Enhancement Shaman Raid and World Boss Guide for WoW Classic

enhancement shaman raid and world boss guide

Your role in the melee group is to provide totems to the melee group and put down as many Annihilator/Nightfall procs as possible. In the healing utility build, you will also be trying to aid with raid heals at the small cost to your Annihilator/Nightfall procs. Your role is not to top DPS meters.

Below you will find the accompanying video hosted by Melderon that features information from this guide, with some extra info provided by Joeytwotimes.

The link to the Google Slides from the video: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FiAr4y8SksKtP1Q2njGyxfXFBE4x74iRiKwYHhV533U/

Stat Priority

Elemental Devastation & Stormstrike Builds

  1. Hit (Most Important)
  2. Attack Speed
  3. Critical Strike and Agility
  4. Intellect and Mp5 (Mana per 5 seconds)
  5. Stamina
  6. Strength

It is super important to get Hit to 9% (or 6% as Orc) in order to reach Hit Cap then try to work on Critical Strike since this will be a common trade-off.

Here is a phase 1 Pre-Raid BIS list for this build in the Gear Planner.

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Healing Utility Build

  1. Hit (Most Important)
  2. Mp5 (Mana per 5 seconds)
  3. Intellect
  4. Attack Speed
  5. Critical Strike and Agility
  6. Healing
  7. Stamina
  8. Strength

Once again, it is super important to get Hit to 9% (or 6% as Orc) in order to reach Hit Cap. I’m not entirely sure how to value Healing bonuses in this build yet.

Enchants

Consumables & Buffs

Self-Buffs

  • windfury-weapon (Rank 4):
    • This is better than the Windfury that you will get from your Rank 3 Windfury Totem, so buff yourself with this.
  • grilled-squid for +10 Agility:
    • This is going to increase your chance to get a Critical Strike, which will trigger flurry which will hopefully proc nightfall/annihilator.
  • nightfin-soup for +8 mp5:
    • This is situationally used as your food buff on particular fights that may have you providing some raid heals like Shazzrah or is you are in the Healing Utility Build.
  • gordok-green-grog for +10 Stamina:
    • This is extra health with no downside.
  • elixir-of-giants for +25 Strength:
    • This helps your DPS with no downside. This does not stack with juju-power and juju-power is better, so it is probably just better to use juju-power.
  • elixir-of-the-mongoose for +25 Agility and +2% Critical Strike:
    • This helps your DPS with no downside. Plus, the extra critical strike chance is going to help proc your flurry which increases your attack speed.
  • juju-might for +40 Attack Power:
    • This helps your DPS with no downside.
  • juju-power for +30 Strength:
    • This helps your DPS with no downside. This is better than elixir-of-giants and they don’t stack so you should probably just use juju-power.

Situational Self-Buffs

  • juju-flurry for +3% Attack Speed for 20 seconds:
    • When you get a chance to swing at a boss for 20 seconds or so unimpeded and you have everything else under control, feel free to give this a go. Obviously, you could use it more frequently, but you will go through them much faster and need to farm more for diminishing returns. Plus, it could be distracting from your other roles.
  • free-action-potion for immunity for stun and movement impairing effects for 30 seconds:
    • Can be useful if you know a boss uses a stun or movement impairing effect at a given time.
  • juju-ember for +15 Fire Resistance:
    • Use this for bosses that use fire damage. It provides a little extra fire resistance with no downside.
  • greater-fire-protection-potion to absorb the first 1950 to 3250 fire damage you take:
    • Use this for bosses that use fire damage. Be sure to pop this early in your buff cycle so that it is off cooldown when the fight starts and you can pop it during the fight or even multiple times during the fight if possible.
  • greater-arcane-protection-potion to absorb the first 1950 to 3250 arcane damage you take:
    • Use this for bosses that use arcane damage. Be sure to pop this early in your buff cycle so that it is off cooldown when the fight starts and you can pop it during the fight or even multiple times during the fight if possible.
  • greater-shadow-protection-potion to absorb the first 1950 to 3250 shadow damage you take:
    • Use this for bosses that use shadow damage. Be sure to pop this early in your buff cycle so that it is off cooldown when the fight starts and you can pop it during the fight or even multiple times during the fight if possible.

Raid Buffs

  • mark-of-the-wild for +20 resistance to all forms of damage +285 armor and +12 to all stats.
  • power-word-fortitude for +54 Stamina:
    • More health is always good.
  • arcane-intellect for +31 to Intellect:
    • A larger mana pool for casting totems from is always good.
  • prayer-of-spirit for +40 Spirit:
    • This will help with mana regeneration when you are outside of the five-second rule, which can happen even when totem twisting. However, if you are using the talent build that has you spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock, you will likely never get out of the five-second rule since your Earth Shock has a five-second cooldown (it has a second reduced from the talent tree). Sometimes, you’ll be moving in a fight without casting and there is no downside to having some extra mana regeneration for those times though.
  • battle-shout for +232 Attack Power:
    • This helps your DPS with no downside.
  • prayer-of-shadow-protection for +70 Shadow Resistance:
    • This is useful on bosses that use shadow spells.

Pre-Raid Buffs

  • rallying-cry-of-the-dragonslayer for +140 Attack Power as well as +10% Spell Critical Strike and 5% Melee and Ranged Critical Strike:
    • This is the Onyxia/Nefarion head buff and the Attack Power increases your DPS with no downside. The extra Melee Critical Strike will be nice for triggering flurry more often with the hope of getting nightfall/annihilator to proc. The increased Spell Critical Strike is nice once you are using the after Hit Cap talent build which has you spamming Rank 1 earth-shock in hopes of triggering elemental-devastation to increase your melee Critical Strike chance and thus hopefully trigger flurry so that nightfall/annihilator will proc more. This buff does not persist through death.
  • moldars-moxie for +15% Stamina:
    • This is a Dire Maul Tribute buff and extra health is always good. This buff does not persist through death.
  • fengus-ferocity for +200 Attack Power:
    • This is a Dire Maul Tribute buff and provides extra DPS with no downside. This buff does not persist through death.
  • slipkiks-savvy for +3% Spell Critical Strike:
    • This will be helpful in the after Hit Cap talent build for trying to land more Rank 1 earth-shock in the hope of getting Elemental Devastation to trigger Flurry to trigger more nightfall/annihilator procs. This buff does not persist through death.
  • songflower-serenade for +5% Critical Strike:
    • This is going to increase your chance to get a Critical Strike, which will trigger flurry which will hopefully proc nightfall/annihilator. This buff does not persist through death.

