Enhancement Resources for Legion

With the retirement of Totemspot and seeing a large swath of incorrect information flying around, I thought it was time for me to come out of my perpetual silence to share with you all a list of resources and FAQs to help you combat the Legion as an Enhancement shaman. Please keep in mind that this is accurate as of patch 7.1. For the most up to date information, keep an eye on the Enhancement channel in Earthrine.

General Resources

Earthshrine - The official Shaman Discord channel. Better than IRC or a forum! Check the pins in the appropriate channels for links to all sorts of resources. Check the #Welcome-Readfirst channel for a list of links to the other class Discord channels.

Wordup's Enhancement Guide - Found on Wowhead, this is your best starting point for Enhancement. Yes, he keeps it up to date. No, Icy-Veins is not 100% accurate at this time (sadly). No, Noxxic is not even remotely useful, stay clear. Keep to Wordup's guide.

Wordup's Enhancement Weakauras - I run a watered down/altered version of this set. Most of what you could want to track as Enhancement can be found within this pack.

Hekili's Priority Helper - If you need help with your rotation, this is the best there is. Hekili keeps this well up to date and is constantly making tweaks to help you get the most bang for your button press. Also available for Retribution and Windwalker.

FAQ

Any Frequently Asked Question not found here can be found within Wordup's guide over on Wowhead. I may add on to this list at a later date.

Q: What are the benefits of playing Enhancement?
A: Strong single target damage, strong consistent cleave, decent mobility, decent self healing. Some nice utility (AoE root/slow OR AoE stun OR AoE CC, strong single target CC, AoE movement speed) that can benefit a raid but especially shines in 5 man content. Plus, some pretty neat aesthetics. Outside of burst AoE scenarios, we're one of the stronger melee specs in game currently.

Q: What are our stat priorities?
A: Mastery > Haste > Versatility >> Crit

Q: When I Sim myself, haste comes out higher. Why?
A: Trinket types or current gear can skew Sim results. Incredibly low haste levels could be causing your Sim to favor more haste. In most scenarios it's still more beneficial to continue to stick to mastery gems and enchants. Chances are you'll gain and change out gear frequently as you continue to improve your ilvl, which will alter your stat balances.

Q: Icy-Veins says I need 17% haste, is this true?
A: No. There is no haste soft cap for Enhancement. Hardcap is 100% and we'll likely not see that within this expansion, even with stat bloat.

Q: Is there a mastery hardcap?
A: Nope. The more, the better.

Q: Where can I find a BiS gear list?
A: There isn't one. Thanks to the Warforged/Titanforged system, it's a complete pain in the butt to Sim every gearing scenario. Take what you can get and when in doubt, Sim it.

Q: Is there a BiS list for trinkets?
A: This is the closest thing you'll get. Up to date as of October 17, 2016 by Wordup. Keep in mind that you'll need to Sim yourself if you have trinkets of varying ilvl; secondary stat levels may change how well certain trinkets perform for you.

Q: Everyone keeps telling me to Sim myself! How do I do this?
A: Check out this guide to get you started.

Q: What's the best artifact path?
A: You can find Wordup's quick and dirty recommendation chart here.

Q: Best race for Enhancement?
A: All races Sim very closely. If you're asking this question, you're likely not playing at a level where the race of your character will impact your performance. Choose whichever race you like best and which racials you think you'll personally benefit from the most.

Q: Best Shaman Class Hall followers?
A: Here's a nifty chart. If you'd like to keep Rehgar as a bodyguard, consider deactivating Avalanch.

Q: Best Shaman Class Hall traits?
A: Personal preference.

Media Links

The following are the fellow Enhancement Shaman folks that I personally recommend. My media production as of this post is on semi-hiatus. You'll see some videos from me crop up here and there, but nothing particularly useful.

If you're ever in need of Restoration or Elemental people to follow, please don't hesitate to give me a poke on Twitter. I'll happily redirect you to some awesome folks.

Wordup's Youtube - Guides, previews, and Mythic content, oh my!
Wordup's Twitter - Enhancement talk and occasionally some sass.
Wordup's Twitch - Best hair EU. Streams sporadically, but worth catching when he does.

 Hekili's Twitter - Best taco dog on the net. Addon stuff, terrible puns.

Maelfus' Twitch - Streams more frequently than Wordup, but not by much. Dies a lot. I'm often in chat heckling him.
Maelfus' Twitter - Food, shaman stuff, general nerdery. Best beard in the shaman kingdom.

