Last updated on Jun 18, 2024 at 10:00by Wordup36 comments
Welcome to our comprehensive guide on the Enhancement Shaman changes in World of Warcraft's latest expansion, "The War Within."This page is designed to help you navigate the new changes, optimize your gameplay, and get the most out of your Enhancement Shaman in PvE environments.
In this guide, you'll find detailed breakdowns of the new Hero Talent Trees for Enhancement Shaman. We'll explore the most significant updates,and offer insights into how these changes will impact your overall playstyle.Whether you're a veteran Enhancement Shaman or new to the class, our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to excel in "The War Within."
1.
Enhancement Shaman: The War Within Expansion Preview
Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Enhancement Shaman.Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about theEnhancement Shaman spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion,including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some insight into the state of the specgoing into the expansion.
This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, and will be kept upto date with developments during the War Within beta. This is not meantto be a launch guide for Enhancement Shaman, but instead serves as aresource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, andwhat you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.
2.
The War Within Changes for Enhancement Shaman
Currently throughout Alpha and Beta, both Enhancement as a spec and Shaman asa class have not seen any changes to any of its talents or mechanics. As such,the spec at its core operates the same as it has in Dragonflight - though theaddition of Hero Talents add in some new things to play with. In some cases, thisis good; in other cases, it opens up flaws that were previously able to be ignoredbut are now on full display.
3.
Hero Talent Trees for Enhancement Shaman in The War Within
The flagship feature of The War Within are "Hero Talent Trees", withEnhancement having the choice between either "Stormbringer" shared with Elemental,or "Totemic" shared with Restoration. These trees will grant all 11 talent pointsat once when you reach Level 80 (with a handful of choice nodes), and you canfreely swap between them just like regular talent points.
4.
Enhancement Shaman Hero Talents
StormbringerTotemic
3.1.
Stormbringer
Stormbringer focuses entirely on Maelstrom Weapon, providinga powerful "finisher to our finisher" with
Tempest that activatesafter spending 40. This rolls over, counting any extra you spend above the 40count and feeding into your next one. Alongside that,
Awakening Stormsas the capstone provides a second, more random activation point in the form ofan RPPM proc from
Lightning Bolt,
Chain Lightning and
Stormstrike.
The goal of this tree is relatively simple: generate and spend as much resourceas possible to cycle through Tempest casts. This deals strong uncappedAoE damage, and interacts with Maelstrom Weapon itself to become instantand deal increased damage. The remainder of the tree leans even further into thisprocess, incentivizing using as many of these casts as possible to activate othereffects after. Most important of these is
Rolling Thunder, spawning aLightning
Feral Spirit every time Tempest is cast to amplify our Naturedamage even further.
Leaning even further into the heightened value of spending as frequently aspossible is Unlimited Power, providing a stacking 3% Haste buffwhenever we spend any
Maelstrom Weapon, but has a fixed durationof 15 seconds that does not refresh. This gives the tree a ramping feel that flowswell into our gameplay loop.
Alongside this, Arc Discharge gives a very powerful follow-up of 3instant
Chain Lightning casts that deal 75% additional damage (these willalso consume any leftover
Maelstrom Weapon when cast to amplify the damagefurther). These rapid-fire follow-ups give the tree a frenetic feel in AoE, andleans really heavily into the goal of cycling as much as possible.
In terms of defense and utility, on the other hand, the tree is fairly weak. Shocking Grasp slows targets we critically strike with Nature spells,which can be quite obnoxious given the inconsistent application.
Nature's Protection does provide some defense following our
Tempest casts, but we cast it infrequently enough that it is notreliable, and holding it plays counter to the tree as a whole.
Surging Currents is largely irrelevant too, considering the overlap ithas with
Maelstrom Weapon, and that spells also consume stacks of thatwhen activated by this.
As it stands right now this tree is relatively powerful due to the stronginteraction with our primary gameplay loop of our resource, providing an extrabig burst moment that flows well. It also slots into both build archetypes, thoughit has a leaning toward Dragonflight Storm due to Static Accumulation and
Thorim's Invocation. The value of
Rolling Thunder in tandem with
Elemental Blast does still keepit relevant though, and is universally good in AoE scenarios. Alongside that,currently
Primordial Wave does not seem to be intended to interact with
Tempest at all (though there is a bug that says otherwise.
3.1.1.
Bugs
While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, there are a handfulof fairly pervasive bugs that may get in the way of testing the tree to be awareof:
Rolling Thunder causes
Feral Spirit to lose buffs if youare not talented into
Elemental Spirits.
Storm Swell and
Arc Discharge are both active regardlessof which talent you pick.
3.1.
