Why are enh shamans so rare?

[Deleted]

Used to play Enh back in Cata and I remember loving the hell out of it! Plus I had that special feeling of being one of the few that played the spec :P I switched to Ele during MoP and I am afraid of going back to enh for some reason xD

[zoomgpally]

Played the shit outta enhancement. It's easily one of the most fun specs in game. Enhancement Shamans always used to be strong out of the door as well (then get weaker during the course of an expansion).

Moved to DK which just felt like a really well rounded enhance with less heals

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Indeed, it's a priority system on enhance. Usually end's up falling into a regularish pattern but there's no fixed rotation.

While it's kinda shit/cheating getting a decent CLC addon makes it much easier to get good numbers out of your character so you can excel at situational awareness/etc.

Which is what every other spec has these days.

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Enhancement has no proper damage reduction cooldown which is why every single melee dps class is better than shaman for mythic encounters. Need somebody to soak 90% of damage? No problem, just get a rogue or monk. DPS role in high end raiding lives and dies with cooldown usage, and shaman is a class that has none.

Good single target dps does not make up for extremely bad aoe dps (before WoD) and the lack of cooldowns. Remains to be seen if the good aoe dps will make up for poor single target dps and lack of cooldowns in WoD, but I really doubt it.

DPS DKs have worse defensive cooldowns in most cases
Also, if you think shaman has no defensive cooldowns, you don't know your class well enough to belong in high end raiding anyway.

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Not so. My pre-6.0 BM hunter had a substantially easier time killing players in pvp than my shaman. In arena, the high pet damage basically countered LoS and high damage plus mobility and short-cd CC ensured that I could take on just about anyone and have a high chance of winning, and I did. While a good player can do well with any class, he or she will do better with some more than others. Every fight with enhancement is an uphill battle.

Enhancement has no "oh sh!t" button like iceblock, deterrence, shield wall, blood presence, etc. Shamanistic rage is weak for what it is, but with the glyph it's pretty good.
Enhancement's CC is limited to a 1.7 sec cast "curse" effect, which does not work on druids and allows the player to continue moving. Even when it was instant, it's long CD devalued it compared to a spammable CC like fear, poly or cyclone. Even feral druids were able to insta-cast cyclone, incurring a 20 sec CD.
Capacitor Totem 4 sec stun is situational, clunky and not a reliable stun. In cata, at least our feral spirits had a 2 sec stun - that was more useful.
Since enhancement is a hybrid melee/caster we are vulnerable to EVERY cc in the game, thankfully disarms are no longer an issue but still are vulnerable to snares, roots, silence and stuns. We do not have a gap closer aside from ghost wolf and a sprint. Frozen power is nice but it DRs so after two uses it becomes useless outside of being a snare.

The reason for all of this is that enhance gets hit with nerfs directed at resto. They do not seem to put much thought into how nerfs to resto spec adversely affect the two DPS specs. Not saying this to complain about enhance, but to illustrate that there are a lot of things that can go wrong for you if you are playing as one...and that to be good with one you have to know how to work around these issues.

Yes, a weak defensive ability that cripples your damage overall AND throws all pooled resources out the window is a oh shit button...

As in "OHSHIT MISCLICK"

As for hex, it is a CC that doesn't instantly break on damage, pretty much being polymorph on steroids.

[Raiju]

DPS DKs have worse defensive cooldowns in most cases
Also, if you think shaman has no defensive cooldowns, you don't know your class well enough to belong in high end raiding anyway.

They're pretty poor in WoD, but once again the context of this thread is present/past - where dk defensive cooldowns were incredibly strong even as dps.

Compare the dk defensive talent tier to the shaman one (even now this one holds true)
Icebound fortitude as a minor defensive boost
Significantly higher physical damage reduction from armour passively
AMS before it's 6.0 nerf was crazy strong.

Hex breaks to a single direct attack - weak dots and cleave may not break it immediately. I imagine most would trade hex for polymorph, given (in pvp) the target can't position while cc'd, there's no cooldown, and poly's only real drawback of healing the target while cc'd does not gameplay using it in nearly all cases.

[Anzen]

Enhance is high effort/low reward, compared to, say Warrior which is low effort/high reward, which I'd assume is why people don't play it.

[Nihilan]

Enhance has been a roller coaster deeps machine over the years though. It has definitely lost its charm since the oldschool windfury nerfs. Now it feels like just another bland melee class. Its main drawbacks, imo are its lack of burst aoe*, its dependency on searing totem, its low sustain/high burst dps model and its high effort-low reward playstyle. As has been mentioned, enhance is not hard to master, but it will require more effort on the part of the player to compete with other, simpler, melee specs. The spec does have very good mobility though with instant ghostwolf.

(*Enhance lacks burst aoe but is very strong at sustained aoe.)

[I mained enhance through end the of vanilla/beginning of BC, then through wrath/cata. Playing a monk since MoP though.]

