An Enhancement Shaman is not a melee healer. While many will have a resto sub-spec and can certainly help top off a group after an AoE or step in to prevent an emergency, their gear's focus on melee stats makes them unsuitable healers in the endgame. An Enhancement Shaman should be dedicated to DPS, maximizing Unleashed Rage and totem coverage for his group.
Enhacement Shaman have four sources of damage:
Windfury, a weapon imbue that gives the shaman a 20% proc of two instant attacks with a substantial AP bonus
Stormstrike, a 10s cooldown instant attack with both weapons
Elemental Shocks, shared cooldown instant elemental damage offering stealth prevention, snaring or interruption
Fire Totems, pulsed direct or AoE fire damage
The vast majority (75-80%) of a shaman's damage comes from autoattack and Windfury. Shamans also have three on-crit procs: the aforementioned UR, Flurry (3 attacks at +30% speed) and a special clearcasting state for shocks.
Enhancement shaman are highly gear dependent, perhaps more so than any other DPS class. The 'skill' required to be effective at the class manifests in proper gear selection prior to combat; during combat the amount of 'skill' to produce respectable DPS consists mainly of staying in contact with the mob and maintaining totem coverage. This gives an Enhancement Shaman a great deal of latitude while DPSing since there are a limited number of actions that we can perform while waiting on Stormstrike and Shock cooldowns, allowing many possible global cooldowns to be used for purging mobs or removing poison/disease debuffs with no interruption of the DPS cycle.
Windfury Weapon
Mechanics of the Windfury Weapon imbue can be found in the Shaman: Windfury article. Below are specifics as they relate to weapon choices for Enhancement Shaman.
Windfury Weapon is the best weapon imbue to use – former CM Tseric has stated that the devs have no plans to scale the other weapon buffs to match Windfury. [footnote]http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=102731970&pageNo=1&sid=1#0[/footnote]
Weapon Speed Interaction
Weapon Speeds play an important role in maximizing DPS from Windfury procs. The goal is to chain WF procs every 3 seconds, as soon as each cooldown ends. Both the OH and the MH need to be as slow as possible to achieve this(they do not need to be matched in speed, just as slow as you can get it). The idea is to reduce the number of swings made during the time that windfury is on cooldown. Since the cooldown is 3 seconds, weapons speeds are preferred to be close to that speed, generally this means 2.6 - 2.8 under current itemization. The idea is that a faster weapon would proc a WF, and then strike again within the cooldown window, which means that windfury would exit cooldown and your weapon would still be on some significant portion of its swing timer, unable to proc another WF.
Many shaman will correctly use a slow MH weapon but use a fast OH such as a dagger, generally because its easier to find fast OHs than slow ones. This combination however means that your OH is much more likely to be the first one to hit outside of a WF cooldown and will "steal" the potential chance to proc, placing your main hand on lockdown. In order to maximize the potential for MH procs the OH needs to be as slow as possible.
The image below [footnote]courtesy of Yo![/footnote] illustrates this principle. You can see that as the MH and OH approach 2.6 speed (arbitrarily chosen as the cut off point for the scale) that the number of WF procs lost to the OH become lower, at around a 45% predicted loss rate. A fast OH with a slow MH combination has a higher rate of loss to the OH, at nearly 55%.
Windfury Proc Rate
When you are wielding a two handed weapon, or are using a shield, your chance to proc windfury on any landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is 20%. When you dual wield weapons, the chance on each landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is approximatedly 36%, if and only if both weapons are imbued with Windfury. Originally posted by Disquette on the WoW official forums. Original post is no longer archived by Blizzard.
Analysis of the combat log shows that if you sum all hits, the proc rate while DWing is 20%, but that includes hits you make while inside the 3 second cooldown, which cannot actually proc WF. When you remove the ineligible hits the observed proc rate from the eligible hits becomes 36%.
Can Windfury Totem avoid the cooldown problem?
While you may ~think~ it will help you avoid the WF cooldown problem, the totem isn't providing anywhere near the benefit you'll get from the weapon imbue.
WF Totem has the following issues: no elemental weapons bonus (40% multiple), only one extra attack (200% multiple), lesser AP bonus (scalar). Each MH WF Totem hit would be 100% extra damage or so compared to a normal attack, and has only one chance of proc'ing flurry, any weapon procs, and UR. Each MH WF imbue hit would be 280% extra damage or so compare to a normal attack, and has 2 chances of proc'ing those things.
In a very very simplified way of looking at it, you'd have to proc MH WF 2.8 as many times using the totem as you do using the imbue, for it to be worth it.
Flametongue and Frostband Viability?
Stormstrike
Stormstrike is an instant attack with both weapons. Unlike many other classes that have normalized instant attacks (Mortal Strike for example), Stormstrike is not normalized. Non normalized instant attacks benefit greatly from using the slowest weapons with the highest DPS possible.
