Enhancement Shaman Cataclysm PvP

[ShamanLicksYourFace]

Compendium of Enhancement Shaman Concerns

These concerns are mainly PvP specific as that is where the majority of our problems lie but they deal with general problems the Specc is having including Clunky mechanics, Mobility etc.

Searing Flames

The general idea behind the talent is a good one but it is currently not too appealing or efficient in it's current form. The Searing Flame DoT is a nuisance especially in PvP when it is near impossible to build the stacks necessary to do competitive burst damage. The chances of the Totem being killed, the debuff being dispelled and LoS issues make it take longer than necessary to build up the stacks for our main attack to be a possibility. This is extraordinarily painful for a damage system that takes 5 talent points and one that might be left out of PvP builds if it stays in it's current form.

The devs have admitted that they are working on the AI for this Totem so we look forward to it with fingers crossed. The Enhance rotation(priority system) also apparently has a rather long and awkward pause currently in the Beta/PTR and this could possibly be filled by adding Fire Nova to Searing totem. A fix to this issue is to either make the number of stacks needed for a full power Lava Lash less, or make LL not consume the Searing Flame Stacks.

Maelstrom Weapon

This is one of the most iconic proccs an Enhance Shaman has but it is currently suffering from similiar pitfalls as the Searing Flame Talent, it simply takes too long to build up the stacks in a PvP environment. Enhance Shammies simply don't have the ability to stay on the target or the haste needed to accrue all 5 charges. This makes it hard for us to have any instant cast heals or CC thereby crippling our survivability to a large extent.

An easy solution as suggested by many other Enhancers is to make Maelstrom Weapon Proc off damage taken thereby greatly increasing PvP viability and to possibly reduce the full charge stacks to 3-4.

Shamanistic Rage + Primal Wisdom

Enhance currently has very large Mana issues with the changes to the Specc, a small number of spells will leave you completely oom and the design of Shamanistic Rage and Primal Wisdom are not alleviating the issue. Firstly Shamanistic Rage does not affect healing spells which is the major issue here, it would ideally be used before a high costing instant Maelstrom heal and right now it just doesn't affect that. Allowing healing spells to be affected by shamanistic Rage would be splendid.

Primal Wisdom is a good idea but the Mana restoration becomes a problem in PvP due to low melee uptime, a better way to go about it would be to slightly increase either the proc chance or the mana restored. Lets say 50% chance to restore 10% mana up from 40% chance to restore 5% mana.

Feral Spirits

This is still currently our major crutch when it comes to PvP and the fact that it carries all our on-call mobility, healing and stuns is not too pleasing. Removing the stun and movement buff from the wolves and giving them directly to the Shaman would be great, possibly a glyph that adds a 50% stun chance on Stormstrike with an internal cooldown. The movement buff is less meaningful but could still be either baked into another ability or simply given to Enhance, we simply need our tools removed from our Wolves, let the Wolves be a dmg cooldown instead. Reducing the cooldown of the wolves from 3 minutes to 2 minutes would also be a less permanent fix but would go a long way in alleviating PvP balance concerns.

Windfury Weapon

It is great that the devs decided to buff the Attack Power bonus of the Spell but it still has a hidden 3 second Internal Cooldown which is crippling Enhance Burst. We were told Weapon imbues would be made unique allowing for the removal of the Internal Cooldown but this has not happenbed and it is worrying considering how far along the Beta is and how big a change this is. It is hard to argue against this change though, it would be positive and wouldn't affect Resto/Ele as they only use one Weapon Imbue.

Stoneclaw Totem

We have not had much information on the design intent for this specific shield but the 50% reduced effectiveness came out of left field, we would hope there are higher ranks which quite frankly should be more powerful than older incantations. The Totem just needs a huge buff as it is something Enhance needs to stay alive due to its less than stellar survivability.

