How to Ehnc v4.0

[Brynmor]

I may as well do a compilation post since I'm probably going to get a lot of questions in the next few weeks about the spec.

As a brief overview; there are a lot of changes to Enhancement in 4.0. Our passive damage (auto attack, Windfury, Flametongue and Lightning Shield) which pre-4.0 constitutes over half of your output has been significantly reduced in favor of active abilities. Meaning most of your damage is going to come from actually pushing buttons, not just auto attacking. This means movement should be less harsh on us (Ancestral Swiftness helps with this too). It also means if you screw up your priorities you will suffer a lot more for it. We no longer need to refresh Magma Totem and Lightning Shield regularly, nor are we using Fire Nova in our single target rotation anymore. So no more being starved for open GCDs.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty I should say that EhnSim isn't fully functional for 4.0 yet. That means that a lot of this is "napkin math" and speculation, but it does (more or less) represent the consensus of the theorycrafting community and I would be surprised if anything but the most minute of details were proven wrong once EhnSim is up and running. I'll keep this updated with any new revelations that may occur.

Gearing/Stats

Probably the biggest change in this area for Enhancement is that there is no longer any Intellect on melee DPS mail. If you see INT on a piece of gear it's caster gear. This means we're working off of a base mana pool. This isn't really a problem because of some other tweaks but I'll get into that later.

Agility now gives us 2AP per point making it a more attractive stat than Haste. This means that, similar to the good ol' days in TBC, we'll be stacking AGI. This is partly because the 30% buff we received to melee haste is going away in 4.0 so even if nothing else changed Haste would still be much less attractive for us. So congratulations, we get to hit hard again instead of just really fast. We also get a +5% AGI bonus for using all mail, meaning leather is no longer a viable option unless you're making massive jumps in ilevel.

Another change to stats that affects Ehnc is that all hit buffs and debuffs have been removed, so we need to get to 17% spell hit (446 hit) from gear alone.

1 point of Expertise was removed from Unleash Rage when it was reduced to 2 talent points but they also slightly buffed the scaling on Expertise Rating so we don't actually need any additional EXP rating to be capped. 138 is now the requirement to be capped.

There is also no longer any Armor Penetration on gear, so some of your mail pieces will be marginally better than they were (it also means the Saurfang trinket may well be BiS now).

Then of course we get a new stat; Mastery. Mastery for Enhancement increases all of our Elemental damage; Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst, Fire Nova, Searing Totem, Magma Totem, Fire Elemental, Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, Lightning Shield, Lava Lash, Frostbrand and Flametongue are all buffed by it. You can think of Mastery as Spell Power (INT) on steroids. Initial forecasting puts Mastery as a very valuable stat for Enhancement, probably second in value only to AGI (after Hit and EXP caps).

So the old rules of cap spell hit and expertise before all else still applies;

Spell Hit to 17% or 446 rating (16% or 419 rating for Draenei)
Expertise to 26 (138 rating with 2/2 UR)

How all this comes together is that you'll probably want to regem everything (I mean everything, anything but a +8 or higher AGI socket bonus probably isn't worth using an orange or purple gem for) to AGI except your Nightmare Tear, then reforge for the Hit and EXP caps and if you have any reforging left after all that reforge Crit (to just under the Crit cap*) and Haste to Mastery. If you can't hit the caps without using gems replace a few AGI gems with Hit or EXP gems as needed. Again, I say probably because we can't absolutely confirm by running 10,000 hour simulations on EhnSim yet but controlled, shorter tests have shown these assumptions to be correct.

* 76% - (white swing miss chance) = Crit cap

Talents

As all the other trees did Enhancement has changed quite a bit compared to pre-4.0. I'm just going to copy and paste this change log from MMO-C;

Notable changes have been highlighted.