Mana Potions

  • major-mana-potion for restoring 1350 to 2250 mana:
    • These are very useful and it is not uncommon to use one of these in a fight. When you need mana, this or major-rejuvenation-potion will be your first choice.
  • major-rejuvenation-potion for restoring 1440 to 1760 mana and 1440 to 1760 health:
    • This is the go to potion when I could stand to gain a little health as well. It doesn’t have nearly as much maximum mana restoration as the major-mana-potion, but it does give you a good bit of health back and you need to be alive to lay down totems and get nightfall/annihilator procs.
  • demonic-rune and dark-rune for restoring 900 to 1500 mana at the cost of 600 to 1000 health:
    • These can be useful for restoring mana as they do not share a cooldown with major-mana-potion or major-rejuvenation-potion Potion. However, be careful when you use them since you can kill yourself using them. I don’t usually find myself needing to use them, but I do carry some with me.
  • enriched-manna-biscuit for restoring 2148 health and 4410 mana:
    • This is pretty handy after being resurrected.
  • restorative-potion for curing one magic, curse, poison or disease every five seconds for 30 seconds:
    • This can be really helpful on bosses that spam lots of magic, curses, poisons or diseases on the raid.

Talents

There are three general builds that you will need to consider depending on the raid’s available debuff slots and healing needs.

Stormstrike Build

This build has a few advantages. First, it is probably the highest DPS build of the three builds. It is also a pretty good pre-Hit Cap build because it puts points into natures-guidance. This is the talent tree that I possibly recommend before Hit Cap (9% for Troll and Tauren and 6% for Orc, assuming annihilator/nightfall use):

classic shaman 0 31 20
0/31/20

Second, this build is likely preferably over the Elemental Devastation Build if your raid will allow you a debuff slot. stormstrike will give you three extra hits per minute, which I think is greater than the increased number of hits you’d get from the extra Critical Strike -> flurry that you’d get in the Elemental Devastation Build. If you don’t have a debuff slot, it’s still a decent build pre-hit cap.

A small note about this tree, I do not think this is the best tree for an Enhancement Shaman because you need to sink points into getting the totem benefits and the hit from natures-guidance in the Restoration tree, but you skip lots of the other benefits from the Restoration tree.

Enhancement (31 points)

  • ancestral-knowledge – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your maximum Mana by 5%. A larger mana pool for your totems is always good.
  • thundering-strikes – Rank 5/5
    • Improves your chance to get a critical strike with your weapon attacks by 5%. This improves your DPS, but more importantly it gives you a better chance to land Flurry which increases your chance for nightfall/annihilator procs.
  • improved-ghost-wolf – Rank 2/2
    • Reduces the cast time of your ghost-wolf spell by 2 sec. This is needed to get deeper in the talent tree at the next level. This placement is a bit contentious because you could put the two points into guardian-totems, but you will likely not be in the Main Tank’s group, so you’ll be instead casting strength-of-earth-totem for your Earth Totem. As a result, I put these two points into Improved Ghost Wolf to give myself a much better PvP viability. However, if you are use grounding-totem frequently in PvP, than this might have more overall utility at 60 since it will give you a reduced cooldown.
  • enhancing-totems – Rank 2/2
  • two-handed-axes-and-maces – Rank 1/1
    • Allows you to use Two-Handed Axes and Two-Handed Maces. You are going to need this to carry nightfall. Maybe before nightfall gets released you could argue that it could be placed elsewhere since you are carrying annihilator, but all of the other places you could place this point are all still pretty negligible.
  • flurry – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your attack speed by 30% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. This is big. You are all about trying to hit the raid and world bosses as much as possible, so a talent that increases your attack speed by 30% after you Critical Strike is big. This is also, why Critical Strike and Agility are important stats for you.
  • improved-weapon-totems – Rank 2/2
  • elemental-weapons – Rank 3/3
    • Increases the melee attack power bonus of your rockbiter-weapon by 20%, your windfury-weapon effect by 40% and increases the damage caused by your flametongue-weapon and frostbrand-weapon by 15%. Makes your weapon buff, windfury-weapon, better. The buff gives you extra DPS with no downside which will be helpful in PvP and dungeons. These talents could be placed elsewhere in a different build since your windfury-weapon is not as important as windfury-totem for the people in your group. However, I didn’t really see a better place to be placing these talents.
  • weapon-mastery – Rank 5/5
    • Increases the damage you deal with all weapons by 10%. The buff gives you extra DPS with no downside which will be helpful in PvP and dungeons. These talents could be placed elsewhere in a different build since your DPS is not super critcal. However, I didn’t really see a better place to be placing these talents.
  • stormstrike – Rank 1/1
    • Gives you an extra attack. In addition, the next 2 sources of Nature damage dealt to the target are increased by 20%. Lasts 12 sec. You have made it to the end of the tree and this spell could be pretty useful in PvP and dungeons, but you won’t be using it in raids unless your raid will give you debuff slot of raid and world bosses. Getting a debuff slot will mean that you get three extra chances to proc annihilator/nightfall per minute. Without a debuff slot, it could be reasonably argued that natures-swiftness is a better use for this talent.

Restoration (20 points)

  • improved-healing-wave – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the casting time of your healing-wave spell by 0.5 sec. This is just to get deeper into the tree, but a faster healing-wave I think will be more useful than a less mana intensive one offered from tidal-focus. However, maybe tidal-focus is better here since you are sometimes strapped for mana. My mind isn’t fully made up here.
  • improved-reincarnation – Rank 1/2
    • Reduces the cooldown of your reincarnation spell by 10 min and increases the amount of health and mana you reincarnate with by an additional 10%. You will need to use this to get deeper in the tree at the next level. It has a mildly nice benefit of shortening your reincarnation cooldown and thus makes you more helpful after wipes.
  • totemic-focus – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the Mana cost of your totems by 25%. Makes the reason you are here, laying totems, less mana intensive.
  • natures-guidance – Rank 3/3
    • Increases your chance to hit with melee attacks and spells by 3%. Increases your most important stat. You need to be stacking hit because one of your major jobs is to try to get get procs on raid and world bosses with nightfall/annihilator.
  • totemic-mastery – Rank 1/1
    • The radius of your totems that affect friendly targets is increased to 30 yd. Makes your totems reach further. However, if you are laying them appropriately, you will usually be close to your melee group, so I’m not sure how much this matters. You do need it to get to the next level in the tree.
  • restorative-totems – Rank 5/5

Elemental Devastation Build

classic shaman 18 22 11
18/22/11

Once you have gear that gets you to hit cap, there is an alternative build that utilizes elemental-devastation. This build will have highest annihilator/nightfall uptime if your raid does not give you a debuff slot.

This build plays much differently. The premise of this build is to spam Rank 1 earth-shock and try to get a critical strike with it, so that you can trigger elemental-devastation to hopefully trigger flurry and increase the uptime of nightfall/annihilator. The general idea of this build is that you will enter most raid and world boss encounters and drop your totems, auto-attack and spam Rank 1 earth-shock (while Totem Twisting, if necessary). However, as your raid gets better and you begin to have a better idea of the time it will take for bosses to go down for you raid, you can also increase the Rank of earth-shock accordingly. In this guide I will always state Rank 1 earth-shock, but your mileage may vary.

