Enhancement Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Talents can be freely changed whenever you are out of combat in Dragonflight, and no longer requires you to be in a rested XP area (such as an inn or capital city), nor do you need to use Tome of the Still Mind / Codex of the Still Mind. You can also save different loadouts to swap between combinations on the fly quickly.

This section aims to provide you with a quick and easy set of builds for different situations that lets you get the most out of your Enhancement Shaman. Enhancement currently focuses on having every part of its build built together due to a great deal of synergy between certain abilities that focus on the type of damage you are dealing with. Due to this, below, we have compiled builds based on two types: Elementalist builds that center around Lava Lash and dealing Magic damage, and Physical builds that focus on Stormstrike and dealing Physical damage. Each section has a single-target raid-focused build and an equivalent AoE Mythic+ oriented selection to choose from:

• Elementalist Raid: BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIJJpEJgkEikkQJhAAAAAAAAAAAAAKRIJkgiAJtkkSAQSCBC
• Elementalist Mythic+: BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIJJpEJISSISCUSkAAAAAAAAAAAAAKRIJkolioQSLJpAoEkQgA
• Physical Raid: BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIJJHAkcARSSSQSiECAAAAAAAAAAAAoEhkQCKCk0SSKBAJJkCC
• Physical Mythic+: BcQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIRSKASSSiIJSSLRCAAAAAAAAAAAAoEhkQiWKiCJtkkCgSQCBC

Remember that you can easily import any of the talent trees below into the game with any of the "Copy Export String" buttons:

This build primarily focuses on dishing out as much single-target damage as possible, but there are some talents taken along the way (in Hailstorm, Primordial Wave, and Lashing Flames) that can also do free cleave damage while providing a hefty bonus toward that goal. There are still small sacrifices made for sustained AoE situations, but when the aim is to do as much boss damage as possible, this build excels, and some points are flexible enough to slot those in should they be required. It also makes use of all 3 Elements that Elemental Spirits can trigger, so there are always high-value globals alongside Elemental Blast for frequent burst windows.

The building blocks of the single-target build are primarily here to maintain some priority damage, keeping a versatile damage profile for Mythic+ where a balance is needed. It does, however, sacrifice Elemental Blast to take Crash Lightning and Crashing Storms for AoE purposes. This is primarily because in AoE situations, all Maelstrom Weapon is spent on Chain Lightning, so the value increases significantly. The gameplay loop also maintains the multi-DoT maintenance for Flame Shock, which, while it has a heavy management requirement, does provide extremely good sustained cleave.

It features heavy, frequent bursts with Primordial Wave + Splintered Elements It works in most target counts alongside Sundering and exceptional funnel damage, though it suffers slightly in uncapped AoE. The build also takes a more Mythic+-oriented utility suite in the class tree. Some points are flexible here depending on the dungeon, affix, and composition discussed on our Mythic+ page.

Unlike the Elementalist build, this goes all in on making the most out of our Physical weapon attacks and imbues in Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon. This comes with an extremely high amount of RNG but exceptionally high potential for damage if things go right, thanks to Deeply Rooted Elements. It also generates an extreme amount of Maelstrom Weapon and therefore has a very high uptime on Feral Spirit, allowing it to layer the buff over all of its cooldowns (such as Doom Winds) with ease. The downside is that, unlike the alternative build, this is exclusively single-target with little cleaving or AoE, which is a big sacrifice. Its inconsistency in when it does damage too can be less appealing especially during proggression, but it is difficult to argue with how much this build can do when the stars align.

In comparison to the single-target build, this pulls away a lot of the tools aimed at achieving that goal to grab some of the AoE options available. Crash Lightning and Crashing Storms are taken alongside Alpha Wolf to provide uncapped AoE damage and leverage the high Maelstrom Weapon generation alongside high Feral Spirit uptime. Primordial Wave is also taken to pair the Splintered Elements Haste window with Doom Winds, allowing you to get extra casts of Crash Lightning while it is active for uncapped burst AoE via the individual Windfury Weapon procs.

Physical AoE builds are somewhat less competitive because points are tighter, forcing a sacrifice in one area of damage for another, but it can still work and outdo Elementalist in the right conditions. There is also some wiggle room to hybridize more depending on the dungeon being run.

While the above builds can be slotted into most encounters depending on what is required, some more bespoke tools may be required on some bosses. You can check out specific tips and builds for each of the Vault of the Incarnates encounters below:

Mythic+ can potentially require a mix of particular AoE and Single-Target talents, depending on affixes and other variables. If you want more specific advice about the selections (especially those relating to Utility), check out the dedicated page below:

Many of the Enhancement talent choices add abilities or alter how you would play due to the synergistic effects it creates with other portions of the toolkit. We recommend you look at our rotation page linked below for more details.

