Enhancement Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Enhancement Shaman in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Enhancement Shaman talents.
Talent Choices for Enhancement Shaman
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.
Enhancement Shaman Talent Cheat Sheet
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
Elementalist: Single-Target and Raids
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.
Elementalist: AoE and Mythic+
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.
Physical: Single-Target and Raids
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.
Physical: AoE and Mythic+
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.
Raiding
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+
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:
Enhancement Shaman Spec Talents Explained
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.
Tier 1 Talents: Rows 1-4
These talents establish the core of your playstyle and include many of your basic abilities. Key talents include:
Ability | Explanation |
---|---|
![]() |
Our core generator ability strikes with both weapons, so can
trigger weapon imbues and generate a high amount of ![]() |
![]() |
Our main-hand imbue can trigger special bonus attacks on main-hand auto-attacks and ability hits. |
![]() |
Deals moderate Fire damage, increased by 100% if ![]() |
![]() |
Grants a cycling buff that increases ![]() |
![]() |
Causes your ![]() |
![]() |
Reduces the cooldown of your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Causes your ![]() |
![]() |
Increases the maximum number of ![]() |
![]() |
Deals moderate Frost damage with your main-hand weapon and
increases the damage of your next ![]() |
![]() |
Causes ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Causes all of your active ![]() ![]() |
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.
Tier 2 Talents: Rows 5-7
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 |
---|---|
![]() |
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 ![]() |
![]() |
deals heavy Flamestrike damage to enemies in a line in front of you and disorients them briefly. |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Causes the surrounding talents (![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
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. |
![]() |
Gives all your auto-attacks a 5% chance to trigger an 8
second buff that reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
![]() |
Causes ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Causes ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Adds a cooldown to your toolkit that significantly
increases the proc chance of ![]() |
![]() |
Increases the gains from the Mastery stat on the
proc chance for ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Grants ![]() |
![]() |
Causes ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
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 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
Increases the damage of your ![]() ![]() |
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.
Tier 3 Talents: Rows 8-10
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 Shaman Class Talents Explained
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:
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:
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.
PvP Talents (War Mode)
"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.
Enhancement Shaman War Mode Talents
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.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed and updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed and updated for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Shaman Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Wordup, a frequent theorycrafter involved in a number of class communities. He is also an experienced player who has been in the world top 100 since the days of Sunwell, currently raiding in Echoes. You can also follow him on Twitter.
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 DPS Log Rankings for Vault of the Incarnates: Day 1
- Mythic+ Tier List in Dragonflight Season 1 (Week 15)
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Hotfixes: March 22nd
- Class Set Updates and Clarifications in Patch 10.1: March 22nd
- Dragonflight Patch 10.1 PTR Dev Notes: March 22nd
- Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible Raid Testing: March 24th
- Ebyssian and Emberthal Epilogue Cutscene in Patch 10.0.7
- How to Unlock Ancient Zul'Gurub Crafting in Patch 10.0.7