Enhancement and where it has gone

[wordup]

I agree and disagree with you. TBC was the first expansion where enhancement shaman in raid was not a joke at a bar. In fact i still have some screenshots from swp boss raids where i was just behind the 2 rogues with the legendaries from BT.
Anyway,

i disagree that enhancement is a spec that everyone can play now. I can assure you it is extremely rare to find good enhancement shamans around. Most of the times i am surprised from the huge gaps in skills. Things were worse in ToT where we were the Fire Elemental's pets..But yes ToT was our fun and only content patch where we broke everything in dps meters. I will never forget it!

I would prefer the single dps of enhancement to be challenging but rewarding.
I would prefer that blizzard wouldn't see us as melee moonkins and just aoe things to top meters.

However this is the case in this expansion and unfortunately i believe they dont really take into consideration our feedback. The feedback they accept is not generalized and i feel it comes from certain high end players where guess what , not many enhancement shamans exist..

Whilst you may say it's very difficult to find good Enhancement Shaman, the logs tend to differ. You can see at the lowest percentiles, Enhancement is performing usually 20%~ better relative to other classes (in lower end content) than it is when you look at the 95th percentiles. That indicates that skill differentials are not as important for the spec as it is for others. Whilst the spec has nuance and feel, it really is nowhere near as in-depth as it used to be/it could be/compared to alternatives. On a subjective level, sure, but objectively it actually is very difficult to find huge "skill gaps".

That isn't from a lack of trying from the community trying to min/max, it's simply that the class does not have any super vital mechanics that do take a quick and experienced player to make use of, compared to the other melee say, who have extremely important management in their resources or their procs, or their cooldowns.

[Deleted]

I'm kinda surprised by this since I'm enjoying my enhancement shaman in mythic and I kinda can keep up on some fights with other dps. Given my guild is not the best and we only raid 2 days a week for 3 hours, I'm certain f.e. the mages dont do as much as they should. Looking into logs for mythic or heroic hfc enhancer is fine I think. It's not like we could expect to be in the top 5 dps speccs with all these mages, warlocks, hunters and what not. I only wish enhancement would be more about single target and not reduced to fire nova that much...but hey, restoration always was more fun Im just not allowed to heal since we have so many =(

Oh and also enhancement is a beast in cm! Just did shadowmoon realm best today for the must have title spiritwalker needed to share since I am happy :P

[shallowfall]

It seems they are trying to buff our ST damage, but they're trying to be careful about it. Unfortunately, bursty-ness in PvP is a big factor. They can't just re-buff our Ascendance, or enhancement will be once again dropping people in PvP withing seconds. Ele/EM/Asc/Trinkets and it would take 2 stormblasts to drop foes. Damage would drop off after that, but that burst was pretty OP. They continue to buff SS and LL, but our ST damage still isn't quite there.

IMO we should be 10/10 great at AoE (fire nova!), GOOD at single target, and then 2-3 target multi-dotting can be our slight weakness. If you look at our spell mechanics, it would seem that's how it should be. FN can be used on 2-3 targets but really doesn't shine until 4+ targets. CL is similar. Other than LM, that's our aoe right there! Whereas, multi-dotter classes can really stick out in a good way on 2-3 targets.

How to fix this? Well, there's a lot of discussion in other threads already.

I'm still having fun playing the spec. I'd worry if I were trying to compete for a spot in a top guild pushing for world top 100. But I play semi-hardcore in a guild that raids 9 hours a week. I can pull competitive numbers and I feel like I'm contributing. Though I do wish I had more utility...

[Emophia]

cataclysm was worse.

Late Cata was the most fun I've had as enhance, only problem was the the complete lack of any real burst CD and no real benefits with lust.

[Deleted]

If burst was a problem they already have the tools: let somethign do more damage in pve than in pvp.

[MiiiMiii]

Honestly Enhancement shaman is in a pretty good spot now. Raid leaders wants us, PvPers want's us.

Maybe you don't like that our strenght in raids is AoE.
Maybe you don't like that our role in PvP is purging a lot.
Maybe you don't like how kiteable we are.

Personally, I liked the Vanilla style way better, but I honestly think that Enhancement is one of the most complex and fun specs in the game right now (all other classes has like 3 buttons now lol)

[Deleted]

Honestly Enhancement shaman is in a pretty good spot now. Raid leaders wants us, PvPers want's us.

Go look at how many enh exist in the top 80 spectrum and then come back and say that.

[shallowfall]

Honestly Enhancement shaman is in a pretty good spot now. Raid leaders wants us, PvPers want's us.

"Shaman DPS is pretty awful though, there's literally no reason to have a DPS shaman on your roster, so Blizzard dropped the ball on that one." -Midwinter on their AMA.

I believe Method has said something similar before, too.

I'm not trying to be as ultra-pessimistic as I probably sound, but I'm trying to be real here. I enjoy playing the spec and I whine about it very little. But those kind of claims just don't hold up. If you're talking casual playing, that's different. Raid leaders want anyone who can pull decent numbers and execute mechanics. Any spec in the game can do that in the hands of a skilled player.

[Emophia]

Yer from what I hear some enhc comps are stupid good in 3v3 right now, namely turbo and enhc/lock/heal.

Dunno about pve tho, haven't played the game since january.

[Tehillim]

"Shaman DPS is pretty awful though, there's literally no reason to have a DPS shaman on your roster, so Blizzard dropped the ball on that one." -Midwinter on their AMA.

I believe Method has said something similar before, too.

I'm not trying to be as ultra-pessimistic as I probably sound, but I'm trying to be real here. I enjoy playing the spec and I whine about it very little. But those kind of claims just don't hold up. If you're talking casual playing, that's different. Raid leaders want anyone who can pull decent numbers and execute mechanics. Any spec in the game can do that in the hands of a skilled player.

Yeah, they basically dropped the ball on enhance this xpac. The only point they've been truly viable was for margok and tectus. Even now with the buff to our single target we're only middle of the pack for that. Cleave is still awful and there are several better aoe specs. Our cleave just needs to be buffed or you will likely never see them often enough in high end guilds. Sure, there are a few, but those people are honestly gimping their raid by playing enhance. It's just not probably that Blizzard will put enough heavy aoe fights in a raid to justify the low cleave that our class has. I would honestly prefer they nerf fire nova a tiny bit more and compensate our cleave so that I could justify playing it.