These talents establish the core of your playstyle and include many of your basic abilities. Key talents include:

Ability	Explanation
Stormstrike	Our core generator ability strikes with both weapons, so can trigger weapon imbues and generate a high amount of Maelstrom Weapon.
Windfury Weapon	Our main-hand imbue can trigger special bonus attacks on main-hand auto-attacks and ability hits.
Lava Lash	Deals moderate Fire damage, increased by 100% if Flametongue Weapon is imbued on your off-hand weapon. This has a lot of supporting talents further in the tree.
Forceful Winds	Grants a cycling buff that increases Windfury Weapon damage stacking up to 5, but does not refresh itself.
Improved Maelstrom Weapon	Causes your Maelstrom Weapon stacks to additionally increase the damage of affected spells by 10/20% per stack consumed, massively increasing the damage of spenders, and is always taken.
Molten Assault	Reduces the cooldown of your Lava Lash ability by 3/6 seconds, and Lava Lash casts against a target affected by your Flame Shock reapplies the effect and spreads it to 2/4 nearby enemies. This allows you to maintain Flame Shock in single-target for free and forms the crux of multi-DoTs in AoE.
Unruly Winds	Causes your Windfury Weapon procs to trigger a third attack.
Raging Maelstrom	Increases the maximum number of Maelstrom Weapon stacks you can have to 10, and it increases the damage dealt by spells that consume the effect by an additional 5% per stack.
Ice Strike	Deals moderate Frost damage with your main-hand weapon and increases the damage of your next Frost Shock by 100%.
Hailstorm	Causes Maelstrom Weapon spending abilities to give you Hailstorm stacks that increase the damage of your next Frost Shock cast and causes it to hit an additional target per stack.
Fire Nova	Causes all of your active Flame Shocks to erupt, dealing Fire damage to up to 6 nearby enemies. This can be strong in AoE, but is not strong enough to warrant taking over the Hailstorm package currently. Its main benefit is requiring less points for ease of pathing.

There are 13 points available in this section, and you need to spend at least 8 points to advance to the next part of the talent tree, so many of These abilities will be included in every build you can make. Although every talent in this section (other than Stormstrike) is technically optional, it is strongly recommended that you have the following talents as they are both versatile and play an essential role in all builds:

• Lava Lash
• Improved Maelstrom Weapon (2 points))
• Raging Maelstrom
• Molten Assault (1 point)

From this point on, your main decision will be whether you want your build to focus more on Physical damage effects with Stormstrike eventually and Windfury Weapon, or the Magic side of the tree with Lava Lash and our spell toolkit. Both of these options have single-target and AoE variants, so your choice here will often dictate how you path down the tree based on which damage profile (either sustained or burst in this case) you desire and personal preference.

These talents establish the overall theme of the build and include a variety of tools to specialize in different damage delivery profiles. Key talents include:

Ability	Explanation
Elemental Blast	Deals massive Elemental damage to your target, and grants a buff for 10 seconds that grants either 3% Critical Strike, Haste, or 6% Mastery. This gains an additional charge if you are also talented into Lava Burst. This is almost always taken in single-target builds.
Sundering	deals heavy Flamestrike damage to enemies in a line in front of you and disorients them briefly.
Overflowing Maelstrom	Maelstrom Weapon spenders can now consume up to 10 stacks at once, up from 5.
Swirling Maelstrom	Causes the surrounding talents ( Hailstorm, Fire Nova and Ice Strike) to generate Maelstrom Weapon when used.
Windfury Totem	Drops a totem at your feet for 2 minutes that grants party members a 20% chance of triggering an additional auto-attack, which can trigger any on hit effects. This is a unique raid buff provided only by Enhancement, and is a staple in raids or compositions where you have other melee present.
Hot Hand	Gives all your auto-attacks a 5% chance to trigger an 8 second buff that reduces the cooldown of Lava Lash and increases its damage. This is a key reactive proc for Elementalist builds and provides a lot of throughput.
Ashen Catalyst	Causes Flame Shock ticks to give a stacking buff that increases the damage of your next Lava Lash by 12%, and reduce the cooldown of Lava Lash by 0.5 seconds. This significantly increases access to the ability and is important for all situations - especially funnel.
Lashing Flames	Causes Lava Lash to apply a debuff for 20 seconds that increases the damage the target takes from your Flame Shock effect by 100%. This forms the core of the Flame Shock multi-Dot playstyle.
Doom Winds	Adds a cooldown to your toolkit that significantly increases the proc chance of Windfury Weapon and increases its damage dealt by 10% for 8 seconds when cast. On the GCD, and causes a small main-hand strike when cast.
Storm's Wrath	Increases the gains from the Mastery stat on the proc chance for Stormbringer and Windfury Weapon by 150%, improving Mastery scaling for Physical builds.
Stormflurry	Grants Stormstrike a 25% chance to strike your target again for 40% of the damage dealt, and can chain off itself. These extra hits can also trigger any of our weapon procs and effects.
Stormblast	Causes Stormbringer empowered Stormstrike casts to deal an additional 25% of damage dealt as Nature. This adds an extra Mastery scaling component into Physical builds in single-target.
Crash Lightning	Deals Nature damage in a 120-degree cone in front of you, and if 2 or more targets are hit, you gain a buff that causes Stormstrike, Ice Strike, and Lava Lash to trigger a Nature damage splash when cast. Initial casts can trigger Windfury Weapon imbue, and this is our main source of sustained AoE.
Crashing Storms	Increases the damage of your Crash Lightning by 40% and causes your Chain Lightning to jump to 2 additional targets. This is taken in most high-target AoE situations.

