Orcapalooza: Live (Picture) Blogged
Anyone, who is anyone, even who is anyone meaning anyone not meaning someone important, should be rolling an orc on Argent Dawn RIGHT NOW for BigRedKitty’s ORCAPALOOZA! I’m Kazzahana, fyi!
UPDATE 1: Hi Ratshag! Feel better in green skin?
TJ did show up:
With Some Guy:
UPDATE 2: And they’re off!
UPDATE 3: Twenty Minutes, One Thing!
UPDATE 4: One Thing, and One Bloodmoon Chosen! Halfway point…
UPDATE 5: Oh Noes!
UPDATE 6: 10 MINUTES REMAINING. I am losing.. only two of the Bloodmoon Chosen and three items:
UPDATE 7: IT’S OVER!
And I lost…
FINAL UPDATE
Aside from going back and compressing and cropping images, Thanks Brksorc! And thanks, Bloodmoon Chosen!, from one Argent Dawn-er to a whole bunch!
How to Not Suck at Shaman, Enhancement Edition: Enhancement Fashion: Loving Leather
Introduction
Talent Specs and Important Abilities
The Stats You Need and Why They Play Well Together
The Shock and Awe of Shocks and Windfury: A How-to
Beating Other People With Sticks: Totems and Synergy
Enhancement Fashion: Loving Leather
Shaman have 19 slots of gear to fill and some of those slots are more important than others. Raiding with the wrong tabard or shirt can be disastrous for your DPS and morale! Well, maybe the morale part.
Pointy Things!
The two slots at the bottom are just about the most important for an enhancement shaman. Proper weapons selection is vital to maximize DPS. If you don’t care about the math or the reasoning behind it, get the slowest one-handed weapons you can. Right around the 2.6 speed is pretty good. The badge fists at 2.5 are fine (though not optimal, the DPS they provide is a significant improvement over many other choices). If spending that many badges is not easily done, go slow, then go slower, then go so slow people think you have stopped and that’s the speed you want. Unless you have a racial bonus, it doesn’t really matter what type of weapon you choose. Maces, axes, fist weapons- they are all viable choices.
The total benefit of a weapon (as modeled by Yo’s) is the best basis. Sometimes, a faster weapon can up your stats by a sufficient amount to outweigh the loss of DPS from the speed, but that is something you would have to check on.
Taking the breakdown of enhancement dps, and ignoring the stat allocation, some aspects of DPS are affected by weapon speed; others are not. The white damage (40%) is going to reflect the dps value alone. The 40% that is made of stormstrike and windfury, however, favor weapons with high damage values. Stormstrike instantly attacks with both weapons. Since it is an instant attack, weapon speed is immaterial, only the damage range it deals. Slower weapons tend to have the highest damage ranges. Windfury instantly adds two attacks with the current weapon every time it goes off. If it did not have the limitation of the three second cooldown, WF would be normalized. However, since the limitation in frequency is tied to a time-delay, it also favors slower weapons.
Putting this in the context of the season two one-hand and off-hand maces, you have the following effects (some of this will have the off-hand weapon as the main hand which, obviously, cannot be done- thought-experiment):
The one-hand version, pummeler, has a speed of 2.6 and a damage range of 177-330 and an average DPS of 97.5. An average main hand hit will be around 250. An average off-hand hit will be around 125 (50% penalty).
The off-hand version, bonecracker, has a speed of 1.5 and a damage range of 102-191 and an average DPS of 97.7 (higher!). An average main hand hit will be around 150. An average off-hand hit will be around 75.
Using the stormstrike ability with two bonecrackers would be 225 for a ten-second cooldown, or 22.5 DPS.
Using the stormstrike ability with a main-handed pummeler and a bonecracker would be 325, or 32.5 DPS. Already ten higher.
Using two pummelers nets a hit for 375! or 37.5 DPS. Using the two slower weapons nets a 5 DPS increase just from stormstrike while only losing out on a small amount of white DPS. But stormstrike is only 10% of total DPS, how does windfury treat weapons:
A windfury proc on the bonegrinders would add 300 damage (plus the AP bonus which would be a relatively static bonus) from a main hand hit roughly every four seconds for 75 DPS, or 150 for an off-hand hit at 47 DPS.