Stormstrike provides two major benefits to the Enhancement Shaman - it is capable of producing Windfury procs, and it will proc, but not consume, Flurry.
Timing Stormstrike to Proc Windfury
Stormstrike and 2H Weapons
Taking the idea that slower weapons are better, many shaman will assume that a 2H weapon will therefore produce better damage with Stormstrike. Disregarding Crit and the idea of "burst" damage for the moment, here is how Stormstrike plays out using S3 Arena weapons with 1500 AP.
S3 2H =(134.2 + \frac{1500}{14}) \times 3.6 = 868.83
S3 DW 2.6 = (103.1 + \frac{1500}{14}) \times 2.6 + (\frac{103.1 + \frac{1500}{14} \times 2.6}{2}) = 819.94
Dual wielding produces nearly the same Stormstrike damage as using a two-handed weapon. Additionally DWing produces more opportunity for Windfury procs, Unleashed Rage procs from crits, and Flurry procs from crits. Overall the benefit of DW far outweighs the "higher end damage" of a 2H weapon for Enhancement Shaman.
Elemental Shocks
There are 2 possible rotations that an Enhancement shaman can use. Initially most shaman will assume that with the Stormstrike nature damage bonus Earth Shock spam will yield more DPS. However, Earth Shock is a binary spell and is susceptible to full resists, whereas Flame Shock has no binary component and will benefit from partial resist rates due to spell hit. Additionally, Flame Shock benefits from Curse of Elements and the Improved Scorch Debuff, while Earth Shock is only amplified by Stormstrike. (Both benefit from Misery)
In determining the ideal rotation, let us assume a sandbox environment with no crits and no resists to worry about. The mob will be fully raid debuffed with CoE and Malediction, Misery, and Improved Scorch Debuff. Assume that Earth Shock always has the benefit of Stormstrike, and that the Enhance Shaman in question has 2500 Attack Power, yielding 750 spell damage (approximate) with the Mental Quickness talent. Earth Shock has a spell damage coefficient of 0.42 and Flame Shock has a coefficient of 0.67.
Earth Shock Spam
This is a 6 second cycle.
\frac {0.42 \times 750 + 675}{6} \times 1.26 = 207.9
Flame - Earth Rotation
This is a 12 second cycle that begins with Flame Shock.
\left (\frac{0.67 \times 750 + 797}{12} \times 1.36\right) + \left (\frac {0.42 \times 750 + 675}{12} \times 1.26 \right ) = 355.2
While a single earth shock in 6 seconds is worth more than a single flame shock that is allowed to go its full 12 second DoT, the combination of the two in a single, 12 second rotation, provides superior DPS.
Finally as a third point of comparison, let us compare Earth Shock to Flame Shock directly, using only 6 seconds of the DoT component of Flame Shock. Earth Shock was computed above as providing 207.9 DPS every 6 seconds.
\frac {0.67 \times 750 + (377 + 0.5(420))}{6} \times 1.36 = 246.9
Therefore, you can see that Flame Shock over a 6 second period provides more DPS than Earth Shock.
Talent Builds
Elemental or Resto sub-spec
No real difference anymore, matter of personal preference,
Placeholder text.
The Myth of Elemental Devastation
One of the more prevalent suggestions is that Enhance Shaman should optimize their DPS by speccing into Elemental for a 5 second shock cooldown, 5% increased shock damage, and of course the Elemental Devastation Talent, typically achieved by removing points from Mental Quickness and/or Improved Weapon Totems for an 18/43/0 build.
The logic of this build is fundamentally flawed. A properly geared Enhancement Shaman will have at most a 6% spell crit rate from Intellect. Under perfect conditions this will amount to a 1% crit gain from Elemental Devastation. Under not-so-perfect conditions, this talent would be negligible and worthless to an Enhancement shaman.
The probability of getting 2 crit shocks in a row at 6% spell crit, in order to sustain the extra melee crit bonus of Elemental Devastation, is 1-(1- 0.6)^2 = 0.118. That's about 12% uptime of an extra 1% crit from 3 talent points.
Itemizing an Enhancement Shaman
Enhancement Points - EP - Stat Weight System
Extensive modeling, simulation, and empirical testing[footnote]Original testing and theories done by Disquette, Pater, Tornhoof, and Yo![/footnote] have led to the development of a system for determining the items which produce the highest DPS in a raid environment. The Enhancement Points (EP) system assigns weights, or scores, to each stat point. These EP weights can then be used by hand or in automated programs such as Enhancer, Pawn, LootRank and Thottbot to score items. Today, the best tool for determining these weights is to use the Crazy Shaman's DPS & EP Calculator produced by forums member Yo! For those who cannot run the simulator, are unwilling to do the legwork, or just want to check their own numbers, the following sets of EP values are provided. Values in () are for use with Blessing of Kings.