This section offers the most significant number of talents, with up to 19 points available. Unfortunately, you will likely want to spend between 10-12 points above the 8-point gate and another 8-10 points below the 20 points gate, leaving you only 8-12 points to spend here. This constraint forces you to pick the type of damage delivery profile you want to specialize in here in the tree and forms the most significant part of the puzzle when building your character.

Depending on your choices made above the 8-point gate, you will likely want to continue specializing along the left or right sides of the tree:

• Physical builds will want to specialize in abilities that have extra interactions with Stormstrike, picking up talents such as Doom Winds, Stormflurry and Storm's Wrath. It can also specialize into single-target by grabbing Stormblast here.
• Elementalist builds instead tend to take similar core talents regardless of target count, completing the right side of the tree with the Fire talents — Hot Hand, Ashen Catalyst, and Lashing Flames.

Any build can path through Sundering and Storm's Wrath to reach Elemental Blast for a powerful single target finisher. Alternatively in AoE situations we take Crash Lightning and Crashing Storms to add more AoE to our toolkit. Overflowing Maelstrom is a staple in most builds due to how high the Maelstrom Weapon generation is, so we can condense the number of GCDs required to use the resource. Finally, Windfury Totem is a worthwhile pickup regardless of build, especially for raid situations to provide unique damage-increasing Utility to your party.

The final rows dictate your cooldown toolkit and define the damage profile of your build. Which you select below the 20-point line is generally decided by what you choose earlier on the tree. Key talents include:

• Elemental Assault provides flat Stormstrike damage but more importantly, gives it a guaranteed Maelstrom Weapon generation aspect, making this very appealing for Physical builds and often two points are spent here.
• Legacy of the Frost Witch is a good end talent for Physical builds by giving another multiplier on top of other effects to increase damage dealt by Physical abilities and even further increasing access to Stormstrike. This can usually be taken with only one point to gain access to the Stormstrike reset.
• Primordial Wave provides a strong finisher ability that can also be used for large damage to up to 6 targets. This suits the Elementalist build well as a mid-range burst tool, but Physical can also take this to pair with Doom Winds.
  • Primal Maelstrom causes it also to generate 10 Maelstrom Weapon stacks when cast, allowing it to set itself up and deliver the burst damage on demand without setup.
  • Splintered Elements allows you to leverage additional Lightning Bolts it echoes for a short but potent Haste buff, especially in multi-target situations.
• Feral Spirit is more of a rotational cooldown now that summons two wolves for 15 seconds, and each active wolf increases Physical damage dealt by your abilities by 15% stacking multiplicatively. While active, you also generate a stack of Maelstrom Weapon every 3 seconds.
  • Witch Doctor's Ancestry increases the chance to trigger Maelstrom Weapon and also causes each stack generated to reduce the cooldown of Feral Spirit by 1/2 seconds, drastically improving the frequency and uptime of the effect.
  • Elemental Spirits is specifically for the Elementalist build, and should be avoided by the Physical build as it replaces the Physical damage bonus. It instead replaces it with wolves that buff Fire, Frost, or Nature damage chosen randomly.
  • Alpha Wolf is taken by Physical AoE builds to give each of your wolf spawns uncapped AoE damage should you need it.
• Deeply Rooted Elements gives access to the Ascendance effect that deals massive damage when triggered and converting Stormstrike into Windstrike, which has a significantly lower cooldown, ignores armor and has a 30-yard range. Physical single-target builds will always default to this as, while it is RNG, it provides huge damage windows.
  • Static Accumulation causes the Ascendance to generate 1/2 Maelstrom Weapon every second while active, giving a huge surge of resources when the effect is triggered.
  • Thorim's Invocation completes the effect by causing Windstrike to discharge up to 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon to fire a Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning. This allows you to consume excess stacks off the GCD and avoid waste due to the resource flood for huge burst damage.

