I've read a few of the posts presented here about Enhancement and it's downfalls when it comes to itemization. However I pose a question to you all that I didn't see answered, which I would greatly appreciate imput on. If the question has been answered and I have overlooked it I would appreciate a link to guide me.

Anyhow, my question. As we all know 2.1 really fubar'd Shaman in terms of itemization; several of us Enhancement Shaman who were using pretty bad-assed daggers before 2.1 hit suddenly found our DPS crippled. Unfortunately I am one such shaman.

My current set-up is Malchazeen/ Emerald Ripper with Windfury 5 and Flametongue; however I had a friend do some math as to how to maximize my sustained DPS, and we assumed I had Decapitator. We found, frighteningly a 71.7 DPS offhand with a 2.6 speed with WF5 and Decapitator with wf5 will outdps a 91.9 (Malchazeen) DPS fast weapon with FT, and Decapitator with WF5; all old info I'm relatively sure.

Anyhow to the point, I don't have Decapitator because Prince hasn't dropped it =\ I can't even get a Fool's Bane or BBW's paw to drop.. So my quetsion to the Theorycrafters is this: Would a 71.7/71.7 pairing both at a 2.60 speed outperform my 91.9 and 87.5 1.80 Speed pairing assuming WF5 on malchazeen and FT on Emerald Ripper?

If actual items are needed for the mathematics, let's assume http://www.thottbot.com/i27872 and http://www.thottbot.com/i27747.

An answer regarding itemization awaits you here [Shaman] Itemizing Enhancement at 70

Yep.

As mentioned already, reference the 40 page thread on itemization. Although the answers you seek could probably be found on the wow class forums.

That is extremely disheartening. But thank you both for the quick responses.

If you read my FAQ, yes. Posting a question, not so much. The general public still has absolutely no clue and will happily give outright wrong advice. They regularly recommend rockbiter offhand. It's pretty disheartening, actually.

I just went for my first kara run on friday (yay one shot all bosses), and I decided to let a warlock take the emerald ripper and I kept my green 56 dps 2.6 speed offhand.

Now, in my case, that's probably a bad decision, but not by very much. The increase in dps would be slight, because of the buggy weapon-speed influences, and I didn't want to be seen as a lootwhore.

It's sad that a weapon 30dps higher would produce only a marginally better overall dps increase for me.

Even more depressing was that my blue leather chest is better for overall dps than the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28599 (breastplate of carnage), which I ended up taking and using since no one else wanted it. I didn't want to seem ungrateful to my guild, and bypassing nightbane loot seemed like a bad idea. At least now I have some enhance gear with +mp5 and int... /sigh.

Its no different for horde. On my server, Except for the Hellfish Guys, it seems like all the other enhance shamans are still offhanding malchazeen or fast gladiator weapons. Even the ones farming mag and doing SSC.

Itemization past kara is pretty disheartening except for the tier sets, i have yet to see a decent belt or bracers and even the best boots arent that great. Thankfully there are a couple of decent offhands. Its annoying having 16-20 mp5 when you know its not doing anything for you but its the best there is.

Indeed, I stopped looking for answers there when I asked a question on my rogue about a DPS Net loss from switching to sword sec from Fist. I was just disgusted with the sheer amount of 'ur a bad player imo, u jest got lucky 2 be in nax'.

I got the Reflex Blades today, and went with Those and Bogspine. The Damage difference is really upsetting when compared to the fast weapons. It's almost 300 sustained DPS higher over a five minute fight =\

If you're using a dagger mainhand, look into replacing it ASAP. For the OP, I'd recommend getting a Runic Hammer crafted or holding out for a Decapitator off Prince.



I'd still call the offhand weapon-speed question open for debate, however. I haven't seen any reliable evidence for slow blue offhands being better than purple daggers.