A windfury proc on the pummelers would add 500 damage on a main-hand hit or 250 on an off-hand hit for 125 DPS or 62.5 DPS if windfury procced an average of once every four seconds. The slower weapon hits for almost as much off-hand as the faster weapon did on the main-hand. If you had a 50-50 split on main and off-hand windfury procs, the slower weapons net almost 40 DPS more than the faster ones! It would take a lot of stats as well as inherent weapon damage to make up 45 DPS. All things being equal, slower is better. All things being unequal, they have to be really unequal for faster weapons to be worthwhile.
Chains? Leather?
It’s the job of the tank to concentrate the damage, as much as the encounter allows, onto herself, or himself, or itself (pick the most appropriate). It’s the job of an enhancement shaman to keep unleashed rage on the party, a windfury totem down, and make things dead. Since it’s someone else’s job to take the hits, armor value is, well, nice to have, but not important. We’re going to immediately not consider cloth armor (it just doesn’t have the stats) and plate armor can’t be worn. Mail and leather it is.
Between the two, the major difference is in armor value (not a concern) and in stat allocation. Looking at the stats you need, you find many of those sprinkled on both leather and mail items. Since there is no “magic stat,” the only way to really weigh items is to use Yo’s and determine the EP weights that are accurate for you. You can take those weights and mentally keep them in mind or use an in-game mod like Pawn to keep track of that for you. However, those weights, especially for enhancement shaman, are highly variable. Small changes in stats can upset small differences in EP weights, so frequent checking using Yo’s simulator is important to keep the data accurate.
Outside of the game client, MaxDPS.com has an enhancement shaman listing of gear. you enter your stats and it uses its own formulas to generate a list of gear (be sure to check “Include Leather” in the lower right). Lootzor, Thottbot, and WoWHead all have similar listing which can take the ep weights and generate lists. Yo’s simulator, on the import/export tab, generates links for both the Lootzor and Thottbot sites.
One thing to notice is how highly leather gets ranked on those lists. Over half of the best items, and many of the best in slot items, are leather.
The relic slot should be filled with the Stonebreaker’s Totem as soon as you can get it. The non-armor slots should be filled with what best meets your stat allocation needs.
The coming days
When I started this series, Wrath of the Lich King was over the horizon. We all knew it was there, but now it is standing in a clear silhouette. Many classes and many abilities are changing significantly. Shaman will be gaining AP (as currently stands) from agility, strength, and potentially intellect. Spellpower, the unification of spell and melee hit, crit, and haste will have a great impact on the hybrid classes. This series was written from the perspective of what is currently true for shaman. Going into Wrath, much of it, I am sure, will be invalidated. But for the next few weeks or months keep your rage unleashed!
How to Not Suck at Shaman, Enhancement Edition: Beating Other People With Sticks: Totems and Synergy
Introduction
Talent Specs and Important Abilities
The Stats You Need and Why They Play Well Together
The Shock and Awe of Shocks and Windfury: A How-to
Beating Other People With Sticks: Totems and Synergy
Enhancement Fashion: Loving Leather
Totems! Totems! Totems!
Totems are the defining characteristic of the shaman class. Over the levels, quite a few of them are collected and (certainly in my case) some are used only once to see what they do. Some, such as Poison or Disease cleansing totems, or the spell resistance totems, have situational uses. Some fall into the more general category, and those are the ones that need the most explanations.
Generally, all totems only affect your party, not the entire raid. Additionally, they have a range of (untalented) 20 yards, beyond which they provide no benefit. Any totem that provides a passive buff can be refreshed any time prior to its two-minutes. The totems, notably the fire or water totems, that have active effects (mana spring, searing, etc.) should expire before they are replaced so the full benefit is received. With only having to juggle the six-second shock cooldown and the ten-second Stormstrike cooldown, keeping totem uptime high should be an easy task.
All totem effects are based on untalented effects.
Earth Totems
Strength of Earth: This is your “default” earth totem. It increases the Strength of all nearby party members by 86. For most, that means 172 AP which translates to roughly 12 DPS added to white damage for all melee classes and more benefit depending on how specials scale with AP.
Tremor Totem: This totem pulses every four seconds to break fear, sleep, and charm effects. When you are fighting mobs that do any of the above, this is the totem to drop.
Fire Totems
Fire Nova Totem: Fire Nova Totem go Boom! One of the weaknesses of the Enhancement Shaman is AoE DPS. we are single-target creatures. Between this and magma totem, we can contribute at least a small amount of AoE DPS. Some things to note: creatures can and will target and destroy the Fire Nova totem before it goes off if they are not being tanked. With the 15 second cooldown on this totem, it is a good idea to use this totem first, then a magma totem, then this again, if the pull isn’t over.
