In my (alliance) guild we're only just starting to have enough shaman available to play with group buffs.
I'd like to get some experiences from Horde raiders on how they handle their melee DPS shammies.

Currently we (melee group) get GoA more than WF, partly due to not wanting to risk rogues being gimped if their shaman dies. Is this justifiable?

Often, with shaman/war/rog/rog/hunter, we still will use GoA. It is my intuition that war+rogue+rogue with WF would be more damage than with GoA, but I do not know the specific DPS losses that the non-rogues-non-warriors would incur.

What about a feral druid instead of a hunter, in the above group scenario?

What are the rules of thumb?

I usually just ask what they want.

Warriors tend to prefer windfury while with rogues it depends on their spec from what I understand.
If you are enhancement yourself and only 1 warrior I would expect grace to be favored especially if you're also grouped with a feral druid.

I'm unsure about hunters and their ability to stay within an enhancement shamans totem range.

Windfury, always everytime every spec.

Your melee dps group should include a fury warrior, shaman, 2-3 rogues and a feral druid(space available). Using GoA because of a fear of the shaman dying is absolutely unjustifiable. You organize buffs assuming people will do their jobs and not die. it has been proven conclusively with mathematical modeling in the Rogue DPS spreadsheet that windfury provides the most DPS.

Windfury and get that hunter out of your melee group.

Windfury always imo. The shaman doesn't benefit from it, and neither does the feral but they are both in that group to buff the rest of it.

Warriors and sword rogues get so much benefit from WF and to a lesser extent dagger rogues.

Lose the hunter and get a feral, give the hunter a shadow priest.

In the case of suboptimal groups.. where would you draw the line and definitively say GoA or WF?

I'm not sure what a suboptimal group is, if you mean 3 ferals and enhancement shaman and 1 rogue, then you would use GoA, but who would raid with a group like that?

Generally this is how I work it out:

If there is a Warrior in the Group: Windfury Totem
If there is no Warrior in the Group: Usually Windfury Totem, Grace of Air if they would prefer it.

The boost in DPS for a one fury/arms Warrior with with windfury is greater than 5 people having grace of air, even in the most extreme of circumstances (4 Feral Druids, One Warrior)

It doesn't? So the extra 2-3.5% crit rate and whatever attack power gained by those under its effect doesn't somehow take their gear and weapon DPS into consideration?

Flametogue doesn't scale....GoA and Windfury do.

I 10 man in a group with warrior tank, fury warrior, feral cat, hunter, myself and I run GoA (and add flametongue for the warriors) typically.

Never mind, I was only counting the AP consideration (which doesn't scale), not the crit%. Still a bit sleepy at the moment (even though it's 2pm and I've been at work 5 hours).

If you are in a melee group you should be using windfury and strength of earth. The only time I would use goa over windfury is if there are more hunters/druids in the group than warriors/rogues, which probably shouldn't be the case. Generally I'm in the main tank group and I use either windfury, goa, or a mix depending on the fight. As for melee groups you should use windfury almost always over goa. You might want to use goa in a fight where melee have a chance to take melee damage, although I can't think of a case off the top of my head.

Well the crit added by GOA clearly scales with gear. The AP bonus clearly does not - it's a static bonus. What's more, only two of the players in that group you cited are getting the static bonus.

I'd be surprised if dropping windfury wasn't the best option for a two warrior group, regardless of who else was in there. 2-3.5% crit for the party versus a 20% (say) increase in warrior DPS?

There's some situational use involved, but I think I'd want windfury down.

Depends on the group. Rogues and Warriors need WF, druids and hunters Agility. Try ot work groups around that.

Some sort of idea for a mixed-up group would be flametongue and agility but the players find the flametongue animation so aggravating that they're willing to lose the DPS.

Flametongue does such a pitiful amount of DPS for melee that searing totem would be a further increase of DPS. Windfury is so good for warriors and allows them to generate much more DPS that if there is a Warrior in the group the DPS increase of windfury exceeds the benefit of any other members in the group, your milage may vary though but this has pretty much always been the case.

How many threads on this topic do you think we can start all in the same week eh? 5? 6?

Do you have any data/maths/references to back this up? there is a related discussion on this point in this thread - http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.p...d=1#post375722

DPS warrior and/or 2x combat rogue? WF.
The only class/spec combos that are going to prefer GoA are mutilate rogues, hunters, and feral druids. The only one of these that has any place in a proper melee DPS group is the druid. Setup should be:
- DPS warrior (Fury or MS/Flurry, which can actually do nice damage with Windfury)
- Combat rogue
- Combat rogue
- Combat rogue or feral druid
- Enhancement shaman

Dropping GoA on aggro-dropping or aggro-sensitive trash (I'm thinking Brutes in Gruul's Lair) so everyone has some extra dodge is totally acceptable, though. This only really applies to boss fights, where you always need to optimize DPS, either to save healers' mana, beat the enrage timer, or kill the boss before too much of your raid dies to randomness.

Every single warrior spreadsheet ever.

For gods sake, NO IT DOES NOT. Stop cross posting this nonsense across the boards.

If you have a decent totem timer or you have a good sense of innate timing, you can twist GOA/WF. It is possible due to the 9s window of WF to keep your normal attack rotation while maintaining a GOA/WF presence. I do have 5/5 in totem mana efficiency, and only really bother to twist on boss fights/long trash pulls where I know I will easily be able to Rage a full mana bar back. Same can be done with tranquil if it's an aggro-sensitive fight.

In any other situation except some absurd 3x hunter 1x feral or mix and match hunters/ferals, windfury. I don't know who started the whole GOA/Flametongue/SoE max dps rumor, but they need a serious reality check.

The topic of the thread is 'melee DPS group', not 'warrior DPS group'

From what I understand, the Windfury Totem doesn't have an internal cooldown, correct?

Are you really that block-headed? The amount of damage that a single warrior gains from Windfury eclipses the gain that a feral druid, hunter, and enhancement shaman get combined. This has been theorycrafted, parsed and proven by numerous members of this forum. Rogues also see an increase in DPS from Windfury that is greater than what they see from GoA once they are out of blues. If your group is DPS Warrior/Rogue/Druid/Hunter/Shaman, you drop Windfury. Period. Flametongue Totem is total and utter crap for any class and should only be used if you're dropping Wrath of Air in a caster-heavy group where CC is an issue so you can't use Searing totem. It is THAT bad.

Not to mention you have no reason to have that kind of a group outside Kara. Warrior/Roguex4 + Shaman is hands-down the best use of a shaman in a raid that isn't specced Elemental.

Yes.