Enhance shaman? Srsly?

[buena]

Well I know they've had a lot of problems in the past, but it seems to me the patch nicely addressed all 3 of their main issues:

Too easily kiteable
- Frost shock off DR

Too easily OOM
- Heavily reduced shock costs for enh
- Water shield buff

Too easily dead
- Shaman wall

On top of that, it looks pretty damned fun to earthshock on stormstrike with 500 spelldamage for 40% mana cost, and purge, bloodlust and windfury are as good as they've always been. I've started to see impressive performances from them in battlegrounds.

So what do you think? Flawed too deeply to fix? Or a new vital part of a brutal melee train? I'm particularly interested in hearing from those few who already were playing them in 2.2 and what has changed.

[Kazin]

Still no catch-up...no sprint, no intercept. I don't know how they'd get back on me, a Curse of Exhaustion spamming warlock, once I get away the first time.

I'm skeptical, though I'd love to make my shaman enhancement. I just need to be convinced that it's a good idea, but I still don't think it is. :-(

[buena]

In theory, frost shock and earthbind are bigger snares than coex.

In practice, it's not a 1v1 fight. Whether or not he can stay on you has a lot more to do with what your teammates and his teammates are doing than just duel mechanics.

[Kazin]

In theory, frost shock and earthbind are bigger snares than coex.

In practice, it's not a 1v1 fight. Whether or not he can stay on you has a lot more to do with what your teammates and his teammates are doing than just duel mechanics.

Sorry, I mean that I can spam CoEx from further away than any shaman will ever shock me, and earthbind is for kiting, not for stopping yourself from being kited. If you're already within range to drop an earthbind and hit someone with it, you're not really being kited very well, are you? :P

And no, it's not 1v1. Still, SL/SL warlocks vs melee are already all about CoEX spam kiting, and that's against people who _can_ vanish, sprint, intercept, etc to catch up. Even with those abilities it can be damn hard for them to get back on top of me, so what I'm implying is that I don't know how a shaman is going to do better when he lacks a catch-up.

My two level 70s are a warlock and a shaman. I know all about being kited as a shaman. What's his partner going to be? A paladin who can stun me once per minute? A druid who can't actually cleanse my druid's roots? Or a priest that can't do much to me aside from an occasional fear?

I think they'll be more viable in 3v3 now, or possibly 5v5, but not because of frost shock. The other changes are pretty awesome.

And a little more background info on me: my shaman has 5k arena points saved up and about 70k honor. I've been resto since I hit 70, and I'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to spend all of those points on S3 DPS gear. I would honestly love to spend all of it on enhancement gear, but I still just cringe when I think of how much I'd hate to be kited by...well, me.

[Kazin]

(I'd also really love to hear from people who are actually doing enhancement already, much like the OP asked for, because maybe it's really worth trying :P)

[Jardak]

my 3v3 team hit 2200 with an enhancement shammy, as well as 2100 with 5v5

unfortunately, we havent been able to play together with the new 2.3 changes due to the fact our pally essentially quit on us :/

but in all honestly, id be very doubtful that our game play would change that much. regardless of their increased mana efficency as well as their own semi-pain suppression, you're adding another melee class in the picture with no real innate ability to reach their target (like an intercept, even sprint). we'd be able to win a few games more possibly, but the biggest issue of reaching the target isnt voided

you get one fear off, one thing that can close the distance, a smart player will kite them around, and even if they'd have 200 dps weapons, their damage is zero if they cant touch their target

blessing of freedom can only go to one person unfortunately :P

trust me, having played against some hunter teams with those lil frost traps, its almost laughable how bad enhancement shammies have to pretty much sit there and slowly walk to their target to do a their damage and by then its too late

its not all bad though, against a lot of "traditional" teams, having an enhancement shammy can do some serious damage. against mage/rogue/priest teams, you can almost take your pick for your target. if both the warrior and sham are on their target, you can deal a buttload of damage.

but yea, long post, shorter version is that in my eyes, i really dont believe that these buffs address the core issue with enhancement shammies, its just softening their rough edges

[Synir]

I've been playing an enhancement shaman for a while, and it's not looking good. Next week I'll switch to elemental.

It's just frustrating to be so easily killed by so many classes. Seriously, one trap and it's over. One snare and it's over. The lack of DR on FS is only helpful when it comes to keeping druids from running, spamming it and EB totem in sequence... and that means you can't interrupt their heals. Even if you FS a ranged class, if they are a step ahead of you that's where they will remain, while still doing damage to you, and they get their CDs back to root you more permanently.

