Does Enhancement Shaman in SL feel good or too clunky?

[Overcharg3]

So for me personally, I love the changes they made and the way they play now. It feels very similar to how they played back in WOTLK or Cata, especially with the return of Maelstrom Weapon, being able to instant cast chain lightnings again feels awesome. And if you're going Venthyr, being able to insta cast Chain Harvest is going to be super OP in aoe situations. Overall I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out with legendaries, soulbinds and raid/mythic + gear. Playing enhancement shaman on the pre-patch has been a blast for me so far

However, I can understand that for some people the spec might feel too clunky, especially if you're speccing into a bunch of active abilities and managing a bunch of GCD's. It's a lot of micro managing, and if you played enhance in WOTLK or Cata, it's not as bad as that but it's definitely similar in that regard. But imo it makes for a more interesting and involved rotation and I prefer that style of gameplay

[Unlimited Power]

Enhancement at high gear levels in Legion and BFA is a spec with very little to no actual downtime. With good gear, prepatch enhancement has a more downtime, but nothing obscene.

But I fear that Enhancement will be downtime city at the beginning of Shadowlands and frankly most content going forward now that Blizzard has introduced scaling soft caps for secondary stats.

I'm really not a fan of characters sitting around literally just waiting for a cooldown or resource to re/generate, which is my primary reason for disliking energy based specs and why I've historically liked playing elemental more than enhancement.

Unfortunately Blizzard has also walked back any improvements made to Elemental during BFA with patch 9.0, so now I'm stuck liking neither of the specs.

I hear Enhancement AoE at least gets a lot more tolerable at level 60 with improved Crash Lightning as the cooldown reduction from CL gives a much more fluid AoE rotation in combination with the Hailstorm talent.

[Tantypops]

There was a reason they moved away from the WoD design: too many buttons and none of them were impactful. Just like now, you wait for maelstrom and LB doesn't hit for much, your shocks only do a small % of total damage, same as WF and LL. You just maintain your rotation and get, idk atm mediocre damage? I understand legion and bfa enh was similar to a warrior, but this feels like a step backwards. Thankfully they reverted the disconnection between single target and aoe spender for ele.

[Zmiley]

Enhancement felt really good at the start of Legion, why did they move away from that after only 1 patch? My enhancement shaman which has been my main in most expansions feels awful both in way of mechanics and DMG compared to my Warrior and Mage, probably wont play him in SL.

[Aurosh]

Enhancement felt really good at the start of Legion, why did they move away from that after only 1 patch? My enhancement shaman which has been my main in most expansions feels awful both in way of mechanics and DMG compared to my Warrior and Mage, probably wont play him in SL.

Damage is fine. It isnt an easy spec like warrior though.

And it has minor GCD gaps. I currently play HotHand for ST, which is nearly GCD capped. The stormflurry build is easier, but has more gaps with no button to press.

[Draknalor186]

I did some attacking on the target dummy on my low level shaman (was 90 pre-squish) and.. the damage from windfury just completly puts me off ever wanting to play this spec seriously.. that used to be the main thing about the spec, the thing that hit the hardest, the thing that could one shot people in PvP.. Now it's like 0.9% of dmg done.. and stuff like the fire shock/lightning bolt do far more damage..

I just wish they'd bring back the "Enhancement" as the main focus of the spec and stop trying to make it into Elemental with melee weapons

[Schmilblick]

It's still clunky and extremely bad in PvP, every melee is better, even Survival hunter.

[A Cunning Plan]

I find enhancement pretty fluid in PvE. Spinning plates-playstyle took me some time to get used to and I was seriously considering Fury to be my new main. PvP viablity is what I'm the most afraid of: the spec is still very fragile and on top of that self healing has been reduced. I will main enha tho.

[StillMcfuu]

Probably switching mains from Rogue to Enh Shaman for at least the first part of SL. I love the changes they've made. Especially now that both LB/CL and Heal/CH have been buffed the spec has a great feel.

Especially the heal buff, keeping a 5 stack pocketed feels great to get a nice chunk of healing out of an instant cast, or heal another player. I think the only thing really missing is another defensive, I'd like to see earthen wall totem in the talent tree and/or a semi nerfed Astral shift with a lower cooldown.

[kosajk]

I find enhancement pretty fluid in PvE. Spinning plates-playstyle took me some time to get used to and I was seriously considering Fury to be my new main. PvP viablity is what I'm the most afraid of: the spec is still very fragile and on top of that self healing has been reduced. I will main enha tho.

could you elaborate on self healing being reduced?
from what i know its ben buffed a lot lately, there was ben some last min nerf or something?

[Oturanboa]

Having 2 charges on stormstrike would literally remove whole "clunkyness" of the spec.

"Downtimes" as people would call it, are blessings since you wanna use totems and heals.

BUT! Using someother spell in that splitseconds stormbringer procs... Is just horrible. Sometimes it even procs again a second time before you can use it in that 1.5 seconds you used lava lash... Makes you twitch and feels punishing.

