Shamans and Two Handed Enhance! Blizzard Please!

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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It’s common knowledge to the WoW community that Enhancement Shamans wielding two handed weapons coupled with windfury is undoubtedly iconic, it’s a staple of vanilla and classic and most OG Shamans have always enjoyed it more the dual wield, faults and all. It is not just the big windfury’s but how a two hander looks on a Shaman… the animations, how flurry couples with it all. It’s loved for a variety of reasons. If you ever need to see a video of of this iconic behavior just look up Unbreakable on YouTube.

What I’m getting at is pretty simple, Shamans have been pigeon holed into dual wield for 17 years or so. We’ve been stuck with it, until classic came and gave us the opportunity to enjoy it yet again.

Here we are, season of discovery, which is undoubtedly a fantastic opportunity to expand on the two handed tool kit… and instead we introduce dual wield… to me and many other shamans, I am most certain that is utterly disappointing.

It’s very cool that we’ve been given the opportunity to tank, I think that’s fascinating as I’m sure many others do. But introducing dual wield into classic is to me just lazy and uninspired and uninteresting…lava lash is a very boring ability. Please don’t force me into dual wield to be viable, I understand this is just the beginning of season of discovery, but you’ve already stated as a company that you’re planning on continuing down this path for Shaman and I’m here to tell you that the vast majority of us do not want to dual wield, and instead would prefer you expand on two handed enhance and the viability of them in pvp and pve.

Please :pray:, this is the one opportunity we’re ever going to have again to expand on it. Thanks you!

Some rough ideas for skills to support it:

Primal Strike: An instant attack that does 85% weapon damage (%) nature damage. 8 Second CD.

Anticipating Winds: Reduces Windfury’s hits to 2, but increases proc chance to 40%.

Primal Rage: Increases attack speed by 15% when wielding two handed weapons at all times.

Winds Guidance: Increases chance to hit by 2/4/6%.

Wind Shield: Creates a vortex around the shaman dealing damage every 2 seconds for 16 seconds, slows targets attack speed by 5% per hit stacking up to 5 times.

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After they’ve said to us they’re listening to feedback on this topic and seeing the insane amounts of posts on they almost have to make a 2h rune. Otherwise it’s pretty obvious they never intended to do it regardless of what the community wants.

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I’d bet my house that they already plan to add more 2h-focused runes when other Runes slots become available in future phases.

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I truly hope that’s the case!

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My first husband was a “Dual Wield guy”. I told him, boy you choose one, me or your offhand. He tried to tell me Lava Lash. I said, boy how’s this for Lava lash? And i kicked his azz out to the curb. Bye boy.

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Damn if that doesn’t just sum it up. I’ll still play Enh if DW is the only supported archetype. But it’d be a pale comparison.

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Only way I’d ever play Enh DW in classic is just to have two spell damage scaling proc weapons, and I still wouldn’t take Lava Lash. That ability just SUCKSSSSSS.

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Signed, 2H Enhance is a part of the Vanilla game, they should have improved it not abandoned it a second time…

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Rune of storm earth and fire
Grants 30% of attack power to spell damage
Allows lavalash with a 2 handed weapon
In addition when using a 2 handed weapon your storm strike, earth shock, and lava lash abilities all grant 1 stack of maelstrom

Boom cast weave build yay

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I like these ideas, but this one should definitely be a different element. Lightning is too similar to wind (technically nature damage which has earth, lightning and wind spells, plus random druid stuff and poisons). If the point is just aoe damage, lava or fire would work. We already have a lightning, water, and earth shield so we’re just missing fire. The attack speed slow is good for tanking though.

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Lavalash needs to just be retired. Keep it away from my 2h.

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This was my response to a similar topic. I think because 2 hand enhance can get Overload and Lava burst (auto crit), there is room to work:

As a 2-hand shaman, with Lava burst being in, couldn’t you weave in Lava burst in between 2 handed swings to continually proc the 9% crit from elemental devastation and flurry (at 60 of course)? That would make your runes for those 3 spots Overload (chance for double crit lava bursts), Lava burst, and Shamanistic rage for mana?

