Enhancement Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2

This has had some adjustments in Season 3 to ease up some of the difficulty, and with the Season 3 set bonus pulls ahead as the go to build for single-target encounters.

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The biggest payoff of this build is your Maelstrom Weapon spenders, and the numerous effects the build has to amplify them. With the Patch 10.2 change to Elemental Assault, the previous issue of starvation is mostly gone and it instead cycles extremely quickly. It also has a good amount of free cleave built into the kit with Hailstorm and the funnel effects it takes throughout the tree. With the addition of the Season 3 set bonus there is even more to go around, so you are never far away from a big moment that you can accurately predict is coming.

• Season 2 Set Note: Until you have access to the Tier 31 4-piece bonus, you will still be using the previous set and as such need to make room for Sundering. Drop Swirling Maelstrom for this.
• Elemental Blast is your big payoff moment, being spent during the large damage amplifier windows of Elemental Spirits. Primordial Wave also provides a punchy instant setup hit that can leverage extra targets for Haste via Splintered Elements.
• Hot Hand forms the crux of the proc gameplay for the build, granting much higher access to your primary strike that triggers a 1-2 cycle with it and fillers when active.

This is currently our best AoE and Funnel build by a large margin, and is the ideal pick for Mythic+.

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While this has a lot more moving parts than other builds, it makes use of a wide suite of synergistic effects to convert most of our regular toolkit into hard-hitting AoE spenders. It functions by combining a number of packages together that have enough space to interlink, with a fluidity achieved through the additional Maelstrom Weapon available in AoE.

• It has a heavy focus on Lava Lash even in AoE, thanks to Molten Assault and Lashing Flames, and can convert those targets into extra funnel with Ashen Catalyst.
• Crash Lightning pairs with this to generate a large amount of additional Maelstrom Weapon and add a splash effect to those activating Lava Lashes, forming the filler core.
• The additional Maelstrom leads to Chain Lightning as a very frequent spender, that in turn leads to Hailstorm casts that can be further amplified with Ice Strike (that also splashes).
• To cap it off, all of that extra generation leads to more instances of Feral Spirit thanks to Witch Doctor's Ancestry, and explosive finisher casts with Primordial Wave as a burst, setup and funnel tool thanks to Splintered Elements.

It sounds like there is a lot going on with the above, but in practice it plays intuitively with a little experience, as there is a logical progression with each cast. All of this flexibility and synergy makes for an extremely well suited Mythic+ spec.

This is a sub-build of the Elementalist option listed here, foregoing the most difficult talent ( Lashing Flames) to instead focus on Hailstorm and amplifying it further.

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A lot of the DNA of the regular Elementalist build is here, and the same points can be echoed about how this plays. The primary difference is that, instead of filling with Lava Lash cycling to apply Lashing Flames as a DoT maintenance loop, it aims to spend Maelstrom Weapon and Hailstorm as much as possible. The Legacy of the Frost Witch effect affecting Frost damage in Patch 10.2 enables this, alongside the ease of access to Elemental Blast to keep single-target relevant. Do note, however, that the Frost Witch effect does not apply to the cast that triggers it, meaning it needs to already be active for Elemental Blast casts to be amplified.

Prior to the acquisition of the Season 3 set bonus, this is our best single-target build. After, it is still competitive but not as dominant

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Note: This build currently is set up for the Tier 30 set for the early part of the season. If you gain access to the new one, simply switch a single point from Elemental Assault into Primordial Wave to enable it.

Patch 10.2 has refined what was already a very skinny gameplay profile, eliminating the need to juggle two Maelstrom Weapon spenders by adding in a more synergistic choice with Tempest Strikes. This further goes all in on the central theme of the entire build: pressing Stormstrike. Everything taken here is to further the goal of hitting this as much as possible, culminating in proc burst windows via Deeply Rooted Elements. Instead of the careful Maelstrom Weapon of other builds, it instead uses it to trigger the Legacy of the Frost Witch reset portion for, you guessed it, more Stormstrikes. This has very little baseline cleave, but it can swap out Lava Lash to grab Crash Lightning at very little cost as well.

This build is ONLY relevant prior to the acquisition of the Tier 31 set, and no longer functions properly once you have the new set. It remains here just for the early portion of the season before people are geared.

