Enhancement Shaman Frequently Asked Questions — Dragonflight 10.2.6

Yes. You should be making sure that you do not overcap the Maelstrom Weapon effect by going above 10 stacks. You should aim to consume it at around 8 stacks, allowing room for procs to happen and pool slightly without hitting the upper limit. Do not rush to cast it as soon as you hit 5 stacks, however, as that will often interfere with other ability cooldowns.

There are two things that change this however: Storm builds and the Static Accumulation talent. The former does not care about waste at all, so long as it is in service of casting more Stormstrikes. The latter means that spending as soon as possible at 5+ becomes much more desirable, so long as other higher priority abilities are not available.

This remains a firm no. Too much of our damage is still sourced from our Main Hand, and Lava Lash does not do enough, even with supporting talents, to make this a good choice.

Generally speaking, this is a no. Assuming it has full uptime on a target and can live the entire duration, the amount of damage will be a marginal increase over an alternative cooldown. However, it is also prone to dying, poor AI, or disrupting a group with its taunt. It is much more beneficial to save it as a survival tool thanks to much additional health.

Never. "Hard casting" is the practice of casting below 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon (and thus incurring a cast time). Whenever you do this, it resets the swing timer if used without at least 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, so it should never be done due to the resource loss being greater than the damage benefit.

Depending on your build, yes. Most of this will involve pooling Elemental Blast charges to deal significant damage during your Elemental Spirits windows, as Elemental Blast benefits from every type of elemental spirit. There are also some minor considerations , such as burning off effects like Hailstorm or abilities like Sundering with the appropriate wolf if it is about to expire, but otherwise, do not overthink it.

If it is included in your talent build, yes. It should be used as a low-priority filler that slots in whenever nothing else is available.

If taking Elemental Blast, 3 or more, otherwise whenever a second target is present.

When playing Storm builds, never. If playing Elementalist however, in any situation where you do not have Elemental Blast talented but are against a single-target, this is used as an on-cooldown high-priority spender.

No. The generation is always given regardless of how much is wasted due to overcapping. However, you should still try to avoid wasting any whenever possible.

Yes. The effect is unique from our Windfury Weapon imbue, and the extra auto-attacks generated can trigger a number of our on-hit proc effects.

In any situation where there are other melee that scale well with bonus auto-attacks, this is worth taking. A general rule of thumb is if more than one Warrior or Rogue is present in any group, this is a locked-in choice, but you can check how powerful it is for all specs here:

The answer to this question in any context will always be to simulate it. This is because what is an upgrade for you may not be an upgrade for someone else. In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer, even when talking about 2 completely identical comparisons from you to another person. Everything in your gear affects everything else.

This applies to gear, set bonuses, trinkets, and, in certain circumstances, talents.

The only exception to this rule is when a specific fight dictates a certain set of optimal talents and gear pieces that enhance their strength. If you are curious about what kind of setup to go for a specific fight, WarcraftLogs.com's rankings and statistics are a good place to see what others are doing.

We have a guide on how to sim yourself here:

For Enhancement, there is no strict "amount" or breakpoint of any stat you are required to reach, nor are there any points at which a stat stops being desirable. In most cases, your specific secondary is less important than the volume. This is, however, another situation in which a simulation done to check your ideal gear pieces and stat values will provide you invaluable information.

Currently, races are fairly even from top to bottom, and the the choice you make will likely result in a minimal difference. Current simulations to demonstrate how low the impact is are as follows: