Why is enhance “complex”

Classes Shaman
1

Every YouTube video rates the rotation of enhance as complex and hard with a lot of micro things to manage.

I’m not seeing it. The rotation is pretty straight forward and it just seems like u don’t really have a choice in what ability to use but instead whatever’s available.

Like we only have to maintain flame shock. And the one mistake I make is just using flame shock instead of frost.

I feel like affliction and classes that have all abilities available and you have to choose what to use carefully is more complex.

To me ele seems more complex since u can easily not pay attention to lava burst and accidentally cast an extra lightning bolt vs enhance having all abilities on cool downs so u just push what’s next

2

I think it’s more of the priority rotation vice a generic builder spender rotation that most specs have. Enhance is very fluid depending on what procs you have available to you at any given time vice hit a,b,c you hit a,c,y,b,a etc etc

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3

Melee vs ranged comparisons are not that simple. Compared to other melee classes, Enhancement does not have a fixed rotation of basically use one or two abilities to build to X resources then spend them with a few other abilities.

It’s because of the cooldown system that mistakes cannot be recovered either; if you only need 3 holy power but build to 4, so what, you were going to build that extra resource eventually anyways. For Enhancement, that is lost time while abilities sit off cooldown that can’t be recovered. It also doesn’t help that the cooldowns do not really line up that well meaning the ‘rotation’ is non-existant and requires longer proper sequences to play without downtime.

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4

I imagine people say that because everything has a CD. Enhance can get itself into a spot where everything is on cd for a few seconds and you have nothing to press.

I dunno. I don’t find it to be “difficult” its just not a straightforward build/spend like fury or WW for example.

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5

There are people out there who want to play classes with a 2 or 3 button rotation, so in that regard Enhance is off the charts. I don’t understand it either, but look at how many people complain about having to hard cast lightning bolt or have long periods of downtime.

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6

because every single youtube content creator who makes things like tier videos and spec ratings is absolutely trash at the game

like, literal dirt tier

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7

The base rotation appears pretty straight forward and manageable but there are numerous talent options that complicate it beyond the point of most other melee specs.

Not being GCD locked doesn’t mean that a spec isn’t complex though. Feral is another example; WW too. Some specs that are GCD locked are pretty easy as well, like havoc and fury.

8

If it wasn’t rng combo points with maelstrom weapon it would be better. Going back to Maelstrom weapon is huge leap backward, not good.

9

Id say its vastly better haha. The bfa legion enhance was horrid in pvp and unintuitive u were a crappy fury warrior with less damage and survivability and utility as well.

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10

All builder-spender systems with multiple options, especially where multiple CDs to keep synced away from simultaneous refresh, are still priority rotation systems as well.

Builder/spender systems just tend to have an inherent further layer of bankability and downtime reductions, since they tend to still give you something (of lower value) to press when lacking free procs, rather than risking entirely dead globals when unlucky.

11

I don’t think it was too complicated in the end but we all felt confused initially as coming from BFA we were just chucking stormstrikes after crash lightning. Now that adjustment is over and we are getting used to it everyone is getting better at it.

It’s like driving stick shift isn’t difficult at all and makes sense but if you came from automatic it just seems complicated for a few weeks.

12

It’s not really difficult, it’s just that most other specs are incredibly easy and so it’s hard in comparison to others.

13

It’s no more difficult than what we had previously, though. It just had more dead globals and punishes downtime more variably.

In terms of decision-making or pace-management, a Static-Echo-Master-Surge-Storm build of Elemental, for example, has significantly more going on than the most complex that can be gleaned from Enhancement (the talent-complexity of which is basically just Hailstorm and Earthen Spike).

  • Yes, I realize Static Discharge isn’t currently viable.
14

A huge part of the complexity comes from the sheer volume of buttons involved in the “rotation.” The core rotation is 7 abilities. That’s before borrowed power abilities, before talents; it doesn’t include Chain Lightning, though you constantly switch between it and Lightning Bolt at any given moment, and it doesn’t include Feral Spirits because it’s only once every couple minutes. It also doesn’t include maintaining Windfury Totem.

Typical talent setup adds Sundering and another cooldown, plus you get another button from your essence, which, depending on what you have access to, adds either another cooldown or another ability to your core rotation. I believe that makes it 12 total buttons. But most of your time is spent casting those core 7, and you press them a relatively equal number of times.

Elemental Shaman has four buttons in their core rotation: Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, and Lava Burst. And maybe count Frost Shock because sometimes you’ll use it to gap-fill while moving. Once you account for talents, cds, and an essence, Ele’s total number of single-target rotation, damage dealing buttons is 11. That includes Earth Elemental, which is a five minute cd and does barely any damage afaik, and it includes Icefury over Primal Elementalist, which adds two buttons (Icefury and Frost Shock). But again, most of time s spent pressing those core 4 buttons.

And that’s a big difference. 12 buttons vs 11 buttons looks much closer than it is. the 7 button vs 4 button comparison is probably more accurate. On top of that, keep in mind that Enh is juggling all these buttons plus paying attention to a dot, and managing an rng combo point system, and reacting to procs. Not to mention interrupting, throwing the occasional off heal, using a free global to drop healing stream totem, or whatever other utility… And, oh yeah, we’re melee so 90% of mechanics are designed to hose us, so we’re frequently moving at the same time.

None of that should be taken as a complaint. Enh is my favorite class/ spec in any game ever (and it’s not close), especially now that we’ve reverted back to the pre-shi**y-energy-bar-and-praying-for-procs version. And I will always come down on the side of people playing what they like, and so don’t look down on Havoc Demon Hunters or Arcane Mages for playing 2 or 3 button specs. But in terms of complexity or difficulty or whatever you want to call it, Ele simply doesn’t come close Enh. And in general ranged dps is nowhere near as hard as melee.

