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.
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