Shaman WeakAuras (2)

As of Legion, this post is completely out of date. If you've stumbled upon this post looking for Enhancement Weakauras, allow me to redirect you to Wordup's Weakaura setup. I personally use a stripped and modified version of his string.


Back in March I had put together a little post of the WeakAuras I had been playing around with. Since then I've come across several incredibly useful auras that other players have put together, customizing them to my taste in certain cases, and I've even made a few shaman-specific auras myself.

The image above show all of the auras I'm currently using. Looks a little noisy, but keep in mind most of these will not be displayed at the same time. I've divided these auras into four sections: Defensive and Healing, DPS, Procs, and Interrupts.

These auras come in the Defensive and Healing pack.
Upper Left - Glyph of Lightning Shield is activated, applying the 10% damage reduction.
Upper Right - Shamanistic Rage is active, displays remaining duration.
Bottom Row - Spec dependent. Shown is Nature's Guardian activation, duration, and cooldown. The "?" will display the shield value of Stone Bulwark Totem, SBT's duration will be an icon placed under where Shamanistic Rage is shown. Astral Shift will likewise appear underneath Shamanistic Rage's aura.

Here we have miscellaneous auras split between the Defensive and Healing pack and the DPS pack.
1 - Fire Totem tracker (DPS). Will display an image of either your Fire Elemental, Searing Totem, or Magma Totem (depending on which you're using at the time) when you have 10 seconds remaining on the totem's duration. Incredibly useful for when you're specced into Liquid Magma.
2 - Elemental Mastery duration (DPS). Pretty self explanatory. Will only be displayed while the talent is actively being used.
3 - Elemental Fusion tracker (DPS). Will display one icon for one stack of EF, two icons for two stacks of EF. Very necessary for getting the most out of that talent.
4 - Ancestral Guidance tracker (D&H). Will display anytime any shaman in the raid activates AG. Also displays remaining duration of the current AG being used.
5 - Unleashed Flame tracker (DPS). Displays if you have an unused Unleashed Flame buff.
6 - Feral Spirits tracker (DPS). Only displays while wolves/raptors are active and displays remaining duration.
7 - Liquid Magma tracker (DPS) - Displays when LM is activated and displays remaining duration.
8 - Healing Rain duration (D&H) - Displays the remaining duration on your current Healing Rain. Timer is accurate when using the talent Conductivity, though the visual bar may be a little funny at times.

In this image we see a bunch of trinket, ring, and weapon procs, along with a duration timer for your potion. This series of auras (aka the Procs pack) is from a much larger pack someone else put together, which you can find here. Since I'm still using it, I've also included an aura for Scales of Doom. The larger pack includes ALL trinkets from Blackrock Foundry, as well as all weapon enchant procs. Ring procs may also be found within, though I've included both versions in the smaller pack as well.

Last up we have the interrupt aura. Stumbled upon this little gem in one of the WoW subreddits and found it somewhat useful, especially if not all of your interrupters run with some sort of announcing addon. The word 'Interrupts' will be replaced by the name of anyone who successfully interrupts a spell, bosses included. I've brought down the opacity of this aura just because of personal preferences.


I'm still very much getting used to WeakAuras, both in utilizing them visually in a raid setting and on the creation side of things. If anything seems off/doesn't work quite right, please drop me a line so I can go about fixing it!

Shaman WeakAuras

I've been slowly getting more into using WeakAuras, as you can display a lot of useful information with this addon that otherwise may be hidden or not easily referenced in the middle of an encounter.

Currently I'm only using four different strings of auras, with plans on expanding upon them once I return to the game. My focus has been on managing Liquid Magma optimally and tracking my defensive uptimes. These auras originate from pre-existing strings put together by other players, modified slightly to suit my specific needs and to fit the theme of my layout.

Shamanistic Rage Activation/Duration
Icon shows up when Shamanistic Rage is activated, bar to the left counts down the remaining duration of the ability.

Tier 15 Defensive Activation/Duration
Talent specific icon shows up when any of the abilities are active. Each variation shows the duration of the ability. To the left of the SBT icon, the current shield strength will be displayed. NG portion still needs tweaks, but should show activation and I believe the ICD.

Fire Totem Expiration Warning
Pops up when your current fire totem has 10 seconds left on its duration. Icon adjusts to match your current fire totem. A must have for anyone running the Liquid Magma talent.

Liquid Magma Duration
Displays the duration of the Liquid Magma talent to help prevent premature clipping when refreshing fire totems.