So, while technically not my first WoW character, my Tauren Shaman was the first I actually made on the correct server, so while there's a weird little level 7 (or at least he was 7 before the level squish in Shadowlands) human paladin that I then replicated on a different server and who has been my main since early 2008, that shaman has jockeyed with my Undead Rogue as my "Horde Main" since 2006.
I've always chased this idea of a Battlemage in RPGs, a class I'd for some reason assumed was a standard fantasy RPG class, but which doesn't actually seem to exist under that name in any, as far as I can tell. Truthfully, the Eldritch Knight Fighter in D&D is more or less exactly what I picture when I think of a Battlemage. But when I first encountered the Paladin class in Quest for Glory V, I imagined them as being more wizardly in nature, rather than the more religiously-affiliated version we actually see.
In vanilla WoW, Paladins were only available to the Alliance (specifically only humans and dwarves could be them,) and so when I found out my roommate was playing on the Horde side, I tried to pick the next best Battlemage-like class, which to me looked like the Shaman.
I didn't really get the talent system initially, so I actually think I invested more in the Elemental tree early on, but eventually I figured it out and realized that Enhancement was the spec I really wanted.
It's a bit of a weird name, but the idea, I think, is that the elemental magic that the Shaman uses enhances their melee abilities, focusing (at least early on) on the Shaman "weapon imbue" spells, and later giving us melee attacks like Storm Strike and Lava Lash that are sort of flavored as if we are empowering those strikes with elemental magic each time we make them.
In Unearthed Arcana, they initially gave us a revised version of the Storm Herald Barbarian, but while the flavor of that subclass was always cool, and also fits decently with the idea of an Enhancement Shaman, it's just mechanically a mess, and even with some very smart changes (like letting you pick a different storm each time you raged, rather than effectively narrowing you down to just one third of the subclass) it just wasn't living up to its promise, and I'm given to understand that the Path of Elements is going to be a totally separate subclass.
Given that another elemental subclass, the Way of the Four Elements, was demolished and replaced with the quite decent Warrior of Elements, maybe we can hope that we'll see a similar glow-up.
It is a little strange to see the WoW Shaman represented in D&D by the Barbarian, but I will say that there's some logic to it: both are tied to a kind of primordial, ancient power. Words like "Primal," "Ancestral," and "Storm" are keywords that fit quite well with either class. It's only strange because in WoW, two of the Shamans' three specializations are spellcasters. I could imagine that we might get guidance in the book that suggests that if we want to do this, we might instead look to the Druid class, maybe going for Circle of the Land or Circle of the Sea.
That said, even though the Enhancement Shaman does have mana as a resource (though in WoW, if you're not a healer or an Arcane Mage, mana is mainly there to limit only specific utility spells, as they figured out long ago that damage-focused characters don't find managing mana a fun challenge) I do think that it's actually a pretty good fit. If Fighters are the D&D equivalent of Warriors, then that kind of leaves Barbarians up for grabs (though Fury Warriors are pretty Barbarian-coded).
So, let's talk about the core abilities of an Enhancement Shaman.
The real central mechanic is Maelstrom Weapon - as you attack in melee (and in WoW, in addition to your melee abilities, melee characters will auto-attack a target, doing minor damage but also triggering things like this) you get a stacking buff that reduces the cost and casting time and increasing the damage (the latter being more relevant) of your next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning spell (the latter doing less damage but chaining out to additional targets, so you use it in AoE/Cleave situations). Maelstrom Weapon stacks up to 10 times, each stack doing 20%. So, if you have 5 or more, these spells will cast instantly, and if it gets up to 10, it'll hit for 300% of its normal damage. Because most spells have a casting time, it's not really practical to cast them if you're a melee character, as this will interrupt your auto-attacks, so this is a way to let a melee shaman use the class' iconic central damage spell.
(Interestingly, Lighting Bolt is an Elemental Shaman's filler spell while they wait for other spells to come off cooldown, kind of like a cantrip, but for Enhancement, it becomes one of their hardest-hitting spells through Maelstrom Weapon.)
Given the pacing of D&D combat compared to WoW, building up stacking buffs on each hit doesn't really work - there's a good chance that a Barbarian will only make 4 attacks in an entire encounter, so even if you said that after 5 hits, you could send out a jolt of lightning, there's a chance that you wouldn't even get to do that.
Depending on the subclass, some Barbarians get a boost to damage output at level 3, usually adding damage to one attack per turn, like Berserkers and Zealots. Other subclasses don't get this boost, and are focused a bit more on survival/tankiness (World Soul, and potentially Wildeheart, though the latter is more of a choice between various utility options).
Especially given the existence of the Spiritual Guardian, which I do think is Shaman-coded, though oddly more aligned with one of the "Hero Talent" trees shared by Elemental and Restoration but not Enhancement, I think Path of the Elements is probably going to be more damage-focused.
The actual math of how damage is added might be hard to predict - Berserkers add d6s equal to their rage bonus (so 2d6, then 3d6, then 4d6) while Zealots add a d6 plus half their Barbarian level - but I could imagine that they get something like the ability to add some amount of Lightning, Fire, or Thunder damage to one of their attacks each turn.
WoW is much more equal-opportunity when it comes to characters being good at single-target versus multiple-target-focused. Every class has abilities that work for both, and you might tweak your talents a bit to focus your build on one or the other, but typically there are some AoE abilities you get regardless.
I don't know if that's something they want to replicate in D&D, but I do like the idea of a Path of Elements Barbarian being able to do things like Crash Lightning, which is an Enhancement ability that strikes everyone in front of them with some nature damage (in WoW, nature is a massive catch-all for anything from lightning and thunder to poison to even beams of sunlight cast by Balance Druids). It has some knock-on effects, making some of your melee strikes hit additional targets, but that's not really how D&D is designed.
I could imagine having something like a limited-times-per-day cone-effect thing we either do as a bonus action or in place of an attack. If it's just any time we rage, it might have to be pretty weak for balance reasons, but if it's limited-use, then it has to hit really hard.
One of the major themes of Shamans in WoW (admittedly less emphasized in modern WoW, though one of the Hero Talent trees Enhancement can get brings it back in a big way) is Totems, where Shamans place an object on the ground that has some kind of effect. The Totemic hero talents I just mentioned center around putting a big Tremor Totem down at your feet, which pulses damage to nearby foes and activates again based on abilities you use. Admittedly, this might not tie into the themes they're going for with this subclass, especially if they want to see it be a little more setting-agnostic (though certainly the Demon Hunter Ranger and Oath of the Ebon Blade Paladin are going to be very setting-specific).
Anyway, I don't have a full level 3/6/10/14 breakdown here, because that seems like it would be far too specific. Still, I have high hopes for the subclass, not only letting me replicate my venerable WoW character, but also potentially giving us an actually-good elemental subclass for Barbarians.
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