Unfortunately, we're not all lucky enough to always have a shaman in our group.

The overall gain there would have liekly been higher with the dps warrior instead of teh druid in your group. The loss of crit would have been made up by the windfury difference, and the tank will benefit enough from the your buffs to let that heavy melee dps that much harder. Also double shouts are a nice side bonus.

The point, though, is that this is the Enhance Shaman: The Collected Works of Theorycraft, Vol I thread, not the rogue discussion thread. So for the purposes of these discussions, there's -always- an enhancement shaman in our raids/groups. Unless someone is bringing a huge number of rogues or something, I suppose!

Wait, I'm confused. I thought envenom was nature damage as well? Wouldn't the optimum use of stormstrike charges be to have the rogues all build up the deadly statck and then envenom it whenever someone happen to have 5 CP when there is a 5-stack built up? That way you get the bonus to deadly/scorpid ticks, as well as the big bonus to envenom.

Hey guys, posted back on the first of these topics ages ago.. my gear has gotten extremley better and my guild has already killed kael once and should get him again tonight, so in other words i'll be stepping into hyjal and bt over the next few weeks. Just want to ask some advice I guess on some of the stuff mentioned for weapon combo's in the initial post.

I am still not overally certain how our DPS is lowered once we hit less than 1.5 atk speed, I can certainly see it happening with a faster off hand but if the shaman is using identical attack speed weapons then surely getting more haste rating would only increase the damage we could possibly do? I don't see anything changing just because we get faster attack speeds.

At the moment I am wielding a Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper and a Netherbane, both are 2.6 attack speed. I plan to dual weild Syphon's of Nathrezim both being 2.8 atk speed, I would think these would be the IDEAL weapons for all shaman's to dual weild as they are not unique and would give us the largest possible damage from both stormstrike and windfury procs (being 265 top end damage).

Could anyone point out any holes in my questioning and please correct me where I am wrong I'm sorry I don't understand what was said in the initial post :P thanks for anyone who is willing to help

The main issue (from what I gather) in hasting your attacks faster than 1.50 attack speed, is that, once a main hand WF proc occurs, it will take another 2 main hand hits to have a chance to proc another (main hand) WF.

ie. In the case of a 1.50 hasted attack speed:

or, faster:

So, when it's hasted over 1.50, you're going to have more main hand attacks within the 3 second cooldown of windfury, after a proc, which will lower your dps. As in order to maximise the chance to proc windfury attacks, you want to minimise the number of attacks within the cooldown.

The haste bit is a confusing issue and I'm not sure how to word it so that it's not. It "lowers your dps" because you end up messing up the windfury cooldown cycle, but at the same time you're getting a lot more white dmg hits in that span of time, which would be an increase to your white dps. So... does it balance out? As it says on the OP, pretty much zero empirical evidence has been supplied so far to verify either way.

That's actually a change Blizzard made a long time ago (in like 1.10 or even earlier). DoTs don't consume debuffs with charges, if they did Destruction 'locks would run around murdering people for using up Imp Shadow Bolt Procs on dot ticks. But DoTs DO get the benefit of said Debuffs.

Should be pretty easy to test the 1.5/1.4 hypothesis. Drop all your haste gear and random proc items. Group with a druid, drop GoA and drink a major agility pot -- you'll want to bring your crit as high as possible, to keep flurry & UR up. Get a few pairs of weapons with different speeds, from 2.6s (flurried 1.82s) to 1.3 (flurried speed .93) and run a few minutes of JUST white and windfury with each, no stormstrikes or shocks.

We use low dps vendor weapons, adjusting AP to match differences in DPS via low level stat food and STR scrolls, trying to match the tooltip dps of each weapon as closely as is possible. We want only the attack speed to being tested.

According to the hypothesis, we should see a pretty stable dps as we go down from 2.6 until we hit 2.1 and 2.0 weapons (flurried 1.47 & 1.4 respectively), when they would be a sharp decrease in dps. Then DPS would again steadily increase (as the swing period gets closer and closer to meeting the 3s cooldown) and drop off sharply again once we hit 1.4s (.98s, where we're getting three swings in during the wf cooldown).

Comments? I know testing this by using a proc like flurry isn't ideal, but haste rating gear isn't super accessible even if your guild is in MH/BT, potions don't last very long and the cooldown on Bloodlust/Heroism would make it pretty annoying to get a meaningful dataset.

