Enhancement Shaman Guide for The War Within

Stormbringer focuses entirely on Maelstrom Weapon, providing a powerful "finisher to our finisher" with Tempest that activates after spending 40. This rolls over, counting any extra you spend above the 40 count and feeding into your next one. Alongside that, Awakening Storms as the capstone provides a second, more random activation point in the form of an RPPM proc from Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Stormstrike.

The goal of this tree is relatively simple: generate and spend as much resource as possible to cycle through Tempest casts. This deals strong uncapped AoE damage, and interacts with Maelstrom Weapon itself to become instant and deal increased damage. The remainder of the tree leans even further into this process, incentivizing using as many of these casts as possible to activate other effects after. Most important of these is Rolling Thunder, spawning a Lightning Feral Spirit every time Tempest is cast to amplify our Nature damage even further.

Leaning even further into the heightened value of spending as frequently as possible is Unlimited Power, providing a stacking 3% Haste buff whenever we spend any Maelstrom Weapon, but has a fixed duration of 15 seconds that does not refresh. This gives the tree a ramping feel that flows well into our gameplay loop.

Alongside this, Arc Discharge gives a very powerful follow-up of 3 instant Chain Lightning casts that deal 75% additional damage (these will also consume any leftover Maelstrom Weapon when cast to amplify the damage further). These rapid-fire follow-ups give the tree a frenetic feel in AoE, and leans really heavily into the goal of cycling as much as possible.

In terms of defense and utility, on the other hand, the tree is fairly weak. Shocking Grasp slows targets we critically strike with Nature spells, which can be quite obnoxious given the inconsistent application. Nature's Protection does provide some defense following our Tempest casts, but we cast it infrequently enough that it is not reliable, and holding it plays counter to the tree as a whole. Surging Currents is largely irrelevant too, considering the overlap it has with Maelstrom Weapon, and that spells also consume stacks of that when activated by this.

As it stands right now this tree is relatively powerful due to the strong interaction with our primary gameplay loop of our resource, providing an extra big burst moment that flows well. It also slots into both build archetypes, though it has a leaning toward Dragonflight Storm due to Static Accumulation and Thorim's Invocation. The value of Rolling Thunder in tandem with Elemental Blast does still keep it relevant though, and is universally good in AoE scenarios. Alongside that, currently Primordial Wave does not seem to be intended to interact with Tempest at all (though there is a bug that says otherwise.

While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, there are a handful of fairly pervasive bugs that may get in the way of testing the tree to be aware of:

• Rolling Thunder causes Feral Spirit to lose buffs if you are not talented into Elemental Spirits.
• Storm Swell and Arc Discharge are both active regardless of which talent you pick.

Totemic spreads itself thin by interacting with a huge number of our spec tree abilities, alongside adding in a replacement to Windfury Totem with Surging Totem. This is a 30-second cooldown ability that will deal AoE damage to the nearest enemy every 6 seconds, which we mostly use as soon as its ready. The tree also gives some nice quality of life by moving the Windfury aura to ourselves so long as we have Windfury Weapon applied to our main hand.

Currently much like our spec tree, there are two entirely separate paths you can take with the tree, which can be a little confusing. For Storm builds that lean into Stormstrike, it will be leveraging the damage from Surging Totem itself, alongside Totemic Rebound to empower the totem further with Stormstrike casts. This is rounded out by Oversurge to empower it even further during Ascendance procs, and Earthsurge to give a big burst of damage via Sundering. This all works well with the baseline Feral Spirit buffs as the totem deals Physical damage.

Conversely, Elementalist builds focus on Lively Totems and Reactivity as its primary damage source here, instead using Surging Totem as an enabler. This somewhat reduces the value of the talents on the tree you can take that interact with the totem directly, but it is reasonably similar value, if a bit confusing. This is mostly because when taking Elemental Spirits, we lose a lot of the buffing power that applies to the totem, shifting the value in the tree around a lot.

The capstone, Whirling Elements, hooks into a lot of different spells, granting a mote of Air, Fire and Earth when cast that enhances the next associated ability of that element. The main one of note here is the Earth Mote, which interacts with either Elemental Blast or Sundering in the form of cooldown reduction. Obviously, Storm trends toward Sundering here to bring it down to a roughly 30 second cooldown to make use of Earthsurge. Elementalist on the other hand makes use of the Elemental Blast consumption to get an extra cast every totem cycle, meaning that Maelstrom Weapon pooling is required to make sure it never sits at 2 charges while playing.

For defense and utility, the tree is severely lacking. Oversized Totems is fun, but a bit pointless in terms of power, while Swift Recall is so incredibly niche that you will be unlikely to ever see real value from this. Wind Barrier is theoretically a nice anti-rot tool, but at 6% of our max health every 30 seconds it is both weak and infrequent.

Power wise, Totemic can be quite strong (if a little RNG) for either build archetype, but the problem comes down to the spec talent tree failing to give room to actually pick up everything you need to. No matter what build you play, there are always some compromises you need to make here to get things working, and some of those sacrifices are significant.

While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, they are worth keeping track of. Thankfully, for the most part Totemic has had most of its issues cut down, with a handful left:

• Reactivity does not activate on target dummies.
• Surging Totem cannot be dragged from the Hero Talent UI, instead you need to drag Windfury Totem from the spec tree.