In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Enhancement Shaman (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Enhancement Shaman guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Purge, one of the best Enhancement Shamans in the world, who often contributes to the Enhancement Shaman section of Totem Spot.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents have been designed with your own survival in mind.

• Nature's Guardian will proc every time you receive a damaging attack that brings you below 30% health (although not more often than every 30 seconds). When Nature's Guardian procs, it immediately reduces your threat towards your attacker and increases your maximum health by 25% for 30 seconds (when the effect ends, your health percentage is preserved).
• Stone Bulwark Totem is an Earth totem on a 1-minute cooldown that grants you an absorption shield for 30 seconds.
• Astral Shift reduces damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds. It has a 2-minute cooldown.

Nature's Guardian is useful in a progression environment where you will often find yourself below 30% health. It can also help you when you pull aggro from the tank.

Stone Bulwark Totem and Astral Shift are also viable, depending on how often you will need damage reduction during an encounter. Astral Shift is best for mitigating infrequent, large sources of incoming damage. Stone Bulwark Totem is best for mitigating damage more frequently, or for mitigating smaller chunks of damage over long periods of time.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents have been designed with crowd control and utility in mind.

• Frozen Power causes your Frost Shock to also root the target for 5 seconds.
• Earthgrab Totem summons a totem that remains in place for 20 seconds, rooting every enemy within 10 yards for 5 seconds, after which time their movement speed is reduced by 50% (for as long as the totem is up and the enemies are within 10 yards).
• Windwalk Totem grants immunity to movement-impairing effects to all party and raid members within 40 yards. The effect lasts 6 seconds. Note that it also removes movement-impairing effects that are already applied on players.

Earthgrab Totem and Windwalk Totem are the best choices, depending on which one will be the most useful to your raid. Windwalk Totem is basically a raid-wide version of Hand of Freedom and can be useful on many encounters. There often are other classes that can do a better job than Earthgrab Totem, so the opportunities to use it are rather limited.

Frozen Power suffers from only being useful on a single target, but in that particular case (rooting a single enemy) the short cooldown of Frost Shock makes Frozen Power better than Earthgrab Totem.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents have been designed with totem cooldown and mobility in mind.

• Call of the Elements, which does not trigger the global cooldown, resets the cooldown of your totems that have a base cooldown shorter than 3 minutes:
  • Grounding Totem: 25-second cooldown;
  • Earthbind Totem: 30-second cooldown;
  • Earthgrab Totem: Tier 2 talent with a 30-second cooldown;
  • Healing Stream Totem: 30-second cooldown;
  • Capacitor Totem: 45-second cooldown;
  • Stone Bulwark Totem: Tier 1 talent with a 1-minute cooldown;
  • Tremor Totem: 1-minute cooldown;
  • Windwalk Totem: Tier 2 talent with a 1-minute cooldown.
• Totemic Restoration reduces the cooldown of your totem proportionally to the duration that remained on them before they were destroyed or replaced, up to a maximum of 50% of the full cooldown. This description is very misleading. What happens is that when your totem is destroyed with, let's say, 20% remaining on its duration, then the remaining cooldown on your totem is shortened by 20% (the remaining duration on your totem) multiplied by 50% (the maximum amount the talent allows you to remove from your totem's cooldown), which means the cooldown of your totem is shortened by 10%. To make things clearer, we take the example of your Fire Elemental Totem (60-second duration, 300-second cooldown).
  • If it is destroyed after 15 seconds, then 75% of the duration remained on the spell and you remove 75% of 150 seconds off the cooldown, which equals to 112.5 seconds.
  • If it is destroyed after 30 seconds, then 50% of the duration remained on the spell and you remove 50% of 150 seconds off the cooldown, which equals to 75 seconds.
  • If it is destroyed after 45 seconds, then 25% of the duration remained on the spell and you remove 25% of 150 seconds off the cooldown, which equals to 37.5 seconds.
• Totemic Projection enables you to relocate your totems to a new location. Casting this spell does not trigger the global cooldown.

Call of the Elements will be the default choice when neither of the two other talents can apply, although it will not work on totems that have a 3-minute cooldown.

Totemic Projection will be useful for moving your totems (mostly Searing Totem and Magma Totem) to a new location without spending a global cooldown for it. This talent is primarily meant for encounters with a lot of movement, although you can use it with great success to keep relocating your crowd-control totems ( Capacitor Totem, Earthbind Totem, or Earthgrab Totem) as the enemies you are targeting are moving out of the area of effect.

Totemic Restoration is rather disappointing. On the paper, it looks as if it gives you a relative freedom to use your totems with a long cooldown for exactly the amount of time you need them for. While it does give you a bit of freedom, this freedom comes with a huge penalty on the cooldown of your totems.

That said, there are cases when it can be beneficial: for example, if you need your Fire Elemental Totem twice, each time for 30 seconds, within 4 minutes, or if you die while your Fire Elemental is up.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 talents have been designed to improve your performance.

