Ralgarog

Hello all.

I was told by a few of my friends that this would be a good place to post about a post that i made on the world of warcraft forums. The post i made got like 500 responses but alot of them were bumps and very few of them were actual helpful feedback.

[Warning: Some of the information found here is out of date. This was made the day that the 2.1.0 ptrs went live.]

Here is a repost of the first two parts:

Hello. I am Ral'Garog and i am a shaman. Not just an normal QQing shaman but one that raids and does heroics on a regular basis.

In this thread i hope to be able to give a clear and comprehensive list of problems that i have faced while raiding and running heroics. I will not touch on PvP, and i will not touch on normal instancing.

First off: There is a misunderstanding between what Shaman were, and what Shaman are. Previously, a Shaman was able to spec with a little in each tree and was able to actually perform rather well with casting spells at range, running in to melee as well as healing. Shamans use to be “The true hybrids of WoW.” They were the “Jack of all trades; Master of none.” At one point of time, a Shaman was able to run away from an enemy then attack them at a range then run into melee them and be very effective and efficient at doing so. Also: They was able to heal themselves by a good amount. This was back when from my understanding: 4k health was considered a lot to have.

The Shaman of today are nothing like that. There is a design flaw in the game which prevents Shaman from becoming a jack of all trades. That flaw is two fold: But both of the flaws are hand in hand. The first flaw is Itemization. The other flaw is talent trees. Due to limited raid spots: A Shaman must pick a spec, stick to it, and hope for the best.


Because Shaman have to spec deep into their talent trees to be a viable substitution for the “true form” of the spot they are trying to fill, they must gear themselves accordingly. For example It's currently impossible to have +1500 healing, +850 spell damage, +18% spell crit, +20% melee crit along with also +1200 attack power. Since this is a thread about enhancement, we must stick with the +20% melee crit and the +1200 attack power. That completely gimps my spells and healing.

Itemization:
One of the major problems with enhancement Shaman gear itemization is the fact that blizzard are currently setting us up as if we were offshoot hunters. Even enhancement Shaman specific gear has tons of mp/5 which is almost completely not needed by a enhancement Shaman because of shamanistic rage. [Which is a quite efficient spell when it works as intended.]. Unlike hunters: Shamans need a lot of +hit as so that they can dual wield competently and efficiently: The problem is since there is almost no mail gear in the game [besides desolation] with +hit; Enhancement shamans must roll on leather. Gimp their attack power and critical strike percentage by taking on a a lot of weird gear which has a lot of hit but not much of anything else.

Right now: It can be argued that the Desolation set is better for enhancement shamans than their tier 4 because it has more hit and almost just as much attack power with gems and enchants. In my opinion: that should not be the case. I may be wrong: But a shaman should not have to roll on leather [even high end leather] if they are suppose to inherently wear mail.

The changes made to the tier 4 [and tier 5] on the PTRS are a step in the correct direction: But i have noticed something odd. Last Friday i copied my characters over to the ptrs as so that i can do some battle grounds with the blizzard staff: The only pieces of tier 5 which were upgrades for me were the shoulders and the helm: Chest: downgrade. Legs: major down grade. Gloves: downgrade. All of those are including enchants mind you. **

I do not think that my current gear should be able to compare with what i get from 6 or more months of high end raiding. I do know that there is a high chance for our tier 4 – 6 to be buffed before it makes it over to live: but i just wanted to point that out. **

There needs to be some kinda implementation of better enhancement Shaman specific gear. Yeah: another class can use it, but it suits the needs of enhancement Shaman much better than the needs of other classes and not a mixture of Hunter and rogue gear on mail. Enhancement Shaman need more crit, more strength, less int [not too less. Just enough], the stamina you place on our gear is just high enough so thats good.

A good alternative would be to remove the mp/5 from our sets. Add armor penetration bonuses,more hit, more critical strike rating(Or agility) and make the sockets Blue and yellow sockets mostly with mp/5 as the socket bonuses: Thus making the mp/5 on our gear completely optional and not forced onto us.