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Compared to alternative AoE builds, this is much easier to get running quickly due to most of its effects being instant payoff rather than setup. It has very high resource generation, allowing for frequent Chain Lightning and Crash Lightning casts, which in turn reduce the cooldown of Feral Spirit significantly to make use of the Alpha Wolf for additional uncapped AoE. It also sacrifices very little single-target to get there, still maintaining the Deeply Rooted Elements package. Its issue is that the flexibility is lower due to its big moments being locked to Doom Winds rather than Primordial Wave, and the unreliability of Ascendance procs. All that said, this can still do well with less effort required, so it may fit your playstyle better, but its limitations going forward with the new set means its days are numbered.

Unfortunately, Season 3 makes the previously simple Storm Cleave build a lot more cumbersome, as it struggles to find enough points to suitably fit everything together.

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The main sticking point is not so much the Primordial Wave requirement, but all of the Lava Lash and spread prerequisites to leverage it in AoE. This causes a huge point squeeze in the centre of the tree, forcing us back into the Season 1 problem of having to pick between AoE and single target options, sacrificing a huge amount of the other in doing so. While it does get some extra benefits from the set like an additional Alpha Wolf activator and bonus Nature damage, there are some key things to consider when specializing:

• Tempest Strikes / Storm's Wrath / Stormblast - your single target centre block options. These contribute a lot to bosses in Mythic+, but have little in the way of AoE conversion. This is the big sticking point in the middle.
• Fire Nova / Swirling Maelstrom - allows you to lean even further into AoE (which the build already brings a lot of), but at the cost of the previous talents it really hurts when forced into single-target.
• Pathing to Splintered Elements - going all the way down nets you huge extra Primordial Wave value in both single-target and especially AoE, but...
• The Deeply Rooted Elements path - without access to this, the only real payoff moment for Storm is gone, but there is simply no way of comfortably fitting it all in without huge sacrifices.

The above contention makes it hard to really recommend the build, as while it can do some good things, it runs into a lot of roadblocks in terms of fluidity. While it had its time in Season 2 and is still playable to a degree, for now in Season 3 I would heavily encourage you to try one of the Elementalist builds instead.

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

Talent	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.
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.
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. This provides powerful single-target and AoE at the same time, making it very versatile, and is almost always taken by Elementalist builds.
Fire Nova	Causes all of your active Flame Shocks to erupt, dealing Flamestrike damage to up to 6 nearby enemies. This is very specialized for AoE and contributes little to single-target, but Storm builds will often take this to cover some of its AoE requirements. This is due to the number of Physical multipliers the build takes, which it now scales within Patch 10.1.

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
• Windfury Weapon
• 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 and Lightning damage effects with a focus on Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon on the left, or the varied magic schools on the right side of the 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:

Talent	Explanation
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 builds take this to leverage the various Physical damage amplifiers on the tree.
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 Elementalist builds to provide punchy single-target.
Tempest Strikes	Causes each of your primary strikes ( Stormstrike, Lava Lash and Ice Strike) to deal additional Nature damage to the target. Very simple, and leans into the strength of Storm. Also removes the need to juggle two different spenders.
Overflowing Maelstrom	Maelstrom Weapon spenders can now consume up to 10 stacks at once, up from 5, and is always taken to help with our Maelstrom Weapon management.
Sundering	deals heavy Flamestrike damage to enemies in a line in front of you and disorients them briefly. This is a mandatory pickup if using the T30 set bonus, but is otherwise more of a utility/niche pick.
Swirling Maelstrom	Causes the surrounding talents ( Hailstorm, Fire Nova and Ice Strike) to generate Maelstrom Weapon when used.
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.
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 Storm builds.
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 separate Nature damage splash when cast. Initial casts can trigger the Windfury Weapon imbue, and this is a core part of our rotational AoE and Maelstrom Weapon generation when additional targets are present.
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, including Crash Lightning.
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.
Stormblast	Causes Stormbringer empowered Stormstrike casts to deal an additional 25% of damage dealt as Nature. This adds an extra Mastery scaling component into Storm builds for single-target.
Elemental Weapons	Provides 5% additional magic damage dealt per Weapon imbue active. While this can technically be activated via double Flametongue Weapon, it is never worth dropping Windfury Weapon to do so.
Gathering Storms	Causes each individual target hit by Crash Lightning to increase the damage of your next Stormstrike cast by 25%, up to 150%.
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 all high-target AoE situations.
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.

