Enhancement Shaman Talents Guide

Patch 10.2.5 Last Updated: 24th Jan, 2024
Weber Enhancement Shaman Author
Weber

Class Talents

The Shaman tree is fantastic in that there are very few required DPS throughput talents, leaving us with many points to spend on utility for any given scenario. We will basically always pick up Frost Shock, Flurry, Lava Burst, Fire and Ice and Nature’s Fury for throughput.

Other high-priority talents are Astral Shift, Wind Shear, Earth Elemental, Spirit Walk/Gust of Wind, Elemental Warding, and Ancestral Guidance, which all provide very significant defensive utility or mobility.

The only talent that should be avoided is Nature’s Swiftness, as it directly works against Maelstrom Weapon.

Talent Builds

As of right now, there are two different viable talent builds for Enhancement.

Single Target Fire

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The fire build focuses on improving Lava Lash through Hot Hand and Elemental Blast through Elemental Spirits. Maelstrom generation has been massively improved in 10.2 because of the new tier set bonus and the buffed Elemental Assault, making this build an equal or even preferred option to the Physical build, where it previously was found lacking a bit in single target.

Single Target Physical

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The physical build, on the other hand, focuses on improving Stormstrike and Windfury Weapon and provides strong burst windows through overlapping Doom Winds, Feral Spirit, and Ascendance. Ascendance is a strong cooldown now that it got support talents in Static Accumulation and Thorim’s Invocation, which synergizes heavily with Legacy of the Frost Witch. Unless reliable burst is needed, you should talent into Deeply Rooted Elements, which will result in higher uptime than using manual Ascendance. It is key not to take Elemental Spirits in this build, as you want your physical damage buffed from the regular wolves. This build also no longer opts into Hailstorm, as you want to spend as many GCDs on Stormstrike as possible.

Mythic+ Fire

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The fire build excels at cleaving and funneling smaller trash pulls without sacrificing almost any single target. It provides very consistent upfront damage, as you have Primordial Wave for basically every pull. This will be the preferred option for Mythic+.

If you don’t want to play around Lashing Flames, you can opt to move the points out of Elemental Assault, Lashing Flames and Sundering into Legacy of the Frost Witch and Swirling Maelstrom.

Mythic+ Physical

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This build has much higher uncapped burst AoE potential using Doom Winds and Alpha Wolf than the fire build but sacrifices sustained damage and funneling potential to do so. The physical build has to make sacrifices in single target to AoE or vice versa and is inferior to the Fire build in Mythic+.