Enhancement VS. Elemental

This is a wow post. Not interested? Don’t read.

The endless depate, some say Elem FTW!, others say Enhancement=1337. Though, there is a fact and that is that your shaman is OP anyway, and i think everyone can agree with that.

Shaman is a fun class to play, they are a very procc based class, wich basicly means that if you don’t procc you don’t really do any damage at all.

Now there is a main difference between these speccs and how they play out with their different key abilitys.  Most of you know that the Enhancement specced shaman uses brute force to pount the enemy with weapons while the Elemental shaman calls on the power of nature to reign balls of lightning towards the enemy (i mean, how cheesy did that sound ). So basicly Enhancement is Melee and Elemental is Ranged damage.

Now, what to decide on when choosing?

Enhancement:

My personal oppinion is that this specc is the most enjoyable when it comes to playing as a shaman. Though, the starting levels are pretty boring and draggy, this changes at level 30 when you get Windfury, this is the most core ability in the enhancement specc.

Windfury is a spell that applies to you weapon(s)  and gives you a 20% chance on hit to hit the target with two extra attacks with increased AP, depending on rank. When this proccs while wielding a twohanded weapon, you can really feel the shivers going along your spine. It’s insane damage. To note you can Glyph to get a 2% increased chance of it proccing.

So, while leveling as enhancement, 70% of your damage comes from auto-attack and windfury proccs. The rest is earthshock and flameshock. I usually go for pulling with a flameshock since it places a DoT on the target, then finish off with earthshock.

When you hit 40 you can either specc dualwield or stormstrike, what you choose doesnt really matter, though stormstrike is the next core ability of the shaman. It instantly attacks with both (or 2handed) to strike for their usual weapon damage though it places a debuff on the target increasing nature damage done to the target by 12% (20% with glyph) for the four next nature damage sources. So it’s a good ability to use. 

When going for dualwield, you should really consider wich weapon enchants you’re going for. Windfury should always be placed on your main hand weapon, though the offhand is harder to choose. On one hand you can place windfury on that aswell, though the Windfury procc has a 3sec hidden cooldown, so you might find yourself in the situation where your offhand steals all the windfury proccs. But i’ve found that placing flametounge on your offhand provides extra on-hit-damage and it raises your spell damage aswell, so it’s a good choice. Rockbiter can also be an option since it raises the white damage, therefor the stormstrike damage aswell. So, i think you’ll have to try that out for yourself and see what you feel is best.

Next you’ll get Shamanistic rage. This one is worth gold. Two min cooldown, for a 15sec duration you have a chance on hit to restor mana equal to 45% of you AP and reduces all damage taken by 30% for the same duration. In short IMBA.

On higher levels you get Maelstrom weapon, a talent wich has a chance on white hit to reduce the cast time of your next Lightning or healing spell by 20% and it stacks up to 5 times, so yeah, you’ll get an instant healing or damage spell. It’s not very hard to choose wich spell to cast, healing if you’re injured or lightning bolt on singel target, or chain lighting on multi target. So it’s rather situation based.

The end talent in the enhancement tree is awesome Spirit wolves. It summons 2 wolves at your command with 30% of your AP, they heal you for 100% of the damage they deal and they have the ability to stun and taunt the target. They also have the ability to raise your runspeed by 60% for 12 sec with a 30 sec cooldown. They last for 45 sec or until killed. So yeah, they are imba.

So the basic playstyle for a shaman is:

Flameshock -> Stormstrike ->Earthshock -> Lightningbolt

In addition to that you have alot to offer in buffs. Strengt of the earth totem wich provide the raid with 155 str and agi, everytime you critt with white attacks you and the entire raid gains a 10% ap buff. You can also use windfury totem wich increases everyone melee haste by 15% and flametounge totem wich gives the entire raid spellpower.

I’ll get back with a similiar post about elemental when i’ve tried it out some more. =)