Why are enh shamans so rare?

[Deleted]

I've tried Enh numerous occasions since... Wotlk I think. I really like the idea of being a melee shaman, but their rotation has always been so messy.

That's because there is no rotation. No wonder you felt it were messy.

[mercutiouk]

Played the shit outta enhancement. It's easily one of the most fun specs in game. Enhancement Shamans always used to be strong out of the door as well (then get weaker during the course of an expansion).

Moved to DK which just felt like a really well rounded enhance with less heals

- - - Updated - - -

That's because there is no rotation. No wonder you felt it were messy.

Indeed, it's a priority system on enhance. Usually end's up falling into a regularish pattern but there's no fixed rotation.

While it's kinda shit/cheating getting a decent CLC addon makes it much easier to get good numbers out of your character so you can excel at situational awareness/etc.

[maizensh]

Played the shit outta enhancement. It's easily one of the most fun specs in game. Enhancement Shamans always used to be strong out of the door as well (then get weaker during the course of an expansion).

In MoP it was the opposite actually. Enh in 5.4 was very strong, with the best single target burst (I don't think any other dps came within range to enh's burst) and a very good AoE if you could make it happen.

And I agree, incredibly fun spec. No real need for addons though, since the priority system is not hard to grasp (depended on L90 talent, UF made it harder, but still nothing extraordinary). The only real challenge was FS snapshotting (which offered a big dps increase), which was made a lot easier by addon/wa as without help it was a very hard mechanic to keep track of. Now since FS is dynamic you don't really need addons to play enh, unless you're struggling really hard.

[Yagyu4k]

Each high end guild wont enh shamans, because they're melees with an amazing dps loss while moving. Its still an funny spec but just few good guilds have one.
And every high end guild say's that enhancements are useless. Actually thats the point, blizzard should open their eyes and change something to delete the class racism against enhas. I know a lot of people on us and eu and 95% of them hate enhancer.

The question is now, why?

[Deleted]

I wanted to roll shaman since day one, but as my friend absolutely insisted on going alliance so I rolled a warlock instead.

Tried shaman for the first time in wotlk and absolutely loved it. Went enhance because I already had a caster and I was always inspired by the 2h WF shamans back in the vanilla days.

As of now I still love the flavor of the class and everything shaman, so I'm probably going to keep on maining it for WoD.

Only issues is that some mechanics definitely feel outdated now (I'M LOOKING AT YOU TOTEMS) and if Blizzard put their all into it I'm sure they could make something absolutely amazing and fun to play with a revision of it.

As for having a priority rotation based on cooldowns, I like the way it plays. It's simple yet has it's own charm.

If you get weakauras keeping track of what button to hit is really simple, you just gotta spend some time configuring it.

Edit: Sorry, but to answer the quesiton: just as how every class has a flavor of the month, enhance is just the opposite of that. I don't think it's friendly to noobs at all, this spec.

[Anium]

Enh has always appealed to me but just never quite got round to maxing one. now that a used my free 90 boost on a dk i dont see it ever happening now. outside of ascendence the spec does seem a bit meh though, and tbh thats probably down to ascendence being too good

[fixx]

I know a lot of people on us and eu and 95% of them hate enhancer.

The question is now, why?

Enhancement has no proper damage reduction cooldown which is why every single melee dps class is better than shaman for mythic encounters. Need somebody to soak 90% of damage? No problem, just get a rogue or monk. DPS role in high end raiding lives and dies with cooldown usage, and shaman is a class that has none.

Good single target dps does not make up for extremely bad aoe dps (before WoD) and the lack of cooldowns. Remains to be seen if the good aoe dps will make up for poor single target dps and lack of cooldowns in WoD, but I really doubt it.

[Deleted]

Enhancement has no proper damage reduction cooldown which is why every single melee dps class is better than shaman for mythic encounters. Need somebody to soak 90% of damage? No problem, just get a rogue or monk. DPS role in high end raiding lives and dies with cooldown usage, and shaman is a class that has none.

