[MOP] What do you think about the new and (I hope so.) better Enhancement Shaman?

[Yagyu4k]

I like enhancement since classic beta, and MoP is a new chance to be a very good class again. (wotlk and cata not so)
I tested enhancement a long time at the beta server and I like enhancement in pvp, very strong, good burst and a perfectly surviability.
But in pve I´m not sure what I think.


I need your mind: what do u think about this spec? :-)

[flak]

I think searing totem will be less frustrating. I think survivability will still be high in PvE. I think AoE will still be clunky and rampy. I think they will have reasonable burst damage. I think overall DPS potential will remain low.

[Omanley]

They seem to have adressed a lot of our concerns at the mid/end of cata and in MoP beta. More than ever before I think.
-less annoying ST apparantly, plus the option to stack SF with FET also (personally I would've hoped for SF to be unlinked from totems, but an improvement nontheless)
-MSW working against absorbs
-Utility unlinked from Feral Spirits (though I dislike CPT(they should've kept bash, with a 1min cd/5sec duration))
-They made haste rating interesting again (though other haste sources like BL, UE:WF, 10% ats buff etc. are still lacking => still no big difference in playstyle through more haste)
-Decent aoe for a change (Others complain about how it incorporates LL, our main nuke, which has its drawbacks, but personally I dont think that's so bad (maybe tied to a lower cd wouldn't be bad, but I am content))

Especially shamans have gotten lots of new utility,l something the class lacked. What I'd critisize still is wacky especially in pvp. Forced GW glyph, Forced Frozen Power and ULF. It feels that we dont get much out of the totem tier, and the absorb tier includes the removal of baseline SCT. The root/freedom tier incorporates our old FP which we will stuck with so nothing new there either. So it's basically a healing cooldown, some extra effects on imbues (which are very shaky right now in terms of usage) and the passive EotE, which outperforms actual cooldowns (which would be more fun to have if they worked as well for us as they did for resto/ele) in the same tier.

Imo I think as pve enh would be fine (leaving number tuning outside the picture), but leaving lots to be desired still, especially in terms of baseline utility, and the implementation of some new stuff.
Especially CC (the one that makes you unable to do anything, not counting snares/roots/silences) is an area shamans are very weak in. Bind Elements isn't really applicable in pvp, Hex is easily the weakest pvp CC now since they buffed Repentence and Intimidating Shout, and CPT, which is supposed to support our weak CC, requires support of other CC, talents and glyphs instead to actually work.

[nazrakin]

I'm pretty happy with it. They've given us just enough that I think we will be better than we ever have.

- Ascendance finally provides us with a powerful DPS CD.
- Searing Flames now stacks on us. Which means we aren't punished for target switching. Fire Ele can stack it now too.
- Between Stormlash, Ancestral Guidance, and the separation of passive/active totem buffs our raid utility is, arguably, superior to anything else out there.
- Stat "equality" still need a little work, but its much improved.
- Hunters are now using expertise and they've added another AGI weapon class, so I'd be shocked if we run into the same itemization issues.

We'll see how it all plays out relative to what others have gotten. Going into Cata I felt like we had got boned, I don't really feel that way this time.

[Aoyi]

I like some of the new changes, but I'm hoping they address the issue with feral spirits if it hasn't been addressed already (they take 2 or 3 seconds to start attacking on beta). Stormlash totem is nice. Especially when paired with Ascendance. I haven't done any of the raid testing yet, but in dungeons, we seemed do be doing OK. Our survivability has worked really well for me on scenarios as people seem to drop out of them constantly in beta, so you'll find yourself suddenly soloing things. I don't like that we've lost both the windfury buff and attack power (replaced with spell power even for ENH), but in a 25 man, I'm sure I'll have it covered.

[Omanley]

Um, dont we still have the 10% ats buff? I think you confused that with SoE

[Yagyu4k]

The bluepost says no

[Protoman]

The bluepost says no

We do still have 10% attack speed buff, it's our Unleashed Rage. And we have Mastery, and the SP buff which is ridiculous. I can understand that all Shaman should provide SP to the raid, but they should have let Enhance get a personal 10%AP buff from it and just not benefit from other classes AP buff......we went from having 2 AP buffs with our UR's 10%AP and SoE totem's STr/Agil to none, while it might not be a big deal in raids in PVP it would be nice to have a personal AP buff and get more out of our stats.


Enhance has gotten some good improvements, most noticeable is the Searing flames buff which alot of people thought would never happen or wasn't even an issue but I'm glad they did something about it. There are a few major issues I hope they address at some point tho:

-Haste- Have it effect our abilities and rotation so it will "do more" like it does for all other classes, making buffs like Blust/hero or EM or raid zone buffs like sinesstra and madness noz buff noticeable on our DPS, and improve value of haste

-AoE- Still think its kinda clunky and too many single target abilities involved in our aoe rotation, with shocks and LL always on CD as soon as avaiable its just not very smooth gameplay and can't always predict AoE. I think making FN spread FLS instead of LL makes alot of sense, aoe spell spreads aoe dot, and on a 4sec CD will be more accessible.

-Feral Spirits- Still crap DPS, since forever.

