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.

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.

I've got to say that running around and inspecting random Alliance shamans all the time is pretty depressing. Enhancement with a mix of healing, melee and +damage gear. Consistently. There are a TON of shamans who have no clue how to gear the class.

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.

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.

This is a combat log error. Windfury procs are not determined client-size, they are determined server side so by the time the WF swing reaches the client, it can appear after another swing on the opposite hand. This is more pronounced when using a two-handed weapon. I have no idea *why* it is like this, but when I run with high latency and a 3.6 two hander it's pretty obvious this is the case.

That's pretty much the reason though: your main hand swing count stays the same in both cases, so you're cutting your main hand WF proc rate (and thus overall DPS) going to a faster offhand. It's entirely possible that (and was true in my case) that a 2.6 offhand lvl 70 green was better than an Emerald Ripper offhand, and it is almost certainly going to prove to be the case that when comparing a slower weapon with equal stats to a faster weapon the slower weapon will allow more overall DPS.

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).