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The latest patch 5.4 newsTotem Talk: Enhance me
by Rich Maloy 
Jul 31st 2010 at 8:00PM
Two weeks ago a fellow enhancement shaman contacted me on Twitter asking how to improve his damage output. He was kind enough to let me use his email as the topic for the weekly enhancement shaman column here on WoW.com. Because he was brave (crazy?) enough to face the public scrutiny that comes from being in the spotlight here, show him the high level of respect our fellow enhancement brother deserves. Here's his email:
I just switched to enhance for raiding a couple of weeks ago and I still feel like my DPS is lower than what it could be. I'm using Shock and Awe and still depending more or less on the priority frame, which I hope to ween off of soon. I'm still not 100% sure if I have the priorities set up correctly at this point. They are set at:
- SR
- MT
- LS
- MW5 LB
- SS
- ES if SS
- FS
- LL
- FN
I also use Wolves every time they are up and also Fire Elemental when off CD. With just my buffs at the heroic dummy I seem to be maxing out around 6-6.5k. Again, seems a little low to me. If you would like to look at my armory, the name is Alyssian on Durotan. We use WoL, too, and my guild is Chi Cerca Trova.
PS - Any tips for helping me get off of the SAA priority window? I'm mainly concerned with keeping the shock rotation going, I think I can handle the rest.
Gear
My first impression from two weeks ago, before looking at rotations, before checking out the logs, was simple: gear. Luckily he had two good weapons with the heroic versions of Black Bruise and Keleseth's Seducer, the same weapons I'm using on Stoney. Weapons are the two most important pieces of gear for any melee class -- they are the largest single source of our damage.
With weapons set, I was looking for other upgrades for Alyssian. Thankfully, enhancement scales well with gear, so the damage will increase as the gear gets better. But what to upgrade first? That's easy: two-piece tier 10. The two-piece set bonus on our T10 gear grants an additional 12% damage for 15 seconds when we use Shamanistic Rage, which means we can use it every 60 seconds. The generic use of "additional damage" means it applies to everything -- magical and physical -- and it scales. First on the shopping list: two pieces of tier 10 gear.
Next up on the Emblem of Frost wish-list: Herkuml War Token. Not many specs are fortunate enough to have one of their BiS trinkets be available through a vendor. This is a must-have for every enhancement shaman short of heroic Halion's Sharpened Twilight Scale, and even then it might be best to keep the war token and replace Tiny Abomination in a Jar. Then, with good trinkets you can then finish out the four-piece T10.
Lastly, I recommended replacing his totem with Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice. Once you're farming ICC on a regular basis and sucking in as many Emblems of Frost each week as is humanly possible, you should be well on your way to four-piece tier 10 and then have a few extra emblems to spend on a totem.
According to the armory, in the two weeks since our first email Alyssian has seen some very nice upgrades including the sanctified chest and shoulders, the Herkuml War Token, and was even been lucky enough to win Tiny Abom in a Jar. He's up to three pieces of T10 and well on his way to looking good in his enhance gear.
The gems look good as he's way over the hit cap, just over the expertise cap, using the Nightmare Tear to activate the meta gem, and then going flat-out for haste on everything else.
Rotation
My advice on the rotation was always lead off with Flame Shock as you're running in, but make SS_0 your highest priority. In the world of enhancement DPS simulations using EnhSim, SS_0 means use Stormstrike if there are 0 Stormstrike debuffs up on the boss. The SS debuff is important for everyone but would be key for a player with lower AP.
Once you have the two-piece tier 10 bonus, you'll activate SR all the time, except of course when you're timing it with Heroism. Because the tier bonus only lasts 15 seconds and then is on cooldown for 45 seconds it is possible to completely miss using them together entirely. Just find out from your raid leader when he wants Heroism and time your usage accordingly.
I ran a sim using the rotation outlined above with the current gear from the armory as of July 30th, and came up with 10,331 DPS on a single target fight. For all sims I used a 7 minute fight, 0% variation, a 250-350ms reaction time, and did simulate mana.
After a few iterations, combinations, incantations, and intonations, I came up with a rotation that looked good for you and topped out at 10,493 DPS. It looks like this: (updated 8/1 with full spell explanations for the enhancement alphabet soup)
- SW - Spirit Wolves (Feral Spirit in your spellbook)
- SR - Shamanistic Rage
- SS_0 - Stormtrike if there is no Stormstrike debuff on current target
- MW5_LB - cast Lightning Bolt with 5 procs of Maelstrom Weapon
- FS - Flame Shock
- FE - Fire Elemental Totem
- MT - Magma Totem
- LS - Lightning Shield
- ES - Earth Shock
- SS - Stormstrike (regardless of debuff status)
- FN - Fire Nova
- LL - Lava Lash
Weening off Shock & Awe
Lastly, how to ween yourself off Shock and Awe? The best thing I can suggest is practice. The program itself is amazing. Everything an enhancement shaman needs, it has. Except for reaction time. That is, the biggest problem with the SAA priority frame is that it doesn't teach you to anticipate your next cast. To learn this anticipation there are two things you can do. First, take off the training wheels. There is no "weening" off SAA. You either have the training wheels on, or you have them off. Take them off. Second, practice. From your email we know you're no stranger to a target dummy so be sure to get out to one and just put in the time practicing your rotation.