** May be out of date by now.

 

Ralgarog

Specialization:
This has been touched on a lot by the itemization section due to the fact that this requires us to work to optimize our DPS. But the problem is in our talent trees, there are a lot of talents which are almost completely unnecessary for a enhancement shaman.

Examples of this would be: Shield Specialization, Ancestral knowledge, Anticipation, Two Hander specialization, Toughness, Mental quickness, Improved weapon totems.

All that i have listed are things which should either be improved: move up a tier [or should i say down a tier?] or completely removed in favor of something which would help us better fulfill the role of a DPS hybrid. Right now i can almost safely say that there is no raiding enhancement shaman who puts more than 50 points into their tree before moving onto another due to the fact that half of the things in the enhancement tree is almost useless and it works against each other. I am not one to cry about how “We did not get our full review.” But there are evidence in our talent tree that blizzard truly still think of a shaman as a full hybrid even when they spec into enhancement, which is not the case.

What you do to improve those talents are completely up to you, but things i think you should keep in mind when changing them. [I have a bias towards raiding enhancement shaman so please excuse any mixups i am to make in any 'useful' talents which i call non-useful.]

1. Ancestral knowledge should also help to increase our attack power and or crit when they spec into it. As a enhancement shaman: If i were to have only 5k mana, AK would only give my +25 mana which does not do much for me. That is not even enough to cast rank one spells. But if it were to increase our intellect and our strength by 5% [or bonuses gained by them by 5%] It would go a long as as to help make enhancement shamans better in terms of optimization of their spec.
   
2. Shield Specialization should not be in the talent tree of a offensive dps class. Sure: We can wear shield, but it makes almost no difference even when you spec into Shield specialization. It may be a good idea to use this as a way to “Enhance” our defenses. It may be a good idea to combine anticipation and toughness and use that to replace Shield Specialization. Remember: enhancement shamans should not be tanking damage from most mobs in raids and if they do, it's still up to 10k damage or move even with their shields on.
   
3. Anticipation does almost nothing for a raiding shaman. +5% dodge does not do much for me because as mentioned countless times: It helps classes like Warriors who have the “over power” ability to have the upper hand in a duel with me. Even when pvping, it's truly rare when you dodge a back stab or a garrote or something that can be potentially fatal to the shaman. It may be a good idea to either buff that talent or combine it with toughness.
   
4. Toughness is actually the most worthless talent we have. It gives the shaman less than 500 more armor. 500 armor reduces damage by so little that i makes no difference at all to the shaman, especially when they are not wearing a shield [which they should not be doing when they are dpsing. It may be a good idea to replace toughness with a completely different talent which reduces base damage taken by the shaman by a certain percentage or maybe even turn it into a actual spell or ability which reduces damage taken by a significant amount for a limited amount of time. You can think of it as the shaman version of the rogue's evasion ability [for lack of better words.]
   
5. Almost no enhancement shamans use two handers anymore. And when they use it: it's just for heavy burst damage and it's usually a one time thing used for PvP crit and cut videos. Enhancement shamans are almost completely metalloid around Dual wielding with Shamanstic rage and also Unleashed rage. It may be a good idea to Give shamans the ability to use Two handers as a base skill gained at level 40 or 60 [or even from a weapon skill trainer.] and make the talent into something that would give a chance to stun a target or even use it as a slot to give shamans a new ability of sorts.
   
6. Improved weapon totems makes such a little and slight difference that nobody knows if you have it or not unless they ask you. It would be better to remove that talent from the game and replace it with something that a raiding shaman can actually use to help buff the raid. Maybe use it to give enhancement shamans the ability to add a debuff to a mob which increases damage taken by a Shaman's weapon enchants by a certain amount that is also affect from shaman weapon totems.
   
