Shamans in WoW Forever - Need support from community and blizzard

Saren-1544894 · September 26, 2026, 8:11am

Hi everyone,

As a previous “hardcore” (as it was possible in the vanilla period) gamer from wow vanilla until beginning of Wotlk I am very excited about WoW forever! And I really hope it’s going to live up to its expectations.

I am reaching out to you Blizzard and the player’s community to ask a few questions related to the shaman and the role expected for this class in WoW Forever regarding HL PVE.

I have no, to very little doubt, that our Elemental and Restauration specs will allow the shaman an open door to HL PVE in top guilds and raids.

My concern is oriented towards enhancement shaman.

As for a lot of players, I believe (we are planning on coming back to wow or switching to WoW Forever), I would like some clarity before spending money AND a lot of time into the game.

What is the purpose and aim for the Enhancement Shaman ?

-> Is there an official dedicated thread where this has already been layed out?

I see nice reworks have been made around the talents but more specifically i would like to know :

Will the shaman 2H be viable for PVE HL content? Is it expected?
Will it be as viable as any other melee DPS class? Or just a support class/spec?
Does the “tanky” spec will allow the shaman to really manage enough threat and taunt mobs in dungeons so as to be able to tank just like a druid or a paladin would do?
Is it expected for us to tank? If so, with peers of the same level and equal gear? Or us needed to be above and playing with lower level characters?

I really would appreciate if you blizzard or with the help of the community I could get clarity on this.

I believe no one would appreciate spending time chosing the wrong main character for the launch seeing how long the levelling to 60 will take.

And since we are not able to reach level 60 on beta to try out the full spec, I guess it’s hard to say how viable any class would be (except for the ones with little changes). Any way I believe it’s pretty clear what is expected for all the other classes and spec. I am just not sure about this one and would prefer some clarity.

Sorry if answers are already there on the web and I was not able to find them, please forgive me for my little knowledge regarding this.

By the way I found 3 very interesting threads on the US forums which I would like to share here.

We all have our own opinions but it would be really nice to understand what is the main direction taken by Blizzard regarding Enhancement shaman.

Is it meant for DPS competition with other melee classes?
Is it meant for fun playing, no competition
Is it meant for PVP, can it be competitive?
Will there be a real tanking spec making it a real spec option?

Because once we know what is the strategy here, we can help with thinking about spells and talents and make interesting propositions.

I find the post of Oasis (first thread) really interesting.

At the moment my belief is the following regarding enhancement :

The will is to make a shaman melee with a 2H (not dual wielding → this can be found on retail, we do not need to have this on forever unless it is possible to chose from one or the other and that both are equally viable for DPS in HL PVE) .
The difference of this melee class is that it is supposed to play with elements and therefore along with physical damage the plan is to be empowered with/from spell damage.

So why withdraw spell haste from “Rage of the farseer” and remove access to spell crit from the elemental tree? I’m not even sure this was giving an unfaire advantage compared to other DPS melee classes.

Also if there is a plan for shaman to tank, like said in thread number 2 we need the toolkit :

Reliable threat generation
Mitigation
Defensive cooldowns
AoE threat
Scaling
Positioning tools
Mechanics that allow the spec to consistently perform the role

I like the idea where the talent "Spirit weapons " would be something like :

All your weapons imbue now generate +30% threat and each of the imbuement have a nice specific effect for the tank to chose.

Because let’s be honnest, why should we need a talent to lower our threat generation as DPS? It should be de facto and if 2H is the way to go for DPS, then the go to will be windfury the other weapons imbuements will never be used by 2H dps.

It’s obvious that Spirit Weapon is the Tank switch Off/On depending if you want to tank or not.

As for “Improved Stormstrike” and “Anticipation”, along with our “Ligthning Shield”, they are (at least to me), very PVP oriented (it’s not a critic regarding PVP but more an argument to make these talents interesting as well for PVE).

-> Could it be possible to do something with Ligthning Shield for its damage to be triggered not only when the shaman is hit? The paradox being that with anticipation you should be less hit… therefore the lightning shield becomes even less useful…

-> Anticipation could be nice for tanking, again if tanking can be a reliable role (possible to merge it with “Toughness”? This way you gain a bigger lifepool and more avoidance?

-> Could the “Improved Stormstrike” be changed as followed ?

Current : When you Stormstrike, you have a 50% chance to gain 50% mana regeneration while casting spells for 15 sec, and Stormstrike’s cooldown has a 50% chance to reset each time you Dodge or Parry.

New : When you Stormstrike, you have a 50% chance to gain X mana regeneration based on the physical damage dealt for 15 sec, and Stormstrike’s cooldown has a 50% chance to reset each time you Dodge or Parry.

This way I guess it is still good for PVP and better for PVE.

Food for thought there is still 5 weeks before launch and 4-5 more weeks before the real deal of raids.

Kind regards!

A shaman lover!