[fixx]

Also, if you think shaman has no defensive cooldowns, you don't know your class well enough to belong in high end raiding anyway.

If you think 30% or 40% reduction is as good as 90% reduction when the incoming damage is significantly higher than maximum health you don't know basic math well enough to belong in this discussion anyway.

[Murderdoll]

Which is what every other spec has these days.

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DPS DKs have worse defensive cooldowns in most cases
Also, if you think shaman has no defensive cooldowns, you don't know your class well enough to belong in high end raiding anyway.

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Yes, a weak defensive ability that cripples your damage overall AND throws all pooled resources out the window is a oh shit button...

As in "OHSHIT MISCLICK"

As for hex, it is a CC that doesn't instantly break on damage, pretty much being polymorph on steroids.

Poly on roids?

A cc which is no longer supplemented with maelstrom weapon requiring us to stop and cast as melee plus has the added bonus of a large cool down.

SIGN ME UP!!

It's OK they can take some minor damage though.

[TrollShaman]

Personally I enjoy both ele and enhancement specs. Back in Cata I was Ele/Resto but then switched to Enh/Resto so I dont have conflicting int gear secondary stats :P

Enhancement felt much less clunky in this prepatch thanks to no more ramp up time to Lava Lash, although Echo of the Elements change that to some degree. Personally I like that they got visual updates too like Stormstrike looking much less boring although I sorely miss Ascendance's original Stormstrike animation. It feels weird shooting a breeze at the opponent now ._.

With Wod coming very soon I will have basically 2 Shaman. One is Ele and strictly for Challenge Modes, and the other remaining Enhance/Restoration.

[Koreche]

Which is what every other spec has these days.

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DPS DKs have worse defensive cooldowns in most cases
Also, if you think shaman has no defensive cooldowns, you don't know your class well enough to belong in high end raiding anyway.

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Yes, a weak defensive ability that cripples your damage overall AND throws all pooled resources out the window is a oh shit button...

As in "OHSHIT MISCLICK"

As for hex, it is a CC that doesn't instantly break on damage, pretty much being polymorph on steroids.

DPS dks hardly have worse defensives... and shamans bring nothing to mythic raids lol.

its a oh shit button because if you mess up and almost die you become immune to damage and living because of it is alot better than dying to do 50k more dmg... what you said about it is just plain stupid and makes you look like you have no idea what you are talking about. iceblock is a very good defensive in both pve and pvp and saves mages a hell of alot more than any shaman defensive...

Hex breaks pretty easily on damage and it doesnt hinder movement speed and they have full control of their character. its basically a disarm/silence that breaks if you hit the target twice lol not to mention its our only actual CC that isnt countered by an auto attack or moving out of the way. Capacitor is shit against anyone that doesnt suck.

enh also has no gap closer. just a sprint that only breaks slows/snares already applied so anyone smart just reapplies it. shamans can also do nothing against being stunned or any hard cc that isnt a magic effect. and ascendence is what used to make up for not having a gap closer but our damage is so bad now especially without being able to use lava lash that it just doesnt matter that we can auto attack. its nowhere near as good as any other gap closer

[Mormolyce]

Ele and Resto go very nicely together, they can share almost all their gear. Melee in general is sought after by pretty much nobody. And ele has a much better fleshed-out, more satisfying rotation. Enh has one of the crappiest, most old-fashioned rotations in the game. If not the most.

But that's just like, my opinion man.

[Professor Expert]

Yes, a weak defensive ability that cripples your damage overall AND throws all pooled resources out the window is a oh shit button...

As in "OHSHIT MISCLICK"

As for hex, it is a CC that doesn't instantly break on damage, pretty much being polymorph on steroids.

Not sure what you're talking about...but if it's divine shield, you take a 50% damage cut for 8 sec of immunity...doesn't sound like a bad deal to me. Sham Rage is a 30% damage reduction, and only if glyphed does it dispel magic debuffs. It should not require a glyph to do what it does, and it should be at least 40% damage reduction.

Polymorph, as a CC, is far more useful than hex which can be dispelled by a base ability that all other shaman and mages have. I'm not attacking the target I CC with hex; that's the point of CC. To take one guy out of the equation while I focus on another. If used correctly, polymorph is the next best thing to druid's cyclone.

enh also has no gap closer. just a sprint that only breaks slows/snares already applied so anyone smart just reapplies it. shamans can also do nothing against being stunned or any hard cc that isnt a magic effect. and ascendence is what used to make up for not having a gap closer but our damage is so bad now especially without being able to use lava lash that it just doesnt matter that we can auto attack. its nowhere near as good as any other gap closer

Ascendance has become enhance's excuse for a "gap closer" as it's no longer any significant source of burst.

You can choose the windwalk totem talent and give up frozen power. IMO frozen power is more useful most of the time, especially against rogues since they cannot remove the root with burst of speed, and it also helps keep mages and hunters in melee range. The 1 min CD on WW totem is also too long; it needs to be more like 20 sec for it to be useful.