Contents
You may easily jump to a topic by searching for the Section Number next to each heading.
I. Frequently Asked Silly Questions
II. FlameTongue Weapon in Patch 2.3
III. Windfury Totem or Grace of Air in a group?
IV. Windfury Mechanics
V. Weapon Enchants
VI. Boot Enchants - Agility vs Run Speed
VII. Shocks/Elemental Damage
VIII.1 Itemization - Stat Weights
VIII.2 Itemization - Using Stat Weights
VIII.3 Itemization - Haste Rating
VIII.4 Itemization - Hit Rating
VIII.5 Itemization - Intellect and Mana/5
VIII.6 Itemization - Off-Hand Weapons
VIII.7 Itemization - Main Hand Weapons
VIII.7.1 Is 2H viable for PvE DPS?
VIII.8 Itemization - Relics
VIII.9 Itemization - Gems
VIII.10 Itemization - Meta Gems
VIII.11. Itemization - Trinkets
VIII.12 Itemization - Weapon Expertise
X. Useful Links and Addons
XI. Simulators and Modeling
XII. Totem Twisting
XIII. Swing Timer
XIV. Consumables
XV. Dealing with Threat
XVI. Evaluating Enhancement Performance in a Raid
XVII. Changelog

I. Frequently Asked Silly Questions
Asking any of these questions is likely to get you flamed and laughed at because they've been asked hundreds of times. All the info you need to figure this stuff out should be in this post.

* What weapon should Enhance shaman use on the Kael'Thas fight?
* Is an Elemental Devastation build worth more DPS than a 0/45/16 build?
* Is weapon X better than weapon Y?
* Can you tell me how to increase my DPS?
* How much hit rating do I need?


Answers to the Silly Questions:

Think. The 2H Raid Viability section of this post clearly illustrates that a 2H is bad for PvE purposes. The Windfury mechanics section makes it clear that fast weapons are bad. You do the math from there.
No, no its not. See the elemental damage section of this post.
Use Yo's Simulator to compare the difference in your potential DPS using different weapon speeds/DPS values.
Read this post. Its not overly difficult, really.
Read the Hit Rating section of this post. There is no magical number. Really. Stop asking this.


II. FlameTongue Weapon in 2.3
Since everyone is asking, yes, FT will be a more viable OH weapon imbue in patch 2.3. Its not going to out DPS Windfury. The AP–>Spell Dmg talent change will make it easier for Shaman to find a good OH without having to carry around a low level green weapon. Before you debate this with us, please run a test for yourself on Yo!'s simulator (linked below).
More Info:

Post 1058
post 1095
Post 1101
Post 1107


III. Windfury vs GoA in a raid group?
Always use Windfury if the following conditions are True:

* A DPS warrior is in your group
* A warrior who is tanking is in your group
* A warrior is in your group
* If no warrior, more than 1 sword rogue is in the group

Grace of Air should be considered for use only if the above are false, and under these conditions:

* A feral druid tank is in the group (ie, bear... not kitty)
* A prot warrior is in your group on a non threat limited fight with high damage components
* Any combination of more than 2 hunter/druids is in the group


IV. Windfury Mechanics
Windfury Weapon was corrected in the 2.1 patch link Windfury on the main and off hands. At some point prior to that, a hidden/internal 3 second cooldown had been added to Windfury Weapon. As a result, OH procs now (correctly) trigger the cooldown on the MH. Despite this set back to shaman DPS (net loss of about 10-15% DPS for enhancement shaman), Windfury Weapon is still the best weapon imbue to use – even the developers admitted to as much in an IRC chat, when they said they have no intention to scale the other weapon imbues to match the power of Windfury. [Need a link to this, please PM me if you can find it]

Weapon Speeds play an important role in maximizing DPS from Windfury procs. The goal is to chain WF procs every 3 seconds, as soon as each cooldown ends. Both the OH and the MH need to be as slow as possible to achieve this(they do not need to be matched in speed, just as slow as you can get it). The idea is to reduce the number of swings made during the time that windfury is on cooldown. Since the cooldown is 3 seconds, weapons speeds are preferred to be close to that speed, generally this means 2.6 - 2.8 under current itemization. The idea is that a faster weapon would proc a WF, and then strike again within the cooldown window, which means that windfury would exit cooldown and your weapon would still be on some significant portion of its swing timer, unable to proc another WF.

Many shaman will correctly use a slow MH weapon but use a fast OH such as a dagger, generally because its easier to find fast OHs than slow ones. This combination however means that your OH is much more likely to be the first one to hit outside of a WF cooldown and will "steal" the potential chance to proc, placing your main hand on lockdown. In order to maximize the potential for MH procs the OH needs to be as slow as possible.

