Enhancement Shaman Glyphs
Glyphs are all the rage these days. They’re a new way for players to modify spells and abilities. At level 70, players have 3 minor glyph slots and 2 major slots. The last major slot is awarded at level 80. With a limited number of slots and plenty of glyphs to chose from the choices can be complicated. After the break I’ll go over the recommended glyphs for enhancement shaman to maximum DPS. Plus, I’ll include some other options that might apply depending on your play style.
Major Glyphs
A lot of the choice comes down to play style. These are the ones that maximize enhancement damage output.
- Glyph of Stormstrike (major glyph / level 45) – Increases the nature damage bonus from your Stormstrike ability by an additional 8%.
- Glyph of Feral Spirit (major glyph / level 60) – Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
- Glyph of Lightning Shield (major glyph / level 15) – Increases the damage from Lightning Shield by 20%.
The Glyph of Lightning Shield and the Glyph of Windfury are a very close tie for third place. The Lightning Shield glyph works especially well if you have the talents: Static Shock and Improved Shields. This combination provides a descent DPS boost and scales well with haste.
If you pvp a lot, you might consider keeping the Glyph of Stormstrike and replacing the other two slots with Glyph of Windfury Weapon and Glyph of Shocking. This would help improve the burst damage that is required in pvp.
Minor Glyphs
The minor glyphs seem to come down to personal preference with the possible exception of the ghost wolf glyph. Here’s a list of all the minor shaman glyphs available.
- Glyph of Ghost Wolf – Your Ghost Wolf form regenerates an additional 1% of your maximum health every 5 sec.
- Glyph of Renewed Life – Your Reincarnation spell no longer requires a reagent.
- Glyph of Water Walking – Your Water Walking spell no longer requires a reagent.
- Glyph of Water Breathing – Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
- Glyph of Water Shield – Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1.
- Glyph of Astral Recall – Cooldown of your Astral Recall spell reduced by 2.5 min.
References
El’s Inscription is a great place to look for glyphs for every class. It also has some good information on how to grind out the inscription procession. I’d also like to point out the big enhancement shaman thread on the elitistjerks.com web site. Page 149 of that thread talks about glyphs and the removal of the Strength of Earth Glyph. Another excellent thread on elitistjerks.com is the enhancement shaman glyph thread that shows off a lot of theory craft for each glyph combination.
Updated 6/2/2009 – I updated the recommended glyphs based on the info from game version 3.1.
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- Posted by Kevin at 09:08 am
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9 Comments
Good summary. I am having good luck lvling at 57 with Windfury and Lightning Shield.
I’m a resto-shaman now but am building a good enhancement set and loved being enh at level 75. For major glyphs, I found the Glyph of Water Mastery to be a good one since our mp5 is pretty weak and that glyph alone is worth 15 mp5 or something. If you are having mana issues, that glyph along with the water shield minor glyph (1 additional orb) can help out a lot. Glyphs for raiding with windfury on both weapons, I’d use: 1) Windfury, 2) Water Mastery, 3) Stormstrike. If using flametongue imbue on the off-hand, I’d switch out the SS glyph for the lava lash glyph. The flametongue glyph is cool too, but I can’t see 2% spell crit out-weighing 40% bonus dmg increase on windfury. Of course if mana isn’t a problem, the glyph selection is a lot easier and more straight-forwardl, depending on whether or not you are using WF/WF or WF/FT
Correction: Sorry, I’m at work and wowhead.com is blocked. I found another site that isn’t blocked and looked up the water mastery glyph, finding that it’s 30% additional mana regen, thus more like 30 mp5 than the 15 mp5 I stated above.
WooHoo, patch 3.0.8 is out today! Free re-spec for Shamans. Time to switch from resto to enh, yay!
I updated this post with some of the recent glyph changes. Its typically better to chose the flametongue glyph over the shocking glyph unless you pvp. The 3rd glyph spot is the most influx right now so this could change easily with the next patch.
I made one last update before I post on the 3.1 changes. I’m gathering my notes now.
The latest changes to the Windfury glyph that removed the additional attack power knocked it off the list for DPS. The other glyphs assume at least 15 points in the elemental tree, but if you’re looking to maximize PvE DPS then that’s the way to go.
I find that using the glyph of feral spirit is integral as an enhancement shammy as well. Provides more attack power to feral wolves equalling 30% percent of the total AP of your char.
More updates for the 3.1 changes.
@Artisticnoir – The Glyph of Feral Spirit is a great choice and comes out pretty high in simulation. It may not be the best leveling glyph due to the lack of AP, but once you get into Naxx-level gear its a good choice.
Currently leveling a shaman, i think the windfury glyph is great when your using wf/wf. theres like a 3 sec inner cd to the wf procs but after that 3 sec it almost always goes off for me. only lvl 70 but wf and wolf are my major glyphs so far and the wolves help alot for those tricky group quests that you can easily solo thanks to the extra ap for puppies
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