Enhancement PvE Guide.

[Tides]

Welcome to the Cataclysm Enhancement Shaman Guide.



Updated for 4.3 10/1-2012

This is my first guide written so any imput and anything new i've not updated is welcomed.
With that said, i'm gonna be stealing like mad from Radux's Restoration Shaman Guide cause it looks nifty and it reduces the amount of stuff i have to do.
This will be strictly PvE as i am not big on PvP as Enhancement.


1. Talents
2. Spells
3. Glyphs
4. Stats
5. Gemming
6. Enchants
7. Gearing
8. Consumables
9. Useful links & addons

I'll try to only use as few abbreviations as possible, the ones being used being the most common ones, such as dps, aoe and the likes.


Talents

Since Cataclysm Enhancement Talents have not changed that significantly. Most of our talents are pretty straight forward and there's a pretty clear path down the Enhancement tree.

Enhancement Specialization

When you choose Enhancement as your Specilization you gain access to:
Lava Lash Explained in the Spells section.
Mental Quickness. Converts Attackpower into Spellpower. (4.3 stops you gaining spellpower from anything EXCEPT this ability)
Dual Wield. Allows Dualwielding.
Primal Wisdom Gives you mana when you hit stuff.
Mastery I will explain further on our Mastery later.

Enhacement Talents
Elemental Weapons
Increases the damage from Windfury and Flametounge weapon imbues and increases the Unleashed Elements buffs. Mandatory Talent

Focused Strikes
Increases the damage of Storm Strike by 45% Mandatory Talent.

Improved Shields
Increases the damage done by Lightning Shield. Filler Talent.

Elemental Devastation
Gives you extra melee crit when you get a spellcrit. Mandatory Talent.

Flurry
Increases Melee attack speed after melee crititical strikes. Mandatory Talent.

Ancestral Swiftness
Permanent 15% movespeed bonus. Instant Ghostwolf. Mandatory Talent.

Totemic Reach
Increases the range on Totems. Optional Talent

Toughness
Increases Stamina by 10% and reduces the effect of slows. Optional Talent

Stormstrike
Deals damage and applies a debuff that increases the crit chance of several of your spells on the target. Mandatory Talent

Static Shock
Gives a chance to proc Lightning Shield when you attack with Lava Lash and Storm Strike. Mandatory Talent

Frozen Power
Boosts spelldamage when Frostbrand is active on Target. Ranged Snare. Optional Talent

Seasoned Winds in 4.1
Gives you resistance to a spellschool that you successfully interrupt with Wind Shear for 10 seconds. Optional Talent

Searing Flames
Applies a stacking Damage over time on the target from Searing Totems Attack. Mandatory Talent

Earthen Power
Removes Snares when Earthbind Pulses. Optional Talent

Shamanistic Rage
Defensive Cooldown. Also awesome when you've just ankhed and are almost out of mana. Recommended Talent

Unleashed Rage
Gives a 20% Attack Power boost to raid/party members and adds 8 Expertise. Mandatory Talent

Maelstrom Weapon
With 5 stacks makes a number of your heals and offensive spells instant and removes mana cost. Mandatory Talent

Improved Lava Lash
Super Charges your Lava Lash when the target is affected by Searing Flames. Mandatory Talent
(4.3 This also causes Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock to 4 nearby targets)

Feral Spirit
Offensive Cooldown granting you control of 2 Feral Spirit Wolves that can AOE taunt, give you Sprint and stun the target. Mandatory Talent


Elemental Talents

Acuity
Grants you more Crit. Recommended Talent

Convection
Reduces Mana cost of offensive spells. Worthless Talent

Concussion
Increases the damage done by some of your offensive spells. Recommended Talent

Call of Flame
Increases the damage done by your Fire Totems and Lava Burst. Optional Talent

Elemental Warding
Reduces Elemental damage taken. Optional Talent

Reverberation
Reduces the cooldown of your shocks and Windshear by 1 Second. Optional Talent
(4.3 this will reduce the cooldown on Wind shear by 5/10 seconds)

Elemental Precision
Increases Elemental Damage done and gives you a small Spirit -> spell hit from your Chest Enchant Optional Talent

Recommended Talent Spec

Version 1
Version 2
With the changes to Windshear the differences in the two specs are only "Do you have to interrupt or not"


Spells

General abilities

Feral Spirits
Your dps Cooldown. Time it well with your procs trinkets and bloodlust. Making a macro to use your Wolf Sprint is a good idea.