If you read through the "The Change to Windfury and You" thread ( The Change to Windfury and You! (does not apply to warriors) ), you'll find a lot of discussion about midway through the thread about how Windfury isn't working exactly as expected. Mainhand procs can proc offhand windfury. Offhand procs can proc mainhand windfury. That discussion gets abandoned pretty quickly, because, well, we don't know what causes that so nobody has anything further to say about it. Which is unfortunate, because the logic behind slow offhands being substantially better hinges on the idea that offhand procs always proc offhand windfury, which is demonstrably not true.

The thread then moves on to slower weapons being better, based on:

(1) Disquette's scripted model, which, while pretty awesome, assumes that a proc off one hand always triggers damage from that same hand. It also, by Disquette's own admission, under-reports white damage.

(2) Some really horrid live testing done using lv10 gray vendor items, without enough test time to gather any statistically significant data. This test was posted on the official WoW forums, and I suspect it was as much a grab for the CMs' attention as anything else.


I'm not aware of any reliable live test which shows slow weapons being so much better than fast weapons that downgrading a Malchazeen or Emerald Ripper to a High Warlord's Cleaver or Boggspine Knuckles would increase your DPS.

Furthermore, when I tested it, the typical explanation for slow offhand > fast offhand (offhand WF procs will "lock out" mainhand procs and reduce your MH proc rate) didn't hold up. I logged the number of mainhand vs offhand procs using Black Planar Edge (slow mainhand) and Malchazeen (fast offhand) and didn't see any fewer mainhand procs than expected. My ratio of white mainhand swings : white offhand swings is 2:3. My ratio of mainhand to offhand windfury procs was the same. (Test results are on page 11, down at the bottom.)


My personal opinion on enh weapon itemization: get a slow mainhand, for sure. For your offhand, if you have a choice between two weapons with similar DPS, take the slower one. However, if you get access to a fast offhand that's a tier above your current offhand, go ahead and take it.

Our only guild enh shaman is currently working on the gladiator axe offhand to go with his new Planar Edge, for just this reason -- he's currently OHing Malch, for lack of a better option. He has a Fool's Bane and Decap, but they're both MH only, and there aren't really any good options for OHing.

Offhand itemization is just terrible. I don't see any better options than Gladiator weapons, with a couple exceptions like the axe off Al'ar (that your Protection Warriors will want as a toy).

The ideal case for Windfury is your main hand proccing every 3 seconds. This, however, is just that...the ideal case. It does not happen this way. This is why we even run Windfury on the off-hand, because an OH-windfury proc, causing a 3sec MH lockout still nets more damage than running an OH with FT or something. There is simply not another viable, scaleable off-hand weapon enchant.

Slow/Slow is important because Windfury has a non-modified, 3-sec cooldown. It makes no sense, therefore, to use a fast weapon to try to give it as many chances to proc as it can, because the damage of two slow-weapon hits every ~3 sec nets more damage than the fast hits.

While testing is showing that fast off-hand does not steal WF procs from main hand, the mechanics of our damaging abilities still favor slow weapons. Stormstrike, for example. Since SS is an instant hit with both weapons, every 10 sec, the best way to get the most damage from a SS hit is slow/slow. The same is true for Windfury.

It is my plan to use the following to keep my damage increasing:
+12 agi 3% crit damage meta gem
* This, I feel, is the gem of choice for the Enh. Shaman. I know (I think Disquette) did testing regarding DPS of +24ap vs 3% crit, and found the crit to win out pretty desively. I did testing with the haste meta, and I personally feel that the 45s hidden cooldown on the proc, combined with the short duration of the buff (5s was it?) makes it a bad choice.
* The next thing about this gem is that it provides a unique ability. There is no other piece of gear that I can use to gain 3% more crit damage. Since we are always critting, and Windfury crits are usually large (>1k, so we are gaining >30 damage per WF crit) I feel this gem is the best.

