WotLK Classic Enhancement Shaman Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

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.

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.

Use this build with a slow physical main-hand weapon in situations where there is only one target or reduced opportunity to cleave.

While most talents are set in stone, if your raid lacks Improved Icy Talons from a Frost Death Knight, you can pick up Improved Windfury Totem by taking points out of Ancestral Knowledge and Improved Shields.

Elemental Warding is taken instead of Mana talents such as Improved Stormstrike and Elemental Focus because with Tier 10-equivalent gear you will no longer have any Mana issues. If you are playing with Tier 9 gear and below consider using the Mana talents instead, and probably play the Spellpower build below instead.

This is a better build for dungeons or situations where there are multiple targets which can be hit for extended periods of time.

As before, Improved Windfury Totem can be dropped for Ancestral Knowledge and Improved Shields if you already have its buff from another Enhancement or Frost DK. Mana talents can also be swapped for Elemental Warding once you have strong gear, overall.

Regardless, while gearing up and in dungeons, Elemental Focus is deceptively powerful for Mana sustain, as Enhancement's area damage profile uses Fire Nova every 3 seconds with Glyph of Fire Nova, 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 Mana sustain tool!

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 Feral Spirit, Glyph of Fire Nova, and Glyph of Stormstrike with physical main-hand or Glyph of Flametongue Weapon with spellpower main-hand. 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 minor glyphs, Glyph of Water Shield, Glyph of Renewed Life, and Glyph of Water Walking are fine quality of life options.

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.

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.

The Restoration Tree provides no real benefits to Enhancement and should be ignored.