7. Mental quickness seems to be in the wrong tree. It's a good talent mind you, but i think it may be a good idea to put it a bit higher up into the talent tree and maybe move a skill as the one i suggested for the two hander or the improved weapon totems part of this thread.

Problems getting into raids:
Enhancement shamans can get into raids, but it's very rare that they do so. The primary reason is that if there is no Paladin in the raid; Enhancement shamans generates an insane amount of threat. With the burst nature of the class, a Enhancement shaman with above average attack power and raid buffs can easily crit a boss or a mob for 5k damage or more. Although it's rare: When it happens, we instantly spike up in damage. There is no way to control our threat so we almost forced to stop dpsing for atleast ¼ of the fight.

Tranquil air totem is flawed in a lot of cases because it prevents enhancement shamans from being in the MT's group because they are unable to buff the main tank properly. Also: The air totem is a HIGHLY valued and wanted totem. Members of the groups bring shamans into the raid for those totem buffs: not a threat reducing buff which is strictly for the shaman himself to be able to dps. So threat is definitely a problem that really needs to be worked out.

Shamans have no CC and very limited anti CC's. Therefore: In my humble opinion, i think a Enhancement shaman should be able to dps on par with a rogue because that is one of the only things that the shaman bring to a raid. His DPS and the totem buffs.

If we are not the class for CC or the class for Anti CC, then we should be the class to fear because of our damage done. We should be a high priority target to CC because we should be able to beat another class to a pulp because thats the only thing that we have to hold our own in a group or raid. [I touched on pvp as a comparison.].

Right now: Although enhancement shamans are pretty boring to play [Drop totems, stormstrike earth shock, auto attack. Rinse and Repeat.] We do a relatively good amount of damage when we gear pretty well. By nerfing our damage again and again, our disadvantages would quickly out weight the advantages of having us in a group. An example of what i am talking about is:

Mage can polymorph a mob and do good dps. Rogues can sap and stunlock mobs and do good dps. Warlocks can banish, seduce, fear and dps. Shadow priests can fear and do good dps. Warriors can fear, stun, offtank [slightly when not spec for it.] and dps. Hunters can confuse, ice trap and dps. Duids can cyclone, hibernate, entangling roots, stun, and do good dps. Shamans....All we have is our dps and buffing.

To take our dps away from us is to take away our reason to be in a raid. Once a Enhancement shaman specs into enhancement, he is no longer a hybrid. He is a melee shaman who's role is almost completely dpsing and enhancing the dps of his raid members.

Enhancement shamans should be either insanely good at dpsing while controlling their threat or insanely good at buffing while being able to help adjust the threat of others while dpsing: An assist class. We all know that wont happen so it would be good to make us a good dpser.

 

Myul

Wearing 2 Gladiator's Fist, some Leather and Mail Gear from Kara, Heroics and you will be only limited by your aggro cap, this is the only real problem of a enhance shaman.

+ 10% AP
+ over direct 150 AP (rogue/warrior/druids)/about half for hunters
+ 1-3% crit (class depending)
+ WINDFURYYYY
+ Bloodlust/Heroism

are such a good assisting/boosting class stats at this time of raiding game - i really don't know what you are crying about?

- Aggro management
- very aggro sensible at high geared state

Well your posting is really outdated, i'm sorry. Might just fit into some of the other "please change class xy" threads.

 

Ralgarog

I am not crying. I am stating facts. Me personally i am comfortable with the dps i do. Even at the time of making that post i was comfortable with the dpsing that i was doing. When made this thread it was directly related with a post that Tseric made which had how the devs felt about the Enhancement when they basically said, "Enhancement needs help in pvp. Enhancement may not be preferred in PvE. Enhancement are fine."

The most problem i have is our talents in the enhancement tree. Some of them are so useless that hardly anybody take up points in them. Some of the others: we only take them because we have to in order to get to a higher part of the tree.

Here is a link to the original thread: maybe it would put some things into context:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

I am currently in the act of updating everything in these threads but alot of the information is still viable.