Elemental (18 points)

  • convection – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the mana cost of your Shock, lightning-bolt and chain-lightning spells by 10%. This is mostly about getting yourself to the deeper in the talent tree since you will be spamming the mana inexpensive Rank 1 earth-shock. However, it could help save some mana in PvP settings when you are using a higher rank of earth-shock and lightning-bolt. I could see the argument for concussion here if you begin using higher ranks of earth-shock in your boss encounters. But the reduced mana costs for an already mana strapped build is nice as well. My mind is not totally made up here and it depends on your raid and how quickly you can down raid and world bosses.
  • earths-grasp – Rank 2/2
    • Increases the health of your stoneclaw-totem by 50% and the radius of your earthbind-totem by 20%. This is also about getting deeper into the talent tree and it is a bit contentious. I think placing these two talents points in either earths-grasp, call-of-flame or concussion are reasonably defendable positions. I picked earths-grasp since it gives a small boost to using earthbind-totem during the Sons of Flame stage of the Ragnaros fight. The raids we have done so far (Onyxia’s Lair and Molten Core) don’t benefit from Fire Totems so call-of-flame isn’t super useful, but perhaps that will change in later raids. call-of-flame has some PvP and dungeon value though. Getting improved damage out of your lightning-bolts and earth-shock from concussion is pretty minimal since you are only using Rank 1 earth-shock to either cause interrupts or try to trigger elemental-devastation. A little boost to DPS with that seems not worthwhile, but it could be helpful in PvP and open world encounters. Long story short, I think the placement of these two points is pretty much up to you and how you think you will play, but I currently I see the most raid functionality from earths-grasp.
  • elemental-warding – Rank 3/3
    • Reduces damage taken from Fire, Frost and Nature effects by 10%. This reduces damage taken and as a result helps with your survivability. This is a nice talent and can really add up over the longer term.
  • reverberation – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the cooldown of your Shock spells by 1 sec. This reduces the cooldown of your Shock spells, but most importantly your Earth Shock. It lets you get more of those in with the hopes of triggering elemental-devastation.
  • elemental-devastation – Rank 3/3
    • Your offensive spell crits will increase your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks by 9% for 10 sec. This is one of the big reasons we’ve put so much work into the Elemental tree. Hopefully, your Rank 1 earth-shock will land a critical strike and then improve your chances to proc Flurry in order to improve your chances of getting a proc with nightfall/annihilator.

Enhancement (22 points)

  • ancestral-knowledge – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your maximum Mana by 5%. A larger mana pool for totems is always good.
  • thundering-strikes – Rank 5/5
    • Improves your chance to get a critical strike with your weapon attacks by 5%. This improves your DPS, but more importantly it gives you a better chance to land flurry which increases your chance for nightfall/annihilator procs.
  • improved-ghost-wolf – Rank 2/2
    • Reduces the cast time of your ghost-wolf spell by 2 sec. This is needed to get deeper in the talent tree at the next level. This placement is a bit contentious because you could put the two points into guardian-totems, but you will likely not be in the Main Tank’s group, so you’ll be instead casting strength-of-earth-totem for your Earth Totem. As a result, I put these two points into Improved ghost-wolf to give myself a much better PvP viability. However, if you are use grounding-totem frequently in PvP, than this might have more overall utility at 60 since it will give you a reduced cooldown.
  • enhancing-totems – Rank 2/2
  • two-handed-axes-and-maces – Rank 1/1
    • Allows you to use Two-Handed Axes and Two-Handed Maces. You are going to need this to carry nightfall. Maybe before nightfall gets released you could argue that it could be placed elsewhere since you are carrying annihilator, but all of the other places you could place this point are all still pretty negligible.
  • flurry – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your attack speed by 30% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. This is big. You are all about trying to hit the raid and world bosses as much as possible, so a talent that increases your attack speed by 30% after you critical strike is big. This is also, why critical strike and agility are important stats for you.
  • improved-weapon-totems – Rank 2/2
    • Increases the melee attack power bonus of your Windfury Totem by 30% and increases the damage caused by your flametongue-totem by 12%. Makes your best totem, windfury-totem, better.

Restoration (11 points)

  • improved-healing-wave – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the casting time of your healing-wave spell by 0.5 sec. This is just to get deeper into the tree, but a faster Healing Wave I think will be more useful than a less mana intensive one offered from tidal-focus. However, maybe tidal-focus is better here since you are sometimes strapped for mana. My mind isn’t fully made up here.
  • totemic-focus – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the Mana cost of your totems by 25%. Makes the reason you are here, laying totems, less mana intensive.
  • totemic-mastery – Rank 1/1
    • The radius of your totems that affect friendly targets is increased to 30 yd. Makes your totems reach further. However, if you are laying them appropriately, you will usually be close to your melee group, so I’m not sure how much this matters.

Healing Utility Build

enhancement shaman raid and world boss guide healing utility build talents 0 22 29
0/22/29

This build is quite flexible with hit, but you almost certainly are going to be putting at least one talent point into natures-guidance. How you spend them depends on your gear, but generally I think the best build is probably the one above. I think this because hit can always be a somewhat tough stat to get and passing up hit where it makes a lot of since seems unwise, but you are making your reincarnation less effective and the cooldown longer.

I also generally think that this build has the most raid utility and it is the build I will be using. However, it is also the build I have the least amount of experience with, so it may not turn out to be as good as I think. It is important to note that this build will predominantly use chain-heal and that has been lots of the rationale behind not putting talent points into things that would help healing-wave and lesser-healing-wave.

The general rotation will look like:

  1. windfury-totem
  2. grace-of-air-totem
  3. Auto-attack
  4. Possible chain-heal
  5. Auto-attack
  6. Possible chain-heal
  7. Auto-attack

You use the possible chain-heals where they seem needed and appropriate.

Enhancement (22 points)

  • ancestral-knowledge – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your maximum Mana by 5%. A larger mana pool for totems is always good.
  • thundering-strikes – Rank 5/5
    • Improves your chance to get a critical strike with your weapon attacks by 5%. This improves your DPS, but more importantly it gives you a better chance to land flurry which increases your chance for nightfall/annihilator procs.
  • improved-ghost-wolf – Rank 2/2
    • Reduces the cast time of your ghost-wolf spell by 2 sec. This is needed to get deeper in the talent tree at the next level. This placement is a bit contentious because you could put the two points into guardian-totems, but you will likely not be in the Main Tank’s group, so you’ll be instead casting strength-of-earth-totem for your Earth Totem. As a result, I put these two points into Improved ghost-wolf to give myself a much better PvP viability. However, if you are use grounding-totem frequently in PvP, than this might have more overall utility at 60 since it will give you a reduced cooldown.
  • enhancing-totems – Rank 2/2
  • two-handed-axes-and-maces – Rank 1/1
    • Allows you to use Two-Handed Axes and Two-Handed Maces. You are going to need this to carry nightfall. Maybe before annihilator, but all of the other places you could place this point are all still pretty negligible.
  • flurry – Rank 5/5
    • Increases your attack speed by 30% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. This is big. You are all about trying to hit the raid and world bosses as much as possible, so a talent that increases your attack speed by 30% after you critical strike is big. This is also, why critical strike and agility are important stats for you.
  • improved-weapon-totems – Rank 2/2