Good single target dps does not make up for extremely bad aoe dps (before WoD) and the lack of cooldowns. Remains to be seen if the good aoe dps will make up for poor single target dps and lack of cooldowns in WoD, but I really doubt it.

They've had 2 since MoP, Shamanistic Rage and Astral Shift. While 30% and 40% damage reductions aren't as strong as other classes, they can still be stacked to around 58% iirc. I don't recall a fight in SoO where their current defensive CDs were not enough. Of course there are things like malice which a rogue/priest can do better with their abilities, but 80% of specs are not capable of what they can do anyway.

Additionally in WoD there is a new glyph which gives Shamanistic Rage a 60% damage reduction, at the cost of double the cooldown. The cooldown is fairly short anyway. I will assume you were referring to defensive cooldowns in your second paragraph.

On a different note, the reason Enhancements are fairly rare is because they have traditionally been associated with being suboptimal and as such, not particularly sought out. While there were times when Enhancement wasn't really bad at all, in almost all cases there was a better alternative in another melee spec in terms of utility/DPS etc.

Enhancement has become a lot more common these days, in line with their newfound strength in the latter half of MoP, as well as the incentive of their insane burst damage. Most guilds have one, and I've even seen a few guilds have two. I remember when the majority of guilds didn't have any at all back in Cataclysm, and seeing one walking around in anything other than levelling gear was genuinely pretty rare. However with the new sim results and such, we may see a slow decline in Enhancement numbers once more, as the flavour of the month craze dies down and people roll something else for WoD.

Another reason for their lack of popularity may be that their spec doesn't really change much over the expansions. People tend to like trying fresh/revamped/new gameplay, but Enhancement is probably one of the least changed specs around rotationally. It still very much plays the same as it has done for a long time, and with WoD that isn't changing either. The addition of many CDs in MoP perhaps changed the emphasis of Enhancement (and actually did cause an increase in numbers), but rotationally it was still pretty much the same.

[OhpUldum]

If you enjoy it, you've not made a mistake.

This is all that should matter in a video game. If you're enjoying it go with it. I'm leveling an enhancement shaman also and just hit level 86 yesterday. Its a fun mix of fast dual wielding melee and spells, lots of spells. I thoroughly enjoy taking my instant cast nature spell and using it as a free heal in pvp or to drop a rain on the melee group vs a boss.

Lots of utility with shaman overall.

[fixx]

They've had 2 since MoP, Shamanistic Rage and Astral Shift. While 30% and 40% damage reductions aren't as strong as other classes, they can still be stacked to around 58% iirc. I don't recall a fight in SoO where their current defensive CDs were not enough. Of course there are things like malice which a rogue/priest can do better with their abilities, but 80% of specs are not capable of what they can do anyway.

Things rogue can do in Siege that enhancement cant: Soaking Anguish on Protectors, clearing bubbles on Malkorok, soaking Hisek's Aim on Paragons and finally soaking Garrosh's Malice in 4th phase. Somebody might throw in a comment about offhealing with AG/HTT but smoke bomb is just as good.

That's the problem really in a nutshell. When raid leader looks at two melee dps classes that use agi gear and two weapons, there's no reason to pick shaman over rogue in 25 man heroic raids. Especially with shamans having shitty AOE (in MoP) and being more limited in loot (cant use swords or daggers which means you gear them slower than rogues).

People who play enhancement do it because they like it and their guild isn't going for world firsts. For world first guilds enhancement is bad joke and wouldn't be allowed in progress raids.

[dewd]

People who play enhancement do it because they like it and their guild isn't going for world firsts. For world first guilds enhancement is bad joke and wouldn't be allowed in progress raids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQkaysuV9WM

-world 1st? check
-enhancement? check
-aoe? check

[fixx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQkaysuV9WM

-world 1st? check
-enhancement? check
-aoe? check

- all competition banned? check
- different tuning of everything in WoW East vs West? check

[Satori]

Enhancement has no proper damage reduction cooldown which is why every single melee dps class is better than shaman for mythic encounters. Need somebody to soak 90% of damage? No problem, just get a rogue or monk. DPS role in high end raiding lives and dies with cooldown usage, and shaman is a class that has none.

