Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Enhancement Shamans in The War Within 11.1

All sections for Enhancement Shaman PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Enhancement Shamans in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Enhancement Shaman PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Totemic
Hero Talents: Stormbringer
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Totemic and Stormbringer. Both Hero trees are currently viable in competitive play with more players favoring Totemic in its current state.

Let’s cover more in depth breakdown on the effects of these talents in order to optimize your gameplay.

Hero Talents: Totemic

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Starting off we have Totemic, which grants us slightly more consistent direct and AoE damage. This primarily focuses on Surging Totem, to which we can place down for some AoE damage from its tremor effect.

Further in the tree, we have some talents that require a bit more explanation in terms of how to maximize their effects.

Totemic Rebound occasionally buffs your Surging Totem from a few of your primary damaging spells. This will proc a Surging Bolt to buff our Surging Totem damage. After buffing our Surging Totem, the bolt will redirect back to the target you’re attacking for some added consistent damage.
Earthsurge makes the tremor effect from Surging Totem way stronger after using Sundering, as long as the totem is currently active.
Whirling Elements gives us three unique buffs we can use to make our rotation feel stronger and more fluid, solely to enhance our single-target and AoE damage. Out of the three buffs, the Earth enhancement is most notable as it greatly assists you with spreading your Flame Shock. You can utilize this effect before using Primordial Wave to make your globals feel more efficient.

Hero Talents: Stormbringer

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Next up, we have our Stormbringer Hero tree. This tree requires some slight ramp-up to build Maelstrom stacks to benefit out of Tempest, which forces us to select talents like Doom Winds to generate Maelstrom stacks slightly faster.

Now, we have some talents further down the tree that help make this build feel more fluid to our rotation.

Lightning Rod, which can be applied from Tempest, Lightning Bolt, Elemental Blast, and Chain Lightning to your selected target. Having this on the right target can help close out a game, as the target takes 10% of all total damage dealt from either Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning.
Awakening Storms provides you easier access to Tempest without having to rely solely on ramp with Maelstrom Weapon stacks.

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Shaman Class Talents

In the Shaman Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Greater Purge to remove 2 magical buffs on enemy targets instead of one, making us a bit more efficient with our globals. The only downside is that it is now on a 12 second cooldown.
Stone Bulwark Totem to grant us a hefty absorb on ourselves upon use, but be mindful as additional absorbs can be purged off, not the initial absorb.
Totemic Projection, which places your totems in different locations then where it was originally placed. This can be used to either protect your totems if placed behind pillars, or on targets to increase their effectiveness.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

Regardless of what Hero tree you play as, we recommend swapping out of Totemic Recall and / or Cleanse Spirit, against non Shaman or Warlock compositions, to any of these optional talents.

Poison Cleansing Totem to remove poison effects, and is great into Assassination Rogues, or Hunters that apply Chimaeral Sting to healers, which negates the silence effect if placed before the effect is active.
Traveling Storms on maps where Z-axis is prevalent, mainly for Dalaran Sewers, Mugambala, and Blade’s Edge Arena.
Elemental Resistance if facing Fire or Frost Mages, Elemental or Enhancement Shamans, or Balance Druids, to help us out with our team’s survivability.

Enhancement Spec Talents

Our Enhancement spec talents vary depending on which Hero tree you choose, but both have talents that are fundamental to our rotation.

Improved Maelstrom Weapon makes it crucial to build Maelstrom Weapon stacks, as it not only reduces cast time but makes our off-healing and direct damaging spells way stronger.
Sundering helps us stop casts or micro-control targets at times where all of our Crowd Control and utility has been used up. If you select Totemic as your primary Hero talent build, make sure your Surging Totem is placed and close by to increase your Surging Totem damage. This is thanks to Earthsurge.
Doom Winds makes your Windfury Weapon procs way higher, greatly increasing the chance that you generate Maelstrom Weapon stacks while also enhancing your burst windows.
Primordial Storm, which is a new addition to 11.1, grants us some valuable cleave damage after using Primordial Wave. This will only assist your burst windows.

As for our Stormbringer tree, we will pick up talents that greatly boost our damage profile for Lightning Bolt as well as an increase in Maelstrom Weapon generation. These primarily include Ascendance and Thorim’s Invocation.

Ascendance is our 3 minute burst cooldown, as it reduces the cooldown on Stormstrike and converts it into a ranged wind attack.

Enhancement Shaman PvP Talents

With the removal of Ride the Lightning, our default loadout will slightly shift from our previous patch.

In most matchups, you’ll have a default loadout you’ll almost always select when entering in a PvP matchup. These are Shamanism, Burrow, and Grounding Totem.

Shamanism allows us to apply a weaker version of Heroism on ourselves and an ally every minute without receiving the Exhaustion debuff.
Burrow allows you to go underneath the ground for 5 seconds, giving you some additional movement speed and let’s you avoid all attacks while active. Once this spells ends its duration, you can come up and deal some hefty physical damage to any nearby target.
Grounding Totem allows you to redirect harmful spells to the totem within 30 yards for 3 seconds, making it possible to negate some heavy hitting damage before the cast finishes, or some magic Crowd Control, such as Fear or Polymorph.

However, we do recommend swapping from / to Burrow, or Grounding Totem if you find it to be negligible in certain matchups, to some of our optional talents depending on what you’re playing or up against.

Stormweaver can be super valuable if you would rather buff your own Healing Surge or Chain Heal, as your Maelstrom Weapon stacks converts itself into its own Stormweaver stacks after your consuming a damaging spell. It’s best to use this with at least 5 Maelstrom Weapon stacks available, as you can make your next healing spell instant cast. The more stacks you use, the stronger your healing spell becomes.
Static Field Totem is a great pick if you choose to play with another melee, increasing you and your teammate’s uptime on the preferred target. This totem allows us to constrain targets in its radius until the totem has been killed. Pairing this with Totemic Projection, you’ll mainly use this to drag targets in, but can use to launch targets away from your team to help peel or pseudo Crowd Control enemy healers.