 

Azaranth

Best Melee Group Long-Lasting Buffs in the Game (SoE / Windfury / UR) - Check
Best Melee Group Short-Lasting Buff in the Game (Heroism / Bloodlust) - Check
Utility (Cleansing, Spot Heals, Reincarnate, Spell Interrupt) - Check
Resource Management and Sustainability (Shamanistic Rage) - Check
Solid Top10 DPS - Check

Enhancement is a great raiding spec right now. It could use a threat reducer, but that's about the only thing I'd like to see changed (in PVE).

 

slant

Agreed, enhance shamans are pretty good in raids these days, except for threat management. The spec is lacking in single group and PvP play.

Offhand itemization is also a real problem.

 

Ralgarog

Please note: My argument is not that, "Hey i want to do top dps and heal for 90210 and tank!"

My argument is that, "We got tanking talents in our talent tree. Wtf is that about?"

Playing Enhancement is pretty boring. The only fun part of it is trying to see how high your windfury hits for. Besides dropping totems, enhancement shaman do 3 things while dpsing: Stormstrike, Earth Shock, Auto attack. We need something else...even if it does not add anymore damage. I am tired of constantly spamming the same attacks over and over and over again.

Also: Threat is a problem. There is mp5 on our gear. Why is that there?

Those are my concerns. Right now i normally do close to the top dps. I am actually doing more dps now than i was doing pre patch. (dont ask me how.).

 

Spades

How is this different from DPSing as any class? Rogues spam SS/Backstab, refresh S&D and use rupture or eviscerate. Warriors spam a few abilities depending on spec and occasionally do a rage-dump. Hunters spam Steady Shot. Mages use scorch/fireball or frostbolt. Shadow priests use SW:P, Mind Flay, etc.

"Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long."
-Rorschach, Watchmen

 

Tempestra

The problem is that you're mixing some fact with some opinion, and then presenting it as fact.

I don't think any smart raid leader would scoff and not bring an enhancement shaman over a 3rd rogue or DPS warrior.

I also don't think any smart raid would not bring an elemental shaman over a 3rd mage or 4th warlock.

I can't give proper credit, although it was probably Gurg, but someone said that hybrids, by definition, will not perform a single raid role (be it tanking, dps'ing, or healing). However, they bring more than enough extras to the table to warrant inclusion in a raid (as mentioned above - ankh, rez spells, totems and heroism...). The way it's set up now is actually quite nice. I don't think there's much need for discussion past minor tweaks (for ex, maybe a small threat dump tied to their shock cooldown, or more innate threat redux) for enhancement shaman, and most hybrids in general.

 

Myul

The answer to this is pretty simple:

WoW is not just about you, BT/HYAL/TE/SSC and your raid.

It's about 8 billion of player's, all with different goals and playing styles.

Every class you will ask will tell you about at least 50% of their talents points are a waste or to weak, but whom you are talking to then? Some Elitist Jerks or a casual? Is it now forbidden to do ANYTHING you want with a hybrid class? Tanking, meleeing, casting or healing. You pick your gear and your talent points what suiting the best to it.
There were a lot of people including me playing with their shaman as a tank pre tbc, before the beginning of the raiding days. And why we shouldn't. Blizzard gave us huge armor and a shield, at least one ability to hold aggro against green/blue geared frostmages in stratholme some years back. And if someone still want to do this, why not?

Just recheck the talents tree, playing with 0/42/19 or 0/47/14 for raiding , you are not wasting many talents in useless talents. Some could be stronger, especially in comparission to some talents from other classes - but they aren't worse. Anticipation is not that bad for raiding (cleave, whirlwind, offtanking caster) and a nice filler. But you can pick the talent guardian totems instead, saving you 2s of cooldown every time.

Why some shamans may need mp5 on their gear? Well, do you have to pick shamanistic rage? Isn't it ok, to use a pvp specc with 0/37/24 or something. Or picking up elemental fury, because they like to. This game should not suit perfectly for raidng orientated players only, they try to give you the possibility to do what you want.

