So i’ve been very worried about Enhancement Shaman looking at all the blue posts and beta changes and sadly I’ve had my worries confirmed. It doesn’t make sense that a class can have so many abilities on the bars (24 by my count before you take any talents) and feel like you sometimes have no buttons to press. 21 buttons that are useful in combat and yet I still feel like i’m missing a filler ability. Its obvious rockbiter was removed to combat the massive increase in buttons we have to press but honestly its noticable. Frost shock is the closest we have but I have two problems with it. The first is it has a 5 second CD so not really spamable and two it already has utility, its mean to be a slow, even though we already have a slow in earth bind totem. it would feel just as weird if warriors started using hamstring to dps. So IMO frost shock can go
The spec has been gutted and returned back to how it was pre legion but its missing some key things. One is totems. After the cheers of getting totems back at blizzcon we now are back to having only 4, two earth, one water no fire. it’s also missing the awesome lava lash spreading flame shock and then fire nova aoe. Instead we have crash lightning as our main aoe which no longer works in the current version of the spec as you can’t reliably hit storm strikes multiple times any more for the cleave damage. so crash lightning might as well go as well Or at least be move to a talent.
It feels very weird as I write this that I’m complaing about how bloated this spec has got in terms of the amount of abilities but at the same time I’m also complaining that we are missing things. This is where the fundamental problem is with Enhancement. To much fluff not enough substance. Why do we need two slows ? . Why do we need multiple range abilities as a melee spec, in this case we have frost shock, lightning bolt and chain lightning all of which perform a very similar but every slightly different role. It feels like all three of these could be removed and we just get earth shock like elemental as it basically performs in the same way. finally why do we no have three heals. in what situation am i going to be using chain heal as enhancement and how can you argue that searing totem didn’t play well with the spec but the tiny healing from healing stream does.
all that said credit where credit is due the talent tree is finally for the first time ever looking really promising. There some great build you can make, changing the way you play your spec which is what I’ve been asking for, for years. The only problem the talent tree has now is that you are going to struggle to fit a lot of these talents on to your already busy bar. if you really wanted to you could add another 7 on to the list of abilities. Its good to see elemental blast back working with maelstrom, but as i said earlier is kind of adds to the range problem. Ice strike has some nice play with the level 35 tier especially, i think it will be required if you want to play with fire nova properly. The only real issue is the level 30 and 50 tier. I’m not sure what earthern spike is doing here as it is such a boring talent (sundering would be better in its place). The other two are pretty much the same. I’m also not sure what earth shield is still doing here. It might be mathematically viable but it just feels a bit weird. you also can’t use it on yourself now if you have lightning shield up which your pretty much always will.
So how would I fix it. first of all abilities that can go. Frost shock, crash lightning, chain heal, cleanse spirit, Earh spike, earth shield. I think some of these could be pushed to the talent tree quite comfortably. I would like to see searing totem return as a CD with it buffing life lash. I could slive with this being a talent. bring back rock biter, It a melee spec I want it to feel like one. make it reduce the CD on storm strike and get rid of the random procs, it would give it some more control of our damage. finallya new ascendance model, it not necessarily bad its just old.