Enhancement Shaman

Hardcore viability

Shamans are a great class to play for Hardcore. As a hybrid damage/support class, we have multiple tools and skills to excel in this game mode.

For Enhancement Shamans, about 50% of our damage comes from our white hits, meaning we are not as completely gear dependent as classes like Warriors or Rogues. And, because only half our damage is spells, we're also not totally dependent on hard casts like Mages. The hybrid nature of shamans plays very well into the hardcore solo-style of gameplay.

Shamans in classic are generally thought of as low damage compared to Warriors and Mages, and for end-game PvE that is true. But pre-60, expect to be doing huge amounts of damage in both solo and dungeon gameplay. Our weapon enhancements add crazy damage to our melee attacks, flame shock gives us the ability to multi-dot, and Fire Nova is a great aoe spell that we learn starting at level 12! While leveling, a lucky crit or windfury proc will just global a mob.

For solo killing elite or difficult mobs, shamans are good if not the best. Not quite as great as Hunters or Warlocks, but between our sustain, utility, and damage we have little issues. Against a mob like Besseleth, we can dispel her poisons. Against many mobs, we can kite them indefinitely with Frost Shock.

Lastly, Shamans are just plain fun. Many classes can feel quite tedious in their rotations, or completely underpowered without gear. Shamans have a great variety of spells to change up your rotation, and as discussed are only partially gear-dependent. Tired of a rotation? Change it up! Spam more lightning bolts, kite with Frost Shock, use Windfury even though Rockbiter is "better". Switch to using slow 2-handers or sword n' board. Shamans have a lot of options to keep the game feeling fresh!

Best races

Horde

Shamans are a class unique to the Horde, and can be played as Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren.

Orcs - with Axe Specialization, Hardiness, and Blood Fury, Orcs are an excellent all-rounder choice, and the best for Enhancement DPS.

Trolls - with Berserking, Beast Slaying, and Regeneration, Trolls are the best race for Elemental and Restoration Shamans, and a good choice for Enhancement.

Tauren - with War Stomp and Endurance, Tauren are a safe choice for Shamans and offer the most escape for Hardcore gameplay.

Which race is best?

There is no obvious choice as to which race is best overall for Shamans in hardcore mode; each race offers advantages to help enhance your gameplay.

Tauren are the safest pick for Hardcore mode. War Stomp stuns for long enough to cast Ghost Wolf when talented, giving you an excellent escape tool on a decently short cooldown. Even without ghost wolf, War Stomp is a hard disable, which shamans lack. However, Tauren offer no offensive boosts to your kill times

Orcs and Trolls are really a coin flip as neither is notably better than the other. Both give you a good DPS cooldown; Blood Fury is on a shorter cooldown, but is only melee attack power and debuffs you to take 50% reduced healing. Berserking is on a longer cooldown, but affects your spells and does not debuff you. Berserking can be extra useful when you need an emergency heal as it increases your cast speed more when you're missing health. It is worth noting that Berserking costs mana (7% of your total) and Blood Fury does not.

Troll's Regeneration is a small but nice bit of health regeneration, especially if you are going for some spirit gear. Orc's Hardiness is valuable as the chance to resist stuns can help avoid a sticky situation.

Tauren are the best pick for safety. Orcs give you max enhancement DPS, Trolls give you max Ele and Resto offspeccing.

Stat analysis

Weights

Conversion

What does it all mean?

A good way to judge strength and attack power is to compare it to your weapon dps. 1 dps = 7 str = 14 AP, which means a weapon that is 10 DPS and gives +7 str, is equivalent to a weapon with 11 DPS.

Agility is quite low value, until you get the talent Flurry. Although shamans like crit, point for point agility simply does not increase your damage that much. With Flurry, there is extra weight added to crit. Still, Agility will be valued lower than Str and Stam, even with Flurry.

Comparing Spirit and Intellect is difficult. Technically, Spirit gives 0.5 mp5, while Intellect gives 15 mana. It takes 30 ticks of 0.5 mp5 to get 15 mana, which takes 2.5 minutes! So in a vacuum, Intellect looks much better. But in reality, the time Spirit Regen is rolling is very often while leveling, and the time you are at Max mana is quite low. The point is that judging the effective value against each other is quite complicated, so it's easy to assume that they are effectively equal. If we need to outweigh one, we can look to get more Spirit, as many spells cost a % of total mana, so increasing the mana pool is only so helpful.

Important spells / skills

Totems

The most unique aspect of the Shaman is our Totems. Totems are units summoned by the shaman that can provide buffs, do damage, or provide a number of other benefits. All totems benefit the Shaman and our party members.

