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!
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