Talent Changes

* Feral Spirit is now a Tier 7 talent, down from Tier 11. Cooldown reduced from 3 min to 2 min. Duration reduced from 45 sec to 30 sec.
* Maelstrom Weapon is now a Tier 6 and 3 Ranks talent, down from Tier 10 and 5 Ranks. Now also reduces the mana cost of spells, and now also affects Hex.
* Shamanistic Rage is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 9. Now also causes your skills, totems, and offensive spells to consume no mana for 15 sec.
* Earthen Power is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 9. No longer causes your Earth Shock to reduces enemy attack speed by an additional %.
* Static Shock is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 8. Revamped - When you use your Primal Strike, Stormstrike, or Lava Lash abilities while having Lightning Shield active, you have a 15/30/45% chance to deal damage equal to a Lightning Shield orb without consuming a charge.
* Stormstrike is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 7. Reworked - Instantly strike an enemy with both weapons, dealing 125% weapon damage and granting you an additional 25% chance to critically strike that enemy with your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lightning Shield, and Earth Shock spells for 15 sec.
* Unleashed Rage is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6. Increases expertise by 4/8, down from 3/6/9. Now increases all party and raid members attack power by 5/10%, up from 4/7/10%.
* Frozen Power is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 6.
* Flurry is now a Tier 2 talent, down from Tier 4. Now increases attack speed by 10/20/30%, up from 6/12/18/24/30%.
* Toughness is now a Tier 3 and 3 Ranks talent, down from Tier 4 and 5 Ranks. Now increases Stamina by 3/7/10% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%). reduces duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30%. (Up from 6/12/18/24/30%)
* Elemental Weapons is now a Tier 1 and 2 Ranks talent, down from Tier 3 and 3 Ranks. Now Increases the passive bonuses granted by your Flametongue Weapon and Earthliving Weapon abilities by 20/40%, the damage of your extra attacks from Windfury Weapon by 20/40%, and the effectiveness of the ongoing benefits of your Unleash Elements ability by 25/50%.
* Improved Ghost Wolf has been renamed to Ancestral Swiftness. Now also increases movement speed by 7/15%.
* Improved Shields is now a Tier 1 talent, down from Tier 2.

New Talents

* Improved Lava Lash - Increases the damage of your Lava Lash ability by 15/30%, and by an additional 10/20% for each of your applications of Searing Flames on the target, consuming those applications in the process.
* Improved Fire Nova - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova by 10/20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 sec.
* Searing Flames - Causes the Searing Bolts from your Searing Totem to have a 33/66/100% chance to set their targets aflame, dealing damage equal to the Searing Bolt's impact damage over 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
* Elemental Devastation - When you deal critical damage with a non-periodic spell, increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks by 3/6/9% for 10 sec.
* Totemic Reach - Increases the range of your totems' effects by 15/30%.
* Focused Strikes - Increases the damage dealt by your Primal Strike and Stormstrike abilities by 15/30/45%.

Primary Spells/Spec Bonuses

* Lava Lash - You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 200% of that weapon's damage to an enemy target. Damage is increased by 40% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue. / 4% of base mana, 5 yd range, Instant cast, 10 sec cooldown
* Mental Quickness - Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 50% of your attack power, and reduces the mana cost of your instant spells by 75%.
* Dual Wield - Allows one-hand and off-hand weapons to be equipped in your off-hand, allows you to parry frontal melee attacks, and and increases your chance to hit by an additional 6%.
* Primal Wisdom - Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to immediately restore 5% of your base mana. / Instant

Removed Talents

* Mental Quickness has been removed from the tree.
* Improved Stormstrike has been removed from the tree.
* Dual Wield Specialization is gone. See Primary spells.
* Dual Wield has been removed from the tree.
* Weapon Mastery has been removed from the tree.
* Improved Windfury Totem has been removed from the tree.
* Spirit Weapons has been removed from the tree.
* Mental Dexterity is gone.
* Shamanistic Focus has been removed from the tree.
* Guardian Totems has been removed from the tree.
* Thundering Strikes has been removed from the tree.
* Enhancing Totems has been removed from the tree.
* Earth's Grasp has been removed from the tree.
* Ancestral Knowledge has been removed from the tree.
* (Elemental Tree) Elemental Fury has been removed from the tree.

Continued on next post.

[Brynmor]

Talents Cont.

So, between the new Mental Quickness, Primal Wisdom and the spell cost reduction additions to Maelstrom Weapon and Shamanistic Rage you should never be wanting for mana even off of a base mana pool. Only hard casting successive Greater Healing Waves should put a dent in your mana.

