1. Introduction
2. Whats n̶e̶w̶ old in vanilla?
3. Talent Spec
.....3a. Enhance / Elemental 18/33/0
.....3b. Enhance / Restoration 0/33/18
4. Gear
.....4a. Items and stats
.....4b. Enchantments
5. Spells, and how to use them
.....5a. Skills and totems
.....5b. Friends and foes
6. Professions
7. Addons
.....7a. Addons
.....7b. Macros
8. Final notes
1. Introduction
Welcome to my 1.12 guide for Enhancement pvp! I've been playing the class in a pvp role on retail since early WotLK, while not originally experiencing the vanilla playstyle until much later. For this reason, forgive me if I have made any mistakes within the guide. While I have done a large amount of research combined with my own style of play mistakes happen, feel free to contact me and i'll correct them it immediately. Shamans can fill an extremely diverse role within a battleground. They are generally a class that can move away from the norms many other classes have to abide by, with plenty of tricks up their sleeves - making them a dangerous and unpredictable foe on the battlefield. While my personal playstyle has moved in a certain direction, do not be afraid to experiment! Stagnation leads to predictability, and predictability often leads to failure.
2. Whats n̶e̶w̶ old in vanilla?
If you were to compare vanilla shamans to the shamans of retail, you could be forgiven for thinking they are an entirely different class altogether. In retail, enhancement players dual wield slow axes or maces while instantly casting various spells and attacks, boosting their attack speed and shock damage for the next X attacks and occasionally getting a free instacast of a heal or lightning bolt. They work more like a normal melee class as opposed to how they were previously. Totems are extremely situational, only last a few seconds and are mostly an ignored afterthought while weapon imbuements were removed entirely from the game.
In vanilla shamans are closer to the ideas portrayed in popular fiction and folklore. Like the elements we can be highly unpredictable, capable of slowing your movement with ice, interrupting every spell you cast with earth, scorching you with fire and blowing you over with a flurry of wind. With the elements at our back we have many tricks that can catch out even the most seasoned of players while keeping ourselves out of harms way by shielding ourselves with lighting and earth while reflecting your spells with air. Equipped with a one hand weapon and shield until we can get in range, where we switch weapons on the fly for our heavy hitting two hander, Shamans mostly rely on tactical placement of totems and thinking ahead while attempting to outlast our opponents until our windfury procs can deal massive unpredictable burst damage.
3. Talent Spec
There are several talent specializations that vanilla enhancement shamans use. Below are the most common builds, but most are able to be tweaked to your liking and playstyle. I'll explain the reasoning behind my chosen spec, but feel free to try any of the other styles and change as you see fit.
3a. Enhance / Elemental 18/33/0
Click for more information
Enhancement tree: 33 Talent points.
Ancestral Knowledge - Useful. Shamans can struggle with mana, but if you feel that ranged classes are kiting you too easily pick up shield specialization instead.
Guardian Totems - Useful. Increases your survivability further. Very useful against any burst classes.
Thundering Strikes - Essential! Critical attacks are always welcome, if they proc at the same time as a windfury proc you can oneshot cloth users with some luck!
Improved Ghost Wolf - Useful. Shamans have no gap closer so having ghost wolf on a 1 second cooldown is almost essential
Improved Lightning Shield - Useful. Punish anyone attacking you with a nice boost to lightning shield damage.
Two Handed Axes and Maces - Essential! Enhancement relies on big, slow two-handers for their huge windfury damage.
Flurry - Essential! The problem with two handers is they are slow, and windfury only has a 20% chance to proc anyway. Synergises well with Thundering Strikes
Elemental Weapons - Essential! Raises the Windfury attack power bonus by a further 40%.
Parry - Essential! Your parry chance might not be astonishingly high, but a parry can easily be the difference between life and death.
Weapon Mastery - Essential! A solid 10% damage boost to your white hits, stacks wonderfully with crits and Windfury
Stormstrike - Essential! Gives you an extra white hit, which has the chance to crit as well as proc windfury. Boosts your next two damaging nature spells (shocks, lightning bolts) by 20%.
