How to Ehnc v3.3 (@Rounds and Divthem)

[Brynmor]

I've been reading up on EJ about the 3.3 changes and doing some work on EhnSim and here's what I got so far;

The highest DPS priorities I worked out of EhnSim for a single target was this:

MW5 LB
Flame Shock
Stormstrike
Earth Shock
Magma Totem
Lava Lash
Spirit Wolves
Fire Nova
Ligntning Shield
MW4 LB
MW3 LB
Shamanistic Rage

Idealy you shouldn't refresh Magma Totem unless there's only 1 tick left nor you should you overlap Flame Shocks unless there is only 1 tick left on the DoT. Fire Nova becomes exponentially better the more mobs there are, so in AoE situations spam it.

My spec is the one you want to use now, you can also take one point from Imp SS and put it into Elemental Focus if you want to. You should be using the same Glyphs as me as well, even when you lose 4pc T9 the Flame Shock glyph is still better than the Windfury Glyph.

It looks like Black Magic is a viable enchant for the offhand, although it doesn't seem to be much better than zerking. According to my math the badge trinket is going to be BiS (I have it at 677 EP, H-DV is at 580) so you might want to pick that up first with your badges.

Thats pretty much what I was able to come up with. EhnSim doesn't have the new totems or T10 bonuses yet so I can't prove anything about them yet, although I'd imagine the totem designed for Elem will be best and haste will be more attractive once you get T10 4pc.

This is all based on my stats, your results may vary, please read the contest rules before entering, yadda yadda yadda.

[Tatari]

I haven't started weaving in flameshock yet to be honest. I'll start working it out today, I guess.

Are there still the subtle priorities like ES if SS is applied?

[Brynmor]

Not anymore really.

[Okthanks]

So here's an honest to goodness question I've had, and I'm not 100% on your raid makeup, but why are you putting points into improved windfury? Frost DK's already provide a 20% melee haste buff that overlaps with the windfury totem that we drop.


The spec I've been running is essentially the same except for 5/5 on ancestral knowledge and 3/3 on the improved shields.

The current spec I use also has 0/3 on the improved soe and sote totems which I know is not optimal for a single shaman a raid (unless you have another shaman to pick that up for you). Barring these 3 points, I'd put 4/5 into ancestral knowledge over windfury as a main spec, and the current spec I have if you have two shamans, one with the improved totems.



Also you tried to old lightning daggers approach anymore? This was a spec in the Naxx ages that you had two fast weapons and tried to pull as many mw procs as possible, not sure how this works in today's raids but it seems shamans favor haste these days instead of armor pen, so it'd be interesting to see how it'd work out with two fast daggers with current BiS gear. In Naxx you sacrificed a bit of flametounge damage for the additional procs which with 2 fast weapons stacked quite a bit faster, on the average of 20%, combined with BiS gear these days putting you near the crit cap I think this could work even better.

[jydlen]

Because we raid with a Frost DK...

[Okthanks]

Hell I didn't know. You guys have changed alot over the past year and some change.

[Brynmor]

So here's an honest to goodness question I've had, and I'm not 100% on your raid makeup, but why are you putting points into improved windfury? Frost DK's already provide a 20% melee haste buff that overlaps with the windfury totem that we drop.


The spec I've been running is essentially the same except for 5/5 on ancestral knowledge and 3/3 on the improved shields.

The current spec I use also has 0/3 on the improved soe and sote totems which I know is not optimal for a single shaman a raid (unless you have another shaman to pick that up for you). Barring these 3 points, I'd put 4/5 into ancestral knowledge over windfury as a main spec, and the current spec I have if you have two shamans, one with the improved totems.



Also you tried to old lightning daggers approach anymore? This was a spec in the Naxx ages that you had two fast weapons and tried to pull as many mw procs as possible, not sure how this works in today's raids but it seems shamans favor haste these days instead of armor pen, so it'd be interesting to see how it'd work out with two fast daggers with current BiS gear. In Naxx you sacrificed a bit of flametounge damage for the additional procs which with 2 fast weapons stacked quite a bit faster, on the average of 20%, combined with BiS gear these days putting you near the crit cap I think this could work even better.

It's two points. Even if I could put it elsewhere I really wouldn't see much of a DPS increase. The only place I could really put the points is in Ancestral Knowledge which for DPS is a garbage talent. Assuming there were two shaman in the raid one could drop Enhancing Totems but again, the only place you could really put the points for more DPS is in Ancestral Knowledge which doesn't provide as much DPS as people think it does. Like it or not Enhancement is still a buffing spec and the opportunity cost of those two talents is very low. Plus, bringing two Enhancement Shaman to a single raid is a waste of raid slots.

I have two specs; the main one I use has 3/3 Imp Shields and a point in Reverb and no points in mana regen/conservation talents. My second spec moves some points into mana conservation talents for when I don't have JoW, usually in 10 mans. The former is the accepted spec for 25 man raiding, it's what everyone uses.

