TBC Classic Enhancement Shaman Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the spells summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will make it much easier to understand the topics discussed on this page.

We will present the skill rotation of an Enhancement Shaman as a priority list. This is not an exact sequence in which abilities should be cast. Instead what it means is that whenever you must choose between using different skills, try to use the one at the top of the list first.

Our recommendations assume you are running one of the recommended talent builds from the talents page and are playing a max level character. If you are still leveling, please refer to the leveling page for a leveling-specific rotation.

While they are extraordinarily powerful, explosives such as Super Sapper Charge will not be detailed in the rotation. Usually, you will want to use them as soon as the tank has solid threat on the target. The main exception is when you are facing multiple or particularly dangerous (such as enraged) enemies at some point in the fight. Saving explosives to carry you and your group through these moments (and possibly do a ton of AoE damage in the process) is probably worth it.

1. Place down your totems (party-dependent but generally will include at least Strength of Earth Totem). This includes Totem Twisting;
2. Stormstrike whenever it is up (unless you are fishing for Windfury procs, as explained in the advanced section below), followed by Earth Shock to make use of its debuff;
3. Rotate between Flame Shock and Earth Shock on cooldown to keep Flame Shock's damage-over-time effect up if it will have time to run its full duration. Earth Shock is especially powerful when you can finish off enemies with it, or whenever Stormstrike's debuff is on the target.

1. Fire Nova Totem;
2. Magma Totem while Fire Nova Totem is on cooldown;
3. Flame Shock on multiple targets;
4. Your single-target-rotation priority in the remaining global cooldowns.

In this section, we will dive deeper into the core mechanics and various abilities of Enhancement Shamans. Understanding these topics is an important step to truly mastering the specialization.

Windfury Weapon has a 3-second internal cooldown that prevents its procs from happening back-to-back. Enhancement Shamans typically use slow weapons, with 2.6 or higher second swing times. This means that you will usually not be able to proc Windfury as soon as its internal cooldown expires.

However, with Stormstrike, you can try to proc it as soon as the internal cooldown is up. You can download WeakAuras 2 and use our recommended WeakAura for easy tracking of your Windfury Weapon cooldown below:

As explained in SlimX's video, you want to hit as many Windfury Weapon and Flurry swings with your main-hand weapon as possible, as it does a lot more damage than the off-hand weapon, due to the dual wield penalty.

This means that, ideally, you want both weapons to swing at the same time, and if they are not swinging at the same time, it is ideal that the main-hand weapon goes first. You can use the weak aura listed in the previous section to track your sync status, and the macro listed on our macro guide below to adjust your sync until it is perfect, if needed.

Totem Twisting is an advanced Shaman technique that aims to keep both Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem effects active on your party at all times, even though using one of the Totems will automatically despawn the other.

When you use Windfury Totem, its weapon enchant is applied to your party's weapons for 10 seconds. During this period, you can use Grace of Air Totem / Tranquil Air Totem and still keep Windfury's effect. However, in order to keep Windfury's enchant active, you need to cast Windfury Totem, followed by your second Air Totem of choice every 10 seconds, which has a huge Mana cost.

You can downrank Windfury Totem to rank 1 for Mana conservation purposes, as its main benefit is the extra swings, which are equal for all ranks.

As your support totems fully benefit from Enhancing Totems and Improved Weapon Totems, you will typically be the main Totem Twister for your raid's melee / tank party. Make sure to have macros / addons set up for easy Totem swapping and buff tracking on party members, and learn to juggle this responsibility along with your regular rotation in order to become the perfect Enhancement Shaman.

Tremor Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem should all be dropped when slightly less than 5 seconds remains until the Fear, Poison, or Disease application event. As they remove effects every 5 seconds, this will ensure that these harmful effects are removed as soon they are applied, which is of particular importance for Fears, so that allies do not have time to run out of the Totem's radius.