[Guide] Shaman DPS TextBook

[grim412]

Enhancement shaman DPS




Disclaimer: I didn't color coat this because it's suppose to be a useful guide, not the cover a fruit loops box. White is easiest to read. Please don't flame. I do not say I am the perfect shaman, but I think what I so is pretty good.

This is my first serious post, took me nearly 2 hours. So if you like it +Rep me.




Spec
Your spec is 0/45/16. Dont Argue.Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


Enchants
Head
- - -Glyph of Ferocity

Shoulders
- - -Might of the Scourge - Drops off Sapphiron inNaxxramas
- - -Greater Inscription of Vengeance - Aldor
- - -Greater Inscription of the Blade - Scryer

Chest
- - -Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats

Wrist
- - - Enchant Bracer - Brawn

Hands
- - - Enchant Gloves - Major Strength

Legs
- - - Nethercobra Leg Armor
- - - Cobrahide Leg Armor If you're a cheap shit

Feet
- - - Enchant Boots - Cat's Swiftness
- - - Enchant Boots - Dexterity If you're broke

Fingers
- - - Enchant Ring - Stats For 375 Enchanter's

Mainhand
- - - Enchant Weapon - Mongoose
- - - Enchant Weapon - Potency If you're poor


Gems
In general, Bold Living Ruby (8 Strength) should fill every socket unless there is a socket bonus that does not require using a Blue gem color

Red: Bold Living Ruby (8 Strength)
Yellow: Inscribed Noble Topaz (4 Crit 4 Strength)
Blue: Sovereign Nightseye (4 Strength 6 Sta)

The Rigid Dawnstone (8 Hit) is always the wrong answer for enhance shaman.

The Bold Living Ruby (8 Strength) will always be better then Bright Living Ruby (16 AP) in a raid environment due to Blessing of Kings.

Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (12 Agility 3% +Crit), Best choice for a meta gem. This gem will scale with your crit rating.

Gear: In a Nutshell

Weapons

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.

Relics

The two best choices are Totem of the Astral Winds and Stonebreaker's Totem

As for the rest of you're gear goes, this is 'in a nut shell' so I wont go over every piece of gear.

Strength>Crit>Hit>Everything else. Now don't go out only getting Str, with no hit. You need to find a way to balance it.

Consumables

Pre-Fight Pots
1st= Flask of Relentless Assault
2nd= Elixir of Major Agility
3rd= Fel Strength Elixir

Mid-Fight Pots
1st= Haste Potion
2nd= Elixir of Major Strength
3rd= Insane Strength Potion

Food
1st=Food with strength
2nd=Food with strength
3rd=Food with strength

There's a bunch, dont know the names by heart
Food & Drinks - Items - World of Warcraft

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.

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
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.

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=8 [combat] Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem

Pros:

* Party gains 88 Agility or extra threat reduction
* Overall DPS of the party is increased

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 will 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.
* 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.


Im not going to go into detail about special groups.


Rotation & Role

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.


If you dont understand this. Flame - Earth Rotation is much better.

StormStrike-FlameShock-StormStrike-EarthShock-Repeat (While you're totem managing.)

You're soul roll as an Enhancement Shaman is to increase the DPS of others, while creating a good amount on you're own. If you're only dropping totems to increase you're damage, you're not a team player, and shouldn't raid.


Thanks

[eliteninjakimimaro]

Cool Very Nice Guide

[pink]

Very nice guide, hits a lot of key points.

[Procatcher190]

Very nice post and for that you get +Rep

[Tanka]

Very nice man. Been fumbling around with my shammy(new to it) but this looks like a good way to go. Thanks!

[Aradroth]

Why would you put blue gems over epic gems? Plus enhancement shamans are about the easiest class in the game to play. If you seriously don't know this you probably shouldn't be playing the game...

[Raskel]

My guess is that you have read elitistjerks guide, which totally explains everything and uses some of the exact words you have used here. You shouldn't take credit for these kind of things. Sure you have added some pieces of your own.

Here is the elitistjerks.com guide:

Shaman: Enhancement - Elitist Jerks

And enhancments are not the easiest to play.. BM Hunters are deffo the easiest to play. Enhancements has many modifications and you have to really watch your gear

[grim412]

Why would you put blue gems over epic gems? Plus enhancement shamans are about the easiest class in the game to play. If you seriously don't know this you probably shouldn't be playing the game...

Sure, if you want to put epic gems in go for it... Im not telling you to get blue gems, its just in most peoples price range.

Ele shamns are easyer
BM hunters are easyer

enhance is just as difficult to play as the next class, you need to time you're windfurrys, watch your threat (enhance shamans pull alot of threat in a short amount of time), while timing your stormstrike with earth shock/flame shock.

