Enhancement Shaman; Where do we stand?

[Deleted]

Ok, so 5.2 is coming out within the next week or so, and given that our last change was a buff to Spirit walk, it would seem that blizzard has just about given us our last changes (They've obviously already decided we're sorted).
So my question is that, all things said and done, what do you feel will be our best choice of lvl-90 talents in the new tier, we've seen that Unleashed fury (Which WAS our clear winner before has had a slight nerf to lightning bolt) nerfed, while both PE and EB have had a direct buff.
So im just wondering if anyone has been on the beta recently to see which of these options are currently simming highest. and what the answer of that question will imply to our stat-priorities and rotations.
Last of all, ele has obviously had a huge amount of attention in this patch (Rightly deserved i feel), do you think that this will push ele ahead of enhancement in terms of performance?
Other other Enhance-related comments welcome.

[Barky]

From what people have been saying, Unleashed Fury is still our best talent due to the double dip of Static Shock from unleash WF and the LB damage from Unleash FT. The other abilities at least now might have potential on certain fights and situations, instead of UF being the clear winner. Though I see them more for PvP standpoints and UF always being the top in PvE. I havent checked the sims in a while so Im not 100% on this.

Enhancement has been mostly left alone really, we're in a good place overall, and from what I have seen on the sims, enhancement is ahead, though the new build might have changed that. I'm personally happy with our output and the fact we can do more self healing (AG was buffed iirc) and our movement speed sprint has had its CD halved.

The only thing I'm concerned / annoyed about is the awful t15 set bonuses. Elemental have the chance to shorten the time on their biggest self DPS cooldown by every LvB reducing Ascendence CD, and enhancement's one is crap because it makes wolves shorter CD. Wolves are crap now, they dont do enough damage for this to be considered a decent set bonus imo. It should be every WF lowers our ascendence cooldown or something! Ascendance is our big new ability in MoP, why cant we both get it for a set bonus?

[Aviators]

From the SimC result I saw, Haste becomes better than Mastery, and PE becomes the level 90 dps talent.

http://dread-gaming.com/simc/enh_mop_786.html

So the AS / PE build is the highest, and its stat scaling is Haste>Crit=Mastery

2nd highest is EM / PE build, and its stat scaling Haste>Mastery>Crit


Here is the latest SimC using AS / PE

http://dread-gaming.com/simc/enh_mop_794.html

Interesting thing to note, we are going to be going full haste gems on certain items.


I believe this was all done by Purge (could be wrong), so kudos to him if i am right, but If i am wrong, damn me to hell.

[Deleted]

I guess I'll go with AS - UF. -> Haste and Mastery would then be almost equaly good, Haste being just slightly better.
Thanks for posting those links Aviators.

[Roboctopus]

Unless it proves a detriment, I am sticking mastery, it just interacts way too well with everything we do, and let us not forget the Legendary Meta which it WILL buff.

[Nitwit]

The only thing I'm concerned / annoyed about is the awful t15 set bonuses. Elemental have the chance to shorten the time on their biggest self DPS cooldown by every LvB reducing Ascendence CD, and enhancement's one is crap because it makes wolves shorter CD. Wolves are crap now, they dont do enough damage for this to be considered a decent set bonus imo. It should be every WF lowers our ascendence cooldown or something! Ascendance is our big new ability in MoP, why cant we both get it for a set bonus?

And yet elemental's 4p is a DPS loss on the majority of expected fight lengths, while enhancement's is a respectable gain (~2.5%). Funny, that.

Unless it proves a detriment, I am sticking mastery, it just interacts way too well with everything we do, and let us not forget the Legendary Meta which it WILL buff.

Haste buffs the legendary meta gem more than mastery because RPPM. Also buffs trinket uptimes. Combined with swapping to PE, haste is >>> mastery for BiS.

You obviously won't have the new trinkets/meta as soon as the patch hits, so the transition will be somewhat slow, but that's how things are looking right now.

[Deleted]

Unless it proves a detriment, I am sticking mastery, it just interacts way too well with everything we do, and let us not forget the Legendary Meta which it WILL buff.

Me too propably. Difference between Haste and Mastery ( AS - UF ) is so minimal... See, I'm not into min/maxing. Farewell EotE, liked those double CLs.

[Barky]

And yet elemental's 4p is a DPS loss on the majority of expected fight lengths, while enhancement's is a respectable gain (~2.5%). Funny, that.

Really? huh, just reading it speculated on insane amounts of ascended ele shamans everywhere, then again, since I'm enhancement I barely look at any ele theorycrafting, ta for the info though bud.

I guess I'll prob spec into AS and UF as well then, I just cannot stand PE or EB as talents. especially PE. it's a shitty broken talent. and EB shouldnt be hard cast as top prior, as a melee it feels so wrong to hard cast even with 0 maelstrom stacks.

Main reason I hate PE is because it completely restricts your totem choice, especially during the fight when after you've used your Fire Elemental, to max dps you use Earth Elemental right after, but what if there's a fear mechanic / adds need to be slowed situation, /bye earth elemental. If the Elementals you summoned weren't linked to your totem it would actually be a very good talent, one I would also probably use, but its shackle to a totem kills it for me.

[Omanley]

Enh stands it's ground
Ele is on the outside

and Resto is left in the rain

[Nitwit]

Me too propably. Difference between Haste and Mastery ( AS - UF ) is so minimal...

That's because the profile is already gemmed and reforged for haste.