Lightning Shield

The 6 talent points for Improved Shields and Static shock are just not Justifiable for their effect, it's a pretty lackluster mechanic and needs a buff to it's damage before it can become an iconic and useful Enhance ability. Earth Shield is the model for a perfect Shaman Shield that works without a hitch and is extremely effective. In addition to this, the change to Lightning Shield making it only procc off of Stormstrike and Lava Lash might be good for PvP burst but it makes the talent not scale at all with haste which is extremely worrying, this might make it a completely skipped talent at later tiers.

Talent Tree

The Enhance tree still suffers from bloat even after the removal of 3 unnecessary points, we could stand to lose a few ranks on Maelstrom Weapon, Static Shock and Searing Flames to allow points for some utility talents. Currently it is a huge toss up for Enhance to take any survivability talents and much more detrimental to our dps in comparison with other speccs.

Stormstrike

It is not clear why it was changed from giving +25% nature damage buff to only buffing the crit of a number of lightning attacks by 25%. This will hurt Enhances scaling in a major way even if it is not as apparent at Cata launch.

Minor Issues

1 expertise was removed from Unleashed Rage unexpectedly and with the higher ratings needed at 85 this does sting.


Elementals

It is quite annoying that the Fire & Earth Elementals share a 2 minute cooldown and have the outdated mechanic of being stationary and not moving a great distance from the totem spot. It would help Enhances movement Dps slightly if the Elementals resembled a frost Mages Elemental and simply followed the Shaman for their duration. This I guess is a QoL issue for all Shamans.

Totems

There are obviously alot of concerns about the general Totem System but there are others who have covered the issue in great detail with awesome suggestions so I won't go into it.

Summary - TL: DR

I personally believe the design team has done a great job with Enhance PvE in the beta, our rotation is less complicated and less filled up but at the same time is more rewarding. I believe that we can do competitive and even great Dps in Cata.

The PvP outlook is a completely different story, most of our attacks, resources and proccs are coming off of sustained melee uptime on the target which we simply will not have. With our crippling mana issues and our low mobility and even lower survivability we are a little like sitting ducks in BGs.

We are targeted first a majority of the time in BGs and without more effective tools and on demand healing I doubt Enhance representation will be high in Battlegrounds and possibly even arena with the dispersement of BL. I would go as far as to say Enhance is likely to be the least played specc in PvP in Cata and that says a lot. I really hope we do get some sort of fix even if it is not huge, just something to allow us to stay alive long enough to be a real threat in PvP and the more common 1v1 situations in Cata's Battlegrounds.

Thanks for reading and feel free to add any input or agree/disagree. :P

The EU thread is http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....13234247&sid=1
Feel free to post in the thread on EU forums or post this on the US forums, just give me credit if you do xD

[Papalenin]

You nailed it on the head. I still think they could tie a mana-back feature to shocks for enh too. One thing for shamans in general though, can we get an untalented instant ghost wolf already?

[ShamanLicksYourFace]

You nailed it on the head. I still think they could tie a mana-back feature to shocks for enh too. One thing for shamans in general though, can we get an untalented instant ghost wolf already?

Agree and agree.
It seems like Mana is going to be the crippling factor for Enhance in PvP, what's the point of a whole bunch of little tools if we dont actually have the Mana to use them?

[Stormwolfe]

I think we should have the stamina talent also inscrease armor... and an instant LvB working off of shock uses

[ShamanLicksYourFace]

I think we should have the stamina talent also inscrease armor... and an instant LvB working off of shock uses

I'm guessing they think that would be too OP as they already made Stamina equal for all Classes, Plate wearers might complain. Instant LvB does sound nice though as long as it's not tied to Maelstrom.

[Baabinator]

Some of your ideas are just weird.

Giving a stun and movement increase might be wonderful, but we're still shamans man, not rogues, not warriors, shamans.

Perhaps if we had a totem that we could trigger it would feel more shamanistic, perhaps Stoneclaw could fit this.

Remember the old Fire Nova totem? It was something you would lay in advance, and when that warrior/rogue jumped you it would stun them momentarily.

