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[Enhancement] BiS gear and set-up discussion (4.3 and onward)
The purpose of this post is to provide the current best-in-slot gearing setup for an Enhancement Shaman. It will be be kept as up to date as possible.
This is not intended to discuss or debate which race or professions are the best for an Enhancement Shaman, and only to discuss our basic best in slot setup including glyphs. For other Enhancement related discussion, refer to this thread: http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t127416-...good_transmog/ This list obviously isn't final. Please keep in mind that while I believe this setup to be the best currently available in game, I am human and have not tested every possible setup. If I have made mistakes, spelling errors, or there's an error in a config file, or you have any other questions or comments, send me a PM rather than cluttering up the thread. If you believe you have a gear, enchant, gem, reforge, imbue or glyph or talent setup that is superior, you'll need to simulate your setup and provide data supporting your claim, keeping a few things consistent with what is outlined here. For the sake of consistency, most parameters required will be similar to those outlined in the 3.3 BiS discussion thread by Vespasian and Rava. Race: Must be Tauren. Other races provide a dps increase. Professions: Must be Alchemy and Enchanting. They do not interfere with normal enchants and provide +80 agility each. Mana: Simulating mana is not necessary, we are not limited by it. It's fine if you do, the results should be identical either way. Do not use Shamanistic Rage as soon as available. Simulation Time: 5000 hours Combat Length: 7 minutes Combat Variation: 35% Reaction Time: 230-260. Talents: This is the talent setup currently being used. Please note that Shamanistic Rage will be considered a required talent point. PLEASE INCLUDE CONFIG FILE AND DPS REPORT WITH YOUR POST, as well as any and all changes you made from those found under the item list. Agility main hand: With 4.3, spell power weapons are dead. We are not likely to see them compete again in the future. I don't have a config/dps report to give yet, but wanted to update for 4.3 as quickly as possible, so until I'm able to provide them, if you have any setups you believe to be better, please PM me instead of cluttering up this thread unless you can provide significant data supporting it. There is a lot of potential for different setups to have very similar output this tier, as several of the highest agility items also have very weak secondary stat combinations, namely Sporebeard Gauntlets, Belt of the Beloved Companion, Treads of Dormant Dreams and Signet of Grasping Mouths. Spiritwalker's Grips, or VP gear in the other 3 cases may be very competitive. It's also entirely possible that some setups will go as high as 60 points over the spell hit cap. Hit beyond the cap is often better than Haste Rating. Chardev profile: chardev 9
Stat values (DPS) These are the stat values used with the below Config file. Yours will be different. Sim it yourself for your own character for best results.
DPS Report and config file:  ← Click Here |
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Also exchanging the Feral Spirit Glyph with the Flametongue Glyph increases the DPS by around 200 with the current version 2.3.0 of the sim. |
Thanks for your work Ashunera. However where you speak about trinkets its a bit vague. By "proper" weapons you mean Agility ones? And second, you say Essence of the Cyclone is the second best trinket, does that include Fluid Death also?
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You're right, by "proper" weapon I mean an Agility weapon. Essence of the Cyclone would be second best for second slot, or third best overall, though I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to rank trinkets, and just didn't find any setups where Essence or Prestor's came out above either of the top two.
From my testing, trinkets ranked something like this (possibility of human error and will not be accurate for all setups of course): [Fluid Death] [Darkmoon Card: Hurricane] [Essence of the Cyclone] [Prestor's Talisman of Machination] [Tia's Grace] [Essence of the Cyclone] [Prestor's Talisman of Machination] [Unheeded Warning] comes out below pretty much every item level 346 Agility trinket. I didn't bother playing around with [Unsolvable Riddle], but I don't see it competing. |
According to the in-game links, all the caster weapons you linked have been 'nerfed', as in have less than 100 dps.
A few options would be to use the Twilight Highlands caster mace, [Gurgthock's Garish Gorebat], which has ~333dps ingame, or the [Vicious Gladiator's Gavel], whose stats are about the same ingame. |
I'm looking in the the gearset's at this moment and i was wandering, what is the best routine to make an optimal gear set? Is it first select gear, then select enchant, then gems and then reforge or is there another optimal order? Or is there any order at all?
