On this page, we list your Enhancement Shaman coreabilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of WarcraftMoP 5.4. We also explain whento use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtletiesthat you will need to know if you want to excel at playing an EnhancementShaman.

The other pages of our Enhancement Shaman guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

The rotation of an Enhancement Shaman revolves around the following priority list.

1. Summon and refresh Searing Totem:
   • try to refresh with less than 3 seconds remaining on Searing Flames (the stacking buff that the totem gives you).
2. Cast Lightning Bolt if you have 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon (4 with the Tier 15 2-piece bonus).
3. Cast Stormstrike (called Stormblast during Ascendance).
4. Apply/refresh Flame Shock if:
   • it is not applied on your target and Unleash Flame is up (buff granted by using Unleash Elements);
   • it is applied on your target and Unleash Flame is up;
   • it is not applied on your target, but Unleash Flame is not up and Unleash Elements will not come off cooldown in the next 5 seconds.
5. Cast Lava Lash.
6. Cast Unleash Elements.
7. Cast Earth Shock.
8. Cast Lightning Bolt with 1 or more stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, as a filler(or when you are moving and cannot reach the boss)

If you chose Unleashed Fury as your Tier 6 talent, then using Unleash Elements on cooldown becomes your highest priority.

If you chose Elemental Blast as your Tier 6 talent, then using it on cooldownbecomes your highest priority.

If Flame Shock drops and there are a few seconds left on the cooldown of Unleash Elements, refresh Flame Shock without the Unleash Flamebuff.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

Against 2 enemies, simply keep doing your single-target rotation onone enemy, and start using Fire Nova on cooldown. Lava Lash will spread your Flame Shock tothe other enemy.

Against 3 or more enemies, replace Lightning Boltwith Chain Lightning in your rotation. When fighting at least 6 enemies, replace Searing Totemwith Magma Totem.

3. Shield and Weapon Imbues↑top

Use Lightning Shield, Windfury Weapon on your Main-hand weapon, and Flametongue Weapon on your Off-hand weapon.

Lightning Shield lasts for 1 hour and damage does not cause itto drop. Thanks to your Static Shock passive ability, Lightning Shieldis an integral part of your Enhancement Shaman play style.

4. Cooldown Usage↑top

As an Enhancement Shaman, you have 6 main cooldowns:

• Ascendance is your Mists of Pandaria ability. This cooldowncauses your melee attacks and Stormstrike ability to deal pureNature damage for 15 seconds, meaning that they will benefit fromyour mastery: Mastery: Enhanced Elements.Ascendance has a 3-minute cooldown and should be used whenever it is available.You can also save it to line it up with periods during which you deal increaseddamage. Finally, try to use Ascendance together with other cooldowns,such as Elemental Mastery if you chose it as your Tier 4 talent.
• Feral Spirit should be used on cooldown.
• Fire Elemental Totem and Earth Elemental Totem are importantDPS cooldowns (especially the former, which is by far the most powerful), they should be used whenever yourElementals will be able to attack the boss for 1 minute without beinginterrupted (unless you are using Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem).These twototems are mutually exclusive, as using one causes a 1-minute cooldownon the other. So, use Fire Elemental Totem with higher priorityand use Earth Elemental Totem when your Fire Elemental Totem ison cooldown.
• Spiritwalker's Grace should be used when you need to move, so thatyou can keep casting Elemental Blast when moving (provided youchose it as your Tier 6 talent).
• Stormlash Totem is a raid-wide DPS cooldown that causesevery players within 40 yards of the totem to deal additionalNature damage for 10 seconds. Use it when the raid will deal increaseddamage (while Heroism / Bloodlust / Time Warpis active, for example). You can also use it to push past animportant encounter phase.

Your elementals and your wolves benefit fromyour Attack Power, so it is beneficial to summon them during times when yourAttack power is increased ( Enchant Weapon - Dancing Steel proc, for example).

In addition, your talents grant you a number of other DPS and healingcooldowns, and you have a few defensive cooldowns as well. We detailthem all in our additional cooldownssection.

5. Optional Read: Mastering Your Enhancement Shaman↑top

While the rotations we gave in the previous sections will yield very goodresults, the single-target and multiple-target rotations of an EnhancementShamans have many subtleties. Understanding them will help you play yourcharacter to its full potential.

5.1. Procs

As an Enhancement Shaman, you have the following procs: Flurry, Flametongue Weapon, Windfury Weapon, Static Shock (especiallywith Unleashed Fury talented), and Maelstrom Weapon.Flurry, Flametongue Weapon, Windfury Weapon, and Static Shock are largely out ofyour control and they happen so often that you should not try to time yourabilities to benefit from them.