Magma Totem: As with Fire Nova totem, the Magma Totem is about it for Enhancement Shaman’s ability to do AoE damage. The range is small, but be careful when using these as the damage can break CC and generates threat.
Searing Totem: Somewhat of your “default” fire totem. In situations where there is no CC and all targets being tanked, use this totem, it does increase your dps, but it is uncontrolled.
Air Totems
Grace of Air Totem: Adds 77 agility to nearby party members. Rogues, Feral Druids, and Hunters will love you for this. AP and Crit for them. It’s the air totem that should be your default because it benefits everyone, but it probably will not be. Most of the time, you’ll be dropping Windfury if you’re in a melee DPS group. Some exceptions to this, if you are in a group of rogues/feral druids/hunters or with a feral druid tank or with a warrior tank who is generating sufficient TPS and rage the avoidance boost from 77 agility is worthwhile.
Windfury Totem: The air totem your dps warriors, paladins, and swords rogues want. The benefit this totem gives your party outweighs just about any benefit Grace of Air will give you. If your raid is close to the threat cap, giving your warrior tank this will probably be the best thing you can do for raid dps (and to save your own skin: ankhs get expensive).
Wrath of Air Totem: Worth a short mention, if you get stuck in a caster group for some incredibly silly reason, or are with a paladin tank and are nearing the threat cap, this may be the way to go. Buffing the casters outweighs GoA for yourself, though I’m not sure whether a paladin tank would want this or WF totem. If you are getting threat capped, ask.
About the GoA and WF divide
Ideally, you can get around this problem by having a resto shaman in the raid as well. Windfury totem is a huge benefit to the heavy but slower hitting melee classes. It is no benefit to shaman, druids, or hunters. Rogues end up kind of split on it. If you have a resto shaman, it may be the best use to have them in the tank/melee group to drop SoE and WF, leaving you in the hunter/druid group to drop SoE and GoA.
The Elemental Totems
The Earth Elemental Totem and the Fire Elemental Totem are not totems you want to count on, but they are handy and useful to have available. The Earth Elemental summons a pocket tank that does okay against groups of mobs (it does much better if it gets healed, too), and the Fire Elemental… well, instead of dropping any other fire totem, you would drop this one. Really good against groups of low HP mobs. When you drop either elemental totem, there is a two-minute cooldown on the other, so you cannot have both active at the same time.
How to Not Suck at Shaman, Enhancement Edition: The Shock and Awe of Shocks and Windfury: A How-to
If my shaman had been on an arena team, I would have called it “Frost Shock and Awe.” True story.
Introduction
Talent Specs and Important Abilities
The Stats You Need and Why They Play Well Together
The Shock and Awe of Shocks and Windfury: A How-to
Beating Other People With Sticks: Totems and Synergy
Enhancement Fashion: Loving Leather
The Awe of Shocks
The underlying mechanics of the Enhancement Shaman are incredibly esoteric, but the act of DPSing is a fairly straightforward process. The bulk of Enhancement Shaman DPS comes from normal attacks and Windfury procs. The easiest way to maximize dps from those abilities is to stay in contact with the target as much as possible. People may say that Hunters can just autoshoot and afk and still do good dps, but Shaman can autoattack and still do great dps. There is no mana cost and no cooldowns to manage and as long as you don’t cast any spells with a cast time your swing timer will continue uninterrupted.
Maximizing DPS is not much more complicated and only requires juggling the cooldowns on shocks and Stormstrike. Stormstrike is easy to get out of the way: hit it every cooldown unless it’s cooldown comes up while you are casting Flame Shock. If it does, Flame Shock first, otherwise, StormStrike first. If you don’t care about the math this is what you need to know:
Enhancement/Resto Shaman will find the most benefit from cycling Flame Shock, then Earth Shock.
Enhancement/Elemental Shaman will find the most benefit from cycling Flame Shock, then two Earth Shocks.
If Stormstrike conflicts with a shock, Flame Shock takes precedence.
If the target will die within the next eight seconds, Earth Shock, otherwise continue the rotation as normal.
