The failed shaman modifications are disgusting

[Hungry9]

Poor shaman, poor enhancement shaman, so how will you continue to play?

[Bigsmerf]

Like they always have, except slightly better. The spec is perfectly viable and the base sham toolkit alone is enough to bring one to any group. Are there issues? Sure, but that doesn't make an enh sham invalid and unusable.

[Jstansberry]

Like they always have, except slightly better. The spec is perfectly viable and the base sham toolkit alone is enough to bring one to any group. Are there issues? Sure, but that doesn't make an enh sham invalid and unusable.

"Perfectly viable" is definitely an overstatement - any time there is an enhancement shaman in raid, an ele or resto would be more valuable. As you said, the baseline benefits a shaman brings (WF totem, tremor totem) are the only reason to bring an enhancement shaman. Auto-attacking with a Stormstrike every 12 seconds is only slightly better than vanilla enhancement shaman, where you didn't get to Stormstrike at all because of the lower amount of debuff slots.

[Burunduk]

Perfectly dead spec...
Find another class to play.

[Bigsmerf]

Like they always have, except slightly better. The spec is perfectly viable and the base sham toolkit alone is enough to bring one to any group. Are there issues? Sure, but that doesn't make an enh sham invalid and unusable.

"Perfectly viable" is definitely an overstatement - any time there is an enhancement shaman in raid, an ele or resto would be more valuable. As you said, the baseline benefits a shaman brings (WF totem, tremor totem) are the only reason to bring an enhancement shaman. Auto-attacking with a Stormstrike every 12 seconds is only slightly better than vanilla enhancement shaman, where you didn't get to Stormstrike at all because of the lower amount of debuff slots.

I think you're confusing optimal and viable in your comparison to ele and resto. This is a spec that can clear every form of content. objective fact. Perfectly viable sounds pretty much just right to me. Does that make enh perfectly FINE? Fuck no. There's lots that needs to be done, but personally i would prefer it be brought up and made around as valuable as ele in terms of dps. Resto- as the "healing spec" gets to win the prize of most valuable, because... Well do I even have to explain it?

[Jstansberry]

I think you're confusing optimal and viable in your comparison to ele and resto. This is a spec that can clear every form of content. objective fact. Perfectly viable sounds pretty much just right to me. Does that make enh perfectly FINE? Fuck no. There's lots that needs to be done, but personally i would prefer it be brought up and made around as valuable as ele in terms of dps. Resto- as the "healing spec" gets to win the prize of most valuable, because... Well do I even have to explain it?

It's not viable - you're getting carried through content when you play as enhancement. You're a deadweight that is only brought either because people like you or because they couldn't find a shaman willing to play one of the better specs. To put it into perspective, it's as if you were bringing a multiboxed druid that mostly just auto attacks and occasionally casts MotW, Faerie Fire, Hibernate, and Entangling Roots because you couldn't find a real druid. Replace most of your melee DPS with enhancement shamans and I guarantee the game gets much harder. Replace them with feral druids and it's harder but still realistic. Replacing most of the caster DPS with ele shamans and boomkin and it's even less of an issue than having a feral druid melee core. Ret paladins currently perform better than most classes.

It is literally possible to prog with 12 enhancement shamans in your raid. Getting 28 other people to agree to progressing through raid content with 12 enhancement shamans is another story. Being suboptimal to the degree that enhancement currently is (i.e the worst DPS spec in the game by a good margin) means it is not viable. Other "suboptimal" specs either have a niche unique to their talent tree or perform well enough to not be a hindrance, enhancement has neither of those things.

[Bigsmerf]

I think you're confusing optimal and viable in your comparison to ele and resto. This is a spec that can clear every form of content. objective fact. Perfectly viable sounds pretty much just right to me. Does that make enh perfectly FINE? Fuck no. There's lots that needs to be done, but personally i would prefer it be brought up and made around as valuable as ele in terms of dps. Resto- as the "healing spec" gets to win the prize of most valuable, because... Well do I even have to explain it?

