Enhancement Shaman DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.2

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 whenever an additional target is present to make use of our funnel, cleave, and burst AoE tools. We also come with a solid utility toolkit for dungeons, and Windfury Totem provides 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

• Lower single-target ceiling than other specs.
• Strong AoE tools have a 6 target cap.
• 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.

We are maintaining a list of changes for Shamans, so you can see what changes with every patch of Dragonflight.

With the release of Patch 10.2 and Season 3, alongside the addition of new loot and the Tier Set bonus, Enhancement also received a number of tweaks to key talents and its tree structure. While the list is small, they have a big impact on builds going forward:

• A number of key talents in the center of the tree have been moved around to improve accessibility. Most importantly Elemental Blast, Sundering and Windfury Totem have all shifted places.
• The Maelstrom Weapon generation component of Elemental Assault now also applies to Lava Lash and Ice Strike casts.
• A new talent, Tempest Strikes, has been added as a choice node option against Elemental Blast. This servers as a core single target option for Storm builds.
• The Splintered Elements effect now grants 20% Haste when consuming the buff, increased by an additional 4% for each extra Lightning Bolt generated on secondary targets.
• The buff gained from Legacy of the Frost Witch now also includes Frost damage.
• The direct damage dealt by Primordial Wave casts has been increased by 500% but can no longer be cast on allies.

The biggest change here is the one to Elemental Assault, which single-handedly solves Elementalist's Maelstrom Weapon drought issue. Alongside that, Tempest Strikes solidifies Storm's core by refocusing its Maelstrom economy on just Lightning spenders, refining its gameplay loop. The Legacy of the Frost Witch change also opens up a secondary build to avoid the Lashing Flames management minigame for Elementalist builds, instead taking advantage of the buff to empower Hailstorm for AoE.

These changes alongside the Season 3 gear leans toward a very balanced single target situation between both builds, so it really will just come down to preference and encounter. In AoE, however, it is looking a lot like Elementalist will pull pretty far ahead as it takes advantage of more of the changes. All of our pages have been updated to account for these changes, alongside new Season 3 builds and recommendations ready for you to jump into the new content.

Please have a browse and know that your feedback is welcome on our forum!

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 the Best in Slot items to look out for in the current season of Dragonflight.

Once you have started to gear, you should ideally have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more to go alongside your new items. We have a dedicated page for exactly this, as shown below, and the stats page, where you can find more information on our stat priority and any necessary changes you may need to make with 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.

If you are looking for an answer to a specific question, often these are common queries many players have. We keep pages that cover the most frequently asked questions and also mistakes players tend to run into.

Season 3 brings an extremely powerful set bonus alongside some talent changes that target fixes some key problems some builds had previously. Considering we have spent most of Dragonflight as a strong performer with a few strong niches, it looks like from a damage perspective, that is going to continue and, in some cases , even improve. I expect us to be one of the top melee picks (especially in raids, thanks to Windfury Totem), and the only downside we really have is our survival that can sometimes struggle to keep up with punishing encounters.