Enhancement Shaman Gearing Guide

Blizzard is changing their approach to tier sets in 11.2 and are releasing separate tier sets for each set of hero talents.

Season 3 Enhancement Shaman Tier Set Bonuses:

• (2) Set Bonus (Stormbringer): Ascendance has a 100% chance to grant a charge of Tempest and every 8 Awakening Storms now activates Ascendance for 6.0 sec.
• (4) Set Bonus (Stormbringer): Nature damage increased by 3.0%, and Ascendance empowers your next 2 Tempests to gather a storm above that deals (960% of Spell Power) Nature damage to its primary target and reduced damage to nearby enemies after 1.5 sec.

While more Tempests and Ascendance are great, this set bonus has the potential to create some very frustrating moments, particularly in dungeons. There is now a third source of Tempest you have to keep track of, in a spec that already is somewhat hard to pilot, and you will find yourself sitting on 7 Awakening Storms at the end of a pull and having to refrain from pressing Stormstrike as to not waste the Ascendance proc before the next pull. The set bonus also technically favours Deeply Rooted Elements over Ascendance to generate Tempests more frequently, but I suspect that the variance between pulls will be too high to be worth it in a progression or pushing environment.

• (2) Set Bonus (Totemic): After you consume all the Whirling Element Motes, your Surging Totem casts Primordial Storm at 200% effectiveness at its location.
• (4) Set Bonus (Totemic): After casting Primordial Storm, your next Lava Lash or Fire Nova casts again at 150% effectiveness.

This set bonus aims to improve Totemics 30 second burst windows even better, however it does end up somewhat weak numerically. The Primordial Storm is used by Surging Totem, which means it does not consume Maelstrom Weapon (which would buff the spell to 350% effectiveness normally) and it does not proc weapon imbues, which is what makes the spell strong in this build in the first place. Fire Nova is not good enough to be taken, even with the set bonus.

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Enhancement Shaman, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

When playing Enhancement, generally you are looking for on-use trinkets to pair with your burst and passive stat sticks, because we scale very well with them and we don’t amplify damage effects tied to items, like some other specs would.

Manaforge Omega comes with a wide set of trinkets once again, and two of them stand out among the rest for us.

Araz’s Ritual Forge provides a massive amount of primary stat for 30 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown, which naturally syncs up with Ascendance. The effect being a bit longer than trinkets of its kind are generally is quite nice for Enhancement, as it will buff you while you still have a lot of lingering lightning wolves at the end of your burst.

Astral Antenna provides you with random procs of crit and is a solid passive trinket.

The best dungeon trinkets from season 2 stay available for season 3, old favorites from season 1 are making a comeback, and there is even a strong candidate from the new dungeon, leaving us with a stacked pool of dungeon trinkets:

Signet of the Priory and Lily of the Eternal Weave are great on-use trinkets to be paired with your burst and you will want one active trinket. Macro it with Doom Winds or Primordial Wave when playing Totemic and with Ascendance when playing Stormkeeper.

Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker is a slightly unconventional passive trinket, providing you a very short, strong surge of Crit like an on-use trinket would. If fight timers allow you to keep your cooldowns synced to it, this trinket is fantastic. However, if you are forced to desync your cooldowns from it, then other passive options will probably be better.

Alternatively, Ara-Kara Sacbrood and Empowering Crystal of Anub’ikkaj are strong passive stat sticks and much more easily obtained than the Seaforium Pacemaker, since they are usable by many more classes.

Lastly, Mechano-Core Amplifier, Suspicious Energy Drink, Shadowbinding Ritual Knife, Quickwick Candlestick, and Spelunker’s Waning Candle are great options from Delves, but since they are not available in higher item levels they will eventually fall behind.

Right now the only Embellishments of note are the Darkmoon Sigils, which can only be put on weapons. As such, you will want to craft a weapon and put Darkmoon Sigil: Ascendance on it. For your second embellishment craft another low stat budget armor item such as bracers with Writhing Armor Banding.

Best D.I.S.C Belt & Miniature Titan Disc Effects

In 11.1.7 Blizzard introduced a new belt that you obtain through Overcharged Delves. With the weekly server resets on June 24/25 Blizzard has pushed tuning changes to the Titan Discs. Recommended Titan Discs for Enhancement Shaman are now:

• Spark Burst (haste proc)
• Electric Current (passive mastery)

Which one of these is better for you will largely depend on the stats on your gear, as they are very close in power. Generally, Stormbringer will favor Spark Burst, while Totemic will favor Electric Current.

For more information about unlocking the DISC belt and the different Miniature Titan Disc effects available, check out Method's D.I.S.C Belt Guide.