Unleash Elements
Gives several different effects depending on your current Weapon Imbues. Will detail a bit further down.

Stormstrike
One of your main offensive attacks. This attack also gives your offensive nature spells an additional chance to crit. Have the debuff up all the time.

Lava Lash
Your Top Hitter. This one will make your enemies quiver in fear. Searing Flames will boost this attack significantly and consume the dot in the progress making this attack hit very hard. Cooldown roughly fits with stacking up 5 Searing flames on your target.

Lightning Shield
When talented for it, will give a 45% to proc Lightning Shield when you use Lava Lash and Stormstrike. Refresh it before combat and then, if glyphed, forget about it.

Chain Lightning
Your go-to cleave ability. Only useful if you need to do cleave damage and should only be used with Maelstrom Weapon stacks.

Lightning Bolt
Your go-to ability to use with Maelstrom Weapon. Scales better than Chain Lightning so quickly becomes the better choice for single target dps.

Earth Shock
Deals nature damage and slows attackspeed of the target.
Use in place of Flameshock whenever you've got a Flameshock on the target and nothing better to use.

Flame Shock
Deals damage and applies a damage over time. Should be used when you have Unleash Flame buff to boost it a little extra.

Fire Nova
Emits a fire nova from all targets affected by Flameshock dealing damage to all targets nearby to everyone except the target affected by flameshock.

Frost Shock
Slows the target and deals damage. Mostly for pvp.

Lava Burst
Not used by Enhacement, except maybe during movement away from bosses with Spirit Walkers Grace.

Purge
Strips a target of a buff. Very useful in pvp, situational use on some raid encounters. Keep it bound on your hotkeys for the rare cases that you need it.

Wind Shear
Interrupts your target. As Enhancement you must have this hotkeyed to something you're comfortable with.
A good idea is to make a Focus Macro aswell.
If you are not familiar with focus macro's i will detail it further down.
(4.3 Cooldown increased to 15 seconds)

Ghost Wolf
Situational. Instant and usable indoors. Use it smart. You cannot be reduced by 100% movespeed while in ghostwolf.

Shamanistic Rage
Enhancement Shamans very own personal Defensive cooldown. Reduces Damage taken and makes your offensive spells cost no mana. Perfect for that big aoe incoming from a raid boss, or when you've just died and need to plant totems and cant hit anything to regain mana.

Hex
Shamans very own Crowd Control. Has a chance to break when damaged. Works wonders in 5mans and raid trash.

Bind Elemental
More CC for Shamans. Breaks when damaged. No Cooldown. Only works on. You guessed it! Elementals!

Spirit Walkers Grace
Allows you to cast spells while moving. Extremely Situational for Enhancement. Has its uses when moving away from a boss though.

Bloodlust.
We all know it, we all love it.
There's always alot of debate on when the best time to use it is and long story short, it depends largely on the fight.
As Enhacement it's important to consider timing of trinket procs, your Feral Spirits and Potion.


Weapon Imbues.

Windfury Weapon
Great Weapon imbue. Should always be on your Mainhand weapon. Has a internal cooldown of 3 seconds.
Unleash Wind Deals damage and gives attackspeed boost.

Flametongue Weapon
In 4.3 Flametounge will now give you a flat 5% Spell damage increase + the on hit fire attack.
Should always be on your Offhand.
Unleash Flame Deals damage and boosts your next Fire spell.

Rockbiter Weapon
Should only be used in very rare cases where you need to taunt something to save a healer with Unleash Elements or if you are - for some reason - tanking a 5man.
Unleash Earth Taunts the target for 6 Seconds. To be used with consideration.

Frostbrand Weapon
Use for pvp only.
Unleash Frost Deals Damage and slows the target. Pvp only.


Totems
Magma Totem
Area of effect damage totem that ticks every second for some damage. Should only be used in situations where aoe is of utmost importance.