Rotation something like (assuming 3.5 speed 2H weapon):

0.0 secs - Flame shock
0.0 secs - Melee swing
1.5 secs - Lava burst AUTO CRIT (procs 9% melee crit bonues and flurry) + overload chance
3.5 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
3.5 secs - Stormstrike
5.0 secs - Earth shock
7.0 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
9.5 secs - Lava burst AUTO CRIT (procs 9% melee crit bonues and flurry) + overload chance
10.5 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
12.0 secs - Earth Shock (Stormstrike still up, falls off on this shock)
14.0 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
15.5 secs - Stormstrike
17.0 secs - Flame Shock refresh
17.5 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
18.5 secs - Lava burst AUTO CRIT (procs 9% melee crit bonues and flurry) + overload chance
19.0 secs - Earth shock
21.0 secs - Melee swing (bonuses still up)
etc etc etc.

All that with windfury on the constantly hasted and 9% crit buffed 2 hander? I didn’t even account for flurry hasted melee swings in here so the dps would be higher.

All that while needing way less hit and having the ability to get double auto crit lava bursts and ensure a crit at a specific time? Windfury + overload seems like it would be RNGesus that averages out to pretty decent.

2 Hand seems like it would be okay, just with lava burst for auto-crit uptime of buffs instead of lava lash. Using rage as necessary for mana and pots + the regen skills we’re getting from some other classes. Only seems to be 2 second breaks in the rotation at most and you would prob have to back off a bit for threat.

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And also completely trash at doing damage.

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I really like the wind-themed ideas! Just like 2H shaman, I feel like Blizzard has neglected wind/air as an element compared with the others and just gone with lightning instead

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It kind of reminds me of Warding Winds from DnD though. To your point, Warding Winds isn’t offensive, but I like the fantasy of it a lot.

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Maybe not with the new runes. Keeping flurry and elemental devstation constantly up by adding 1 (maybe 2) auto crit Lava bursts every 8 seconds with Lava Burst and overload in between long weapon swings. I don’t know, they may be alright.

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Honestly… no. I think we need ways that DON’T involve the Maelstrom system. Not going to make a suggestion just pointing out that I’ve seen this mentioned a lot on Reddit as well and it’s just… there has to be other ideas to bring to shamans.

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So for me i think we dont need to add much additional to the spec to make two hand work better. All we really need is abit of synergy between some abilities. We have three i think shields an we might see dw using water shield for the mp help over lightning, which makes some sense since of what i see the fact of lightning shield being up has little effect compared to the mana regen of using water shield instead.

  • Grounding strike: This heavy strike that does 75-90%weapon damage, while if lightning shield is active the damage of this attack is buffed by 30% consuming one lightning orb. This attack could have a 8-15 second cd maybe.

  • Ice sheet: Your frost shock now leaves a debuff on the target, which reduces the attack/casting speed of the target, but when hit with a non-fire based attack the sheet of ice explodes showering those in 15-25 yard range for X frost damage from the sharp splinters of ice. while the shaman hitting the target with a fire-based attack will remove the debuff.

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This wont be as much dmg as you think. The 9% crit will be nice but it wont be 100% unless you build for spell hit which we would need 14% as we cant get the dw 5% and we cant get the 3% from talents and ele dev. Not to mention that ALOT of bosses are fire immune or resistant. At best wed have a build that only semi works 60% of the time. Also the LB and subsequent overload procs will do almost no dmg unless they also give us the 30% ap turns to sp talent as a rune. Maybe there is a path for a spellhance build but that will likely be better as dual weild anyways, especially if you can dual weild sp weapons.

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This is why i say we lean into the maelstrom weapon but give 2h some increased generation since its gonna be easier ro cast weave with a 2h, but will also fall short of dws maelstrom generation.

Rune of storm earth and fire
Increases your spell damage by 30% of your attack power and allows you to use lava lash with a 2 handed weapon

In addition while wielding a 2 handed weapon, your stormstrike earthshock and lavalash will all generate 1 stack of maelstrom weapon

This rune will benefit both 2h and dw (since we 2h enjoyers have to cope with letting our dw oppressors take some benefits) but also allows 2h to stay in the game with a reliable source of maelstrom to do low stack cast weaving with, which i personally think could be fun to skip lavalash for lava burst with even or skip lava burst and storm strike talent for elemental fury talent in elemental. In my years with enh ive really come to enjoy lightning being part of the rotation and my class fantasy really likes the 2h build being part of it

“Storm, Earth, and Fire heed my call!”