Restoration (29 points)

  • tidal-focus – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by 5%. In this build, it is much more clear that you want tidal-focus because you are going to be using chain-heal frequently, while being mana strapped.
  • totemic-focus – Rank 5/5
    • Reduces the Mana cost of your totems by 25%. Makes the reason you are here, laying totems, less mana intensive.
  • natures-guidance – Rank 3/3
    • Increases your chance to hit with melee attacks and spells by 3%. Increases your most important stat. You need to be stacking hit because one of your major jobs is to try to get get procs on raid and world bosses with nightfall/annihilator. However, depending on your gear you might shift two points into Improved reincarnation. It depends on what gear you see drop for your raid group. However, I think putting the points into natures-guidance here is probably the best as it is hard to get hit on pieces and making yourself less hit dependent from gear is going to let you open yourself up to more mana per 5 gear. I think the general rule is that natures-guidance is the better use of the points, but I can see certain gearing situations, particularly early in raid progression, that may alter this decision.
  • totemic-mastery – Rank 1/1
    • The radius of your totems that affect friendly targets is increased to 30 yd. Makes your totems reach further. However, if you are laying them appropriately, you will usually be close to your melee group, so I’m not sure how much this matters. You do need it to get to the next level in the tree.
  • healing-focus – Rank 5/5
    • Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any healing spell. This is pretty nice because you will be in the thick of the melee group and you may be getting hit with certain area of effect damage spells while casting your chain-heal. It is important to avoid interruption because you are fitting these Chain Heals in between your annihilator/nightfall swings.
  • tidal-mastery – Rank 5/5
    • Increases the critical effect chance of your healing and lightning spells by 5%. Increasing the critical effect chance of your healing spells is pretty nice and I think it is the best use of the talent points at this point. The alternative of putting five talent points into restorative-totems is small when contrasted with this benefit since you are going to be using chain-heal frequently.
  • natures-swiftness – Rank 1/1
    • When activated, your next Nature spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds becomes and instant cast spell. This is your safety net spell that you can macro with a heel, so that you can instantly save yourself or someone else.
  • purification – Rank 4/5
    • Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 8%. This is nice because it is going to make your chain-heal 8% more powerful.

Final Notes & Thoughts on Builds

I think the Healing Utility build is the best build for several reasons.

First, I think it provides the most overall utility to the raid. Almost every talent point seems really useful and few points seem wasted. This is a criticism I have of the stormstrike and elemental-devastation builds. The stormstrike build has you pouring lots of talent points into the Enhancement tree to still do poor DPS and the elemental-devastation has you pouring tons of points into the Elemental Tree just to get elemental-devastation, which is only going to marginally increase your annihilator/nightfall uptime.

Second, I think the utility of the Healing Utility build is simply outstanding because it is increasing your healing capabilities while still providing annihilator/nightfall uptime and Totem Twisting with improved-weapon-totems. It does have the worst annihilator/nightfall uptime, but it also is getting decent raid healing in exchange for the cost of a ~2-4 weapon hits per minute.

I think the questions your raid leader needs to answer with how they want their Enhancement Shaman to play are:

  1. Do they want maximal uptime of annihilator/nightfall out of their Enhancement Shaman?
  2. Are they willing to give up a debuff slot to accomplish that?
  3. Is the raid willing to lose ~0-2 Nightfall procs (depending on the length of the encounter) in order to get more raid healing?
    • If the raid wants the high uptime of annihilator/nightfall without giving up a debuff sot then the elemental-devastation build is the best build for achieving this. If the raid wants maximal uptime of annihilator/nightfall and is willing to give up a debuff slot then the stormstrike build is the best. If the raid accepts a slightly lower uptime of annihilator/nightfall, but is willing to forgo that for a more quality raid healing then the Healing Utility build is the best. I think the Healing Utility is the best proposition, but people’s opinions and priorities may be different.

Racials

Orc

  • axe-specialization for +5 Axe Skill is going to be nice for get nightfall/annihilator to proc more. This is because it the 305 Axe skill will bring down your Hit Cap to 6% and let you stack more Critical Strike gear.
  • blood-fury is going to squeeze out a bit more DPS, but reduce the healing effects done to you during that time, so be careful when you use it.
  • hardiness is always super useful in PvP

Tauren

Troll

  • berserking gives an increase to attack speed (between 10% and 25%) depending on your health, with a 10% boost at full health and a 25% boost when badly hurt. This lasts for 10 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown, so you could probably get it off twice during some fights.
  • regeneration is going to help you regenerate health at 10% of your health generation rate during combat.

In the end, I suspect the best race for Enhancement Shaman is Orc for that +5 Axe Skill from axe-specialization. I suspect Troll is next best since Berserking will be useful for increasing the uptime of nightfall/annihilator. However, I like the way Taurens look and their lore the best, so I will be play.

Totems

  • windfury-totem (Rank 3; Air Totem)
    • This is your holy grail totem and the whole reason you are being dragged along for the raid. You need to make sure this is down AT ALL TIMES.
  • grace-of-air-totem (Rank 2/3; Air Totem)
    • See Totem Twisting below. In many cases, you will be using Totem Twisting with grace-of-air-totem to increase the Agility of the melee group.
  • tranquil-air-totem (Rank 1; Air Totem)
    • This is a pretty situational Air Totem to twist in. This can be helpful on certain raid boss encounters like vaelastrasz-the-corrupt in Blackwing Lair.
  • mana-spring-totem (Rank 4; Water Totem)
    • Depending on how much mana you are going through on fights, this can be helpful. Normally, I find that a major-mana-potion is good enough to get me through most fights, but I will use this as default if the fight doesn’t require a better totem. However, if there is a fight where melee can get improved viability from my Water Totem, I am quick to ditch this for the better totem since it only benefits me in the group and I don’t usually get much utility from it.
  • fire-resistance-totem (Rank 1; Water Totem)
    • For bosses that do fire damage, this is what I use as my Water Totem since it increases fire resistance by 60.
  • nature-resistance-totem (Rank 1; Water Totem)
    • For certain bosses, like the end of the princess-huhuran fight, that do lots of nature damage, this is what I use as my Air Totem since it increases nature resistance by 60.
  • strength-of-earth-totem (Rank 4/5; Earth Totem)
    • This is the standard Earth Totem that I use. It give a nice +61/77 Strength buff and greatly helps pump up the melee DPS.
  • tremor-totem (Rank 1; Earth Totem)
    • Certain bosses have a fear mechanic and this will dispel fear from everyone within range of it. It ticks every 4 seconds, so I try to lay it down about 3 second before the spell is cast, so that it ticks right after the spell is cast. Once the fear is dispelled, I will usually replace it with strength-of-earth-totem.