Compare an enhancement shaman to other dps (melee) classes like for example a rogue:

1 Minute static fight, no spells to catch with grounding, no repositioning

[Shaman]
- dropping 4 totems
- using stormstrike 5 times
- using shocks 9 times
- switch between GoA & WF 5 times
- using trinket(s) and shamanistic rage
- using bloodlust/heroism
3x actions

[Rogue - a]
- spamming sinister strike ~ 15 times
- using finisher 3 times
- using adrenaline rush, trinket(s) and bladefurry
2x actions

[Rogue - b]
- spamming backstab ~ 11 times
- using finisher 2 times
- using adrenaline rush, trinket(s) and bladefurry
< 20 actions

regardless button smashing, waiting for cooldowns

It's not much about any dd class, ranged have their more complex, but straight cycles, melees have to react to some more boss abilites then them.

 

• Khlysti

Offhand Itemisation is pretty good once get to tempest keep and beyond, but is indeed sorely lacking in earlier zones where anything with a slow speed is tagged 'main hand'. If you look earlier in this forum there is a thread I made going over the theorycraft to show how completely awful mp5 is for enhance shamans in a raid (it requires 0 JoW uptime to even do anything, its that bad). Int really is not that much better though, as once you get a mana pool big enough to hold what shamanistic rage returns when raid buffed you don't really need more (yet each level of gear has slightly more int than the last, yes we need X int to function, but we don't need to be over X ever)

Threat can be an issue, but since getting the Vashj trinket ( http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30621 ) I haven't found a fight where I can't go pretty much all out (and in most places I don't need to use that trinket).

As to the boring side of things, meh, we have as much to do as most dps classes do, without the need for extremely precise button timings that some have. And I personally don't want to be in the tanking warrior position where you press multiple buttons per second (my warrior would be my main if I liked doing that all raid).

That said, the talents and gear issues are real, and are fairly major.

Talents:

We lack a 'good' choice on quite a few of the first rows, then near the bottom of the tree we suddenly have more 'must have' talents per row than we 'need' to spend to keep going, dw spec being changed to 3 points from 5 helped that a bit at the bottom end, but the top end uselessness is still painfully obvious. As a simple example, Improved Lightning Shield could just be changed to Improved Shields (affecting ES, WS and LS) and it may be of some use, shield spec/toughness/anticipation need removing or major reworking as they are holdovers from when rockbiter + earthshock made shaman tanking viable. But even then they weren't particularly good, instance tanking could be done without them and most arguements to use them boiled down to the other options being equally bad rather than those choices being good.

Our dps is far to proc reliant and can be horribly bursty. The easiest way to fix this would be to reduce the power of windfury (which would also help the retarded 'slow green better than fast epic for offhand' situation) and add another controlled attack for enhancement. Preferably a main hand swing with some form of extra damage (ala MS without the debuff) or a 'mini' wf type on next swing ability where you get an extra attack with +x damage on next swing. The cooldown for this ability could easily be set such that the expected damage done over any period is the same as before, and we suddenly have far more control over our own damage.

Gear:

As I have said before, mp5 is awful for enhancement shaman, I can accept that if we have to share non set drops with hunters than there may be some mp5 we can't avoid (and really, with any raid having 1 enhance shaman tops we can't expect much non set gear genuinely meant only for us). However having our tier gear (Hi there tier 6) coated in mp5 is extremely silly.

Enhancement is a good tree (overall), having one in a raid is a worthwhile boost, playing one is fun. But having blizzard (seemingly) have no concept of how to itemise for it, or how to make our weapon enchants function in a sane way (anything that makes speed more important that dps on a weapon is stupid, as is 3 of our 4 enchants being hugely less useful than the 4th) is rather annoying.

