Enhancement Shaman Guide for The War Within - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

StormbringerTotemic

Stormbringer focuses entirely on Maelstrom Weapon, providinga powerful "finisher to our finisher" with Tempest that activatesafter spending 40. This rolls over, counting any extra you spend above the 40count and feeding into your next one. Alongside that, Awakening Stormsas the capstone provides a second, more random activation point in the form ofan RPPM proc from Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Stormstrike.

The goal of this tree is relatively simple: generate and spend as much resourceas possible to cycle through Tempest casts. This deals strong uncappedAoE damage, and interacts with Maelstrom Weapon itself to become instantand deal increased damage. The remainder of the tree leans even further into thisprocess, incentivizing using as many of these casts as possible to activate othereffects after. Most important of these is Rolling Thunder, spawning aLightning Feral Spirit every time Tempest is cast to amplify our Naturedamage even further.

Leaning even further into the heightened value of spending as frequently aspossible is Unlimited Power, providing a stacking 3% Haste buffwhenever we spend any Maelstrom Weapon, but has a fixed durationof 15 seconds that does not refresh. This gives the tree a ramping feel that flowswell into our gameplay loop.

Alongside this, Arc Discharge gives a very powerful follow-up of 3instant Chain Lightning casts that deal 75% additional damage (these willalso consume any leftover Maelstrom Weapon when cast to amplify the damagefurther). These rapid-fire follow-ups give the tree a frenetic feel in AoE, andleans really heavily into the goal of cycling as much as possible.

In terms of defense and utility, on the other hand, the tree is fairly weak. Shocking Grasp slows targets we critically strike with Nature spells,which can be quite obnoxious given the inconsistent application. Nature's Protection does provide some defense following our Tempest casts, but we cast it infrequently enough that it is notreliable, and holding it plays counter to the tree as a whole. Surging Currents is largely irrelevant too, considering the overlap ithas with Maelstrom Weapon, and that spells also consume stacks of thatwhen activated by this.

As it stands right now this tree is relatively powerful due to the stronginteraction with our primary gameplay loop of our resource, providing an extrabig burst moment that flows well. It also slots into both build archetypes, thoughit has a leaning toward Dragonflight Storm due to Static Accumulation and Thorim's Invocation. The value of Rolling Thunder in tandem with Elemental Blast does still keepit relevant though, and is universally good in AoE scenarios. Alongside that,currently Primordial Wave does not seem to be intended to interact with Tempest at all (though there is a bug that says otherwise.

While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, there are a handfulof fairly pervasive bugs that may get in the way of testing the tree to be awareof:

• Rolling Thunder causes Feral Spirit to lose buffs if youare not talented into Elemental Spirits.
• Storm Swell and Arc Discharge are both active regardlessof which talent you pick.

Totemic spreads itself thin by interacting with a huge number of ourspec tree abilities, alongside adding in a replacement to Windfury Totemwith Surging Totem. This is a 30-second cooldown ability that willdeal AoE damage to the nearest enemy every 6 seconds, which we mostly use assoon as its ready. The tree also gives some nice quality of life by moving theWindfury aura to ourselves so long as we have Windfury Weapon applied toour main hand.

Currently much like our spec tree, there are two entirely separate paths youcan take with the tree, which can be a little confusing. For Storm buildsthat lean into Stormstrike, it will be leveraging the damage from Surging Totem itself, alongside Totemic Rebound to empowerthe totem further with Stormstrike casts. This is rounded out by Oversurge to empower it even further during Ascendanceprocs, and Earthsurge to give a big burst of damage via Sundering. This all works well with the baseline Feral Spiritbuffs as the totem deals Physical damage.

Conversely, Elementalist builds focus on Lively Totems and Reactivity as its primary damage source here, instead using Surging Totem as an enabler. This somewhat reduces the value of thetalents on the tree you can take that interact with the totem directly, but it isreasonably similar value, if a bit confusing. This is mostly because whentaking Elemental Spirits, we lose a lot of the buffing power that appliesto the totem, shifting the value in the tree around a lot.

The capstone, Whirling Elements, hooks into a lot ofdifferent spells, granting a mote of Air, Fire and Earth when cast that enhancesthe next associated ability of that element. The main one of note here is theEarth Mote, which interacts with either Elemental Blast or Sundering in the form of cooldown reduction. Obviously, Stormtrends toward Sundering here to bring it down to a roughly 30 second cooldown tomake use of Earthsurge. Elementalist on the other hand makesuse of the Elemental Blast consumption to get an extra cast every totem cycle,meaning that Maelstrom Weapon pooling is required to make sure it neversits at 2 charges while playing.

For defense and utility, the tree is severely lacking. Oversized Totemsis fun, but a bit pointless in terms of power, while Swift Recall is soincredibly niche that you will be unlikely to ever see real value from this. Wind Barrier is theoretically a nice anti-rot tool, but at 6% of our maxhealth every 30 seconds it is both weak and infrequent.

Power wise, Totemic can be quite strong (if a little RNG) for either buildarchetype, but the problem comes down to the spec talent tree failing to giveroom to actually pick up everything you need to. No matter what build you play,there are always some compromises you need to make here to get things working,and some of those sacrifices are significant.

While it is still Beta and bugs are a part of the process, they are worthkeeping track of. Thankfully, for the most part Totemic has had most of itsissues cut down, with a handful left:

• Reactivity does not activate on target dummies.
• Surging Totem cannot be dragged from the Hero Talent UI, insteadyou need to drag Windfury Totem from the spec tree.

Strengths

Weaknesses