Enhancement Shaman DPS Guide — Midnight (12.0.1)

Midnight brought with it an enormous overhaul to Enhancement, significantly changing its gameplay and resource economy. These changes make things less hectic, providing a clearer goal within the rotation, but still feels familiar to anyone who has played Enhancement in recent years. A clearer emphasis has been placed on melee strikes, and linking Maelstrom Weapon management to different effects outside of just damage. Since this impacts every aspect of the playstyle, changes are broken down into sections below.

Midnight presents one of the biggest shake-ups to modern Enhancement in a long time. The biggest change of note is a stronger link between melee strikes with Maelstrom Weapon using Elemental Tempo, providing cooldown reduction. Additionally, Crash Lightning now triggers its buff effect regardless of how many targets are hit, bringing it into single-target as well. Some fillers have been removed (namely Frost Shock and Ice Strike), and Voltaic Blaze is now an active button instead of a proc. Our cooldown suite has also seen significant changes, providing some alternative timers depending on the situation.

Click for notes on Cooldown Changes

• Doom Winds
  This has seen the biggest changes, now benefiting from Static Accumulation and Thorim's Invocation when active. Duration is also increased by the latter to 10 seconds when taken, and has been removed from the GCD. However, bonus Windfury Weapon chance has been reduced to 200%.
• Ascendance / Deeply Rooted Elements
  No longer deals damage on cast, but otherwise functions the same, now replacing Doom Winds. Whenever Ascendance is triggered, Doom Winds is also cast for free. With the active choice node taken, also grants a 0.5% chance per Maelstrom Weapon spent to trigger Doom Winds.
• Feral Spirit
  Has been changed to a passive talent. Instead, now spawns one Nature wolf whenever you trigger Doom Winds, or a Fire wolf when you cast Sundering. These provide 5% Physical and 5% Element increase for their respective school, lasting for 8 seconds.
• Primordial Wave
  Has been removed, with its effects (such as Primordial Storm) instead being placed into Sundering casts instead, which has moved to the bottom of the talent tree.

Some tree shuffling has also been done, alongside some new talents to round out the gameplay. Elemental Assault is now finally a single point for guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon generation, Stormblast is easier to access, and Thunder Capacitor is now the source of Maelstrom Weapon refunds. Ride the Lightning has been moved from the PvP tree as well, causing all strikes to also trigger Chain Lightning when used, giving us a smoother transition into cleave situations.

The new class feature in Midnight are Apex Talents, powerful 4-step talent nodes that provide compounding benefits when taken. For Enhancement, Storm Unleashed adds significant benefits to Crash Lightning casts, giving it a stronger presence in the rotation:

• Storm Unleashed — each Maelstrom Weapon spent has a 2% chance to cause your next Crash Lightning cast to ignore its cooldown. Additionally, the weapon enhancement buff can now overlap.
• Storm Unleashed — has two points, increasing the damage of Maelstrom Weapon spending abilities by 7.5%, and weapon imbuement damage by 10% per point.
• Storm Unleashed — causes Crash Lightning to leave behind a static pool on the ground, dealing 100% of the initial damage dealt over 2 seconds. Additionally, the weapon enhancement buff increases auto-attack speed by 15% per stack.

The node is quite front-loaded with the first point, adding an extra proc to react to, and elevating the value of Crash Lightning in the rotation. With the added benefit of the weapon buff overlapping, it means refreshing the effect is no longer wasting any damage, and makes gameplay a little smoother as well.

As Hero Talents are a key component to Enhancement's playstyle, they saw some of the largest changes moving into Midnight. They are now closer together in terms playstyle, but both are still distinct.

• Stormbringer Changes - Click for Details

  • Tempest now has a 2% chance to trigger per Maelstrom Weapon spent.
  • Awakening Storms no longer deals damage, and has a 1.1 RPPM chance of triggering Tempest.
  • Rolling Thunder now summons a wolf 12 seconds when Doom Winds is triggered, rather than on Tempest casts.
  • Arc Discharge now only triggers from Chain Lightning.
  • Three new talents: Stormwell, Natural Gift and Descending Skies.
  Between the two trees, Stormbringer saw the most mechanical changes, and comes out the other side a bit worse for wear. Tempest is now random, triggering on a percent chance when Maelstrom Weapon is spent. Awakening Storms has also been changed to an RPPM proc as well, so while the rate of Tempest triggers are similar, they're much less predictable. Lastly, Rolling Thunder instead summons a Feral Spirit wolf when Doom Winds is activated.
• Totemic Changes - Click for Details

  • Surging Totem now has a 1-minute cooldown, and lasts for 25 seconds.
  • Whirling Earth (triggered by Whirling Elements) now doubles the damage of your next Sundering cast, and spawns a Searing Totem.
  • Lively Totems now triggers a Searing Volley on any Lava Lash or Voltaic Blaze cast.
  • Three new talents: Totemic Momentum, Elemental Attunement and Primal Catalyst.
  In comparison, Totemic saw clear improvements in Midnight, with a clear direction that maps on well to other new talent updates. Surging Totem totem is now positioned more as a cooldown, lining up with the Doom Winds changes for powerful 1-minute bursts of damage. The biggest standout is the new talent - Totemic Momentum - allowing for extremely long streaks of Hot Hand uptime. This also positions proper Maelstrom Weapon management back into its rotation, which has been sorely missing in The War Within.

The result is that they keep the same distinction in preferred strike (either Stormstrike or Lava Lash), while now both having a reason to care about Maelstrom Weapon.

Unfortunately, while the rotational changes are good, the same can't be said for our Defense and Utility. We've lost Stone Bulwark Totem as an active tool, and both Earth Elemental's cooldown and duration was reduced (to 3 minutes and 30 seconds respectively), all while removing damage reduction from Primordial Bond. We do now have permanent Earth Shield via Therazane's Resilience, though self-healing isn't as potent as before. Raging Maelstrom has had the previous PvP talent Stormweaver folded in though, reducing the cost of self-healing, and both Brimming with Life and Elemental Warding have been buffed for more passive defense.

In the utility department, we retain the suite of niche options, but have lost a lot of control. Both Guardian's Cudgel (when longer double stuns are needed) and most importantly both Thunderstorm and Thundershock are gone, with Sundering no longer incapacitating targets. This severely limits our control options, something we were previously very good at.