Enhancement Shaman Raid Guide

Welcome to the Enhancement Shaman Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0.5! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

Enhancement ShamanRaid

Single-Target

Excellent

AoE

Excellent

Utility

Strong

Survivability

Strong

Mobility

Strong

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Stormstrike, Lava Lash and Ice Strike deal 10% increased damage.
• 4-Set: Activating Feral Spirit summons 1 additional Feral Spirit.

Single-Target

Multi-Target

Elementalist vs. Storm

• With the reworks to the spec tree, Storm is now far ahead of Elementalist. The reworked versions of Stormblast and Deeply Rooted Elements as well as the new talent, Flowing Spirits, are very much tailored to Storm and the RNG playstyle.

Tempest Strikes vs. Elemental Blast

• Due to the changes to Deeply Rooted Elements, making it trigger off of all spenders rather than generators, with the exception being Elemental Blast, it now makes Tempest Strikes the better choice for all builds that play Deeply Rooted Elements.
• If you play a build that uses Ascendance, Elemental Blast should become better.

Using Chain Lightning vs. Elemental Blast/Lightning Bolt

The way you spend Maelstrom Weapon varies based on the number of targets you are fighting, whether your priority is killing a certain target, and which build you are playing.

• If you are specced into Elemental Blast
  • You use Chain Lightning if
    • You are fighting 3 or more targets and you do not need to focus on killing a certain target.
    • You are fighting 2 targets and Elemental Blast is on cooldown or you do not have Feral Spirit active.
  • You use Elemental Blast if
    • There is an important target that needs to die quickly, even if there are more than 5 targets. This results in less overall damage output but it is worth it to kill dangerous priority enemies.
    • You are fighting 2 targets and Feral Spirit is active.
• If you are specced into Tempest Strikes
  • You use Chain Lightning if
    • You are fighting 2 or more targets and you do not need to focus on killing a certain target.
  • You use Lightning Bolt if
    • You are fighting 1 target.
    • You have Primordial Wave active.

Flowing Spirits

• With Flowing Spirits, you will only spawn wolves from the type of spell you cast. This means if you are only using Stormstrike, Crash Lightning, Chain Lightning and Tempest on AoE, you will only be spawning Lightning wolves.
• This is why you will see crazy pulls where you have close to 10 lightning wolves up and no other type of wolf.

Stormbringer vs. Totemic

• Stormbringer is generally better on pure ST or consistent AoE, such as Mythic+ or encounters like The Silken Court.

• Totemic has recently become more popular as it shines at short burst windows, such as the Blood Parasites on Broodtwister Ovi'nax and even more so, Queen Ansurek where throughout the whole fight there are adds spawning that die quickly.
• Totemic is not far behind Stormbringer on pure ST but gains a lot of AoE when the fight allows for it, which makes it the stronger choice on some fights.
• Totemic has extreme variance due to Molten Thunder and Flowing Spirits procs during Ascendance. If you get good procs on pull you can easily burst 2 Mil higher than the previous pull. On AoE you will see even greater variance as your 15 Sec window of Ascendance will be the majority of your damage.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Enhancement Shaman. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Treacherous Transmitter
  • Great on-use trinket alternative. Can be annoying to use.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife
  • This is one of your best passive options, better than most other trinkets at the same ilvl.
• Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj
  • Great passive choice, almost as strong as your best options.
• Dead-Eye Spyglass
  • Great passive choice, one of your most solid options.
• Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
  • Great passive choice, one of your most solid options. Can be annoying to use.

Embellishments

• Dawnthread Lining
• Duskthread Lining
  • Both of these are your overall best embellishments, depending on what stats you currently need.
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots, or Waist depending on your available gear.