It's not viable - you're getting carried through content when you play as enhancement. You're a deadweight that is only brought either because people like you or because they couldn't find a shaman willing to play one of the better specs. To put it into perspective, it's as if you were bringing a multiboxed druid that mostly just auto attacks and occasionally casts MotW, Faerie Fire, Hibernate, and Entangling Roots because you couldn't find a real druid. Replace most of your melee DPS with enhancement shamans and I guarantee the game gets much harder. Replace them with feral druids and it's harder but still realistic. Replacing most of the caster DPS with ele shamans and boomkin and it's even less of an issue than having a feral druid melee core. Ret paladins currently perform better than most classes.

It is literally possible to prog with 12 enhancement shamans in your raid. Getting 28 other people to agree to progressing through raid content with 12 enhancement shamans is another story. Being suboptimal to the degree that enhancement currently is (i.e the worst DPS spec in the game by a good margin) means it is not viable. Other "suboptimal" specs either have a niche unique to their talent tree or perform well enough to not be a hindrance, enhancement has neither of those things.

Low dps doesn't correlate to dead weight. You're just not pulling as much as everyone else. No, it's nothing like having a multiboxed druid in group, because shaman isn't druid. And even if the game gets "harder" that still doesn't mean it's not viable. Remember that all shaman raid in MC? Fully cleared. 40 shamans. I'm quite sure they were all overgeared for the content though, so... Eh. Also, in regards to that last lil tidbit...

Bloodlust?

[Jstansberry]

Low dps doesn't correlate to dead weight. You're just not pulling as much as everyone else. No, it's nothing like having a multiboxed druid in group, because shaman isn't druid. And even if the game gets "harder" that still doesn't mean it's not viable. Remember that all shaman raid in MC? Fully cleared. 40 shamans. I'm quite sure they were all overgeared for the content though, so... Eh. Also, in regards to that last lil tidbit...

Bloodlust?

If you are playing a melee DPS spec, then being the lowest potential DPS output by far does correlate to being a dead weight. Current "resto" shaman meta build is going all the way down enhancement for Bloodlust and playing as a healer. If you count that as an "enhancement" shaman, then sure enhancement is viable. Players are smart enough to realize that you don't need to play as the worst melee DPS in the game for the privilege to cast Bloodlust, you can just take the talent and heal and be at least 2 times as useful as the guy who is actually playing as an enhancement shaman. Even if they did have to play as a bad melee dps, Bloodlust is not good enough of a buff to make up for the lack of output.

The all shaman MC had several near BiS shamans participating. And they used collectively well over 1000g in consumes, easily. If you think doing the easiest 40man with an average item level 20 higher than what you'd be at when progging it is a meaningful benchmark, then there is too much context you're not aware of for this to be a meaningful discussion and I'm too lazy to explain it to you myself.

[Akos1896]

Smerf, I have to agree with Jstanberry here.
Enh is in a weird spot. It's own DPS is pathetic and it makes up for it with extreme utility, mostly for melee. BUT 90% of these utilities can be brought by another shaman.
There's a pull. You run to the target (not charge, shamans don't have that). You put up the utility totems and put up an OK fire DoT on the main target. After that, auto-attack. You can't even use your best melee weapon enhance and your best shock because initially Blizzard wanted to make enh a tank build and they were too lazy to re-shape some talents. So you are in front of the mob, your biggest shock and best weapon enhancement are a no-no and you autoattack. Every 10 sec you stop DPSing to totem twist to keep up both WF and agility for the others who actually do damage. In compensation every 12 sec you have a double-attack (your only melee ability as a melee class). On CD or during bosses you cast your single target BL on someone else, because giving 20% haste for pathetic damage guy/you will barely give any damage increase. Enh shaman is a design mess because 1/3 of the talent tree is for abilities facilitating tanking while they don't have the strict minimum to be a tank (like a taunt or having aoe threat). Other talents are either weird, undertoned or just not enough to make a melee DPS class.
Enh shaman in Vanilla is a 2H wielder (or 1h + shield but that setup would put you below holy priests in the raid's DPS meter). Each 2H weapon is slow but in exchange, hits hard. So on paper enh gameplay should be abusing the 2H weapon and sneaking in extra attacks for DPS (like an arms warrior, in this sense). Enh shaman actually does it but very badly. You have WF. You really want to sneak in an added hit now? Pray for RNG Gods, because you have 20% for it. A very good party utility but it's extremely unreliable. You can't time your added damage. Your only real option is stormstrike.
The other part of enh shaman gameplay revolves around shocks and weapon enhancements. But as already said, you are deprived from the best options. You can soemtimes put up a DoT and autoattack somewhat bigger instead.
At the end of the day, enhancement shaman is bad because they have 1 ability to abuse the high damage of the 2H weapon. Other weapon-proc buff is nice but unreliable. And that's your melee. No action bar filled with abilities or at least a 4 button rotation. Stormstrike on CD? -> Autoattack then.
I would agree that enh shaman is not viable. In theory, 39 geared guys could even carry Hogger through Naxx. But that is it, enhancement shaman is carried there. You can argue that in exchange of the lesser DPS they bring good utility, and it is true. But a BL-resto shaman brings the exact same utility and actually contributes (that's another story why this happens). You could not theorycraft a Naxx comp where an enhancement shaman would be the optimal guy for any of the raid slots. Utility? (BL) resto shaman. Damage? Anyone else, including Hogger. Nighfall bot? Even retri pala can force more weapon procs on the opponent, they are more consistent.