-Burning Wrath- As mentioned, still give 10%SP to raid but personal 10%AP buff

-Some way to change rotation and reduce ability Cd's.....with a static rotation we need atleast one Cd that lets us fire off attacks faster. Either Elem Mastery or Ascendance should reduce the CD of SS to 5 sec. Can balance by reducing the passive bonus haste on EM or reduce the damage from melee swings on Ascendance.

-Less damage from passive sources- Right now I'm seeing too much passive damage from stuff like imbues (esp FT, WF should be > then FT, so FT needs nerf, WF buffed, FB adjusted to be lil lower then FT, and scaling fixed so these levels stay the same later on), LB and LS seem to be doing too much damage relative to our active strikes/shocks mainly cause of EoE and ULF talents....should prob start off at lower dmg/scaling so even with talents our active abilities have some lead on them. Even some passive proc enchants like "Elemental Force" are doing more then stuff like shocks and ule. OR passive damage could be fine but we just need to buff active damage above them (cept imbues def need rebalance)

-More damage from active sources- Our instant abilities don't hit very hard right now, and overall contribution is a little low compared to how some other abilities stack up, esp compared to passive sources. They need to shift more to active damage by nerfing passive damage.....like the SF FT buff that replaced the lost dps from SF dot should instead be spread among our active abilities and not all dumped onto FT....or atleast spread among all imbues and not just FT. Our ULE instant damage is VERY low, barely changed at all since lvl 90 and I don't think it has scaled well and should hit for like double what it does now esp since it's a 15sec CD ability. Our LL needs to hit alot harder too, it should be our biggest hitter by a fair margin but currently its doing as much as stuff like LB and FT. Our SS could use a buff too, but Shocks especially need a nice boost like more instant damage and more periodic damage with FLS, would like to see better haste scaling so we reach breakpoints for extra ticks alot easier with lower levels of haste to improve haste value. Shocks are something we rely on alot in PVP and currently they don't do much.

I think what we really need is just some passives to boost our instant damage....Example:

"Super Strikes": Increases damage of SS and LL by 20%, and ULE by 40%.
"Super Shocks": Increase instant damage of all shocks by 20%, and periodic damage of FLS by 60%. Increase haste scaling of FLS dot.
-Nerf FT below WF, buff WF to scale above FT at all times, buff FB so its just below FT in DPS
-Remove the FT buff from SF and that damage will be part of the Super shocks/strikes....or make it buff all imbues, like "4-20% buff to all imbue damage".
-Possibly nerf LB and LS to balance for more active damage

[Emophia]

They didn't do anything to make the playstyle more interesting, makes me a sad panda.

Bring back WOTLK enhc playstyle plz, or hell, even totem twisting.

[Deleted]

Well about those buffs: enhancement lost 10% atp, but gained the mastery buff. In the end. enhancer and elemental are the only specc giving 3 important raid buffs.

So nothing to be worried about. We' ll provide enough buffs and all of them can be easily provided by other members. For raiding, you really need a weird setup to miss a buff.

[Yagyu4k]

They didn't do anything to make the playstyle more interesting, makes me a sad panda.

Bring back WOTLK enhc playstyle plz, or hell, even totem twisting.

y the wotlk enhancer was bad but very funny playstyle

[Yautjalv426]

I dont even play wow anymore. couldnt again if i wanted to account since beta got hacked and banned. don't really matter anymore though lol. but i always both loved and hated enhancement shaman and i wish you all the best. i think you guys should get an execute. once target gets to 20% just make shocks do a ton more damage. just a suggestion for blizzard to ignore. but still someone pass it on for yourselves <3

[Protoman]

Well about those buffs: enhancement lost 10% atp, but gained the mastery buff. In the end. enhancer and elemental are the only specc giving 3 important raid buffs.

So nothing to be worried about. We' ll provide enough buffs and all of them can be easily provided by other members. For raiding, you really need a weird setup to miss a buff.

Yea, but I want buffs that enhance ME too.....SP buff is totally useless to enhance should atleast have a personal benefit.....why do we have to be the only class/spec in the game to bring a buff that is useless to us? We are the only spec where haste isn't fully functional and follow the theme of "do more" either, with the haste buff, or swing speed, not as good for us as other classes. The only buff that really does much for us is Mastery.....kinda lame, they restricted buffs and tried to make each one count except for Enhance.

They didn't do anything to make the playstyle more interesting, makes me a sad panda.

Bring back WOTLK enhc playstyle plz, or hell, even totem twisting.

WOTLK playstyle was fun mainly cause of two reasons....the button mashing and MW5 at top priority....but some of the buttons we mashed were pretty useless like LS and totem refresh so I'm glad they are gone. Other melee have this type of playstyle, not all the time but during lust/hero and stuff they do.....only way to get this for enhance again is to make haste effect our abilities/rotation so we button mash again, and make MW5 top priority so we look forward to it's proc and use it right away instead of hold onto it cause of low priority which has really taken the "signature" out of our "signature proc".

