This spec was fun, for a while. What next?

Classes Shaman
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Let me share some of my impressions maining Enhancement over the past 4 DF seasons. I’m not 100% up-to-date with all the balance changes lately, so treat this as just my opinion and nothing more.

When DF first came out, I thought Enhancement was the bomb. I said to myself:

“Imagine the looks on those Elemental Shaman faces, we have EB and it’s instant and crits harder, too!” — Samardala, sometime in 2022

Yes, a single Lava Lash would crit harder than most of their spells.
Yes, we have 3 bars of skills that we have to use on a mixed priority/proc basis.
Yes, for a while we could beat our chests and exclaim that not only was Enhancement one of the most complicated specs to play, it was also one of the top performers, in the hands of the elite.

But where are we now?

  • Skill bloat is a pervasive player complaint
    • The average Enhancement Shaman has 3 bars of skills he or she has to use in combat. You have to do way more work for way less credit.
  • Enhancement’s potential in PvP was eviscerated.
    • Elementalist shaman could do one thing well – put a lot of DPS pressure on one guy at a time and set up huge damage spikes. – That is gone. (half-way through S1, iirc)
    • Storm shaman picked up from there and it could do one thing well – pretend it’s useless until an Ascendance proc, at which point a clueless enemy healer would be overwhelmed and someone would die. – That, too, is gone. (with S2, iirc)
      • With both viable builds nerfed to the ground, Enhancement amounts to a door stopper.
      • Is the intent for Enhancement to not be competitive at all?
  • The spec fantasy is out the window.
    • We are meant to be Enhancement Shaman – “totemic warriors who use the power of the elements to enhance their strikes”. What are we, instead? A version of Elemental Shaman that just runs around a bit more?
      • What happened to the reign of Windfury? Even the Storm spec is called STORM because of all the Lightning Bolts you rely on.
      • What happened to the reign of Stormstrike? A skill once on par with Mutilate (and with the same animation, too) has been reduced to being a filler barely discernible from auto-attacks.
      • What happened to clothies (in S1) and Warriors (in S2) running away in horror from us? Walking up to someone in PvP feels like you’re asking them to die on their own. The DPS meters at the end of a match are even more tragic.

Our spec, apparently, is going to mostly continue the same way in TWW.
Going like this was fun, at the beginning, but it seems that Enhancement’s strengths are an antithesis to the principles that the balance team embraces.

What would you folks rather have? A complete rework or targeted fixes?

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it doesnt need a rework, just a little bit of pruning from useless skills.

e.g. ice strike is just bloat that nobody would need.
the cd reduction of hot hand should be much smaller or even remove it entirely and add more dmg to it.
this 2 changes alone would remove so much bloat.
but if you want to also make it less of a hassle to play, you should also remove lashing flames as it contributes to making you work much harder for dmg than others.

I am already at the point where i log in after work and want to do some chill m+ and I rather spec ele or resto to turn my brain semi off than playing 500iq spec enhance.
if we are at a point where people think playing the spec is more work than fun, something went wrong.
So far this only happened to a handful of specs for me. (sub rogue is another candidate)

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I agree about Ice Strike. I also think we don’t really need the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning – just give us Fork Lightning as one skill and call it a day!

I’ve been getting that, too… Feels like freedom to play elemental :smiley:

I don’t know, change seems like it’s long overdue! When Augvoker came out, support Enhancement seemed like the best idea ever. Now, tank Shaman seems like a great idea.

From what I’m seeing, Elemental’s rework seems interesting, though…

Are you planning on sticking to Enhancement for TWW, or are you jumping ship? I’ll probably stick to Enha because of sheer stubbornness; whether I’ll like it is another question entirely :')

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Enhancement 500 iq spec rofl ye right.

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you know means exergarating right?

enhance requires a lot more concentration to perform well (not even perfectly) that baby specs like ret where i press 3 buttons drooling over the keyboard and being top dps.
enhance currently has the most annoying rotation of all specs that i have played. I had basically every class at one point in mid to high rio, as i am an absolutr multi classer.
it is very easy to do very bad dmg as enhance while on most specs that is much harder to achieve

i will 100% play my shaman, but not sure about the spec yet. stormbringer is decent fun so far

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