Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.1.5)
On this page, you will find our Level by Level Enhancement Shaman leveling guide for The War Within. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Shaman leveling guide.
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide for The War Within
Welcome to our Leveling Guide for The War Within. This will help you in your journey to max level as an Enhancement Shaman, covering talents and abilities you should know about.
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Playstyle
Enhancement Shaman is very flexible when leveling, being suited to
questing due to its extremely high mobility or doing large pulls and using its
healing tools to stay alive. With big cooldowns such as Bloodlust and
Earth Elemental, it also has no problem dealing with particularly
dangerous elites so long as it is infrequent. It also does well in dungeons, but
you may find your queues go faster if you do so as Restoration to heal instead.
Gear Options
When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. You will often be replacing these gear pieces very quickly, so just equip whatever comes to you without worrying about secondary stats.
Best Leveling Talents For Enhancement Shaman
Your talents can be changed anywhere in the world as long as you are out of combat. Be sure to explore various combinations of talents at will while leveling to best combat a variety of encounters and use it as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with what the spec is capable of. We have included a sample leveling path through the Class and Enhancement skill tree below. This is an easy-to-learn but still effective leveling experience that forges a middle path between introducing core mechanics without delving into some of the more complex aspects that need to be managed.
Immediately at level 10, you will gain access to Chain Lightning,
Astral Shift, and the
Maelstrom Weapon passive.
Maelstrom Weapon is the cornerstone of the entire Enhancement spec,
and it will both reduce the cast time of your spells and increase their damage.
It is important that you practice only using your offensive spells when you
have at least 5 stacks of
Maelstrom Weapon, but at lower levels, this is
less critical. Use
Chain Lightning while fighting at least 3
targets.
Use the Copy button below to generate an Import Code to use in-game!
Level by Level Rotation for Enhancement Shaman
To help with understanding what changes as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along, and the rotation will adjust for you!
Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!
A core part of the Enhancement toolkit are weapon
imbues. Make sure to have Flametongue Weapon and
Windfury Weapon
applied at all times. These spells will naturally cast onto the appropriate weapon
in your main and off-hand.
Keep yourself buffed with Skyfury
for the additional Mastery and auto-attack procs.
Make sure to keep Lightning Shield active
at all times for the extra
Maelstrom Weapon and damage when being struck.
Also, thanks to
Elemental Orbit, you can keep
Earth Shield active at
the same time for additional healing.
Use Bloodlust whenever you are up against
dangerous enemies, or have pulled a large pack and need to burst it down
quickly.
- Cast
Flame Shock when engaging enemies.
- Cast
Lava Lash to spread
Flame Shock against multiple enemies.
- Cast
Doom Winds on cooldown, ideally against elites and large groups of enemies.
- Cast
Primordial Wave on cooldown, with as many
Flame Shocks active as possible.
- Cast
Primordial Storm when available with 10
Maelstrom Weapon.
- Cast
Crash Lightning if multiple enemies are present.
- Cast
Stormstrike.
- Cast
Frost Shock if buffed by
Ice Strike or
Hailstorm.
- Cast
Lava Lash.
- Cast
Ice Strike.
- Cast
Lightning Bolt if at 5+ stacks of
Maelstrom Weapon.
Enhancement also has a robust toolkit for surviving different situations through a variety of spells and effects:
- Most importantly, we can use our
Maelstrom Weapon stacks to make
Healing Surge both instant and more potent thanks to
Improved Maelstrom Weapon. If you are ever in danger, this is our tool of choice for recovering.
Earth Elemental is your own personal pocket tank you can get out for emergencies and will taunt nearby enemies, giving you time to catch up. This lasts for a full minute, making it great for dangerous elites.
Nature's Guardian procs a free heal whenever you drop below 35% health, keeping you more stable for longer. This has a 45-second cooldown, though, so if it has procced, be careful.
Earth Shield also gives us passive healing so long as it is maintained and even boosts self-healing casts while active.
Reincarnation lets us get straight back up if you ever die but has a lengthy 30-minute cooldown. If you ever go a bit overboard, use this to get back right to where you started without needing to run back. Just be careful - you spawn with low Health, so if there are still enemies nearby, it might be worth walking instead.
War Mode Talents to Level Up as an Enhancement Shaman
If you are willing to take the risk and utilize War Mode, the following PvP talents are recommended during leveling or for other open-world content. There may be times when you would like to use other options and are encouraged to experiment! PvP talents can be freely changed at any time.
Your first PvP talent slot will unlock at Level 20, your second at Level 30, and the final at Level 40.
Recommended Enhancement PvP Talents
- Level 20:
Counterstrike Totem lets you pull aggressively and deal the damage back to enemies, using your own Health as a resource!
- Level 30:
Stormweaver provides free healing whenever you spend
Maelstrom Weapon for damage freeing up some resources in exchange for sustain. This is not always comfortable to use, but is a solid option until we reach level 48 and can switch to
Shamanism.
- Level 48+:
Shamanism unlocks when we gain
Bloodlust at 48, and reduces its cooldown to a mere minute, giving us a much more frequent burst window.
- Level 51+:
Totem of Wrath unlocks when we gain
Primordial Wave at 51, increasing the burst potential every 30 seconds when we cast it. I would recommend dropping either of the two early pickups, to have this to pair with
Shamanism for heavy burst.
Changelog
- 21 Apr. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.1.5.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.1.0.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 13 May 2024: Format adjustment to move slider closer to rotation.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5, no changes necessary.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2 talent changes.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7, no changes necessary.
- 20 Jul. 2023: Rewritten to include rotation advice.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 22 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Shaman Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Wordup, a frequent theorycrafter involved in a number of class communities. He is also an experienced player who has been in the world top 100 since the days of Sunwell, currently raiding in Echoes. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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