Enhancement Shaman Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (Season 1)

Right now, although the guide does support both trees, I would strongly recommend playing Stormbringer. It performs significantly better and improves our gameplay goals in every measurable way, while Totemic is numerically weaker and much harder to execute.

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.

If you are playing Stormbringer, spending as often as possible becomes significantly more important due to both Supercharge and the often paired talent, Static Accumulation. The act of cycling through this resource to trigger Rolling Thunder is the driving force of the strength in the tree. If you are playing Storm Totemic however, you generally do not care about waste as much, instead using your Maelstrom Weapon spenders to trigger Stormstrike resets via Legacy of the Frost Witch.

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 granted and Primordial Bond's defense.

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.

With Stormbringer paired with Elemental Blast, there is currently an optimization around casting this exclusively when you have either an ice or fire wolf active, as this pushes the damage per cast over the threshold to beat out Lightning Bolt, even considering the value from Static Accumulation.

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.

Generally speaking, this is not cast by any build other than specifically an Elementalist loadout that does not play with Elemental Blast. This is a fairly niche playstyle and will likely perform quite poorly, so you can safely remove it from your bars. Just path through it in the talent tree to reach Earth Shield.

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.

Never in PvE content. While doing this does activate Elemental Weapons and grants an extra talent point, no talent really makes up for it as a second Flametongue Weapon does effectively nothing.

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: