How To Improve As Enhancement Shaman — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Enhancement Shaman in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0). We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Optimizing your Global Cooldowns
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.
Correctly Managing Maelstrom Weapon
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.
Ability Priority Mistakes
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.
Knowing When RNG Is Not On Your Side
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.
Flame Shock Uptime
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.
UI Assistance
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!
Knowing How to Sim Yourself
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.
Changelog
- 16 Mar. 2025: Cleaned up for Patch 11.1 with older sections cut.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for Patch 11.1.0.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated with relevant War Within information.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 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, added note regarding UI.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7, no changes necessary.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5 to add extra emphasis to Storm and Maelstrom waste.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1, no changes necessary.
- 20 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: Reviewed 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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