3.3.5 Enhancement PVE tips and tricks
https://i.imgur.com/to5dD05.jpg
Introduction
I want to begin by saying that enhance is one of my favourite specs to play. The complexity of the rotations makes it very rewarding and challenging. With this guide I’ll touch up briefly on most aspects of enhancement but I am going to focus primarily on the rotation and the setup I use to maximize damage. I’ll also include whatever tips I can think of to help all players new and old. I’d like this to be an open discussion and welcome concerns and additions in the comments.
I am aware of many of the theory craft sham builds but what I am going to explore here is the standard method.
Let’s take a look at what Enhance has to offer.
Buffs:
Enhancement can bring some valuable buffs to a raid. It can be more valuable in 10 man raids where buffs can be scarce. Likewise enhance also benefits from both caster and melee buffs except casting haste. You can also change up your talents to accommodate for buffs given or not given by other raid classes, I’ll touch up on this in the talent section.
Mobility:
Enhancement suffers in this field. Some spells can be cast at a distance but almost all of our damage comes from melee. Shamans lack movement talents, speed boost abilities and charges that other classes have, so we suffer on fights with long distance target changes. On top of this, magma totem will have to be re-applied every time your target out ranges it.
Target switching:
If the target isn’t Too far away, target switching isn’t a large loss. As soon as stormstrike is on the target, damage will resume as usual.
Damage:
Enhancement provides competitive damage and is the highest damage output spec for shamans. The difference between elemental and enhancement is very skill dependent. While elemental is a very simple rotation and is ideal for new players, enhancement will provide a challenge and feel more rewarding.
Talents and Glyphs
Typical Endgame build:
https://i.imgur.com/Ujgs7AZ.png
Some aspects of your build will change depending on your group and items. For example; Improved Winfury totem can be dropped if there is always going to be a frost DK in your raid providing Icy Talons. The two spells do not stack.
If you are lower gear and struggle with mana you can opt to use some mana talents like Elemental Focus, Shamanistic Focus, and Improved Stormstrike.
Glyphs:
Glyph of Lightning Bolt,
Glyph of Stormstrike
Glyph of Windfury Weapon.
The third Glyph is changeable, I prefer this one but you may want to play around with a few others. You can try Glyph of Lightning Shield, If you get T9 set bonus, or Glyph of Feral Spirit But it did not seem to work last time I checked.
Rotation
Before I spit out a priority I want you to understand that enhancement is a lot more than just a simple priority. I’ll go into more detail below. As one of the toughest rotations in the game you’ll have to spend time perfecting it. It may take some time before you see some positive results.
Single Target Damage
Order of Priority
Lightning Bolt (Maelstrom Weapon x 5):
This is your highest damage ability. Only use when at full Maelstrom stacks (5). It is important to be very quick when consuming your Maelstrom, you cannot build stacks past 5 so delaying the lightning bolt will prevent the next potential stacks.
Stormstrike:
The ability itself does not do a lot of damage but it applies a nature debuff. Even when the target has some stacks left, I find this worth using still because it strikes with both weapons giving twice the chance for Maelstrom stacks.
Shock:
Flame shock and Earth shock are the 2 shock spells you will use. Flame shock takes priority, if the debuff is on the target use Earth Shock. On a straight single target rotation, you will be alternating between the two.
Lava Lash:
Again, the attack itself does little damage, but is still an additional chance for Maelstrom procs. This puts it above Fire Nova even though it's weaker.
Fire Nova:
Does a decent amount of damage but does not proc Maelstrom. Can also be a heavy mana eater for lower geared shamans. The nova is centered from your fire totem so make sure it’s close enough to do damage.
Magma Totem:
Magma is the fire totem you will be using. It does a good amount of “pet damage", more damage than searing totem and is also an AOE. It has short range though, so again, make sure the totem is in range of the target. Magma totem can be recast shortly before it expires during breaks in the rotation or when target changing or target moving.
Lightning Shield: The lowest priority move. It is free to cast so can be reapplied whenever there is a break in your rotation and magma totem is still relatively fresh. Can be recast while moving between targets too.
AOE Damage
Chain Lightning: Replace Lightning bolt with Chain lightning whenever the CD allows. Make this switch for anything more than single target.
Fire Nova and Totem: Fire Nova and Magma totem provide a good amount of AOE. Prioritize these when facing large groups of mobs.
Additional Abilities
Feral Spirit:
A fairly weak cooldown. At the ICC level the spirits only do about 10% additional damage while they are out, less than 3% overall. The move also triggers a GCD so I make sure I use it right before the pull, so I don’t need to waste a GCD on them during the fight.
Shamanistic Rage:
Before T10 this is only a defensive and mana replenishing move, you’ll use it at times when you are sure you’ll be attacking something long enough to regain most of your mana. When you have t10 2 set, it’ll also increase your damage by 12%. This means you’ll have to time it as a damage CD as well.
Fire elemental totem:
A good cooldown considering how long it lasts. The cooldown for it is 8 minutes though, which means you have to be selective on which fights and when to use it. After it’s out you cant move the totem, so don’t use it on fights where there is a lot of movement. Save it for the stationary fights so you can still use your Fire Nova effectively.
