Here's some I picked up when I was researching Enhancement Shamans. I hope you find this as helpful as I did.
An Enhancement Shaman is an integral part of any melee group. Besides offering substantial personal DPS, an Enhancement Shaman brings group specific buffs through talents beyond those offered by a Resto Shaman. These include Unleashed Rage (an on-crit proc for 10% additional melee AP), Strength of Earth (+97 STR) Windfury (20% proc instant attack with extra AP), and Grace of Air (+88 AGI). Enhancement shamans are equally useful in a main tank group, offering increased dodge and armor, or increased threat generation.
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.
Shaman - Contents
1Shaman: Enhancement
1.1Major Abilities
1.1.1Windfury Weapon
1.1.1.1Weapon Speed Interaction
1.1.1.2Windfury Proc Rate
1.1.1.3Can Windfury Totem avoid the cooldown problem?
1.1.2Flametongue and Frostband Viability?
1.1.3Stormstrike
1.1.3.1Timing Stormstrike to Proc Windfury
1.1.3.2Stormstrike and 2H Weapons
1.1.4Elemental Shocks
1.2Talent Builds
1.2.1Elemental or Resto sub-spec
1.2.2The Myth of Elemental Devastation
1.3Itemizing an Enhancement Shaman
1.3.1Enhancement Points - EP - Stat Weight System
1.3.1.1Using EP - Examples
1.3.1.2Hit Rating
1.3.1.3Haste Rating
1.3.1.4Intellect and Mp5
1.3.1.5Expertise Rating
1.3.2Weapons
1.3.2.1Main Hand
1.3.2.2Off Hand
1.3.2.3TwoHand Viability
1.3.3Relics
1.3.4Gems and Meta Gems
1.3.5Trinkets
1.3.6Enchanting your Gear
1.3.6.1Weapon Enchants
1.3.6.2Agility vs Run Speed for Boots
1.3.6.3Enchants for the rest of your gear
1.3.7Consumables
1.4Enhancement Shaman in a group
1.4.1How to choose totems
1.4.1.1Totem Twisting
1.4.2Managing your threat
1.5Notes for Raid Leaders
1.5.1Group compositions that work
1.5.2Evaluating with WoW Web Stats
1.6Simulations
1.7Useful Links and Addons
1.8Upcoming Changes in Wrath of the Lich King
1.8.1Core Mechanic Changes
1.8.2Loss of Resto Tree Synergy, Major Gains to Elemental Tree
1.9Copyright Information
2Shaman: Elemental
3Shaman: Restoration
[top]Major Abilities
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[top]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]
[top]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%.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 800x600 and weights 254KB.
[top]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. [footnote]Originally posted by Disquette on the WoW official forums. Original post is no longer archived by Blizzard.[/footnote]
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%.
[top]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.
[top]Flametongue and Frostband Viability?
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[top]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.
[top]Timing Stormstrike to Proc Windfury
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[top]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 = 868.83
S3 DW 2.6 = 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.
[top]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. = 207.9
Flame - Earth Rotation
This is a 12 second cycle that begins with Flame Shock. =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. = 246.9
Therefore, you can see that Flame Shock over a 6 second period provides more DPS than Earth Shock.
Talent Builds
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From a raiding perspective the Enhancement tree is pretty straight-forward. 45 points are required in the tree to pick up all of the spec defining talents. Along the way this includes picking up Improved Ghost Wolf in Tier 2 to be able to advance to Tier 4 for Flurry. This build assumes that you are spending points on Enhancing Totems and Improved Weapon Totems for the benefit off your group.
Standard X/45/X point build
[top]Elemental or Resto sub-spec
Beyond the 45 points in the Enhancement tree there is the choice of sub-spec into Resto or Elemental. For quite awhile the assumption was that the Elemental options could not maintain pace with 3% hit from the Resto tree. Several months of deliberation and testing from the part of the community in this thread led us to the conclusion that both specs produce, on average, identical DPS figures for the individual shaman. The only real distinguishing feature between the two sub-specs is the increased totem range for convenience, and cheaper totems to make totem twisting easier.
The standard resto sub-spec build contains 14 points minimum. This leaves 2 points available at the discretion of the shaman after picking up Totemic Mastery and Nature's Guidance. Many shaman choose to put these points in Improved Reincarnation for the chance to use a "battle threat drop" (dying) more often. The alternative is to provide a slight boos to your DPS by putting the 2 points into Concussion in the Elemental tree.
The Elemental sub-spec again begins with the 45 point base in the Enhancement tree. The Elemental sub-spec focuses on the damage increasing talents and puts 2 points into Convection in order to reach Tier 3 talents. This leaves 1 point available to place in either Convection or Call of Thunder. Elemental Focus will provide a very low average benefit because of the low spell crit rate that a properly geared Enhancement Shaman will have.
[top]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
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[top]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.
Stat T4 EP T5 EP T6 EP Sunwell
Attack Power 1 1 1 1
Strength 2 (2.2) 2 (2.2) 2 (2.2) 2 (2.2)
Agility 1.74 (1.91) 1.8 (2) 1.54 (1.69) 1.71 (1.89)
Crit Rating 1.97 2 1.74 1.94
Haste Rating 1.28 1.48 1.82 1.98
Hit Rating 1.34 1.4 1.69 1.8
Armor Penetration 0.22 0.28 0.35 0.41
Expertise Rating 3 3 3.18 3.53
For your convenience, here are LootRank.com listings pre-filled with these EP weights. (Just change the armor type)
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