 

slant

We have a ton of bad talents, but that applies to many classes. Main problem with the enhancement tree is that it completely lacks useful synergy with elemental/resto. I filled out one of those armchair designer talent generators awhile ago to show how that synergy might work, address threat generation, make 2Handers viable, etc.

http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=18579

Myul's comparison of shaman melee gameplay to rogues' is laughable. I could see comparing shamans to paladins or maybe even dps warriors, but certainly not rogues, druids, or hunters.

 

Ralgarog

You answered your own question.

 

Myul

Sorry, Offhand Itemisation is quite fine:

Gladiator's Cleaver 2.6
Gladiator's Pummeler 2.6
Runic Hammer 2.4
Fel Edged Battleaxe 2.2
Malchazeen 1.8
Gladiator's Shanker 1.8
Emerald Ripper 1.8
Vileblade of the Betrayer 1.8
Riftmaker 1.8
Warbringer 1.8
The Night Blade 1.8
Blade of the Unrequited 1.6
Gladiator's Left Ripper 1.5
Gladiator's Hacker 1.5
Gladiator's Bonecracker 1.5
Gladiator's Shiv 1.4
Dirge 1.4

All quite easy to obtain and all 80 dps and more, some with more, some with less interesting stats. But do you want to tell me, there is no weapon on this list, regarding speed and stats, that might suits to you?

A too slow offhand may reduce your flurry uptime, and it's not that hard to obtain even the 2625 arena points for the "mainhand", playing your 10 games a week at 16xx rating (can be higher with warrior/warrior/pala/2nd full healer/enhancer teams), yielding 600 points for one hour or two of work. (6 weeks = 1554 rating, 5 weeks = 1626 rating, 4 weeks = 1725 rating, 3 weeks = 1885 rating).

Khlysti
I'm really wondering, why lady vashj trinket is such a big deal for you. Just think about it, how many crits you may do per minute. Multiply this with 54 (thats the reducing aggro amount listed on thott) and think about the result. Maybe 1200 aggro per minute with bloodlust/heroism on? What's your regular tps without it?

slant
Could you go in detail? At least it's all about button smashing, not more, not less. Pressing 3, 4 or 10 hotkeys may increase the difficulty, but please be seriously - there not mure about it after all.

 

slant

Umm, 13 out of the 17 offhands you listed are faster than 2.0s and thus entirely unsuitable for enhancement shamans. No offense meant, but do you play a shaman?

 

Myul

Remaining 4, 2 of them are easily farmable in 10 hours (gold or materials), without a group or somebody's help.

 

slant

Have you played a rogue? Once you figure out what abilities are appropriate for a given encounter, of course you end up pressing buttons. But those abilities aren't always identical. Rogues have many choices available to them beyond just opener,SnD,SS*5,evis,SS*5,SnD,repeat. They have controllable burst via adrenaline rush and blade flurry, can attack two mobs at once at full damage, stuns, DoTs, incapacitates, interrupts, expose armor, snares, cast time debuffs, and so on. If they have aggro issues, they can feint, evade, gouge, kidney shot, blind, sprint, or vanish. Not only do they have all of those interesting useful abilities, but they have the energy mechanic actively pushing them to use them as quickly and adroitely as possible. Not to imply that rogues are a better class or more useful to the group/raid or even that they have more overall options, because that would be silly flamebait. But they are incredibly fun to play in melee combat.

As for your list, well, there's only four weapons on it now. That's bad itemization. Nobody said that good offhands didn't exist, just that there aren't very many of them.

 

• Disquette

Look at the "ok or good" choices in this list:

look at the "good" choices in this list:
Without trying to QQ, It's interesting to compare the number of "good" choices to the "good" choices that a rogue or dps warrior has. Arena, anyone?

 

Malan

I started to skim your post until I saw this, and then I really stopped caring what you had to say. Yah we have itemization problems and talent issues, but tell me a class that doesn't feel the same way. This thread is pretty silly and is boils down to "If I was a dev for a day, here's what I'd do"

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Myul

I played one through MC, BWL and AQ40, so i guess i know about the class.

