How To Improve As Enhancement Shaman — The War Within Pre-Patch
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Enhancement Shaman in World of Warcraft — The War Within Pre-Patch. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Optimizing your Global Cooldowns
The single most common mistake Enhancement players make is not adjusting their rotation to minimize empty Global Cooldowns. This problem is twofold:
- Simply not pressing buttons fast enough. You should be mostly GCD locked, so you should always have something available if you are managing resources correctly.
- A combination of not keeping on top of your ability cooldowns and casting things in an order that causes them to clash in the next cycle.
Ideally, you should plan your globals based on your ability state, making sure to keep abilities cooling down in a way that does not cause this to happen. This is not a skill you learn overnight and comes with practice and muscle memory, but downtime is the enemy of any good Enhancement player.
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 do your Maelstrom Weapon
spenders, letting you fill space that other melee specs may not be able
to. With none of these available, shift into
Ghost Wolf
whenever possible to quickly re-engage your target in melee.
Correctly Managing Maelstrom Weapon
The above is also intertwined with your Maelstrom Weapon management.
This serves as the central mix-up in the rotation that allows you to
fill gaps that can be caused by incorrect cooldown cycling or bad
Stormbringer procs that create a clash. Treat it as a one GCD
delay, giving other abilities time to return. This means
pooling is a core part of Maelstrom management, as you can store
up to 10 stacks before any waste occurs. If you are at risk of
reaching 10 stacks, however, due to cooldowns or passive generation, you
should shift to burning it off quickly, as waste is terrible in
Dragonflight due to how much damage it contributes.
Overflowing Maelstrom doubles down on this, giving more room
to use Maelstrom-positive GCDs without worrying about overcapping
because you cannot spend it fast enough, as it always spends your entire
pool.
It may be tempting as Elementalist to rush into big payoff
Elemental Blast moments, but remember that it is key to get the most
out of these limited charges. That means ideally spending at or above 8 (unless
charges are about to go to waste) and overlapping it with powerful
Elemental Spirits. If you spend them too early and avoid these
buffs, you leave a huge amount of damage on the table.
For Storm builds specifically, the rules surrounding
Maelstrom Weapon changes drastically. Unlike in all other
cases, when playing this in single-target, we do not care about
resource waste at all. Instead, we aim to cast as many
Stormstrikes
as possible. That means it is used more to fuel
Legacy of the Frost Witch
resets, and as such, whenever Stormstrike is not ready, we spend to try and
trigger both this and
Static Accumulation. This rule is exclusively
for Storm builds due to the way its entire loadout works and the nature of
fishing for
Deeply Rooted Elements procs.
Ability Priority Mistakes
While Enhancement is not the highest APM spec, it does come with a lot of different active buttons that all interact with each other and can be very unforgiving with the time you have to make those decisions. Due to this, knowing when to prioritize something because it is currently buffed and when to sit on it because more important things are currently available is key.
For Elementalist builds effects such as Hot Hand drastically
alters the playstyle when active raising
Lava Lash to the top to avoid
waste. Similarly,
Hailstorm and
Ice Strike buffs raise
Frost Shock
much higher to avoid reapplying the buff without consuming it.
For Storm builds on the other hand the highest priority is getting
Stormstrike on cooldown and keeping it there to fish for
Deeply Rooted Elements
procs. Anything that can trigger
Stormbringer should be
used when it is not ready, and shifting to maintenance in the short period while
waiting (such as refreshing
Flame Shock with
Lava Lash or managing
your
Maelstrom Weapon) becomes the priority.
Both builds also have to balance their Maelstrom Weapon carefully, as
mentioned above due to the ebb and flow that changes between them. Storm comes
in bursts and leverages it for extra resets via
Legacy of the Frost Witch,
while Elementalist plays around with the
Elemental Blast cooldown and uses
any excess to fill time, while also trying to aim for as few stacks as possible
before casting
Primordial Wave.
Our Rotation section goes into more depth regarding this as it comes with a fairly robust ruleset for the conditions on when to shift priorities.
Knowing When RNG Is Not On Your Side
No matter the build you play (though some are worse than others), there is simply
a factor of high RNG that can impact Enhancement at all times. Sometimes, there
is nothing you could have done to fix it. Elementalist can simply
have bad Elemental Spirits rolls not overlapping with
Hot Hand
and badly timed
Maelstrom Weapon slumps, which can hurt performance.
Storm, on the other hand, is at the whim of
Deeply Rooted Elements
and
Stormbringer proc chains, which can be extremely erratic, and both
contribute a lot to your performance. If you check your logs and you see you
only got a couple of procs in 5 minutes compared to someone who got 10+,
unfortunately, that is just the luck of the draw, and the only real answer
is to move on to the next pull.
Flame Shock Uptime
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. With
Molten Assault,
Lava Lash will reapply
Flame Shock to
your target if it already has
Flame Shock on it and will also apply it
to nearby targets in AoE, allowing you to maintain
Flame Shock uptime
without having to recast it.
UI Assistance
Because Enhancement is a spec with a lot of moving parts, it really
does benefit from having some form of tracking via Weakauras or something similar
as the base UI is very much lacking when it comes to these effects.
This is especially due to the fact that our resource in Maelstrom Weapon
has no resource bar, just some small UI elements despite how important it is.
While a lot of the packs can be very helpful, nothing compares to manually adjusting
things to your own weaknesses. If you find you are struggling with a particular
part of the rotation, just highlight that aura a bit more aggressively to train
yourself into managing it properly. There is nothing wrong with using all the tools
at your disposal to improve, just remember to think about the why when
pressing buttons!
Knowing How to Sim Yourself
It is challenging to optimize your character without first accurately using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a fixed 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 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 is a video on how to sim your character using the website.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5, no changes necessary.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2, added note regarding UI.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7, no changes necessary.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5 to add extra emphasis to Storm and Maelstrom waste.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1, no changes necessary.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Reviewed 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.
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