Totemic
Totemic spreads itself thin by interacting with a huge number of ourspec tree abilities, alongside adding in a replacement to Windfury Totemwith
Surging Totem. This is a 30-second cooldown ability that willdeal AoE damage to the nearest enemy every 6 seconds, which we mostly use assoon as its ready. The tree also gives some nice quality of life by moving theWindfury aura to ourselves so long as we have
Windfury Weapon applied toour main hand.
Currently much like our spec tree, there are two entirely separate paths youcan take with the tree, which can be a little confusing. For Storm buildsthat lean into Stormstrike, it will be leveraging the damage from
Surging Totem itself, alongside
Totemic Rebound to empowerthe totem further with
Stormstrike casts. This is rounded out by
Oversurge to empower it even further during
Ascendanceprocs, and
Earthsurge to give a big burst of damage via
Sundering. This all works well with the baseline
Feral Spiritbuffs as the totem deals Physical damage.
Conversely, Elementalist builds focus on Lively Totems and
Reactivity as its primary damage source here, instead using
Surging Totem as an enabler. This somewhat reduces the value of thetalents on the tree you can take that interact with the totem directly, but it isreasonably similar value, if a bit confusing. This is mostly because whentaking
Elemental Spirits, we lose a lot of the buffing power that appliesto the totem, shifting the value in the tree around a lot.
The capstone, Whirling Elements, hooks into a lot ofdifferent spells, granting a mote of Air, Fire and Earth when cast that enhancesthe next associated ability of that element. The main one of note here is theEarth Mote, which interacts with either
Elemental Blast or
Sundering in the form of cooldown reduction. Obviously, Stormtrends toward Sundering here to bring it down to a roughly 30 second cooldown tomake use of
Earthsurge. Elementalist on the other hand makesuse of the Elemental Blast consumption to get an extra cast every totem cycle,meaning that
Maelstrom Weapon pooling is required to make sure it neversits at 2 charges while playing.
For defense and utility, the tree is severely lacking. Oversized Totemsis fun, but a bit pointless in terms of power, while
Swift Recall is soincredibly niche that you will be unlikely to ever see real value from this.
Wind Barrier is theoretically a nice anti-rot tool, but at 6% of our maxhealth every 30 seconds it is both weak and infrequent.
Power wise, Totemic can be quite strong (if a little RNG) for either buildarchetype, but the problem comes down to the spec talent tree failing to giveroom to actually pick up everything you need to. No matter what build you play,there are always some compromises you need to make here to get things working,and some of those sacrifices are significant.
3.1.1.
Bugs
While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, they are worthkeeping track of. Thankfully, for the most part Totemic has had most of itsissues cut down, with a handful left:
Reactivity does not activate on target dummies.
Surging Totem cannot be dragged from the Hero Talent UI, insteadyou need to drag
Windfury Totem from the spec tree.
4.
Enhancement Shaman Tier Set in The War Within
Below are the Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses for Enhancement Shaman inThe War Within. Bear in mind that these are the first passes of bonuses and maychange going forward.
Shaman Enhancement 11.0 Class Set 2pc —
Stormstrike,
Lava Lash,
Ice Strike and
Crash Lightning deal 15%increased damage.
Shaman Enhancement 11.0 Class Set 4pc —
Feral Spirit lasts 100%longer. This includes any Feral Spirits spawned from alternate sources.
4.1.
Enhancement Shaman War Within Set Bonus Impact
Due to this being a very early reveal of the set bonuses, I have a feeling thatat least one of them may change going forward, so bear that in mind.
The 2-piece is very standard, a non-committal bonus that simply improves ourprimary strikes regardless of build. A healthy start to a new expansion that isunlikely to rock the boat while letting the Hero Talents breathe.
The 4-piece on the other hand is incredibly powerful, providing anenormous boost to our DPS due to the value of our Feral Spirit buffeffects and the multiplicative nature of them. The power of this bonus isuniversal, applying to both single-target and AoE, and to both archetypes andHero Talent trees. It does however, incentivize Stormbringerquite heavily due to
Rolling Thunder, allowing you to reach up to10 wolves with some good RNG - which seems a bit extreme.
The current value of the 2-piece is somewhere around 2% give or take in mostsituations depending on build. The 4-piece however is harder to predict because ofjust how much it hooks into the very core of the spec and warps it, but roughestimates put it somewhere north of 20%.
5.
Enhancement Shaman Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Still have flexible damage profiles, allowing us to tailor damage to raid encounter needs.
Strong sustained single-target alongside some decent burst tools.
Very mobile, with some decent control options, alongside easier to use Windfury Totem.
Weaknesses
Still a lack of consistent uncapped AoE tools.
Even longer setup time than before for both Hero Talent trees.
Still very fragile, with a lack of tools to survive frequent big damage events.
6.
Changelog
- 17 Jun. 2024: Page added.
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