Enhancement Shaman For Dummies
((This guide was created by Nezchia of the Shaman Forums. All credit for this guide goes to him. You can find a link to the original post here. Also the original posting of this guide on the WoW Forums will be the most up to date version you can find.))
This is for people who keep posting asking for help with enhancement dps. I will cover the very basics you need to know to win at being enhancement. This will include glyphs, gearing, and rotation. Note that this is for end-game PVE (i.e. raiding) only as most of this does not apply to PVP.
If you haven't figured it out yet, Enhancement is the melee DPS talent specialization and the melee DPS buffer specialist of the Shaman. As such the gear you want to gather are all itemized for melee. This means the stats you want are: Agility, Hit Rating, Crit Rating, Attack Power (AP), Expertise Rating, Intellect (yes Intellect), and Haste Rating. When looking for gear, the stats that you must prioritize are Hit Rating and Expertise Rating. You want to get enough hit rating to max out your spell hit percentage.
STATS AND ATTRIBUTES
HIT RATING
In raid settings, this means you want 17% from Hit Rating (Horde) or 16% from Hit Rating (Alliance). If your guild runs 25 man raids with a Shadow Priest or a Balance Druid, they will bring 3% Hit. This brings the amount of hit you need to 14% (Horde) and 13% (Alliance). What does this mean in terms of actual Hit Rating? This means you need:
Horde:
17% = 445 Hit Rating
14% = 367 Hit Rating
Alliance
16% = 419 Hit Rating
13% = 341 Hit Rating
Note: Alliance only have 1 race that can become Shaman - Draenei. Draenei have a passive racial that increases chance to hit with both melee/spell by 1% for everyone within range, including themselves.
EXPERTISE RATING
All mobs, no matter where you're attacking from, have a 6.50% chance to dodge your attacks. The only way to reduce this chance to dodge is to increase your Expertise skill. You have to increase your Expertise skill to 26 to maximize your DPS. In order to get 26 Expertise skill, you need ~146 Expertise Rating with 3/3 Unleashed Rage. This can be found on your Tier 7 and Tier 7.5 chests and shoulders. It can also be found on other gear. Though the most common way for Enhancement to increase their Expertise skill is to gem their socketed gear with Precise Scarlet Ruby, Accurate Monarch Topaz, or Guardian's Twilight Opal.
CRITICAL STRIKE RATING
The buffs that Enhancement Shaman give to the melee DPS come from Totems and critical hit procs. (Procs are what we call buffs that come from attacking) The big buff Enhancement provides is Unleashed Rage (which gives everyone 10% more AP) -- and Flurry (which increases our melee attack speed by 30% for the next 3 hits to allow us more chances to proc Unleashed Rage to keep the buff up at all times). As a result, one of the next stats you want is Critical Strike Rating. It should come naturally from gear but if your Critical Strike percent isn't at 30% unbuffed, you can increase it with gems such as Deadly Monarch Topaz, Smooth Autumn's Glow, Jagged Forest Emerald.
HASTE RATING
Haste Rating increases how fast our attacks hit. This helps us do more damage with our weapon imbues (Windfury Weapon and Flametongue Weapon - this is gone over later). It also increases our proccing buffs uptime (Unleashed Rage, Flurry, Maelstrom Weapon) by giving us more chances to get critical hits. Now, you don't want to gem it or enchant it because you get a lot of Haste from the gear that's available.
AGILITY
Agility is our primary attribute we want. Why? Agility increases our melee Critical Strike percent (0.012% per), our AP (1 AP per), our Armor (2 armor per), and our Dodge (0.04% per). By the time you have Naxxramas gear, you should have around 700-800 Agility unbuffed. Now while some Shaman players argue that you want pure AP, I would argue that stacking Agility gems is better because it scales with Blessing of Kings. It also increases your Critical Strike percent without causing you to suffer a huge loss in AP, compared to Smooth Autumn's Glow which is purely rating and no AP. It's always better to sim your stats to see which stat is best for you to stack with gemming.
INTELLECT
Now you may be thinking: Why do I want Intellect? Intellect is important for Enhancement because it: a) increases our AP (1 AP per); b) increases our mana pool (15 mana per); and c) increases our Spell Critical Strike percent (0.005% per). Now that Blizzard has changed the synergy between melee and spell, a lot of our damage comes from Lightning Bolt and shocks, which costs a lot of mana to cast. Like Haste Rating, you don't want to gem it or enchant it.