Second question is it also possible to list BiS set for non-heroic if possible. Since not everyone is able to run them. If i know the most optimal gear selection i will try the contribute to the non-heroic BiS set if needed. Edit: Some Grammar |
Ashunera, I'm not sure why, but the primary stats in your config are incorrect, which is throwing off other stats as well. STR should be 148 (it's 145), AGI should be 4544 (4699), INT 320 (309), SPI is correct. Here is the CharDev profile for your setup (with 2 points in Imp. Shields instead of Imp. Fire Nova, as these are a dps increase and are completely up-in-the-air points).
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Ashunera I understand that you are listing the BiS but I only have one issue:
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This thread should not be seen as a shopping list. Look at that gear list. Most people reading this thread won't be able to get any of it, much less one of the best caster weapons in the game. This is literally the best possible gear available to an enhancement shaman in this tier of raiding. If you could get it all right away, raiding wouldn't have the same meaning.
Instead, think of this thread as a fun exercise, the ultimate level in the meta game of planning out potential upgrades. With that in mind, things like "the best gear available for people who will never do any heroic fights, not even the easiest ones," or "the best weapon available, other than caster weapons, because Blizzard might make them not as valuable" don't fit the spirit of "best." So what's the point of all this anyway, then? Playing around with gear sets and priority orders can help us better understand how our class mechanics work, and how the tools we have work. We can even improve the accuracy of the tools based on discussions about what's truly the best setup. As we improve our understanding of the class and mastery of the tools, we can then better plan out what gear will actually be upgrades for us, in the raid content we will actually see. And we can then better determine what gems, reforging, glyphs, and priority will provide the most potential dps for us, with the gear we actually have. And, as I mentioned earlier, this whole exercise is meant to be fun. |
Thank you for getting something like this going again; I had considered doing so myself having recently returned to the class. It is disappointing that the thread began at time when FT is being re-designed- it will create a lot of confused Shaman. I would probably make the disclaimer relating to the upcoming nerf a touch clearer, lest the sort of posting above continues to ensue.
I think your decision relating to talents is off the mark. Certain talents and enchants (think runspeed) provide varying levels of utility, and it’s up to the player to make a judgment about what utility is most valuable at different times and in different circumstances. From my old post: Quote:
Also, the priority queue looks rather static as you have written it. I would suggest a table format (as with the other dynamic variables) to encourage people to tweak this queue. Similar with the talent spec listing. Finally, I think there is value in a post explaining methodology so that the lay-man can at least know the tools that are being used and can try it for themselves (I for one do not know how you managed to export your re-forged Chardev page to enhsim- if it is a manual process human error can creep in, making your cross-checking of people’s submissions take a lot longer). Perhaps a mod could squeeze in another post under your OP allowing you to do this As you can tell, much of this is personal preference so feel free to discard as much or as little as you like. Best of luck with the thread- I look forward to following the discussion. |
A slow caster weapon is preferred, but the weapon speed doesn't mean quite as much as the weapon's spell power. The vast majority are 1.8 speed and very few 359+ have weapon DPS over the 72.4 mark.
