Enhancement Shaman DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.1

Enhancement is a melee specialization with a heavy emphasis on both Physical attacks and Elemental spells, weaving both together in a fast-paced combat style and an emphasis on effects that amplify the strength of different abilities.

The gameplay has 3 central pillars: juggling different ability cooldowns, your stacks of the Maelstrom Weapon effect, and reacting to procs. This means you will often be cycling your abilities on cooldown in order of priority, with some excelling in different scenarios. We can adapt well to different target counts and excel in single-target, funnel, and cleave situations. We also come with a solid utility toolkit for dungeons, and Windfury Totem as an extra boost to other melee players in our party, granting us unique damage-increasing utility.

Strengths

• Very versatile damage profiles, able to do well in almost all scenarios.
• Specialist at 2-6 target cleave and AoE.
• Has access to funnel tools, converting AoE damage into a priority target.
• Powerful instant burst tools.
• Free Cleave options that cost no single-target to use.
• Powerful control toolkit for Mythic+.
• Good mobility with a tool for most situations.
• Off-healing tools to assist the group.
• Windfury Totem boosts other melee in your group.

Weaknesses

• Limited uncapped AoE scaling.
• Reliant on uptime, so you are heavily punished by high movement encounters or intermissions.
• Punishing playstyle with a steep learning curve when getting started.
• Requires many available keybinds to play effectively.
• Less durable compared to other melee specializations.
• Every build has an RNG factor to deal with.

For the launch of Season 2, Enhancement has received a small number of high impact changes on the talent tree, opening up new build options and combinations. Highlights include:

• Static Accumulation now also has a passive active at all times (including outside of Ascendance), that grants Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning a 10/20% chance to refund all Maelstrom Weapon stacks spent.
• Thorim's Invocation also has a new passive that increases the damage of all Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning casts by 20%.
• Deeply Rooted Elements has had its proc mechanics altered. It now begins at 0% chance and increases by 1% per Stormstrike cast until Ascendance is triggered. After, it resets to 0% once again.
• Fire Nova has been converted to Flamestrike (Fire and Physical) damage, and Flame Shock has been converted to Volcanic (Fire and Nature) damage.
• Windfury Weapon damage increased by 50%, and Forceful Winds bonus per stack has been reduced to 20%.
• Elemental Weapons now requires imbues to be active on your weapons to gain its full effect.
• The PvP talents Spectral Recovery, Swelling Waves, Ethereal Form and Thundercharge have been removed.
• Two new PvP talents have been added: Burrow and Stormweaver.
• A 5% aura buff has been applied, increasing the damage of all abilities by 5%.

Some small other tweaks have happened, but these are the biggest changes that have the widest impact on our tree. In particular, the Static Accumulation and Thorim's Invocation changes open up more build options for different situations, and the Fire Nova change also makes it more desirable in certain combinations. You can find out more about these build swaps on our Talent page.

For a full breakdown of all Class Changes in Patch 10.1, check out our dedicated page below.

For 10.1, the most important changes to the guide include updated talent builds to account for changes. The previously named Physical build has also been renamed to Storm to fit its theming, with full details on the talent page itself. This also extends to the Rotation page, where some priorities have shifted to incorporate these with the upcoming Season 2 set bonus. The majority of changes are there, with details on new build variants, Static Accumulation gameplay, Ascendance for Elementalist, and how to play with the new set bonus. The rotation tool has also mostly been overhauled to display this more clearly. Alongside that, the gear page has been updated to account for all new available items and the addition of Cataclysm Timewalking trinkets.

Mythic raid tips are still to be added with more details about each encounter now that the raid has settled and all Heroic encounters are covered.

Enhancement's core gameplay loops in Dragonflight are very similar to what they were in previous expansions with some solid improvements along the way, so anyone who has played the spec recently should be very familiar with them. The biggest adjustment to the spec's priority and pacing revolves around the changes made to Maelstrom Weapon and its associated spenders. Although the base Maelstrom Weapon proc chance has been reduced, several active methods of generating Maelstrom Weapon stacks have been added to the tree, resulting in an overall increase in total Maelstrom Weapon stack generation as well as an increase in its reliability. Additionally, our Maelstrom Weapon spenders deal significantly more damage than before, shifting our emphasis away from tightly managing ability cooldowns and more toward optimizing their usage for high-damage attacks.