For your convenience, here are LootRank.com listings pre-filled with these EP weights. (Just change the armor type)
T4 /T5 EP List
T6 / SWP EP List
Weapon DPS EP Values
Pitbuller and Rob have shown that it is possible to convert weapon DPS into EP values. This is useful to compute the total EP of a weapon in order to compare two weapons, as seen in this post (link to where you or someone compared Netherbane to MG Cleaver). The following values are only valid for a 2.6 speed weapon. EP would need to be recalculated for any other speeds. These are presented here because 2.6 is the most common speed for weapons.
1 MH DPS = 9.03 EP
1 OH DPS = 3.70 EP
Careful! Only use these numbers for comparing weapons; do not use them for drawing other conclusions. For example, these numbers do not mean that 9 AP = 1 DPS for enhancement shamans. Why? Note the distinction between EP and AP. 9 AP will in fact increase your DPS by more than 1; just as 1 weapon DPS will increase your overall DPS by more than 1. To understand why, imagine that 1 weapon DPS increases your DPS by exactly 1 after glances, misses, dodges, and crits are accounted for. Now throw in Flurry, WF procs, and Stormstrike and realize that the weapon is hitting more often than the tooltip says it is, so you gain more DPS from the nominal weapon DPS.
Hit Rating
Enhance Shaman do not require large amounts of Hit Rating on gear. Effectively, because we can get a large quantity of +Hit from talents (9%), our special attacks (windfury and stormstrike) are already hit capped. All the extra +Hit rating on your gear is going toward improving white damage only, which typically comprises between 45%-50% of your total damage. When you consider the itemization costs of hit rating compared to crit rating and AP, which directly impact 90% of a shaman's total damage, you can see why hit rating is given lower precedence. Take the talents to hit cap your specials, any hit rating on gear after that is icing on the cake.
A common misconception is that you "have to hit before you can crit." This is a fallacy and illustrates a misunderstanding of the attack table. (Note that this is in reference to white damage which uses a single roll system.)
A second misconception is that a miss is a "missed opportunity for a WF proc" and that more Hit Rating will generate more WF procs. This misconception is generated from the flawed assumption that all swings are possible WF procs. However only swings that are outside of the WF cooldown are eligible to proc WF. A good portion of your autoattack hits will never be capable of producing WF procs. A 5 minute fight with no flurry would see 115 white swings with a 2.6 speed weapon. A Shaman might look at that and think that 0.36 * 115 = 41 possible WF procs, but that is incorrect since each successful proc locks out 1-2 hits that follow, shrinking the pool of actual eligible hits. It is actually quite difficult to calculate the number of attacks that you *should* have producing WF in a given amount of time, and that is why we rely on simulators to generate the EP value of Hit Rating.
There is no magic value of +Hit that an Enhance Shaman needs We need as much of every stat as we can get, but hit rating is just less important than the others. That does not mean that the goal is to have low hit rating either though. Rogues and Warriors require large amounts of +Hit to be effective because of their energy/rage feedback system and because they do not have talents that can hit cap their specials before considering hit on gear. Enhance shaman have no such feedback system and are able to hit cap specials through talents - therefore, hit rating above and beyond your talents is great to have, but is not a necessity.
Haste Rating
Haste Rating will directly increase the contribution of white swings to your DPS - 1% Haste will generate 1% more auto attack DPS. Prior to patch 2.2 Haste Rating became the superior stat, but the 2.3 patch reduced its EP value closer to that of Hit Rating.
Modeling at one time indicated weapons hasted between 1.51 and 1.41 speed will actually experience a sharp decrease in potential Windfury DPS. The range of 1.51- 1.41 speed was believed to cause the main hand to always finish a swing just before the end of a WF cooldown, making you wait longer for the next eligible swing that can proc WF. If hasted in this period for a long duration, you could expect WF DPS contribution to decrease. However, you'll also experience many more white swings during that time, and so the loss of potential WF procs should be offset by the increased white DPS. It is no longer believed that the 1.5 to 1.4 hasted speed will actually cause any decrease in DPS - you should notice an overall increase.
There is no need to worry about the 1.51 - 1.41 hasted weapon range. The original claims about the supposed DPS loss had done no empirical or simulated testing to back up their modeling. More recent testing has indicated that whatever potential WF DPS is lost because of swing timer issues is more than made up for by the gigantic leap in autoattack DPS.
Intellect and Mp5
Intellect on gear is not a significant source of DPS contribution. Pater has a short writeup exploring this here.