In the realm of shocks, I want to point out a few of the terms I’ll be using. DPS (damage per second, something we all use frequently), DPM (damage per mana, the bang for your buck), and DPCD. DPCD is probably a new one to a lot of people and stands for Damage Per (Shock) CoolDown. Since shocks cannot be chain cast, the delay between casts is part of figuring their rotation. The best shock rotation to use is dependent upon a variety of factors. I’m restricting this to comparing Flame Shock and Earth Shock. On the whole, Frost Shock is slightly worse the Earth Shock. If the snare effect is needed, or the interrupt of Earth Shock is needed, those are the probably more important than a maximized DPS rotation. If a target is immune to nature damage, Frost Shock can be substituted for Earth Shock at only a small decrease.
| Flame Shock | Earth Shock | Earth Shock with Stormstrike | |
| Mana | 500 | 535 | 535 |
| 5 seconds | |||
| Damage | 482 | 675 | 810 |
| DPM | .964 | 1.26 | 1.51 |
| DPCD | 96.4 | 135 | 162 |
| 6 seconds | |||
| Damage | 587 | 675 | 810 |
| DPM | 1.17 | 1.26 | 1.51 |
| DPCD | 98 | 112 | 135 |
| 10 seconds | |||
| Damage | 692 | 675 | 810 |
| DPM | 1.38 | 1.26 | 1.51 |
| DPCD | 138.5 | 135 | 162 |
| 12 seconds | |||
| Damage | 797 | 675 | 810 |
| DPM | 1.594 | 1.26 | 1.51 |
| DPCD | 132.8 | 112 | 135 |
| 15 seconds | |||
| Damage | 797 | 675 | 810 |
| DPM | 1.594 | 1.26 | 1.51 |
| DPCD | 159.4 | 135 | 162 |
That chart probably requires a certain amount of explanation. The sections for cooldown note what interval your shock rotation would refresh. With the Reverberation talent in the Elemental Combat tree, the shock CoolDown can be reduced to five seconds, allowing a theoretical five second shock rotation. Under each rotation time, it shows what ONE shock would do. 
Rotations at ten seconds and longer would use multiple shocks. Also, the numbers above are the base amounts for the spell and assume no benefit from the Mental Quickness talent or any spell damage on gear (which there should not be any).
Since the shocks have a shared cooldown, the total damage for the shock gets divided by the total cooldown (we’re assuming this is a sandbox encounter where the full shock duration and cooldown end when the target dies). The last column shows the damage Earth Shock would do if it always had the StormStrike bonus damage.
For an Enhancement shaman looking to maximize shock DPS, five points in Reverberation, keeping Storm Strike on the target, and casting only Earth Shock results in the best dps, overall. Without any additions to spell damage, if no one else would be using your StormStrike charges, keep that up and Earth Shock.
If someone else is eating SS charges, the math changes and favors at least a two shock rotation. Allowing Flame Shock to go its full duration and cycling Earth shock in results in more damage at better DPM and better DPCD. A twelve second rotation alternating between them has 1472 damage over 12 seconds (122.6 DPS, 1.42 DPM) does more than two Earth Shocks at 1350 damage (112.5 DPS, 1.26 DPM). For a 15 second rotation taking advantage of the reduced cooldown, Flame Shock followed by two Earth Shocks is the optimal DPS rotation (2147 damage, 143.13 DPS, 1.36 DPM).
Once the Mental Quickness talent (adding 30% of you AP as damage/healing) is taken into consideration, the numbers start scaling differently. According to WowWiki’s spell damage coefficients*, Earth Shock and Frost Shack scale at 42.86% (meaning you multiply your benus spell damage by .4286 and add that to damage done) keeping their relation with FrS slightly worse. Flame shock has a trickier bit of math. Because it has both a Direct Damage and a Damage Over time component, the portion receive different coefficients. In this case, the DD portion has a 15% coefficient, and the DoT has a 52% coefficient over four ticks (or 13% per tick). For total Damage done, FlS gets 67% of spell damage added.
At 1000 AP, a number fairly easily reached, that nets 300 bonus spell damage. Earth Shock would gain an additional 128 damage, 153 with StormStrike. Flame Shock gains 201 damage over its full duration. That brings Earth Shock with StormStrike to ~960 damage, and Flame Shock to ~980 Damage, making Flame Shock the better shock. However, you still have to let it tick its full duration so the cycling is still the most effective solution for DPS.
Enhancement/Resto Shaman will find the most benefit from cycling Flame Shock, then Earth Shock.