Searing Totem
Your standard Fire Totem. Should be down all the time if you are not aoe'ing. Will prefer to attack targets affected by Flame Shock and Storm Strike.

Earthbind Totem
Situational Totem that slows in a area effect every few seconds.

Flametongue Totem
Should only be used in the extremely rare cases where no Mage, Demonology Warlock or any other Shaman is present. The loss of Searing Totem will significantly reduce your damage.

Windfury Totem
Your Standard go-to Air Totem. Always doublecheck what air totems other Shamans are using to ensure that Both Castspeed and Attackspeed totems are present.
Generally goes without saying the Enhance Shaman uses Windfury Totem.

Strength of Earth Totem
Your Standard go-to Earth Totem. Gives you Agility and Strength. Super Totem, keep it down.

Stoneskin Totem
Grants Armor to affected targets. Use it if there's a secondary supply of Strength of Earth (Deathknight, Hunter, Warrior) and the armor is needed.

Wrath of Air Totem
Secondary Air Totem. Use it if there's no other supply of castspeed in the raid and a Survival Hunter or Frost Deathknight is present to supply Windfury.

Fire Elemental Totem
Only useful in situations where focus on Area of effect damage is called upon.

Stoneclaw Totem
Pvp totem. Has its uses with a Glyph that puts a shield on you when you use the totem.

Grounding Totem Redirects the next targetted hostile spell cast on you or anyone in your group to the totem.
Cooldown changed to 25 seconds up from 15 seconds in 4.1

Priority Queue.
Enhancement Shamans are largely very straightforward.
We don't have a set-in-stone rotation but a priority queue.
So basicly, the higher a spell is in the priority the more you want to use it, if it's not on cooldown.

The priority goes as follows.

1. Searing Totem if expired.
2. Storm Strike
3. Lava Lash.
4. Maelstrom Weapon x5 - Lightning Bolt.
5. Flame Shock - If Unleash Flame Buff is active.
6. Unleash Elements.
7. Earth Shock.
8. Feral Spirit.
9. Searing Totem.
10. Maelstrom Weapon 3 or more - Lightning Bolt.
11. Refresh Lightning Shield.

Here is a addon that help's with the queue. Works wonders if you're new to the playstyle.
Shock And Awe


Tips to Enhance

Focus Macro for Windshear -

#Showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [@focus] Wind Shear
/cast Wind Shear

This macro can ofcourse be changed in various ways, but for its purpose it works fine and is very helpful.

For Halfus in particular using a Focus Macro for Chainlightning is very useful.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus, exists] Chain Lightning; Chain Lightning

This will simply chainlightning your focus and if there's no focus chainlightning your target. Useful for 1 fight only, but it doesnt hurt to have it added in there and it doesnt affect you at all on other fights.

Macro for Spirit Wolves & Spirit Wolves Sprint in 1 button.

#showtooltip
/cast [nopet] Feral Spirit; [pet] Spirit Walk

Always refresh your weapon imbues and Lightning Shield before entering any boss fights. Having Lightning Shield or your Weapon Imbues drop off midfight can be devastating to your dps.
Keep a few heals bound for situations where stop-dps is called and you have the mana to spare.

Enhance generally dont need to respec or reglyph depending on fights, but after 4.1 we'll have the option to use Flameshock Glyph to increase the duration on Flameshock by 50%.
This will be very useful for aoe situations because of the new way Fire Nova will be working. Keep some spare Dust of Disappearance in your bags, for these cases.

Have your situational abilitues bound. Spirit Walkers grace will not be useful if you need to stop up and find it in your spellbook.
Enhance has a ton of abilities that are situational. Spend some time and consider which you might have to use and bind them with consideration.

You can remove curses as Enhance Shaman, be helpful to your dispellers if healing is tight and dps is a non issue.

If in doubt. Just ask the question and people are usually very helpful on this board.



Glyphs

If you're familiar with the Enhance Glyphs, you probably already know that we have a few choices and most of them are good choices.

Prime Glyphs

Glyph of Lava Lash
Glyph of Feral Spirit
Glyph of Windfury Weapon
Glyph of Stormstrike

You want Lava Lash for sure, it's the strongest of the four options. The last 3 are open choice, though Feral Spirit is the least powerful of the 3.

