Tier 1

Tier 1 is available at level ten, when your first talents open up.

Ancestral Knowledge

This talent increases your maximum mana by up to 5%, which is helpful in almost all cases. You will be using mana no matter what you are doing, so more of it is always better.

That being said, 5% is not a whole lot, equating to only roughly 250-500 mana at level 70 depending on your gear. That is only 1 spell cast, so not huge.

Usually taken to spend your first 5 points in.

Recommended

Shield Specialization

Increases your chance to block attacks with a shield by up to 5% and the amount blocked by up to 25%.

This talent is pretty useful early on in the game where you will actually be using a shield and capable of tanking some low level instances. After level 30-40 though, you will very rarely be using a shield (unless you are a healer).

If you plan on respeccing anyway at level 40 it can be handy to have for your lower levels. If you want to save your gold though, just grab Ancestral Knowledge to start with.

Skip it

Tier 2

Guardian Totems

This talent increases the amount of damage absorbed by your stoneskin and windwall totems by up to 20% and reduces the cooldown of your grounding totem by 2 seconds.

The 20% damage absorption does not add up to be very much and is generally considered a waste of talent points. The cooldown reduction on grounding totem is useful, but situational, so again generally skipped.

Skip it.

Thundering Strikes

Increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by up to 5%.

If you are going to be meleeing then you want critical hits. 5% is a significant number and if you are building for melee, you need this ability. It is also a prerequisite for Flurry and therefore a must have talent.

Strongly Recommended

Improved Ghost Wolf

Reduces the cast time of your ghost wolf by up to 2 seconds.

While nice to get going a bit faster, I've never seen the point in this talent. You still need to spend time casting, the 2 seconds seems like a waste of 2 perfectly usable talent points.

As with shield specialization, it may be useful if you plan on respeccing later anyway.

Skip it.

Improved Lightning Shield

Increases the damage dealt by your lighting shield by up to 15%.

I tend to always have lighting shield up, so this passive increase in damage (while slight) is constant free damage. It makes one of our very useful spells even better for just 3 talent points, therefore I always take it.

Recommended.

Tier 3

Enhancing Totems

Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems by up to 15%.

This talent upgrades two of your most common totems used in groups and as such is considered by many a must have talent. Since most of my time is spend in groups, I tend to agree and rarely go without this talent. Although sometimes I will wait until a respec later in the game to grab it.

If you mainly solo, then this is possible to skip completely.

Strongly Recommended.

Two-Handed Axes and Maces

This single point talent allows you to wield both two-handed axes and maces.

While very useful and opening up many weapon options, many players prefer dual-wield builds. If you plan on dual-wielding then skip this talent. If you want to single wield and have bigger crit numbers then take it.

Recommended

Anticipation

Increases your dodge chance by up to 5%.

This is a very useful talent as it means you will get hit and hurt 5% less, meaning you will live 5% longer and require 5% less healing.

I strongly recommend this for solo and PvP builds and early level PvE builds. However later in the game it becomes less useful because the tank will be taking almost all the hits (if your getting hit, you or the tank are doing something wrong).

Recommended

Tier 4

Flurry

Increases your attack speed by up to 30% for your next three swings after landing a critical strike.

This is one of the defining talents of any enhancement build. Combined with the 5% boost to critical hits from thundering strikes earlier, it provides a very nice DPS upgrade. The amount of an upgrade scales very well as you get additional critical hit percentage.

Must Have Talent.

Toughness

This talent increases your armor value by up to 10%.

This is a fairly decent talent, reducing your damage taken by a little over 2%. However anticipation provides more than that for 5 points and you are going to be hard pressed to find points for both in any build.

Take Anticipation instead if you want damage mitigation.

Tier 5

Improved Weapon Totems

This increases the melee attack power bonus of our windfury totem by up to 30% and our flametounge totem by up to 12%.

The damage upgrades provided by this talent are significant in certain circumstances and group make ups. If they fit your typical group, then the talent becomes very useful. In most cases though you will likely be using the grace of air totem over windfury, so this talent can be skipped.

Elemental Weapons

This talent increases the melee attack power bonus of our rockbiter weapon by up to 20%, windfury weapon damage by up to 40% and increases the damage caused by out flametongue and frostbrand weapon by up to 15%.

This is a solid talent that increases all of our weapon buffs, and needs to be taken for any serious melee build. The windfury buff is especially nice since it increases the proc damage by 40% not just the attack power.

If your this far into enhance you must take this talent.

Strongly Recommended!

Spirit Weapons

This talent gives you a chance to parry melee attacks and reduces the threat you generate on melee attacks by up to 15%.

Another must have talent! The parry bonus alone is well worth the points, toss in the much needed threat reduction for when you group and there is no way you can skip this talent.

Strongly Recommended!

Tier 6

Weapon Mastery

Weapon Mastery provides up to a 10% damage boost for all damage you inflict with weapons.

For 5 talent points you passively upgrade your damage output by 10%. There is no enhancement build that I can think of that would not take this talent.

Must have Talent

Mental Quickness

The talent reduces the mana cost of all your instant cast spells by up to 6%.

This is yet another great talent. Unfortunately it is found so far down in enhancement that you are going to be hard pressed to find points for it. So many of your abilities are instants though that if you can find the points it is well worth it.

Recommended

Tier 7

Stormstrike

This ability allows you to instantly attack with your equipped weapon(s) and upgrades the next two nature sources of nature damage dealt to the target within the next 12 seconds by 20%. It costs 10% of your base mana and has a 10 second cooldown.

This is another of the must have enhancement talents. It provides a significant increase to your damage output and boosts the nature damage you or an ally cause to the target.

Must Have Talent.

Dual-Wield

This talent allows you to wield two weapons at once.

At this point you need to decide if you are going to stay two-handed based of go to dual-wield. Dual wielding provides a significant upgrade to your average DPS caused, but does drop your burst DPS.

If you are PvE this is to me a must have, however if you PvP it is your choice as it takes longer to gear up to cause the same burst damage with dual wielding as single wielding.

Strongly Recommended

Dual-Wield Specialization

Once you select the dual-wield talent you can put additional points into dual-wield specialization. It increases your chance to hit when dual-wielding by up to 6%.

To make it simple, if you take dual-wielding, then you MUST take specialization.

The hit chance increase will turn into almost a 10% boost in melee DPS. There is no valid reason to skip this talent if you take dual-wielding.

Strongly Recommended

Tier 8

Unleashed Rage

This talent causes your critical hits caused by melee weapons to increase party member's attack power by up to 10% while within 20 yards for 10 seconds.

This talent is very useful and powerful in group PvE. It can single handedly ensure a raid spot for enhancement shaman. Added into a group with rogues or dps warriors, you can increase all of their damage output by a huge amount in a well geared raid.

Even when soloing or PvPing, a 10% boost to attack power can be significant.

Must have Talent for Raid or group based Shaman

Tier 9

Shamanistic Rage

This 1 point talent provides your attacks over the next 30 seconds to have a chance of restoring mana equal to 15% of your attack power. The ability has a 2 min cooldown, so can be used very often.

This is an amazing PvE talent, that can be used to regenerate your mana in much the same way as innervate works for a druid. When cycled through in rotation in combat, you can regenerate enough mana to continue attacking almost indefinitely.

This is the other ability that really allows Enhanced Shaman a raid slot since they can continue to put out high DPS no matter how long the fight continues.

Strongly Recommended.