For those curious, dual [Crul'korak, the Lightning's Arc] is the best main and off-hand if you refuse to use a spell power weapon. It's hard to tell when exactly a caster weapon pulls ahead by a noticeable amount, but once you get to a point where you're looking for Mastery gear instead of Hit gear (or roughly around full 346 blues), a caster weapon starts to pull ahead by a few hundred dps. The only way to know for sure which setup is best for you with any given gear setup is to sim it. Keep in mind a target dummy will not provide you with accurate results - raid buffs significantly increase our spell damage output, while we bring the vast majority of melee buffs on our own. The disparity between Caster and Agility weapons only increases as you acquire more gear as well, and in full heroic quality gear, the switch to Crul'korak from Andoros (and the resulting switch to Windfury due to matched weapon speeds) will net you a 1000 DPS loss at least. 4.0.6 Shaman patch notes (not complete, and official forums are down as of this post) have a "fix" to Flametongue Weapon damage that will reduce this disparity, but I suspect it will not be enough to put Agility weapons ahead. Quote:
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Encounters, off the top of my head (that I have experience with, I'm sure there are more in heroic), that contain very high, and very concentrated raid damage (or single target damage), and therefore encounters that using SR will likely prevent you from dying: Heroic Omnitron Defense System - on Aquiring Target, (shadow infused) Lightning Conductor Heroic Halfus - Mitigate raid damage on the pull, and Furious Roar Nefarian - Massive raid damage every 10% of Nefarian's health, I forget what it's called Conclave of the Winds - Nezir's Sleet Storm Heroic Maloriak - Red phase fire breath, and dark phase for mitigating puddle damage Chimeron - Fued Just about every other raid encounter has a point where using SR situationally is encouraged, however these have absolute cut and dry points where using it is almost required, and if it's not up, some other cooldown is going to be needed (stoneclaw, bubble, raid wall, tranq etc). I realize that this is a theoretical exercise in maximizing damage, but this isn't the type of thing that should be suggested under any circumstances. |
Ashunera I have a couple questions about your config file vs your chardev page.
Your config file has: Str: 145 Agi: 4699 Int: 309 Melee Crit: 28.63 Attack Power: 10587 Spell Power: 8856 Spell Crit: 10.31 Spell Hit: 17.02 While your CharDev with your gear on it has: Str: 156 Agi: 4525 Int: 320 Melee Crit: 24.49 Attack Power: 10489 Spell Power: 7761 Spell Crit: 10.33 Spell Hit: 17.86 Those are the numbers I found off from your gear list and your config. Was curious as to where you got the 174 Agility, 4.14% Melee Crit, 98 more attack power, and 1,095 more spell power while missing out on 11 Int, 0.03% Spell Crit(from the 11 Int), and 11 Str. Is there some modification going on from your CharDev to EnhSim? When I input the corrected stats from CharDev to Enhsim I'm getting: DPS Output Code:
EnhSim version 2.3.0Config: Code:
### Saved by v2.3.0 of EnhSimGUI |
Edit - DPS report and config files have been updated, should be much more accurate for the listed set of gear. I had made a few errors as you pointed out.
Copying everything over manually from Chardev to EnhSim is a time consuming process, so config files of superior setups will save a lot of time in getting this list updated. As Cochice said, however, Shamanistic Rage will be viewed as a required talent point and will not be changed. The rest of the talent setup I will be much more flexible about. |
We are now in new territory; a defensive cool down is a requirement for a max DPS thread but Ancestral Spirit (one of the largest DPS gain talents available to us under certain conditions) is optional. This is exactly why I said we should focus only on the data objective (finding max DPS according to enhsim) and leave the utility to asterisk marks and discussions.
On SR, Coch, I think it’s a crap talent because there is no boss ability that is designed to one shot me unless I make a mistake, so I never NEED 30% reduction of dmg taken. If I did, everyone would need it and every spec would have an ability like this. They don’t. Further, since I am able to instantly heal myself more often than not, I would rather use a heal from time to time than suffer what I believe to be a badly designed talent point permanently. If you really want to get down to the math of it all, you would have to model the DPS gained on every encounter by ½ imp shields (or whatever) x the number of encounters over the life of your character, then measure that against the DPS done for every second after SR saves your life (and I mean exactly that- times where had you not used that talent, you would have certainly died). I have been using that talent since it was made available (in whatever variety) and I can tell you that is has not saved my life that many times. Sure it’s saved my healers some mana, but rarely has it saved my life since I generally do what I am supposed to do. My job is to do dmg. My healers and I (enh are perfectly capable of healing to acceptable levels during all the mechanics you have listed) have healed me through many of the mechanics you have listed and bosses have died as a result (surprisingly, I expect more to die in future). Further, SR’s value reduces to almost nothing the more your farm gear/become more experienced during encounters. TLDR; you don’t need SR. Neither does this thread. If people want to take it, let them. If they don’t, don’t call them stupid. |
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