Classic Enhancement Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Enhancement Shaman DPS in WoW Classic.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Enhancement Shaman talents.
Talent Builds for Enhancement Shamans
Enhancement Shaman talent builds vary in focus between maximizing damage throughput, maximizing group utility with Totem Twisting and Weapon Debuffing and there's even some builds that also focus on healing.
Usually these builds involve a trade-off of some kind between raw damage talents and healing / support talents.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.
Enhancement Shaman Talent Builds: Stormstrike

This build provides the highest personal damage potential out of all Enhancement
Shaman talent builds present in this page, combining Stormstrike's
damage output with
Nature's Guidance extra hit and
Restorative Totems support.
Keep in mind, however, that it is still very much a raid-utility oriented build,
mostly due to the points in Restorative Totems which could have been spent
on something like
Concussion that directly increases your damage slightly.
The extra Mana from the totem will be appreciated by yourself, but especially by
any Mana users in your group, such as Hunters!
This makes it the favored build when soloing or in dungeons, where your damage
is a significant contributor to success. However, in 40-man raids it will rarely
be worth having Stormstrike's debuff over something like Sunder Armor,
and you might be forbidden from using it, which will cause it to be a useless talent.
Feel free to swap points from Improved Reincarnation or
Restorative Totems
into
Ancestral Healing or
Healing Focus, which will give
you extra healing capabilities at the cost of your support abilities.
Enhancement Shamans Talent Builds: Elemental Devastation

This build's namesake, Elemental Devastation is a powerful talent that
drastically increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks (and thus,
your
Flurry uptime) whenever you critical strike with a spell.
This can easily be activated with your shocks, and even if you want to conserve
Mana for Totem Twisting, you can use rank 1 Earth Shock to activate it almost
for free!
Because we want to get Elemental Devastation,
Improved Weapon Totems
and
Totemic Mastery in the same build, points are very tight. But feel free
to spawn some of the early points in the Enhancement / Elemental trees to different
talents of your preference!
Enhancement Shamans Talent Builds: Improved Weapon Totems Hybrid

This build is a full Enhancement / Restoration hybrid which picks Improved Weapon Totems
while keeping strong healing capabilities. By picking up
Flurry
and
Two-Handed Axes and Maces, you gain better soloing abilities and, especially,
the capacity to efficiently keep up the weapon debuffs of
Nightfall and
Annihilator.
By going deeply into the Restoration tree, you become able to do good healing
for you group, only losing the Healing Wave focused talents. Try to weave
your melee attacks and weapon debuffing duty alongside your heals, especially
Chain Heal,
in order to be as useful of a member for your group as possible.
Enhancement Shamans Talent Builds: Totem Twisting Mana Battery