We have a new mechanic in the form of Lava Lash and Searing Flames. To put it simply; your Searing Totem puts combo points on a target that Lava Lash consumes. Lava Lash was changed to a 10 sec CD 200% offhand damage (that is, full damage, enough of a boost to overcome the OH penalty). It gets a shit ton of damage modifiers from various sources and it hits like a truck. With no raid buffs on a target dummy I was able to get crits in the range of 23,000 with it on the PTR (after regeming to AGI and reforging to Mastery).

Stormstrike also now hits very hard, almost at 200% weapon damage with Focused Strikes. Both LL and SS can also proc Lightning Shield orbs, making them hit even harder. Stormstrike now increases your chance to crit with nature spells rather than increasing their damage. This is to compensate for the loss of spell crit from no longer having INT on our gear, thus allowing us to keep Elemental Devastation up. Oh, and Lightning Shield can crit now, meaning your SSs and LLs can proc Elemental Devastation (and so can people attacking you in PvP).

We lost access to Elemental Fury (+100% spell crit damage) in the Elemental tree but we gained an extra 20% AP -> SP from Mental Quickness. So you'll crit for less but on average you'll hit for more.

Anyone who has played Enhancement even as seriously as an alt should be able to talent in the new trees with relative ease. It's pretty self explanatory. Still, here's the spec I suspect we'll use at 85 (http://wowtal.com/#k=Zwk_owzjU.a5o.shaman.). Here's the one I'm going to use at 80 (http://wowtal.com/#k=DccPgRu8o.a5o.shaman.). It should also be noted that your 24th and 25th talent points can be put where ever you want in the Enhancement tree. I went for Totemic Reach, but there's no real correct choice. They're extra points with no DPS talent to fill, and no, Imp Shields does not constitute a DPS talent. The increase in total DPS netted from it is negligible. Improved Fire Nova isn't mandatory for standard builds either. For encounters where AoE is very important you might want it but since FN can't be used with Searing Totem you normally don't need to talent it. Ancestral Swiftness is absolutely mandatory. If you don't know why you're bad.

Glyphs

I'm only going to list the glyphs that are potentially relevant to Enhancement.

Prime Glyphs

Feral Spirit - Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
Fire Elemental Totem - Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Elemental Totem by 5 min.
Flame Shock - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock by 50%.
Flametongue Weapon - Increases spell critical strike chance by 2% while Flametongue Weapon is active.
Lava Lash - Increases the damage dealt by your Lava Lash ability by 20%.
Lightning Bolt - Increases the damage dealt by Lightning Bolt by 4%.
Stormstrike - Increases the Nature damage bonus from your Stormstrike ability by an additional 8%.
Windfury Weapon - Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%.

I've highlighted the ones the we'll likely be using. We may switch from Feral Spirit or Stormstrike to Windfury depending on how things look moving forward.

Major Glyphs

Chain Lightning - Your Chain Lightning spell now strikes 2 additional targets, but deals 10% less initial damage.
Fire Nova - Increases the radius of your Fire Nova spell by 5 yards.
Frost Shock - Increases the duration of your Frost Shock by 2 sec.
Ghost Wolf - Your Ghost Wolf form grants an additional 5% movement speed.
Grounding Totem - Instead of absorbing a spell, your Grounding Totem reflects the next harmful spell back at its caster, but the cooldown of your Grounding Totem is increased by 45 sec.
Healing Stream Totem - Your Healing Stream Totem also increases the Fire, Frost, and Nature resistance of party and raid members within 10 yards by [if (PL<=70) then PL else if (PL<=80) then PL+(PL-70)*5 else PL+(PL-70)*5+(PL-80)*7].
Hex - Reduces the cooldown of your Hex spell by 15 sec.
Lightning Shield - Your Lightning Shield can no longer drop below 3 charges from dealing damage to attackers.
Shamanistic Rage - Activating your Shamanistic Rage ability also cleanses you of all dispellable Magic debuffs.
Stoneclaw Totem - Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.
Totemic Recall - Causes your Totemic Recall ability to return an additional 50% of the mana cost of any recalled totems.

The only mandatory major glyph is Ghost Wolf, and again, if you don't understand why you're bad. The Lightning Shield glyph is amazing for soloing, questing and PvP (recall that LS can crit defensively now). Depending on the fight, Chain Lightning would be a good glyph to use. Shamanistic Rage, Healing Stream Totem and even Stoneclaw all also have potential applications in PvE depending on the fight scenario. Hex would probably be a solid choice too for when we'll be grinding heroics, or even for raid trash in Cataclysm.