Here's what happens if you roughly flip the two around (-6000 haste/+6000 mastery):
http://dread-gaming.com/simc/enh_mop_797.html

-1763 dps, and haste is suddenly ~18% better than mastery per point rather than ~0.3% behind.

Really? huh, just reading it speculated on insane amounts of ascended ele shamans everywhere, then again, since I'm enhancement I barely look at any ele theorycrafting, ta for the info though bud.

The problem is the c/d reduction isn't high enough to get an extra ascendance cast off unless the fight lasts longer than ~7 minutes or so (on average), and even then it causes you to desync ascendance with cooldowns like skull banner.

and EB shouldnt be hard cast as top prior, as a melee it feels so wrong to hard cast even with 0 maelstrom stacks.

Only hard-cast EB with 1+ stack. There was a bug in SimC that made it look like hardcasting with 0 was better, but that was fixed some time ago.

Main reason I hate PE is because it completely restricts your totem choice, especially during the fight when after you've used your Fire Elemental, to max dps you use Earth Elemental right after, but what if there's a fear mechanic / adds need to be slowed situation, /bye earth elemental. If the Elementals you summoned weren't linked to your totem it would actually be a very good talent, one I would also probably use, but its shackle to a totem kills it for me.

You don't have to use Earth Elemental immediately after Fire Elemental. You could theoretically delay your earth elemental cast by 2-3 minutes and still not get any less uses off over the course of the fight (depends on fight length, of course).

Besides, PE still comes out on top even if you can't use Earth Elemental at all (AS/PE loses 3465 dps, bringing it to 189773, and AS/UF loses 1886 dps, bringing it to 187993.

[Roboctopus]

Yeah... Unless they make it crippling to do so, I will never spec EB/PE. I hate both of them. Absolutely horrible in my mind. I dont at all think most of my DPS should come from summoning a damn totem once per fight, and EB is weird and uncomfortable as Enhance.

[Viperk8b]

My hope is still that some time this expansion they just nerf the primal elementals damage and just make it a full time pet, I've always wanted it as a pet and could bring more interest to the talent itself, mainly for pvp. from a pve stand point they could just make empower and reinforce 1-2min cd's built into the elemental's.

[Lavindar]

My hope is still that some time this expansion they just nerf the primal elementals damage and just make it a full time pet, I've always wanted it as a pet and could bring more interest to the talent itself, mainly for pvp. from a pve stand point they could just make empower and reinforce 1-2min cd's built into the elemental's.

I would really like that too, but then they should make a glyph to make they have the old model, at first the new model was nice, but after a while, I discovered I just liked the old one more. Or add an wind elemental, I would choose wind elemental talent even if it halved my dps

[Glyphtics]

I'll probably be taking AS(EM) and PE for the majority of fights, however fights that require target swapping or AoE, i'll probably take Echo and UF / PE. The main thing I worry about, is Enhancements' lack of cleave, compared to other melee classes i.e Warriors, Monks, Ret Pally, Rogue etc. enhancement has extremely lack-luster cleave damage, which I worry will hurt us on some fights in this tier. Enhancement is going to have extremely powerful burst, if not the highest of all classes, however our AoE and cleave will be sub-par.

Ancestral Guidance and Healing Storm will be mandatory for progression. With the buff to AG (60% up from 40% on healing), in conjunction with our forever increasing damage, will put out some insane healing. Dropping a Healing Rain and using an AG, will result in millions of healing.

We'll just have to see how it plays out, I'll be testing all the talents out on progression, so i'll try report back with what I find to be good / useful ;o.

[Griffeth]

Flame Shock -> Lash Spread -> Nova and instant CL procs. Not to bad of a cleave but takes forever to set up

[Nitwit]

Yeah, I like mastery too but with all the PPM madness that seems to be the "theme" of this tier we might as well do a switcharoo. At least for me it wont be so bad and I will only phase into haste as I gear up, not changing current gems and reforges right way. I don't like it but its the way of the world.

New legendary meta + buffed up talents that favor haste + PPM trinkets = too many reasons to take haste as main secondary.

Do set bonuses favor haste too? anyone?

The 2p favors mastery, but it's kind of weak, so that doesn't matter too much. The 4p favors haste (more windfury procs + feral spirits scale better with haste than with mastery).

[Aviators]

We are concerned that fully geared Subtlety, Enhancement and Windwalker DPS are still too high. None of these are particularly easy specs to play, so it might be okay that given that players won't realistically be able to hit their theoretical maxima. Just wanted to let you know they are on our radar.

Too high at max gear apparently

[Alayea]

The 2p favors mastery, but it's kind of weak, so that doesn't matter too much. The 4p favors haste (more windfury procs + feral spirits scale better with haste than with mastery).

But doesn't Feral Spirits still suck? It hasn't hit for any respectable damage since the expansion it was introduced in. I'd be more inclined to use it if their attack power was buffed, but as it is I only use that spell for emergency self-healing.

[Barky]

Yeah It's the way of things, I'll have to swap to haste eventually, just I don't really like this swap over at this gear level, to get used to one way then suddenly 'oh yeah, complete rework when youre geared up' I'll have to see how PE is at some point, may have to even macro some of the skills it uses to optimise things.

I DONT LIKE CHANGE :'(

[Deleted]

Gemming / reforging Haste isn't a problem for me... picking up EB or PE is.
I'll be competitive enough (at my skill level) with AS - UF. Tho, AS as a lvl 60 talent aint the most exciting thing in the world.