[Manletow]

Perfectly viable sounds pretty much just right to me.

It's not viable - you're getting carried through content when you play as enhancement. You're a deadweight

Ret paladins currently perform better than most classes.

Enhancement (and Shaman in general) is meant to be a "Faction Mascot Class" that essentially cheerleads their teammates to victory. There should only be a few in a group/raid as they are not the "stars" of the show.

They are unsung heroes. Silent Guardians. Watchful Protectors...
A Support Class.

Additionally, Smerf just said "group" not "Raid" -- Shamans are excellent in 5 man content. They are highly desirable for all roles (including Enhancement Tank especially).

Yes people always whine about Paladins (the other Mascot Class) being powerful to argue Shaman needs a buff.
Turtle WoW staff foolishly over-buffed Paladin to the point of absurdity.
The same mistake should NOT be made with Shaman.

[Akos1896]

Perfectly viable sounds pretty much just right to me.

It's not viable - you're getting carried through content when you play as enhancement. You're a deadweight

Ret paladins currently perform better than most classes.

Enhancement (and Shaman in general) is meant to be a "Faction Mascot Class" that essentially cheerleads their teammates to victory. There should only be a few in a group/raid as they are not the "stars" of the show.

They are unsung heroes. Silent Guardians. Watchful Protectors...
A Support Class.

Additionally, Smerf just said "group" not "Raid" -- Shamans are excellent in 5 man content. They are highly desirable for all roles (including Enhancement Tank especially).

Yes people always whine about Paladins (the other Mascot Class) being powerful to argue Shaman needs a buff.
Turtle WoW staff foolishly over-buffed Paladin to the point of absurdity.
The same mistake should NOT be made with Shaman.

I see what you are about but having two problems with this.
1. If one of the 'mascot classes' got buffed into something more, then players of the other 'mascot class' have all the right in the world to expect equal treatment.
2. The mascot concept ensured in Vanilla that for raiding only healers from these classes were taken, this concept basically killed 2x2 builds for lategame PVE. Lemme explain. Healer shamans, while having high utility, are having a niche at wide-healing for which they are excellent. DPS shamans had the option to bring roughly the same utility but instead of a very good healing they could decide to either auto-attack or do the holy trinity of lightning bolt-resisted-oom. Palas were in a similar spot. From the moment they have collected a decent enough spell crit chance they have become the best spot healers in the game. Utility is roughly the same but healer version was always a very good raid addition, unlike the other two builds, the auto-attack machine and the brave man trying to raid-tank as a pala.
This whole thing raises two questions:
1. Does the original mascot concept really mean killing 2 of the builds for raiding since healers are more than mascots?
2. If healers are more than mascots with valid non-utility only role in raids, are they even mascots? If no, why do the other 2 builds have to be treated as such?

F.ex. retri buff in TWOW was a bit foolish, they created a monster for PVP. At the same time, they made a perfectly fine build for raiding. From PVE perspective paladins now have the option to heal or DPS at raids (or to tank up until a raid level). Sure, PVP is f-ed because of these changes, but for PVE it is something beautiful, without breaking the (PVE side of the) game.

[Zulnam]

Enh Shaman is pretty mediocre, yeah. And seeing as all the other hybrid dps specs got buffed, I don't see why Enh shouldn't receive the same treatment.