Remaining Sparks

• Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 636 on max item level, therefore, it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Tempered Swiftness -- maximum DPS.
  • Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
• Food
  • Feast of the Divine Day
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion -- a big burst of healing
• Weapon Oil
  • Windfury Weapon
  • Flametongue Weapon
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Deadly Onyx
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem color to enhance your Culminating Blasphemite.
    • Quick Ruby
    • Quick Sapphire
    • Masterful Emerald

Enchantments

For min-maxing a Enhancement Shaman in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
• Rocket Jump -- Goblin
  • Do a small jump in the direction your character is facing.
  • While you're in the Rocket Jump animation you are placed on a global cooldown until your character lands.
• Berserking -- Troll
  • Strong DPS racial that lines up perfectly with Ascendance.
  • Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
• Blood Fury -- Orc
  • Good DPS racial that lines up poorly with Ascendance.
  • 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
• Ancestral Call -- Mag'har Orc
  • Good DPS racial that lines up poorly with Ascendance.
  • Reduces the duration of poisons, diseases and curses by 10%.
• Haymaker -- Kul'Tiran
  • Stuns your target for 3 sec and knocks them back, not the coolest for raiding
  • 1% Versatility which makes this race decent for DPS.

Recommendation

In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS, you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said, the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably, Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift and Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.

If there is a good use of any races utility, it's always recommended to play it, but Troll is the overall best DPS racial currently. I prefer Goblin as its a small dps loss and Rocket Jump can save you from some bad situations.

Discover recommended macros for Enhancement Shamans during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Cursor Macros

Totemic Projection -- Casts Totemic Projection on your cursor without confirmation.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Totemic Projection

Wind Rush Totem -- Casts Wind Rush Totem on your cursor without confirmation.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Wind Rush Totem

Mouseover Macros

Primordial Wave -- Casts Primordial Wave on your mouseover or target.

#showtooltip Primordial Wave
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Primordial Wave; Primordial Wave

Flame Shock -- Casts Flame Shock on your mouseover target.

#showtooltip Flame Shock
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Flame Shock; Flame Shock

Focus Mouseover -- Puts whatever you mouseover on focus

/focus mouseover

Utility Macros

Hex -- Casts Hex on your mouseover or target.

#showtooltip Hex
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Hex; Hex

Healing Surge -- Casts Healing Surge quickly on an ally by mouseovering or targeting.

#showtooltip Healing surge
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Healing surge; Healing surge

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Enhancement Shaman, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

• MRT -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Helpful addon for Raiders, especially for Raid leaders and officers.
• ElvUI -- Full User Interface replacement
  • A user interface designed around user-friendliness with extra features that are not included in the standard UI.
  • Alternatively, you can also use Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF) and an action bar addon of your choice or of course the stock UI.
• BigWigs -- Generic Boss Mod
  • BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific Raid encounter.
• WeakAuras -- Jack of all trades
  • WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework that allows the display of highly customizable graphics on World of Warcraft's user interface to indicate buffs, debuffs, and other relevant information. This addon was created to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras but has since introduced more functionalities while remaining efficient and easy to use.
• Plater -- Advanced Nameplates
  • Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras and wago.io + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
• Details -- In-depth Damage Meter
  • Most powerful, reliable, handsome, damage meter.
• Bartender4 -- Action bar addon
  • Bartender4 gives you more customizable action bars.

WeakAuras

Maelstrom Bar

Shows your current Maelstrom Weapon stacks.

Elemental Spirits Tracker

Shows what type of Wolves you have up. Particularly useful when Elemental Spirits is talented.