Maybe if Stoneclaw did something similiar, we would have a more reliable defense without resorting to things like Shamanistic Rage as our only defense. Because currently, Stoneclaw totem and it's glyph suck, don't feel shamanistic, does not scale with anything, and just feels like a weak way to provide us with something to guard us.

Since Elemental and Enhancement are both going to share Lightning Shield this could be tied into it. That as soon as you drop your Stoneclaw totem your next Lightning Shield orb that deals damage will disarm the target for 8 seconds.

It's a stone CLAW after all, the claw could be holding the weapon until the totem is destroyed or after 8 seconds.

Imagine a rogue jumping stealthing nearby and you waste no time to drop a Stoneclaw totem, and just a split second afterwards he Cheap Shots you and -CLINGCLING- he's disarmed! Now his opener is ruined and you have a chance to retaliate before he gets his weapon back.

ANYWAYS
I started to rabble,

I agree with most of your ideas and just for the hell of something new.

[Reefiis]

They changed the +nature damage effect on stormstrike because they thought it would seem kind of lame, or excessive, in addition to the spec's mastery bonus.

---------- Post added 2010-09-23 at 06:17 PM ----------

Compendium of Enhancement Shaman Concerns

These concerns are mainly PvP specific as that is where the majority of our problems lie but they deal with general problems the Specc is having including Clunky mechanics, Mobility etc.

Searing Flames

The general idea behind the talent is a good one but it is currently not too appealing or efficient in it's current form. The Searing Flame DoT is a nuisance especially in PvP when it is near impossible to build the stacks necessary to do competitive burst damage. The chances of the Totem being killed, the debuff being dispelled and LoS issues make it take longer than necessary to build up the stacks for our main attack to be a possibility. This is extraordinarily painful for a damage system that takes 5 talent points and one that might be left out of PvP builds if it stays in it's current form.

The devs have admitted that they are working on the AI for this Totem so we look forward to it with fingers crossed. The Enhance rotation(priority system) also apparently has a rather long and awkward pause currently in the Beta/PTR and this could possibly be filled by adding Fire Nova to Searing totem. A fix to this issue is to either make the number of stacks needed for a full power Lava Lash less, or make LL not consume the Searing Flame Stacks.

Maelstrom Weapon

This is one of the most iconic proccs an Enhance Shaman has but it is currently suffering from similiar pitfalls as the Searing Flame Talent, it simply takes too long to build up the stacks in a PvP environment. Enhance Shammies simply don't have the ability to stay on the target or the haste needed to accrue all 5 charges. This makes it hard for us to have any instant cast heals or CC thereby crippling our survivability to a large extent.

An easy solution as suggested by many other Enhancers is to make Maelstrom Weapon Proc off damage taken thereby greatly increasing PvP viability and to possibly reduce the full charge stacks to 3-4.

Shamanistic Rage + Primal Wisdom

Enhance currently has very large Mana issues with the changes to the Specc, a small number of spells will leave you completely oom and the design of Shamanistic Rage and Primal Wisdom are not alleviating the issue. Firstly Shamanistic Rage does not affect healing spells which is the major issue here, it would ideally be used before a high costing instant Maelstrom heal and right now it just doesn't affect that. Allowing healing spells to be affected by shamanistic Rage would be splendid.

Primal Wisdom is a good idea but the Mana restoration becomes a problem in PvP due to low melee uptime, a better way to go about it would be to slightly increase either the proc chance or the mana restored. Lets say 50% chance to restore 10% mana up from 40% chance to restore 5% mana.

Feral Spirits

This is still currently our major crutch when it comes to PvP and the fact that it carries all our on-call mobility, healing and stuns is not too pleasing. Removing the stun and movement buff from the wolves and giving them directly to the Shaman would be great, possibly a glyph that adds a 50% stun chance on Stormstrike with an internal cooldown. The movement buff is less meaningful but could still be either baked into another ability or simply given to Enhance, we simply need our tools removed from our Wolves, let the Wolves be a dmg cooldown instead. Reducing the cooldown of the wolves from 3 minutes to 2 minutes would also be a less permanent fix but would go a long way in alleviating PvP balance concerns.

