Enhancement Shaman changes I would like to see

[Cristoff]

I used the good old snippet tool to create a custom talent tree for Enhancement shaman for Shadowlands. I used the abilities we had in the past or stole from elemental and created nothing new. I actually thought most of the changes I made can make a big change, especially in survivability. Also, Fire Elemental would be baseline and brought back to Enhance. I hope the link works. I wish I could put an image or link in a post on the wow forums.

https://imgur.com/a/euAjNAA

[Manu9]

I think this is pretty much how we all want our tree to look, Unleash Elements and Shamanistic Rage Baseline and I'm a happy shaman.

[froschhure]

There is no 60 row?

[apelsinjuice]

There is no 60 row?

no, no new abilties

[kosajk]

look much beter than live and SL iterattions tbh :P
although imo ascendance , ancestral guidance, shamanistic rage and natures guardian should be baseline, on top of obvious feral lounge, rest is arguable ;P

[Sunslayer]

Enhance needs so much help. Maelstrom healing is subpar no healing on Wolves making it possibly the worst CD in the game. Sham rage as only def CD. Enhance will be once again a poorly designed spec for another 2 years. And this is from someone playing Enhance for 14 years.
Also give us back Stormblast animation during Ascendance.

[Pony Soldier]

I tried enhance shaman on test realm and is it just me or do they feel somehow worse? Like, they just feel like a total mess on the test realms right now. As soon as I started to try out combat I felt super disappointed right away. I don't like the return of shocks in place of the Frostbrand and Flamtongue attacks which I actually really enjoy. The removal of the Maelstrom resource is just dumb to me as I actually enjoyed it, we get Healing Stream Totem and couple of other totems I hardly ever use but no Searing Totem?

I don't know, I REALLY hope this is not what shamans are going to be like going in Shadowlands because they feel absolutely horrible. In my opinion, there was no need to make such drastic changes to them as I feel they are pretty much perfect for me right now.

[kosajk]

I tried enhance shaman on test realm and is it just me or do they feel somehow worse? Like, they just feel like a total mess on the test realms right now. As soon as I started to try out combat I felt super disappointed right away. I don't like the return of shocks in place of the Frostbrand and Flamtongue attacks which I actually really enjoy. The removal of the Maelstrom resource is just dumb to me as I actually enjoyed it,

well maelstrom didn't give any advantage and it was been like being warrior 2.0 with shamanistic theme

we get Healing Stream Totem and couple of other totems I hardly ever use but no Searing Totem?

I don't know, I REALLY hope this is not what shamans are going to be like going in Shadowlands because they feel absolutely horrible. In my opinion, there was no need to make such drastic changes to them as I feel they are pretty much perfect for me right now.

community flamed on searing totem as it was been a horrible ability in current situation (~200 dmg per shot tied to 5hp stick with additional cd on top of it), tbh you say you don`t use HST and yet you want extra totem to not use?

Changes are needed although they somehow forget where problems with shamans lies, add some survivability, decent burst and utility,
things that get changed are mostly cosmetic IMO + WF totem so we may say there is some utility although not to impact full on arenas where we struggle most

[Gurahk]

It's weird how people either absolutely love or hate the new enhancement, I've never seen someone say something in-between.

[kosajk]

because they change a lot between builds, hard to not love nuke ele with buged legendary where he could machingun whole team with couple cds (repaired with last changes ~4 days ago) :P
but all things that`s are nice are not coming from core abilities for shamans, for instance transfusion in current build is fraking awesome as it works with MSW for enh and echoing shock for ele, but its nice today who knows what will be tomorrow

We are in deep need to excel on some field in pvp (cc, survivability or burst), or actually be on parr with others on 2 off those 3, atm if we don`t count abilities from new factions, ele can stand it ground with some decent cc and ranged burst but i would not say that same about enh.
The one above is super problematic when we have classes like warlock that can nuke you to the orbit while having strong defensive cd`s and a loot of control over fight, tbh i cant think off any other class that is so hindered like enh shaman in PvP (maybe warriors when hard controlled although i would not say they don`t have burst).