Totems are separated into 4 groups, representing the 4 classic elements, Earth Fire Water and Air. You can only summon one totem of each element.

For the majority of totems, we'll want to place them strategically to affect us while we fight multiple mobs. Totems can cost a good amount of mana, and each is summoned separately on the GCD, so getting the most use out of each placement greatly helps our efficiency.

Shocks

Part of the Shaman flavor is the unique interaction of our Shock spells. Shocks are instant cast spells with a 20 yard range, and a shared 6 second cooldown. This means that casting one shock puts all the others on cooldown.

Shamans have 3 shocks, listed below:

Earth Shock

This is both your main nuke and interrupt spell. It is a 2-second interrupt on a low 6-second cooldown, but remember that casting any other shocks will put this on cooldown. Be aware whether a mob will cast a spell that you need to kick, and save your shocks so Earth Shock is available.

It benefits you to keep rank 1 Earth Shock on your bars as a low mana option to kick spells.

Flame Shock

While not as much up-front burst as your other 2 shocks, Flame Shock deals the most damage and has the best mana efficiency if the entire duration runs.

Frost Shock

With a debuff longer than its cooldown, you can slow a target for as long as your mana holds out. The damage and mana efficiency are similar to Earth Shock.

It benefits you to keep rank 1 Frost Shock on your bars as a low mana option to slow.

Which do I use?

Flame Shock is the best to use, if the target will live the full duration of the dot. It is simply more damage for less mana than the other 2 shocks.

Earth and Frost Shock deal similar damage for similar mana. At max level, Earth Shock will deal a bit more, but as you level, whichever your newest rank is will do the most. Once you get and start using Stormstrike, you will want to use Earth Shock to make use of the Nature damage debuff.

For Hardcore, Frost Shock is good to use to finish off a mob, as mobs who run away will be slowed, reducing the risk of chain pulls.

Lightning

Shamans have two options for ranged combat, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. Both are used much more by Elemental shamans, but are still worth having available as an Enhancement Shaman.

Lightning Bolt

Our basic ranged spell; while none of the Enhancement talents buff this skill, it is still one of our best damage per mana spells in the toolkit. At max range (30 yards) we can generally cast 2 of them before a mob is in melee range. Use Lightning Bolt to deal some mana efficient damage at range as a mob runs to you, and to pull mobs into a more safe area.

Chain Lightning

A cleaving Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning has a faster cast time and a higher base damage than Lightning Bolt. Even without speccing into Elemental, it hits extremely hard, even on a single target. The drawback is the mana cost, costing almost triple as much as Lightning Bolt.

Hitting 3 enemies, this is an excellent cleave spell. However, don't be fooled into thinking this allows you to aoe down multiple mobs! A 2.5 second cast time on a 6 second cooldown means you won't be using it to put up sustained aoe. This is a spell for bursting and cleaving when you don't mind using a lot of mana.

Weapon Enhancements

The bread and butter of the Enhancement tree, our weapon enhancement spells imbue our melee weapons with the power of the elements. Three separate spells add a unique weapon imbue to your weapon with a duration of 5 minutes. These imbues take the slot of other imbues like wizard oil and Rogue poisons.

Rockbiter

Adds a flat amount of melee attack power, as well as causing your weapon damage to generate additional threat.

Rockbiter is your first enhancement, giving a flat amount of attack power and therefore dps. While very basic, the amount of attack power it gives is no joke. Example: at level 16 you learn Rank 3, which gives 118 attack power, equivalent to 59 Strength!

Flametongue

Adds extra fire damage to your weapon swing. The damage scales with weapon speed: slower weapons get more damage.

Flametongue is a spell damage based imbue, adding spell damage to your white damage. This is a separate instance of damage that scales with your spell power and spell crit.

Windfury

Gives your weapon swings a 20% chance to add 2 additional strikes with increased attack power.

Everyone who knows Shamans knows Windfury. Windfury is a massive albeit inconsistent DPS increase.

Which do I use?

Rockbiter is technically the best. It adds more damage than Flametongue, and is less damage but more consistent than Windfury.

In a dungeon setting, if you are a DPS, you will need to use Flametongue or Windfury, as the extra threat from Rockbiter will pull mobs off the tank. Windfury is the most damage, but the burst damage it provides can also pull threat, something that should be avoided in Hardcore.

Against high armor mobs, Flametongue can do more damage than Rockbiter, but even so, when you crit you will crit the entire damage of Rockbiter. Flametongue, as a separate damage instance, has its own crit rate (your spell crit rate, which will be lower when speccing into Enhancement).