Doing all this while managing and twisting totems..

so dont talk about things you dont know.

[Aradroth]

Sure, if you want to put epic gems in go for it... Im not telling you to get blue gems, its just in most peoples price range.

Ele shamns are easyer
BM hunters are easyer

enhance is just as difficult to play as the next class, you need to time you're windfurrys, watch your threat (enhance shamans pull alot of threat in a short amount of time), while timing your stormstrike with earth shock/flame shock.

Doing all this while managing and twisting totems..

so dont talk about things you dont know.

Uhh kid, I'm in BT/Sunwell on my shaman. If your tanks don't suck you shouldn't even have to watch your threat. You act like any of this is even the least bit difficult. Plus, there's already like 5 guides for enhancement shamans on this site.

[grim412]

im not sayin their hard im sayin their are alot easyer

[grim412]

And I just made the guide, then you come in saying you should get epic gems (DUH?)

I mean their only the same thing but better, but most people have a low budget.


And who cares if their ez to play, so are the other 40% of WoW classes.



:gtfo2:

[Suy]

I say it was a nice and good post, and that he wanted to share this with us. And he is alittle right there, he was thingking of everyones budget, everyone havn't really gotten enough for epic gems.

[Aradroth]

And I just made the guide, then you come in saying you should get epic gems (DUH?)

I mean their only the same thing but better, but most people have a low budget.


And who cares if their ez to play, so are the other 40% of WoW classes.



:gtfo2:

My point is that enhancement shamans are one of the easiest classes to play. There doesn't need to be a guide about them, yet this is like the 5th on this site. All of this is pretty much stated on elitistjerks.

[icsdaddy]

Great post over all.. just a few tips.
I mainly play on the Asian (South Korean) servers.. so the economy runs a little differently.
First of all, try to get epic gems as much as possible.. I'm not sure how much money goes about on American servers, but on mine, I can get around 6K profit in two weeks or so.. with that, I usually try to spare 1K or so for gems ATLEAST. Gems are what ups your dps.. after all, you never know how long its going to be till your next equipment upgrade.
Secondly, enhancement shamans should always use totem twisting. I'm currently specced for all three trees.
- Restoration, 2100 heal, 220 mp5 no buffed.
- Elemental, 1050 bonus damage, 24 crit chance, and 141 haste? Not sure about the exact translation
- enhancement, 1650 power, 32 crit, 9 expertise, 121 hit rating, 66 haste.
When I run Sunwell with my raid team, I am almost 100% told to run as a enhancement because of the synergy. If you look at my three specs, my enhancement is currently (by far) the lowest.. however, because of totem twisting, I raise my entire raid dps by atleast a few percentage points.
There's a trick to totem twisting, however. If you look at stormstrike, it is exactly 10 seconds.
if you time the macro with that, you can see the buff going down according to storm strike. For my macro, it pretty much looks like this.

/castsequence reset=10 [combat] stormstrike, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem
if you hit the button three times, as soon as you hit grace of air totem you'll have 8 seconds cooldown. As soon as that cooldown is over, you know that the rest of your party's Windfury buff is gone.. No need to keep an additional timer, just hit the button three times and watch the cooldown.

I forget which post explained this.. but contrary to popular belief, weapon haste actually boosts dps by far.. I use the trinket from Gruul and that procs fairly often. I often see weapon speed in the 1.8-2.0's nearly all the time.. Without that one trinket, however, my dps drops from 1700 to 1500 or so..

As an enhancement shaman, the global cooldown should be consistantly go on and off.. When I'm at the second boss of sunwell (brutallis sp?), DPS is the main concern.. My basic rotation is..
Weapon speed drum (leatherworking), Orc race skill, stormstrike/totem twisting, flame shock, strength totem, mana totem, fire totem, stormstirke/totemtwisting, earth shock, demon slaying elixir, haste elixir, storm strike/totemtwisting, etc..
Not even one second to keep your hands off the keyboard.. that's the spirit of enhancement shaman..

If your a shaman that really wants to boost DPS.. forget enhancement shaman. For my 1 year experience as all three types of shaman, I found that Enhancement reaches a certain level of DPS and cannot (will not) go beyond. i'm sure if someone found a way to use the ignore armor, we could eventually reach the boundary.. but as far as I am concerned, it is relatively impossible with the armor leather and mail gives us right now.
The real damage talent tree has to be elemental. With enough haste, damage has no boundaries whatsoever.. We must put in more effort than pure dealers, but I have seen an elemental shaman rank second in a brutallis kill.