Major glyphs

Glyph of Chain Lightning Dps boost in aoe situations.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem Doesnt Scale with anything. Mostly only useful for Pvp.

Glyph of Lightning Shield Allows you to forget about Lightning Shield for 10 minutes after you refresh it.

Glyph of Ghost Wolf Provides 5% more movespeed while in Ghostwolf.

Glyph of Healing Stream Totem Makes your Healing Stream totem apply the same benefit that Elemental Totem would do. Very nice glyph.

Glyph of Shamanistic Rage PvP Glyph.

Glyph of Grounding Totem Most spells in raids are not ment to be grounded and usually get fixed, so largely a pvp Glyph.

Most the Majors are by preference only, since they are largely just situational utility. My personal favorites are Lightning Shield, Healing Stream Totem and Ghostwolf.



Stats
Listed in order of importance.

Agility
Agility is our main Stat. The best stat you can get.
Every 1 Agility is also worth 1 Spellpower through Mental Quickness

Hit
Hit is what you want to cap as fast as you can. Reforge for it untill you're at the spellcap. This is 1742. 1639 for Draenei.
As of 4.1 you do not need hit to interrupt with Windshear, but this is still a very valuable stat for dps.
After Spellhit Cap, hit drops below Haste in terms of value, but still gives a dps increase.

Expertise
Get to cap as fast as possible. Without any racials the rating required is 542. Obviously this is for dodge only as you should (almost) always be behind a boss.

Mastery Enhanced Elements
Enhancement Shamans have a very straight forward Mastery. It's the next best thing after Agility, when you capped your Hit and Expertise.

Crit
Slightly better than haste.

Haste
Enhancement does not gain any energy gain or reduced cooldown on a ability and with Windfury on a internal cooldown haste is not near as great as it used to be.

Intelligence.
Gives spellpower and some spellcrit. Dont gear or gem for this in any cases.

Strength
While some items may seem like a upgrade they most likely are not if they have str. 1ap per 1 str, makes Agility over twice as good. Str is the enemy!



Gemming

Useful Gems you should be using

Meta Gem
Agile Shadowspirit Diamond
No argument, the best Metagem avaliable.

Red Sockets
Always put a Agility Gemin this socket.

Blue Sockets
If the socketbonus is 20 Agility put in a Hit/Agility gem. If it's 10 hit rating or the likes put in a Agility Gemin this socket.

Yellow Sockets
Mastery/agility gems if the socket bonus is 20 Agility or above. Else 40 Agi gem.

When you're gemming a new pieces of gear, it's often a good idea to take a good look at what gems you have in your gear overall, making sure your meta gem requirement is met and considering if you can meet hit rating requirements with reforging instead of gemming and such.



Enchants

Head Enchant
Ramhaken Enchant is the only choice for Enhancement.

Shoulder Enchant
Therazane Exalted Enchant is the best choice and easily attainable for anyone.

Cloak Enchant
The Wrath Enchant is your best bet at this point in time.

Chest Enchant
20 Stats is the best choice but if it's not avaliable to you, you can go with the 15 Stats Enchant.

Bracer Enchant
The new Agility Enchant is by far the best enchant for bracers at the moment.
If you desperately need more hit or expertise you can go for the Hit enchant or the Expertise Enchant

Glove Enchant
Greater Mastery is the best choice for Gloves, but if you've not got the Maelstrom Crystals avaliable you can use the Wrath Enchant or The Cheap Mastery Enchant. There's also a Expertise Enchant avaliable if you are struggling with the cap.

Belt Buckle
Belt Buckle. Obviously we want a 40 Agility gem in this.

Leg Patches
Dragonscale Leg Armor is the best choice and there's not realy much reason to cheap out. Not too expensive.

Boots
Major Agility
While Lava Walker may seem good at first glance, keep in mind that the movement speed increase does not stack with Ancestral Swiftness making it a bad choice for us.

Weapon Enchants
Landslide on both weapons. If you're still in greens and blues and just dinged 85 go with Avalanche as it works nicely with our Mastery.