Once we have an idea of whether or not this is really an issue in the live game, we can continue on to test the effects of timing SS procs with the WFCD and super fast weapons.

If the flurried speed isn't between 1.4 and 1.5 its not testing the theory though. We need a huge string of data where the weapon is permanently between 1.4 and 1.5 in order to be relevant.

Well, my crit buffed flurry uptime is pretty high -- around 85%. But I suppose I could respect and drop flurry, and just wield some very slow daggers. Vendor daggers are available from 1.6 down to 1.3.

It'd cost 25g but would be worth it if it will end the discussion.

Sure, I'd be stuck with only a single decimal point's weapon speed precision, but if the effect exists it should be visible in this dataset.

Help me build up my methodology here and if it seems sound, I'll get started tonight.

awesome post, I've read through all of it but still there seems to be a kind of gray area regarding hit from gear.

I obviously have the enhance and resto hit talents- so does that mean I don't need to even worry about hit from gear? it seems to be thought of as less important compared to crit from what I can tell. basically, I'm just looking for a clarification or whether I should ALWAYS take crit over hit, keep a balance or if theres a certain rating I should shoot for to have at all times.

sorry if this was already covered, but I swear I just can't find a answer that is satisfying haha

The post that bit refers to is here - http://elitistjerks.com/461443-post1899.html
You still need hit rating, its just of a lower precedence. My priority when comparing 2 items is that if I get more AP/Crit, but lose some Hit, that's ok. If I get more Hit, but lose AP/Crit then I don't take that item.

o yes I saw that part- I read the post, just I guess I'm not understanding it as well as everyone else. basically, is my damage going to be better by always ignoring the hit and going for crit whenever possible? or should I keep a balance? a set amount of hit before chasing crit down? /confused

If you are unsure what gear to look for, use this chart:

Obviously these aren't the end all solution, but for those that are new to the concept, it works.

I looked for a while to see if I could find any pairs of weapons but the only thing that I have found are the Arcane Forged items sold by Raelis Dawnstar (mace and dagger). All of the rest are either MH only items or just unable to find DPS remotely close. Seeing as I am alliance and lazy I will leave this up to someone else to test!

took 30 edits to get the weapon combo right yeahh

Weapons between 1.4 and 1.51 :
Weapons - Items - World of Warcraft

The 1.4 weapons fall below the "theoretical" drop off point so the 1.5 weapon may be the only one that really works for this.

Do they? Is the fall off between 1.41 and 1.50 inclusive? No point in doing a test that doesn't evaluate the hypothesis...maybe a minimum of 1% permanent haste would be required, such as that offered by the 1% glove enchant?

That would bring our weapons to 1.49 and 1.39, respectively.

Either way I feel we'll need to throw in 1.6 and 1.3 weapons as controls.

Chance to miss level 73 mobs when dual wielding with full ranks of +hit% talents:
2.6% on yellow / single weapon attacks
15.6% on white dual wielded attacks

Amount of hit rating needed to reach 1% miss chance (that is the cap, right, not 0?):
26 for yellow / single weapon attacks
231 for white dual wielded attacks

Amount to shoot for:
Somewhere in between 26 and 231. There is no secret benefit to shooting for any particular value; for maximum everything, use the AEP of 1.4 and don't drop below 26 or go above 231.

Those of you who are elemental/enh, add 47 to both targets. Then realize you sacrificed the equivalent of 65 AP for some cheaper shocks or whatever.

Comments? Check my math?

I built a basic spreadsheet to help me see the AEP for items, but, how do you factor in procs? I.E. Dragonstrike = 212haste rating*1.48 = 313.76aep, right? The issue with that - it's not constant. If you use the search tool (NO WAY!) there are several references to Dragonstrike being 96AEP... how are people getting this? Dragonstrike has a rough 26.6% proc from a 33.3 minute testing (this factors in some where but not sure where).

Everything else is simple for getting AEP, straight constant numbers are simple but procs are where I'm getting confused. If anyone could help, that would be great. Please and thank you.

Unless your weapon speed + passive haste gear + flurry falls between that theoretical dps loss range, I wouldnt be worried.

Of course you can speed yourself up with temporary buffs to that range and even way beyond, fastest i have seen my 2.60 weapons hit was 0.78, (I´m troll with berserking), but its just temporary buffs and that gap is way too narrow to worry about with temporary buffs.

It's 96 aep average. I think it used to be assumed 30% uptime, if you look at 26.6% it's 313.76x.266=83.46 average aep.