How To Improve As Enhancement Shaman — Shadowlands 9.0.2

Due to the large rework Enhancement has received in Shadowlands, these are preliminary notes based on testing that will be updated as more data is gathered from players to see where major pitfalls are occurring.

The most common mistake many Enhancement players make is not adjusting their rotation to minimize empty Global Cooldowns. This is a mixture of not keeping on top of your ability cooldowns, and casting things in an order that causes them to clash in the next cycle. Making sure to keep abilities cooling down in a way that does not cause this to happen is a skill that comes with practice, but downtime is the enemy of good Enhancement play.

Also remember that Enhancement does have tools to keep dealing a small amount of damage when you are forced out of range. Both of your Shock spells have a 40 yard range, as does your Maelstrom Weapon spenders, letting you fill space that other melee specs may not be able to. With none of these are available, shift into Ghost Wolf whenever possible to quickly re-engage your target in melee.

The above is also intertwined with your Maelstrom Weapon management. This serves as the main mix up in the rotation that allows for you to fill gaps that can be caused by incorrect cooldown cycling or bad Stormbringer that creates a clash. Treat it as a one GCD delay to give other abilities some time to come back. This means that pooling is a core part of Maelstrom management, as you can store up to 10 stacks but will only ever spend 5. If you are at risk of reaching 10 stacks however, you should shift to burning some off quickly, as waste is extremely bad when it comes to Maelstrom Weapon in Shadowlands.

In single-target situations you should always aim to have as close to 100% uptime on your enemy as possible with Flame Shock. This is an extremely high DPS DoT effect that also has strong talent pairings with Lashing Flames, making it even more important when taken. While there are no immediate procs or effects attached to the ability itself, the raw damage is enough to make it very important to manage. In AoE however (especially with Hailstorm taken), this is rarely if ever used.

It is extremely difficult to accurately optimize your character without first using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a static start point. This will allow you to quickly identify the ideal gear choices you have available to equip, and due to the variables of different gear interacting with each other (and the War/Titanforging system causing unpredictability) should be the go-to tool to decide what you use.

On top of this, simming is now very easy with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and the Raidbots website. Below you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.