How To Improve As Enhancement Shaman — The War Within (11.1.5)

The single most common mistake Enhancement players make is not adjusting their rotation to minimize empty Global Cooldowns. This problem is twofold:

• Simply not pressing buttons fast enough. You should be mostly GCD-locked, so you should always have something available if you are managing resources correctly.
• A combination of not keeping on top of your ability cooldowns and casting things in an order that causes them to clash in the next cycle.

Ideally, you should plan your globals based on your ability state, making sure to keep abilities cooling down in a way that does not cause this to happen. This is not a skill you learn overnight and comes with practice and muscle memory, but downtime is the enemy of any good Enhancement player.

Also remember that Enhancement does have tools to keep dealing a small amount of damage when you are forced out of range. Both of your Shock spells have a 40-yard range, as do your Maelstrom Weapon spenders, letting you fill space that other melee specs may not be able to. With none of these available, shift into Ghost Wolf whenever possible to quickly re-engage your target in melee.

The above is also intertwined with your Maelstrom Weapon management. This serves as the central mix-up in the rotation that allows you to fill gaps that can be caused by incorrect cooldown cycling or bad Stormsurge procs that create a clash. Treat it as a one GCD delay, giving other abilities time to return. This means pooling is a core part of Maelstrom management, as you can store up to 10 stacks before any waste occurs. If you are at risk of reaching 10 stacks, however, due to cooldowns or passive generation, you should shift to burning it off quickly, as waste is terrible in Dragonflight due to how much damage it contributes.

Overflowing Maelstrom doubles down on this, giving more room to use Maelstrom-positive GCDs without worrying about overcapping because you cannot spend it fast enough, as it always spends your entire pool.

In The War Within, Stormbringer drastically alters the way in which this plays. Instead of treating spending as something we carefully weave in between other cooldowns, the combination of Supercharge and Static Accumulation paired with the core Tempest effect means spending becomes a much higher priority. You need to absolutely avoid waste as much as possible to maintain the momentum of Rolling Thunder.

Conversely, Totemic cares much less about maximizing its Maelstrom Weapon efficiency and instead only uses it on Elemental Blast or to maintain Legacy of the Frost Witch.

While Enhancement is not the highest APM spec, it does come with a lot of different active buttons that all interact with each other and can be very unforgiving with the time you have to make those decisions. Due to this, knowing when to prioritize something because it is currently buffed and when to sit on it because more important things are currently available is key.

For Totemic your main mix-up is Hot Hand which shifts the priority toward weaving Lava Lash every other GCD without question, as it provides the highest amount of damage per cast in your arsenal.

For Stormbringer both Static Accumulation and Supercharge refunds require you to react quickly with Maelstrom Weapon spenders to avoid too much waste, while also aiming to keep at least one charge of Stormstrike always recharging. This can take some juggling to manage so bear that in mind.

Our Rotation section goes into more depth regarding this as it comes with a fairly robust ruleset for the conditions on when to shift priorities.

No matter the build you play (though some are worse than others), there is simply a factor of high RNG that can impact Enhancement at all times. Sometimes, there is nothing you could have done to fix it. Totemic can suffer from bad streaks of empty GCDs and low Hot Hand uptime, while Stormbringer can have weak Ascendance windows with low Static Accumulation refunds. If you check your logs and see drastic differences in these, unfortunately that can just be the luck of the draw and the only real answer is to go again.

In single-target situations, depending on your build, Flame Shock uptime varies in importance. Broadly speaking, Stormbringer builds care a lot less about it, mostly applying it via Voltaic Blaze. Totemic builds on the other hand cares a lot more, but will passively maintain it via Molten Assault throughout an encounter.

Because Enhancement is a spec with a lot of moving parts, it really does benefit from having some form of tracking via Weakauras or something similar as the base UI is very much lacking when it comes to these effects. This is especially due to the fact that our resource in Maelstrom Weapon has no resource bar, just some small UI elements despite how important it is. While a lot of the packs can be very helpful, nothing compares to manually adjusting things to your own weaknesses. If you find you are struggling with a particular part of the rotation, just highlight that aura a bit more aggressively to train yourself to manage it properly. There is nothing wrong with using all the tools at your disposal to improve; just remember to think about the why when pressing buttons!

It is challenging to optimize your character without first accurately using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a fixed starting point. This will allow you to quickly identify the ideal gear choices you have available to equip, and due to the variables of different gear interacting with each other should be the go-to tool to decide what you use.

On top of this, simming is now very easy, with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn and the Raidbots website. Below is a video on how to sim your character using the website.