How To Create an Enhancement Shaman That Can Stand Toe to Toe With Anyone
Enhancement/Elemental Shaman
Enhancement/Elemental Shaman
Shaman’s are one of my favorite classes – they offer amazing flexibilty, and some really great tools that help you get by in your day to day leveling and adventuring.
One of those paths is the Enhancement Shaman. I’ve spent a lot of time putting together this Shaman spec to make it well suited for players who want some flexibility. One day you might be raiding, the next some PvP, and then maybe some solo and perhaps dailies when you level to that point.
With that in mind, the build below will serve well as a DPS focused build. This means you’ll be doing a lot of damage, and will be well suited for groups, PvP or solo work.
Solo is always better to do with a strong DPS build, and raids obviously will need an assortment of roles – DPS being one of them.
Row 1 (Enhancing Totems, Earth’s Grasp, Ancestral Knowledge)
The first row is totem heavy, with a nice intelligence buff.
Since this build includes a talent further down the tree that takes strength from high intelligence, max out 5 points in Ancestral Knowledge, and put 3 points into Enhancing Totems to give yourself another 15% Strength of the Earth effect, and 15% to Flametongue. Leave Earth’s grasp – we’re looking for damage per second, not extra tanking ability.
Row 2 (Guardian Totems, Thundering Strikes, Improved Ghost Wolf, Improved Shields)
Leave Guardian totems alone, it can be great for adding to a raid or party but not in this build. Put 5/5 into Thundering Strikes – the 5% extra chance to crit is too good to pass up on a DPS build. Leave Improved Ghost Wolf, but put another 3/3 points into Improved Shields for an extra 15% buff to your lightning, water and earth orbs.
Row 3 (Elemental Weapons, Shamanistic Focus, Anticipation)
This row includes one of the enhancement Shaman’s biggest draw cards – a buff to their impressive Windfury Weapon effect of 40% to damage. I recommend everyone use Windfury above any other weapon effect, its been proven by countless players as the highest DPS of them all. So 3/3 into Elemental Weapons is an easy one.
Put 1 point into Shamanistic Focus – reducing the mana cost of one of your best instant cast spell lines is another no brainer – 45% savings is awesome and welcome to any Shaman.
I leave Anticipation, the benefits just aren’t worth it, maybe PvP players will consider putting 3 points into it, otherwise leave it alone.
Row 4 (Flurry, Toughness)
Flurry is another killer Shaman talent you can’t afford to miss. 5/5 points here to get an increased attack speed of 25% for 3 swings after you crit – great to combine with your previously taken Thundering strikes. Toughness is another great talent, 5/5 gives your stamina a 10% boost, and reduces movement slowing effects. Being all geared for damage can make you a little fragile so take this talent.
Row 5 (Improved Windfury Totem, Spirit weapons, Mental Dexterity)
A great row, with some attack boosting effects and reduction of threat. Max out this entire line – Mental Dexterity gives you a big boost in attack power thanks to your row 1 selection of Ancestral Knowledge.
Row 6 (Unleashed Rage, Weapon Mastery, Frozen Power)
We begin this row by leaving Unleashed Rage — points can be better spent elsewhere to provide you a more balanced Shaman, but if you’re big into raids you might consider filling it. Weapon Mastery is up next letting you increase damage you deal with all weapons by 10% – A big, big boost and another no brainer for a DPS build… all 3 points go in here. Frozen Power gets 2 points for a 100% chance at an ice root effect, which is awesome for PvP or tight spots you and party need to flee from.
Row 7 (Dual Wield Specialization, Dual Wield, Stormstrike)
A great line of talents, being an Enhancement Shaman to me means going Windfury, Flurry, and Dual Wield to the max, which means this whole line gets filled up, DWSpecialization means you’ll hit more often, which is very important for our dual wielding DPS Shammy. Stormstrike, I’m on the fence about, but with a good selection of shocks after your Stormstrikes, a 20% damage increase can’t be passed up.
Row 8 (Static Shock, Lava Lash, Improved Stormstrike)
A sparse line for those wanting to keep their DPS ticking along strong. 0/3 for Static Shock – the lazy man’s shield solution, 1/1 in Lava Lash for an ok instant cast that can be combined with Flametongue, but which I really only took to open up the next line. Improved Stormstrike, again on the fence about this one, getting 40% mana back after a SS is awesome, but its robbing us of more important DPS generating effects right now. Come back & fill it after you max out the Enhancement tree, and I won’t scoff at you.
Row 9 (Mental Quickness, Shamanistic Rage, Earthen Power)
Max this line out – Mental Quickness benefits from our two intelligence talents earlier and piles on the benefits, Shamanistic Rage lets you shrug off 30% of damage with a 2 min cooldown, and Earthen Power can be great again for groups in tight spots of PvP with snaring opponents.