Patch 11.0.2

• Healing Surge healing increased by 20%.
• Stone Bulwark Totem now has a 3 minute cooldown, but its effect has been significantly increased.
• Wind Rush Totem and Static Field Totem now cost 1% of base mana (previously had no cost).
• Fixed an issue causing Stone Bulwark Totem to not be affected by Dampening.
• Fixed a couple of unnecessary sounds and animations from Stone Bulwark Totem.
• Fixed an issue causing Spirit Wolf to be removed and not continue stacking after changing zones.
• Fixed an issue causing Lightning Shield to be removed if another Shaman with Elemental Orbit has an Earth Shield on the Shaman.
• Fixed an issue causing Skyfury buff to drop off after transferring zones and disconnecting.
• Earth Elemental summon no longer resets the swing timer.
• Fixed an issue causing Totemic Projection to fail on transports.
• Fixed an issue causing Spiritwalker's Grace to cancel Lightning Lasso when used.
• Elemental Blast damage increased by 25%. This reverts a previous change.
• Primordial Wave is now a 30 second cooldown (was 45 seconds).
• Primordial Wave baseline passive buff lowered to 250% (was 500%).
• Primordial Wave now properly scales with Enhancement Shaman’s Mastery and Elemental Spirits' elemental damage buffs.
• Doom Winds is now a 60 second cooldown (was 90 seconds).
• Splintered Elements now grants 10% Haste (was 20%).
• Casting Flame Shock, Frost Shock, and Sundering will now initiate combat with melee auto attacks.
• Molten Assault range increased by 4 yards.
• Molten Assault now plays an impact visual on impacted targets.
• Crash Lightning range increased by 4 yards.
• Crash Lightning is now on personal resource display.
• Earthen Weapon is no longer on personal resource display.
• Elemental Spirits is no longer displayed on the personal resource display.
• Hailstorm is now displayed on the personal resource display.
• Elemental Blast now correctly replaces Lava Burst in spell book.
• Fire and Ice now properly buffs Primordial Wave.
• Nature’s Fury now properly affects Primordial Wave.
  • The following talents are now 1 point:Molten Assault
  • Improved Maelstrom Weapon
  • Witch Doctor’s Ancestry

Patch 11.0

• All talent trees have had many talents move locations or have had their pathing updated. 
• New Ability: Skyfury – Harness the fury of the Windlord to grant a target ally 2% Mastery and empower their auto attacks to have a 20% chance to instantly strike again for 1 hour. If the target is in your party or raid, all affected party and raid members will be affected. Learned at level 17. 
• New Talent: Elemental Resistance – Healing from Healing Stream Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage received by 6% for 3 seconds. Healing from Cloudburst Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage taken by 3% for 3 seconds.
• New Talent: Refreshing Waters – Your Healing Surge is 25% more effective on yourself.
• New Talent: Traveling Storms – Thunderstorm now can be cast on allies within 40 yards, reduces enemy movement speed by 60%, and knocks enemies 25% further.
• New Talent: Seasoned Winds – Interrupting a spell with Wind Shear decreases your damage taken from that spell school by 15% for 18 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times.
• New Talent: Encasing Cold – Frost Shock snares its targets by an additional 10% and its duration is increased by 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Arctic Snowstorm – Enemies within 10 yards of your Frost Shock are snared by 30%.
• New Talent: Ascending Air – The cooldown of Wind Rush Totem is reduced by 30 seconds and its movement speed effect lasts an additional 2 seconds.
• New Talent: Enhanced Imbues – The effects of your weapon imbues are increased by 20%.
• New Talent: Stone Bulwark Totem – Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 30 seconds, granting the caster a shield absorbing damage for 10 seconds, and an additional absorb every 5 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.
• New Talent: Jet Stream – Wind Rush Totem's movement speed bonus is increased by 10% and now removes snares.
• New Talent: Primordial Bond – While you have an elemental active, your damage taken is reduced by 5%.
• Voodoo Mastery has been redesigned – Your Hex target is slowed by 70% during Hex and for 6 seconds after it ends. Reduces the cooldown of Hex by 15 seconds.
• The cooldown of Gust of Wind has been reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• The following talents are now 1 point:
  • Totemic Focus
  • Elemental Warding
  • Nature's Guardian
  • Winds of Al'Akir
  • Nature's Fury
  • Totemic Surge
  • The following talents have been removed:
  • Go With The Flow
  • Stoneskin Totem
  • Tranquil Air Totem
  • Ancestral Defense
  • Surging Shields
  • Swirling Currents
  • Flurry (now an Enhancement talent)
  • Maelstrom Weapon (now level-learned for Enhancement)
  • Lava Surge (now level-learned for Elemental and Restoration)
  • Maelstrom Weapon is now learned at level 10 and has been removed from the Class tree.
  • Feral Lunge is now learned at level 14 and has been removed from the Enhancement tree.
  • Flurry moved from the Class tree to the Enhancement tree. 
  • The following talents have been removed:
  • Windfury Totem
  • Focused Insight
  • Refreshing Waters

Q: Why is Totemic never played?

A: With current tuning it's just too far behind at everything basically. It requires significant buffs or nerfs to Stormbringer for it to even be considered.

Credits

Written By: Clickz

Reviewed By: Perfecto