On top of technical side... Sometimes you just have to re-use msw charges before you can dump hailstorm buff on frostshock. Or you risk wasting stormbringer again. There isn't a choise you can win on both fronts and makes the spec feel "clunky" and "twitchy". Makes it specially hellish on ascendance since you wanna squize in a spell right after stormstrike. So you spam it. But stormbringer procs and also cooldown of it comes and you just waste it.

2 charges on stormstrike (3 if you ask me) is a MUST. Both for pvp and pve.

How is this?
-Stormstrike has 3 charges. Ascendance restores all charges of stormstrike.-

This would make enhancement shine a bit on pvp.

[A Cunning Plan]

could you elaborate on self healing being reduced?
from what i know its ben buffed a lot lately, there was ben some last min nerf or something?

Sorry, bad wording. What I meant to write was that you have to sacrifice more in terms of healing yourself than in previous iteration of enha. Healing wave actually heals plenty but 5-10 stacks isn't that quick to build especially in hectic PvP situations (is what I was trying to imply).

[Grimbold21]

I don't care that FW and HS are the ideal talents. I wanna go for a fire build, but goddamn does Lava Lash hit like a wet noodle.

Im using the 15% crit for LL conduit and it's critting for like 1900 with average hits at 500-600 or 700-800 with ES

[kosajk]

Sorry, bad wording. What I meant to write was that you have to sacrifice more in terms of healing yourself than in previous iteration of enha. Healing wave actually heals plenty but 5-10 stacks isn't that quick to build especially in hectic PvP situations (is what I was trying to imply).

yea that is a problem actually maybe with proper talents and some conduits it will be more bearable atm i`m getting eaten in stun lock by feral :P

[StillMcfuu]

I don't care that FW and HS are the ideal talents. I wanna go for a fire build, but goddamn does Lava Lash hit like a wet noodle.

Im using the 15% crit for LL conduit and it's critting for like 1900 with average hits at 500-600 or 700-800 with ES

Are you running HH as well? I honestly only thing HS is the most desirable in dungeon. If it weren't for the FS granting maelstrom conduit, I'd prefer to run EA.

Still the LL build is viable, it just isn't as good, but its not far off. Really its just a case of something has to be second place. The LL leggo looks decent enough too.

[Grimbold21]

Are you running HH as well? I honestly only thing HS is the most desirable in dungeon. If it weren't for the FS granting maelstrom conduit, I'd prefer to run EA.

Still the LL build is viable, it just isn't as good, but its not far off. Really its just a case of something has to be second place. The LL leggo looks decent enough too.

I went and changed to the cookie cutter build cause dps is just superior, minus ascendance. I'm going with ES

[Teriz]

I didn't like it at first, but I started leveling a new one, and I'm getting used to it. Very flashy, per usual.

[chiddie]

I am actually leveling my resto shaman, didn’t try enha much besides the pre patch but I could not grasp the rotation easily. Too many buttons to press. I pressed something, then sometimes something else highlighted, I pressed one of the highlighted buttons and mobs died quickly.

Yey... but also noes. Self healing also sucked big time, 3-4 heals and I was oom. Will give it a try anyways after I’m done with the resto dude, but it seems terribly complicated to me. Also gave a look at rotation explanation on icy veins and got an headache at the end of the page.

[Ihazpaws]

"bad in pvp", "clunky"... I don't say this usually but you people really suck as a shaman then... I am top dps in almost every dungeon, even when I spend 40% of the time actually buffing and healing people. My healing has saved team members from dying so many times already and CC I provide is making sure that tank stays alive. There are multible builds you can do to avoid clunkiness if it feels so horrible for you. Enha shaman has been shit in pvp since wotlk and only few patches fixed it for a moment because of stupid OP dmg ascen provides. Now enha is in equal footing with other classes and in good hands feels like unkillable force that just keeps coming after you and you won't be able to run away. Same what DKs are well known off. Only those retarded rogues are problem, blizz seriously thinks it's ok for rogue to clobal every class during first 4 sec stun.

[deenman]

"bad in pvp", "clunky"... I don't say this usually but you people really suck as a shaman then... I am top dps in almost every dungeon, even when I spend 40% of the time actually buffing and healing people. My healing has saved team members from dying so many times already and CC I provide is making sure that tank stays alive. There are multible builds you can do to avoid clunkiness if it feels so horrible for you. Enha shaman has been shit in pvp since wotlk and only few patches fixed it for a moment because of stupid OP dmg ascen provides. Now enha is in equal footing with other classes and in good hands feels like unkillable force that just keeps coming after you and you won't be able to run away. Same what DKs are well known off. Only those retarded rogues are problem, blizz seriously thinks it's ok for rogue to clobal every class during first 4 sec stun.

you being a mad lad in dungeons means literaly nothing,its not a good metric to judge the class power,specialy when you say you spend almost HALF the time NOT dpsing,im curious...are the people your playing with even have a pulse?

we will have plenty of stats once the classes are more complete and geared in arenas and mythic raids,but from everything we have seen so far enha is loking at being a solid C tier at best in both pve and pvp....but hey atleast its more fun than bfa