State of Enhacement Shaman

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

i just want to discuss about how the enhacement shaman is performing right now (please dont shaman tank, elemental, resto)

i like a lot the enhacement shaman playstyle and im having fun right now in SoD, not for this wont say that the spec is having a bad performance right now compared with the other melee classes, we know that classes like warriors and rogues scalates so well in later phases, and im not seeing how the enhacement shaman ll be in a good spot with the currently state of the class.
I just see how enhacement shamans will be in a death point for next phases if blizzard doesnt put enough efford in the class.

The enhacement runes right now are some of the worst in the game and for future phases these runes wont be better because will have really bad interactions with new abilities and items.

The first thought is wild strikes from druids, for this phase all the other melees classes are receiving a huge buff just having a druid in the party and the shaman have a locked interaction because rockbitter.

Lava lash: right now is an awful spell, low damage and with weapon limitations is outshined by every other low CD damage ability: Mangle, Saber slash, Crusader strike. Please look what now balance druids have with starsurge.

Shamanistic rage: right now is a mana refill every minute but that is just because enhacement is using double rockbitter, using any other weapon enhacement is really low the mana received.

Dual wield especialization: Just by use dual wield you ll have -19% hit rating penalty compared with 2H users in autoattacks, so its just like “you ll hit a bit more autoattacks” but nothing great compared to what runes like Divine storm, wild strikes or Deadly brew do for they users.

Itemization: right now the 2h enhacement shaman have very poor options of weapons (most of 1h weapons are fast) and the entire classic version lack in options for them, was supposed that the new BFD loot considerate every spec but no. just daggers and maces with 2.00 spd.

Im not asking for buff or nerf X class, im just saying that blizzard have to pay more attencion in what are the classes and viability that they giving to us.
SoD is a great idea but looks like if they did a homework the sunday at midnight and nowadays they dont know yet what to do for the future phases.

2

I think our melee DPS problems are fairly well known at this point, but may as well recap

  1. Overall DPS is pretty low at 60, yes, even with 2h wf. Yes, yes, we all know about that one friend you had with a sulfuras. The reality is that if you were raiding, you were there to drop a totem and spam chain heal.

  2. Our aggro generation is very high. I’m not talking about rockbiter. If you get a few crits on a 2h wf proc, or proc wf back to back, you’re very likely to rip aggro from the tank. The main issue is that the aggro happens in bursts. You do low DPS already, but will spend a lot of time backing off and not attacking.

I remember my raiding guild was bored in MC killing trash, and the raid leader jokingly told me to throw wf on my unstoppable force to see if I could pull aggro off the tank in my t1/t2 healing gear, and I did it

  1. We have relatively few melee buttons to press to make combat more interactive, one being stormstrike. 30 second cool down, basically just another auto attack. It was later found to be useful as a way to indirectly fish for an on demand wf proc in pvp. Still, in pve, you’re not doing much else. Shock spam is iffy because…

  2. Mana issues at 60. I think sham rage might be fine. Who knows yet though, this is a wild card as of now.

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3

Lava Lash is the WORST classic spell ever created. It is only good in Cataclysm, right now is just the weakest spell from the game. Even in WotLK with 3300+ spell power it hits like a baby punch.

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4

As a tony 2h, since we are basically forced to use lavaburst and overload ive found that i really enjoy the weaving, it shines very strong in pvp more so than pve where it can do 60-120 dps on a spectrum that trails off on longer fights.

What enhance really needs to shine is likely maelstrom, but more importantly something to make 2h shine through and capitalize on melee strikes. With one stack of maelstrom lavaburst weaving becomes much stronger even if maelstrom dosent effect lavaburst due to the swing timer not stopping with maelstrom during casting. If this gets tied in with some form of attack power into spell damage then we will see a big increase in enh damage output that might even match elemental in p2 which will become quite a brickhouse.

Also theres coral reef axe in BFD that is good weapon for us 2h tonys

5

You hit the nail on the head for every rune, and it feels really bad that we can’t benefit from rockbitter and wildstrikes