Enha scales badly, why?

[Gargz]

IIRC, they didn't give shamans the ability to use swords due to lore contradictions. However if you really think about it, there are several caster daggers out there and maces that shaman's can utilize. Enhance's weapon selection has always been crappy which is kind of retarded since one of our main damage sources now uses weapon damage as a multiplier (Windfury and FT).

I can only give my personal experience here but so far, since I came back to the game I've only noticed a small but steady increase in damage output with better gear. It's a gradual incline where as some other classes, casters mainly, jump quickly. Example, after getting ilvl 346 stacked I pulled around 12-13k on BH boss when we first attempted but that's just a rough estimate. Now my ilvl is 355 and my recent parse was 16kish. Small note though, there was a mage and 1h fury warrior both pulling 20k+ with the fury warrior peaking at nearly 30k but lost alot of it due to movement in fel flame phase.

I feel like we're lacking something. I'm not quite sure what it is yet.

[DraconusIX]

My understanding was that it's because ~50% of our dmg comes from magic and the other 50% is physical - and it's too hard for blizzard to figure out how to increase our dmg without making us OP in either realm.

Plus, we're not that widely played so fixing us just is not that much of a priority for them to fix it (since most of us have been playing our shamans for years and aren't moving on too easily...where as a larger population that's more fickle, read paladins & druids, gets entirely new mechanics to make them more easy to balance). Plus, it also helps push us, albeit reluctantly, into resto.

They are killing balance druids in PvE and pvp all because of some pvp battleground problems. Blizzard is completely changing the play style for pve balance mid-expansion. Might not sound like much, our dots giving energy, but it kills: sustained aoe, movement, and on-command burst dps.

[nazrakin]

There are 4 major factors at play:

1. Haste/crit are abysmal stats, that cannot be avoided in heroic gear. While gearing up through blues we could pick up matery/hit/exp gear for every slot vs just 3 slots of heroic gear.

- I would like to see haste lower ability CDs the same way it does for Rets. Searing Bolts and Searing Flames should also receive haste scaling.

2. MH damage does too little. For any other melee upgrading their MH weapon is a huge boost to their DPS, for Shaman its no where near as good since only 3 of our attacks are modified by it; and 2 of the 3 (SS + UE) are tiny portions of our DPS.

3. Searing Totem should scale the same as other pets. Searing Flames should scale the same as every other DOT. Namely, they both need haste scaling.

4. Float out bad mechanics. Our damage is too conditional and dependent on ramp up + random proc effects. A lot of fights this tier requires target switching that really punishes our DPS.

[Endus]

Endus, we are not really talking about bis weapons, which is ok to be from a end cap boss. We are talking more about, having weapons that drop from anything else but the end boss. On heroic mode tier 11, you got one choice and that is from nerferion.

I was agreeing that THIS tier is a bit wonky, but disputing that this is some kind of long-standing problem. It's unique to T11, and is mostly based around the fact that Nef isn't really an "end boss", he's just a tier-dropping boss. He's more like Professor Putricide or Mimiron, than the Lich King or Yogg-saron. True end bosses have higher item level gear. Sinestra is the closest we've got, though she's Heroic-only, so she's kind of a combo of end boss and Algalon-style bonus boss.

There should be at least one other Enhancement option in the Heroic loot tables, I agree. I honestly think there's a bug with the Heroic BOE items, that they were SUPPOSED to drop but for some reason aren't/were disabled. The heroic versions of Claws of Torment and Maimgor's Bite are in the database, and there's been no reason they SHOULDN'T drop, in theory. Maybe the idea was that they would, and then late in the development they decided heroic-level BoEs wouldn't be good, and just dropped the random BoEs all to 359 rather than try and make the Heroic-level ones BoP.

Whatever the reason, this looks more like oversight than some kind of design maxim, to me.

[Seranov]

There are 4 major factors at play:

1. Haste/crit are abysmal stats, that cannot be avoided in heroic gear. While gearing up through blues we could pick up matery/hit/exp gear for every slot vs just 3 slots of heroic gear.

- I would like to see haste lower ability CDs the same way it does for Rets. Searing Bolts and Searing Flames should also receive haste scaling.

2. MH damage does too little. For any other melee upgrading their MH weapon is a huge boost to their DPS, for Shaman its no where near as good since only 3 of our attacks are modified by it; and 2 of the 3 (SS + UE) are tiny portions of our DPS.

3. Searing Totem should scale the same as other pets. Searing Flames should scale the same as every other DOT. Namely, they both need haste scaling.

4. Float out bad mechanics. Our damage is too conditional and dependent on ramp up + random proc effects. A lot of fights this tier requires target switching that really punishes our DPS.

This is exactly it.

However, Blizzard had stated that they're happy with where Enhancement is.

[LyskaWF]

There should be at least one other Enhancement option in the Heroic loot tables, I agree. I honestly think there's a bug with the Heroic BOE items, that they were SUPPOSED to drop but for some reason aren't/were disabled. The heroic versions of Claws of Torment and Maimgor's Bite are in the database, and there's been no reason they SHOULDN'T drop, in theory. Maybe the idea was that they would, and then late in the development they decided heroic-level BoEs wouldn't be good, and just dropped the random BoEs all to 359 rather than try and make the Heroic-level ones BoP.