Water shield:
You may find it useful to switch to water shield in some situations. Lightning shield isn’t a huge part of your damage and at high gear level I don’t spec in to any mana reduction or return. So I’ll throw this on sometime for AOE pulls or quick fights in a 5 man dungeon. Lower geared sham may also have to do the same.I never have to use water shield in raids.
Wind shear:
Enhance is a great interrupter. Like other melee classes with interrupting abilities, it is not effected by global cooldown. Be sure to use this when required and coordinate with other raid members to make sure you have all the interrupts covered.
I included a couple screenshots of some recount damage breakdowns from a couple fights. Use these to compare your damage make up.
VoA Frost boss:
https://imgur.com/FfFqF34
Rotface Heroic
https://imgur.com/RrKTCAj
Stats and Gearing
Stat priority:
Hit
Expertise
Haste
Attack Power
Critical
Armour Penetration
Agility/intellect/strength
Exploring Your Stats
Hit and Expertise:
Hit is your number one priority till 8%. This ensures that your yellow melee hits always find their target, definitely important to guarantee your stormstrike debuff. Talents provide 6% hit. After the initial 8% you should get expertise cap at 26 expertise for the same reason, then go for spell hit cap at 17%. Additional hit isn’t a terrible thing even after spell cap because many of our procs come from white hits too.
Haste:
Faster, go faster, why aren’t you going faster yet? Haste is everything you need, you’ll gem for it, gear for it, enchant it. You’ll go past the global cooldown soft cap and beyond. Haste will give you more attacks. Windufry itself has a hidden cooldown so it does not benefit from haste, but haste has the advantage of increase auto attacks and in turn flame tongue weapon. Also maelstrom, static charge and t10 4 set will all proc more with haste.
Attack Power:
Not too much to say about attack power, definitely a good stat. Attack power has the advantage of giving us spell damage too but you should be getting enough of it from gear. Attack power + haste gems are a good choice to get the yellow socket bonuses that you deem worthy.
Critical:
Crit provides no additional advantage to enhance through talents. Previous cores had a bug where your critical rating would effect your overall glancing, which is why you may see some guides include critical as an important stat. As of now; crit only provides crit.
Armour Penetration:
Roughly 60% of enhancement damage is spell, this makes penetration the lowest on our stat priority. I’d try to stay away from it but since we share gear with hunters, it is not always possible.
Agility, Intellect, Strength:
These stats give one attack power each, except for agility which also provides some critical. It’s important to remember this when deciding whether or not it is worth downgrading to a leather piece. Make sure you count the intellect as extra attack power. These stats are not worth gemming.
Gemming and Enchanting
Follow the stat priority to make sure that expertise and hit are capped. Use one +10 stats in a blue socket to activate the Relentless Meta helm. Be selective on which blue socket to activate to get the the most from a socket bonus. Gem all other blue sockets with Haste. Gem all yellow sockets with haste, and gem red sockets with Attack Power + Haste if the socket bonus is worth it.
Prioritize Haste and Attack power with enchants too. Use Black Magic on Main-hand and Beserking on Off-hand (they can both proc at the same time making it better than 2x Beserking which does not.)* Engineers will enchant hands with hyperspeed and macro it with Shamanistic rage since they share the same CD. It is important to get your hit and expertise caps. If it is not already provided through gear, then you'll need to gem for it.
Tips and Tricks
Enhancement can be overwhelming to play at times. There are many things to track at once: Maelstrom, Stormstrike Debuff, Flameshock Debuff, Totem Timer and location, lightning Shield and other CDs you may use. I highly suggest getting addons to help you do this. I use IceHUD for most of my tracking needs. You can move important features where ever you please but can take some fiddling time to get it right. Other players may have other addons they find useful for this purpose and I encourage them to add them into the comments. Proxie will track your Maelstromx5.
Since a lot of your damage and procs come from melee attacks, one of the first things I would do is macro /startattack to any move that doesn’t already trigger auto attacks. Relatively simple macros but I’ll still include them in the macro section.
Lastly, if you are really struggling, there is what I like to call “Training Wheels” addons. Two that I know of are EhnPrio and ShockAndAwe. I believe they work for warmane and EhnPrio is close enough to the correct rotation where you should be able to do some decent numbers. I am not Sure about ShockAndAwe though, but I know it use to work for retail Wrath. These would get you into the right habits and close to the numbers you should do until you feel comfortable enough.
Practice. You aren’t going to do amazing numbers right away and you’ll have to work at it. You’ll probably tweak your UI several times before you find the right setup.
Macros
Here’s the start attack macros:
LB
#showtooltip lightning bolt
/startattack
/cast lightning bolt
ES
#showtooltip earth shock
/startattack
/cast earth shock
FS
#showtooltip flame shock
/startattack
/cast flame shock
FN
#showtooltip fire nova
/startattack
/cast fire nova
CL
#showtooltip chain lightning
/startattack
/cast chain lightning
Also make an "iWin" macro That uses your CDs, You'll use this at the start of the fight or when the strategy calls for it. Most of the Enhancement CDs Trigger GCD so you are limited to what you can macro.
*for example*
#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage
/cast Shamanistic Rage
Add "/use [trinket name]" if you have use trinkets.
Add “/cast [Racial Ability Name] for those races with Damage Abilities.