This section offers the most significant number of talents, with up to 17 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-point 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 at this point in the tree and forms the most significant part of the puzzle when building your character. It also dictates what you will invest in for the final rows.

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:

• Storm 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.

All builds will path through Sundering, but Storm's Wrath is optional for Storm and required for Elementalist if you want to take 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 all builds due to how busy our GCDs already are, reducing the number needed to efficiently 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 round out the build you have selected and how versatile it is at various target counts. Which you select below the 20-point line is generally decided by what you choose earlier on the tree, with a few exceptions. Key talents include:

Talent	Explanation
Elemental Assault	Causes Stormstrike, Lava Lash and Ice Strike to have a 50/100% chance to generate an additional Maelstrom Weapon when cast, and increases Stormstrike's damage by 10/20%. The 10.2 addition of other strikes have made this a mandatory pickup for Elementalist builds to fix its starvation problems.
Legacy of the Frost Witch	Resets the cooldown on Stormstrike whenever you spend Maelstrom Weapon, and grants 5/25% increased Physical and Frost damage for 5 seconds whenever this triggers. The first point is the most valuable, though the second has good value with supporting builds. The stacks spent are counted internally, so you do not have to spend 10 all at once.
Primordial Wave	Deals moderate damage and applies Flame Shock to your current target, granting you a 15-second buff that causes your next Lightning Bolt to echo to all targets affected by your Flame Shock for 150% of the damage. At least one point here is mandatory with the Tier 31 set bonus.
Primal Maelstrom	Causes Primordial Wave to generate 5/10 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon when cast. Extremely helpful for setting up bursts.
Splintered Elements	Consuming the Primordial Wave effect grants 20% Haste for 12 seconds, increasing by 4% for each additional Lightning Bolt echo generated on secondary targets. Provides a consistent Haste amp that gets even stronger in AoE to speed up our rotation and improve funnel.
Feral Spirit	Summons two wolves that deal damage to your target for 15 seconds and generates one stack of Maelstrom Weapon instantly and an additional stack every 3 seconds while active. Each wolf also increases all Physical damage you deal by 15% while active.
Witch Doctor's Ancestry	Grants 2/4% additional chance to trigger Maelstrom Weapon, and causes each stack generated to reduce the cooldown of Feral Spirit by 1/2 seconds. Incredibly powerful for the resource alone, and converts into significantly higher uptime on our wolf buffs.
Elemental Spirits	Replaces the Physical damage buff from the baseline effect with a combination of Fire, Frost, or Nature damage increases, selected randomly when summoned. This is used exclusively by Elementalist builds.
Alpha Wolf	Causes your Crash Lightning/ Chain Lightning casts with Feral Spirit active to cause them to pulse for Physical damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. This AoE damage is uncapped and provides a large amount of damage to Storm builds due to its high Feral Spirit uptime. This does also trigger from the wolf summoned by the Tier 31 2-piece bonus.
Ascendance	A 3-minute burst cooldown that converts your auto-attacks and Stormstrike into special attacks that ignore armor, have a 30-yard range, and reduce the cooldown of Stormstrike by 60% for 15 seconds. It provides a large on-demand burst window, but unfortunately is too weak to justify with such a long cooldown so is not taken.
Deeply Rooted Elements	Alternative to Ascendance that gives access to the same effect, with a ramping chance to trigger for 6 seconds from each Stormstrike cast. Much stronger than the above and provides Storm with explosive moments throughout an encounter, but extremely volatile.
Static Accumulation	Whenever you are affected by Ascendance, you generate 1/2 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon every second. It also grants a 10/20% chance to refund all Maelstrom spent on Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning. This is the most powerful source of additional resources in the tree, and causes Storm to often be overloaded with additional resources and Feral Spirit resets.
Thorim's Invocation	Causes your Windstrike casts during Ascendance to also discharge a Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning (based on your most recent cast). This allows us to make use of the resource flood much more efficiently and completes the Ascendance leaf. Also increases Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning damage by 20% at all times.

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 Storm builds will avoid it. Storm builds, on the other hand, will always spend 10 points here, grabbing the aforementioned wolf talents and then deciding between Primordial Wave or Deeply Rooted Elements tracks to completion, with 2-3 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.

* Lava Burst is required whenever you are playing Elementalist builds, but can be skipped by Storm.

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 includes:

• 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.