Once you reach these rows in the talent tree, you will have at most 10 points left to spend, and you will likely already have decided on a build archetype. That means your decisions are largely intuitive, as most of the abilities here lean toward one damage profile or ability school. Virtually all builds will make sure to take Feral Spirit and Witch Doctor's Ancestry, and Elementalist builds will select Elemental Spirits while Physical builds will avoid it. Physical builds, on the other hand, will always spend at least 9 points here, grabbing the aforementioned wolf talents and then deciding between Primordial Wave or Deeply Rooted Elements tracks to completion, with 1-3 points spent between Legacy of the Frost Witch and Elemental Assault.

There is some room to deviate from these, though, depending on the requirements of a given encounter, and there is some plug-and-play with all of the talents below this row.

Enhancement Shamans are given Chain Lightning and Maelstrom Weapon by default, and there is only a small handful of additional damage-increasing talents on the Shaman class tree should be included in every build:

• Lava Burst
• Frost Shock
• Flurry
• Fire and Ice
• Nature's Fury

We would also generally recommend whenever points allow it to take Totemic Projection to allow you to move your Windfury Totem around off the Global Cooldown to avoid outranging it. This can be done using a macro with very little effort, and is a big quality of life improvement.

In addition to the above talents, it is generally recommended for all builds to include a variety of defensive talents. The list of defensive talents include:

• Astral Shift
• Planes Traveler / Astral Bulwark
• Earth Shield
• Earth Elemental
• Brimming with Life
• Elemental Warding
• Ancestral Defense

Finally, it is also strongly recommended that all builds include a few mobility talents:

• Spirit Walk / Gust of Wind
• Wind Rush Totem
• Spirit Wolf / Thunderous Paws
• Go with the Flow

Not all defensive or mobility talents need to be included, but you should try to incorporate an appropriate number of each into your builds, as having none is often a bad idea. The remainder of your points can be spent as you desire for specific Utility, crowd control, or pathing requirements; however, we strongly recommended that you at least consider including some of the following generally applicable utility options

• Wind Shear
• Mana Spring
• Capacitor Totem
• Ancestral Guidance
• Thunderstorm
• Thundershock
• Cleanse Spirit
• Purge

Of note here is Mana Spring. This can be a strong passive boost to your raid's healers, providing extra Mana mostly for free while you execute the rotation. Given it is very easy to access and only costs one point, it is generally recommended in most situations unless you require an excess of control tools.

For a more detailed description of each of our class talents, please refer to the Enhancement Shaman DPS Spell Summary page.

"War Mode" is an optional feature that enables open-world PvP encounters that confers some benefits when active:

• Grants access to PvP talents in the open world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will open yourself up to open-world PvP, so be aware of hostile enemy players who could interfere with you; this is a risk you will have to decide on your own if you want to take.

If you are interested in doing PvP as an Enhancement Shaman or want to look into how to deal with PvP encounters when playing it, please refer to our dedicated PvP guide.

Generally, these selections are made to optimize your ability to kill enemies faster, increasing your pace when moving through content.

• Ride the Lightning provides the largest damage increase option, adding additional effects to each Stormstrike cast.
• Shamanism allows for more liberal Bloodlust / Heroism usage without having to worry about the 10-minute lockout. Great for solo and duo content.
• Skyfury Totem provides a moderate boost when staying in the same area, increasing your Critical Strike damage and Healing by 20% for 15-seconds, with a 40-second cooldown that is low enough to be used liberally and boosting allies within its range on top of that.
• Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds on a 45-second cooldown. This can be strong when dealing with many enemies to convert your health pool into damage.

Other useful options include Swelling Waves and Spectral Recovery as healing tools, increasing your sustain while in combat or moving between encounters. Thundercharge can have limited uses, increasing the recovery rate of your cooldowns between areas.

Ethereal Form, Seasoned Winds, Static Field Totem, Unleash Shield, Traveling Storms and Grounding Totem have very limited PvE uses, being more focused on in-combat control, more suited to a PvP engagement, and as such, are not recommended for efficient enemy killing.