May start leveling a Shaman here soon.
Figured I’d ask here to see which is the best overall spec for it. I kinda feel like rolling as Enhancement?
What’s the verdict on it over Elemental in regards to leveling?
Leveling has become so trivial it does not matter.
Both are in a good spot with ele being favored more for m+ due being ranged.
I always found leveling as melee easier then leveling as a caster. During leveling you could really go either. Endgame wise if you plan to M+ or raid, elemental is currently better.
I don’t PvP myself so take this with a grain of salt, but I think Enhance shaman is seeing some decent performance in arenas. Particularly as Venthyr, Chain Harvest hits for alot and is a big nuke.
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Enhancement is easier for leveling since you have far more potent self-healing IMO.
Level as Enhance.
If you try to pick it up at max level, you’ll have a rough time. Leveling will give you a better idea of the rotation.
Ele is easier to pick up but isn’t quite as fun to level.
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For leveling enhance 110%. It’s too fast and easy and stuff dies too fast to get full value from flame shock and stuff. Also you have no tank so you’ll be taking hits which slows down your casting. Just feels bad all around where as enhance is stupid easy (also instant heals so less down time).
Uhhhhh what? Lol enhance rotation is sooooo easy compared to ele. There’s so many modifiers that change the cast priority of certain spells.
Still leveling doesn’t really give you a great idea of rotation so it wouldn’t make me pick ele. Covenant abilities can have a pretty big impact on rotation.
Yeah no.
I’ve leveled both, and played Enhance before and after they changed it in SL.
Ele hasn’t changed much and is super simple to learn.
Enhance is a skill set that most Shaman can’t master, and most don’t even bother.
You’re cracked if you think Ele has a difficult rotation, and that Enhance doesn’t.
Lol I hard disagree, I just made the swap from enhance to ele 
it might depend on your talents a bit as ele but if you’re running what icy veins tells ya ele is way more complicated.
Master of the elements changes up when you want to cast stuff like earth shock/equake. Ie waiting to cast them until you get the buff but making sure to cast them before you maelstrom cap even without the buff. Not to mention stormkeeper changing prior on lb to such a huge extent (casting it with buff before eshock but again not over capping maelstrom).
Ehnahce it’s just flame shock and storm strike with some crashes and lashes thrown into the mix. One of the easier rotations I’ve ever played on any character.
Fixed it for ya (yes we are both entitled to our opinions) lol
Except mine’s not an opinion. It’s hard fact backed up by numbers. Period.
Come back and talk to me once you’ve leveled to 60 and raided as both Ele and Enhance.
Also:
Thanks for proving my point.
And thanks for proving you don’t know the rotation because that’s not it at all. If that’s what you’ve been doing, now wonder you switched away. Your DPS is likely horrible.
You’re one of the Shaman that hasn’t mastered it that I was talking about.
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LOL what hard facts and numbers? Just because a spec might be underperforming a bit doesn’t mean the rotation is hard.
I mean I am 60 and have done as many 10s as you by the looks of it. You do have the two mythic bosses on me but that’s about it.
Proving nothing? Lol I switched because enhance was too brain dead easy. Especially with venthyr chain harvest. I wanted to go necro so I could off spec heals better for my guild.
/Sigh dude I was exaggerating a bit for fun.
Meh it was respectable. Better than my ele DPS because you know it’s actually hard
But by all means get super bent out of shape!
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Enhancement is one of the least forgiving specs, with one of the highest skill caps to be competitive.
Yes, it’s easy to just hit ss, ll, lb, shock on rotation.
But unless you pay attention to trinket and racial timers, procs, maelstrom, and cooldowns, debuffs and party/raid health,bwhilst also moving around to avoid ground and boss mechanics, you’re going to do dumpster dps.
Learning the rotation well can be the difference between 2.5k and 5.5k dps. Yes, it really is that hard to master, but it is easy to learn.
Unlike most other melee where you just hit what lights up, or one of your 2 attacks, enhancement has 9+ abilities that are used regularly in our rotation. It puts us on par with demo and aff lock in that regards.
That being said, learning the basics of enhancement is easy, and mastering can’t be done while levelling, whereas learning elementals rotation is a do or die situation. You either do good dps, or none at all.
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Enhance is a significantly faster APM spec (actions per minute) than Ele.