Minor Glyphs

Astral Recall - Cooldown of your Astral Recall spell reduced by 7.5 min.
Renewed Life - Your Reincarnation spell no longer requires a reagent.
Water Breathing - Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
Water Walking - Your Water Walking spell no longer requires a reagent.
Arctic Wolf - Alters the appearance of your Ghost Wolf transformation, causing it to resemble an arctic wolf.

No real change here. Arctic Wolf glyph makes your Ghost Wolf form white.

[Brynmor]

Spells

Again, copied from MMO-C with notable changes highlighted;

Enhancement School

* Primal Strike has been added to the game for low level shamans. An instant weapon strike that causes 160.22 additional damage. / 8% of base mana, 5 yd range, Instant cast, 8 sec cooldown (shared with Stormstrike).
* Bloodlust and Heroism now share a debuff with the Mage's Time Warp
* Wrath of Air Totem now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
* Windfury Totem now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards. Now increases melee and ranged attack speed by 10% instead of 16% melee haste.
* Flametongue Totem now increases spell power of all party and raid members by 6%. Range increased to 40 yards, up from 30 yards.
* Ghost Wolf now increases speed by 30%, down from 40%. Now useable indoors.
* Fire Resistance Totem / Nature Resistance Totem / Frost Resistance Totem have been merged into Elemental Resistance Totem - Summons an Elemental Resistance Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min that increases the Fire, Frost, and Nature resistance of party and raid members within 30 yards by [ Level 1-70 : (Level) / Level 71-80 : (Level + 5 * (Level - 70)) / Level 81 or above : (Level + 5 * (Level - 70) + 7 * (Level - 80)) ]. / 8% of base mana, Instant cast
* Windfury Weapon Unleash Element Effect - Unleashing this enchantment deals 20% of weapon damage to the target enemy and increases the Shaman's melee attack speed for the next 6 swings or until 12 sec have elapsed.
* Frostbrand Weapon Unleash Element Effect - Unleashing this enchantment deals 723.54 to 840.87 Frost damage to a target enemy and reduces their movement speed by 50% for 5 sec. Increased in effectiveness if the target is already afflicted by a movement-reducing Frost effect.
* Flametongue Weapon Unleash Element Effect - Unleashing this enchantment deals 916.68 to 1086.99 Fire damage to an enemy target and increases the damage dealt by the Shaman's next Fire spell by 20%
* Stoneskin Totem now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
* Rockbiter Weapon now increases all threat generation by 30% and reduces damage taken by 5%. Unleash Weapon Effect - Unleashing this enchantment forces the target enemy to attack you for 5 sec.

Elemental School

* Hex now lasts 1 min, up from 30 sec.
* Chain Lightning now has a 3 sec cooldown, down from 6 sec.
* Magma Totem now costs 18% of base mana, down from 27% of base mana. Deals 240.33 Fire damage every 2 sec, down from 371 damage every 2 sec.
* Fire Nova no longer works with Searing Totem. Now causes 580 to 650 damage, down from 893 to 997 damage.
* Purge now removes 2 beneficial Magic effects, up from 1. Now costs 14% of base mana, up from 8% of base mana.
* Searing Totem now lasts 1 min, up from 30 secs. Now prefers to target enemies that are afflicted by your Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects. Now costs 5% of base mana, down from 7% of base mana.
* Earth Shock now reduces melee and ranged attack speed by 20% for 8 sec. (Old - 10% melee attack speed reduction only)
* Lightning Bolt now has a 2.5 sec cast time, up from 1.5 sec.
* Bind Elemental *New* - Binds the target hostile elemental for up to 50 sec. The bound unit is unable to move, attack or cast spells. Any damage caused will release the target. Only one target can be bound at a time. / 9% of base mana, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast

Restoration School

* Totem of Tranquil Mind *New* - Summons a Totem of Tranquil Mind with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min, causing party or raid members within 30 yards to lose 30% less casting or channeling time when damaged. / 8% of base mana, Instant cast