Row 10 (Maelstrom Weapon)
Hold out here, and go straight to Row 11. Insta cast spells are good and all, but as Shaman’s we’re already loaded with them, so I see these as five wasted points. Perhaps a good idea for builds that want to be able to deliver emergency heals.
Row 11 (Feral Spirit)
Feral Spirit, the end of the enhancement tree and a great DPS burst for big bosses, or for the occassional one of when the time is right in pretty much any other time in WoW. The three min cooldown and 45 duration make this pair of wolves difficult to time well, but just hold off on the temptation to overuse them and you’ll be fine.
This build is great for people who want a Shaman that fights toe to toe with his foes. He’s great for any part of the game, but not super specialized. If you want to take a tertiary healing role while you dole out big damage, or you just want to help a single grouping buddy out better as you level up, go resto.
If you’re keen to raid or PvP, Elemental is the obvious choice.
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jake
30 June 2009 at 12:56 am
i dont like the idea of cutting the mana giving talents. shamans in group pve need their mana for tactical shock to give them the independance of mana. The Enhancment spec is warrior based but mana is essential for armored players at bay with spells and totems. the windfury i dont understand either…the windfury gives hasterating much auto-nerfs the crit chance which also is important to activate buffs and give the edge on our dps. i dont agree with Maelstrom weapon either, but i think that depends on style of play (by which i mean it is more important for solo’ers). Ghost wolf for one is very useful for pvp (if you know how to use it). Personally you would have been better off showing two trees instead of showing one mistake :p. Sorry if you take this comment rude
Jon
30 June 2009 at 3:29 am
Hey Jake,
No worries man, no offense taken and thanks for sharing your experience!
You make a good point in that I could have shown two trees instead of one here, but this build really isn’t about min/maxing (making the perfect build for a given role), its for casual players who want to be able to do a little of everything and have fun as they level up. Also, while its a level 80 enhancement build, I assume my readers will use my suggestions as a template to assign points as they level up with this spec… but I’m considering doing some level by level suggestions.
Mat
2 August 2009 at 5:29 pm
MSW is about as necessary as dw defiantly need it for enhance shaman, just for a casual spec even, I would stick with earthen power and skip out on toughness, pick up insta gw
you could pass up elemental focus max points on elemental fury, good placement in imp fire nova totem I like that talent alot
drop some points out of strength or intellect
to get unleashed rage
MSW is more than for insta heals, you can instant LB or chain lightning, does a huge portion of your damage, if you check out my armory link, his name is vurok on destromath
not trying to harsh on your spec, just trying to help improve it
, if you want to reply just shoot me an email cause I forget sites I go to lol
JSham
9 October 2009 at 12:10 am
Man, I see you tried to make a build mostly for DPSing, but as a PvP build it is absolutely rubbish.
Here’s my build.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hV0hZ0xgcoEdIGusRuio
I’d say it’s pretty good for both arena and battlegrounds. Consider some points in there, and redistribute according to your needs.
Jon
14 October 2009 at 12:19 am
Hey dude – nice build.
Like I said, my build is meant to be flexible – for people who want to do a variety of things in game… so yes, it will suck compared to pure pvp builds.
On your pvp only build, its a great build for new level 80′s (due to most being under-geared) with the extra stamina, but once you’re better geared (around 20k hp) I’d drop those 5 points and use them for stun-toteming and crit damage increase.
I’m writing up a new enhancement pvp build today with some tips which I think you’ll like.
Dave
13 November 2009 at 1:44 pm
Great talent tree information here, everyone, thanks a bunch.
One problem I’m having with my enhance shammy is figuring out which gear boosts are the most preferred. It seems there are several (AGI/CRIT, AP, SP, SPI, INT, etc) that can benefit, so I’m looking for some guidance on which two or three of these are most important.
Thanks for any guidance, in advance. ^_^
Jon
14 November 2009 at 10:09 am
Hey Dave,
As you probably know, when you level an enhance shaman you can pick up any gear thats mail with attack power/crit on it. Since hunters & shammies are the only mail wearing classes, and hunters & shamans share stats, its pretty simple on the way to 80 to find gear that already has int and attack power on it.
If the mail you find has spell power on it, its only going to be for ele or resto shamans, and I’d never recommend looking for SP gear for enhance Shamans (we get ours from a percentage of AP after all).
Once you get your first socketed gear, I recommend gemming attack power mainly, with some hit, crit and a little expertise… depending on your talent choice.
For PvP I gem as much AP as I possibly can, with some resilience, spell pen, and of course stamina.
The best way to find out what to use is to inspect the guys from high end raiding guilds or the shamans dominating arena.
No one
27 February 2010 at 8:28 pm
Not taking earths grasp as pvp is very very wrong. This guide is faulty.