Totem Twisting

This is probably the best thing you can practice doing as an Enhancement Shaman. It can be mana intensive, but most of the time that isn’t a huge problem. So what is Totem Twisting? Totem Twisting stems from windfury-totem ticking every 10 seconds.

What this means is that you can cast windfury-totem and give Windfury to all of the melee DPS then after the Global Cooldown, you can cast a second Air Totem. When this happens, melee DPS will have the Windfury on their weapons for 10 seconds until the next windfury-totem tick when it gets removed and a second Air Totem buff, such as grace-of-air-totem. Once Windfury falls off, recast windfury-totem) and repeat this until the end of the fight. If you are mana strapped for some reason, don’t worry about Totem Twisting and just keep windfury-totem) down.

Raids

Onyxia’s Lair

Onyxia

Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion.

In Phase 1 of the Onyxia fight, I will just auto-attack (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) from the side (about at the hip) of Onyxia while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem. Be sure to not be too far forward or you will get smoked by her Cleave or too far back or else you will get tossed by a Tail Sweep into the whelps.

In Phase 2 of the Onyxia fight, I will lay Windfury Totem, Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem a few yards outside of the whelp cave of the side I am on. I try to stay spread out and pick up whelps near me. However, the priority is to get keep the totems down and stay alive. If you get targeted with the Fireball make sure you are going to the safe spot. Also be sure to go to the safe spot when she blasts the floor with Deep Breath.

In Phase 3 of the Onyxia fight, I will auto-attack from the side while using Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem. However, once the fear is about 3 seconds out, I will switch out the Strength of Earth Totem for the Tremor Totem. Once the fear is dispelled, I will recast the Strength of Earth Totem. If this becomes too mana intensive or is too complicated, just keep down Tremor if Rogues are in group or Strength of Earth Totem if only Warriors in group. Repeat until Onyxia is down. Also, it is super important to stay at max range when doing melee damage here. At max range, you will not get feared into a Cleave or feared into a Tail Sweep into the whelps.

Molten Core

Lucifron

This is a pretty straightforward fight for Enhancement Shaman, just auto-attack (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) the Flamewalker Protectors, while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem.

Once the Flamewalker Protectors are down, switch to Lucifron and also just auto-attack (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem until Lucifron is down. While running over to Lucifron after killing the Flamewalker Protectors, use a Restorative Potion to give yourself an ability to shed Lucifron’s Curse for 30 seconds if it should gets placed on you.

Magmadar

This fight is a little more tricky for Enhancement Shamans than Lucifron. Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. You will mostly be auto-attacking Magmadar from the side (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem.

However, similar to the Onyxia fight there is a fear mechanic called Panic, so you will need to place down a Tremor Totem about 3 seconds before the Panic hits so that it is dispelled quickly. Then put Strength of Earth Totem back down and repeat until Magmadar is down. The big thing you need to be careful about are the fires that Magmadar lays down. They do damage for an area that is much bigger than they look. If you are in the fire get far away from the fires and you should be fine.

Gehennas

This fight is similar to Lucifron. Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. Just auto-attack the Flamewalkers (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem. Use Free Action Potions during the Flamewalkers because they will stun.

Once they are down, auto-attack the Gehennas (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem until Gehennas is down. Be sure to stay out of Gehennas’ Rain of Fire.

Garr

During this fight the adds will get pulled to the side one-by-one. Try to auto-attack them (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem. Do this until they get down to about ~40% and then run away from them.

Casters will finish killing them and when they die, they explode and it hurts, so don’t be around them when they explode. Continue doing this until all of the adds are down. The raid may switch to hitting Garr for a bit if the raid is waiting on a Banish to end, but do not get Garr below 50% until all of his adds are down.

Once all of the adds are down, auto-attack Garr (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) while Totem Twisting (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem until he is dead.

Baron Geddon

Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. At the beginning of the fight lay down Windfury Totem, Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem and auto-attack him (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) when melee goes in.

You will need to come out as he casts the Inferno ability that pulses doing damage and run in after it is over. During the fight you will likely pick up Ignite Mana debuff which could deplete your mana, so you might be strapped from mana this fight and unable to Totem Twist. You can try to go to the area where the healers are, since it is out of line of sight, during the Inferno to reduce your chance of getting the Ignite Mana placed on you, but it is likely only marginally reducing your chance to get hit with the spell.

Once your totems die, recast them. Alternatively, you can Totem Twist with Windfury and Grace of Air Totem until you are out of mana and then lay one last Windfury Totem and just keep your three totems up. You may need to use a Major Mana Potion to do this. Also, if you get the Living Bomb put on you, be sure to run to the designated safe area. DO NOT run to the group or else you will wipe the group. Once, Baron gets below 6% he will start his self-explosion sequence called Final Service, be sure to back away from him or else you will be toasted. However the raid leader might keep everyone in because if you can kill him first it is not a problem.

Shazzrah

This fight is pretty different for you. Before the fight be sure to pop a Greater Arcane Protection Potion and have it off of cooldown before the fight starts and ready to pop another one, if needed when health is low. You need to stay up during the fight to take care of Purges (discussed later) so the Restoration Shamans don’t need to. You can start the fight by laying down Windfury Totem, Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem. The melee is probably going to get toasted during this fight so the benefits of Totem Twisting are low and you have a more important role in this fight.

You need to make sure you Purge Shazzrah’s Magic Grounding whenever it is up. The layout of this fight will be a triangle with two equally sized groups on the corners and one empty corner that Shazzrah will fill initially. Shazzrah will occasionally target a person in the raid and Blink to them in another corner of the raid. If Shazzrah Blinks to your corner run to the now empty corner. Be sure to do this quickly because Shazzrah will do Arcane Explosion AoE and it hurts. Repeat this until Shazzrah is down.

Sulfuron Harbinger

In this fight the Sulfron’s Guards will be separated from Sulfuron and be subjected to lots of AoE. During the pull, you could consider using a Free Action Potion because Sulfuron can do a knockback that stuns. This Free Action Potion use can be helpful for getting yourself in to position for taking down Sulfron’s Guards and ignore the knockback from Sulfuron as he pulls.

You are using a potion cooldown so consider that and whether you think you will need to use a Major Mana Potion on this fight. I, traditionally, do not need a Major Mana Potion for this fight, so I don’t mind using the Free Action Potion on the run in to Sulfuron’s Guards. However, there is an alternative strategy for this encounter where you tank Sulfron’s Guards and Sulfuron are together and people use lots of area of effect spells on them. In this case, you need to use a Free Action Potion to avoid the stuns.

Totem Twist (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem, while auto-attacking the Sulfron’s Guards. They have an ability to heal themselves and Sulfuron, so you would ideally like to work Rank 1 Earth Shock into your rotation frequently to interrupt the healing. Try to see this from the animation in their hands. Outside of that, Sulfuron’s Guards are down, move to Sulfuron and Totem Twist (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem, while auto-attacking (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Sulfuron is down.

