Enhancement Shaman Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Elementalist builds have fallen a bit behind with the 11.0.5 changes, so I will be covering the priorities for the Storm build using each hero talent tree here.

Stormbringer Storm Priority:

1. Primordial Wave
2. Feral Spirit
3. Tempest at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon
4. Windstrike
5. Doom Winds
6. Elemental Blast at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon with 4+ Feral Spirits active
7. Lightning Bolt at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon
8. Stormstrike at two charges
9. Voltaic Blaze
10. Ice Strike
11. Stormstrike
12. Lightning Bolt at 5+ Maelstrom Weapon
13. Frost Shock with Hailstorm active
14. Flame Shock if not active
15. Lava Lash
16. Frost Shock
17. Flame Shock

Stormbringer Storm Opener:

1. Primordial Wave/Flame Shock
2. (in AoE: Flame Shock on another target)
3. (in AoE: Crash Lightning)
4. (in AoE: Lava Lash)
5. Feral Spirit
6. (in AoE: Lightning Bolt)
7. Ascendance
8. Windstrike
9. Doom Winds

Totemic Storm Priority:

1. Flame Shock
2. Surging Totem
3. Ascendance
4. Doom Winds
5. Windstrike
6. Sundering

Totemic Storm Opener:

1. Flame Shock
2. Surging Totem
3. Doom Winds
4. (in AoE: Crash Lightning)
5. Ascendance
6. Windstrike
7. Sundering

Storm Multi Target:

1. Primordial Wave
2. Feral Spirit
3. Tempest at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon
4. Windstrike
5. Flame Shock if none active
6. Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock if not at maximum
7. Doom Winds
8. Lightning Bolt at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon with Primordial Wave if expiring
9. Chain Lightning at 8+ Maelstrom Weapon
10. Crash Lightning to maintain Crash Lightning buff, or with Doom Winds active
11. Stormstrike
12. Voltaic Blaze
13. Crash Lightning
14. Chain Lightning at 5+ Maelstrom Weapon
15. Sundering
16. Lava Lash
17. Frost Shock
18. Flame Shock

Playstyle

Enhancement has somewhat random resource generation and relies on random procs that tend to feed back into each other. As such, the spec at its core is about efficiently making use of your random procs, keeping your cooldowns rolling, and not wasting any resource while doing so, to keep up your momentum. There are many small details that will help you achieve this, that tend to get lost when just performing a simplified priority list from top to bottom, so I will cover them here, even if they are not necessarily used in the current builds.

Cooldown Usage

To make use of Witch Doctor’s Wolf Bones Feral Spirit you should use Feral Spirit on cooldown. Your other cooldowns benefit from the damage bonus of either Feral Spirit or Elemental Spirits and should be used while they are active.

When playing Flowing Spirits, you will spawn wolves passively by using your abilities. If talented into Elemental Spirits, the type of wolf depends on the ability that spawns them. Fire wolves will be spawned by Flame Shock, Lava Lash, Elemental Blast, Sundering, Primordial Wave, Fire Nova, and Voltaic Blaze. Lightning wolves will be spawned by Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Tempest,Crash Lightning and Voltaic Blaze. Ice wolves will be spawned by Frost Shock and Ice Strike. If you play this talent, it is important to limit your build to spawning the wolves that are beneficial to you. For example you will want to cut Elemental Blast from your build, if you are playing Stormbringer.

Primordial Wave, Doom Winds, and Sundering, should be used on cooldown as to not lose casts. They do, however, provide significantly more value in AoE than in single target, so often times it will be worth to hold them for add spawns in favor of maximizing casts.

Ascendance should be lined up with Feral Spirit and Doom Winds. Using Feral Spirits just before gives you the maximum amount of time to achieve an overlap of two Feral Spirits casts, in which you want to fit in your Elemental Blasts.

Resource Management

Due to Raging Maelstrom and Overflowing Maelstrom you are afforded some leeway in when you spend your Maelstrom Weapon. Raging Maelstrom allows you to hold on to your casts for longer, so you don’t have to spend it immediately upon reaching 5, and Overflowing Maelstrom reduces the amount of global cooldowns you have to use on spending it. This makes it so you get to use other abilities like Lava Lash or Stormstrike first to get them on cooldown, which means they will be up earlier again down the line.

