Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 13 now live!)as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

It's been a few weeks since my last beta post. I feel like I'm back in grammar school at good ol' St. Louise de Marillac, "forgive me readers, it's been four weeks since my last beta post. Since then I've been mean to my guild, and I tried to kill my own priest." In game priest, in game! I can't wait to read the letters to the editor about that slip up. Oh well, at least I didn't use the word "casual."

Moving right along to important topics that everyone cares about: beta changes for enhancement shamans! Well, I suppose "everyone" excludes people that are not interested in beta spoilers. Great, two paragraphs in and I've already offended Catholics, priests, and people not interested in beta spoilers. Look on the bright side: at least I didn't use an offensive font this week!

If you are interested in the latest beta changes as they relate to enhancement shamans then please read on. Please note that beyond this point, this post will not further offend your good, wholesome middle Azerothian sensibilities.

Prime glyphs

The latest round of glyphs look very interesting. The glyph list by prime, major, and minor classifications were released into the wild for Shaman as well as another lesser, filthier class. Prime glyphs are the newest category of glyphification, adding an additional three glyph spots for prime-type glyphs. The prime glyphs generally fall into the category of X does Y more. Here are those relevant to enhancement.

• Feral Spirit - Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
• Fire Elemental Totem - Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Elemental Totem by 5 minutes.
• Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock by 50%.
• Flametongue Weapon - Increases spell critical strike chance by 2% while Flametongue Weapon is active.
• Lava - Your Lava Burst spell deals 10% more damage.
• Lava Lash - Increases the damage dealt by your Lava Lash ability by 20%.
• Lightning Bolt - Increases the damage dealt by Lightning Bolt by 4%.
• Stormstrike - Increases the Nature damage bonus from your Stormstrike ability by an additional 8%.
• Windfury Weapon - Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%.

There's a lot to choose from in there. Leading contenders are Feral Spirit, which will probably end up being a must-have, Windfury Weapon, Lava Burst, and Stormstrike. Glyph of Stormstike could continue to be a possibility because we still apply a debuff to our target increasing nature damage, which includes Lightning Shield, Lightning Bolt, and Earth Shock. This is going to come down to sims to see how it plays out versus some others.

Glyph of Flame Shock in its current incarnation increases the critical strike damage by 60%. The change to increase its duration by 50% is pretty significant, but I doubt it will be viable against some of the other, stronger ones.

[View Remaining 14 Paragraphs]