So sure, it's fun to crit a nice big WF in a BG or drop a priest really fast in arenas. And yes, some people have done well with the build - like 5% total, if they have exactly the right team, full gear, and great skill. But let's face it, chances are they'd have done better with another spec/class instead given these factors.

[Plaga]

I would say our mana is fine now but kiting still remains a bit of a problem as well as our mini shield wall/pain suppression.

Frost shock while yes not suffering DRs is still dispellable and on a larger cooldown than crippling poison and hamstring. Yes hamstring and crippling aren't ranged abilitys but rogues have deadly throw and both war plus rogues have intercept abilities which enh shams don't. Warriors can intercept and intervene if need be while rogues can sprint, vanish, cloak and shadowstep there way to people. Yes warriors do only have two intercepts but enh shams have 0 and hamstring is a far more effective snare than frost shock.

As for our survivability I would have to say its improved with the shamanstic rage buff...well at least it has for the 5 seconds it takes your opponent to realize they need to hit dispell. Our vulnerability to snares contributes as well to our defense problem. Kind of hard to LOS the frost bolt or ice lance thats going to kill you while you sit in frost nova.

My arena teams have increased since 2.3 though:
joined a 2080 2v2 and brought it up to 2156 with high point being 2180ish
brought a 2008 tri-sham3v3 up to 2080ish with high point being 2110


Forgive me for spelling/grammatical errors its late :(

[Arashikage]

enh shammy, warrior, retro paladin, holy paladin, disc priest. Gonna try this next season. Can not wait to spend my 5k points to complete me enh set. :)

That will be a lot of fun.

[Nastynate]

Ive been playing in the Shadowburn Battle Group since beginning of Season 2 as enhancement. I will say that the recent buffs have been nice, but It isnt enough to give us enough mobility. Compared to almost every class which has ways to get out of snares... druids, priests, pallys, mages, rogues, warriors(talking about intercept). We have no way to catch up to our target, even when we keep the target slowed by frost shock.

Example: The frost mage.... we purge their armor buff and slow them with frost shock, they blink and kite.

Other than that I think the buffs helped my team get over our 2200 stump.

What I would like to see in a future patch is a reversed Purge. A skill that purges harmful magical effects from team mates and myself.

[Grup]

I was just thinking "Nastynate is the only enhancement shaman that I've ever seen at a high rating", lo and behold, he's in this topic! You're definitely right that enhancement mobility is really terrible, and I almost felt guilty exploiting it, though there's really no way I'd want to sit there with you wrecking me. I think enhancement shaman need a talent, something like earthgrab totem, heck, maybe even make stormstrike a trainable talent and replace it with earthgrab totem. When I played enhance it was so frustrating to have targets I could NEVER catch up to on my own, only stuns/CC could give me a chance.

[Saffira]

.

What I would like to see in a future patch is a reversed Purge. A skill that purges harmful magical effects from team mates and myself.

O you mean give you dispel? I would be fine with this if paladins had purge =D

[buena]

We have no way to catch up to our target, even when we keep the target slowed by frost shock.

Example: The frost mage.... we purge their armor buff and slow them with frost shock, they blink and kite..

Not being able to hit a frost mage as a melee isn't really the best example to prove that you can't stay on targets. No other melee can hit them either. How do you do staying on warlocks? They have some kiting potential but can be caught by most classes.

[Nastynate]

Warlocks don't have a blink to save them and sadly, alot of the locks in the battle group cant last more than 25 seconds with my warrior and I on him. The only 2 locks we have ever wanted to queue dodge against was Superpaul ( because education is a fucking beast and owns our priest before we can put a dent in SP), and Didy (because its a pain in the ass trying to kill a lock through so many stuns, felguard, rogues, and chastise.)

But your right Buena...every melee class has problems getting to mages. How about hunters? I will say that we got farmed for about 80 points in 4 games by progres and some team I have never seen before, Hunter Ice mage and priest. It was sad. Another class we have problems with due to being kited is Shamans(with BoF). True I can purge freedom, but it doesnt help when both shock and hamstring comes off and our target books it half way across the field.

IDK I guess what Im saying is that the only way an enhancement shaman will ever get past 2300 in the Shadowburn BG is to hope to god you play some shadow power teams, or just plain old Warlock teams. It really is a gamble when you queue, because any good ice mage will knock us down again.