Mp5 is almost universally agreed to be a hunter stat that is wasted on enhance shaman gear. Note that the more you decide to contribute in a "hybrid" manner (healing to top off yourself and others) the mana pool will become slightly more important, but not such that you should sacrifice significant DPS upgrades to hold on to 15 Int on another item. The combination of Judgment of Wisdom and Shamanistic Rage (use it early, use it often) should prevent you from running out of mana even in full rogue leather gear - unless you're having to spot heal.
Expertise Rating
Patch 2.3 converted weapon skill rating into weapon expertise rating, which converts into Expertise skill at a rate of 3.9423 expertise rating:1 Expertise, and reduces the chance for your target to dodge and parry by 0.25% per point of Expertise. 103 Expertise Rating is required to achieve 6.25% dodge reduction, which is the maximum observed value of any NPC. As an example, [Shoulderpads of the Stranger], which used to provide 10 dagger skill rating, now provides 10 expertise rating (all weapons).
The parry reduction element of Expertise will have only marginal use in raid settings: mobs cannot parry attacks made from behind. Many bosses randomly turn to cast attacks and can parry while turning, but this possibility is too random to value significantly. Unlike parry, mobs can dodge attacks from behind and Expertise is currently the only way to reduce the number of dodges. The dodge reduction element of Expertise will vary from encounter to encounter: it will be useless against bosses that are constantly casting (e.g. Shade of Aran, High Astromancer Solarian, Reliquary of Souls) because mobs cannot dodge while casting, but useful against mobs that do not cast or only cast instant spells. Expertise has been shown to affect yellow damage as well as white damage, so under the second circumstance it is actually more useful than hit rating for enhancement shamans.
We still don't know how Expertise's dodge and parry reduction affect the one-roll white attack table. For now, the community is assuming that it converts dodges and parries into hits that do not have a chance to crit. On the other hand, we are now confident that Expertise will allow yellow attacks to crit, since they are resolved through a two-roll system. Thus, we will estimate expertise rating to be similar to the weight of hit rating, with some exceptions.
First, expertise rating is only useful in chunks, because there is no concept of having 2.5 Expertise - the Skill values are all rounded down to whole integers. To get around this, you first need to sum up the expertise rating across all your items, divide by 3.9423, take the floor, and multiply by 3.95 again. This gives you a "white hit rating" equivalency. Note that this makes expertise rating EP discontinous.[footnote]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Discontinuity.html[/footnote] One expertise rating may be worth 0 EP because it is not enough to give you an extra skill point -- e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 15 expertise rating -- while a jump of two expertise rating at the same point may have a surprisingly high EP -- e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 16 and thus 0.75% dodge reduction to 1.00% dodge reduction.
Next, we must account for the fact that Expertise, unlike hit rating, also effects the yellow damage from special attacks in addition to the white damage from auto-attacks. To correct for this, you need to multiply by the ratio of melee damage to white damage, or (Yellow % of damage + White % of damage)/(White % of damage). Also, because white crit rate as a percentage of landed swings decreases as hit rate goes up, but with the two-roll system, yellow crit rate stays constant, we must adjust for that. Finally, we must multiply by the EP of 1 hit rating, to convert our "hit rating" equivalency into EP.
Our final expertise calculation is:
EP = \lfloor \frac {\sum {\text {Expertise}}}{3.9423} \rfloor \times 3.9423 \times \frac {\text {Yellow\%} \times (1 + \text{Crit\%}) + \text{White\%}}{\text {White\%}} \times \text {Hit EP}
Example Calculation:
Assume that we are examining a new piece of gear that will bring our total Expertise Rating to 17, Hit EP is 1.4, Crit% is 30%, White% of DPS is 50%, Yellow% of DPS is 40% and the remaining 10% is shocks and searing totem.
Expertise EP = \lfloor \frac {17}{3.9423} \rfloor \times 3.9423 \times \frac {40 \times 1.30 + 50}{50} \times 1.4
Expertise EP = 45.12
Note that this value is not the EP stat weight of Expertise Rating, it is the total sum worth of the Expertise Rating on all your gear.
Weapons
A frequently asked question is how to wield weapons with differing speeds but similar DPS values, such as using a Rising Tide and a Syphon - is it better to put one weapon in the main/off hand over the other? Simulation results indicate that it makes little difference which hand the slower weapon is wielded in. It appears that in general, a 2.x/2.y = 2.y/2.x.
Optimizing enhancement shaman DPS requires running two slow weapons with Windfury Weapon on both weapons.
The best way to choose between multiple items in the same slot is to run Yo's simulator, once for each item, using the stats that you would have with that item equipped. Do not post asking which weapon is best: find out for yourself by running the sim. That said, here are some general guidelines, current as of Patch 2.4.
Main Hand
Current best in slot weapon is [Hand of the Deceiver].
Arena weapons from the latest season (e.g. [Vengeful Gladiator's Cleaver]) are likely to continue the trend of being several DPS better than the best available PvE weapons.