Maelstrom Weapon, however, needs to be watched out for, as it enablesyou to perform an instant, mana-free cast of one of your spells. Usually, youwill use it with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, but you cansometimes need to use it with Healing Surge, Healing Rain, or Hex.

5.2. Searing Flames and Lava Lash

Searing Totem is your offensive totem. It applies a stackingbuff on you ( Searing Flames), up to 5 stacks. The buff lastsfor 15 seconds and is refreshed every 2 seconds by your totem.This is important because it means that you do not need torefresh Searing Totem as soon as it expires. You can indeed wait for thebuff to have 3 seconds remaining before putting down Searing Totem once again.

The damage of Lava Lash is greatly increased by Searing Flames.When you summon your Fire Elemental Totem, the damage that the elemental deals alsogrants you stacks of Searing Flames, which means that summoning this totemis not detrimental to your DPS. On the contrary, summoning your Fire Elemental isyour most potent ability (i.e., the ability that brings you the most damage for thetime you spend casting it).

5.3. Stormstrike and Nature spells

Stormstrike is a special melee attack that applies a debuff on yourtarget, increasing your chance to critically hit with Nature spells( Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, Lightning Bolt,and Lightning Shield)on that target by 25%.

5.4. Unleash Elements and Flame Shock

Unleash Elements gives you an 8-second buff called Unleash Flame when you use it. Increases the potency of yournext Fire spell. Since Flame Shock is the only Fire spell in yourarsenal ( Lava Lash deals Fire damage, but it is a melee attack, nota Fire spell), you will always want to consume Unleash Flame with Flame Shock.

If you choose Elemental Blast as your Tier 6 talent, it can benefitfrom Unleash Flame, but not enough that it replaces Flame Shockas your spell of choice to consume Unleash Flame with.

5.5. Maelstrom Weapon and Lightning Bolt

Maelstrom Weapon is a stacking self-buff that each of your melee attackshas a chance to apply. Each stack of Maelstrom Weapon decreases the cast time andmana cost of some of your spells, most notably Lightning Bolt.

At 5 stacks, your Lightning Bolt costs no mana and has an instant cast.This is why you should, in most cases, wait until you have 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon before using Lightning Bolt.

The only time when you want to use Lightning Bolt withfewer than 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon is when all yourother spells are on cooldowns and you have nothing to do, or whenyou are on the move and you cannot reach the boss.

5.6. Multiple Target Rotation Subtleties

If you perform your normal single-target rotation on a boss or a prioritytarget (an add from the pack you are trying to kill, for example),any nearby enemy will already take a decent amount of collateraldamage from Flame Shock being spread by Lava Lash.

When fighting a boss surrounded by adds, you can control how muchsingle-target DPS you deal to your main target and how much AoE damage youdeal to nearby enemies. To do so, you can keep casting Lightning Boltinstead of switching to Chain Lightning. Or, you can use Chain Lightning but not Fire Nova.

Note that putting down Magma Totem will cause you to eventuallylose your stacks of Searing Flames. This is the reason why Magma Totemis less effective than Searing Totem where you are fighting only afew enemies.

5.7. Kiting

As an Enhancement Shaman, you will make a great kiter, thanks to Ghost Wolf (which you can improve with Glyph of Ghost Wolf), Spirit Walk, and Earthbind Totem, which allow you to safely runaway from the enemies you are assigned to kite. You can also use Frost Shock to slow down specific enemies.

One advantage that you have over other kiter classes, such asFrost Mages, is your ability to taunt by using Unleash Elementswhen one of your weapons is imbued with Rockbiter Weapon.

When kiting, you should try to move in a circular manner. To achieve that,you should always be moving sideways (left or right) and use the camera control(by default, the mouse right button) to try and rotate around a fixed point.The idea is that it enables you to target the enemies you are kiting and itmakes it easier to group them together.

Your main problem will be to get initial aggro on a pack of enemiesbecause of your lack of repeatable, instant cast time AoE damageability. Your best choice is to use Flame Shock followed by a Fire Nova but you have very little room for error, due to thecooldowns on these abilities. Chain Lightning (with Glyph of Chain Lightning preferably) can work for small groups of enemies.Later on, you can easily maintain your aggro with Unleash Elements and RockbiterWeapon.

5.8. Additional Cooldowns

5.8.1. Defensive Cooldowns

We consider that you have 3 defensive cooldowns.

