Tew Much Pew Pew

So what happens if you out-level or out-gear your party? What happens when you're in Karazhan and the skeleton ushers freeze your tank and oops, you're 2nd on the threat list? What happens when you just can't stay under the tank's threat at all, because you've got your maximum DPS rotation down and you're going to use it, dammit!

At the very worst, you die, and the lack of DPS wipes the group. Or, at best, your healer is irritated at you because they now have to heal more than the tank, unnecessarily. Lets talk a bit about threat and throttling your DPS.

Sure there are things like Blessing of Salvation (best evar), Tranquil Air Totem (only if you're not in the tank's party), Subtlety cloak enchant ('spensive!), etc. These are all helpful, situationally. But really, it's best to have some tactics of your own to keep threat to a minimum. Choice of weapon imbues is a good place to start:

Windfury is uber. Windfury is awesome. Windfury is the cornerstone of Enhancement DPS. Windfury can get you killed, too. -_- Some fights, like the aforementioned iceblocking ushers, I'm finding its best to just disable weapon imbues altogether. Your DPS suffers a bit, but living through the encounter is a fair trade-off.

Another option is Flametongue weapon, which still adds DPS but without the spiky-ness of Windfury. This is helpful for when you slightly out-gear or out-level your party mates. Again, just turning them off altogether is always an option.

Then there's your SS/Shock rotation. If you're having problems shooting past the tank's threat, simply don't Stormstrike until several seconds into the fight. Or maybe ever. Flameshock maybe, reserve rank 1 Earth Shock for interrupts, and you're set. (you do have rank 1 ES next to your full-rank ES, right?) :)

I think as DPS we can get carried away with big numbers and OMGCRITZLOL!!1!, but the best encounters are those that have a certain flow - call it being "in the zone."

Go with the flow, (Sha)man...