I've put together a list of frequently asked questions and answers for the shaman class. Please reply with any comments and I'll make changes as needed. Please note that this is focused upon empirical tests; saying "In my experience..." isn't wanted here. Also this FAQ is largely written from a PvE enhancement perspective, but I'd be happy to add anything from different specs or viewpoints in the same vein.
Windfury Weapon
- Scales with weapon DPS, attack power, melee haste, melee crit, melee tohit.
- Mitigated by armor and block, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a 5% special attack type melee miss chance.
- The best enchant for enhancement shamans on both hands, downranking the off-hand.
- The two extra attacks can proc flurry, unleashed rage, and shamanistic rage. They do not consume flurry charges.
- The two offhand attacks are affected by the standard offhand 50% damage reduction.
- The windfury totem enchant for your group will proc on ALL melee attacks except for itself, including sinister strike, backstab, sword spec attacks, hand of justice attacks, mortal strike, heroic strike, etc. These attacks also generate rage. Windfury totem is the best melee buff in the game.
BUG1: Windfury weapon has a three second cooldown period. During this period, it will not proc again. Since no usable 1H weapons are slower than 2.9s (or 3.9s with flurry), this means that every single 1H weapon in the game will have at least one swing after its windfury that cannot proc windfury. Note that this means that windfury will proc less than the 20% promised on its tooltip. Handy reference chart:
3.0s normal, 4.0s with flurry = no swings wasted (no 1H weapons >20dps exist at this speed)
1.5s normal, 2.0s with flurry = one swing wasted
<1.5s normal, <2.0s with flurry = two swings wasted
BUG2: When dualwielding, both hands share the same 3s windfury cooldown. To bypass this restriction, downrank windfury on the off-hand. When this is done, they act independently with two separate 3s cooldown periods. Reported many times in the bug report forum, no reply.
BUG3: When downranking the offhand windfury, quad hits will either use the mainhand or offhand damage for all 4 hits. This leads to very "spiky" damage, either high or low.
Flametongue Weapon
- Scales with +spell damage, +spell crit, ,+spell hit, melee haste, melee tohit.
- Mitigated by spell resist, fire resist, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a 4% normal spell resist chance.
- Crits at 100% damage with the elemental talent Elemental Fury
- The best enchant for elemental/restoration shamans.
- Useful offhand for enhancement shamans against mobs with damage shields or very high armor. Also useful if you are using pre-TBC greens.
- Benefits from 10% of your spell damage per hit. This additional damage ignores weapon speed, so if you're elemental get the fastest dagger can you find.
- When used offhand, the fire proc is not affected by the 50% damage reduction.
- [BUG]: When used offhand, the amount of base damage is determined by the speed of your mainhand. (Unconfirmed, was the case 2 months ago.)
- Does not proc clearcasting on crits in 2.0.10.
Rockbiter Weapon
- Scales with melee haste, melee crit, melee tohit.
- Mitigated by armor and block, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a 24% normal dualwielding miss chance, or 5% if you are not dualwielding.
- Rockbiter is the best mainhand enchant if you are an enhancement shaman wearing pre-TBC green gear.
- When used offhand, affected by the standard offhand 50% damage reduction. Rockbiter should never be used offhand.
Frostbrand Weapon
- Scales with +spell damage, +spell crit, +spell hit, +melee haste, melee tohit.
- Mitigated by spell resist, frost resist, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a 4% normal spell resist chance.
- Crits at 100% damage with the elemental talent Elemental Fury
- Benefits from 10% of your spell damage per hit.
- Procs at 9 procs per minute.
- Frostbrand should only be used for the snare effect. Its damage is not comparable to other enchants.
- Does not proc clearcasting on crits in 2.0.10.
Ancestral Knowledge vs. Shield Specialization
Both talents are very weak and a waste of five points. Ancestral knowledge is somewhat better. Shield spec is basically useless, as shamans cannot tank in TBC at all.
Anticipation vs. Toughness
In the best case scenario wearing full tier 5 armor with a gladiator's shield, 5 points in toughness gives roughly 2.5% damage mitigation. 5 points in anticipation gives 5% damage avoidance from the front. Do not spec toughness, it is an underpowered talent.
