How to Play an Enhancement Shaman
An enhancement shaman brings a lethal combination of quick-casting spell damage and hard-hitting melee swings to a "World of Warcraft" fight, rounding out a personal arsenal with improved totems that buff the entire raid group. Playing an enhancement shaman requires a good deal of cooldown management, but when handled efficiently can result in solid DPS and a whole lot of fun.
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Instructions
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Dual wield two slow (over 2.5 speed) weapons, and keep your weapon imbues active at all times. You should place Windfury on your main-hand weapon, and Flametongue on your offhand with no exceptions.
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Gear with your weapons in mind, placing focus on melee stats such as Attack Power, Agility, and Critical Strike rating. Spellpower can also be desirable--Enhancement still relies heavily on spell casting in addition to melee damage--but in general you should avoid pure caster stats such as mana per 5 and spirit.
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Start a fight by dropping your totems, and keep them up at all times. The specific totems of each element that you place depend somewhat on the particular encounter, but your basic set should generally include Windfury Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, Magma or Searing Totem, and Mana Spring or Healing Spring Totem. Adjusting your totem drops will depend on group composition, and whether you are playing PvE or PvP; carefully reading your totem tooltips and experimenting based on each encounter is a good way to get a feel for when to switch this set up.
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Use Stormstrike as often as it is available, and follow with Flameshock and Lava Lash. Allow Flameshock to run its full duration before refreshing, casting Earth Shock instead until Flameshock drops off. Use Lava Lash when it is available and both Stormstrike and your shocks are on cooldown.
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5
Stack Maelstrom Weapon five times in order to proc the instant-cast nature spell, and use Lightning Bolt in single-target situations, or Chain Lightning if there is more than one target. Only in emergency situations should an enhancement shaman ever use a five-stack of Maelstrom to use a healing spell, but if it will save you from death or save your group from a wipe, do not hesitate to do so.
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Refresh your totems and Lightning Shield as needed. Try to aim for as close to 100% uptime as possible, especially where your totems are concerned. If a totem drops off right as Stormstrike becomes available, you can leave the totems down for a moment in order to Stormstrike first.
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Time your Spirit Wolves for use with Heroism or Bloodlust during raid encounters, or on bosses in normal dungeons.
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