[Grup]

I will say that we got farmed for about 80 points in 4 games by progres and some team I have never seen before, Hunter Ice mage and priest. It was sad.

lol, that same setup wrecked my team twice. Didn't even know how to beat them, it was basically our most lopsided losses ever. This is them: http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Ursin&ts=3&t=CANNON+TOWERS&select=CANNON+TOWERS

Honestly, the hunter changes have made them pretty amazing. They're a very difficult target to go after especially if a priest is around to mana burn, and if left alone, ranged mortal strike, mana drains, and high DPS. Let's not forget frost trap.

[Final]

I ran with an enhancement shaman season 1. We broke 2K but suffered greatly from moving people in and out. Our strongest team was Enhancement Shaman/MS Warrior/Elemental Shaman/Pally/Priest. The warrior would build rage then we'd just light someone up. Stormstrike was pretty hacks for the elemental shaman and the warrior hit really hard with the melee buff. He did suffer from kiting a lot, but he got good at switching a shield on when being kited and earthbinding melee off of him. If the warrior didn't need the BoF the enhancement shaman made good use of it.

We also excelled in 3v3 running priest/warrior/enhancement shaman. The burst dps on a warlock was just destructive. Broke top 5 with that combo S1.

[Nastynate]

Warlocks are the biggest targets for our make up, we absolutely decimate every warlock we come in contact with, with few exceptions, Didy and Superpaul.

[Akkin]

While there has been done something about the mana problems, the complete lack of anti-snare and the inability to close gaps as well as our very limited possibilites to slow other players is still a huge issue. Basically all our snares are magical ones and I spend a lot of my time in my 2v2s chasing a healing class that can dispell them. This was really a huge problem pre-patch when frostshock was effected by DR. Since Earthbind Totem has a quite long CD I often would end up not being able to catch a running pally or priest after they dispelled the snare of my first 2 shocks.
It would be great to have some kind of "Charge" but I'm afraid that this might make shamans a bit too strong against cloth-wearing classes, especially if it had an included stun. Such a thing could easily lead to a complete spell lock (on the other hand rogues can do this with wls now too) or to more "burst" damage than a class like priest can take. Anyway..I thought of this to be a reason why our "Medallion of the Horde" could not remove fear in the past but it turned out that I was wrong - or that devs decided there was already enough resilience ingame to not care for this.

So there has been found a different solution - we can not close gaps faster now but theoretically we can survive longer to finally reach our target with SR. Unfortunately this sounds better on paper than it really is since it can be dispelled and most snares don't have a DR...so they can just be renewed and the other player has to keep running a bit longer.
A good example for this is the Druid/Warrior 2v2 team..it's incredibly cruel what hamstring can do to an enhancement shaman.

Also the simple fact that SR can be dispelled will be the reason why teams with enhancement shamans will still be raped by mana burning teams.

Even though SR has been changed survivability is still an issue. Prepatch rogues could stunlock me to death and though chances in 1v1 now might have increased (if you use shield and SR), I really doubt I will stand a chance against the new rogue in arena (especially because they hardly ever come without a dispeller and even a healer without dispell will just make the game last longer, its not like SR kills anybody). Evasion is a real killer for enhancement shamans and unlike warriors we can not even do ANYTHING against an evading target.

Finally the +spell damage/healing is nice but shocks receive only a small amount of it since they are instant casts and its not like enhancement shamans will be spamming cl or lb now. Also they have no +spell crit which makes any combinations with certain talents in the elemental tree completely senseless. The +heal is laughable but if you depend on the enhancement shaman in your team to heal you're all doomed anway.

An other thing that I'm pissed about is that we don't have a talent to prevent us from being disarmed - this could easily be implemented instead of talens like improved lightning shield. But oh well I guess I can always take the nerfed weapon chain over any uber enchantment or carry bags full of my personal armory with me so i can always change to the chained ones when i face the real melee classes.

To not be too whiny...the changes are certainly steps in the right direction and it's probably a bit early to speak the final word..the 3rd arena season has just begun or will begin in a few hours in europe and I bet it will be long enough again to test every aspect of our improved selfs in live environment.

This are just some of the things I guess everbody can think of instantly, more soon to follow once I feel like crying my heart out again.

[Karthera]

From a rogue's point of view, I think survivability is their major issue. Enhance just dies too quickly. But thanks to the recent buffs, enhance does work a lot better, and I do see a lot more enhancement shamans now.