This is not a shaman spec thread, this is a thread discussing hybrid roles with theorycraft to back it up. I only know about shamans as that's all I've played, so naturally all my examples are from that class.

Perhaps a raid could benefit from an "off spec", and different play styles can become more common, without damaging a raid. Convincing raid leaders and other non-hybrids that there is a viable raid spec and playstyle beyond the expected can be a difficult task, and experience may prove this whole argument to be moot. We'll just have to wait and see, but speculations like these early on may provoke food for thought when the expansion comes along.

Thus far shamans, paladins, and druids have been more or less pigeonholed into a healing role in end-game encounters. As a shaman who has been raiding endgame for some time now, I have explored the different available talents and gear for shaman, and I can say from experience that maximizing the ability to heal is the best way to support the raid as a shaman.

Right now, the added support of totems is just as available to a resto shaman as any other spec, with the exception of mana tide, which of course requires 31 in resto. A shaman hurling bolts constantly or swinging a WF bat is just wasting a raid slot, because our current ability to heal effectively far outweighs to DPS. Sure, you can toss in some damage occasionally, but you can't be dedicated to DPS.

Summary for the TLDRs: A BC Enhancement shaman adds 326AP to 1000AP unbuffed rogues. Net mana use is a theorycrafted 0-1200 mana deficit every 2 minutes. Hypothesis: an ehancement shaman focused this way heals no one, but maintains a "raid DPS" equivalent to a rogue

To start, I wanted to explore the Enhancement tree. Enhancement to date is so incredibly bad outside of a battleground (it's not that great there, either), that mentioning "endgame" in the same sentence is the setup to a joke. With the new talents, I think we can try something new.

0/47/14 Enhancement
With endgame melee DPS gear available right now, the talents I linked, the Strength enchantments listed in this thread, and a Deathbringer or Misplaced Servo Arm in the offhand (chosen simply because they are unlikely to be highly desired by other classes), a shaman would have:

289 Strength
18% chance to hit
25% chance to crit
around 1000 AP unbuffed
3800ish Mana
4100ish HP

Now, I am not gonna theorycraft out the DPS of the shaman, because the math of including Windfury, dual wield miss rate, Flurry, etc, is a giant headache. I would concede that even considering all those things, the shaman fleshed out this way doing nothing but melee and using stormstrike every time it's up would only produce something like 60-70% or less of a rogue's DPS.

So who cares? Well, based on SoE totem rank 6 curse-gaming data mining, and extrapolating that a new rank of GoA totem has the same value, each of these totem would yield 99 to their respective stats with talents. Of course, that's only 12 points into Enhancement. But then there's the gem of the tree:

Unleashed Rage
Tier 6
5/5 points: Causes critical hits with your melee attacks to increase the attack power of all group members by 10%.

Let the theorycraft begin! Lets see how much we can improve a rogue's AP

Unbuffed AP: 1000
AP from SoE: 99
AP from GoA: 99
AP from improved Mark of the wild: 81 (27str, 27agi)

Add it all together, and you have 1277AP. 10% increase from Unleashed rage: 128AP.

The grand total from an enhancement shaman: 326AP for every 1000base AP rogue in the group. A warrior gets a little less AP, but more crit from AGI, and of course Imp Battle Shout isn't included in the calculations. Hunters get less bonus AP because STR doesn't help, but again, trueshot aura isn't included. Suffice to say, a group could be stacked with melee and the enhancement shaman would boost the DPS significantly.

Well, that extra 10% requires a crit at least once every 10 seconds. Dual wielding 2 Misplaced Servo Arms at 2.8 speed, 18% to hit and 30% crit (don't forget GoA totem), you can pretty much guarantee that crit once every 10 sec.

What about mana? 3800 is next to nothing!! Well, GoA, SoE(225 mana each with talents), Stormstrike every time it's up(200 mana at level 60), over 2 minutes is 1650 mana. The new rank of Windfury weapon is 200 mana every 5 min, so over 2 minutes it's 80 mana. So total mana usage is 1730 mana every 2 minutes. This brings up the new 41 point talent:

Shamanistic Rage
174 mana, 30 sec duration, 2 min cooldown
Gives your melee attacks a chance to restore mana equal to 20% of your strength.

2 weapons, 2.8 speed, stormstrike with 2 weapons twice = 24 swings. With 18% to hit, It's not unreasonable to assume 22 of those swings land on average. With SoE totem and MotW, Strength is at 415. 20% of that is 83. If 100% of those swings proc the talent, thats 1826 mana. For the sake of argument, lets assume you manage to get ahold of a Pugio and Harbinger of Doom (we know rogues won't let those go, but this is Theorycraft!), that's about 35 successful hits. 35*83 mana =2905 mana.