Thunderhead is a really boring talent. I mean i know the bar was set low with the 2H talent, but jesus.

Bloodlust is nice but the cooldown is absurd. What was it, five minutes? On par with Adrenaline Rush from rogue, another talent nobody takes. Both abilities should have their cooldown reduced to the standard 3 minutes for important abilities (Nature's Swiftness, Power Infusion, Presence of Mind etc.)


Idk how it could be improved. Reduce CD on Stormstrike even more? Make the debuff it places actually useful? Some better talents than "increase mana by 5%" (lol) or "15% damage on lighting bolt charrge" (double lol).

While we're at it. I have never, NEVER, liked how the shaman shield spells worked in vanilla. 3 charges for a buff that expensive that only does something when you're getting punched in the face? No thanks.

Maybe make it "lightning shield also increases all damage by 15% while active". Then Thunderhead might have some use (although giving shaman 15% that we then have to put on another, better, DPS, is pretty mean xD)

The new shaman racial spells, while cool, are also kind of all over the place, and suffer from a much too large cooldown to be of any practical use.

[Gantulga]

Enh is a not a DPS spec. Enh tank is pretty decent even in raids and deep enh is a popular healer spec.
Where do people get the idea that enh is a DPS tree?

[Akos1896]

Enh is a not a DPS spec. Enh tank is pretty decent even in raids and deep enh is a popular healer spec.
Where do people get the idea that enh is a DPS tree?

I will list some of the enh tree talents.
* Thundering strikes (5% melee crit)
* Flurry (same as with warriors)
* Stormstike (double-attack)
* Weapon mastery (+10% damage with all weapons)
* Improved weapon totems (keep in mind that shaman tanks use grace of air as an air totem, not WF)
* Elemental weapon (getting stronger weapon buffs)

The misunderstanding came because Blizzard was initially planning to make enh a tank spec and TWOW reinforced this idea with some custom talents. But Blizzard gave up on the idea and currently shaman tanks, while possible, are extremely janky.
Their threat generation comes from weapon hits and a shock. No aoe threat, no direct taunt. No defensive CD, no stun, no shout, no talent giving extra threat to nature damage (like palas have with holy damage). Shaman tanks are kinda midway between rogues/warlocks/hunters and pala now.

Also, enhancement, when Blizzard realized what they wanna do with them and made class changes in later expansions became a melee spec.

Regarding the healer idea... You can go into enh tree making your healing worse to make your melee utility better. Plus TWOW added a weakened version of BL. Enh is not a healing tree. Enh is a tree supporting melee, but shamans are so much defined by their (melee) support that most restos give up on healing bonuses to have even more melee support.

[Jstansberry]

Enh is a not a DPS spec. Enh tank is pretty decent even in raids and deep enh is a popular healer spec.
Where do people get the idea that enh is a DPS tree?

Healers going into resto is basically just a TWoW thing because of Bloodlust. Enhancement tank is also decently incentivized by TWoW changes to talents and itemization. Enhancement in vanilla was a (bad) melee DPS spec and technically still is meant to be in TWoW, but there have been very few changes to support it.

[Gantulga]

Even in 1.12 it's far from being a DPS spec. It has group enhancements via the totem talents and some leveling aid in the form of melee talents (which also affect tanking just as much).
It's a support talent tree and other classes have similar trees too, including pure damage dealers.

If anything, turtle team should first decide which direction they want to take with the tree.

[Jstansberry]

Even in 1.12 it's far from being a DPS spec. It has group enhancements via the totem talents and some leveling aid in the form of melee talents (which also affect tanking just as much).
It's a support talent tree and other classes have similar trees too, including pure damage dealers.

If anything, turtle team should first decide which direction they want to take with the tree.

Sorry, but only someone who has never even looked at the 1.12 enhancement talent tree would think this. There were 3 total talents that were "support" talents in the enhancement tree, if we're being generous - realistically there were only 2. That's basically the same amount of "support" talents as the Fury tree for warriors, and no one would call that a support talent tree. Every other talent either makes the shaman do more damage or take less damage, except for a talent that increases max mana and another that reduces Ghost Wolf cast time.

[Ninjerk]

Enh Shaman is pretty mediocre, yeah. And seeing as all the other hybrid dps specs got buffed, I don't see why Enh shouldn't receive the same treatment.