Spirit Weapons: Does It Work
[BUG] Intial tests showed that spirit weapons does not work. When presented to the developers in the bug report forum, they dismissed the findings saying that tracing the NPC's thread showed that threat reduction was in effect. More testing is indicated.
Unleashed Rage: Does it generate threat
Unleashed rage does generate threat. This is removed in the 2.0.10 patch. It is still unknown how much this change will help enhancement shaman threat management. More testing is indicated.
Thundering Strikes Bugs
[BUG] Short and sweet, the thundering strikes talent does not affect Windfury or Stormstrike attacks, so they have a 5% lower crit rate. Combined, these two attacks account for roughly 50% of shaman DPS. This has been posted to the bug report forum many times with no reply from developers or QA.
Shamanistic Rage
- Early testing in January showed that shamanistic rage is a flat 35% on hit proc. More recent tests have shown it to be based upon a set procs per minute. More testing is indicated.
- Shamanistic rage causes power gain threat at the rate of 1 threat per 2 mana restored. If you get 6000 mana from shamanistic rage, it's the same as if you healed for 6000 damage.
The new Elemental Focus (Clearcasting) Talent
- Before the 2.0.10 patch, elemental focus was a flat 10% on spell hit for clearcasting, so the next spell was cast for free. As of 2.0.10, clearcasting procs on every spell crit. This was done to boost elemental sustainability. Level 70 elemental/resto shamans commonly have a 25-35% crit rate, so this change is very significant. Hybrid PvP enhance/elemental "suicide spec" shamans were nerfed by this change, as they have less than 10% spell crit.
- Chain lightning does give three chances to proc clearcast.
- Elemental mastery is now essentially two guaranteed free spells.
How to gear for enhancement
Four stats are important for enhancement shamans. They are:
- Tohit: If you don't hit, you can't windfury. Windfury procs give damage, crits for flurry and unleashed rage, and gives mana with shamanistic rage. Enhancement/resto shamans can get 9% tohit from talents. The first 5% tohit is absolutely essential and should be your top talent/gear priority, as 5% is required to totally eliminate misses with windfury and stormstrike.
- Attack power: Measures how hard you hit. 1 STR = 2 AP.
- Haste: Haste is the enhance shaman's best friend. It scales infinitely with gear. Get as much haste as you can.
- Crit: Crits do damage and proc flurry and unleashed rage. Enhancement shamans can get 5% crit from talents, but this does not apply to windfury or stormstrike.
Several people are working on spreadsheets to mathematically weigh each stat. But until they release their work, just remember that all four of these stats are important, and your gear should have a good balance between them. Do not sacrifice too much of any one stat for another.
Stormstrike
- [BUG] Not affected by the thundering strikes talent.
- [BUG] If the first attack of your stormstrike is dodged, parried, or misses, the second will never go off. This bug has been reported in the bug reports forum and has not received any replies.
- Can proc windfury, flurry, weapon procs, unleashed rage, shamanistic rage.
Weapons for enhancement
Get the slowest weapon you can find for both hands. Due to the 3 second windfury cooldown combined with the instant attacks of stormstrike, it is the optimal configuration.
Four hits from Flurry
If both weapons are the exact same speed, you will get four hits from flurry instead of three. This is a nice bonus but mathematically it doesn't make a huge difference as when geared properly flurry is almost always up anyway.
Bloodlust/Heroism
This spell increases all speeds by 30%, including the global cooldown. Thus it is very, very powerful.
Earth Shield
- [BUG] Earth Shield is only affected by the Purification talent when cast upon yourself. So you lose out on 10% effectiveness.
- Earth shield counts as the target healing, so if it heals 100 damage they get 50 threat. This is affected by defensive stance/bear form and defiance/feral instinct, so a warrior/druid tank generates 0.725 threat against all mobs per point of damage healed. It is unknown if this healing threat is affected by Paladins' righteous fury spell. It's unlikely, since the healing effect is listed as nature, not holy. Also paladins get 50% threat from healing passively, so the difference would be minimized. |