[Rising Tide], [Syphon of the Nathrezim], [Talon of the Phoenix], [Claw of Molten Fury] and [Dragonstrike] are roughly equivalent items and rank just below the S3 weapons.
[Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality] from the Sunwell badge vendor is simulated at within ~10 dps of the S3 and T6 weapons.
Orcs should prioritize axes for the +5 Expertise racial bonus. This is applied per hand non stacking, so an axe/mace combo only applies expertise to the axe, and an axe/axe combo would apply 5 Expertise to each hand (which would be the same as having 5 Expertise on an armor item).
The differences in DPS within these "tiers" are relatively minor. Which weapon is best for you, or which weapon to mainhand and which weapon to offhand, can only be found by using the simulator with your stats, and no general conclusions can be drawn.
Off Hand
OH itemization is fairly poor early on in raiding, but changes in patch 2.3 have added several new options in KZ and ZA that help fill the gaps. If you are not yet raiding, the best choices for OH in a WF/WF setup is a 2.6 speed Gladiator weapon from Arenas, a crafted [Runic Hammer] or a blue one-hand weapon available in several heroic instances. Failing that, you can use a green 2.6 speed weapon from the Auction House.
An epic dagger with high dps (such as [Malchazeen] or [Guile of Khoraazi])and imbued with Flametongue can be used to temporarily replace a green or blue OH weapon. This comes at the cost of reduced Windfury procs, reduced Stormstrike damage, and a reduction in Flurry uptime. This should be seen as a stopgap measure only, not a weapon that you should commit to using for long periods of time.
Current best choice (As of patch 2.4) for an offhand is [Mounting Vengeance] followed by any of the Season 3 Arena weapons ([Vengeful Gladiator's Cleaver]).
Next set of choices include [Rising Tide] and [Syphon of the Nathrezim].
[Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality] is within ~10 DPS of the S3 and T6 weapons and is available off the Sunwell badge vendor.
TwoHand Viability
2H weapons are strictly inferior for PvE DPS situations. Talents and mechanics of shaman DPS at lvl 70 are built around DW. 9% +Hit while DWing through a 0/42/19 build allows all special attacks to be hit capped through talents alone, while a 2H will only receive 3% of the hit benefit. DW also scales better with AP. 2h effectively gains (1.0 * 0.95 hit rate) = 0.95 from AP and DW gains (1.5 * 0.74 hit rate) = 1.11 from AP. The more +hit you have (until we reach cap) the greater the difference between the two is. At a certain point (easily reached when raid buffed), this difference in gain from AP will outweigh the bonus base DPS of a 2H weapon over similar ilevel 1H weapons.
The second largest benefit you bring to your group is Unleashed Rage, and your Flurry and UR uptime will take a large hit from using a 2H, as strings of dodge/miss/non crits become compounded by a single, slower swing time. Threat concerns are even more problematic with a 2H because of large WF procs, requiring that you heavily pad your threat against a tank.
And finally, as mentioned in the Windfury Proc section, DW with WF on both weapons results in an increased chance to proc WF off either hand (36%). 2H weapons will not benefit from that increased proc rate.
Note the differences here. 2H has a higher flurry uptime because DWing will consume the 3 charges faster, but the Uptime for UR is much higher for DW than 2H, leading to greater group synergy.
The following section is currently under dispute, equations are likely to be changed soon following community review of corrections.
Derivation of the Unleashed Rage uptime:
UR Uptime = \left ( 1 - (1 - \text {crit\%})^{\text{HitsPer10sec}} \right ) \times 100
HitsPer10sec = \frac {10 \times \text{Num Wpns} } {\text {Wpn Speed}} \times (1- \text {Miss Rate}) + \frac {10 \times \text {Num Wpns} }{\text {Wpn Speed} \times \left 1-0.3((1-(\text {Crit Rate} \times \text {Flurry}))) \times \text {Windfury} + 1}
Windfury = \left(\begin{array}{l l}\text{WF Proc Rate} & \text{Wpn Speed} > 3 \\\text{WF Proc Rate} \times \text{Wpn Speed}/3 & \text{Wpn Speed} < 3\end{array}\right)
Flurry Uptime = \left (1-(1- \text{Crit Rate})^3 \right ) \times (1- \text {Miss Rate})
Relics
While it is possible to swap relics during combat to try and take advantage of multiple relic buffs, this is not recommended. Swapping a relic incurs a global cooldown and resets your swing timer.