Golemagg The Incinerator

This fight is pretty straightforward. Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. You will Totem Twist (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem and auto-attacking (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

He will apply a debuff called Magma Splash that stacks to anyone attacking him. It stacks up and once you get to about 6 stacks you need to stop auto-attacking him and let the stacks drop off of you. It takes 30 seconds for the Magma Splash stacks to drop off of you. Once Golemagg gets to 15% he will initiate Earthquake. Use a Free Action Potion right before this and try to have him down before the Free Action Potion wears off. If you have 6 or more stacks at this point, just continue to auto-attack through it (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

Majordomo Executus

This fight is all about crowd control so it is also pretty easy for the the Enhancement Shaman. Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. You will Totem Twist (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem, while auto-attacking the non-crowd controlled target (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

Work your way through all of the adds and do not attack Majordomo. Cast Rank 1 Earth Shock on the healers to interrupt their healing spells. After all of the adds are dead, Majordomo will go to the area to summon Ragnaros and you will collect your loot.

Super important: do not loot or even go near the chest.

Ragnaros

Before the fight be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. You should use these throughout the fight as he burns through them. You will be separated from the melee from this fight as you will be about halfway on the peninsula. This is because any player with a mana bar, meaning you, can get target by the Hammer of Ragnaros and this causes an AoE knockback for everyone in range of that player, so that would be all of the melee if you were near them and this is not good.

You need to periodically get into totem range of melee and drop Windfury Totem, Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem and then back up out of range and continue auto-attacking Ragnaros (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

When Ragnaros is about to do his Hammer of Ragnaros knockback, you need to backup a little bit and after it goes off you can go back in and auto-attack him (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). If the raid does not kill Ragnaros in 3 minutes, Ragnaros will submerge and spawn 8 Sons of Flame. You need to go to the meet up point for the raid and Totem Twist (Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem) along with placing down Fire Resistance Totem and Earthbind Totem and stand from a distance because they have a mana burn.

Once all of the Sons of Flame are down go back to your original position and continue laying down Windfury Totem, Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem at a distance and auto-attacking (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). Continue through anymore submerges (but it is unlikely you’ll live if you get to a second submerge) until Ragnaros is down.

Blackwing Lair

Razorgore the Untamed

This fight has three phases. Before the fight, be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. As you stage for the first phase in the South side of the room, be sure to drop Windfury Totem, Strength of Earth Totem and Mana Spring Totem about 30 seconds before the fight, so that their mana costs have rejuvenated before the fight. You will not need these totems for long and unless you are working in the South corner you are going to need to replace them soon anyways.

First, you are going to kill Grethok the Controller then his two guards. They go down pretty quickly. As you engage Grethok the Controller and his guardians, you can Totem Twist with Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem.

Once, they go down, go to your assigned corner and Phase Two will begin soon. Lay down your Windfury Totem, Strength of Earth Totem and Mana Spring Totem as you get ready to pick up the waves of Blackwing Mages, Legionnaires and Dragonkin. If you are able to Totem Twist Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem during this phase then go ahead, but I find it tough to keep up with all of the waves to remember to Totem Twist, so I just keep Windfury Totem down.

This is certainly a place to improve my game. The kill priority is Mages then Dragonkins then Legionnaires. Just auto-attack the Blackwing Mages, Legionnaires and Dragonkin (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). After the 30 eggs are broken, the adds get freed and you need to run back to the South corner for Phase Three. The tanks will be tanking Razorgore the Untamed near the stairs.

For this phase you will need to Totem Twist Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). When he does the Conflagration, he will also do a Fireball Volley that you need to get out of line of sight for (usually around the stairs). Once the Fireball Volley goes off you can return and continue attacking Razorgore the Untamed until he is down.

Super Important: do not run into the next room until the raid is ready.

Vaelastrasz The Corrupt

Before this fight you need to equip your Fire Resistance gear. Ideally, your Fire Resistance should be around 150 or greater unbuffed. Before the fight, be sure to have a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. The Black Dragonscale set can be useful for getting your Fire Resistance up. Vaelastrasz the Corrupt will start the fight around 30% and immediately cast Essence of the Red, which gives you essentially unlimited mana (and also essentially unlimited Rage for the Warriors and essentially unlimited Energy for Rogues in your group).

You will need to stand at maximum range near the hindlegs in a cluster with the rest of the melee group. Do not move, because Vaelastrasz the Corrupt can Cleave and it can chain off of people and wipe the raid really easily.

During this fight you will Totem Twist with Windfury Totem and Tranquil Air Totem (because the melee will be going nuts and will need their threat reduced as much as possible) along Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking and spamming Rank 7 Earth Shock until Vaelastrasz the Corrupt is down.

If you get Burning Adrenaline, you need to leave the melee group and run to the back wall, being careful to stay away from the tail so you don’t get tail whipped. You will lose 5% of your health each second and when you die, you will explode and do a ton of damage, so you need to be far away from the raid when this happens. However, while you have Burning Adrenaline, you will have instant casts, so feel free to go crazy on Rank 4 Chain Lightning, Rank 7 Earth Shock and even Rank 9 Healing Wave to keep yourself up longer with Burning Adrenaline.

Suppression Room

When doing the Suppression Room Gauntlet, you should not use totems. If you do, you might aggro respawned mobs and it will be a big pain. You can drop Windfury Totem, Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem in the back of staging area that you are initially pulling mobs to though. As you pull mobs, you will simply auto-attack (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) the elites that get pulled back to the staging area platform. Try to not stand in the Flamestrike too long as it hurts. I don’t recommend Totem Twisting here, because you will have to keep laying your totems constantly and they might eventually get too far forward as you run around attacking the pulled elites in the staging area and pull extra mobs.

When you are getting ready to start going through the gauntlet, do not caste anymore totems. Once you start making your way through stick to the left wall as tightly as you can unless you are coming out to help melee an elite and stick closely with the group. During the Suppression Room Gauntlet they are a bunch of whelps, do not use any area of effect items (like Goblin Sapper Charges) on whelps until it has been called for. Once, they call for area of effects spells and items, feel free to use a Goblin Sapper Charge if it is off of cooldown, but be mindful of your health as they do 375 to 625 damage to you. Due to the high number of targets, it is sometimes difficult to find the elites during the Suppression Room Gauntlet.

In order to fix this you will have wanted to make an assist macro ahead of time that is simply /assist elite_tanks_name. When you hit this macro it will find the target of the tank who is aggroing the elites for you. I also like to use this when I am against the wall during the Suppression Room Gauntlet, because it is oftentimes tough to see anything. Once, the target is below ~97%, it is usually safe to assume that the tank has engaged the elite and you can run out to assist the tank with the elite. When you attack the elites, you are simply auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

When the area of effect spells are occuring, this is a great time to look at your raid frames and see if anyone has died. You are going to be the first point of contact for resurrections because you have a ton of surplus mana from not laying totems and the other people that could resurrect are going to try to start eating as soon as possible to get their mana up, so resurrecting slows them down.