As you gain more spell damage and spell crit, Flametongue will outperform Rockbiter. But as an Enhancement Shaman, and pre-60, Rockbiter will outperform in almost all scenarios.

Windfury does more damage on average than Rockbiter. Plus, because Windfury hits count as melee hits, they can crit and proc Flurry. Ie, windfury effectively increases your Flurry uptime.

Windfury is inconsistent, however. It is not uncommon to kill a couple mobs without it proccing. Windfury also has an issue with overkill: if you proc when the mob is just about dead, the damage is completely wasted. This is especially noticeable when using slower two-hand weapons. A good proc will almost kill a mob, but the kills without a proc and the overkills will feel much worse.

All-in-all, Rockbiter is the best to use outside of dps-ing dungeons.

Utility

Stormstrike

While not technically a utility spell, this is the only spell that is unique to Enhancement Shamans. Stormstrike is an instant attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff to the target that increases the Nature damage they receive by 20%.

Astral Recall

A free hearthstone on a 15 minute cooldown, what’s not to love?

Cure Disease

Cleanses diseases, we also have a totem for this!

Cure Poison

Cleanses poisons, we also have a totem for this!

Frostbrand Weapon

Another weapon imbue that everyone pretty much forgets about. It has a chance to apply a 25% slow and deal some mediocre damage.

Ghost Wolf

40% move speed increase at level 20. This is a massive QoL spell, as well as a great escape tool when you need to run from mobs!

Healing Wave

Our obligatory “long cast, big efficient” heal. Healing wave is an excellent baseline heal. Use different ranks to accomplish different things: Rank 1 for spamming and fishing for procs, Rank 4 for ultra-efficient heals, Rank 10 for big heals.

Lesser Healing Wave

Lesser Healing Wave - Our obligatory “fast cast, big throughput” heal. This is what we will generally find ourselves using to heal ourselves, especially in a pinch.

Lightning Shield

3 charges that deal Nature damage to attackers, this is a very efficient damage per mana spell, albeit an expensive one to cast. The internal cooldown on the orbs proccing is 3.5 seconds, which is decently long. The buff also lasts 10 minutes, so feel free to buff yourself long before any combat starts.

Purge

A valuable ability, many mobs have buffs that add damage, defenses, or effects. A common one is the mage’s frost armor, which slows you when you damage them. Purge the buff off so that you don’t get slowed, which helps you not land in an emergency. (Or purge some World Buffs and get banned!)

Talent builds

At 40, your skill build will look like this. There is almost no flexibility, with most of the talents being mandatory.

Levels 10-20

5/5 Shield Specialization - our level 10-14 talent choice is between Shield Spec and Ancestral Knowledge. Shield Spec is the better choice: put simply, a 5% increase to your mana pool is simply not worth the 5 talent points required. Shield Spec gives us more survivability if you decide to run 1 hand + shield. Even if you are using 2 handers, you will want to switch to a shield when in danger, and this talent helps in that emergency situation.

3/3 Imp Lightning Shield - Lightning Shield is one of your best damage per mana spells, so increasing its damage is beneficial. These points can be flexible if you do not find yourself using lightning shield. If so, put points earlier into Thundering Strikes, and then 3/5 into Anticipation for 3% dodge chance.

1/5 Thundering Strikes - 5% crit is obviously a great talent. This is a mandatory talent both for the DPS increase it provides, and because it allows you to take Flurry later. We put 1 point in first, get Imp Ghost Wolf by 20, then finish this talent after.

2/2 Imp Ghost Wolf - reduces the cast time of ghost wolf to 1 second. This is a mandatory talent as ghost wolf is not only your travel speed skill, but one of your best escape tools in hardcore. If you are a Tauren, War Stomp stuns the enemy long enough for you to cast Ghost Wolf when talented. You will learn Ghost Wolf at level 20, so place these 2 talent points at levels 19 and 20.

Levels 20-30

1/1 Two-Handed Axes and Maces - Allows you to wield 2-handed Axes and Maces. A mandatory talent, even if you are planning on using a 1 hand + shield. 2 handers offer increased kill times and beneficial stats. You can use 2h weapons against lower-level mobs or when dps-ing dungeons. If you do not have a decent 2 hand weapon at level 20, you can skip this talent until you get one. But for 1 talent point, this talent is worth getting. Note: you do not need this talent to use Staves like the Crescent Staff.

5/5 Thundering Strikes - we delayed this for imp ghost wolf and 2h weapons, and we can finish it now.

5/5 Flurry - a mandatory talent, flurry will greatly increase your dps and kill times. Paired with windfury weapon, this talent is one of our best.

