Enhancement Shaman for Dummies

Introduction

This thread is a result of me talking with a buddy of mine about Enhancement Shaman, how to play it, what to do, etc. We were talking mid-raid so we had to cut it at one point, and I promised to make him a thread with "links to addons and pr0tips" after the raid. That's what I did, but I went a bit too far with the text, which resulted in this. It became much more of an article rather than "pr0tips" thread, so I decided to re-post it in a bit more public place than our closed guild forums.

This guide is about Enhancement Shaman in PvE beyond the "shock every 6 sec, ss every 10 sec" pattern.

Elitist Jerks

The first and best theory document on the subject is this: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t20765-shaman_enhancement/

You should read it thoroughly if you're serious about playing enhancement shaman and like math. If you are just curious about your possible future offspec or hate math, you can pretty much skip all the parts with the extensive math and just read the basics - there is a lot to know from that thread.

I will be explaining a lot of things here which were already explained on EJ. I'll be using a much more 'simple' language, and I won't be showing any math.

Stormstrike Timing

One tiny part of that article isn't complete in EJ article, but it's a very important thing:

Q u o t e:
Timing Stormstrike to Proc Windfury

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What is 'timing Stormstrike to proc Windfury': you should know that Windfury has a 'hidden' cooldown of 3 seconds (shared for both hands; so if WF procced from any hand, it can't proc for the next 3 seconds at all). You should also know that Stormstrike hits with both weapons. Now, to reach the ideal maximum DPS, you want to use Stormstrike when Windfury is not on cooldown.

Example: you're meleeing, Windfury procs, one second after that proc your Stormstrike becomes available (off CD), ideally you should wait another 2 seconds before using Stormstrike.

Why? Simple: Stormstrike counts for 2 strikes, and both of them can proc Windfury. You do this to increase your Windfury procs "density". Remember that Windfury is a proc, it doesn't just happen itself every 3 sec, it procs from hits, so by doing 2 additional hits while WF is not on CD, you're literally making Windfury proc more.

Some may argue that because of this waiting, you do less Stormstrikes per boss. This is true; however, both math and practise prove that doing this trick increases dps in all cases (>1 min fights), and the increase can be anywhere between 50-100 dps. It's worth the effort.

Totem twisting

Another interesting feature of the class is totem twisting.

When you use your Windfury Totem, it enchants every party members' main hand weapon with a 10 seconds buff "Windfury Totem". Windfury Totem 'ticks' every 5 seconds and refreshes this buff.

The interesting thing is that even if you remove the Windfury Totem, the 10 sec buff will still remain and tick off. Even if you replace your Windfury Totem with another totem...

That's what totem twisting is. You drop a Windfury Totem (and enchant your groups weapons), immediately replace it with a, say, Agility totem. In 9 seconds you repeat this. This achieves both Windfury Weapon AND Agility totem being effective for your group at the same time. ~3% crit is totally worth the effort, especially since this becomes automatism if you practise enough.

Shocks

I would like to point at a part of the EJ thread about "Elemental Shocks" (ctrl+f and search for that).

As proven there, Flame+Earth (keeping the flame shock debuff) is the best rotation. However, even pure Flame Shock spam is better than Earth Shock. Earth Shock spam becomes equal to Flame Shock if we assume that every each Earth Shock was done on a Stormstrike debuffed target, which is nearly impossible in a raid scenario. Then there's also the Scorch debuff.

Conclusion: Flame Shock is the main shock for enhancement. If anything goes wrong (and there will always be cooldown overlapping if you play the class perfectly), Flame Shock always takes prio as a higher DPS contributor. Ideally you have to keep the Flame Shock debuff; so you do flame-earth-flame-earth-... unless you have to adapt your spell rotation. Say, you were totemtwisting and timing SS, by the time you remembered about your shock cooldown, the Flame Shock debuff had only 3 seconds left on it - go with Flame Shock.

Gear

Slow weapons in both hands is by far best (WF imbues, of course). However not everyone understands why. People claim that it's because they have better damage ranges. While they do indeed have 'higher' damage ranges, this is not the sole reason. The actual weapon speed matters for enh shaman - unlike for Warriors/Rogues - we have the weapon speed variable present in the damage formulas for WF and SS.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Normalization

Check this link, it explains why weapon speed matters for us but not as much for Warriors/Rogues. Windfury and Stormstrike are not normalized. White damage also scales better with AP with a slower weapon, and white damage is about 40% of Enhancement Shaman. Using any weapon faster than 2.0 is gimping yourself.

There are also a lot of discussions about Hit Rating, Crit Rating, Haste, Expertise, etc. A very rough explanation to stats: Hit Rating is the least wanted stat, even though it's not bad, you should never focus on it. Crit and Strength/AP are primary stats, but as gear progresses, as you reach ~1.7k / 40% talented crit, other stats take over. Haste is good, but going under 1.5s swing timer is generally a bad idea (a WF proc will lock out the next 3 hits instead of 2 with its cooldown, so that's 1.4x seconds wasted), so careful how you gear and take Flurry into account, aswell as Dragonspine Trophy if you have it (which is a VERY good trinket for Enhancement Shaman, by the way). Expertise is very good.

Sounds pretty confusing? There is some software which can help you with picking upgrades.

MaxDPS.com is a fast and good one. Remember to tick "include leather gear" as nearly all shaman best-in-slot gear is leather (thanks Blizzard for itemizing nearly all mail epics for hunters only, and ruining our Tier 6 set with stupid amounts of Mp5 and intellect which are nearly useless for us).

theorycraft.narod.ru - the best simulator ever. This program is insane. Something sick as hell. Remember that you gotta input your stats including talents there. Our 5% crit talent doesn't include in our char window, nor do all the hit talents. So you gotta add 5% crit and 9% hit to the values you put there. You also gotta write your actual Expertise there, not Expertise Rating.

I will also suggest the WoWEquip addon - http://files.wowace.com/WoWEquip/WoWEquip.zip - it's like CTProfiles in game, allows you to configure gear setups, compare them and various other stuff. I spent hours in WoWEquip + AtlasLoot + Yo's simulator, figuring ideal gear setups for all levels of progress.

Spec

The most common build for Enhancement PvE is this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZxVbdVMsAuqoVbez

A lot of people don't care about Imp Reincarnation though, and put the 2 points in Concussion in Elemental (shock dmg).

There have also been arguements about the Improved Weapon Totems. Apparently some people calculated that the overall raid DPS increase in nearly any scenario is outperformed by 1 point in Concussion. And this is raid DPS, not personal from one member. Personally I think that this is so very minor that I would prefer having no 'unfilled' talents and put 2/2 into Weapon Totems just because it looks better like that.

Ah, and another variant for resto is getting only 3/5 Totemic Focus, but getting both 2/2 Imp Reincarnation and 2/5 Concussion. Personally, I twist almost always. The only case I don't twist is when nobody in my group can benifit from WF totem at all. I prefer 5/5 Totemic Focus.