I've Got Mail!

Ladies and Gents, a momentous day.

My first Question and Answer.

So here goes.

Don't play a Shaman, but I love your blog. I learned a lot about the capabilities of the resto-shaman I was running with at the time from reading your stuff.

Question for you: we're a guild of what I would call social players with some pretty good players who enjoy running together. Trying to get a critical mass of people through kara to be able to run the 25mans a bit more often. We don't have many shaman. And we have a whopping *one* enhancement shaman who we are trying to gear up with some early Kara bosses. I'm a big fan of letting people run with whatever spec they want, as long as they have put some thought into it. This is about having fun, after all. Unfortunately, our enhancement shaman seems a bit, um, ineffective (dps running about half of my slightly better geared BM hunter). And I just don't know enough about the class to make useful suggestions. There are some obvious points - his gear is simply not up to snuff. I also suspect his gameplay could use some major tweaks, and just from a cursory look he has the wrong gems. And more than a few wasted spec points.Not to mention the fact that he's skimping on enchants, inscriptions... (doubtless holding out for better gear). BUT... since there is no benchmark, I really don't have a tangible way to make it clear that his gameplay is subpar, and that at some point he will be holding us back until he improves. Nor do I know how to suggest he improve. We have great class leaders for every other class, but lacking greatly at shaman. (He has been fairly openly critical of some subpar hunter and mage play, where there are some high standards to measure against. Hard for some people to internalize a need to improve without some kind of tangible evidence).

So, after that long winded explanation, I guess the actual question is this: what kind of dps should we expect from a well-played shaman with early or pre-kara gear? And how should I/we suggest that he go about gameplay? I can read EJ until my eyes bleed, but most of it assumes some basic knowledge about where an enhancement shaman's damage really comes from. And I just don't have it.

So... assuming strength, AP, agi, stam... kind of in that order for stat preference? 2H vs dual wield? What kind of totems? Fight positioning... I just don't know where to start.

-Chuck of Unknown Server (Names changed just in case)

There is other relevant info between myself and Chuck that I will paraphrase below.

-Our Struggling Enh Shammy has DPS averaging around 350

- Here is his talent spec: Yowza

- He is using A 2.5 speed MH and a 2.6 OH (This is a good thing)


Now that we know what we're dealing with, here were my thoughts. Now granted I know I'm a Restoration Shaman, but I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on Enhancement as well. By no mean am I an expert. That being said, some (hell, all) of what I wrote may be inaccurate. If one of you guys sees something amiss, please call me out on it.

So here goes...

It is good for Enhancement Shaman to have a main hand weapon that is equal to or faster than your offhand. This helps it so that when Windfury proc's it doesn't do it from the offhand and suffer the dual wielding damage penalty.

(Edit: After re-looking at Elitist Jerks, the reason why a slower offhand is preferred is due to scaling and cooldown timing. Windfury is not "normalized". So slower weaps = higher damage. Also, Windfury is on a 3 second cooldown. So having a slower weapon prevents "missed" procs. Procs that couldn't go off because the cooldown on the attack wasn't ready due to a fast weapon.)

When gearing up, he shouldn't focus on the socket bonus that gear can provide. Often times the bonus does not equal the usefulness of using other more powerful gems (Str, Agil, Crit, Hit) and forgetting about the bonus altogether.

Make sure that eventhough he may be wearing "Shaman" gear that it is Enhancement Shaman gear. To that end, Tidefury sucks the big one for Enhancement Shaman. Just because its meant for a shaman, doesn't mean its meant for his spec. Specifically the Shoulders, some random green "of the bandit" with the Aldor/Scryer enchant would help more with his melee damage.

Getting revered with Cenarion for the DPS glyph (helm) you can buy from the quartermaster is a step in the right direction.

Weaps should have +15 / +20 agility or +15 str enchants on them. Until you have epic items, thats about as much as you need to think about it. I mention Str because Shaman AP is derived from the same formula as that of a warrior[ (Strength x 2) + (Character Level x 2) - 20]
No agility in that formula to be found...

However I still value the agility on the weaps more than Str for this simple reason. At level 70, 25 points of agility = 1% crit chance for a Shaman. This as opposed to a Rogue or Hunter that Require 40 points of agility =1% crit. Enhancment Shaman are crit animals, this is actually their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.

Many abilities like flurry (as well as a new one on the PTR) are triggered when a shaman crits, not to mention the unpredictable devastation that is windfury. These abilities can dish some serious damage but can also draw some serious aggro. Currently this unpredictability means that a Shaman either has to play it very conservative, especially at the beginning of the fight (i.e. not do anything) or throw caution to the wind and hope he or she doesn't go crit happy and get himself/herself obliterated.

The innate threat reduction that the spirit weapons provide is being beefed up in 2.3 to combat this problem.

Per Eyonix:
"It never applied to only white damage. I personally had this tested extensively. It's going to be 30% damage reduction from white damage, plus stormstrike, plus windfury procs. 15% was simply too low, so the additional 15% should help quite a bit."

Link



His spec, its OK but it has a few glaring holes.

Re-link of spec


1 - Improved lighting shield? He shouldn't be getting hit anyway, and it adds a huge amount of threat if a mob hits him. Making it damn near impossible to get the mob off. In short, wasted points.

2 - Which brings us to...toughness 5/5 ?! This is widely regarded as one of the worst talents in all of the shaman trees. Even with 10% more armor a raid mob is still going to beat the bag out of him in no time flat. I mean maybe if it was 10% more stamina that would be one thing, but as is he shouldn't be getting hit anyway and 10% more AC isn't going to do a whole heck of a lot.