You can deduce the mana recovered from the proc rate from that. We know Blizzard is a big fan of overcompensating for balance, so let's say the proc rate is 30%. 30% of the dual servo arms mana recovery is 600 mana, and 871 for the daggers. Even at something that low, 600 mana is an enormous amount.

The down side: Technically, the only added AP past 12 points in Enhancement is the 10% from unleashed rage. One could easily spec 0/12/49 and be a spectacular raid healer and include the basic totems.

Now, of course, none of this hypothesis takes into account gear down the road. Who knows? Maybe it will turn out that being a healer is the best way to go.

Edit: fixed rogue AP math

If we take the Enhancement setup from the first post, and include an elemental shaman in the raid to take advantage of Stormstrike, then the DPS provided by the 2 shamans is greater than their individual contributions. If Stormstrike is used every time it's up, then the next 2 lightning bolts from the elemental will do 20% more damage. Since an elemental shaman is unlikely to cast any OTHER damage spell ever, and we use 12 casts every 20 seconds (2 sec cast time +Lightning Overload+4 sec of extra interval), then you could say it's a 3% increase in damage.

10 casts at 100%, 2 at 120% = 12.4/12 = 104%

Throw in the mana recovery of a Resto shaman with mana tide and Blessing/Judgement of Wisdom, and you have an extremely effective team of DPS and healing. Perhaps one of each spec is the way to go!


As an addendum, there are a wide variety of ways to play a raid shaman in the upcoming expansion based on the new talents and spells. There might be a way to do a half spell DPS, half healing role. Or maybe spec for smaller group activity, focusing on damage and healing as necessary (I know I do this in Strat/scholo for example).

I'd like to see the possibility of entertaining different roles for the hybrids, even if it means switching roles several times during an instance. I wanted to explore just how to do that with talents.

Edit: added Elemental shaman stuff

The thread you mention was before the talents were revealed. This thread deals with the actual talents Blizzard has proposed, and uses facts and theory to back up statements. That other thread is merely a digression on numbers of each class and "play what feels good".

Unfortunately we dont know the specifics of druids yet ,so it a little too soon and their are other threads where this discussion probably belongs, so I wont go into too much detail.

But its looks like with improved sanctity aura and the ability for Shaman to dual wield naxx level healing weapons,as well as the existing talents like increased int for Feral druids that blizzard is offering a trade off. Go a little further down the dps tree and you also get some increased healing ability.

For Shamanist Rage the proc rate is unknown but in a raiding enviroment with both Judgement and Blessing of Wisdom available it may be less attractive then going 21 into restoration.

Enhancement shaman + dw warrior (3/53/5) probably + Blessing of Salvation...any questions? warriors benefit way more from shamans than do rogues. 144 ap totem which will probably be even more after xpansion, and windfury, might as well add trueshot hunter (gimp unter), and a feral druid lawl.

I doubt even with that setup that your DPS would equal the gain that the 4 rogues would get combined.

Personally I'm interested to see what the projected math for a 41 elemental is with a group of mages or locks.

Your first problem with all that math is you are giving rogues 2ap per agi, which they don't get. As a fury warrior with a rogue as my old main, that 10% AP proc from enh shamans sounds hot. If it's worth it or not yet who knows, but it looks interesting.

I think some adjustments in initial math would be in place.

1) Slow weapons (2.8) are not optimal for DW shaman in raid enviroment. Keeping buff up requires critting often, maximizing JoW proc requires hitting mob fast. Daggers, fast axes (orc racial) are all good options, 2.8 weapons are not.

2) Mana regeneration doesn't rely on Shamanistic Rage only. With BoW (39.6 mp5) and JoW (50% on hit to return 59 mana) and quite often out of 5 sec. rule (20 sec. cooldown on Stormstrike), shaman mana regeneration if not shocking will be almost all the time 100%. BoW/JoW alone (assuming 2.0 weapons) will provide shaman with way over 100 mp5 (probably even 150+ mp5) and that's without taking flurry proc into account.

Shamanistic Rage is more like Evocation tool, used after burst DPS (shocks) or healing, not something that is expected to keep shaman able to cast Stormstrike.

Rogues get 1 attack power for each point of agi. So you'd most likely be better off with windfury because of the scaling of an extra swing.

Means warrior and rogues get the same ap, and if you choose to use SoE + WF then warriors get twice as much AP as the rogues. ofc if you use SoE + GoA you have the option of using flametongue totem for some extra dps.

When I ran some numbers after the initial shaman talent leaks using 2 2.6 weapons, and enough +hit to not miss, 80% flurry uptime and assuming windfury does work on offhand too JoW alone came to 211mp5 (using the level 60 rank of 59 mana per proc).

Clearly making use of a 1.6 or so speed offhander would help mana generation alot, and assuming offhand windfury works, and procs mainhand swings (ala todays swordspec) it would also boost dps.

Indeed. If they've done their job properly then the most effective raid would be the one with people specced down to the bottom of 25 different talent trees imo.