Are Enhancement Shamans viable in PvP?

[Divineknight13]

enhance has never been the same since vanilla sadly =( but there in a better place then ret paladins lol

they have alot of strong dps cds as well as cc and healing ... they need more defensive cds cuz theres nothing that stops u from just tunneling the enhance for the kill

[Stockdale]

I, personally , enjoy Enhanc pretty much. It has a very high burst damage and is an excellent Anti-caster.

The only problem is survivability, specially against other melees. If you get a Rogue in 2s, just wait to get stunned, use your defensive cooldowns and hope for the best, but dont expect to survive through without a healer.

Actually, i'm doing 2s with an elemental shaman, lol, and we are doing pretty fine.

Anyway, if you are really giving up on an Enhanc, you're giving up on one of the most fun to play classes in wow. You never get tired of it

[Mithgroth]

The thing about shamans is that some niche abilities like Wind Shear, Frost Shock, Ghost Wolf and other utility like totems are all designed with resto in mind. So while resto with all those abilities designed on their standards does well, they prove to be not enough for enh/ele.

Because of that, shaman utility often gets nerfed because of resto, and resto keeps the position as only really good shaman pvp spec.
Blizz places all shaman specs under the same umbrella. That's kinda evident when looking at their responses and statements. They often use the word "shaman" when an issue really is resto specific. Not only blizzard, many players dont recognice enh/ele either. They complain about "shamans" being op in pvp, neglecting the fact that 95% of those are resto, and blizzard takes action, nerfing shamans, having problems later to justify those changes.

Blizz never approached the balancing act for the class in a more separated manner (i.e. making abilities/talents work different for each spec baseline, or handing out more spec specific abilities to begin with).

That's also the reason why we read crap like ""Hard to use" isn't enough justification for something not being dispellable, CCable, etc."
They considered an aoe stun for a healer class powerful, so they couldn't be bothered making it competitive with melee stuns for enh or caster stuns for ele.

FAZIT: until they balance the class properly (much more separated specs), you have to give up on a fully viable dps shaman spec, wether it is enh or ele.

100% true, I would leave my sign under it.
I had very high hopes for MoP in terms of PvP, particularly for Shaman. Not because I was expecting insane buffs or revamps.

GC's crew started working on this long before in Cata, but they finally managed to divide specs in MoP. It was a technical process and it was a step should be taken long before. Just because of this I hoped that DPS Shamans would stop suffering because of Resto, unfortunantly I was wrong. Now they have the tech to work more spec-spesificly, they just don't use it to 'fix' this ancient Shaman dilemma.

And in Blizzard's point of view we are all mistaken.
Enhancement, although feels weak, is in the optimal point. Not underpowered, not overpowered. Not faceroll, not freekill. Has strengths and weaknesses. The problem lies with other classes being in a place much higher than that optimal point. That's why Enh feels weak, or it's just "lolenh roll x".

They plan to solve this by nerfing other classes to Enh's level, but I doubt they can be successful on that.
We'll see.

[Omanley]

Well, I've not played for a while and placed my focus on shaman changes mostly, so I cant make an exact estimation about the current pvp-"balance".
Because of that, I dont know what the strong points for the individual classes are, and where a strong point stops being exactly that, and starts being overpowered.

What I see though is that for the most part, blizzard designes abilities to be uncomplicated and easy to use. That's what makes them fun. Blizz has made the game simpler and simpler in many regards (though they're also stuffing the game with dozens of features of questionable significance (pet battle system, yuck)).

What I dont get is why they cling to their "Shaman stuff has to remain complicated and unfun" policy.
-Our stun has to be a liability to use. When we ask for it to be at least undispellable, we get jackass remarks (rogues and warriors have more, easier to use stuns which are undispellable, so what exactly justifies that? Their high damage? Their otherwhise huge utility and mobility toolkits?)
-Our base mobility cant just be an instant gap closer or paired with a freedom effect... no, they cling to using Ghost Wolf, only now we have to glyph it. It is so weak, some people dont even glyph it, because you hardly see a difference between shitty and no mobility.
-Our healing spells are (except for totem cooldowns) entirely casted, which, together with the off-heal nerf cripples ele surv., with enh selfhealing being crippled through holding off msw for crucial hexes (not mentioning the lb damage lost).
-Our utility spells feature one-shottable, immobile, not usable while silenced, outrangable sticks of wood as well as imbue dancing, sacrificing fs/es as ele, gw/ability dancing (since our mobility makes us unable to cast anything unless we cancel it)

Not meant offensively, mithgroth, but aspects of the class such as these would make me unable to place enh in an optimal spot. In terms of pure pvp statistics, maybe, I do not know.
But in terms of enjoyable ability design, shamans are at the very bottom, with a huge gap towards, I dont know...rogues/ferals maybe(I guess finishers/cp builders are restricting)or maybe shadow (not having holy spells at its disposal)?

To be fair, they fixed some weird shaman restrictions as well, like changing Wind Shock to Wind Shear, making GW instant baseline, enabling Earth Shield to not overwrite another shaman's Lghtning or Water Shield, removing Buffs from the totem equation and likely some other things I cannot think of right now.
But even with all of that said, there's still much to be done, and while they fixed some issues and ignored others, they made others even worse, like mobility with GW, shared shock cooldowns with Lava Burst/Surge and Fulmination or fragile totems (first through not adressing their low survivability as utility cds, then through deliberately nerfing them further through not making them placeable through silences)