3. Anticipation 5/5 ...Increases dodge by 5%. I haven't played melee aside from PTR in a while. But I'm pretty sure that if you stand behind a mob, you can negate cleave type of effects and going back to point numero 2, he shouldn't be getting hit anyway aside from spell damage so its kind of a wasted use of talent points. At least for PVE.

So now that we have 13 points wasted. Where should they be going? Well for one, they should be going in to 2/2 improved weapon totems.





This increases the damage done by windfury proc's for the rest of the raid. Thereby increasing threat generation by the tank and allowing everyone including him to let loose sooner.

That leaves us with 11 more points.

We'll move to the resto tree, this is where the glaring error in his build lies. First he should put 3 points in to either ancestral healing or totemic focus. I have it in ancestral healing because I have 2 sets of gear and if I need to be a 3rd healer, having a crit heal on a tank that increases his armor by 25% is nothing to sneeze at, but its up to him. Its mainly to get to the next tier of talents.

Here is where he has a big problem. He should have 3/3 in natures guidance. Maxed, it is a 3% to hit with spells and with melee weaps. Combine that with the dual wield specialization in the talent tree (6% to hit while dual wielding) and his Hit rating from gear ( 5.26) and his hit rating is roughly 14%. Yowza! but here's the thing. Shaman do OK white damage, but our main sources of DPS come from windfury, stormstrike, and spells. (AKA yellow damage) the hit rating for these attacks cap out at around 9%. Basically he could swap out his gear that has hit rating for other stats if he wanted to. (agility, AP, stamina, Str)

So we now have 5 points left. I would place 2 in to guardian totems (enhancement). The talent sucks for the most part, but it lessens the cooldown of grounding totem. Key for fights like maiden, and handy in PVP.




Next I would slap a point in totemic mastery (restoration) It increases the range of his totems and therefore increases his utility.



The final 2 points are his call. He can put them anywhere besides improved lightning shield. Toughness is marginally less bad, but at least that talent doesn't create aggro havoc.

So there you have it. That's my assessment.

My suggested build

With regards to weapon types. I prefer dual wield for the +6% to hit. You get bigger / more frequent windfury hits with a 2H, but the trade off isn't worth it IMO.

- Totems -

Windfury, unless in an all caster group. Then Wrath of air.

Mana spring - Its a crappy amount of mana per 5 right now (getting fixed on test) but its better than nothing and his healing stream won't do a whole lot.

Strength of Earth - + str is good for him and all melee.

The flame tongue totem ( puts a fire attack on group melee hits) screws up windfury and shouldn't be used. And the totem that shoots fire is only going to boost his damage marginally

(Edit: Apparently - raid buffed Searing totem can add between 50 - 70dps. This is more significant than I had thought. If CC or mana isn't an issue and your Shammy can remember to keep it up in addition to his other duties this is a viable DPS booster.)

and might not be worth the effort trying to remember to drop it. Besides if it shoots a CC'd mob that isn't going to be pretty.

So for the most part, no need for a fire totem.

Make sure he has the totem timers mod.

It shows time left on all totems being used and gives warnings when they are almost up.

Why his overally DPS is so low could be attributed to the following:

He might be saving his shocks instead of using them to DPS.

We have earthshock which is the equivalent of the rogue's kick. However if you use any shock (Frost / Fire/ etc) it triggers the cooldown on all shocks, Earthshock included. Check out WWS when you get it up an running, it is a possibility that he's not using his shocks because he doesn't want to risk not being able to throw an interrupt in.

If that turns out to be the case, tell him not to worry about that and to focus on DPS until something arises where he should be on interrupt duty, and when that happens you'll let him know.

For Enh Shaman its pretty simple. Windfury on both weaps, use stormstrike when you can, and Make sure to always have the Fireshock effect up. Its a DoT that lasts through the Shock cooldown, so you can alternate Fire shock / Ice shock or Fire / Earthshock.

I went on the PTR last night and in my crap Enh gear I killed some Ogre's in the barrier hills (lvl70 - 72mobs) and my average DPS was over 500. Granted thats with the new Enh Shaman changes, but just the same, those changes aren't going to jump your DPS over 150 points so something is amiss.

The only thing I could come up with is that he's saving his shocks to 1: Manage his aggro in case of windfury crits or 2: Is saving his shocks in case something bad happens and needs to interrupt a caster.

One last thing when it comes to gear. Unless he's a loyalist he should feel free to look at leather gear in addition to mail. Not for every piece, but if there is a specific slot that just doesn't have what he needs that is mail, leather is a good option. Its not like the difference of 200 AC or so is going to be the deciding factor on whether or not he croaks.

A good way to find gear (not proven - just what I use) is to look at the Black temple armor set for enhancement shaman. This is the most uber gear in the game. Find the stats that are important in those sets, and check out the overall numbers for each stat. Which is highest, which is lowest. Then try to find less uber gear that fills those needs. Its not the most statistical or proven method, but I'm not elitist jerks and I would never try.



Skyshatter Harness

Notice on the Skyshatter Harness agility is omitted completely. I believe this is done with the notion that that agility is made up through other gear and/or at that level the need for agility is compensated through other stats (i.e. hit and crit). Regardless, I view agility as an important stat in the early stages of raiding.

So thats my take on it. I would get WWS up and running and crunch some hard numbers to see whats going on. Talk to him and let him know his DPS needs to improve. Open a dialogue with him that lets him know you want him to succeed as much as he does and that you are all in it together. Hopefully he is receptive to what you have to say.