Hope im wrong tho cause im old player so for me its shaman or other games for next expansion

[CID-77]

Is it just me or do Totems on the GCD make it feel way to clunky? Even my UH DK feels snappy compared to Enhance. Especially in PvP it feels really bad to have to spend 2 GCD's when you either go offensive and defensive, just on Totems. Throwing in one normal ability as a generic example, and some human lag in between button presses, this means when you have a clutch play to either save yourself or kill someone, you spend 5 seconds with just one 'action'.

Offensive; Skyfury and Windfury totem need to be dropped (Windfury should be down from the start of course, but PvP is dynamic and moving around makes you have to recast it often), and say Earthen Spike/Ascendance/Feral Spirit. That's 5 seconds before you start your rotation.

Defensive; Healing Stream and Counterstrike totem need to be dropped, and if it's up Astral Shift if it's up. A lot of button presses during your 'oh shit' moment, and still not as good as some other classes' defensive options.

This feels so clunky and doesn't match the nicely flowing damage rotation, because I do like the basic feel of Enhance now.

[StillMcfuu]

I tried enhance shaman on test realm and is it just me or do they feel somehow worse? Like, they just feel like a total mess on the test realms right now. As soon as I started to try out combat I felt super disappointed right away. I don't like the return of shocks in place of the Frostbrand and Flamtongue attacks which I actually really enjoy. The removal of the Maelstrom resource is just dumb to me as I actually enjoyed it, we get Healing Stream Totem and couple of other totems I hardly ever use but no Searing Totem?

I don't know, I REALLY hope this is not what shamans are going to be like going in Shadowlands because they feel absolutely horrible. In my opinion, there was no need to make such drastic changes to them as I feel they are pretty much perfect for me right now.

I can't be the only that thought frostbrand and flame tongue kind of sucked. You just macro'd them to the same key and kept the buff up, it was super lazy.

[Pony Soldier]

I can't be the only that thought frostbrand and flame tongue kind of sucked. You just macro'd them to the same key and kept the buff up, it was super lazy.

I'll agree it wasn't the most exciting abilities to use but they were nice filler attacks when your other abilities were on cooldown. Now they're just back to being buffs which now make enhance shamans feel less fun to play in my opinion. I mean it's alright but I'd rather have abilities that have an attack animation that I use every 15-20 seconds or so than having those abilities just be a weapon buff which to me is boring.

Reducing what was an attack that was part of your rotation to a simple buff that lasts for an hour is lazier I think. It also helped diversify enhancement from elemental a little bit by having them use those attacks rather than Fire Shock and Frost Shock. Now they just feel like a fusion between elemental and enhancement instead of being straight up enhancement. Which I guess could be fun for some and is something I can deal with but I prefer specs to have their own feel to them.

[StillMcfuu]

I'll agree it wasn't the most exciting abilities to use but they were nice filler attacks when your other abilities were on cooldown. Now they're just back to being buffs which now make enhance shamans feel less fun to play in my opinion. I mean it's alright but I'd rather have abilities that have an attack animation that I use every 15-20 seconds or so than having those abilities just be a weapon buff which to me is boring.

Reducing what was an attack that was part of your rotation to a simple buff that lasts for an hour is lazier I think. It also helped diversify enhancement from elemental a little bit by having them use those attacks rather than Fire Shock and Frost Shock. Now they just feel like a fusion between elemental and enhancement instead of being straight up enhancement. Which I guess could be fun for some and is something I can deal with but I prefer specs to have their own feel to them.

I see enhancement as always being Melee Elemental... Really I just see Shaman as either ranged, melee, or healer, so all of their toolkits should be similar.

I prefer having the shocks, I think they feel better and mesh with the class better. We should have ES as well, as the usage of ES, FS, or FrS was always a big choice back in the day. Basically Dot, Damage, or Slow. My issue with the old Frostbrand and Flametongue were they required no thought, you had them up, or you didn't otherwise you were hitting rockbiter as a filler. It's not as if Flame spread a dot that I needed to consider applying on a target or in multitarget situations, FT and FB were just ohh the buff is about to expire, if I'm not in the middle of pressing stormstrike 300x let me double tap this macro I made to put them back up.