STRENGTH
The Burning Crusade "End all be all" attribute. It is no longer the best attribute for us as it only increases our AP by 1 per point of Strength. Never, EVER enchant or gem for Strength. Preferably never get gear that has it either, but if it's an upgrade, it's an upgrade.
GLYPHS
The following are the glyphs you should get for major and minor slots.
MAJOR
Glyph of Windfury Weapon
Glyph of Stormstrike
Glyph of Feral Spirit
* NOTE * : Each Enhancement Shaman should gear/gem/enchant/glyph according to their gear level. It is best to SIM. SIM. SIM.
MINOR
Minor glyphs are up to you since these are more for cosmetic purposes.
ROTATION
THERE IS NO ROTATION. I REPEAT THERE IS NO ROTATION!! Enhancement uses a priority system. A full stacked Maelstrom Weapon Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning (if aoe pull) > Stormstrike > Earth Shock > Lava Lash > Refreshing totems, shields. If everything is on cooldown (though this is unlikely), you may be able to throw a Flame Shock and Lava Burst (but this is not recommended as it resets your swing timer). Some people argue for and others argue against Lava Burst so I thought I'd give you both sides of the coin.
TALENTS
Now we cover which talents you must have as an Enhancement Shaman. The following lists which talents MUST be (no exceptions) maxed out:
Enhancement
Enhancing Totems
Ancestral Knowledge (2 points to move to next Tier)
Thundering Strikes
Elemental Weapons
Flurry
Windfury Totem
Spirit Weapons
Mental Dexterity
Unleashed Rage
Weapon Mastery
Dual Wield
Dual Wield Specialization
Stormstrike
Lava Lash
Mental Quickness
Improved Stormstrike
Shamanistic Rage
Maelstrom Weapon
Feral Spirits
Elemental
Concussion
Elemental Devastation
Call of Flame (2 points to get to next Tier)
Elemental Fury
The next list is a list of Talents that you can remove from your Talents if you raid with a Blood DK or MM hunter and a Frost DK.
Improved Windfury Totem
These talents are up to preference but really increase your dps.
Improved Shields
Static Shock
Call of Flames (full)
Shamanistic Focus
Elemental Focus
Some people get 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge and 2/2 Improved Ghost Wolf. This is completely up to your preference.
TOTEMS
Totems are what most of our buffs primarily come from. In an optimal setting:
Earth: Talented Strength of Earth Totem
Fire: Flametongue Totem or Searing Totem or Magma Totem (depends on if your guild has someone else cover Flametongue)
Wind: Windfury Totem (Talented or untalented)
Water: Mana Spring Totem or Cleansing Totems (Disease/Poison)
WEAPON SPEED AND WEAPON IMBUES
Ideally you want a slow (2.6 speed) Main hand and Off-hand weapon, but many simulations have shown that slow/fast (1.4 to 1.6 speed) Off-hand weapons are doing more DPS than slow/slow. It'll depend on your EP values to determine your best Off-hand weapon. As for weapon imbues (Windfury, Flametongue, Frostbrand, Rockbiter), you always want Windfury on a slow Main hand weapon and you ALWAYS want Flametongue on your Off-hand, regardless of weapon speed.
EDIT: After Patch 3.1, you do NOT want fast weapons in the Off-hand. Slow/slow is the optimal setting for max DPS. This is due to Flametongue being normalized to weapon speed.
FERAL SPIRIT
Our beloved Spirit Wolves now scale accordingly to our stats. They gain 30% of our AP, 35% of our Defense, 30% of our Stamina, and we believe they inherit our Hit Rating as well.
ADD-ONS
This is a list of which add-ons Enhancement Shaman find useful:
Shock and Awe
TotemTimers
Enhancer
RatingBuster (Helps you see how much ratings give)
HELPFUL LINKS
Elitist Jerks Shaman Forums
Elitist Jerks Enhancement Shaman Theorycraft
Elitist Jerks Enhancement Trinkets Thread
Enhsim - Enhancement Shaman DPS Simulator EJ Thread
Thanks to the following people for contributing to this thread:
Cantii - Shadow Council (Shock and Awe and Lewa's post)
Throdown - Ghostlands (Numbers on Intellect and Agility)
Torodo - Argent Dawn (Clarification on critical percent)
Calidria - Khaz'goroth (Suggestion of links)
Marashka - Scarlet Crusade (Links for EnhSim)
Kokomala - Silver Hand (Feral Spirit numbers)
UPDATED: 4/16/09 to include Patch 3.1 changes.