A good UI helps. Be sure to check out Mat McCurley's UI column for ideas, and hit up my Power Auras Classic post for some ways thoughts on adding in timers for shields and Maelstrom Weapon procs.
Conclusion
Alyssian, it looks like you're well on your way to improving your gear and learning the ways of enhancement. I'm happy your guild gave you the opportunity to switch over to enhancement, and thank you for reaching out. Readers, do you have any positive advice to share with him?
May all your hits be crits!
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Matt Sampson's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, WoW.com's shaman experts have you covered. Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
mackejn Aug 1st 2010 9:38AM
Second the recommendation for Power Auras if you can figure out how to set it up. I'm no super Shaman, and my dps is limited by the fact I only do 10 mans, but I love this addon. My only real complaint with it is that it can't track magma totem. The really NICE thing about Power Auras is that it allows you to watch more than just the box with your rotation suggestions. I find I can watch the whole screen and interpret what PA throws up without as much focus as Shock and Awe takes.
About the abbreviations. It's a little annoying, but that's the short hand EVERY theory crafting article for shaman's uses. It's probably best to spell out what they mean in the beginning, but for an enhance column that's looked at more advanced topics I don't think it's unreasonable for the author to expect people to be familiar with the shorthand. The column this week wasn't for someone just dabbling in enhance.
johnnyamerika Aug 1st 2010 12:08PM
Not to be negative, but there are some glaring problems with this article. For one, Rich makes an effort to say that enhancement shaman scale well with gear. This is flat out false. We're the absolute worst-scaling active spec inside ICC (discounting specs like Arms and Frost (mage) which no self-respecting DPS play as). For more on this, shammies, check out: http://www.stratfu.com/kamigami/N_Lord_Marrowgar.html
RIch follows up his claim with some well though-out proof: "damage will increase as the gear gets better." What a profound statement.
But most interestingly, during the open letter to Rich, the writer says that he is having trouble pulling more than 6-6.5k on a heroic dummy. If Rich was paying more attention, he might have suggested to the shaman that those numbers are actually fairly good for a heroic dummy. The idea that dummies are in place to test DPS is silly. Every class scales differently with raid buffs. Enhancement shaman in particular require just about every raid buff/debuff out there in order to do their maximum potential DPS. Because of this, there's absolutely no way for one to accurately test DPS on a dummy unless they have their entire raid with them.
6-6.5k on a dummy is actually pretty good for an enhancement shaman. In my gear (less than 6 items away from absolute BiS), I could sit on a dummy and do just over 7. Yet in ICC, that's translating to 17k on stand up fights.
There are some very good things Rich mentions, such as weening off of Shock and Awe (add ons like this that decide what you should do next for you just hurt you in the long run). Also, running EnhSim to test your DPS is an absolute must for any serious enhancement shaman.
Unfortunately, the sum of this piece is little more than a glossed-over review of what information is already out there on sites like Elitist Jerks. Sorry, Rich, I'm usually a fan. But you might need to spend a little more thought on these pieces instead of trying to keep the freaks in check over at Big Crits.
Morninglory, Enhancement Shaman for Life
Icecrown-US
Stoneybaby Aug 1st 2010 5:12PM
Morning glory, thank you for the constructive criticism. If I'm reading the stats from your link, you're suggesting that based on the top 200 ranked logs per spec on WoL, enhancement sitting in the middle is indicative of not scaling well? I have to disagree that enhance is the worst scaling spec -- just ask any elemental shaman. Moreover, to your point going from 7k to 17k I think shows the level of scaling enhancement shamans benefit from.
Lastly, the stats linked are the extreme outliers. Maybe running some sims with different levels of gear would do better to prove this point one way or another. For example, does a 5% increase in gear score translate to a 10% increase in dps? I'd do this but I'm too busy "keeping the freaks in check" so I'll leave it to you.
As for calling this little more than a "gloss-over" of information that's available on Elitist Jerks, I think you're missing the point here. This person switched over to enhance just a few weeks ago. Did you catch that? If you're new to enhancement, where do you go for information? The Theorycrafting Think Tank article at EJ is far too outdated. The 3.3.3 thread has been archived. The "simple questions simple answers" thread is over 62 pages. The BiS gear setup and discussion is 7 pages, and reads like a meta-game for EnhSim as opposed to offering quick advice, and there are no other current resources available for a new enhancer.
It's one thing for players who are deep in the enhancement life-cycle, who've played it for months, or years. It's another coming into it cold and needed resources. I've played enhancement for... wow has it been 3+ years? yup, over three years. I suspect you've played enhance for more than one month. What would you say to a fellow enhancement brother that comes to you for advice?