Thunderhead is a really boring talent. I mean i know the bar was set low with the 2H talent, but jesus.

Bloodlust is nice but the cooldown is absurd. What was it, five minutes? On par with Adrenaline Rush from rogue, another talent nobody takes. Both abilities should have their cooldown reduced to the standard 3 minutes for important abilities (Nature's Swiftness, Power Infusion, Presence of Mind etc.)


Idk how it could be improved. Reduce CD on Stormstrike even more? Make the debuff it places actually useful? Some better talents than "increase mana by 5%" (lol) or "15% damage on lighting bolt charrge" (double lol).

While we're at it. I have never, NEVER, liked how the shaman shield spells worked in vanilla. 3 charges for a buff that expensive that only does something when you're getting punched in the face? No thanks.

Maybe make it "lightning shield also increases all damage by 15% while active". Then Thunderhead might have some use (although giving shaman 15% that we then have to put on another, better, DPS, is pretty mean xD)

The new shaman racial spells, while cool, are also kind of all over the place, and suffer from a much too large cooldown to be of any practical use.

I've thought for some time that it would be cool if each stack of Lightning shield gave some kind of dps stat buff (hit/crit, maybe for both melee and spell?) and a later talent in Ele and Enh would have some mechanic that would consume a stack of it to apply extra damage somehow.

[Geojak]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

[Akos1896]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

Yes and it allows real buffs to the trees afterwards.
People tend to dislike it though. Both WF and chain heal are prominent for shaman identity and this is considered too radical for Vanilla+.

[Jstansberry]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

A change like this doesn't actually make enhancement DPS more viable on it's own, though. It'd still be more optimal to heal as enhancement than DPS, even if you'd be missing Chain Heal. A slightly inefficient healer is always going to be better than the worst melee DPS in the game. The hard pill to swallow is that there is no place in raids for a "support" that does very low DPS when they have the ability to heal, instead.

[Akos1896]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

A change like this doesn't actually make enhancement DPS more viable on it's own, though. It'd still be more optimal to heal as enhancement than DPS, even if you'd be missing Chain Heal. A slightly inefficient healer is always going to be better than the worst melee DPS in the game. The hard pill to swallow is that there is no place in raids for a "support" that does very low DPS when they have the ability to heal, instead.

Yes, but if such a support build loses some of its non-DPS utilities (f.ex. chain heal) it gives developers a free hand to buff the DPS at the same time.
People opposing shaman DPS buff usually point to all of the utility the shamans can bring. If we cancel some of those utilities for enhancement, they can finally start hitting like a real DPS.

[Gantulga]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

A change like this doesn't actually make enhancement DPS more viable on it's own, though. It'd still be more optimal to heal as enhancement than DPS, even if you'd be missing Chain Heal. A slightly inefficient healer is always going to be better than the worst melee DPS in the game. The hard pill to swallow is that there is no place in raids for a "support" that does very low DPS when they have the ability to heal, instead.

Yes, but if such a support build loses some of its non-DPS utilities (f.ex. chain heal) it gives developers a free hand to buff the DPS at the same time.
People opposing shaman DPS buff usually point to all of the utility the shamans can bring. If we cancel some of those utilities for enhancement, they can finally start hitting like a real DPS.

Shaman is a support class at core. It makes zero sense to take away their utility. In fact enh needs more utility, not less.

[Jstansberry]

[

Shaman is a support class at core. It makes zero sense to take away their utility. In fact enh needs more utility, not less.

The problem is that the baseline buff support shaman provides is already too strong to reasonably increase. Enhancement currently has no edge over restoration or elemental who can provide the same buff support and fulfill the role of an actual DPS or healer on top of that. Decreasing resto or ele utility is obviously less than ideal. Increasing enhancement DPS is the only path that makes sense, in my opinion.

[Akos1896]

[

Shaman is a support class at core. It makes zero sense to take away their utility. In fact enh needs more utility, not less.

The problem is that the baseline buff support shaman provides is already too strong to reasonably increase. Enhancement currently has no edge over restoration or elemental who can provide the same buff support and fulfill the role of an actual DPS or healer on top of that. Decreasing resto or ele utility is obviously less than ideal. Increasing enhancement DPS is the only path that makes sense, in my opinion.