Windfury Weapon

It is great that the devs decided to buff the Attack Power bonus of the Spell but it still has a hidden 3 second Internal Cooldown which is crippling Enhance Burst. We were told Weapon imbues would be made unique allowing for the removal of the Internal Cooldown but this has not happenbed and it is worrying considering how far along the Beta is and how big a change this is. It is hard to argue against this change though, it would be positive and wouldn't affect Resto/Ele as they only use one Weapon Imbue.

Stoneclaw Totem

We have not had much information on the design intent for this specific shield but the 50% reduced effectiveness came out of left field, we would hope there are higher ranks which quite frankly should be more powerful than older incantations. The Totem just needs a huge buff as it is something Enhance needs to stay alive due to its less than stellar survivability.

Lightning Shield

The 6 talent points for Improved Shields and Static shock are just not Justifiable for their effect, ot s a pretty lackluster mechanic and needs a buff to it's damage before it can become an iconic and useful Enhance ability. Earth Shield is the model for a perfect Shaman Shield that works without a hitch and is extremely effective. In addition to this, the change to Lightning Shield making it only procc off of Stormstrike and Lava Lash might be good for PvP burst but it makes the talent not scale at all with haste which is extremely worrying, this might make it a completely skipped talent at later tiers.

Talent Tree

The Enhance tree still suffers from bloat even after the removal of 3 unnecessary points, we could stand to lose a few ranks on Maelstrom Weapon, Static Shock and Searing Flames to allow points for some utility talents. Currently it is a huge toss up for Enhance to take any survivability talents and much more detrimental to our dps in comparison with other speccs.

Stormstrike

It is not clear why it was changed from giving +25% nature damage buff to only buffing the crit of a number of lightning attacks by 25%. This will hurt Enhances scaling in a major way even if it is not as apparent at Cata launch.

Minor Issues

1 expertise was removed from Unleashed Rage unexpectedly and with the higher ratings needed at 85 this does sting.


Elementals

It is quite annoying that the Fire & Earth Elementals share a 2 minute cooldown and have the outdated mechanic of being stationary and not moving a great distance from the totem spot. It would help Enhances movement Dps slightly if the Elementals resemblem a frost Mages Elemental and simply followed the Shaman for their duration. This I guess is a QoL issue for all Shamans.

Totems

There are obviously alot of concerns about the general Totem System but there are others who have covered the issue in great detail with awesome suggestions so I won't go into it.

Summary - TL: DR

I personally believe the design team has done a great job with Enhance PvE in the beta, our rotation is less complicated and less filled up but at the same time is more rewarding. I believe that we can do competitive and even great Dps in Cata.

The PvP outlook is a completely different story, most of our attacks, resources and proccs are coming off of sustained melee uptime on the target which we simply will not have. With our crippling mana issues and our low mobility and even lower survivability we are a little like sitting ducks in BGs.

We are targeted first a majority of the time in BGs and without more effective tools and on demand healing I doubt Enhance representation will be high in Battlegrounds and possibly even arena with the dispersement of BL. I would go as far as to say Enhance is likely to be the least played specc in PvP in Cata and that says a lot. I really hope we do get some sort of fix even if it is not huge, just something to allow us to stay alive long enough to be a real threat in PvP and the more common 1v1 situations in Cata's Battlegrounds.

Thanks for reading and feel free to add any input or agree/disagree. :P

The EU thread is http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....13234247&sid=1
Feel free to post in the thread on EU forums or post this on the US forums, just give me credit if you do xD

Exactly right, thank you for posting this! :P

[Aviators]

Enhancement's pvp set bonus now increases the chance to proc Maelstrom Weapon by 20%

[LyskaWF]

Enhancement's pvp set bonus now increases the chance to proc Maelstrom Weapon by 20%

Where did you see this? /do want.

[Pool of the Dead]

i read it all, made some valid points, overall though i feel enhance are ok how they are atm. if anything i think they should shorten the duration of Feral Spirits.