This build is meant for advanced players to fully support their group from multiple different angles. You will be in charge of debuffing enemies, totem twisting, mana boosting and emergency healing.
Debuffing enemies with Nightfall and / or
Annihilator
can be done efficiently by
Flurry-specced Shaman
with little raid DPS loss.
Totem Twisting by cycling between Windfury Totem and
Grace of Air Totem
every 10 seconds (thus keeping both buffs up simultenously) is very Mana consuming
but also grants a significant boost to melee DPS in your group.
Mana boosting with Mana Tide Totem and
Restorative Totems,
which also boosts
Enamored Water Spirit (a must-have trinket for this build),
can help a caster / healer group keep their Mana high. Because you will want to spend most
of your time in melee groups for Totem Twisting, you should only get swapped to a
caster / healer group whenever it is time to drop your long Mana cooldowns.
Last but not least, in case of emergency you have enough points into Restoration
that you can make a decent off-healer, including Nature's Swiftness
which is one of the best panic buttons in WoW Classic when combined with
Healing Wave.
Notable Enhancement Shamans Talents
Elemental Tree
The Elemental Tree has several useful damage-oriented talents for an Enhancement-focused Shaman and some PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Classic Shaman PvP guide.
Earth's Grasp increases the health of your
Stoneclaw Totem and
the radius of your
Earthbind Totem. While this can occasionally be useful,
the other options are generally more impactful.
Call of Flame increases your Fire Totem damage by 15%. Since you will
want to have your Fire Totems out in most fights, this can contribute a small amount
of damage to your rotation.
Elemental Focus causes you to have a 10% chance to make your next damaging
spell cost no Mana whenever you cast a spell. You can easily fish for these procs
with lower rank shocks if needed, and every time this procs you get to use a maximum
rank shock for free!
Reverberation reduces the cooldown on your shocks. This allows you
to interrupt / slow / DoT enemies more often and to proc
Elemental Focus
/
Elemental Devastation more often.
Eye of the Storm is a great talent for PvP, as it will allow you to heal
without interruption when you really need it, because you were just hit by a critical
strike.
Elemental Devastation increases your critical strike chance by up to 9%
after you deal a spell critical strike. This can easily be activated with rank 1
shocks, and is a good damage / haste increase due to its synergy with
Flurry.
Elemental Fury can be an option instead of
Stormstrike for
the maximum damage talent build, as it does not take a debuff slot.
Enhancement Tree
The Enhancement Tree is your main tree for melee damage increases and offensive totem boosting talents.
Guardian Totems increases the damage reduction of
Stoneskin Totem
by up to 20%, which is a small boost to your tanking support capabilities. It also
reduces
Grounding Totem's cooldown, which is situationally useful.
Improved Ghost Wolf reduces
Ghost Wolf's cast time heavily,
which is great for quickly moving around when outdoors.
Enhancing Totems increases the Strength and Agility granted by
Strength of Earth Totem
and
Grace of Air Totem by up to 15%, making them stronger DPS increases for the
melee players in your group.
Two-Handed Axes and Maces allows you to use its namesake's weapons.
Besides the high damage boost it brings to a Shaman, it allows you to use
Nightfall,
which is one of the best raid boosting tools in WoW Classic.
Flurry increases your attack speed by up to 30% whenever you land a
critical strike. This allows you to keep your weapon debuffs more reliably, and is
a significant damage increase.
Improved Weapon Totems increases the melee attack power granted by your
Windfury Totem, which makes it even stronger at boosting your melee group's
damage.
Stormstrike is a 20 second cooldown melee attack that causes the target
to take 20% additional Nature damage from the next two Nature damage attacks to hit
it. This has natural synergy with our
Earth Shock and, overall, is a great
DPS increasing talent, as long as your group can spare the debuff slot.
Restoration Tree
The Restoration Tree is where much of your Mana sustainability and healing power comes from, and as such you will almost always want at least some points into it.
Improved Healing Wave decreases your
Healing Wave's cast time
by up to 0,5 seconds. This is typically not impactful enough to warrant being taken
as an Enhancement Shaman.
Ancestral Healing increases your target's armor significantly after
you land a critical heal. While a niche talent for us, it can help stabilize an
ally in danger.
Totemic Focus reduces the Mana cost of your Totems significantly.
This is mandatory to have for an Enhancement Shaman, as you will not have enough
Mana to Totem Twist, otherwise.
Healing Focus lowers the chance of suffering spell pushback on heals
from taking damage. This is extremely useful when you need to heal yourself or others
under pressure, especially in PvP.
Totemic Mastery increases the range of your totems to 30 yards, allowing
them to affect targets that are further away. While this talent does not stack with
our Tier 1's 3 piece bonus, it is generally a good talent to use, ensuring maximum
uptime on your Totem's effects.
Tidal Mastery increases your critical strike chance with heals and lightning
spells. This has some synergy with
Ancestral Healing but you will typically
not get much out of it as an Enhancement Shaman.
Nature's Swiftness causes your next Nature spell to become instant. This
is great when trying to land an emergency
Healing Wave on a struggling ally.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2024: Page updated for Classic Anniversary.
- 19 Feb. 2020: Added a Totem Twisting Mana Battery talent build.
- 27 Aug. 2019: Clarified that the intent of these builds is first and foremost to provide the best raid support possible.
- 19 Aug. 2019: Page added.
More Classic Shaman Guides
More Classic Guides from Other Classes
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides

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 Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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