The problem with shaman utility is that besides bloodlust all of them is baseline, everyone has them (besides minor upgrades in talent trees). You almost get the whole package by default.
And after that you can choose if you wanna spam an op heal during raids, be an oom threat generator or spam autoattacks -> most shamans go resto.

[Manletow]

I don't see why Enh shouldn't also be buffed

Thunderhead is a really boring talent.
3 charges for a buff that expensive that only does something when you're getting punched in the face? No thanks.

Bloodlust is nice but the cooldown is absurd.

shaman racial spells suffer from a much too large cooldown

It was buffed in many ways including Stormstrike becoming cheaper with a shorter cooldown.
Talents were heavily buffed (such as combining 10% armor boost + 5% dodge Talents) and giving Parry ability for free to all Shamans.

If you buff DPS you need to nerf defense/healing ability.
Paladin is overpowered because they buffed their damage but did nothing to reduce their defenses/healing.

Thunderhead is an incredibly fun and clever talent.
It allows Shaman to provide a buff (that is not tethered to a totem).
It allows Enhancement to provide more Support (usually putting it on a Tank) -- expanding its intended role.
It allows Shaman to get value from a Elemental Shield when usually its useless (in Raids) due to requiring the Shaman get hit to activate.

The competition is simply too strong. Using Water Shield for 15 mana (requiring NO talent points) vs spamming 300 Mana Lightning Shields (which cost 4 talent points) is preferable to most Shaman players.

But yeah Bloodlust should be 4 minute cooldown (and reduce the high mana cost).
The Spirit Wolf Racial also has a high mana cost I would not mind seeing get reduced. Or remove the .5 cast time.

[Hungry9]

I just want to know how to continue playing as a pure enhancement shaman in Turtle World of Warcraft now? Be a mascot?

[Skeetul77]

I keep seeing people mention thunderhead and bloodlust and I think this is your problem. Those are overpriced for what they do and thunderhead's purpose is that the damage it does increases the casting shaman's threat, not the target's, which isn't really helping your DPS anyways. I'm leveling a shaman and I treat stormstrike like it's still the 31 point talent with nothing beneath it, because everything below it in the enhancement tree is weaker than what you can from going hard elemental.

If I were going a hard raiding spec, I'd do something like this.
https://talents.turtle-wow.org/shaman/Z31U0I6-5H00N01

You skip out on
-full Weapon mastery
-Bloodlust

For

Elemental Mastery - This now also procs from melee crits AND flametongue giving you 2 chances for 40% cheaper shocks

Elemental Devastation - This used to be a horrible talent because you needed a lot more talent points to fill out enhancement. Now that you don't, and every spell crit will proc clear casting and give you 9% melee crit.(Can't remember if flametongue crits also proc this, but I think they do.)

Elemental Fury - Double damage on your spell crits, need I say more?

So how this works, instead of waiting 5 minutes to get bloodlust and get a minor bonus to your swing speed and casting(why are you casting anyways?), you're constantly proccing flurry and clear casting and every spell crit gives you 9% more melee crit, which gives you a whole crap load of flurries, and you just keep rolling.

I've never raided vanilla as an enhancement shaman. But I would think they'd avoid strength gear because that scales too poorly. So assuming you get agility, intellect, pure crit and attack power, you should have a pretty great crit chance with the extra 9% from elemental devastation. I would even consider taking flametongue over windfury because it procs every hit and has a chance to proc clearcasting and the possibility of of elemental devastation for 9% extra crit fun times.

[Calli]

How about baking into the enhanced wf totem the actual wf totem skill too.
Meaning you can only use the totem if actually skilled enhancement.

Couple this with putting chain heal locked into the end of the healing talents.

This will fix, the current meta problem that is, you spamm healing wave and drop wf totem. After the fix you either spamm healing wave, or you drop wf totem as enhancement. It will also stop the meta of getting bloodlust and still just spamm healing wave.

This is a good suggestion, really.

[Jstansberry]

I keep seeing people mention thunderhead and bloodlust and I think this is your problem. Those are overpriced for what they do and thunderhead's purpose is that the damage it does increases the casting shaman's threat, not the target's, which isn't really helping your DPS anyways. I'm leveling a shaman and I treat stormstrike like it's still the 31 point talent with nothing beneath it, because everything below it in the enhancement tree is weaker than what you can from going hard elemental.