• Elemental Mastery increases your haste by 30% for 20 seconds. It has a 90-second cooldown.
• Ancestral Swiftness gives your next Nature spell an instant cast. It has a 1-minute cooldown. Ancestral Swiftness also passively increases your spell haste by 5% and your melee haste by 10%.
• Echo of the Elements gives you a chance to duplicate your spells that do direct damage or healing.

Each of these talents have situational uses with Elemental Mastery being the usual default choice.

Elemental Mastery is the best single-target DPS talent, especially at higher gear levels when paired with Primal Elementalist and Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem.

Ancestral Swiftness is situationally useful if you need sustained DPS rather than the somewhat infrequent bursts of damage granted by Elemental Mastery.

Echo of the Elements lags far behind the other two talents for single-target DPS, so it is recommended to use it only when sustained, heavy AoE damage is required.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents give you a new healing cooldown or a new healing mechanics.

• Healing Tide Totem heals the 5 most injured nearby players every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. It has a 3-minute cooldown.
• Ancestral Guidance causes you to heal up to 3 nearby injured party or raid members for 60% of the direct damage or healing you do for 10 seconds. This ability has a 2-minute cooldown.
• Conductivity is a passive ability that causes you to both increase the healing you do with direct spells to allies standing in your Healing Rain and heal nearby allies standing in your Healing Rain every time you damage an enemy.

For burst healing, you will almost always prefer Ancestral Guidance to Healing Tide Totem. In a worst-case scenario, Ancestral Guidance will do as much healing as Healing Tide Totem, but it can do significantly more, depending on fight mechanics (when you do AoE damage or when your main target takes increased damage). Moreover, Ancestral Guidance has a shorter cooldown, allowing you to use it more often. The only reason to use Healing Tide Totem is when your healing will be required at a time where you cannot deal damage.

Conductivity can be useful if you need to provide sustained healing to the raid, something that cannot be achieved with Ancestral Guidance and Healing Tide Totem.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

• Unleashed Fury upgrades your Unleash Elements, which will increase the damage you do with Lightning Bolt by 20% for 10 seconds and grant your melee auto attacks a chance to trigger Static Shock for 8 seconds.
• Primal Elementalist causes your Earth Elemental Totem and Fire Elemental Totem to deal 80% more damage. They become regular pets (although they are not permanent) with abilities.
  • The Earth Elemental automatically casts Angered Earth, Pulverize, and Harden Skin. If you instruct it to, it will channel Reinforce on you, which will decrease the damage you take by 20% and increase the healing you do by 10%.
  • The Fire Elemental automatically casts Fire Blast, Fire Nova, and Immolate. If you instruct it to, it will channel Empower on you, which will increase the damage you deal by 5% and increase the healing you do by 10%.
• Elemental Blast is on a 12-second cooldown and will enable you to maintain a 66% uptime on a buff that changes randomly each time you refresh it: +3500 Critical Strike Rating, +3500 Haste Rating, or +3500 Mastery Rating. For Enhancement Shamans, the buff can also be +3500 Agility. The ability also deals a bit of damage every time you use it.

The relative value of the talents changes with your gear:

• Elemental Blast is best until you reach Tier 14 Heroic gear;
• Unleashed Fury is best at Tier 14 Heroic gear levels;
• Primal Elementalist is best with Tier 15 gear.

Even if Primal Elementalist is best for Tier 15 gear, there are still situations where Unleashed Fury is useful, for example when sustained damage is more valuable than bursts every 3 or 5 minutes.

Even at gear levels where Elemental Blast is best, using it complicates the rotation, as it gives an additional ability to manage (while the other two talents simply enhance existing abilities).

Note that when using Primal Elementalist, it is usually not worth using Empower from your Fire Elemental (more on that in the rotation page).

8. Major Glyphs↑top

Below, you will find the glyphs that can improve your DPS, in specific situations.

• Glyph of Chain Lightning causes your Chain Lightning spell to strike 2 additional targets, but it deals 10% less initial damage. This glyph is a significant DPS increase if your Chain Lightning hits 4 or 5 targets.
• Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem reduces the cooldown and duration of your Fire Elemental Totem by 40%. This means that your Fire Elemental Totem will have a duration of 36 seconds (down from 1 minute) and a cooldown of 3 minutes (down from 5 minutes). This is extremely potent if you choose Elemental Mastery as your Tier 4 talent, because you will be able to combine your Fire Elemental and Elemental Mastery for every other cast of Elemental Mastery.
• Glyph of Fire Nova increases the radius of your Fire Nova spell by 5 yards, bringing it to 15 yards (this means a 125% increase to Fire Nova's area of effect). This glyph will be useful in AoE situations where the enemies are loosely stacked.
• Glyph of Grounding Totem turns Grounding Totem into a damaging ability that reflects a harmful spell back to its caster. We have yet to see how many boss abilities will be allowed to be reflected back with this totem.

Finally, there are major glyphs that bring more utility to your spells.