The two best choices are [Totem of the Astral Winds] and [Stonebreaker's Totem]
A: Astral Winds EP = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Astral_Winds * Elemental_Weapons
B: Stonebreaker EP = Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3)
B1: Stonebreaker EP to WF = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Stonebreaker * Elemental_Weapons
B2: Stonebreaker EP to SS = Percent_of_SS_Swings * Stonebreaker
B3: Stonebreaker EP to white damage = Percent_of_white_Swings * Stonebreaker * (1 - MissRate)
Physical Damage breakdown:
Assuming two 2.6 speed weapons, flurried to 2.0 speed, means you get around 10 white swings per SS cooldown. 40% of those swings will be WF, meaning 10 white swings, 2 SS swings, 4.8 WF swings. 10+2+4.8 = 16.8
Percent_of_WF_Swings = 4.8/16.8 = 0.286
Percent_of_SS_Swings = 2/16.8 = 0.119
Percent_of_white_Swings = 10/16.8 = 0.595
(This breakdown is conservatively in favor of the Astral Winds Totem. Many WWS parses from raids show the balance slightly shifted away from WF towards white swings)
A: 32
B1: 44
B2: 13
B3: 65 * (1 - Missrate)
A = Stonebreaker_Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3).
32 = Uptime * (44 + 13 + [ 65 * (1 - Missrate) ]
Let Missrate = 19%
Then Uptime = 29%
As miss rate decreases, so does the required uptime to break even. An enhancement shaman with +9% hit from talents and no hit rating on gear would see a 19% miss rate against boss mobs, resulting in a required uptime of 29%.
Changing some values for more hit gear, we find that even if your miss rate is better than 2% the required uptime is 26.4%. This gives us a fairly good window of possible required uptimes for the Stonebreaker buff over a wide variety of gear, with a good conservative estimate being 30%.
Now what does it take to achieve a 30% uptime? Here’s a simplified formula for determining this.
(Seconds per Shock) = (Stonebreaker proc chance) * (1-Spell miss rate) * (Stonebreaker duration) * (1/Stonebreaker Uptime)
(Seconds per Shock) = (0.50)*(1-0.14)*(1/0.30) = 14.3
This means that on average, a shock every 14.3 seconds is the minimum needed to maintain 30% uptime on the totem buff and thus make it come out ahead of the Astral Winds totem.
Conclusion: The Stonebreaker totem should be superior to the Totem of Astral Winds on average if the shaman can shock at least once every 14 seconds. Note that Stonebreaker has a 10 second hidden cooldown.
Gems and Meta Gems
In general, [Bold Living Ruby] should fill every socket unless there is a socket bonus that does not require using a Blue gem color, and where the socket bonus is worth more EP than what the loss of the dps stats on the blue gem would be.
If you are matching gems for socket bonuses, use the following:
Red socket: [Bold Living Ruby].
Yellow socket:[Inscribed Noble Topaz].
Blue socket: [Sovereign Nightseye].
The [Rigid Dawnstone] is always the wrong answer for enhance shaman.
The [Bold Living Ruby] will always be better then [Bright Living Ruby] in a raid environment due to Blessing of Kings.
Naturally the epic BT/Hyjal versions of these gems follow the same logic and you should be able to extrapolate which gems to use.
[Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], Best choice for a meta gem. This gem will scale with your crit rating. The 3% crit damage can be roughly approximated to raise your DPS by 0.03 * Crit Rate. At 30% crit rate this amounts to nearly a 1% gain in damage dealt.
[Thundering Skyfire Diamond] gives 240 haste rating for 6 seconds. This is your second choice for meta gems as it appears to have a 1 minute cooldown. Shaman with lower crit rates (20% or lower, geared in heroic/blue gear, just starting 25mans and KZ) will benefit slightly more from this gem over the RED.
[Swift Skyfire Diamond] will yield a very minor DPS increase - same for [Potent Unstable Diamond]
Weapon Enchants
[Enchant Weapon - Mongoose] 4.8% crit per proc (double procs stack) and 2% haste.
[Formula: Enchant Weapon - Crusader] provides 60 Strength (120 AP) at lvl 70 per proc.
[Enchant Weapon - Potency] is a constant +20 Strength (40 AP).
Clearly Mongoose is the preferred enchant, although Crusader can be a cheaper, but still effective alternative. Potency should be completely avoided.
[Formula: Enchant Weapon - Executioner] is roughly equivalent at high T5/T6 levels of gearing to a single enchant of Mongoose. The break point depends on the amount of Armor Penetration on your gear. Use of the simulator is recommended to determine whether Mongoose or Executioner will benefit your character more. It is estimated that around 500-600 passive Armor Penetration is required before Executioner will begin to out perform double Mongoose.
Executioner currently does not stack from multiple hands, each proc when DWing will simply refresh the buff. It is unknown if this is intended, since this deviates from how other weapon enchants function. Obviously the value of Executioner will increase as you gain more -Armor gear. At entry raid level a shaman will gain more from dual Mongoose enchants. At high T5 content and beyond, Executioner will become more valuable.