Feral Spirit is usually categorised as an offensive cooldown.This ability does damage, and this is what matters to a DPS class. Thatsaid, your wolves have a passive ability called Spirit Hunt, whichwill heal you for 150% of the damage the wolves do (210% with Glyph of Feral Spirit). It means that your wolves do more healingthan damage. Therefore, you can perfectly use them as a healing cooldownin times of high damage, if you want to help your healers a bit.

Shamanistic Rage reduces all damage taken by 30% for 15 seconds.With Glyph of Shamanistic Rage, it also removes all dispellable debuffsfrom you. It has a 1-minute cooldown.

Spirit Walk removes all movement-impairing effects from you andincreases your movement speed by 60% for 15 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown,which you can reduce to 45 seconds with Glyph of Spirit Walk.

Healing Tide Totem is a powerful healing cooldown, especially in 25-manraids, where it will target the 12 most injured players.

5.8.2. Tier 1 Talents

Your Tier 1 of talents gives you access to 2 additional defensive cooldownsthat are mutually exclusive: Stone Bulwark Totem and Astral Shift.Simply use them whenever needed, following the guidelines we gave inthe talents page.

5.8.3. Tier 4 Talents

Ancestral Swiftness gives you an instant-cast Lightning Boltor Chain Lightning every minute. The best way to use it is tomake a macro (see our AncestralSwiftness macro).

Elemental Mastery greatly increases your damage throughputfor 20 seconds, so you should use it on cooldown orkeep it for times when you deal increased damage.

5.8.4. Tier 5 Talents

Ancestral Guidance is a powerful healing cooldown that you should usein times of high raid-wide damage during which you also deal a large amountof damage.

5.8.5. Tier 6 Talent: Primal Elementalist

If you chose Primal Elementalist as your Tier 6 talent,you can get your Earth Elemental Totem and your Fire Elemental Totem to respectively channel Reinforceand Empower on you. While they are channeling,your Elementals are not doing any damage.

Reinforce reduces the damage you takeby 20%. As your Earth Elemental does not do much damage, youshould never hesitate to let it channel Reinforce if youare taking damage.

Empower increases the damage you do by5%. Your Fire Elemental does a significant amount of damage and,in the general case, increasing your damage by 5% does notmake up for the damage your Fire Elemental is not doing whilechanneling. If you are in a situation where 5% of your damagerepresents a larger amount than the damage your Fire Elementaldeals, then it is beneficial to let your Elemental channelEmpower.As an Enhancement Shaman, you need to take into account the factthat when channeling, your Fire Elemental will not apply Searing Flames, which is very detrimental to yourDPS as Lava Lash will no longer get buffed.

Both channels also increase the healing you do by 10%, but thiswill rarely affect your decision as to whether you should letyour Elemental channel.

5.9. Tier 15 Bonuses

With the Tier 15 2-piece bonus, Stormstrike grants 2 additional stacks of Maelstrom Weapon. Therefore,you should cast Lightning Bolt at 4 stacks, so that you do not run the riskof wasting a stack when casting Stormstrike.

The Tier 15 4-piece bonussimply causes you to cast Feral Spirit more often.

5.10. Tier 16 Bonuses

With the T16 2-piece bonus, Unleash Elements becomes your top priority, regardless of the Tier 6 talent you chose.

With the T16 4-piece bonus,you will need to focus on spreading Flame Shock to as many targets as possible in multiple-targetsituations. This way, your Lava Lash cooldown will have a higher chance to reset.

6. Changelog↑top

• 10 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
  • Fire Nova has been significantly buffed and can now be used as soon as there is a second target.
  • Added section on Tier 16 bonuses.
• 19 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: Lightning Bolt can now be cast while moving.
• 04 Apr. 2013: Big update following review from Purge.
  • Improved explanations for consuming Maelstrom Weapon charges with the Tier 15 2-piece bonus.
  • Removed advice to refresh Flame Shock with less than 3 seconds remaining. It simply needs to be refreshed every time Unleash Flame is up.
  • Removed outdated explanations for when to use Feral Spirit.
  • Added a few minor tips here and there ( Unleash Flame and Elemental Blast, clipping Flame Shock, added a few defensive cooldowns).
• 27 Mar. 2013: Fixed a very confusing typo in the AoE rotation section.
• 09 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • The cooldown of Spirit Walk is now 1 minute (was 2).
  • Improved explanations for using your Elemental Totems.
  • Added tips and explanations for the Tier 15 bonuses.
  • Improved explanations for the interaction of Flame Shock and Unleash Elements.

Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Buffs, Debuffs, and Useful Abilities