1/1 Parry - self-explanatory, this allows you to parry. 1 talent point that gives you 5% avoidance, this is mandatory and should be taken at level 30.

Levels 30-40

3/3 Elemental Weapons - greatly increases your weapon enhancement spells, this is mandatory and should be taken right after parry.

5/5 Weapon Mastery - a flat 10% increase to your white damage. Mandatory for the damage it provides and to build toward your 31 point talent.

1/1 Stormstrike - your ultimate talent and the culmination of the Enhancement tree, Stormstrike is unfortunately fairly lackluster. At 21% of your base mana, it is expensive to cast, has a fairly long 20 second cool down, and only does the damage of a single melee attack.

The main draw of the skill is that it debuffs the target, increasing the incoming damage from the next 2 Nature spells by a whopping 20%! For an Enhancement Shaman, that will generally be Earth Shock and one tick of Lightning Shield.

After a very rigid talent builds up to level 40, we now have a huge amount of flexibility with how we will build up to 60. Feel free to play with any of these builds - use them as a guide for whatever you want to accomplish as you head for the end game!

We have 3 choices of talent builds, shown below.

Which should I do?

Sub speccing into Resto will be the safest and most effective build. It gives you some extra self and group heals, extra armor through procs, and - biggest of all - adds hit chance and reduces pushback when casting heals. The last two are massive buffs to hardcore gameplay, and it's a shame that we get these talents so late. But, that just means we get them as we push to the finish line!

Weapon progression

In general terms, there is no definite answer to whether you should use 1 hand + shield or 2 hand. It is much more about personal preference and play style. Try both, see which you prefer, or best of all carry and use both depending on the situation.

You should always look for the highest DPS weapon available, regardless of weapon speed, and look at stats as secondary. Recall that 7 strength = 1 DPS, and that Orcs get 5 weapon skill for Axes.

Professions

Herblism + Alchemy

Alchemy is the best overall choice for Shamans in Hardcore. The amount of stats, choice of stats, and the usefulness of Health and Mana pots can not be overstated. Shamans have a number of escapes, but all of them require mana: the last thing you want is to be oom and unable to cast Stoneclaw or Ghost Wolf.

Engineering + Mining

Engineering is obviously very useful to every class, and shamans are no different.

• Grenades like Iron Grenades give us a much needed disable (as shamans only have slows)
• Additional escape tools like the Target Dummy
• Extra damage from bombs like Dense Dynamite for us to use in dead spots in the rotation, which shamans most definitely have.

Engineering requires more effort compared to the ease and immediate benefit of Alchemy, but is equally or maybe more useful to your hardcore journey.

Leatherworking + Skinning

Athough not quite as beneficial as Alchemy and Engineering, Leatherworking is still a good profession to pursue. Skinning requires almost no thought or effort, compared to mining and herbalism. Leveling Leatherworking is also quite easy, especially compared to Engineering.

The gear it provides is not great, however. Many of the recipes have Agility and Spirit, which while not useless, is still unfavorable compared to Strength. Still, there are plenty of pieces that are great to have, like the Hillman Shoulders (at a time when everyone else is happy to have gray cloth shoulders).

After level 40, when you have 5/5 Flurry and the ability to specialize your Leatherworking, Agility gear becomes much more desirable and as such Leatherworking becomes much more desirable (Agility never is weighed equal-or-more-than strength). Unfortunately, the specializations and end-game recipes aren't very beneficial. The Black Dragonscale set requires Enchanted Leather (Breastplate is the only one that does not) and Black Dragonscales, which are very difficult to get in hardcore. The Warbear and Devilsaur sets are good, but lack armor and require a lot of specific and difficult farming.

Tailoring

Although it sounds questionable, Tailoring is actually a semi-viable choice for a Hardcore Shaman. Bags are the obvious benefit, but moreso Intelligence gear is extremely useful if we want to heal dungeons, which we should most certainly look to do. If you are planning on playing Ele, then the Bloodvine Set will be an extremely powerful end game set.

An unconventional choice to be sure, but one that can certainly work.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is simply not recommended. Shamans can not wear mail gear until 40 (when BS will start making plate) and crafting the Weapons is too difficult for too little pay off. Unlike Warriors, only about half our damage comes from our weapon; we simply aren't as reliant on our weapon slot to justify skilling (and fishing for the leathers) to make Blacksmithing weapons.

Class quests

Shaman class quests are relatively simple, requiring some easy battles and some long travels. In general, the quests involve gathering items for a Master to craft you a Sapta, a drink that enables you to commune with the Spirits and Elements of Azeroth.

You will have to craft a Sapta for each element and commune with a spirit of that element to gain its totem.