Where would they even fit? Heroic trash? That's a joke.. the only option would be to put them on heroic boss loot tables, which would make little sense without putting the normal versions on the normal bosses (which would not be a terrible idea).

[Deleted]

This is exactly it.

However, Blizzard had stated that they're happy with where Enhancement is.

can you provide a source to that statement? I wasn't aware they ever said something about it.

[Sorrior]

can you provide a source to that statement? I wasn't aware they ever said something about it.

If you mean the bliss being happy bit just look at front page news from cata beta and the like they've said it many many times.

[wordup]

I can explain it pretty thoroughly to you.

1) As a melee class, we value crit abnormally low. Warrior, (and for physical damage hunter) feral, and even rogues gain more from crit than us. Indeed, rogues suffer from a similar "doesn't affect everything" problem, but not nearly as close to us. A significant portion of our damage comes through spell, and now stormstrike buffs the crit chance, it not only undermines the power of crit to cause them, but the benefit of even getting one. Also, we gain nothing from crits other than excess damage. A warrior has Deep Wounds and the bonus of Impale, Ferals gain extra combo points on builder crits same as rogues. Unfortunately, we also share our gear with Hunters, who unlike us with our strongest stat being the reasonably good mastery, finds Haste and Crit to be significantly stronger, which we do not like. I haven't mentioned ret here, but that is because in the next section haste shows up.

2) Haste provides us with nothing compared to most other melee specs. Rogues gain extra energy, which in turn increases their ability uptine. Warriors produce more rage which means either more frequent and fluid rotations, or more HS dumps for extra damage. Rets produce more holy power. Hunters gain more focus. Ferals get quicker dot ticks which is their main source of damage. All we gain from haste is more maelstrom and on a very rare occasion a few extra windfuries; whilst we are regularly capped on MSW charges during a windfury proc anyway. I have found Sinestra exacerbates these issues, since the haste buff effects us the least when we gain it whilst others fly up in DPS.

3) Our mastery is strong, but not strong enough. Given this is our best stat, it still only effects half of our damage. It's a stat we want but only because we have no other option. I understand that they want masteries to be unique, but ours focuses in on bringing a crutch to the side of our class that, while it makes us unique, requires some serious overhaul to make things scale properly.

4) We have to invest far too many stat points on hit and expertise. No other spec actively reaches the expertise and the spell hit cap before gaining their primary stat. This hurts us a lot more than others think; because clearly this is between 2-2.1k stat points invested, whilst a majority of other melee specs can freely go into their favourite stat after 900-1200.

Finally,

5) We have no agility or AP %age increase to scale up our melee damage equal to our SP when we get gear upgrades. Considering a lot of our damage relies on RNG, we need some melee damage increase to benefit our relatively average (yes we all have lava lash but look outside of that) damage with our hits. Combat Rogues see 12k auto attack swings, we max out at 8-9k, and I believe this is the root cause of a lot of our scaling issues. Agility is our most valued stat, but compared to other classes that can rate it up to 3x a secondary, we fall very, very flat.


And just to add, we also have no strong cooldowns to couple with our abilities for strong burst periods, and our target switching is very poor. But that is for another thread.

[Also I just have to add as an afterthought; Nefarian hc as our only weapon drop does cause issues. Endus you might disagree, but the difficulty of Nefarian vs. Professor Putricide, normal or heroic, is leaps and bounds of difference. Even the most difficult of the end tier bosses, which for me would be cho'gall vs. Prof (given it was before the % buffs) would make me choose prof in a heartbeat. Arguing based on increased Ilvl is unfair, because it doesn't change the fact that we are one of THE latest to receive our 372 MH weapons, beaten out only by Holy Paladins; here's a brief rundown:
Dagger Casters: Magmaw, V&T
Mace Casters: Cho'gall, Nefarian
Sword Casters: Al'Akir
Agility Sword: V&T
Dagger: Tron
OH Dagger: Cho'gall
2h Str Weapons: Magmaw, Cho'gall, Nefarian
Staff: Halfus
Ranged: Atramedes, V&T

I don't think it's unfair that we receive no offhand, main hand, or anything in between until we've fully cleared BWD on heroic. It has severely impacted us and I don't remember any spec ever receiving treatment like that before in a tier outside of Vanilla. There is no Ilvl higher boss because it was a redundant idea they got rid off after LK, which was a good idea as well.]

[drbutcher]

Atm enha shamans are the worst dps spec in heroic gear by FAR.Our scalling was bad like.. forever and we were always near the bottom.the difference is that now we are at the bottom.

Why our scalling is so bad?The visible reasons are different every time.For example now one of the reasons is that we gain almost nothing from both crit/haste while in wotlk haste was our best stat.

