World of Warcraft: Forever Enhancement Shaman - Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

Earth Totems provide offensive and defensive tools, with some additional unique utility depending on the situation. Unlocked at Level 4, as you level up you'll gain access to the following:

• Strength of Earth Totem – Increases the Strength of you and your party.
• Stoneskin Totem – Reduces Physical damage taken by you and your party.
• Tremor Totem – Removes Fear, Charm and Sleep effects from you and your party.
  Pulses every 5 seconds.
• Stoneclaw Totem – Attempts to Taunt nearby enemies while active.
  30-second cooldown, 15-second duration.
• Earthbind Totem – Slows nearby enemies by 50% for 5 seconds
  15-second cooldown, 45-second duration.

In the majority of situations, you'll be using Strength of Earth Totem to provide bonus Strength to you and your group. Earthbind Totem is, however, an extremely useful kiting tool to slow all nearby enemies when dropped. If you or your party run into trouble, use it to create some area denial while making distance.

Stoneclaw Totem can be used when solo to take some pressure off, especially if you pull something by accident. Tremor Totem is also invaluable for removing Fear effects before things get out of hand, so always be aware of enemies that may cast these to avoid any accidental pulling incidents!

Fire Totems are almost entirely offensive, adding ways to deal extra direct damage to your targets. Unlocked at Level 10, as you level up you gain access to the following:

• Searing Totem – Attacks a nearby enemy within 20 yards for Fire damage.
  30-55 second duration, depending on rank.
• Magma Totem – Attacks all enemies within 8 yards for Fire damage every 2 seconds.
  20-second duration, increased by Trial by Fire.
• Flametongue Totem – Applies a weaker version of your Flametongue Weapon imbue to your party.
  Effect is exclusive with Windfury Totem and your Flametongue imbue.
• Frost Resistance Totem – Increases the Frost Resistance of you and your party.

While not a Totem itself, Fire Nova also triggers around your active Fire Totem in Forever. This means you always want one active and near enemies to anchor casts to.

The highest damage option for Fire Totems is Magma Totem, especially when combined with Call of Flame and Trial by Fire for bonus damage and duration. It is, however, very Mana intensive to maintain, so sometimes Searing Totem is worth using instead.

While Flametongue Totem is useful and provides bonus damage across your group, the exclusivity it holds with Windfury Totem means it's not worth using. Windfury Totem is simply much too valuable for melee groups to consider switching to Flametongue instead currently.

Water Totems provide restorative effects, alongside some extra tools to remove debuffs from you and your allies. Unlocked at Level 20, as you level up you gain access to the following:

• Healing Stream Totem – Heals you and your party a small amount every 2 seconds.
• Mana Spring Totem – Restores Mana every 2 seconds for you and your party.
• Poison Cleansing Totem – Removes Poison effects from you and your party every 5 seconds.
• Disease Cleansing Totem – Removes Disease effects from you and your party every 5 seconds.
• Fire Resistance Totem – Increases the Fire Resistance of you and your party.

Mana Spring Totem is your go-to totem to help with Mana issues you may face. In any encounter where you need access to debuff removal both cleansing Totems are invaluable.

Air Totems cover a wide range of different effects, with some unique use cases. Unlocked at Level 30, as you level up, you gain access to the following:

• Windfury Totem – Applies a weaker version of your Windfury Weapon imbue to your party.
  Effect is exclusive with Flametongue Totem and your Windfury imbue.
• Grace of Air Totem – Increases the Agility of you and your party.
  Effect is exclusive with Windfury Totem from other Shaman.
• Grounding Totem – Redirects one harmful single-target spell cast at you or your party to itself.
  15-second cooldown, 45-second duration. Destroyed after one spell absorbed.
• Windwall Totem – Reduces the Ranged damage taken by you and your party.
• Sentry Totem – Summons an immobile Totem that grants vision of an area and warns of attacking enemies.
  Buff can be clicked to switch your perspective to the Totem.
• Nature Resistance Totem – Increases the Nature Resistance of you and your party.

Your go-to in any group content is Windfury Totem, which is the premier group buff provided by Shaman. Bear in mind that this is exclusive with Flametongue Totem and Grace of Air Totem provided by any other Shaman, but it's strong enough that it's always worth using. When solo, you can instead opt to use Grace of Air for some extra Agility.

Grounding Totem is one of the most unique tools available to Shaman, and can be used to quickly nullify dangerous casts from enemies. Look for chances to catch dangerous casts with the Totem!

Here, we'll be covering all of the core tools that make up Enhancement's damage toolkit, alongside any mechanics that are worth knowing about. This section will evolve over time after launch as more is discovered.

The backbone of your melee toolkit, unlocked on the fourth row of the Enhancement talent tree. Stormstrike has a 6-second cooldown, dealing 150% of your weapon damage (normalized based on the type of weapon), and can trigger any imbue effects. It also applies a debuff that increases the damage of your next Earth Shock, Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning within 12 seconds. This has one charge, and is consumed by the first spell cast.

With Improved Stormstrike, this also allows up to 50% of your Spirit-based Mana regeneration to continue while casting. This is your primary source of sustain during combat, so it's cast on cooldown whenever possible. Finally, the talent also gives up to a 100% chance to reset Stormstrike's cooldown whenever you Dodge or Parry, making you lethal in solo content.