There are four quests, one for each of your elemental totems.

Call of Earth  - (Level 4)

Done inside the starting zone, there’s not much to this. Go kill some mobs, collect the items, drink the Earth Sapta and find the hidden path to talk to the Spirit of the Earth.

Call of Fire  - (Level 10)

For this we head a farm in the Barrens, where we get the Torch of the Dormant Flame. Take this to the hidden path in the South of Durotar, where you will find the shrine. Talk to the NPC to find out what items are needed for the Fire Sapta.

Collect the reagents and return to the shrine. Drink the Sapta to reveal the Spirit of Fire. Defeat this elemental, and you’ve completed the quest.

Call of Water  - (Level 20)

The water quest is straight up un-fun. It requires quite a bit of traveling back and forth from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms and back.

Start in the Barrens and talk to the NPC south of Ratchet. Head to another NPC, south of Camp T, then go on over to Tarren Mill, Hillsbrad. Collect the water, travel back to the Southern Barrens, then back to the NPC south of Ratchet.

Then, run up to Ashenvale and find a moonwell in the Ruins of Stardust. Get water from there. Take that back to the Southern Barrens. From there to South of Ratchet again.

Now, head on back to the Eastern Kingdoms, to Silverpine near the Sepulcher. Drink the Sapta, beat the heck out of the Water Spirit, and then once again head back to the Barrens.

Call of Air  - (Level 30)

The Air quest is much more simple after our odyssey of a water quest.

Head on down to the Thousand Needles and find a small path up to an NPC. Turn in the quest and viola! You are now the best friend to Warriors and Rogues everywhere. Plus a bonus - a one hour buff that gives you 40% movespeed and 30% attack speed!

Dealing with danger

Shamans have a number of tools to deal with danger, listed below:

Stoneclaw Totem: a poor man's Target Dummy, Stoneclaw will generate threat in an aoe, occupying the time and attention of any mob. This can be used to occupy 1-2 mobs while you kill another, or to allow you time to run.

Earthbind Totem: an aoe slow, this is a great tool to give you some space to escape. Be aware that it casts its slow upon being summoned, and then every 5 seconds after that. The range on the aoe slow is 10 yards.

Searing, Magma, Fire Nova Totems: all 3 of these totems attack and generate threat. While it won't hold an enemy for long, it can be enough to delay them for a second, giving you some much needed space. Magma and Fire Nova generate threat immediately upon being cast, but only in a very small aoe (melee range). Still, it is enough sometimes to grab a mob's attention.

Frost Shock: a 50%, 8 second slow on a 6 second cooldown. You can use this to kite a mob for as long as your mana holds out. Note that rank 1 of this spell has the same slow amount and duration, so use it when all you need is to slow a mob.

Ghost Wolf: a 40% movespeed increase on a 1 second cast time (when talented). This is an excellent escape tool to run from mobs. Only useable outdoors, so stay away from caves!

Advanced tips

Make use of your spirit regen outside the 5 second rule. Shamans are a great class to stack Spirit, because our rotation lends itself to front-loading our spells and then idly whacking with our weapon, giving a nice window for Spirit regen to kick in.

One of the best, and most advanced, bits of Shaman gameplay is the positioning of our Totems. The four totems spawn on set locations around our character model; on the four corners of a square where the character model is looking.

Earth and Fire totems can be heavily dependent on spawn location. Earth spawns on our front-right corner, and Fire on our front-left. Use this to accurately place totems to maximize their benefit.

Totems can not be recalled in Classic WoW, it is not uncommon for a forgotten totem to aggro a mob, which will kill the totem and immediately sprint at you! Be aware of your totems and if you need to recall one, summon it again or another totem of the same element.

A frequently asked question is "why do mobs keep killing my fire totem?" When Fire Nova and Magma Totems spawn, it immediately generates threat, and generates more on enemies that are closer to it. Use Stoneclaw to keep enemies occupied, and try to summon it a bit away from mobs (but not so far that it misses!)

Be aware that Rockbiter and Earth Shock generate huge amounts of threat. In a dungeon, do not use them unless you are tanking. Even Windfury, as unpredictable as it is, can easily pull threat if you get multiple crits. Shamans are very bursty and controlling your threat can be very difficult.

On the topic of tanking: yes, Shaman tanking is possible. However, this guide does not recommend it. Our single target threat generation is very good, but in dungeons we have no survivability cooldowns, no taunt, no threat-generating skills besides Earth Shock and auto attacks, very limited CC, and pre-40 we have very little armor and mitigation (shamans don't have parry until 30).

Hardcore Shaman Leveling Guide

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