Artrubian’s somewhat awesome guide to enhanced Shamanism

[Artrubian]

Artrubian's somewhat awesome guide to enhanced Shamanism.

Now by no means am I THE authority on this topic but I do like to keep up on the "In" things from time to time and I have been Enhanced my whole WOW shaman career. Topics for discussion are going to be as followed.  Basic Stats, Rotations, Totems, Specing really isn't going to play too much into this because the new talent systems almost require you to pick ALL of your talent tree before you can reach the bottom, but ill touch up here and there on it glyphs are the bigger part. I would also like to try and add/edit here and there to try and keep this up to date or more accurate as I am only human not google bot

Basic Stats and gearing,

They first changed us back in BC when STR was our desired AP stat to now AGI....we are hunters without the bows now, Rogues without the Vanish, Druids without the endless other druids in the raid.  I cannot stress Hit rating enough...if you're not around 1500 or 17% <16% for Draenai> GTFO.lol I know sucks when other stats are really appealing and make you hit harder. But basic fact is....if you can't hit it all you're doing is fanning it.  With hit on our top of the list we are going to head over to Mastery next. Since Lava Lash, Lightning bolt, chain lightning, shocks all being affected by this they really do add some massive bursts. It really is quite satisfying hitting the heroic boss with a 39k lava lash. Next to what I've found Expertise is really really nice to have, shoot for about 9%. Those pesky rear boss misses can put you in sad face, Haste and Crit you don't really need to gem for it right now because there isn't enough gear out there to satisfy our other needs to waste the socket on these. That and with Windfury Totem/unleash elements (with windfury on main) Haste goes up pretty well for now. AGI you get a TON of it with gear and with the Rage buff we get 10% AP isn't worth gemming at this point. Also helps the crit rating along with some specs. SO for my own recap Hit>Mastery>expertise>haste>crit-Agi for those little bit of EXTRA things. Items with Hit and mastery built in are GOLDEN.  Weapons are pretty much the same as they have been since BC...you want slow one hander's in both hands (2.6 seems to be the norm these days) and make it look like a rogues...AGI STAMINA and for mentioned stats. Windfury on the front and Flame tongue on the back.

Rotations,

There is a great add-on for Enhanced Shaman called Shock and Awe....it's basically a timer/cool down watcher to which you can easily switch your priority list to call out what's next or what cool down you should have available, I love to start with a good ol unleash Elements just to keep the haste flowing followed by Flame shock. With the addition of Flame shocks Dot being able to crit now...it just makes sense to keep this up at all time and switch with earth shock as cd's allow.  After the opener starts up its kind of a watch and click as time passes...rock beats paper. Paper beats rock...lizard kills Spock sort of mess.  Lightning Bolt/chain lightning when Maelstrom weapon has 5 procs is always high on the list. An instant shot of 15k or so damage is always nice and since time is money you want to try and keep all your spells instant.  With the new edition of Searing totems debuff on the target that takes high priority when it has 5 stacks to hit Lava Lash for a beauty Coup De Grace. Always try and keep up Storm strike because the debuff on the target. It's not a big damage dealer at this time anymore but it really is nice because of two things. The debuff they get, and the extra chances to proc windfury off main hand. Feral Sprits pop those during the start because on a lot of the boss fights when you have to beat the enrage timer.....you'll get to use them again. They lowered the CD on them nicely to make them more of a dps addition instead of an ohh hell I'm going to die or...no I don't want to burn that CD yet wait for the boss. It is kind of funny because everything has a high priority but if it's one thing blizzard has kind of managed its CD timing....you can keep everything successfully on CD and still keep your priority's in check...of course things happen the world isn't perfect and the boss never holds still...so naturally you are going to have to improvise a bit here and there.

Totems

Pretty much self explanatory here as they really haven't changed much except the fire end.  Strength of earth for earth. Water....who needs but thrown in what you want or what you feel the raid needs more...Wind...duh windfury totem (haste nom nom) Fire. Against single targets always stick with Searing Totem these days you get the highest possible dps against single targets not necessarily from the totem itself but the lovely Lava Lash stacking buff and DoT.  Against multiple targets 3+ I still love the oldie but goodie magma totem with the blast radius. Seems to consistently bring in higher numbers there. And finally Heart totem....Captain planet sucks so don't bring this one

Spec and glyphs.

It's really easy to see which talent points are more geared toward PVP and PVE...extra stamina/armor.....if you're doing your job and the tanks doing theirs....you shouldn't really be getting hit much...I've never found this to be a viable amount to make/break the deal..Anything dealing with Frost brand is a PVP trait...I don't pvp much so I'm really unable to give you a great heads up on the enhanced PVP shaman and you.  Static shock...YES....if  you could hit someone for an extra couple thousand every so often just for...well hitting them again with something else wouldn't you take it? Besides with the added minor glyph it's a Ron Popiel dream...set it and forget it (for 10 min) I'm currently 10/31/0. I would be 11/30/00 but damned if I didn't love those wolves so much. Earthbind totem...EH PVP. Lower casting time for ghost wolf...EH PVP...Toughness...HA we are shaman why do you think they give is a rerez? Even with an additional 15% hp we are still one shot away from the floor (mmmjager) PVP trait. Elemental reach? Nice thought but other points are needed in another quadrant and I've never really had much of an issue with "hey arty come stand next to me" and again frozen Power.PVP.  Glyphs Lava lash/Windfury/Storm strike are my three for the prime glyphs....Lava lash...I mean come on 20% more of a damage boost? Other classes would CRY for that much of a boost to their already big boomers.  Windfury....2% more frequent windfury procs doesn't sound like a lot but if you are swinging your main hand with full haste/heroism it drops your main hand speed almost to 1.9...it adds up quite substantially.  Storm strike...the debuff the mob gets is you get an extra 25% crit for natural spells against that target...the glyph adds an extra 10% to that. Since the bulk of the spells we cast against our targets are in  fact natural in damage it's a good boost.  Major glyphs aren't really a strong point for us other than the lightning shield one that's nice because it keeps your stacks to 3 charges for the full duration of the buff...so no more wasting a global CD because you have to reapply your storm shield every min or so.  The other ones I use are Shamanistic rage and chain lightning.  Shamanistic rage use to be used for mana regen now it's just kind of a damage mitigator. But this lovely glyph removes a magic ability from your personage. It's kind of nice when in a full 25 person (pc term there) raid and everyone needs to be debuffed at the same time fast...no more messy waiting on those slower resto fools. Chain lightning just because I like to hit lots of targets if I'm going to use it anyways, and overall it does do more damage than its three person counterpart when hitting more targets. Minor Glyphs are just a reagent vendor now days for us.....more bag space by not carrying those messy scales and oils. (Except I like to look like an arctic wolf because I'm hungry like one)


As before mentioned this is kind of my first guide list and as well...the only main enhanced shaman out there I feel it my patriotic twilight duty to reach out to your budding low lvl alts and hopefully inspire you to great things. I'll try and keep this more updated as I try out new things or find new things and feel free to add your bits because I'm always learning.  TWILIGHT FTW