Gear Builds

Pre-Raiding gear


I'll list the different choices for each slot in order of how good they are for you.
Important. When you're gearing for either of the "sets" keep in mind, if you're halfway through a gearset, the items you've aquired may not be the "best" for you at that point in time. Always make sure you've got your hit rating and expertise ratings sorted when you get new gear. Sometimes you'll have to wait a while before equipping a Epic piece simply because it doesnt have hit or expertise.

Head
Zehera's Dragonskull Crown Valor Points
Dawnslayer Helm Asira Dawnslayer - The Hour of Twilight.
Engineering Head Avaliable to Engineers.
Headdress of Sharpened Vision Zul'aman - Daakara


Necklace
Cameo of Terrible Memories Valor Points
Necklace of Smoke Signals Justice Points.
Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace World Drop
Amulet of the Watcher Zul'Gurub - Bloodlord Mandokir

Shoulder
Betrayers Pauldrons Archbishop Benedictus - Hour of Twilight
Pauldrons of Nalorakk Zul'aman - Nalorakk


Cloak
Batwing Cloak Valor Points.
Cloak of the Banshee Queen Sylvannas - End Time
Dory's FineryWorld drop.
Viewless Wings Justice Points.
Recovered Cloak of Frostheim Zul'Aman 2nd Chest

Chestpiece
Dragonflayer Vest Valor Points.
Tier 12 Chestpiece Justice Points.
Dragonkiller Tunic Leatherworking BoE.
Breastplate of Primal Fury Zul'Aman Halazzi.

Bracer
Dragonbelly Bracers Valor Points.
Bracers of the Hunter-Killer Leatherworking.
Legion Bindings BoE Well of Eternity Trash.
Bracers of Forked Lightning Justice Points
Hide-bound Chains Firelands BoE
Wristguards of The Predator Zul'Aman Akil'zon

Gloves
Arrowflick Gauntlets Valor Points.
Tier 12 Gauntlets Justice Points.
Time Twisters Gauntlets Murozond - End Time
Handguards of The Tormented Zul'Gurub - Cache of Madness.

Belt
Cord of Dragon Sinew Valor Points.
Cinch of The World Shaman Hour of Twilight Quest.
Firearrow Belt Avengers of Hyjal Honored.
Corded Viper Belt Leatherworking.
Waistband of Hexes Zul'Aman - Hex Lord Malacress.

Leggings
Rended Earth Leggings Leatherworking.
Tier 12 Legs Justice Points.
Arrowsinger Legguards World Drop.
Zombie Walker Legguards Zul'Guru - Zanzil.


Boots
Boneshard Boots Valor Points
Eathen Scale Sabatons Leatherworking
Treads of Malorne Hyjal Exalted.


Rings
Emergency Descent Loop Valor Points.
Splintered Brimstone Seal Justice Points.
Alurmi's Ring Well of Eternity Quest.
Signet of the Elder Council Earthen Ring Exalted.
Gilnean Ring of Ruination. World Drop.
Hornet-Sting Band. Justice Points.
Arlokks Signet Zul'Aman

Trinkets
Kiroptyric Sigil Valor Points.
Fluid Death Justice Points.
Darkmoon Card: Hurricane Darkmoon Card (Inscription)
Quicksilver Alchemist Stone Alchemy BoP Trinket.
Unsolvable Riddle Hellscreams Reach/Baradin Wardens Exalted.

Relic
Ripfang Relic Valor Points.
Relic of Golganneth Justice Points.

Weapons
Tricksters Edge Peroth'arn - Well of Eternity
Clattering Claw Archbishop Benedictus - Hour of Twilight.
Maimgors Bite BoE Raid Drop.
Claw of Torment BoE Raid Drop.
Mace of the Sacrificed Zul'Aman / Zul'Gurub.
The'kals Claws Zul'Aman / Zul'Gurub
Arlokks Claws Zul'Aman / Zul'Gurub

Best in Slot NORMAL Gear

This is not yet 100% certain i will try and verify all this by weeks end.
Some Tier 12 Heroic Items are bis even at this point and will be included although i will add their alternative if you realy dont do any heroic bosses

Head
Zeherahs Dragonskull Crown. - Valor Points.

Necklace
Cameo of Terrible Memories. - Valor Points.
Choker of the Vanquished. Lord - Ragnaros Heroic.

Shoulder
Spiritwalkers Spaulders. - Hagara the Stormbinder.

