Without a doubt, Enhancement is the best leveling spec to choose when leveling your shaman. However, there'Âs more than spec to leveling up. In this Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide, we will cover a few of the main points you need to have covered before you get started.
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide Part 1: Optimizing your talent Spec
Upon picking Enhancement as your Leveling Spec, you will receive a number of new abilities: Lava Lash Mental Quickness, Dual Wield, Primal Wisdom, Mastery: Enhanced Elements
You will want to have all of these talents maxed out, and they should be chosen in this order:
You should be Level 69 now, and you can allocate the remaining points into the following talents, and you can do so in any order you choose for the last 10 points:
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide Part 2: Gear
Enhancement Shaman are fairly gear dependent. Not so much as warriors are, but Enhancement abilities such as Stormstrike and Lava Lash are heavily dependent on the weapons you use. Essentially you want to have slower, hard hitting weapons. This gives you bigger hits. You can use axes, maces, fist weapons, or daggers for one-handed weapons. With Enhancement Shaman, I tend to look actual weapon damage per hit, rather than DPS, since we are somewhat dependent on instant strikes. However, faster swings can be beneficial for more frequent critical strikes, mana regen from Primal Wisdom, and faster application of Maelstrom Weapon. This, however, can be done through haste, and has less to do with the actual weapons you choose. You still want to choose damage over speed.
In regards to armor, shaman can wear leather until level 40 and mail after that. Past level 50, you want to be wearing all mail gear to get the bonus from armor specialization. Stats to focus on while leveling are stamina, agility, and hit rating until 17%. Expertise is also important, but it'Âs not absolutely necessary until you start raiding. Once you get to Level 70 or higher, you will begin to notice more haste and critical rating on gear. It'Âs helpful, but not necessary. Mastery is much better, which you will begin to see on gear once you hit level 80.
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide Part 3: General Tips
As an enhancement shaman, you will be doing a lot of damage through melee. My personal preference is to drop totems (I always use searing, windfury, Strength of Earth, and Healing Stream), pull with Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock while the mob is running toward you, Stormstrike (or Primal Stike if you don'Ât have it yet), Lava Lash, and Earth Shock. In Melee combat, (striking distance) only use Lightning Bolt if you have 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon up. If you are in a bind, use a healing spell, but again, best when you have full Maelstrom ready. By the end of this rotation, you should have killed the mob.
The reason you want to use these spells when maelstrom is up is because casting timed spells will reset your swing timer and can slow your attacks. Also, anything that is NOT instant receives no mana reduction from Mental Quickness.
Enhancement Shaman Leveling Guide Part 4: Final Words
While Leveling your Enhancement Shaman, the bulk of your experience will most likely come from questing. Now with the multitude of quests available, you will probably feel the need to complete each and every one that you pick up. Honestly, it'Âs not necessary to do that. In fact I don'Ât recommend it, some of the quests you pick up will be absolutely worthless in terms of gold, gear, and experience rewards. What you need is an optimized questing path that gets you to level 85 as soon as possible. I used a WoW Leveling Guide for that, and I was able to get to level 85 in just under 4 days played time. However, if you want to slow it down, and figure things out on your own, then it'Âs entirely up to you.