Haste
* I posted this somewhere else, but it is my current theory that non-cd haste procs and passive haste will be very, very good for Enh shaman. The reason is that haste effects increase our white damage (which is the majority of our damage), and work to minimize the amount of combat time spent waiting for windfury to proc.
* This will be somewhat difficult to measure, and here is how I think the data will end up looking:
--Haste will proportionally increase white damage, more haste will keep netting more white damage
--Haste will, until a certain point is reached, have neglegable impact on windfury damage.
--Once a certain amount of haste is reached, I think it will start netting higher damage due to the haste helping us proc windfury faster.
--This will help proc WF on both MH and OH, and while we _ideally_ don't want OH taking too many MH procs, having any windfury proc is way better than having no WF proc for N seconds.

Based on these two, I am planning on getting my off-hand squid mongoosed, because the only thing cooler than wielding an alien life form and "Thor's Oven Mitt" is "Thor's Oven Mitt" and a Lightning-Squid.

Ideally, your MH and OH will be identical. Consider the other dual-wielding melee classes: in both cases, their offhand attacks have a specific purpose. For Rogues, their offhand attacks proc Combat Potency. Additionally, their dual-wield talent boosts the damage of their offhand white attacks by 50%. For Fury Warriors, their offhands do 25% more damage and contribute Rage. For Enhancement Shamans, the sole purpose of the offhand aside from white damage is to proc Windfury.

Now, 2.1 introduced two problems to Enhance Shamans. The first, Windfury is on an overall 3 second cooldown. This means that it is important that Windfury's damage is as high as possible, thus necessitating slow weapons. This gives rise to the second problem, which is a faster/lower DPS offhand "stealing" Windfury procs from the mainhand. You cannot get around the first problem, but you CAN get around the second. Try and make sure that your two weapons are as close in speed and DPS as you can possibly make them. If you have to make a choice, choose speed similarity over DPS similarity. You need to get away from the conventional melee DPS mindset of MH > OH. They are equally important in every way except for white damage, where obviously a higher DPS mainhand will pay more dividends than a higher DPS offhand.

EDIT: First paragraph deleted, because I'm not sure what I was seeing now, given that I'd changed some mods that show windfury differently that the default UI. Second paragraph left in so the discussion makes some manner of sense.

Also, Nite_Moogle, I think you're misinterpreting my test data. if 40% of my white swings are mainhand, and 40% of my WF procs are mainhand, that means I'm not seeing any problems with lockout from my offhand. I'm getting the same number of mainhand procs I'd expect to see if I didn't have an offhand equipped at all. (That or my test is off, which it might very well be - one hour of testing in the Blasted Lands isn't ideal, especially with an ability as random as WF, but I just don't have the hours upon hours it would take to test more thoroughly.)

I've stayed away from this topic so far simply because I don't understand exactly what you're saying. Can you post a combat log of this (including the 50 rows before and after it happening?

Forgive the ignorant. When dropping WF totem, you can keep WF5 on your OH and it does not share a 3 second cooldown with the totem correct?

So this would be the best route to go in a raid situation?

WF totem does not gain the benefit of your elemental weapons spec, it doesn't get totem of astral winds benefit, it's a white hit instead of a yellow hit, and it's only 1 hit instead of 2. You are better off with WF5.

Alrighty good to know.

Like yall have said, alot of Alliance Shamans run around with no idea what to do and as much as I point them here, well, sadly few make the effort.

I just banked my Blackout truncheon in favour of a green 2.6 from the AH. It's lower dps, but I'm finding that it just does more damage. I'm getting more constant WF procs, more bursty damage, and it's working out fairly well. It does suck that slow greens are better for enhancement than fast purples, but short of taking the devs to siege in a hostage crisis, I don't see an easy out.

WoW is a game that rewards people who are willing to invest time. This extends to outside of the game, the people who are willing to do the numbers and figure out the best way to gear their character will see better results than someone who just chucks the highest dps weapons on that they can find.

Haste is awesome, mainly because (Please correct me if I'm incorrect here) shamans don't have normalization mechanics on their attacks. Of course, modeling nested haste procs would be both difficult and mathematically baffling, not something my brain is capable of even starting on.

Think of the infamous 4xmainhand quad proc from before 2.1, but two hits instead of four.

I should be able to get a screenshot of it with a timestamped combat log in the next couple days.