Enhancement/Elemental Shaman will find the most benefit from cycling Flame Shock, then two Earth Shocks.
If Stormstrike conflicts with a shock, Flame Shock takes precedence.
If the target will die within the next eight seconds, Earth Shock, otherwise continue the rotation as normal.
*Some of the coefficients on that page may be wrong, and it may list an incorrect number for Earth Shock. If it is incorrect, the correct number would be lower by 10%. This would make the break even point where Flame Shock becomes superior at all times to Earth Shock occur at a lower amount of AP, but doesn’t change the ultimate conclusion.
Should you wait for Raid Drops? Maybe Not.
Getting ready for raiding is a multi-faceted endeavor. You have to weigh the pieces of your current gear against each other and patch the weaknesses as quickly as possible, while keeping in mind long-term goals. With the incredible rewards from Badges of Justice, some item slots should be filled with Tier or Badge loot, with very little else being an option. But there are some items that can stand up to that level that are obtained outside of raids, and outside of pvp. They may be a bit trickier to find, but some of them are out there.
Feral druids are often brought to Karazhan as off-tanks so on single-tank fights they can go full-dps and help down bosses faster than either a protection specced warrior or paladin would. This is often the case, but not always. Feral druids can Main Tank everything in Karazhan, and can do very competitive DPS if they go only in that role. That versatility is also a weakness, because it means we cannot just focus on one solid set of gear, but need several.
Depending on the loot system you use, it may not be easy for all the items you need to be picked up in raids, or there may be considerable competition (those tricksy rogues!). Using programs like Rawr and Emmerald’s gear lists can help you find pieces obtainable outside of raids that can serve nearly as well, or sometimes better than, comparable raid drops. As an example, I’m going to contrast the Edgewalker Longboots and Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless from Karazhan to the Sunrage Treads and Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer from Magisters’ Terrace.
While +hit remains a good stat for all physical DPS classes until the hit cap is reached, the relative value it has for a feral druid is low. Because Socket Bonuses are for +Hit or +Stamina, all calculations will assume a Delicate Living Ruby (+8 Agility) in all slots. We will also ignore the values for Armor and Stamina. They are important stas, but neither contributes to DPS, so they are immaterial for this discussion. Since no items have strength and the characters other stats will remain the same, only the AP gain from the items is listed.
The Edgewalker Longboots provide 99 AP, +.825% chance to hit, 1.8% chance to crit and drop from Moroes in Karazhan.
The Sunrage Treads provide 86 AP, 1.44% chance to crit, 126 Armor Penetration and drop from Kael’Thas in Magisters’ Terrace on Normal mode.
How these items weigh against each other is dependant upon the remainder of your gear set. If you are at the hit cap without any additional hit rating, the Edgewalker Longboots’ hit rating provides no additional benefit. ArPen has a variable value depending on total amount of armor negation from all effects. On a high armor raid boss, the armor penetration from the Sunrage Treads increase physical damage by .69%. For Feral Druids, that means all damage but the Rip in you rotation is increased by .69%, or about a .5% increase in total damage at the minimum.
What we can say for certain is that the Edgewalker Longboots provide about 1 more dps, and .4% chance to crit, with the +Hit and +ArPen probably roughly equivalent in slightly different sets. The slight edge goes to Edgewalker Longboots. But consider that the Edgewalker Longboots drop in a ten man raid you can only run once a week, and the Sunrage Treads drop in a normal mode dungeon. They are well worth the time if you don’t already have better.
The Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless provide 74 AP, +.825% chance to hit, 1.59% chance to crit and drop from the Chess event in Karazhan.
The Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer provide 97 AP, +1.45% chance to hit, 1.4% chance to crit and drop from Kael’Thas in Magisters’ Terrace in Heroic mode.
Again, the overall gearset must be taken into consideration, but the Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer add about 1.5 more DPS and have up to .6% more chance to hit, and about a .2% reduction in chance to crit. The edge in this case goes to the dungeon drop, the Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer. As a bonus, farming for the shoulders in Heroic Magisters’ Terrace, you’ll hopefully have chances to pick up the Shard of Contempt and Commendation of Kael’Thas, which are two amazing trinkets for feral druids.
Quick Update
BRK is ruining my fun! All my character slots are full and Alliance. Boo! Perhaps there should be an alternate event. A world PvP event…
Also, the next part of the Shaman guid goes up sometime tomorrow. It’s all written, I just need to get some graphics to break up the text.