Both those improvements I was looking forward to in MoP but have been disappointed. And Blizz made an excuse for haste which is really kinda lame "they have too many CD abilities already"....totally untrue and wouldn't be a problem with a priority to deal with conflicting CD's, plus every other melee gets this effect so I see no good reason to exclude us.....they said they want to achieve this goal for haste but haven't seen anythin done for it yet.

[Grimbold21]

On those live streams, i can't figure out if that shaman up top is hancer or elemental. Wish i knew how enhancement is faring in that context.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty satisfied with enha. Lots of improvements over time... Small QoL stuff but anyways. Some of our talents are ermm.. slightly dull but I guess it is the same with other classes as well. But atleast I'm excited with UF. ^^

[takolin]

Yea, but I want buffs that enhance ME too.....SP buff is totally useless to enhance should atleast have a personal benefit.....why do we have to be the only class/spec in the game to bring a buff that is useless to us? We are the only spec where haste isn't fully functional and follow the theme of "do more" either, with the haste buff, or swing speed, not as good for us as other classes. The only buff that really does much for us is Mastery.....kinda lame, they restricted buffs and tried to make each one count except for Enhance.

Haste on the beta-sims is our highest secondary stat after hit/expertise cap and closely followed by mastery with crit being at a slightly further behind 3rd. Haste is by no means rubbish specially when you consider that the sims put LB as the top priority (excluding ascendance SS) which brings us back to the more haste = more MW5 procs = more buttons to press design philosophy.

And yes it's a pity enhancement doesn't benefit from the SP buff, but it's not the end of the world. The only thing I'm not overly happy with is the AoE of enhancement but even then it's better than in the past.

[flak]

Haste on the beta-sims is our highest secondary stat after hit/expertise cap and closely followed by mastery with crit being at a slightly further behind 3rd.

That depends what talents you take.

[Sakyo]

I love that the choice of the totems is now more active - no stupid dropping of a set of totems only to get buffs.
But: too many keybinds, I think I have to buy a new keyboard with some extra buttons...

[Omanley]

They didn't do anything to make the playstyle more interesting, makes me a sad panda.
Bring back WOTLK enhc playstyle plz, or hell, even totem twisting.

There were basically four reasons our playstyle was as it was:
1) Requirement of having to recast LS every now and then. This was taken care of with Static Shock no longer consuming charges, and one of those changes I am happy about because it was boring and dumb to have a 10min duration buff last only 20 seconds or so
2) Requirement of having to recast MT every 20 seconds, which, just like LS, was one of those filler abilities we used whenever there was nothing else to do
3) Lava Lash having lower cooldown (which however wasn't worth that much, since it was at the priority bottom)

4) Main Reason: MSW5xLB. They did lots of stuff to ruin this for cata, but it's looking like it's on its way back up.
-they brought 200% spellcrits back (something that will also make our "new" SS debuff more useful again)
-they brought extra haste rating scaling back (on flurry)
-we have UE:WF, something we hadn't through wotlk
-we have mastery affecting it, something we hadn't through wotlk
-we have other stuff benefitting from haste in MoP, like our ultimate talents UF:WF (Static Shock benefitting from haste again) and PE (FET hits faster with haste), FT (from SF change), Feral Spirits and Elemental Totems (they do scale with haste now, right?)
-Our scaling with haste rating will maybe even be good enough to gem for it (dont forget that secondary stat gems will offer twice as much in number as primary ones from MoP onwards => gemming for haste => much more MSW
-we have UF:FT, which enhances LB by 30%
-we have EotE, which is basically a ~30% buff to MSW, since 30% of your casts will hit twice

The first two reasons weren't really good ones. There third one was basically a change with good intend, but it would be cool if it weren't as static. There's basically no point having a combo point system stuck to an ability with a stuck cooldown.

Plus the fourth aspect is getting better again. I had may doubts about this one, since we still have 13% less haste through raidbuffs (which is true for others though) and 10% less through Flurry, but I guess I underestimated changes made.

Also while the lost two abilities (MT and LS) in our short dps time-frame (within 30 seconds), we gained UE. It has a cooldown, but it makes up for some of those gcds we lost.

So while we may not be like we were in wotlk, it's not looking that bad from my perspective in a pve setting (I still have much to critisize in terms of pvp application though).

[Deleted]

We do still have 10% attack speed buff, it's our Unleashed Rage. And we have Mastery, and the SP buff which is ridiculous. I can understand that all Shaman should provide SP to the raid, but they should have let Enhance get a personal 10%AP buff from it and just not benefit from other classes AP buff......we went from having 2 AP buffs with our UR's 10%AP and SoE totem's STr/Agil to none, while it might not be a big deal in raids in PVP it would be nice to have a personal AP buff and get more out of our stats.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't enhancement benefit from the +% SP? I know they don't benefit from SP being directly on gear, but I guess the buff can increase it after we have converted AP into SP.

If so, I'd rather stick with the SP buff in terms of giving it to my healer in a 3s scenario, and run with a class that gives me the AP buff, like a warrior

---------- Post added 2012-08-02 at 02:24 PM ----------

And on topic:

I'm not really seeing enhancement improve and get buffed in MoP, but rather just get what people have been begging for, for at long, long time(searing totem, lightning shield, imbues in PvP)