Now, if you want to compare Enh to, say, Outlaw, that would be an interesting debate.

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15

Ahh, I can see that now.

Having started out predominantly with short-CD-sync-based specs, I’d always thought of it as something relatively… baseline/universal, I guess, despite that being increasingly less the case as WoW has developed, so somehow sync manipulation didn’t come to mind despite, yeah, being pretty huge for Enhance; I was looking instead at just the A/B and this-for-that and prep-with-this kinds of decision making, as per Surge of Power, Master of Elements, etc.

Yep, I completely left out the majority of the spec’s complexity over a personal blindspot. Thank you for the correction.

16

So, I picked Ele because it was one of the specs brought up by the op, and I wasn’t specifically replying to you, so I appreciate your measured response because my reply seems super harsh when directed at your previous comments, but that wasn’t the intent.

To be fair, I’m probably short-changing Elemental a bit. I know there’s some decisions that are based on current short-term buffs, which isn’t an Enh thing at all (outside some fairly simple Frost Shock interactions with Hailstorm), so I may be under-estimating the cognitive overhead required to make those decisions in real time, though I suspect clever use of WeakAuras could pare that down somewhat.

It’s also notable that a big difference between Enh and Ele, at least in the prepatch, is how talents are selected. Because Ele’s core rotation is just a few buttons plus a longish cd, they’re free to pick up tons additional buttons and complexity from their talents. In comparison, for Enh the payoff for adding a button to the core rotation is a relevant consideration. In the Icy-veins guide, for example, both Elemental Blast in tier 1 and Icestrike in tier 2 are excluded as good picks not because they aren’t potential dps increases but more because their payoff isn’t worth the disruption to the rotation through added complexity and an extra button.

But that calculation is fluid. When we have covenants and soulbinds and legendaries and whatever else in SL (not to mention inevitable balancing changes, the payoff for those abilities could increase to the point that Enh has 14 or 15 dps buttons for single target.

Sorry for the novel, but, hell, the servers are down for 6 more hours and it’s my day off.

17

Let me also just add that the idea of what complexity actually is in regards to a rotation is fairly subjective. And Vitwolfen is right that we have blind spots when it comes to considering other playstyles. For example, there’s an added layer of complexity for ranged classes of having to make judgment calls about whether your current cast will finish in time to allow you to avoid an incoming mechanic or if you should interrupt it with movement. That’s not really a thing with melee.

18

Enhance operates on a standard priority system for ST akin to something like

Windfury Totem if not up
Frost Shock if you have Hailstorm buff
MW x 5 LB if you have 8+ stacks
Flame Shock if not up on the target
Feral Spirit
Stormstrike on cd and reset
Sundering (if taken)
Frost Shock
Flame shock if less than 5 sec duration to refresh
Lava Lash
Crash Lightning
MW x 5 lb at 5+ stacks if nothing else

But certain talents change priorities — if you have lashing flames

suddenly Lava Lash goes right before flame shock to keep the buff up

If you have Hot Hands, Lava Lash goes to top priority during hot hands windows

If a second mob comes into range, crash lightning goes above Frost Shock (non hailstorm) to get the SS boost

What happens if Flame shock is about to fall off, but you just spent MWx5 and have Hailstorm? What if you took Ice Strike with Fire Nova? (el oh el)

Did you take Stormkeeper? Earthen spike?

Those make rotation look like

Hailstorm
Stormkeeper
Earthen Spike
MWx5 LB 8+ stacks
Flame Shock if not up
SS
etc. etc. etc.

There is a lot to going on, on top of maelstrom weapons only having visual stack up til 5 — meaning if you want to do the 8+ stack thing, you need to have some sort of external addon or stare at your buff bar.

Not even getting into PvP where, unlike most other melee you aren’t just looking for interupts, but also have to know what sort of things are worth purging/cleansing/grounding.

Its more complex than a lot of other melee specs out there, except for maybe Feral (with snapshotting - though I don’t have personal experience I just hear its complex) and Subtley rogue (same, people just tell me its complex).

19

Oh, no worries there. As I said, it was my bad, my blindspot. Just as I wouldn’t think of “Will I have enough time to cast this” as a something specific to Elemental even though it’s very pertinent when put alongside/against Enhancement, I just didn’t think about the arguably massive complexity that comes from CD sync (especially to those who might be newer to it). That led to a far from honest evaluation of the two against each other.

All in all, my only two complaints about Enhance at this point is that sometimes the priorities are so varied that CD sync (and with it the at-a-glance modular mathing to avoid line-up) ends up devalued as compared to just… following the priority list, and how much it can change over the 50-60 addition of WfT (Rank 2) and Doom Winds.

Though, I have the same issue with every spec “propped up” by borrowed or levelcap powers, and Enhance is hardly the worst culprit there.

20

No classes rotation in this game is hard or complex. You are literally pressing buttons. So lets just all stop with the “my class is harder than yours” thing.

That being said enhance has a priority system that is unique and feels / flows differently to most other classes. IF you really want to get the most out of every global as enh, there are going to be a handful of times on fights that you’ll have to make micro decisions on which button to press and those things will add up in the end.

This is all they mean by “complex”. Nothing is complex but enhance does require specific decision making when it speeds up and you’re global capped that, depending on the situation, the order you press those buttons in can make a big difference. You get used to this decision making the more you play it.