The image below (courtesy of Yo!) illustrates this principle. You can see that as the MH and OH approach 2.6 speed (arbitrarily chosen as the cut off point for the scale) that the number of WF procs lost to the OH become lower, at around a 45% predicted loss rate. A fast OH with a slow MH combination has a higher rate of loss to the OH, at nearly 55%.


Windfury Proc Rate: When you are wielding a two handed weapon, or are using a sword and shield, your chance to proc windfury on any landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is 20%. When you dual wield weapons, the chance on each landed attack outside the 3-second cooldown is approximatedly 36%, if and only if both weapons are imbued with Windfury.
Original findings posted by Disquette
Analysis of the combat log shows that if you sum all hits, the proc rate while DWing is 20%, but that includes hits you make while inside the 3 second cooldown, which cannot actually proc WF. When you remove the ineligible hits the observed proc rate from the eligible hits becomes 36%.

The attack power bonus from Windfury is not reduced by the 50% OH damage penalty from Dual Wielding.
StormStrike and Windfury are not normalized - their damage will increase with slower weapons.

Do not use WF Totem instead of WF Weapon on your MH. While you may ~think~ it will help you avoid the WF cooldown problem, the totem isn't providing anywhere near the benefit you'll get from the weapon imbue.
WF Totem has the following issues: no elemental weapons bonus (40% multiple), only one extra attack (200% multiple), lesser AP bonus (scalar). Each MH WF Totem hit would be 100% extra damage or so compared to a normal attack, and has only one chance of proc'ing flurry, any weapon procs, and UR. Each MH WF imbue hit would be 280% extra damage or so compare to a normal attack, and has 2 chances of proc'ing those things.
In a very very simplified way of looking at it, you'd have to proc MH WF 2.8 as many times using the totem as you do using the imbue, for it to be worth it.


Calculating Windfury Damage
Courtesy of Hedin - Enhance Shaman: The Collected Works of Theorycraft, Vol I
Assuming that you have Weapon Mastery and Elemental Weapons:

* MainHand Damage
( + /14 * ) * 1.10
* MainHand Windfury
(+( + WindfuryAP + )/14 * ) * 1.10 * 1.40
* OffHand Damage
( + /14 * )/2 * 1.10
* OffHand Windfury (2.1 patch mechanic)
((+AP/14*)/2+(WindfuryAP + )/14 * )) * 1.10 * 1.40


V. Weapon Enchants
Mongoose > Crusader > Potency, generally. None of them are wrong, it comes down to personal choice and what your gear favors. Mongoose provides 4.8% crit per proc (and stacks with double procs on MH/OH), Crusader provides 60 Strength (120 AP) at lvl 70 per proc, and Potency is a constant +20 Strength (40 AP).

Some information on Executioner can be found here. Executioner currently does not stack from multiple hands, each proc when DWing will simply refresh the buff. It is unknown if this is intended. Obviously the value of Executioner will increase as you gain more -Armor gear. At entry raid level a shaman will probably gain more from dual Mongoose enchants. At high T5 content and beyond Executioner will be more valuable.

Evidence suggests that Mongoose and Executioner have nearly the same uptime and PPM, around 40-45%. Dual Executioner may have as high as 70-75% uptime, but again, the effect does not stack.


VI. Boot Enchants
For PvE, either [Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed] or [Enchant Boots - Cat's Swiftness] are going to be big payoffs. Increased run speed is hands down the best enchant you can get for PvE. Derivation:
Let D be your dps without a boot enchant. For the run speed to provide more benefit, we need:
(D+12A)(T-t) < (D+6A)(T-t/1.08)
which simplifies to
T < [(1-k)D + (2-k)6A]t/(6A)
where k = 1/1.08. For example, gives A = .16286, and so we have
T < (.07581D + 1.074) t
Using some actual data, a shaman that does betwen 900 and 1000 dps will have T < 76.88t
For 5 minutes, we would need t > 3.90 seconds and for 6 minutes we would need t > 4.68 seconds.
So for a 5 minute fight if you spend roughly 4 seconds moving between adds, running to the boss, etc, Run Speed provides a superior DPS benefit.

VII. Shocks/Elemental Damage
The ideal shock rotation in a Raid is Flame Shock - 6 sec - Earth Shock - 6 Sec - Repeat. With CoE on a mob, Flame Shock will generally outperform the damage of Earth Shock, even with the 20% nature dmg bonus, especially if you have rogues, moonkin, or elemental shaman (or a Romulo's Poison Vial) that are consuming your StormStrike debuffs faster than you can utilize the bonus for yourself.

