So, I’m primarily making this as a purely Enh shaman player, but I do know that the other shaman specs have it worse, but
PLEASE DO ANOTHER PASS AT SHAMAN’S KIT
The core is there, and I’m all for it. Enhancement in TWW feels solid to press buttons, and I originally was planning to avoid the class because of its general survivability. Stormbringer is fun though for how simple it is, and really drew me to the class again.
But then that prementioned issue keeps rearing it’s ugly head: For a melee class, Shamans have zero passive sustainability and the active sustainability really dips into your damage output, especially for enhancement.
You’re either using one of three defensives, earth shield, or healing stream totem for any sort’ve passive mitigation, which all feel like they do nothing. If you need to heal yourself, healing surge will consume your maelstrom weapon stacks and heal for a good chunk; but the tradeoff is losing those stacks.
Compare this to something like Ret paladin that has word of glory. A similar sized heal, but chews up half the amount of resources and actually reward you for pressing occasionally. Yet ret paladins have so much more passive survivability from just spending holy power and hitting their buttons.
I understand enhancement is meant to be more of a hybrid-style caster and melee, but it feels horrible to need to stop and heal after every mob pull just in the open world because a random wasp nearly caved your head in, and pray you don’t accidentally pull two and your three defensives are on cooldown.
So, looping back to my original point
For a class that has 4 action bars worth of spells and utility, everything feels incredibly lacking. I get that a lot of the classic fantasy for shamans was buffing your weapons, but as an enormous hot take:
Make lightning shield, windfury weapon, and flametongue weapon passives.
I know these are staple shaman buttons, but now that they gave shamans a raid buff as well? We don’t need those buttons to press. Additionally, Enhancement needs some form of bonus armor or additional increase to their health on top of Brimming with Life. My first thought is making some form of passive Earth Shield for enhancement to heal on hit, but I understand the button is useful in PvP or other situations.
Finally, totems. Totems hold such a massive importance to shaman, and I fully agree that they need to stay. I just think a lot of shaman’s utility or defensives could be combined into a totem, and that totem made untargetable. Spirit Walk and Wind Rush can be combined, for example, giving the shaman a larger speed boost and removing movement impairing effects.
I know shaman has other glaring issues right now, like struggling in pvp against other melee classes, but as it stands it feels like enhancement is just the weaker, less cool cousin to Mountain Thane warriors.