Once combat clears, start resurrecting anyone in the raid who is dead. Continue following the pace of the raid until you get through the Suppression Room Gauntlet. Remember that if you wipe here or on the upcoming boss, Broodlord Lashlayer, the raid will need to start the Suppression Room Gauntlet again from the beginning.

Broodlord Lashlayer

Broodlord Lashlayer is a pretty straightforward boss for you. Just Totem Twist Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). You need to be a bit leary of threat here, but it isn’t likely to be much of a problem for you. However, the raid leader may call off all DPS for a bit if too many people are nearing the tank on threat. Stay behind him to avoid his Cleave. Lastly, when, Broodlord Lashlayer does the Blast Wave you want to be out of line of sight (so go around the corner of the doorway if he is being tanked on the right-hand side) or far enough away from him to not be hit by this area of effect spell. Once he does this, run back in and repeat this until he is down.

Firemaw

You can wear your Fire Resistance gear here as well. It might help you resist some Flame Buffets and thus allow you to stay on the boss longer. Before the fight, you can use a Juju Ember and a Greater Fire Protection Potion on yourself with the cooldown up for an additional Greater Fire Protection Potion. All of this will just make the fight a little easier on your healers. You will be on the other side of the doorway with respect to the Suppression Room. You will hug the wall behind the second column furthest away from Firemaw on the pull and approach the first column as he is getting pulled to the doorway. You will wait until Firemaw casts his first Flame Buffet.

This is two-fold. First, his first Flame Buffet comes pretty quickly after Firemaw is finally in position. Second, it gives the tank a bit more time to build up some threat.

Once he is in the doorway, go to Firemaw’s rear and just Totem Twist Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). Watch your stacks of Flame Buffet and be sure to go back around the column after you get 3 (maybe 4) Flame Buffets and wait for them to drop off. Just before you run to the column, be sure to drop on last Windfury Totem and leave it up until you come back. Do not try to Totem Twist from behind the column, because Windfury Totem needs line of sight to work.

Once your Flame Buffet drops off, run back to the rear of Firemaw and go back to Totem Twisting Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Fire Resistance Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Firemaw is down.

Ebonroc

This boss is likely the second easiest boss in Blackwing Lair for you. You just need to wait until Ebonroc is pulled into the left corner of the room by the stairs and Totem Twist Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Ebonroc is down. It should be noted, that Ebonroc, has a healing ability based off of Shadow of Ebonroc, that can make the fight a bit long depending how well your tanks are pulling Ebonroc off of each other. Just be prepared to use a Major Mana Potion and also maybe a Demonic Rune during this fight to keep your mana up.

Flamegor

This is the easiest boss in Blackwing Lair for you. You just need to wait until Flamegor is pulled into the same corner that Ebonroc was tanked in and Totem Twist Windfury Totem with Grace of Air Totem and keeping down Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Flamegor is down.

Chromaggus

In this fight, you will be need to watching the debuffs that get placed on you. There are five different Brood Affliction debuffs that can get placed on you: Red (Disease), Green (Poison), Blue (Magic), Black (Curse) and Bronze. All of these are bad and should try to be dispelled. If any player in the raid gets all five debuffs on them, then that will turn into a dragonkin and will need to be kited, polymorphed or killed. If they are killed they heal Chromaggus for a good chunk of health, so you need to be on top of dispelling these Brood Afflictions. You can dispel Brood Affliction: Red with your Disease Cleansing Totem and Brood Affliction: Green with your Poison Cleansing Totem. You will need to rely on Priests to dispel Brood Affliction: Blue and Mages or Druids to dispel Brood Affliction: Black. Brood Affliction: Bronze can be dispelled by the Hourglass Sand that drops from trash throughout Blackwing Lair. However, you are unlikely to get your hands on Hourglass Sand, at least initially, as it is given with priority to Tanks, Healers and Hunters.

Also, during this fight, you need to be aware of five different breaths that Chromaggus can do, however, only two of these will be randomly selected and attached to your Raid ID for the rest of the week. Thus, if you wipe or comeback later that week, you will still get the same two breaths. Confusingly, these breaths are also referred to by colors. The breaths are Incinerate: Red, Corrosive Acid: Green, Frost Burn: Blue, Ignite Flesh: Black and Time Lapse: Bronze. However, they are much more straightforward and will be discussed below.

For this fight you will start on the right side of the nook on the left side of the door that Chromaggus is going to be getting tanked in with the other melee and a Priest to help dispel Brood Affliction: Blue and a Mage or Druid to dispel Brood Affliction: Black. Once Chromaggus is in the doorway, you will run out of the nook and Totem Twist Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem along Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). Be sure that your Windfury Totem are on the Chromaggus side of the nook, since it works on line of sight.

You could drop Mana Spring Totem here, but you are going to need to use your Water Totem for the Poison Cleansing Totem and the Disease Cleansing Totem pretty quickly and I’m not sure you’ll actually make back the mana that you lost from casting it.

You are in charge of clearing your party of Brood Affliction: Red and Brood Affliction: Green with your Disease Cleansing Totem and Poison Cleansing Totem, respectively. However, your raid leader may decide to make this easier on you and just ask you to keep Poison Cleansing Totem down constantly and let the disease happen since it is not too deleterious.

Remember, like Windfury Totem, that both Disease Cleansing Totem and Poison Cleansing Totem need a line of sight on the target, so consider that when you are laying them down. If you run low on mana, just keep down Windfury Totem and be sure you are still using your Poison Cleansing Totem (and Disease Cleansing Totem, if your Raid Leader wants you dispelling the diseases) when necessary.

  • In case of emergency and if you start accumulating lots of Brood Afflictions, be prepared to use a Restorative Potion that can dispel all of the Brood Afflictions except Brood Affliction: Bronze.
  • For all of the breaths except for Time Lapse: Bronze, you will need to go back to the right side of the nook by on the left side of the door that Chromaggus is being tank in to get out of line of sight in order avoid the breath.
  • For Time Lapse: Bronze, you will need to get hit by the breath which will stun you but allow the tank, who is going to avoid the breath, to not get stunned and pick up aggro again. You can just stand where you are auto-attacking him for this to impact you.
  • If you have Brood Affliction: Bronze on you, you need to start heading to the right side of the nook on the left side of the doorway about nine seconds before Incinerate: Red, Corrosive Acid: Green, Frost Burn: Blue, and Ignite Flesh: Black Breaths just in case you get stunned, or around five seconds before Chromaggus does the breath if you don’t have the Brood Affliction: Bronze debuff on you.

Continue running in and out of the nook (or stand still if his breath is Time Lapse: Bronze) around breathes and keeping an eye out to dispel Brood Affliction: Red (if your Raid Leader wants you to dispel it) and Brood Affliction: Green, while Totem Twisting Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem along with keeping Strength of Earth Totem down and auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Chromaggus is down.

