How To Improve As Enhancement Shaman — The War Within (11.0.5)

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.

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 Stormsurge 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.

In The War Within, the dominant Hero talent in Stormbringer drastically alters the way in which this plays. Instead of treating spending as something we carefully weave in between other cooldowns, the combination of Supercharge and Static Accumulation paired with the core Tempest effect means spending at all costs becomes the priority. You need to absolutely avoid waste, and in many cases, you will be aggressively reacting to refunds and procs to make sure this does not happen. Your goal, above all else, is to cycle this resource to produce more Tempest casts, which both deal a lot of damage and also trigger Rolling Thunder which has a big momentum effect on our gameplay style.

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 much higher in the priority while active, creating a one-two weaving cycle. 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 Stormsurge 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.

Add into that the impact of Stormbringer, which requires you to juggle these key priority proc effects while also making sure to stay on top of your Maelstrom Weapon at the same time. There is a lot going on with varying degrees of importance, so being comfortable with what you need to pay attention to and what else you can generally ignore and leave in the background has a huge payoff for your general gameplay.

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.

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 Stormsurge 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.

In single-target situations, depending on your build, Flame Shock uptime varies in importance. Broadly speaking, Stormbringer builds care a lot less about it, while Totemic cares more. While playing Lashing Flames you will mostly keep this applied passively through Lava Lash casts, while Storm builds that avoid this often go long periods without reapplying it, as it is much more important to simply cycle Maelstrom Weapon and cast Stormstrike to reach your next Deeply Rooted Elements proc.

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 to manage 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!

It is challenging to optimize your character without first accurately using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a fixed starting 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.