WotLK Classic Enhancement Shaman Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Enhancement Shaman in WotLK Classic, as well as advised glyphs.
Talent Builds for Enhancement Shamans
In Wrath, the amount of strong new talents deep in Enhancement and the power
of Fire Nova for area damage forces talent builds deep into Enhancement
and midway into Elemental, leaving little room for deviation.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.
Enhancement Shaman PvE Talent Build
While most talents are set in stone, if you already have Improved Icy Talons
from a Frost Death Knight in your raid, you can drop the two points there and put
them into
Improved Stormstrike and
Ancestral Knowledge for a minor
throughput gain.
Elemental Focus is taken ahead of
Improved Stormstrike because
of Enhancement's area damage profile, which spams
Fire Nova every 6 (or 3
with
Glyph of Fire Nova) seconds, which uses a huge amount of Mana. The 40%
cost reduction of Elemental Focus will be up almost 100% of the time during AoE,
making it an excellent throughput tool for longer pulls.
Enhancement Shaman PvP Talents and Build
The general idea of the PvP tree is to gain more defensive, crowd control, and mobility tools while dropping area damage talents which will not have any use in the small-scale PvP happening inside the Arena.
Frozen Power and
Earthen Power are especially notable for allowing
you to quickly close the distance with
Frost Shock and causing
Earthbind Totem
to remove slows, mitigating Enhancement's weakness to being kited.
Wrath Classic Enhancement Shaman Glyphs
In Wrath you will be able to unlock Glyphs that improve your abilities and can be swapped around freely as long as you have the consumable glyph item on your bags.
As an Enhancement Shaman you will want to be using Glyph of Stormstrike
and
Glyph of Feral Spirit in most PvE situations, with the final glyph being
either
Glyph of Flametongue Weapon or
Glyph of Windfury Weapon depending
on whether you are using a Spell Power main hand or Physical DPS main hand.
Glyph of Feral Spirit can be replaced by
Glyph of Fire Nova for area
damage heavy encounters and trash clearing and, if you are min-maxing, use
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem before using your
Fire Elemental Totem and
then swap into another glyph in order to get the cooldown benefit without the
downside of using the glyph in combat.
For PvP, use Glyph of Shocking and
Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem along
with
Glyph of Feral Spirit for maximum damage and survivability.
For minor glyphs, Glyph of Water Shield,
Glyph of Renewed Life, and
Glyph of Water Walking are fine quality of life options.
Notable Enhancement Shamans Talents
Elemental Tree
The Elemental Tree has some interesting talents, such as Elemental Focus
and
Elemental Devastation, but is ultimately outperformed by the Restoration
tree in the secondary tree role.
Elemental Focus increases your Mana sustain in area-of-effect situations
drastically by giving you a 40% discount on your next two spells after getting a
Spell Critical Strike. This is typically used with
Fire Nova, which hits all
targets near your Fire Totem, making it have great odds of landing at least one
Critical Strike.
Reverberation reduces the cooldown on your shocks and
Wind Shear.
This smooths out your rotation, and allows you to interrupt / slow / DoT enemies
more often.
Elemental Devastation increases your melee Critical Strike chance by up
to 9% after you deal a Spell Critical Strike, which has good synergy with
Flurry.
Improved Fire Nova makes your
Fire Nova hit up to 20% harder and
have a cooldown up to 4 seconds faster. As Fire Nova's baseline cooldown is only
10 seconds, this allows you to use it almost twice as often, and can be stacked
with
Glyph of Fire Nova for a 3-second cooldown Fire Nova, which can do the
highest sustained area DPS in the game as long as you have Mana.
Enhancement Tree
The Enhancement Tree is your main tree for melee damage increases and damage support talents.
Improved Ghost Wolf makes
Ghost Wolf instant-cast, which is
great for quickly moving around when outdoors and in PvP.
Enhancing Totems increases the power of your
Strength of Earth Totem
by up to 15%, which makes it the best buff of its kind. While any Shaman can
bring this buff, at least one should do so as it is a powerful raid DPS increase.
Mental Dexterity converts your Intellect into Attack Power, allowing
Intellect gear to be much more valuable for Enhancement.
Stormstrike provides an extra melee attack that also causes the target
to take 20% additional Nature damage from the next two Nature damage spells to hit
it. This buff works well with
Maelstrom Weapon-powered casts and is further
improved by
Glyph of Stormstrike.
Dual Wield allows you to use two one-handed weapons, which is a massive
damage boost due to the nature of combat in Wrath Classic, as well as leading to
more
Maelstrom Weapon procs.
Unleashed Rage grants you Expertise and increases the Attack Power of
nearby allies by 10%. This buff can also be provided by Marksmanship Hunters and
Blood Death Knights.
Lava Lash is a new talented attack, but unfortunately does very little
damage, making it be the last thing on your DPS rotation priority list.
Shamanistic Rage doubles as a Mana and defensive cooldown, which gets
better alongside your gear due to the Mana return being based on your Attack Power.
Mental Quickness converts your Attack Power into Spell Power, making
Attack Power much more valuable and able to scale not only Physical abilities
but also spells such as
Fire Nova and
Lightning Bolt.
Maelstrom Weapon allows you to cast spells 20% quicker per stack and
spells cast with any stacks of Maelstrom Weapon do not reset your swing timer
if you finish casting them before your swing timer finishes, allowing for an
advanced rotation technique known as Weaving.
Feral Spirit is a powerful cooldown that summons wolves which pursue
and stun enemies, heal you and themselves with their attacks, and allow you to
use
Spirit Walk for extra movement speed and root breaking.
Restoration Tree
The Restoration Tree provides no real benefits to Enhancement and should be ignored.
Changelog
- 18 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Phase 2 release ahead of Ulduar raid release.
- 06 Sep. 2022: Page added.
This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Shaman and Druid, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
- Changes to Death Knight Character Creation Restrictions Coming
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- Wrath Classic Hotfixes: February 9th