They "fixed" that a long time ago by making the SP contribution from FT scale with weapon speed. Meaning you can't use two fast weapons with FT and get the same SP bonus you would using 2.6 speed weapons. It's been defunct for a long time. If it were the best DPS I'd be using that setup.

Sounds like you need to catch up on all the changes that have happened since 3.1. I would suggest skimming through some of the threads on EJ.

[Okthanks]

Yeah I have been. Came back to WoW about 3 weeks ago and have been catching up ever since. Things have changed quite a bit, and I can't say I'm too happy with how enhancement is at the moment or how it is in the beta. I'm honestly thinking about switching to my mage or DK since enhancement is getting pretty boring, but I might give elemental a whack.


I've had good luck with putting the 2 points into the improved shields since I only have the tier 9 2 piece.


Also question for you, how have you handled the fire nova setup these days? Do you find yourself blowing it every 6 seconds about or not really? I find that keeping a magma totem down makes it a bit difficult to keep a steady nicely timed rotation and now its a bit more of a button mash these days.

[Brynmor]

Yeah I have been. Came back to WoW about 3 weeks ago and have been catching up ever since. Things have changed quite a bit, and I can't say I'm too happy with how enhancement is at the moment or how it is in the beta. I'm honestly thinking about switching to my mage or DK since enhancement is getting pretty boring, but I might give elemental a whack.


I've had good luck with putting the 2 points into the improved shields since I only have the tier 9 2 piece.


Also question for you, how have you handled the fire nova setup these days? Do you find yourself blowing it every 6 seconds about or not really? I find that keeping a magma totem down makes it a bit difficult to keep a steady nicely timed rotation and now its a bit more of a button mash these days.

Since they added Fire Nova Enhancement is one of the more difficult specs to play. Most people rank it second in difficulty only to feral, I've never played feral so I couldn't say. We were already strapped for GCDs as it was, now that we have FN and stack haste too I hardly ever go a fight with a free GCD unless I have my Fire Elem down to reduce on Magma recasts. Most people describe DPSing as Enhancement now as whack-a-mole. The difficulty comes in having to monitor so many debuffs, procs and short CDs and knowing what to do first if you have several options come up at once.

Fire Nova sims as my lowest priority spell, meaning you'd do just about anything else you could before Fire Nova, which is not to say I never use it, it's just not high priority. My priority set matches what's on the EJ BiS thread as my gear is almost entirely BiS.

The annoying part is (and this has been all over the alpha/beta forums, a lot from myself) is that while Enhancement is currently one of the most difficult specs to maximize it is also one of the most forgiving if you mess up your priority set. Reason being; at high gear levels like mine ~50% of our damage is derived from auto attacks. More if you include Maelstrom Weapon in that category. Meaning it's very hard to get the most DPS you possibly can out of the spec, but if you put WF on the MH, FT on the OH, keep LS up and use MW5 LB when you can you're already over half way there.

DPSing as Enhancement in Beta looks a lot better in some ways. Stormstrike and Lava Lash hit like a truck and more of our damage is attributed to active abilities rather than auto attack. Currently there's some problems with Lava Burst and how it fits into our priority set/rotation, but I imagine there will be a resolution for that.

I'm more pissed about totems. The developers refuse to listen to the community, and the community as a whole is telling them that they hate totems as a mechanic. I don't know why they refuse to accept the fact that the community does not like their implementation. Especially since they've been hearing as much for years. It really doesn't matter if GC thinks totems are fine, or if the development team thinks they're fine. The majority of players don't like them, and that means they need to drop their rhetoric and take a good long look at them, preferably rebuilding the mechanic from the group up. I haven't seen any raiding shaman on the alpha/beta or EJ forums who thinks otherwise. I'd continue my rant but I'll just link this thread I posted in the Beta forums instead; http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25969517745&sid=2000.

If they don't fix totems as a mechanic I won't be playing my Shaman in Cataclysm. I'll likely switch to my Mage.

[Okthanks]

I read your posts and agree completely. I don't understand what the hell the developers are thinking.

The whole reason I rolled a shaman is because I thought playing my mage was boring as can be. I didn't like being squishy, and I didn't like being utterly replaceable by some other type of ranged dps.

I started playing right before LK was released and quit right before Ulduar was released. I'm currently working on my plate shaman (read death knight) since I find it to be much more fun and involving then constantly checking every second to see if I need to throw another flame shock, is my fire nova tick ready and should I use it, how far away am I from a mw proc, should I stormstrike to try and close that gap, wait for autoattack or lava lash (4/5 mw).

One of the other things I've wanted to bring up on the wow forums is why can't we have the searing totem apply a similar effect as our flame shock? It does much less damage and isn't powerful at all in comparison to our magma totem. When I keep it dropped on the boss it constantly ticks for 1000+ every 2 seconds with a hefty amount of damage coming in addition thanks to fire nova. When I drop the searing totem, it takes 3ish seconds to charge up and then does a piddly attack that barely does 500 typically. My idea for making searing totems not terrible is as follows; Think something like you mark an enemy with your flameshock and the searing totem will do 200% damage if its under the effect of the flame shock and adds a tick to the flame shock dot until the enemy is dead or you mark something else. Furthermore, if they did this it would take some of the insanity that is the current enhancement rotation, with the initial flame shock being more of a marker.