Cloak
Dreadfire Drape. - Rhyolith Heroic.
Batwing Cloak. - Valor Points.

Chest
Spiritwalkers Cuirass. - Ultraxion.

Bracers
Dragonbelly Bracers. - Valor Points.

Gloves
Spiritwalkers Grips. - Warlord Zon'ozz.

Belt
Cord of Dragon Sinew. - Valor Points.

Leggings
Spiritwalkers Legguards. - Yor´sahj The Unsleeping.

Boots
Boneshard Boots. - Valor Points.

Rings
Emergency Descent Loop. - Valor Points.
Seal of Primordial Shadow. - First 6 Bosses.

Trinkets
Wrath of Unchaining. - Spine of Deathwing.
Vial of Shadows. - First 6 Bosses.
Matrix Restabilizer. - Ragnaros Heroic.

Relic
Ripfang Relic.- Valor Points.

Weapons
No'khaled The Elements of Death. - Madness of Deathwing.

Best in Slot Gear



Head
Tier 13 Headpiece -- Warmaster Blackhorn Heroic.

Necklace
Choker of the Vanquished Lord -- Rangaros Heroic.

Shoulders
Tier 13 Shoulders -- Hagara The Stormbinder Heroic.

Cloak
Dreadfire Drape -- Lord Rhyolith Heroic..

Chest
T13 Chestpiece -- Ultraxion Heroic.

Bracers
Bracers of Looming Darkness Ultraxion Heroic

Gloves
Sporebeard Gauntlets Morchok Heroic.

Belt
Belt of the Beloved Companion -- Warmaster Blackhorn Heroic.

Leggings
Tier 13 Legguards -- Yor'sahj the Unsleeping Heroic.

Boots
Treads of Dormant Dreams -- Hagara The Stormbinder Heroic.

Rings
Seal of Primordial Shadow All bosses except Deathwing
Signet of Grasping MouthsHagara The Stormbinder Heroic.

Trinkets
Wrath of Unchaining Spine of Deathwing Heroic..
Vial of Shadows All bosses except Deathwing.

Relic
Ripfang Relic Valor Points.

Weapons
No'Khaled The Elements Death Madness of Deathwing.


Consumables

Food
Skewered Eel is the way to go. Agility is your strongest stat so unless you're in dire need of some hit rating this is what you want.

Potions
Potion of The Tol'vir. Strong potion. Pre-potting with this is highly recommended if dps is tight.

Flasks
Flask of the Winds is the best Flask avaliable to you. When you use a Cauldron of Battle you get a Flask of Battle that will, if you are Enhancement when you use it, give you the same effect as a Flask of the Winds.



Addons and links

Shock and Awe.
Great addon for getting the priority queue right, checking uptime on several buffs and much much more. Highly recommended if you are new to Enhance.

Enhsim.
Long story short, this program will simulate combat with the stats you feed it and then figure out if a item would be a upgrade or not, along with many many many other things. If you've got half a mind to realy mastering this spec, you wanna take a closer look at this.

Rawr.
Another program that will help you making sure you're chosing the right gems, the right gear enchant and so forth for your specific setup.

**Please reply to the thread if you find any errors, or anything you'd like me to put in here addtionally, be it more addons, updates i've forgotte, or simply just silly typo's.

[Acidbaron]

For me Stat value wise 20 mastery socket bonus was never worth losing a 40 agility over, could you elaborate and proof it how you find it to add more DPS then just gemming agility?

Other then that can't find much wrong on first glance , Good luck with it.
Keeping a BiS up to date can be a lot of work though. Right now i believe not going for the 4P offers a greater DPS outcome.

[Endus]

For me Stat value wise 20 mastery socket bonus was never worth losing a 40 agility over, could you elaborate and proof it how you find it to add more DPS then just gemming agility?

I'm not 100% on the Enhancement stat weights, but I know Mastery is one of your better stats. It's likely it's worth more than half as much as Agility, point-for-point. That means that 40 Mastery and 20 Agility (20 Agi/20 Mastery gem + 20 mastery socket) is more DPS than 40 Agility.

Best bet is to run Enhsim or something similar to get some reliable stat weights, and then work it out for yourself.