• Glyph of Capacitor Totem reduces the charging time of your Capacitor Totem by 2 seconds. This means that it will stun all enemies within 8 yards after 3 seconds (instead of 5 seconds, without the glyph). This can be useful if a pack of enemies needs to be controlled rapidly.
• Glyph of Feral Spirit increases the healing done to you by your Feral Spirits' Spirit Hunt by 40%. That is to say, Spirit Hunt will now heal you for 210% of the damage done (instead of only 150% without the glyph). This glyph will be a default choice when none of the other glyphs can be put to use.
• Glyph of Flame Shock causes Flame Shock to heal you for 30% of the damage it deals.
• Glyph of Ghost Wolf makes you less susceptible to movement-hindering effects while in Ghost Wolf form. This glyph can be useful in fights where you have to travel through areas that slow your movement speed.
• Glyph of Healing Storm causes each stack of Maelstrom Weapon to increase the healing you do by 20%. It will double the healing that Healing Rain and Healing Surge do (provided you cast them with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon).
• Glyph of Healing Stream Totem adds a damage reduction component to your Healing Stream Totem spell, which can be useful if your raid will be taking Fire, Frost, or Nature damage when you need to use Healing Stream Totem.
• Glyph of Lightning Shield causes you to take 10% less damage for 6 seconds every time your Lightning Shield is triggered. Note that Static Shock cannot trigger this damage reduction.
• Glyph of Hex reduces the cooldown of Hex by 10 seconds, which can be useful if you are assigned to crowd-controlling adds.
• Glyph of Purge causes your Purge spell to remove 1 additional Magic effect from an enemy target, but adds a 6-second cooldown. It can come in handy if your raid ever needs to simultaneously remove 2 Magic effects from a boss. Note that in most cases, it may be better to just let Mages Spellsteal the effects.
• Glyph of Shamanistic Rage causes your Shamanistic Rage ability to also cleanse you from all dispellable harmful Magic effects. There will no doubt be encounters where this will come in handy.
• Glyph of Spirit Walk reduces the cooldown of Spirit Walk from 1 minutes to 45 seconds. This can sometimes be useful if you need to remove movement-impairing effects every 45 seconds. This glyph is also useful if you just the movement speed increase provided by Spirit Walk more frequently.
• Glyph of Wind Shear increases the cooldown of Wind Shear by 3 seconds, but increases the school lockout duration it causes on the target. This glyph can be useful if having a 15-second cooldown on Wind Shear will not hinder your interrupting duties.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

Minor glyphs are mostly cosmetic, although there are two of them that might be situationally useful.

• Glyph of the Lakestrider enables you to walk on water when Ghost Wolf is active.
• Glyph of Lava Lash causes Lava Lash to no longer spread Flame Shock to nearby enemies. This can be useful if nearby enemies around your main target must not be damaged.

10. Changelog↑top

• 19 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: removed Glyph of Unleashed Lightning and added Glyph of Lightning Shield.
• 05 Apr. 2013: Removed mention of Glyph of Healing Storm having an interaction with Conductivity (this is not the case).
• 04 Apr. 2013: Big update following review from Purge.
  • Fixed description of Nature's Guardian (the initial description was correct, but the discussion on the Tier 1 talents was still mentioning that the healing is taken back when the spell expires, which is no longer the case).
  • Added more information to help people decide between Astral Shift and Stone Bulwark Totem for their Tier 1 talent.
  • Improved advice for when to choose Frozen Power as your Tier 2 talent.
  • Mentioned that Totemic Restoration can be useful if you die while Fire Elemental Totem is up.
  • Updated relative strengths of the Tier 4 talents and added more information regarding when to choose each of the talents.
  • Updated relative strengths of the Tier 5 talents and added more information regarding when to choose each of the talents.
  • Updated relative strengths of the Tier 6 talents and added more information regarding when to choose each of the talents.
  • Added more information on the synergy between Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem and Elemental Mastery.
  • Improved the descriptions of Glyph of Fire Nova and Glyph of Spirit Walk.
  • Added Glyph of Hex, Glyph of Healing Stream Totem, and Glyph of Wind Shear.
• 27 Mar. 2013: Updated description of Nature's Guardian to properly reflect the Patch 5.2 change.
• 09 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated Elemental Mastery's cooldown, which is now 90 seconds (down from 2 minutes).
  • Updated Conductivity explanations (enemy no longer needs to be standing inside Healing Rain).
  • Updated Ancestral Swiftness explanations (now increases melee haste by 10%, up from 5%).
  • Glyph of Purge now adds a 6-second cooldown to Purge.
  • Elemental Blast can now increase Agility by 3,500.
  • Glyph of Flame Shock has been completely redesigned and no longer has anything to do with DPS (it heals for 30% of the damage of Flame Shock).
  • Updated Unleashed Fury explanations. The Flametongue component now increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 20% (was 30%).
  • Updated Ancestral Guidance explanations, as this spells now copies 60% (was 40%) of the amount healed.
  • Glyph of Spirit Walk now reduces the cooldown of Spirit Walk from 1 minute (was 2) to 45 seconds (was 1 minute 30 seconds).