Elemental:18 Talent points
Concussion - Useful. Taken for the bonus damage to our shocks mostly, the lightning bolt damage helps if you catch a melee class at range however. Convection can be taken instead if you need the mana, but hopefully you chose Ancestral Knowledge in the enhancement tree to help with your mana issues.
Earth's Grasp - Extremely useful. Stops people from simply killing your stoneclaw totem instead of letting you soak up their hits and increases the slowing range of your earthbind totem.
Elemental Warding - Extremely useful. Boosts your fire, frost and nature resists by 10%. Seriously helps against mages, druids as well as other shamans.
Reverberation - Essential! Reducing the cooldown of your shock spells means you have more interrupts to deal with those pesky kiters and a ton more burst potential.
Eye of the Storm - Extremely useful. Every time you suffer a critical hit you benefit from 6 seconds of focused casting which prevents your cast time from being slowed by hits. Makes it ridiculously easy to heal yourself after taking several nasty hits while making unprepared rogues trivial. Quick note, many people choose Elemental Devastation instead and while it is a valid choice you'll find spell criticals either too rare to benefit from, or you'll be throwing lightning bolts outside of melee range anyway.
3b. Enhance / Restoration 0/33/18
Click for more information
Very similar to the 18/33/0 spec, however instead of moving down the elemental tree you instead focus on defensive talents such as Shield Specialization while aiming for Healing Focus in the restoration tree. It mainly boils down to whether you want a 100% reduction in spell pushback upon being crit for 6 seconds in the 18/33/0 tree, stronger offensive spells but weaker heals or a passive 70% chance to avoid spell pushback with stronger heals, higher hit rating but weaker spells.
4. Gear
4a. Items and stats
Stat priority: Stam > Str > Agi > Int > Spellpower > Hit
Try not to focus on stat weightings too much, shamans in vanilla are dependant on being well rounded and balanced but the above guide should be a general idea what to aim for.
At low levels gear won't matter too much. Just get the best dungeon items you can find with Stam, Str, Agi, Int, Spellpower, Hit in approximately that order. Make sure you have at least a slow 2 handed weapon (3.4 seconds and slower preferred) and a nice caster shield for long range and gap closing.
Once you get closer to 60 however you'll REALLY need blues or better to cut the grade. As you have no real gap closers ranged classes will melt you in seconds if you don't have the gear you need to get in range. Try to get some decent level 60 dungeon blues or even raid gear before even considering pvp at max level. Once you can do so farm that honor and aim for one of the two sets: Champion's Earthshaker followed by Warlord's Earthshaker
Regardless of your gear you will NEED an Insignia of the Horde so you can break free from CC. No questions asked, this trinket is non-negotiable. It can be purchased from First Sergeant Hola'mahi in the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar for 1g50s
4b. Enchantments
To be added.
5. Spells, and how to use them
5a. Skills and Totems
To be added.
5b. Friends and Foes
To be added.
6. Professions
The shortest answer is the easiest answer here. There aren't any professions you absolutely MUST have, but certainly if you want to maximize your pvp potential there are some that are more beneficial to you than others.
Engineering - Obviously an excellent choice for pvp. Works with every class and to be honest you can't go wrong here. Not only is it the most fun profession in the game, it's also extremely useful skill to have in pvp. There are some fantastic items to craft giving you the ability to mind control people, throw bombs and explosives, root people in place as well as boost yourself forward - an especially useful tool as you have no real gap closer as enhance.
Leatherworking - Able to produce some awesome high end mail items, although at that level you'll be working towards pvp gear.
Blacksmithing - Similarly, able to make some of the BEST 2h weapons for shamans.
7. Addons
7a. Addons
To be added.
7b. Macros
To be added.
7. Final Notes
This guide is very much a work in progress. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions feel free to post them below or message me on my shaman - Triangle