Evidence suggests that Mongoose and Executioner have nearly the same uptime and PPM, around 40-45%
Agility vs Run Speed for Boots
For PvE, either [Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed] or [Enchant Boots - Cat's Swiftness] are going to be big payoffs. Increased run speed is hands down the best enchant you can get for PvE. Derivation:
Let D be your dps without a boot enchant. For the run speed to provide more benefit, we need:
(D+12A)(T-t) < (D+6A)(T-t/1.08)
which simplifies to
T < [(1-k)D + (2-k)6A]t/(6A)
where k = 1/1.08. For example, gives A = .16286, and so we have
T < (.07581D + 1.074) t
Using some actual data, a shaman that does betwen 900 and 1000 dps will have T < 76.88t
For 5 minutes, we would need t > 3.90 seconds and for 6 minutes we would need t > 4.68 seconds
So for a 5 minute fight if you spend roughly 4 seconds moving between adds, running to the boss, etc, Run Speed provides a superior DPS benefit.
Enchants for the rest of your gear
Asked often enough that it ends up needing its own section. These are the enchants contributing the most to DPS.
Helm - Glyph of Ferocity (34 AP, 16 Hit)
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Blade (15 Crit, 20 AP) or Greater Inscription of Vengeance (30 AP, 10 Crit)
Cloak - Greater Agility (+12 Agi) or Subtlety (-2% Threat) if you feel threat constrained
Chest - Exceptional Stats (+6 Str/Agi)
Bracers - Brawn (+12 Strength)
Gloves - Major Strength (+15 Strength)
Rings - (Enchanter Only) Stats (+4 Str/Agi)
Legs - Nethercobra Leg Armor (50 AP, 12 Crit)
Consumables
Translating the benefit of consumables using the Pawn values above we can assess DPS consumables in order of greatest benefit:
[Flask of Relentless Assault] 120 EP
[Elixir of Major Agility] 110 EP
[Fel Strength Elixir] 90 EP
[Haste Potion] [(1.48 * 400) * 15]/120 = 74 EP
[Elixir of Major Strength] 70 EP
[Insane Strength Potion] (120*2*15)/120 = 30 EP
How to choose totems
In a 5-man party your DPS is generally limited by the threat that your tank can produce. The most efficient way to increase small party DPS is to provide the tank with more threat. Totems should be chosen that compliment the tank, rather than the rest of the party, even it if means only 1 player is receiving benefit from the totem. Priority of totems always goes to the tank in small groups.
Warrior tanks should always receive Windfury (Paladin tanks need Wrath of Air), unless they are severely under-geared and need the extra armor/dodge just to survive. Rationale for using GoA for a Warrior or Paladin tank should never be to provide crit. Feral druids that are tanking should always be given GoA.
In a raid setting this becomes slightly more complicated as bastardized groups are thrown together. Recommendation is to follow this set of rules:
Rule 1 - If you are ever in doubt about which Air totem should be used, your raid leader has probably failed to put together a complimentary group. Reference the Group Compositions That Work section for details on putting groups together. Encourage proper group compositions for maximum benefit to the raid.
Rule 2 - If a DPS warrior is in your group, he needs Windfury for his rage feedback mechanism. Windfury provides a larger DPS gain to a DPS warrior than any other totem to any other class.
Rule 3 - If you are in group with a Warrior Main Tank, he should receive Windfury, if a Paladin MT he should receive Wrath of Air unless the fight is a non-threat-limited encounter where survivability is questionable.
Rule 4 - If there is no Warrior, but 2 or more Combat Sword Rogues are in the group, they will benefit slightly more from Windfury than from Grace of Air.
Rule 5 - If your group has no warrior, and 2 or more Feral Druids or Hunters, Grace of Air is the totem of choice.
Totem Twisting
Sometimes the best way to solve a conflict of interest in a group is to give everyone what they want. Blizzard is removing totem twisting in the next expansion by changing Windfury Totem to a raid-wide haste buff and combining Grace of Air into Strength of Earth Totem.
Windfury Totem places a 9 second buff on party member's weapons to imbue them with the extra attack mechanic. This can be manipulated to allow a second Air totem to be placed "simultaneously" with Windfury Totem. Proper twisting technique will result in a noticeable loss of shock DPS for the shaman but will still yield a net gain of DPS for the shaman and his group, Testing done by Disquette showed that a group of 3 rogues and a warrior gained 211 DPS while he lost 83 DPS while twisting, a net gain of 128 DPS for the group. For a well geared T6 guild totem twisting would amount to a 0.5% - 1% gain in raid DPS, assuming 27,000 raid dps while not twisting.