Would you tell him to "sim it" and look it up on EJ? You could do that. Or you could give a damn and offer someone concrete relevant advice they can implement quickly and easily. Most players just need a quick-start guide to get them going, and they'll figure the rest out from there. Which is what I've done here for them, and hopefully others will benefit from it as well.
May all your hits be crits!
johnnyamerika Aug 1st 2010 11:23PM
You might be misreading the stats, then, Rich. The script logs the values by fight and breaks each of those down by spec. On some fights, enhancement ends up as high as the middle of the pack out of effective specs. On many others, it falls far to the bottom. Now we can discuss the whys and hows of this quite a bit (that would be a great topic for a post, btw). But the fact is (and it sadly is a fact) enhancement at the top end of current content is scaling the worst with gear than any other role, with the possible (arguable) exception of DKs. The main difference is DKs come with a litany of survivability features that shamans do not have. This is part of the reason many top end guilds choose to run a frost DK over an enhancement shaman. There's much more on the subject here -- http://dkdeathgoddess.blogspot.com/2010/05/dps-scaling-in-icc-numbers-are-in.html
Anyhow, I came off way ruder than I should have -- my apologies on that. I think what you're doing at Big Crits is outstanding, and has the potential to change the way people look at the game. But that I also think as one of the leading voices in the enhsham community, you could be touching on much more important topics with the column. How many enhancement 101 articles has WoW.com put up? How many have you written? I've seen a ton of them, and it's just tired at this point. This person you're writing about may be fairly new to enhancement, but he/she is obviously not clueless about the game if the guild is passing down heroic KSs and BBs to his/her offspec. I'm sure this person knows what EJ is and how to parse it. And they're probably familiar with EnhSim too. Why not raise the level of discourse a little bit higher as opposed to recapping what's already out there in 5-6 different places at the moment? Taken in another direction, this column could've been about how to properly use EnhSim, it's importance to the community, and why it's probably going to be going bye bye in Cata. Or the right way to utilize target dummies (as a tool for mastering rotation and situational combat, not to gauge DPS).
Anyhow, got to split. Please keep it up, Rich.
Morninglory
Lissanna Aug 1st 2010 6:39PM
I spend a lot of my time helping new druids (druids who are leveling 1 to 80, and new druids who just hit 80 and need to learn how to heal or DPS as a moonkin. Sending them to EJ usually ends up with them coming back to me more confused than when they started. EJ wants to be elitist and unapproachable on purpose.
EJ wants to cater to advanced/experienced players of a certain class looking for end-game info on a class they've been playing for years, while working on Hard Mode end-game encounters, not for people looking to start their way as a brand new 80. So, a glossed-over version of what is on EJ is sometimes exactly what a new player is looking for, because that just really means that it's been made accessible.
I write guides that distill all the EJ knowledge into bite-sized pieces written in a language new people will understand, and those new players are thankful for information spelled out in a way that saves them time & energy, and doesn't make them feel dumb for not understanding all the math and technical jargon and pages of outdated info you have to search through to find answers to your questions.
Shammerific Aug 1st 2010 12:17PM
I agree with all the recommendations for Power Auras. I myself use Syronius's Power Auras setup. It tracks maelstrom weapon price and lightning shield charges and the like. I also set up an audible BAM sound when I reach 5 stacks so that I know when to use LB.
I love playing my enhancement spec, but as the guild's main raid healer for 10 mans, I'm stuck playing resto most of the time *sigh*
Lolivertwist Aug 1st 2010 4:13PM
Hey, i my self am a "hard-core" enhancer and to be honest i dont use flame shock on short fights... i find that the less bogged down you rotation gets, the more dps you can pull out on shorter fights. This logic is strongly aposed by some pros BUT i seem to be getting 11k+ on VoA 10 and beat some very well geared rogues in the process... And yes i do use the SS totem :P Rip me apart and call me an abomination to all enhancers of you must, but i find that this method of play simplifies our rotation so much that it may in some cases increase our dps, let alone make us less concentrated on the action bar and more concentrated on the raid itself.... Maybe the fact that my whole rotation is key-binded helps me top the DPS charter, but it must me more than that surely
Jasper.
Stagdoria Sep 23rd 2010 5:50PM
I found this article a nice read. I have been playing an enhance shammy for almost 3 years, never very hardcore tho. I just pulled my shammy over to PTR and am playing around with 4.0.1 (or what ever the exact build is) aside from being a bit buggy, it seems that things are going to be alot of the same for enhancement rotation come cataclysm (we dont seem to be getting nerfed as much as other classes). There are some notable changes tho, and one of the HUGE changes I have noticed is the mana regen for enhance shaman. (possible to change before going live) The other thing I have noticed is a notable increase to dual wield dps thanks to mastery. I am finding myself more on par with other players or even toping dps vs players in much better gear. (i copied my shammy over with an average gs of 230ish or about 5k GS) alot of the other players have much higher GS. Once the bugs are all worked out I think its going to be even better! I know this doesnt relate too much to the actuall article, but I figgured I would post it just so that those who are waiting for cata to hit, and not going to the ptr have a little idea of what to expect. More fun times are coming.