I can see your side, wanting Enhancement to be something different... But I just see Shaman on their own. Thrall may have fought Garrash with Doomhammer, but he killed him with a lightning bolt... That's what shaman should be (to me). I don't see it as a mage type class where I specialize in frost or fire and my firemage shouldn't be trying blizzard.

[Saltysquidoon]

I'll agree it wasn't the most exciting abilities to use but they were nice filler attacks when your other abilities were on cooldown. Now they're just back to being buffs which now make enhance shamans feel less fun to play in my opinion. I mean it's alright but I'd rather have abilities that have an attack animation that I use every 15-20 seconds or so than having those abilities just be a weapon buff which to me is boring.

Good news is if you enjoyed playing blue fury warrior you'll probably enjoy fury warrior.

I can respect that people have different opinions and I'm not saying the 'new' (old) enhancement is perfect but I think you'll find yourself in the minority of enjoying legion enhancement. Enhance has always been a spell blade archetype class, it didn't even have it's second melee ability (LL) till wrath.

I do agree with you though that ele and enhance could enjoy at least some cosmetic diversity. There's really no reason why Enhance's big capstone moment of glory move should be ele's spammable filler, at the very least LB could use a new name, icon and animation.

Edit; I always thought it would be cool if Ele and enhance focused more on different elements from each other, eg Ele is mainly fire and earth and enhance would be mostly wind and water with lightning being the big dick moves of both.

[Jotaux]

Legion enhancement was easily the best place the spec has been in, especially on release.

Now we’ll be back to be the worst melee, because some casuals prefer being the trash spec.

[StillMcfuu]

Good news is if you enjoyed playing blue fury warrior you'll probably enjoy fury warrior.

I can respect that people have different opinions and I'm not saying the 'new' (old) enhancement is perfect but I think you'll find yourself in the minority of enjoying legion enhancement. Enhance has always been a spell blade archetype class, it didn't even have it's second melee ability (LL) till wrath.

I do agree with you though that ele and enhance could enjoy at least some cosmetic diversity. There's really no reason why Enhance's big capstone moment of glory move should be ele's spammable filler, at the very least LB could use a new name, icon and animation.

Edit; I always thought it would be cool if Ele and enhance focused more on different elements from each other, eg Ele is mainly fire and earth and enhance would be mostly wind and water with lightning being the big dick moves of both.

Stormstrike used to be our big hitter, then you would follow it up with a Fulm LB and a big ES because SS debuffed the target for 3 or 4 attacks doing 20% (if I recall) more nature damage. It doesn't do that anymore. Really the spec is in an odd spot where its missing a real hard hitting skill and every other skill hits around the same range. For my pure enhance alt I noticed SS crits at 1.8k, LB crit at 2k, and LL crit at 1.6k. Thats not much of a range, nothing is noticeably chunking enemies, not like ES or storm stormbringer enhanced LB for ele chunks.
Honestly giving SS back its debuff would probably help the spec a lot, maybe give crash lightning a smaller 1 hit debuff so ripping a chain lightning through those mobs would feel better (I don't like the "SS splash" it feels and sounds unimpressive.

[apelsinjuice]

Legion enhancement was easily the best place the spec has been in, especially on release.

Now we’ll be back to be the worst melee, because some casuals prefer being the trash spec.

legion was litteraly just spaming 1 button stormstrike nothing else

[Jotaux]

legion was litteraly just spaming 1 button stormstrike nothing else

No, you had to maintain your 3 weapon enhancements, crash lightning if you had 2+ targets (on release it was in the single target rotation), manage maelstrom, etc. You say its only one button because you didn't understand the spec.

[apelsinjuice]

No, you had to maintain your 3 weapon enhancements, crash lightning if you had 2+ targets (on release it was in the single target rotation), manage maelstrom, etc. You say its only one button because you didn't understand the spec.

its no different now, unless you dont understand the spec, by reading in the ench shaman class discord pretty much everyone is saying the spec is more complicated now