And thanks go to you, Tides, for stepping up and taking this project on.

[Acidbaron]

I ask if i look at my stat values i get the following Agility 2.36, Mastery 0,86. and generally mastery for me always seems to be a bit less then half then agility. (this is unbuffed buffed i get 2,48 and 1,04)

If mastery was just half the value of agility, in a 2 to 1 ratio then we would get the same outcome. Even gemming like you say that being;
A 20 socket bonus comes from a 2 gem piece, so to compare:
2x agility gems = 160.
1 agility gem + 1 agility/mastery + mastery socket bonus = 160.

If use my exact stat values (buffed)
2x agility gems = 198,4
1 agility gem + 1 agility/mastery + mastery socket bonus = 190,4

Slighty higher, almost the same. That's the reason i'm asking why he suggest going for the socket bonus, generally i advise people to not bother with mastery bonuses.

[Tides]

So far, what i've read myself and from my own experiences when simming after getting new items, i've been told to gem like this.
I'm looking over my gear now and i'm acually seeing i'm not even doing what i'm telling you to do, so i think i'll just go sim this again and update it accordingly. When i sober up that is.

Regarding updating in the future, i'll try and update it before a content patch hits, since i'll be busy raiding 12 hours a day for the first week or so after content comes out. Either expect updates before content patches, or a week or 2 after.

[Radux]

I believe EnhSim uses the basic math of StatEPValue*#StatPoints = DPS.

So if Agility's value is 2.86 EP and there was 200 on an item, it would contribute 572 dps. Add in the other secondary stats and you'll find out how much dps that particular item will be. So there are definitely cases where a hybrid gem with a +Mastery socket bonus may pay off rather than socketing a pure Agility gem.

I haven't done any math on any particular items, but the theory/math is sound.

Also big <3 @ Tides for doing this.

[Deleted]

dunno if it has been mentioned but you put "whritten" opposed to written
Also your tier 11 legs in item slot show as a waist rather than the legs
great thread btw

[Tides]

dunno if it has been mentioned but you put "whritten" opposed to written
Also your tier 11 legs in item slot show as a waist rather than the legs
great thread btw

Fixed
Thanks, keep em coming.

[Kidies]

As far as I know, you'll only benefit from mastery by half a point, like 16.5-17-17.5 etc. By swapping gem around, depending on the socket or not, you can hit the mark quite nicely. For example even if 40 agi yields more dps than 20 agi 40 mastery, if it can bring your mastery to half a point, then it's worth gemming for it and vice versa.

[bpcatt1]

At my gear level (around ilvl 350 and 346 weapons), Enhsim puts mastery around .9 with agility at 2.3. I however still use agi/mastery gems all over the place since I feel mastery is better in certain AoE situations.

Also, if you are using Shock and Awe, which I highly recommend, you can add more priorities into the rotation. For example, the one that does the maximum damage for me at my gear is below. It is the standard rotation but reminds me to use more lightning bolts as they produce more dps for ME.

1. Searing Totem if expired.
2. Lava Lash.
3. Flame Shock - If Unleash Flame Buff is active.
4. Maelstrom Weapon x5 - Lightning Bolt.
5. Unleash Elements.
6. Storm Strike.
7. Maelstrom Weapon x 4 - Lightning Bolt
8. Maelstrom Weapon x 3 - Lightning Bolt
9. Earth Shock.
10. Feral Spirit.
11. Searing Totem if less than 3 ticks left
12. Refresh Lightning Shield

[koimagheul]

Recommended Talent Spec

Version 1
Version 2
Both specs are very similar. The points in Reverberation and Elemental Precision are mostly optional, with the option for putting them into Call of Flame or Elemental Warding depending on the need for aoe or more survivability.

kinda inaccurate, call of flames > reverberation for single target as well as aoe. it's better than concussion or imp. shields as well. same for elemental precision.

Prime Glyphs -

Glyph of Lava Lash
Glyph of Windfury Weapon
Glyph of Stormstrike
Glyph of Feral Spirit

You want Lava Lash for sure, it's the strongest of the four options. The last 3 are open choice.

feral spirit is the least powerful of the lot, should be mentionned.