However, currently while playing Stormbringer the biggest sources of Maelstrom Weapon are refunds from Static Accumulation and Supercharge. Because of this, spending at lower amounts of Maelstrom Weapon is generally preferred at the moment.

Elemental Blast and Tempest are exceptions to this rule, as they are constrained by cooldown and proc generation respectively, and should be used with more urgency.

In cleave situations maintain your Crash Lightning buff, as the splash effect on using your other abilities also generates Maelstrom Weapon, improving your resource economy whenever there are multiple targets. You can also refresh the buff just before your second target dies to carry the extra resource generation into single target for a bit.

Lashing Flames

This talent demands you to actively switch targets with Lava Lash in AoE to maintain the debuff on up to 6 targets and this should not be neglected, as this not only buffs the damage over time component of Flame Shock, but also the initial damage of the 1+4 Flame Shocks you spread via Molten Assault. I encourage you to use a mouseover macro to make it easier.

Lightning Rod

As is the case with Lashing Flames, this talent incentivizes you to target swap with Tempest, Lightning Bolt, and Chain Lightning. Whenever you are not funneling you should choose a main target that does not have Lightning Rod yet during AoE. Once again I recommend using a mouseover macro.

Elemental Blast

Elemental Blast gets buffed by all the Elemental Spirits and they stack multiplicatively with each other. As such, you want to maximize the number of Elemental Spirits that are active for each Elemental Blast without losing casts. This is easily achieved, by holding your second charge until Feral Spirit is active. This will allow you to effortlessly fit in two casts per Feral Spirit.

Doom Winds

During Doom Winds you want to focus on using your main hand attacks Stormstrike, Ice Strike, Clash Lightning, and Sundering, as only those trigger Windfury Weapon. This becomes especially important in AoE, as Crash Lightning and Sundering will hit every enemy in front of you with a main hand swing, which is our main source of uncapped AoE. By reducing Crash Lightnings cooldown via Chain Lightning you can fit two or three into Doom Winds.

Thorim’s Invocation

When using Thorim’s Invocation you need to take note of whether it is currently primed with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning and occasionally fix it by spending your Maelstrom Weapon. Due to the random nature of Deeply Rooted Elements sometimes it cannot be helped, but especially when using regular Ascendance you should make sure you have the correct spell primed before you press it.

Alpha Wolf

When using Alpha Wolf, you will need to activate it by using Crash Lightning or Chain Lightning and then actively maintain it again after 8 seconds. Activating the effect is worth even in single target, as the wolves use Spirit Bomb on top of their normal single target damage output.

Tempest

It is very important to not lose Tempest casts, but because there are two ways to gain them, you may run into situations, where both may trigger in close succession. As such, you need to keep track of when you are about to reach 40 Maelstrom Weapon or 3 Awakening Storms with WeakAuras and spend your currently active Tempest if you are about to override it.

Totemic

It is of utmost importance when playing Totemic to overlap your Sundering casts with Ascendance and Surging Totem and quickly react to any resets that happen through Molten Thunder.

If you are playing a Storm build your secondary objective is to stack Totemic Rebound as high as possible. This couples well with Flowing Spirits and Unrelenting Storms, as both Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon will spawn physical wolves, enhancing your Surging Totem and Sunderings even further. Completely ignore the Fire mote and Reactivity when doing this.

Should you find yourself playing an Elementalist build with Totemic for some reason, you will have to make sure to get the most out of Reactivity and Lively Totems by playing your Hot Hand windows well, while hopefully mainly spawning fire wolves through Flowing Spirits.

Awakening Storms, Totemic Rebound and Lively Totems

You may have noticed that Stormstrike has an unusually high priority in the Elementalist build. This is because of the new RPPM effects Awakening Storm. As of right now, the multiplier that is applied for RPPM effects to make them average a certain amount of procs per minute caps out after 3.5 seconds of using a spell that can trigger the effect.

What this means for you is that if, after 3.5 seconds, you do not use a spell that can trigger the effect, you are leaving procs on the table. As Tempest procs are extremely valuable, this means that you regularly have to use Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or Stormstrike solely for this mechanic.

The same applies to Totemic Rebound and Lively Totems in the Totemic tree, triggering from Lava Lash and Maelstrom Weapon spenders respectively.