You'll most likely want a macro to do this if you so choose, and a mod to track the time remaining on the windfury buff. A common one looks like this:
/castsequence reset=10 Stormstrike, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem
Follow the placement of Grace of Air with a shock. The mana costs of twisting are between 14,500 and 10,500 depending on talent choices. Using water shield and mana spring and careful use of Shamanistic Rage can easily provide the necessary mana. The only concern is that bad streaks of Shamanistic Rage may leave the shaman in a mana deprived state - should this happen the shaman should be prepared to use a mana potion (if not on cooldown) or to drop shocks from his rotation and continue to twist for as long as possible.
Totem Twisting has both its advocates and its detractors, it is not an agreed upon mechanic or strategy.
Pros:
Party gains 88 Agility or extra threat reduction
Overall DPS of the party is increased by nearly 3%
Cons:
The shaman increases time spent in global cooldown, impairing his ability to decurse or purge mobs.
The mana cost of refreshing 2 totems every 9 seconds while Stormstriking is roughly 14,000 mana every 2 minutes. This may limit the ability to use shocks, and requires very careful timing of Shamanistic Rage, may require JoW from a paladin, and definitely requires 5 points in Totemic Focus (reduces mana cost to 10,500 per 2 min).
Until you are very practiced with the technique you will find your attention devoted to watching the timers which means you will be less attentive to changes in the game environment
Latency or simply being late to refresh the Windfury totem will cause the Windfury buff to run off your party's weapons, which means they are losing opportunities for a Windfury proc.
]Managing your threat
Enhance Shaman are severely threat capped - not as badly as a Ret Paladin, but worse than a DPS warrior. With no active threat reduction we rely on buffs, items, and strategy to reduce our threat. Methods to reduce your threat are listed below in order of Most to Least effective. Remember that threat reduction is multiplicative, not additive.
Spirit Weapons - Enhancement talent that reduces melee threat by 30%. This is a staple talent for our spec. Most effective since its always on and isn't reliant on a paladin.
Blessing of Salvation - 30% threat reduction. If you only have one paladin in your raid, this is the buff you need. If you don't have a paladin in your horde raid, you need to pressure your leadership to recruit one.
[Prism of Inner Calm] - worth around 10% threat reduction as long as your raid buffed crit rate is over 30% (and by the time you're killing Vashj it damn well better be). Keep an eye on this as Blizzard may buff it at some point.
Strategy - A lot of this depends on your tank and his TPS generation. If your tank can generate around 800 TPS you can give him a 10k threat lead and then unload without much worry of catching up. If you find yourself approaching the threat cap you should stop shocking first since they aren't affected by Spirit Weapons. A suggestion was made of "downranking" your weapons for a few seconds, allowing you to continue to provide Unleashed Rage to the group with lowbie weapons so that your threat isn't increasing.
Battle Ankh - the improved ankh talent can certainly come in handy when clearing raid zones. You need to be extremely careful about pulling aggro however - if you pull and die, the mob will pick the next highest threat target to attack, which may not be the tank. A much safer method is to allow yourself to die to AoE, and have buffers primed to give you DPS buffs when you ankh. At that point you'll be free to take Blessing of Might if you didn't have it before, since your tank will now have a hefty threat lead.
Simulations
The nature of windfury and flurry interactions make closed form modeling extremely difficult and prone to a high degree of deviation. The Enhancement community turned to combat simulators as a way to model our DPS to make informed decisions. Currently the best utility for doing this is Yo!'s simulator.
To use Yo's simulator, load the armory or view your character paperdoll in-game. Make a note of which buffs you have active. Input your stats into the first panel, including your strength and agility for Blessings of Kings calculations. (You do not need BoK on your character for this) Your Hit% should be a sum of the paperdoll value and any from talents. (Nature's Guidance and Improved Dual Wielding do not appear on the paperdoll)
Change the panel to the Procs and Buffs pages and enter things appropriately. Not all trinkets are represented, some things may need to be added as a static AP value to your stats. (Benefit * LengthOfBuff / Cooldown) Yo recently added modeling support for many On Use and proc trinkets, be aware that selecting them only activates the bonus effect on the trinket, if they have passive stats on the item you need to make sure you input those on the main page (if you are comparing a new item that you don't have for example).
Yo's Sim is most accurate when its run for long periods of time, multiple times. If you want EP values, the recommended method is to run the sim for 5,000 - 10,000 hours between 5-10 times, taking the average of all the EP values as the result. If you want to simply compare DPS between item upgrades, multiple runs at 1,000 hours should be sufficient. The length of the sim run helps to smooth out the randomness of windfury/flurry in our DPS model.
Crazy Shaman's DPS & AEP calculator
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Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20080811071236/http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t20765-shaman_enhancement/
Auch wenn 2 oder mehr Schläge vom WF-CD verschluckt werden, besteht danach durch die schnellere Schlagabfolge immer noch eine erhöhte Chance, dass es doch schneller procct.