If I were going a hard raiding spec, I'd do something like this.
https://talents.turtle-wow.org/shaman/Z31U0I6-5H00N01

You skip out on
-full Weapon mastery
-Bloodlust

For

Elemental Mastery - This now also procs from melee crits AND flametongue giving you 2 chances for 40% cheaper shocks

Elemental Devastation - This used to be a horrible talent because you needed a lot more talent points to fill out enhancement. Now that you don't, and every spell crit will proc clear casting and give you 9% melee crit.(Can't remember if flametongue crits also proc this, but I think they do.)

Elemental Fury - Double damage on your spell crits, need I say more?

So how this works, instead of waiting 5 minutes to get bloodlust and get a minor bonus to your swing speed and casting(why are you casting anyways?), you're constantly proccing flurry and clear casting and every spell crit gives you 9% more melee crit, which gives you a whole crap load of flurries, and you just keep rolling.

I've never raided vanilla as an enhancement shaman. But I would think they'd avoid strength gear because that scales too poorly. So assuming you get agility, intellect, pure crit and attack power, you should have a pretty great crit chance with the extra 9% from elemental devastation. I would even consider taking flametongue over windfury because it procs every hit and has a chance to proc clearcasting and the possibility of of elemental devastation for 9% extra crit fun times.

Elemental Devastation and Elemental Fury sound very good on paper, but do not perform nearly as well as Weapon Mastery and Bloodlust. You also sacrifice Nature's Guidance from the resto tree by doing that talent build. I've tried to optimize a "spellhance" setup like the one you proposed, but it never performs nearly as well as an entirely physical damage setup such as this. The issue is how spread out your stats are.

While it does not show a "resist" line in the combat log, Flametongue attacks can be resisted - they just don't appear in the combat log at all when they resist. This means if you want Flametongue to work, you need spell hit to make it competitive. So for a spellhancement build to work you need melee hit, melee crit, spell crit, spell hit, and spell power. There are very, very few items of a decent ilevel that can give you those stats without sacrificing other stats. Elemental Devastation and Elemental Fury are very lackluster without stacking spell crit and Flametongue has a 17% chance to not even land against raid bosses. Paladins do not have this same gearing issue because their on hit spell damage effects such as Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Command do not use the spell hit roll - if the melee attack they are attached to lands the seal damage will also land. Paladin seals also do not partial resist because they are holy damage - Flametongue attacks can partial resist. Similarly, Paladin judgements have been changed in the last few months so that some of them use melee hit instead of spell hit (beforehand they technically used both - the actual judgement and the seal-specific effect used different hit/miss rolls) - an advantage over the analogous shock spells which use spell hit.

In summary, because your shocks and Flametongue hits will be missing ~17% of the time without any spell hit and you also will be wanting to stack a bunch of spell crit for Elemental Fury/Elemental Devastation, spellhancement is just worse when compared to the typical physical damage enhancement build due to stat budgeting. If Nature's Guidance were in the Elemental or Enhancement tree instead of the Restoration tree, then maybe it could be more viable due to the 3% free spell and melee hit giving much more room for other stats in your item slots. However, I think that as long as shock spells and Flametongue attacks use the spell hit roll, spellhancement will always be less than viable - building around attacks that require spell hit as a melee DPS that inherently requires melee hit by default is much too costly in terms of stat budgeting.

Spell ret is the most analogous spec to spellhance and it performs pretty well in terms of DPS output, but it has many inherent advantages over any theoretical spellhancement build. The only advantage that spellhancement could possibly have over spellret is better scaling with spell crit (Seal of Righteousness can not crit and shamans have access to Elemental Fury), but spellret has way too many atypical interactions baked into the kit that make it viable - such as spell hit not being necessary and holy damage unable to be partially resisted, Seal of Righteousness counting as another chance to roll for on hit procs, etc. Then on top of those atypical advantages, Paladins have actual melee abilities to press on Turtle: Holy Strike and Crusader Strike. Even with all of those advantages over spellhance, spellret is generally middle of the pack in terms of DPS. Some spellrets get very high parses by taking advantage of interactions that some would call exploits - Turtle historically does not like that sort of thing existing in their meta so we'll see if it lasts.