Cataclysm (Level 80+) Skills

* Unleash Elements - Focuses the elemental force imbued in the Shaman's weaponry, with the concentrated effects depending on the enchantment unleashed.
See individual weapon imbue spell tooltips for details regarding the effects of unleashing each. / 7% of base mana, 40 yd range, Instant cast, 15 sec cooldown
* Healing Rain - Calls forth healing rains to blanket the area targeted by the Shaman, restoring 309.17 to 367.72 health to allies in the area every 2 sec for 10 sec. / 46% of base mana, 30 yd range, 2 sec cast, 10 sec cooldown
* Spiritwalker's Grace - Calls upon spiritual guidance, permitting movement while casting non-instant Shaman spells. This spell may be cast while casting other spells. Lasts 10 sec. / 12% of base mana, Instant cast, 2 min cooldown

So, a big thing here is that Shaman can chain CC now that Hex lasts 60 seconds whereas it used to only last 30 (while the CD on Hex is 45 seconds). We also get a new CC spell in Bind Elemental which is long, long overdue in my opinion. Shaman should've been CCing Elementals since Vanilla. This means as a Shaman of any spec you can potentially chain CC two targets. I was doing this a lot in dungeons on Beta since there are Elemental mobs a plenty in Cataclysm.

For Enhancement the biggest deal here is that Magma Totem and Fire Nova got damage nerfs and you can no longer use FN with Searing Totem. Couple that with the Searing Flames/LL mechanic and both are out of our single target toolbox. No more refreshing Magma every 20 seconds, no more filling GCDs with Fire Nova. You may do a little dance, go ahead, I'll wait. Couple that with the change to Static Shock where it doesn't consume orbs when it procs plus the LS Glyph and you should only have to cast LS once every 10 minutes. That's right, no more "JOHN FUCKING MADDEN!" play style, jumping from GCD to GCD. Do another happy dance, I'll wait again.

Back? Ok. The offset to that is that our passive damage has been damn near halved. Meaning you can't just park in melee range and be over half way there to your maximum output. You get more GCDs to use situationally, you get more time/room so see what's coming off of CD and what you need to do, and your abilities hit much harder than before, but if you mess up you'll see larger drops in DPS. That's a fine trade off if you ask me.

Spell Priorities

The finer details are still up in the air, but our priority set won't be nearly as complex as it was pre-4.0. As there will be more open GCDs your priority set is less important than in pre-4.0 whereas now, as with TBC, gearing is the most important element. Once EhnSim is working I'll iron out the details but this is the current highest testing DPS priority list;

MW5
SW
FS
ST (if not down)
SS
LL
ES
SR


That's it. No really. Seriously. Like a breath of fresh air isn't it? The FS DoT no longer shortens based on your haste, so it will always be a predictable 18 seconds. Meaning you can always do FS-ES-ES on a single target. A cast-sequence macro would do the trick but I prefer not to use them.

Use Ghost Wolf if you're a good distance out of range of the boss. If the boss is just being moved steadily (like Prof phase 3) the run speed on Ancestral Swiftness should keep you covered. Make sure that there's always a Searing Totem attacking your target.

Professions

Jewelcrafting should still be great. Engineering won't be as amazing from a DPS perspective just because Haste is less attractive than it used to be. I'll post specifics once EhnSim is running and smaller details like this can be ironed out.

Trinkets
Currently it's looking like Death's Verdict (http://www.wowhead.com/item=47131) and Sharpened Twilight Scale (http://www.wowhead.com/item=54590) are BiS for Ehnc. Herkuml War Token (http://www.wowhead.com/item=50355) is still good. Unsurprisingly Tiny Abom in a Jar is no longer very good for us while surprisingly Deathbringer's Will still isn't all that great for us. I'll update with more specifics later.

Alternative Guide

If you're still a little hazy you could also read a similar write up (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27026379015&sid=1) that was done on the official Shaman forums.

[Brynmor]

Updates:

10/12
Updated spell priorities to match current theorycrafted max DPS list.
Expertise rating required to cap has been determined to be exactly 138.
Added link to similar guide on official Shaman forums.
Made slight change to level 80 spec.

10/13
Draenei hit cap is 419.
Added trinket information to the bottom of the third post (ran out of character space in the Gearing section.)