While the core of Enhancement's gameplay remains similar, almost every aspect of the toolkit has been improved significantly. Notably, Enhancement AoE damage has been significantly improved and diversified while still mostly target capped. Additionally, the new class talent tree offers Enhancement a wide suite of utilities, including several AoE crowd control options such as Capacitor Totem, Guardian's Cudgel, Thunderstorm, Thundershock, and Sundering, making Enhancement a specialist at AoE disruption, which is highly desirable in Mythic+. Finally, while the Fire build remains mostly intact; the Physical side of our tree has seen the biggest improvements allowing for more build diversity. In particular:

• Improved funneling damage is improved with a buffed Gathering Storms, operating similarly to how Ashen Catalyst does for Elementalist builds.
• Improved damage windows with the redesigned Feral Spirit and Legacy of the Frost Witch effects, similar to Hot Hand and Elemental Spirits windows
• Significantly improved Mastery scaling via the redesigned Doom Winds effect, as well as the new Storm's Wrath and Stormblast talents.

We can now take combinations of previously impossible abilities, opening up extra possibilities when deciding how we specialize our toolkit. A large number of Shadowlands legendaries return as well, with several powerful effects that were mutually exclusive in the past. Examples include:

• Legacy of the Frost Witch, which has also been improved to be a more significant Physical effect
• Ashen Catalyst to provide more frequent access to empowered Lava Lash
• Witch Doctor's Ancestry that was previously unable to be combined with other options, allowing for significantly higher Feral Spirit uptime to synergize with different portions of the toolkit.
• Doom Winds as a powerful Physical damage cooldown that also provides truly uncapped AoE burst windows.
• Deeply Rooted Elements as a passive proc option for our Ascendance effect.
• Splintered Elements that allows us to leverage Primordial Wave casts for additional bursts of Haste when multiple enemies are present, increasing both our AoE and funnel potential.

If you are interested in playing Enhancement but still need to get a Shaman at max level, we have a leveling guide with tips to help you along your journey.

After reaching max level, it can sometimes be difficult to immediately include new add-ons and UI elements you are not used to, and make the transition to end-game play is quite jarring. Due to that, we recommend grabbing some of the essential add-ons on our dedicated page when you are learning the spec to make the transition smoother when learning to play Enhancement.

Enhancement gameplay revolves around several different interlinking gameplay loops that are often all happening at once, creating a fast-paced experience that is heavy on planning mixed with reactive decision-making. The three core loops it needs to maintain are:

• Manage your Maelstrom Weapon stacks. This is especially important in Dragonflight, as our most powerful abilities consume this to become instant ( Elemental Blast, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, and Chain Lightning). Moreso than ever, generating as much of this resource as possible and avoiding waste by going above 10 stacks is key to executing Enhancement correctly.
• Keep your rotational abilities on cooldown as much as possible. This is secondary to our Maelstrom management but is still very important as it is often the best source of generating stacks. This was previously the most important loop and remains a core part, requiring you to look forward in the rotation, consider where gaps may appear, and adjust your plan mid-flow. This is the main decision-making portion of the spec.
• React to procs. This is the last component and what causes the rotation to fluctuate. Keeping up with powerful procs like Ascendance and Hot Hand windows to get the most out of them is core to any build that uses them.

If you have never played Enhancement before or are new to the Dragonflight design, we recommend looking through our Spell Summary first, as that covers all of the individual abilities alongside our Easy Mode page, which provides a quick primer to get you started.

While we always recommend simming yourself for ideal results, we do provide a dedicated Enhancement gearing page that lists some items to look out for alongside some Best in Slot picks for the first season of Dragonflight.

Once you have started to gear, you must ensure that you have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more. We have a dedicated page for exactly this, as shown below, and the stats page, where you can find more information on the possibility of a changing stat priority and the necessary changes you may need to make for consumables.

The end-game playstyle of Enhancement looks very different from the one you use to level due to the longer form of combat in the encounters you experience. Because of this, we provide Mythic+, Raiding, and PvP-focused guides that are aimed at each content type.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that is causing you to perform poorly, but do not worry; many of these questions come up for players. Because of this, we have set up pages that cover common questions and target frequent mistakes below.

In Patch 10.1, Enhancement is likely to at least remain in the same high-value spot it was in Season 1, if not improve. All of the things that made us very desirable in Mythic+ remains - our large control suite, varied damage profiles, and ability to invest heavily into AoE without losing too much single-target. With the addition of the new set bonus adding in a new burst window, this adds extra layers of power into that mix that may elevate us even further. In raids, a similar story is true thanks to more robust talent options that can suit most encounter types, and Windfury Totem has not gone anywhere. Our only downside is our relative lack of durability compared to other specs, which may potentially be an issue further into the Season.