Shocks are instant cast magic spells that deal damage and trigger a bonus effect. All three share the same 6-second cooldown (reduced by up to 1 second by Reverberation), and each covers a different element:

• Earth Shock – Deals Nature damage and interrupts the target for 2 seconds. Generates bonus Threat.
• Flame Shock – Deals Fire damage and applies a 12-second Fire DoT. Duration increased by up to 9 seconds with Call of Flame.
• Frost Shock – Deals Frost damage and slows the target by 50% for 8 seconds.

You want to maintain Flame Shock at all times due to how efficient the DoT is per cast with Call of Flame. After that, you'll be using Earth Shock instead to consume the Stormstrike debuff - just be careful of the bonus threat generated!

In Forever, Fire Nova is no longer a totem and is instead an ability that triggers from your active Fire Totem. This deals Fire damage to nearby enemies, with a 10-second cooldown (reduced to 6 with Trial by Fire), and is your main AoE ability. It's quite Mana intensive, so be careful using it too frequently if your resources are strained. Always make sure that you have an active Fire Totem, and that it's near enemies you're currently engaged with.

Enhancement can imbue its weapon with one unique effect out of four, separated by element. These last for one hour when cast, and are not exclusive with weapon buff effects such as sharpening stones:

• Windfury Weapon – each attack has a chance to swing two extra times for bonus damage.
• Rockbiter Weapon – increases Attack Power and threat generated.
• Flametongue Weapon – each attack deals bonus Fire damage based on swing speed.
• Frostbrand Weapon – each attack has a chance to deal bonus Frost damage and slow targets by 25%.

The go-to is Windfury Weapon, both for burst and additional swings to feed Maelstrom Weapon. This can trigger from any auto-attack or Stormstrike, and is the backbone of our melee toolkit. There are potentially builds that instead opt to use Flametongue Weapon, and if these perform well in practice, the guide will be updated to reflect that.

Both your Windfury and Flametongue imbues can also stack with the opposing buff Totem (such as Windfury Totem), but an Imbue does not stack with the Totem of the same name.

Enhancement also has a few important procs and effects to be aware of. While not all of them require conscious decision making to utilize, it's worth knowing that they're happening in the background to understand what makes the spec tick.

Maelstrom Weapon triggers from any melee attack, reducing the cast time and Mana cost of your next Lightning Bolt by up to 20% per stack. At 5 stacks it becomes instant, and will not reset the swing timer when cast. This means you always want to cast at 5 stacks only, and avoid weaving casts in between attacks.

It's currently thought to be set at a 20 PPM rate. This still requires a good deal of testing once we have better access to the full talent tree, but the general formula for procs is calculated based on your Weapon Speed in the following way:

This means that slower swing speeds significantly increase the base chance to trigger Maelstrom Weapon. Due to swing speed improvements like Flurry, when paired with Stormstrike and bonus Windfury Weapon attacks the proc chance and stack rate can reach extremely high levels.

Your Melee Critical Strikes (including Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon procs) increase your auto-attack swing speed by up to 30% for the next three attacks. Each auto-attack swing will consume one stack, and new procs will reset the counter to three. This doesn't change any weapon speed calculations (which instead use base weapon speed).

Your direct damage Spell Critical Strikes (not including the DoT from Flame Shock or Totems) increase your Melee Critical Strike chance by up to 9%. This in turn leads to more chances to trigger Flurry, and more opportunities to trigger Elemental Devastation through your Maelstrom Weapon casts. These two talents create a feedback loop between melee and spells, and elevate the value of Critical Strike for Enhancement.

Grants your damaging spells a 10% chance to enter the Clearcasting state, reducing the Mana cost of your next damaging spell by 100%. This is often best used on Fire Nova, but generally so long as you're consuming the effect on high cost spells, it does most of the work it needs to when it comes to taking pressure off your Mana pool.

Outside of Totems and its offensive toolkit, Enhancement benefits from the same broad range of tools to deal with situations as other Shaman. Some are very niche in their use cases, others bring some nice quality of life, while some are crucial for dealing with some encounters.

• Healing Wave & Lesser Healing Wave are direct cast healing spells that allow you to keep yourself healthy, or help party members in danger.
• Purge dispels up to two effects from target enemies.
• Earth Shock also doubles as an interrupt for enemy spell casts.
• Frost Shock slows targets hit for 8 seconds, useful if you need to kite.
• Cure Poison dispels one poison effect from you or your target ally.
• Cure Disease dispels one disease effect from you or your target ally.
• Ghost Wolf shapeshifts you into a wolf with 40% increased movement speed, with a 2-second cast. This can be made instant (and allows its use indoors) using Improved Ghost Wolf.
• Reincarnation allows you to self-resurrect after dying with 20% health and mana. Has a 1-hour cooldown, and requires one Ankh to cast.
• Ancestral Spirit is Shaman's resurrect spell for fallen allies.
• Water Breathing allows your target to breathe underwater for 10 minutes. Requires one Shiny Fish Scales to cast.
• Water Walking allows your target to walk on water for 10 minutes. Taking damage will cancel the effect, and it requires one Fish Oil to cast.
• Far Sight allows you to look far into the distance while you maintain the channel.
• Astral Recall returns you to your Hearthstone location. Has a 15-minute cooldown, and does not share a cooldown with your Hearthstone.