In how many bossfights you can use stuns, expose armor, and so on? Vanish? Ok. Feint? On aggro sensitve fights like leotheras while you forgot pushing escape at the right time - but more?

But you are right, a rogue can add a huge amount to 5 mans and trash or karazhan, but isn't our main interest the handling of boss encounters in ssc and beyond?

And you shouldn't forget about all the options, a shaman can bring into your raid - instantly removing poison and desease of all of your group of one other raidmember, interrupt, aoe snare, substainable kiting ability, some aoe damage and the freaking groupbuffs. Waterwalk, Underwaterbreathing not to count in, regardless my raid loved the first ability skipping lurker trash and some camps before tidewalker

Please be honest, there's not much a damage dealer can add beside cc/control for trash and have to do in a raid while smashing bossmobs.

Disquette
Please remember in the days before tbc and the misitemisation of a complete class -hunter-, i imagine a little hole in the itemisation for a hybrid class specc may hurt a few people, but after comparing yielding gleaver and hacker in offhand on blasted land servants and in kara/gruul/mag, the difference is not that big i would really cry about it.
But i have to agree, the number of good swords is quite high in comparison.

 

• Khlysti

The trinket works out around -30tps for me, which although not huge allows for more dps in threat limited places (and is way way better than any -threat alternative available in TBC (lets go farm aq40 please)). As I said I don't use it on most fights, but for those I do use it it helps keep me alive / do more dps.

For offhands, ignoring arena rewards (which gives 2 decent offhands) just looking at pve drops there are:
Syphon of the Nathrezim
Rod of the Sun King (proc makes it better for a warrior or rogue)
Rising Tide
Netherbane

Thats a nice selection if you can kill Kael, Al'ar, Naj'entus and Supremus, and no pve drop usable enhancement shaman offhand at all if you can't.

Far too much has been posted in this thread already thats plain crap. Shaman are fun, enhance is not viable with SR (you would need more mp5 than a healer, meaning awful AP/crit/hit and dire damage) so mp5 is useless to us. Offhand itemisation is dire before TK, but actually fairly good once you get there (and past it). There are some genuine issues here, but please, keep to things that are true, or if you plain don't know (like that offhand weapon list) then read the other enhance threads which explain what itemisation is good for enhance and why.

 

Macar

Well I did not have time to read your entire post (too much text :P).

But personally (having played Shaman on and off since April 2005), I think the Shaman class has never been better and better thought through than it is today. Of course it is not perfect, but hey no class is.

I much prefer the way it is today, that you have to decide what you want to be good at, and then spec accordingly, then being bad at nothing and good at nothing as it used to be.

http://www.siglaunch.com/sigs/wow/1/...11159sMIJL.png

 

Lace

Can someone give me the Coles' notes version of why Enhancement Shamans need an off-hand that's slower than 2.0? I'm not questioning that fact, I just want to understand why (as a rogue). Is it related to some kind of Windfury CD?

 

Morgan

There is a 3 second hidden cooldown on Windfury procs which means that as a general rule Windfury is better on slower weapons (rather than the old, non-cooldown Windfury which was all about weapon DPS and independent of speed).

Since the cooldown is shared across both hands (MH procs prevent OH procs for 3s and vica versa) and you get the off hand penalty on OH procs, you want as slow an OH weapon as possible to increase the number of MH procs you get.

 

Zurgat

Yes, and we rogues are affected by it as well.
WF has a 3 sec internal cooldown (aparently), meaning you hit something at 0 sec, and you hit again 2 sec later. You're guaranteed not to have another WF proc, the next hit at 4 sec, will have that chance though.
From my point of view, i'd have said you need a weapon slower than 1.5 or 1.6

But, looking at Morgan's post,, i figured the CD wasn't shared... so yeah 2 equally slow weapons (2.6 or 2.7) would be preferable in that case. The Gladiator's axes at 91 dps would work very well.

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