Enhancement Shaman PvP Guide for TBC Classic

Enhancement Shamans are, unfortunately, relatively weak in 2v2 and 3v3 Arenas. This is due to their lack of strong pressure from a Mortal Strike effect, and also the lack of crowd control such as what a Rogue brings. Ultimately, your matches will be reliant on Windfury Weapon lucky critical strikes, which might not even come at the correct timing in order to land kills.

On the upside, Shamans bring Bloodlust and strong pressure against Druid and Priest healer teams with Purge. As long as you can avoid being rooted or feared away from the action, you will be able to dish out a lot of pain against these healers while also removing their heals in the process.

This talent build gets all of the damage increasing talents and the crucial Toughness mobility talent while also getting some healing and totem support talents, notably Totemic Mastery and Nature's Guidance, which is of great importance for landing your shocks and support spells as your gear mostly has Physical Hit, not Spell Hit.

There are no real alternatives in terms of talents, as you are very stretched out as is, so the most important thing with these talents is learning how to use them and your abilities in PvP.

Rather than a fixed rotation, Shaman gameplay is about treading a fine balance between casting damage spells, utility spells, and even healing when needed. Here are some quick tips:

• Keep yourself alive and out of crowd control with Frost Shock, Earthbind Totem, Grounding Totem, and Lesser Healing Wave.
• Pressure enemies with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and also with Purge, Bloodlust, and Earth Shock.
• Keep an eye on your Mana pool, and use Shamanistic Rage as needed. It is also very useful as a defensive tool if you are being focused!

You can find our recommended gear, gems, and enchants for PvPing as a Enhancement Shaman in the link below.

Enhancement Shaman does not have a lot of viable compositions in 2s and 3s, and are also not that popular in 5s, but it can do reasonably well with the following:

In 2v2, Shaman + Rogue, Shaman + Restoration Druid, and Shaman + Disc Priest are your best compositions. The idea is to have a partner who can crowd control enemies and stay alive with little to no help, allowing you to focus on dealing damage and bursting enemies down.

In 3v3, you want to pair with a Rogue / Warrior / Retribution Paladin and a healer, forming a melee cleave setup which can burst enemies down with help from Unleashed Rage and Windfury Totem. Because Mages can easily ruin your day, it is advised to have a defensive dispel in your group from either a Priest or Paladin. A Paladin can also provide Blessing of Freedom, which increases your uptime on enemies even further!

In 5v5, Shaman can fit into just about any team and does not have any specifically-favored composition. Matches tend to be quick and explosive, which makes Bloodlust a must, and Shaman's burst with Windfury Weapon can be quite explosive as long as you can engage without being blown up, which is facilitated by Shamanistic Rage.

In order to become the best Shaman possible, you should understand what your talents and spells are for. The amount of details that can go into this section of the guide is endless, but we will try to keep things brief in order to give you a general idea which you can use to jumpstart your PvP experience.

Totems can be destroyed by totem-stomping macros. These are basically pet commands for Warlocks and Hunters which try to target and destroy all totems with the pet. While these are extremely annoying to deal with, they also force the enemy pets to run after your totems, which can be exploited by killing the pets behind line-of-sight when you coordinate properly with your team.

Bloodlust is the main reason to bring a Shaman to any team. This makes all of your team attack and cast much faster, allowing you to quick overwhelm your opponents, especially when combined with Purge and Earth Shock pressure!

Grounding Totem allows you to instantly nullify incoming enemy spells, which is of great value against any caster team. Earth Shock serves a somewhat similar purpose, but has a shorter cooldown and requires line-of-sight to the enemy caster in order to interrupt.

Purge allows you to remove up to two beneficial magic effects from enemy players. You should generally strip kill targets clean of their magic buffs, paving the way for kills to happen, especially against the magic heals-over-time and shields of Priests and Druids! Beware of spam purging Lifebloom, as it does a large healing burst in the process.

Tremor Totem pulses every few seconds, removing charm, fear and sleep effects from nearby allies. This is amazing against fears especially, but beware of totem-stomping macros or Priests fearing at the same time they attack your totem!