[Aviators]

Where did you see this? /do want.

http://cata.wowhead.com/itemset=912

[Omanley]

i read it all, made some valid points, overall though i feel enhance are ok how they are atm. if anything i think they should shorten the duration of Feral Spirits.

let me guess... you´re no enhancement shaman, and go QQ whenever you encounter one with wolves off cooldown?

in terms of op´s post: you´re right on the money, 100% agree

Stormstrike

It is not clear why it was changed from giving +25% nature damage buff to only buffing the crit of a number of lightning attacks by 25%. This will hurt Enhances scaling in a major way even if it is not as apparent at Cata launch.

it´s actually 20% nature damage, with the glyph adding additional 8%

Minor Issues

1 expertise was removed from Unleashed Rage unexpectedly and with the higher ratings needed at 85 this does sting.

Yeah, dunno why they could not have sinmply made it 4/9 with talents invested. enhancement still needs expertise, which hunters do not like. i guess we will have to search for it on enhancement tier sets, rings, amulets, trinkets and capes, as well as weapons, and will gem for it if there´s not enough to be found.

i hope at least that blizzard adds more expertise on gear come cata. it feels kinda boring having to socket all 140 exp rating with gems, as it takes away the choice.

[raggoo]

Excellent post Op

Agree 90% what u say.
Not sure about this 3min to 2min CD on wolves though and the loss of sprint, i prefer double that over bash personally, especially in expect in cata, when ranged have 40yrds now... and movement ever the more important, and difficult.

[ShamanLicksYourFace]

Excellent post Op

Agree 90% what u say.
Not sure about this 3min to 2min CD on wolves though and the loss of sprint, i prefer double that over bash personally, especially in expect in cata, when ranged have 40yrds now... and movement ever the more important, and difficult.

Well yes but would it be so hard to just give us our own Bash not connected to Wolves? Remember the old Magma Totem?
Imagine what Enhance Shamans could do if we got a short Stun!!!

[LyskaWF]

i hope at least that blizzard adds more expertise on gear come cata. it feels kinda boring having to socket all 140 exp rating with gems, as it takes away the choice.

It may be boring but it's very efficient.

[Omanley]

efficiency can be boring . i liked it better during naxx and ulduar, where exp gear was something sexy. you still could socket it but rather wanted raw ap there. there was also the challenge to not waste the state by having several statpointas over the cap, etc.

i think they should remove that full exp point system. you know, after getting xx expertise rating, you get your next exp point. that´s stupid. make it fluent, like with crit or haste.

[rolfing shaman]

Maybe they should buff Unleashed Rage and make it a 5/10

[CookieEater]

Maybe they should buff Unleashed Rage and make it a 5/10

Eh, I think 8 is already much compared to other classes. Man, in early LK Blood DKs had 11 free Expertise... crazy.

[Koto_and_Juri]

I see people complaining about 2 5stack abilities, but do you not realize that assassination rogues have that very same mechanic via combo points(maelstrom equiv) and deadly->envenom(Searing flames->LL).

[Omanley]

I see people complaining about 2 5stack abilities, but do you not realize that assassination rogues have that very same mechanic via combo points(maelstrom equiv) and deadly->envenom(Searing flames->LL).

it´s not the same. mutil8 generates 2 combopoints by default, crits from mutil8 gener8 a third one.
also finisher moves gener8 25 energy, which helps in even faster stacking.
-slice and dice gets refreshed by envenom/eviscer8
-expose armor will refund all combopoints ( and gener8 those 25 energy)
and and and

basically mutilates entire tree design supports those 5cp finishers convieniency

compared to that, enh has to forsake magma totem/fire nova to plant searing totem, a spell which compliments elemental much more due to it being ranged and immobile, not being affected by anything in terms of "cp" stacking speed, and last but not least, msw is now much slower due to huge haste losses.

in the end, it´s totally different. rogue wants to maintain finisher move effects on him, enhancement stacks up his charges for basic damage.