Its rotation also changes dynamically on the fly. Yes, you have a priority based rotation, but every ability has a cooldown. So you’re having to track multiple short CD abilities and use them as soon as they come off cooldown, while also bearing in mind your priorities depending on the situation.
You mention stormkeeper changing things for Ele. Not really - the cooldown on stormkeeper starts as soon as you activate it. So you simply activate it on CD and have 15 seconds to use your two instant lightning abilities. Which is always easily done - we don’t get that many lava burst procs, lol.
Enhance is one of the more frantic specs in the game. It is significantly more difficult to play optimally than Ele, and this is well recognized by the community.
This is literally the exact same as every single other dps in the game…
Where is this measured? I’ve never really seen this as a stat.
Everyone has multiple short cds to track and priorities based on the situation. Again I’m not seeing the difference. Ele specifically feels much more difficult to manage using abilities and not over capping maelstrom. Enhance outside of doomwinds feels like it has more downtime depending on rng procs of course.
I mean as much as doomwinds does for enhance?
I mean most fights have most fights have more than one mob. With necro it’s pretty easy to have 3 minimum shocks up. I get a ton of procs.
I honestly have never heard this till today and I’ve been enhance since vanilla…
Back to this real quick. Is this actually tracked somewhere? I’d love to go take a look. That’s always interested me (going back to sc days, pros are nuts).
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Enh is hands down my favourite spec in the game. It’s fast-paced, you have abilities to deal with (almost) anything, and the spell visuals are amazing. I can’t quantify it, but I feel like I have the most “fun” while playing enh. I also just prefer leveling as melee, since getting whacked in the face while casting just feels… off to me.
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I would swap back and forth and just get a feel for which one you like more. There’s not much holding you back from reasonably playing both.
I was going to say the same thing lol
…eh not really.
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Enhance leveling will be much easier.
Both specs are really fun so you should try them both.
Simulationcraft tracks APM of each spec, google will pop it up for you. Just make sure you’re looking at the shadowlands one.
Ele has two short CD abilities. Flame shock (which matters) and lava burst (which has two charges so is easy to avoid wastage).
Count how many Enhance has. Read the advanced rotation sections in the guide for each spec to see all the complexity of Enhance.
Doomwinds changes things for Enhance more than Stormkeeper does for Ele. But not sure why we’re comparing a talent to a legendary.
Yes, we can get lots of lava burst procs, but not 15 seconds of them, I think you’ll agree.
If you’ve never heard of APM then you probably haven’t been playing at a high level. I mean no offence by that.
There’s just no point debating it, it’s a very established fact that enhance has a very high skill cap to play at a decent level. Ele simply doesn’t. I wish it did, as playing melee in keys is cancer in SL, so i’ve been playing Ele.
I’ll try to sum this up in one post as to not derail, but:
This is… interesting. What about enhancements current kit do you think actually establishes a skill ceiling, other than correct execution of priority and the knowledge of what to drop during DW windows? It’s certainly higher now again than it was in BFA, but to say it has a “very high skill cap” is… odd.
And on elemental, would you care to explain to me how it doesn’t have a skill cap at all? Just as a tiny example, if in a theoretical ST encounter you had every other short-CD on CD, and you were at 43 mael with a single charge of LvB and no MOTE buff active, what would you do?
I would argue that neither have a cap that high if high at all, and neither are more or less “difficult” to play optimally than the other.
Ah snap… Cool! Thanks!
I have. I’ve also tried multiple specs for both. Enhance just feels easy to do good dps.
Oh I have. Didn’t know people tracked it in wow. I see why now 70 is the highest?!? Sc2 pros are like 200+. The ridiculous ones get up to 400-500.
I do not count ele going to enhance 50-57 being that drastic lol…
I mean if you’re going by APM alone it’s not even top 5 then… Sounds pretty debatable to me. Additionally the Dps variance between good and bad ele shamans is bigger than enhance. To me that indicates ele is harder.
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Perhaps “very high” is incorrect. But it’s widely recognized as being one of the more frantic to play specs, with a high skill cap.
I didn’t mean that Ele has no skill cap. I can see how what I said could be interpreted that way, but it would be a very silly thing to say. Every spec has a skill cap. On AOE, with the Skybreakers leggo, Ele can get reasonably complex to play well.
In your scenario, I would flame shock, as you didn’t stipulate that it was up 
.
Not here to turn this into a pee-ing match (you’ll lose if that’s your highest character), so let’s refrain from getting into that.