The root of the problem though is hidden to some people and i guess to blizzard diveloping team as well.It is the same reason behind our crap/pathetic/non-existant aoe.We share way too many abilities with elemental shamans.Buffing one might make OP the other.So they leave both at the bottom.But for how long?How long will it take to understand that they can make both ele and enha shamans good at the same time?Either make one of them good so people who don't want to reroll and play dps can play something or remake enha shaman talent tree.

How can we get good aoe when FN can be used by elemental shamans as well?Not that the aoe system by itself is any good but anyway.Some times you get a feeling that they don't care about shamans as a dps class at all.How can someone explain the fact that our only "burst" (if you can call it like that) button does the same damage as it did at level 80 while we are the spec that benefits less than anyone from haste so we can't do any serious damage during heroism.

[Fojos]

I mean one of the main problems with elemental and enh is that the developers can justify lower dps, because we "don't switch forms," like many other hybrids...which begs the question, why don't they implement something like that for shamans?

Why would you get better DPS by switching "forms"?

Atm enha shamans are the worst dps spec in heroic gear by FAR.Our scalling was bad like.. forever and we were always near the bottom.the difference is that now we are at the bottom.

Nope. Feral, fire mage and boomkin all scale worse than enhancement.

[Gargz]

Nope. Feral, fire mage and boomkin all scale worse than enhancement.

Really? I thought fire mages were on the top?? I've yet to see a boomtard that does decent dps

[Endus]

Really? I thought fire mages were on the top??

This is why I have that big sticky on how NOT to use stateofdps.com.

Fire mages are scaling poorly and do pretty poor single target damage. The only reason they look high on SoDPS and such is that they can AoE easily and lucky crit streaks push their damage way up for that fight. For every fight a Fire mage gets those lucky streaks, there's another where the tanks are catching up to his DPS because he can't get a proc to save his life. You just don't see those ones on SoDPS because they're not the top 200.

Neither Shaman spec is the worst DPS spec. We're below average, but that's by no means the same thing.

[Dirtyfist]

Claws of Torment need to drop off Omnitron or maybe Atramedes.

As to our mastery..

I mentioned this before prior to cata, our mastery isnt as well thought out as it should be. It increases spell damage, but thats only part of our dps.

Realistically it should boost both. I wouldbe willing to take a % decrease in the spell damage area for a same % increase in the melee aspect area. Ex. 15% to spell damage and 5% to melee damage, then our mastery will increase by the same percentages. Clearly Im no math whiz but that lays out the general idea.

Someone also mentioned changing forms....thats a druid trick and not shamans, but it got me thinking. Give us a CD that would transform us into a random elemental depending on what our weapon imbues are and increase our damage done in that school of magic by 20%, elminiates the CD of any spell in that school . Give it a 6 second duration with a 1.5 min or 2 min CD. Ah damn..been too long since i played the shaman, windfury does nature damage right?

Anyways just thoughts to ponder.

[LQDMTL]

Hunters gain more focus.

Not to derail but Hunters scale pretty horribly with haste beyond their soft cap, which is rather low.

[Deleted]

Unholy dks get their BiS weapon from nefarion, at least in 25 man, for 359 we can get a really rare archeology wep with exactly same stats >.>
But we're not QQing about it are we? Akirus = bad, shalug'doom even worse.

[Fudge]

Unholy dks get their BiS weapon from nefarion, at least in 25 man, for 359 we can get a really rare archeology wep with exactly same stats >.>
But we're not QQing about it are we? Akirus = bad, shalug'doom even worse.

DKs aren't QQ'n about this because they all respec'd to frost which has pulled well ahead of unholy. DW > 2h too.

Also, they're not talking about BiS heroic weapons... They're talking about available heroic weapons.. DKs have one off Magmaw, the 2nd or 3rd heroic boss guilds do. The ONLY option for Enh is Heroic Nef..

[wordup]

Unholy dks get their BiS weapon from nefarion, at least in 25 man, for 359 we can get a really rare archeology wep with exactly same stats >.>
But we're not QQing about it are we? Akirus = bad, shalug'doom even worse.

Not even REMOTELY similar.
You at least have the OPTION for another 372 weapon, just because they overscaled Ashkandi with the 3.8 speed does NOT mean that you're in the same situation at all.

[Araun]

Unholy dks get their BiS weapon from nefarion, at least in 25 man, for 359 we can get a really rare archeology wep with exactly same stats >.>
But we're not QQing about it are we? Akirus = bad, shalug'doom even worse.

but the difference is that there are weapons in between the start of raiding and your BiS. there isn't for hancers, it's only from Nef HC. you can still get 1 from magmaw, it's not bis but it's better than any 359 out there.

aw beat me 2 it

[mercutiouk]

Well, with the removal of the rogue weapon specialisations there's no real reason to EVER make 2.6 agi swords unless they are specifically restricting shaman access to weaponry.

Maces + Axes, used by all, equally good for all, no real difference what the weapon type is for either of the classes that would now use 1h agi weapons. Make them 1 handed or main handed and both die-hard combat rogues and shammies are equally happy.