Good single target dps does not make up for extremely bad aoe dps (before WoD) and the lack of cooldowns. Remains to be seen if the good aoe dps will make up for poor single target dps and lack of cooldowns in WoD, but I really doubt it.

What a joke. You have shamanistic rage with a 30% reduction on a 1 min cd, you can glyph it to make it 60% and then you have astral shift. And on top of all that if for whatever reason you need to soak you have reincarnate. Only melee class that's on par is rogues, it completely shits on warriors and dks and usually pallies since these mechanics ignore immunities.

You should reroll a rogue imo

[Raiju]

What a joke. You have shamanistic rage with a 30% reduction on a 1 min cd, you can glyph it to make it 60% and then you have astral shift. And on top of all that if for whatever reason you need to soak you have reincarnate. Only melee class that's on par is rogues, it completely shits on warriors and dks and usually pallies since these mechanics ignore immunities.

You should reroll a rogue imo

Yes we have shamanistic rage. A very weak cd in comparison to nearly every other class ingame.

The glyph is not relevant to this thread "Why are enh shamans so rare" - having a glyph to give us a powerful soaking ability only available post warlords doesn't help the past and present.

The fact you listed reincarnate as a defensive says a lot about you (as if it wasn't half expected given you blindly defend anything shaman related). It's one of the worst jokes for enhancement right now and DOES NOT FIT in post 3.0 gameplay. It needs to be changed so that it's a) usable frequently (once per fight) and b) balanced upon that usage. You cannot rely on ankh's right now, they are up once every 3-15 pulls, depending on how long the fight is.

Pre 6.0 every melee can soak better than enhancement for every mechanic that comes to mind that had to be soaked recently. Paladins are the only debatable one only having bubble / HOP - although a lot of their utilty is usable on friendlies as well (having a ret paladin basically meant ANYONE you chose had a free SR, just not themselves)

[Satori]

Yeap, forgive me for actually liking the spec. You are a knight, a hero and a bastion of hope for sticking with this shitty class. Our Atlas.

My post wasn't target at pre 6.0 content. Only issue for me is really the non movement while casting LB which makes zero sense as melee.

[Televators]

I enjoyed leveling as Enh, but as someone who enjoys PvP, I've never gotten destroyed so easily in my life at every bracket level. They are just awful in PvP, at least pre-90.

[Deleted]

I loved shaman in tbc and wotlk. I did not like it in any following expac.

[fixx]

What a joke. You have shamanistic rage with a 30% reduction on a 1 min cd, you can glyph it to make it 60% and then you have astral shift.

What a joke indeed. Try to soak something like Malice with SR and tell me how it worked out, compared to rogue or monk doing it. When the incoming damage is something like five times the average health of character some shitty 30% reduction (or even 60% reduction) means you're dead, but 90% reduction only tickles. Sounds like you need to play some heroic (in WoD mythic) raids to have an actual clue of what kinds of numbers are required for soaking.

And on top of all that if for whatever reason you need to soak you have reincarnate.

Once every four pulls. Whoop-de-doo.

Only melee class that's on par is rogues, it completely shits on warriors and dks and usually pallies since these mechanics ignore immunities.

Only melee class that's on par is ret. Rogue, warrior, DK and monk are all far better in raid cooldowns and average raid dps.

You should reroll a rogue imo

You should reroll some L2P.

Yeap, forgive me for actually liking the spec. You are a knight, a hero and a bastion of hope for sticking with this shitty class. Our Atlas.

You can like the class all you want. I like it too.

It still doesn't change the facts that enhancement is badly underperforming in highest end raids.

[Unholyground]

Since 6.0 Shaman has returned as my main. All the little tweaks they made definitely made them more enjoyable too.

[Satori]

If I bring DPS medians for mythic SoO you'll reply that "6.0 doesn't matter" (and yet use 6.0 arguments on why enh is worst melee, we suck). If I bring beta logs showing enh below only WW monks, hunters and ret you'll probably reply with "totems suck, AG is useless".

We have different viewpoints so there's little to gain from this discussion that clusters this forum.