In my mind if you are already catching something on fire, wouldn't adding more cause it to burn more?


Also have you noticed a great difference in your dps on encounters? Mainly its sometimes it just takes ages for maelstrom procs to stack. I did 3d 10m sarth a few nights ago and did close to 10k on one attempt, and then the next I was barely pushing 7.5 because of the lack of mw procs.

If you'd give my your opinion on my gearing and gemming I'd appreciate it. Granted, I know I should be using the Epic cuts instead of the blues, but I've been trying to stack agility so I can get closer to the crit cap with my substandard gear. It seems like we are doing basically the same thing with the exception of you having an actual guild and good gear.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Akama&cn=Okthanks

[Brynmor]

On Beta they've re-tuned the fire totems so Searing does more DPS on single targets than Magma Totem. Searing Totem applies a DoT when talented that Lava Lash consumes to do double damage.

The difference in DPS between encounters usually centers around how much time you can stay in melee range. Enhancement suffers on movement heavy fights. You probably just had bad luck from attempt to attempt if you think it was from MW procs.

Hitting crit cap isn't a desirable thing. It's an unintended consequence of ridiculous gear and stat scaling. I'm the only Shaman on the server with access to enough gear to worry about it, and even then it only becomes an issue when you get 284 LK axes because they have so much crit compared to the ICC fist weapons. Even I'm not having to gem hit to push up the crit cap at the moment.

First thing I notice is you aren't expertise capped. 140 Expertise Rating/26 Expertise with 3/3 Unleash Rage is second priority after getting spell hit cap, which for Draenei is 13%. You should gem for whatever EnhSim/Rawr tells you to gem, but I can tell you right off the bat that gemming Agility isn't right.

That's basically the cardinal rule; do the work on EnhSim and Rawr and go from there. Enhancement scales so erratically that I can only make generalizations about what other Shaman should do (get hit & exp cap, etc). Even the priority list that will give you the most DPS will differ from one on EJ because your gear isn't BiS.

[Okthanks]

Bad luck nothing, Its just the way it is on some fights, you don't have it the same way? Usually I'll have a mw proc every rotation or every other rotation but sometimes I see it taking 3-4 before its filled up.


As for the expertise , I was only 10 away and for the agility my outdated version of enh sim just got updated (They changed it, yay). Looks like I'll be gemming for haste now.

Good to hear about the beta, I've been following the news on it and playing a bit but I haven't noticed that (And I'm playing a plate shaman, not a mail shaman in the beta).


My rotation is identical except fire nova gets a bit more priority.

Looks like you'll be a good replacement for my old friend guttsu, someone else who actually knows the shaman class.

[Brynmor]

10 away is still 10 away. A 10 exp/hit gem would take care of you and it's going to be worth more DPS than anything else.

I don't see how even a very old version of EnhSim would tell you to gem Agility. It has never been good throughout all of Wrath.

If I recall, Guttsu had issues with his gems/gear/spec that showed me he wasn't 100% up on what he should be doing. Either that or he was and just didn't care. Based on your gems/gear and the questions you've been asking I don't think you know the Shaman class very well either. Maybe you did at some point, but it's pretty obvious you aren't up to speed.

Sorry if this comes across as rude as I'm trying to be respectful, but I'm not interested in being somebody's reference guide. I'm fine with clearing up some questions you may have about current practices and theory, or shooting the shit on why the developers don't have a clue when it comes to Shaman; but some of the questions you've been asking me are from changes that are almost a year old. Hell, even this thread is nine months old. If you're going to ask me questions the least you could do is get up to speed first. It's not like I make this stuff up myself, it's all on EJ or worked out on EnhSim/Rawr.

I don't put in time analyzing patch notes and keeping up on theorycrafting so I can tell other people what they should be doing. I do it because I take my role seriously and want to give my guild the best return on the gear they hand me (and because I'm a perfectionist). Out DPSing pure classes is fun, too.

I'm not saying don't ever come back and ask me anything again; how crit cap works can be a bit mathy and confusing and I'm fine explaining difficult, current concepts like that. I don't want to answer questions about changes made during Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC, or hell, even most of ICC for that matter.

[Okthanks]

I quit well before Ulduar was out and the last thing I did was 25m malygos. Its not my intention at all to use you as a reference, but I like theorycrafting and most people don't know their class at all.

I've poured over all the changes since 3.1 and have a pretty good grasp over everything that's changed and how to enhance basically.

As for the class, I know my class well, but I don't understand the wackamole mentality since I haven't played a wide variety of classes, mainly mage shaman, hunter and deathknight with only one going all the way so far (Shaman).

Here's my only question for you if you've looked deeply into the beta; did they remove the internal windfury cooldown or change it at all or is it still the same base 3 seconds? Nobody on EJ knows as far as I can see.