Nefarian

Before this fight you should use a Greater Shadow Protection Potion and have it off of cooldown. Also, make sure that you have the Shadow Protection buff from Priests for +70 Shadow Resistance. Also, you will need to have the Onyxia Scale Cloak on in order to resist Nefarian’s Shadow Flame a the start of Phase 2. This fight is broken in three stages.

In the first stage six different drakonoids could appear from the doorways on the South side of the room. You will get Chromatic Drakonoids and two of the five remaining colors, Red, Blue, Green, Black and Bronze, in each doorway. Like the breaths from Chromaggus, these drakonoids’ color is linked to the Raid ID and the same color will always come out of the same doorway for a given Raid ID. The only drakonoids you should avoid are the Blue ones because they do a mana burn. For the other types of drakonoids, just keep Totem Twist Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem along with Strength of Earth Totem and Mana Spring Totem down while auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

You could consider not Totem Twisting here, because it it uses a fair bit of mana in a long fight and because keeping up with the adds is a lot to handle, but the mana issue is a bit of a moot point because in Phase 2 you could get an early Shaman Class Call (see below) and have lots of your mana disappear anyways, so being super conservative with your mana at this stage doesn’t seem super necessary. However, if you are having trouble Totem Twisting and keeping up with auto-attacking the adds, then you could certainly consider just using Windfury Totem. Also, be aware the Nefarian will be invulnerable and running around the room casting Shadow Bolts and Mind Controlling people, so this is why you have the Shadow Protection and Greater Shadow Protection Potion.

After you have killed 40 drakonoids, you will enter phase two and the Drakonoids will stop spawning. You will need to kill the rest of the Drakonoids on your side and see if there are any left on the other doorway that need to be killed. Once they are all dead go to the throne-side of the platform and immediately get a Tremor Totem down because a fear will be coming in shortly. Afterwards, just Totem Twist with Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem, while keeping Mana Spring Totem and Tremor Totem down, while auto-attacking Nefarian from the side near the hind leg at maximum range (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

Sidenote: A really advanced play would probably have you swapping Tremor Totem and Strength of Earth Totem around his fear mechanic, Bellowing Roar, but this could be dangerous if you don’t get the Tremor Totem down in time, which could happen if you were polymorphed during the Mage Class Call (discussed below). So if you wanted to do this you’d probably want to be sure that Tremor Totem is up during the Mage Class Call and also during his Bellowing Roar. That being said, this fight is already complicated enough and higher powers have declared that they would like Tremor Totem up at all times and that the benefits of working in a Strength of Earth Totem, where possible, do not outweigh the costs of potentially missing a fear.

During this time, there will be many Class Calls where a class has something special happen to them. Most of these you can ignore, but you can and should help out with a few. On the Shaman Class call, Nefarian is going to be laying down totems from the Shamans like crazy. You should try to hit and Rank 1 Earth Shock (since they are quite weak) a handful of these and others should be helping you with this. As Nefarian lays down these corrupted totems, it will use up your mana pool quickly, so you should consider this when popping your Major Mana Potion, Demonic Rune or Rejuvenation Potion on this fight. If you use one, try to wait until after a class call has gone off so that you get the maximal amount of time with the mana you gained and you aren’t just helping Nefarian if a Shaman Call goes out. In general, on this fight, you will need to alternate using Major Mana Potions or Rejuvenation Potions and Demonic Runes in order to keep your mana up.

On the Mage Class Call, the Mages will be polymorphing people in the raid like crazy, so after you lay down a Windfury Totem, drop a Grounding Totem and it will protect your party from the next polymorph that comes their way. If nothing comes before Windfury Totem drops off of your party, just cast Windfury Totem again. Lasty, just before the Warlock Class Call lay down one last Windfury Totem and make your way to the Warlock group (they should be clustered together away from the healers) and drop a Earthbind Totem briefly, so that it can slow the Infernals that spawn and run back to Nefarian. However, don’t forget to drop the Tremor Totem once you get back to Nefarian and have waited a few seconds. You can’t help too much with the rest of the class calls, so just continue Totem Twisting Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem while keeping Mana Spring Totem and Tremor Totem up and auto-attacking Nefarian from the side near the hind leg at maximum range (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build).

As you near 20%, the raid leader will likely call for a slow to DPS in order to wait for a favorable Class Call, so be sure to pull off Totem Twisting and auto-attacking (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) if they tell the raid to lay off DPS. Once, they get a favorable Class Call, they will give the go ahead to DPS and you need to get Nefarian to 20% as soon as possible.

Once Nefarian is to 20%, Phase 3 will begin and he will resurrect all of the dead drakonoids as skeletons. During this Phase you should pull off of Nefarian and run to where the skeletons are bunched up and use Stratholme Holy Water on them. They are quite weak and a few players doing this should go a long ways to taking them down. Once you have used your Stratholme Holy Water, run back to Nefarian and continue Totem Twisting Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem while keeping Mana Spring Totem and Tremor Totem up and auto-attacking Nefarian from the side near the hind leg at maximum range (and spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Nefarian is down. Class Calls will continue to happen in Phase 3, so be aware of them and react appropriately.

World Bosses

Lord Kazzak

You will lay down Windfury Totem, Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem, while auto-attacking (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build) until Lord Kazzak is dead. Do not get low on mana. Mark of Kazzak is a curse that will drain your mana and turn you into an AoE bomb that does a ton of damage when your mana is below 20%. Mages should be decursing the Mark of Kazzak when it comes up, but be mindful and pop a Major Mana Potion if necessary. Generally, I like to not make sure my mana go below 50%. If the fight goes longer than 3 minutes then Lord Kazzak will enter Supreme mode and wipe the raid.

Azuregos

In this fight you will lay down Windfury Totem, Mana Spring Totem and Strength of Earth Totem while auto-attacking (while spamming Rank 1 Earth Shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). Azuregos will cast a Blizzard that will drain mana and leave a debuff that drastically slows your attack speed. Get out of the Blizzard as soon as possible, but in general it will be difficult for you to help too much with this fight because of the attack speed debuff, so just try to keep your totems up.

Loot & Loot Priority

You will have the lowest loot priority for everything from raids and world bosses. The reason for this is simply that you don’t need great gear to fulfill your role. You need to lay totems and hit the raid and world bosses with auto-attack (while spamming Rank 1 earth-shock if you are in the after Hit Cap talent build). Obviously, more critical strike is good, since it triggers flurry, but other melee DPS get more out of it than you.

I have found that you will likely acquire the tier gear pieces of a rather nice Restoration off-spec set before you get gear that actually helps your main spec since the Restoration shamans with eventually start passing on this gear before all of the melee have gotten all of their melee gear. If you play Enhancement Shaman, you need to understand that you will likely be the last person to get main spec gear and be okay with this outcome. Simply put, your role is not very gear dependent and gear improvements only marginally improve the raid DPS.

 

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