[Acidbaron]

Mastery does not need a whole or half a point to be useful, each amount of added mastery to contributes to extra elemental damage.

Trying to gear for AoE is like a healer trying to gear for DPS, there's no real gain in it. As for your choices in gems and gear, i suggest reading the guide written

SAA is a learning tool, it doesn't factor in globals making you use lesser abilities delaying the use of other abilities. Where you otherwise would've waited less then half a second to use LL or UE_FS. The idea of using MW_LB before 5 stacks is that you would otherwise have lost stacks by using it only at 5 all the time and it's only beneficial when everything else is on CD, could very well be it comes ahead of ES.
To clarify not saying using SAA is bad, i used it to learn the spec. You are however beter off eventually to do that thinking for yourself.

[Tides]

kinda inaccurate, call of flames > reverberation for single target as well as aoe. it's better than concussion or imp. shields as well. same for elemental precision.

Imp shields is realy a filler talent that you kinda need to get down in the tree so ya gotta take at least 2 points in that. I can't say i know for sure about call of Flame vs Reverberation, i simply go with that because it gives more room for error with interruptions. Especially on fights like Cho'gall Heroic, you realy want Reverb for the adds.
Interruption is a Enhance Shamans bread and butter, may as well be as good as we can be at it.

feral spirit is the least powerful of the lot, should be mentionned.

I think you might be onto something there.
Will sim that and change it accordingly

[Acidbaron]

As far as i recall the damage difference between windfury and feral spirit glyph isn't that big and fully depends on gear, general consensus after the patch was to sim which one came out on top.

[koimagheul]

Interruption is a Enhance Shamans bread and butter, may as well be as good as we can be at it.

there's a slight difference between being as good as we can and being as good as we need to be at interrupting.
we don't need reverb for maloriak, nefarian and halfus. the only moment it can be of actual help is cho'gall and omnotron 10man heroic (or so i've heard, i don't 10m).

[WildEther]

Shock and Awe is mentioned all the time in all the enhance threads i have read, but I have found Enhaprio works better for me personally, might be better for others too :-)

I also find ShieldsUp very helpful for both enhance and resto, as well as using PowerAuras to make my own indicators for other things SAA does, which I like better because its custom and i can fit it to my style. Example, I have the little mario fire flower icon used for my searing stacks, displaying a small number above it for stacks on the target, granted its only displayed on the target i have in my sights (if its present) but that allows me to reset the totem or look for the right target if needed.

[Kidies]

Quick question about the rotation: Do you find letting FS dots falls off or clipping it yields more dps? Sometimes when there's 5s FS or so, mw5_lb come up--->LB, then UE, then for some reason got another LB, then LL off cd. By the time I use all those skills FS dots already falls off. Another thing is that how much time left on FS dots is "acceptable" for clipping? There're some occasions where I refresh FS when there's 6 or 7s left =/

About SAA, I still use it, but mainly for mw5_lb (for some reason I dont like the one Blizz provides). I recommend power aura for that, just set cd timer on your skills and place them on the middle of the screen. What happens is sometimes (well, many times) 2-3 or even 4 skills are off cd at the same time. Using power aura will give you an idea what button to press next well ahead of time, and dont have to delay half a second for each skill anymore.

[WildEther]

Using power aura will give you an idea what button to press next well ahead of time, and dont have to delay half a second for each skill anymore.

Thats what i love about Enhaprio, it shows a listing of the next 3 skills and updates very very quickly for stuff that either proc'd (MWx5), needs refreshing, or came off cooldown. Also shows the gcd on the icons.

[Deleted]

Just got full epic gear yesterday and wondering if im doing everything correctly. Went to a random HC gruop where was a full epic frost dk and he was pulling 20k on trash while i was at 14k-15k, is it just because our aoe sucks??? Cant post my armory link here but char name Ðaða server Vashj.

[Tides]

at a quick glimse the thing that stands out most to me, is that you chose a Mastery cogwheel instead of a Expertise cogwheel and you're reforging out of expertise and into expertise.

Try removing all your reforging to see where you stand and then start with reforging from scratch, starting with Haste -> hit/expertise and working your way like that. That's how i usually do it when i feel that i can get a bit extra out of the gear with a new item i've gotten.