Yo's Simulator

After a somewhat disappointing ~550 DPS report from last night's Kara run, I've decided it's time to do some OCD-style over-analysis of my raid DPS. If you've spent any time glancing at the Elitist Jerk's stuff on Enhancement Shaman, you'll no doubt have seen numerous mention of Yo's Simulator, which seems to be one of the best tools available.

Here's a quick breakdown of the tool, by tab:

• Tracking headquarters - input your base stats like AP, crit, weapon info, etc.
• Procs & stuff - weapon enchants, trinkets, totems, shock rotations
• Buffs & debuffs - class-provided buffs on you, and debuffs on your target. At the bottom are three dropdowns for raid consumables, too.

When you're done inputting typical values for your raid makeup, go back to the first tab and hit the Theorycraft! button. Well lookie there: 543 DPS - pretty consistent with last night's Recount report.

Since I'm still saving for the epic flying mount and have gear accessibility issues (don't we all?), it's all about bang-for-buck. Let's look at a few upgrades I've been considering:

Dual Mongoose over my current dual Crusaders only improved DPS by 7. Same story with adding the Shadowsong Panther trinket or Hourglass of the Unraveller: 7 DPS. Meta gem Relentless Earthstorm Diamond yielded 10 DPS, but my current Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond wasn't listed, so it's likely less of an improvement.

Playing around Strength/AP (while keeping crit above 23%) seems to have much more DPS value. Furthermore, getting the ugly-as-sin fist weapons (Vanir's Right and Left Fist's of Brutality) for a mere 150 badges (gulp) seems to yield a 25-ish DPS improvement, but getting rid of my hard-fought dual Gladiator's Cleavers (36k honor, 40 EotS tokens) would be extremely disheartening - dunno if I can do it, honestly. :)

So in conclusion, better DPS seems to be all about the sum of all parts, there's no magic bullet in my case. But focusing more on raw base stats (Strength in particular) is probably the direction I should be headed, in addition to any "cheap" upgrades for accessory items (trinkets/gems/enchants) I can find.

The Attack Table

On more than one occasion, I've read that Enhancement Shaman should value critical hit chance over standard "to hit" bonuses. This advice always seemed counter-intuitive to me... "If you don't hit, you can't crit, right?"

Wrong-o.

It appears that WoW uses a single-roll system to determine hits/crits/misses, rather than a two-roll system (first to see if you hit, second to see if you crit). And for those born in the 90's: this "roll" refers to pen & paper RPGs where you physically rolled oddly-shaped dice. Anyone remember THAC0 and the insta-crit natural 20 roll? I digress...

MaxDPS.com has a nice Enhancement worksheet for examining this single-roll attack table. Notice that all possible scenarios are accounted for as a percentage: hits/crits, misses/parries/dodges, etc. If you fiddle around with Crit %, you'll see that having more crit improves the quality of your landed hits by taking percentage points away from regular hits.

Since so many Enhancement abilities (Flurry, Shamanistic Focus, Unleashed Rage) are triggered by crits - not to mention raw DPS - it's important to be crit'ing as much as possible. Sure, having more +hit is nice, but having more crit impacts your overall DPS significantly more.

Note that you can also remove Dodge/Parry misses from the attack table by positioning, so always try to attack from behind!

Thinkin' DPS

While I've been doing a lot of thinking around armor lately (mostly for aesthetic reasons), the reality is that Enhancement Shaman are all about DPS - so I also need to also be thinking about weapons. Especially considering that while raiding/instancing, I'm typically near full health, only taking the occasional AOE damage.

Currently I've got two blues (Reflex Blades and Mag'hari Fury Brand), both with Crusader enchants. Not terrible, but we're still only looking at a base DPS of 103. It's looking like the best available (and predictably attainable) options for me are the Season 1 weapons, either Gladiator's Cleaver or Pummeler. With two of those equipped, base DPS would be 136.2. (Even just one Gladiator MH plus the Fury Brand OH ups my base DPS to 122.5.)

Problem: 36,000 honor plus 40 EOTS marks for both. Ouch. I think I have about 7,000 honor and 7 EOTS marks, and it's been painful to even get that far. :)

Patch 2.doh

Patch 2.4 news is pretty big on the Shaman front, specifically in regards to PvP viability. Sadly, some of these changes translate to significant PvE nerfs. For example, even though Shamanistic Rage now increases mana regained from 15% to 30%, the duration of the ability is reduced by half. Doh! I often use this to mitigate damage during boss and AOE fights (SR reduces damage taken by 30%), so the reduced duration is a serious PvE nerf.

Flametongue (both weapon imbue and totem) now cause a debuff that lowers healing on the target by 50% during a 5-second refreshable duration. Again, great for PvP, but kinda meh for PvE except on certain fights when bosses take healing in some form. Ghost Wolf cast time reduced to 2 seconds, so conceivably a fully talented Improved GW will make it insta-cast, good for PvP and perhaps for a soloing non-Enhancement Shaman, I guess. For Enhancement those points are still better spent elsewhere.

And the biggie - ZOMG Karazahn attunement removed.