Introduction
This guide is maintained by Weber, moderator for the Shaman Class Discord and long-time Shaman player. I have been maining Shaman since Siege of Orgrimmar, and I currently raid with Deposit Coin on Stormscale (EU), where we have managed to get Hall of Fame on a two day schedule over the last few raid tiers. You can catch me streaming my raids on Twitch, or contact me on Discord if you have any questions about the spec.
Enhancement is a dynamic, proc-based melee spec that rewards you for quickly reacting to random resource generation, random procs, and carrying momentum by minimizing downtime. You generate Maelstrom Weapon stacks through melee abilities like Crash Lightning, Stormstrike, and Lava Lash and consume them to empower your spells like Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, which also partially refund the cooldowns of your strikes via Elemental Tempo to keep the cycle going.
What has changed
Midnight Pre-Patch Changes for Enhancement Shaman
Going into Midnight, like many other specs, Enhancement has seen major pruning to throughput, utility and defensive abilities.
In terms of throughput, the complexity that defined the spec in the previous expansion has been toned down. Abilities like Elemental Blast, Ice Strike, and Hailstorm have been removed; Cooldowns like Feral Spirit, Ascendance, and Primordial Wave have been consolidated into Doom Winds and Sundering; Crash Lightning now always buffs you regardless of the amount of targets hit, and challenging aspects like Feral Spirit stacking and Tempest pooling have been removed entirely.
However, in terms of utility and defensive abilities, the spec is now severely lacking with the removal of Thunderstorm, Lightning Lasso, Totemic Recall, and Stone Bulwark Totem, and it might end up no longer really justifying a spot within raid/dungeon groups unless tuned well.