Classic Enhancement Shaman DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents

Enhancement Shaman talent builds vary in focus between maximizing damage throughput, maximizing group utility with Totem Twisting and Weapon Debuffing and there's even some builds that also focus on healing.

Usually these builds involve a trade-off of some kind between raw damage talents and healing / support talents.

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.

This build provides the highest personal damage potential out of all Enhancement Shaman talent builds present in this page, combining Stormstrike's damage output with Nature's Guidance extra hit and Restorative Totems support.

Keep in mind, however, that it is still very much a raid-utility oriented build, mostly due to the points in Restorative Totems which could have been spent on something like Concussion that directly increases your damage slightly. The extra Mana from the totem will be appreciated by yourself, but especially by any Mana users in your group, such as Hunters!

This makes it the favored build when soloing or in dungeons, where your damage is a significant contributor to success. However, in 40-man raids it will rarely be worth having Stormstrike's debuff over something like Sunder Armor, and you might be forbidden from using it, which will cause it to be a useless talent.

Feel free to swap points from Improved Reincarnation or Restorative Totems into Ancestral Healing or Healing Focus, which will give you extra healing capabilities at the cost of your support abilities.

This build's namesake, Elemental Devastation is a powerful talent that drastically increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks (and thus, your Flurry uptime) whenever you critical strike with a spell.

This can easily be activated with your shocks, and even if you want to conserve Mana for Totem Twisting, you can use rank 1 Earth Shock to activate it almost for free!

Because we want to get Elemental Devastation, Improved Weapon Totems and Totemic Mastery in the same build, points are very tight. But feel free to spawn some of the early points in the Enhancement / Elemental trees to different talents of your preference!

This build is a full Enhancement / Restoration hybrid which picks Improved Weapon Totems while keeping strong healing capabilities. By picking up Flurry and Two-Handed Axes and Maces, you gain better soloing abilities and, especially, the capacity to efficiently keep up the weapon debuffs of Nightfall and Annihilator.

By going deeply into the Restoration tree, you become able to do good healing for you group, only losing the Healing Wave focused talents. Try to weave your melee attacks and weapon debuffing duty alongside your heals, especially Chain Heal, in order to be as useful of a member for your group as possible.

This build is meant for advanced players to fully support their group from multiple different angles. You will be in charge of debuffing enemies, totem twisting, mana boosting and emergency healing.

Debuffing enemies with Nightfall and / or Annihilator can be done efficiently by Flurry-specced Shaman with little raid DPS loss.

Totem Twisting by cycling between Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem every 10 seconds (thus keeping both buffs up simultenously) is very Mana consuming but also grants a significant boost to melee DPS in your group.

Mana boosting with Mana Tide Totem and Restorative Totems, which also boosts Enamored Water Spirit (a must-have trinket for this build), can help a caster / healer group keep their Mana high. Because you will want to spend most of your time in melee groups for Totem Twisting, you should only get swapped to a caster / healer group whenever it is time to drop your long Mana cooldowns.

Last but not least, in case of emergency you have enough points into Restoration that you can make a decent off-healer, including Nature's Swiftness which is one of the best panic buttons in WoW Classic when combined with Healing Wave.

The Elemental Tree has several useful damage-oriented talents for an Enhancement-focused Shaman and some PvP utility, which you can learn more about in our Classic Shaman PvP guide.

Earth's Grasp increases the health of your Stoneclaw Totem and the radius of your Earthbind Totem. While this can occasionally be useful, the other options are generally more impactful.

Call of Flame increases your Fire Totem damage by 15%. Since you will want to have your Fire Totems out in most fights, this can contribute a small amount of damage to your rotation.

Elemental Focus causes you to have a 10% chance to make your next damaging spell cost no Mana whenever you cast a spell. You can easily fish for these procs with lower rank shocks if needed, and every time this procs you get to use a maximum rank shock for free!

Reverberation reduces the cooldown on your shocks. This allows you to interrupt / slow / DoT enemies more often and to proc Elemental Focus / Elemental Devastation more often.

Eye of the Storm is a great talent for PvP, as it will allow you to heal without interruption when you really need it, because you were just hit by a critical strike.

Elemental Devastation increases your critical strike chance by up to 9% after you deal a spell critical strike. This can easily be activated with rank 1 shocks, and is a good damage / haste increase due to its synergy with Flurry.

Elemental Fury can be an option instead of Stormstrike for the maximum damage talent build, as it does not take a debuff slot.

The Enhancement Tree is your main tree for melee damage increases and offensive totem boosting talents.

Guardian Totems increases the damage reduction of Stoneskin Totem by up to 20%, which is a small boost to your tanking support capabilities. It also reduces Grounding Totem's cooldown, which is situationally useful.

Improved Ghost Wolf reduces Ghost Wolf's cast time heavily, which is great for quickly moving around when outdoors.

Enhancing Totems increases the Strength and Agility granted by Strength of Earth Totem and Grace of Air Totem by up to 15%, making them stronger DPS increases for the melee players in your group.

Two-Handed Axes and Maces allows you to use its namesake's weapons. Besides the high damage boost it brings to a Shaman, it allows you to use Nightfall, which is one of the best raid boosting tools in WoW Classic.

Flurry increases your attack speed by up to 30% whenever you land a critical strike. This allows you to keep your weapon debuffs more reliably, and is a significant damage increase.

Improved Weapon Totems increases the melee attack power granted by your Windfury Totem, which makes it even stronger at boosting your melee group's damage.

Stormstrike is a 20 second cooldown melee attack that causes the target to take 20% additional Nature damage from the next two Nature damage attacks to hit it. This has natural synergy with our Earth Shock and, overall, is a great DPS increasing talent, as long as your group can spare the debuff slot.

The Restoration Tree is where much of your Mana sustainability and healing power comes from, and as such you will almost always want at least some points into it.

Improved Healing Wave decreases your Healing Wave's cast time by up to 0,5 seconds. This is typically not impactful enough to warrant being taken as an Enhancement Shaman.

Ancestral Healing increases your target's armor significantly after you land a critical heal. While a niche talent for us, it can help stabilize an ally in danger.

Totemic Focus reduces the Mana cost of your Totems significantly. This is mandatory to have for an Enhancement Shaman, as you will not have enough Mana to Totem Twist, otherwise.

Healing Focus lowers the chance of suffering spell pushback on heals from taking damage. This is extremely useful when you need to heal yourself or others under pressure, especially in PvP.

Totemic Mastery increases the range of your totems to 30 yards, allowing them to affect targets that are further away. While this talent does not stack with our Tier 1's 3 piece bonus, it is generally a good talent to use, ensuring maximum uptime on your Totem's effects.

Tidal Mastery increases your critical strike chance with heals and lightning spells. This has some synergy with Ancestral Healing but you will typically not get much out of it as an Enhancement Shaman.

Nature's Swiftness causes your next Nature spell to become instant. This is great when trying to land an emergency Healing Wave on a struggling ally.