Basic DPS calc with standard raid debuffs (CoE/Malediction - 13%, Misery - 5%, Scorch - 15%)
EarthShock: 675/12 * 1.18 = 66.4 DPS
FlameShock: 797/12 * 1.36 = 90.3 DPS

After the talent changes in 2.3 patch, and assuming 700 spell dmg (2300 AP):
EarthShock: (((.42 * 700)+675)/12)*1.18 = 95.3 DPS
FlameShock: (((.67 * 700)+797)/12)*1.36 = 143.5 DPS

Searing Totem is an often overlooked DPS asset. Anytime that crowd control will not be a factor, Searing Totem will produce around 75-100 DPS (when fully raid buffed vs debuffed mobs).

What about using an Elemental/Enhancement build with Elemental Devastation?
Please note, a new thread has been created specificly to discuss the merits of a 16/45/0 build vs the standard 0/45/16 build. Please take all discussion of Elem/Resto subspecs to this thread.

One of the more prevalent suggestions is that Enhance Shaman should optimize their DPS by speccing into Elemental for a 5 second shock cooldown, 5% increased shock damage, and of course the Elemental Devastation Talent, typically achieved by removing points from Mental Quickness and/or Improved Weapon Totems for an 18/43/0 build.

The logic of this build is fundamentally flawed. A properly geared Enhancement Shaman will have at most a 6% spell crit rate from Intellect. Under perfect conditions this will amount to a 1% crit gain from Elemental Devastation. Under not-so-perfect conditions, this talent would be negligible and worthless to an Enhancement shaman.
The probability of getting 2 crit shocks in a row at 6% spell crit, in order to sustain the extra melee crit bonus of Elemental Devastation, is 1-(1- 0.6)^2 = 0.118. That's about 12% uptime of an extra 1% crit from 3 talent points.

VIII.1 Itemization - Stat Weights
Extensive modeling, simulation, and empirical testing by Disquette (post), Pater (post), and Tornhoof (post) have led to the development of a system for determining the items which produce the highest DPS in a raid environment. The Enhancement Points (EP) system assigns weights or scores to each stat point. These EP weights can then be used by hand or in automated programs such as Enhancer, Pawn, LootRank and Thottbot to score items. Today, the best tool for determining these weights is to use the Crazy Shaman's DPS & EP Calculator produced by forums member Yo! Do note that the EP values provided by this simulator are valid for the current live version of the game (2.2) and will change slightly in patch 2.3. For those who cannot run the simulator, are unwilling to do the legwork, or just want to check their own numbers, the following sets of EP values are provided:

Entry Raid (T4) EP Values
If you have just hit level 70 or have been running some heroics for a while but have not started raiding KZ and 25 mans yet, your EP stat weights will be significantly different from shamans wearing high-end gear. Use these values until you have progressed into SSC/TK beyond the first 1-2 bosses. These values were arrived at using simulation of a shaman wearing best of slot quest and instance blues, with some heroic loot. Buffs were limited to what a 10 man raid would normally have - no Kings, no LotP, no flasks, and assumed lower quality gems and enchants.

Attack Power = 1 EP
Strength = 2 EP
Agility = 1.74 EP
Crit Rating = 1.97 EP
Hit Rating = 1.34 EP (explanation below at VIII.4 Itemization - Hit Rating)
Haste Rating = 1.28 EP (explanation below at VIII.3 Itemization - Haste Rating)
Armor Penetration = 0.22 EP
Expertise Rating = see the Expertise section below for an explanation

Middle Raid (T5) EP Values
These values are a generally agreed-upon set produced by the average of the most reliable closed-form model and iterative simulations across the breadth of shaman gearing possibilities. They rapidly become less accurate as you accumulate more pieces of T5-level gear. As such, using Yo's simulator to obtain individualized EP numbers is strongly advised. Note that Blessing of Kings increases the contribution of Strength and Agility by 10% and thus their EPs when it is active.

Attack Power = 1 EP
Strength = 2 EP (2.2 EP with Blessing of Kings)
Agility = 1.8 EP (2 EP with Blessing of Kings)
Crit Rating = 2 EP
Hit Rating = 1.4 EP (explanation below at VIII.4 Itemization - Hit Rating)
Haste Rating = 1.48 EP (explanation below at VIII.3 Itemization - Haste Rating)
Armor Penetration = 0.28 EP
Expertise Rating = see the Expertise section below for an explanation

High Raid (T6) EP Values
These values were contributed by forum member Sebudai based on an end-game T6 gear set, essentially with best-in-slot items for all slots. These should be viewed as a rough estimate for shaman entering T6 content, and include Blessing of Kings.
Strength = 2.2 EP
Agility = 1.69 EP
Crit Rating = 1.74 EP
Hit Rating = 1.69
Haste Rating = 1.82
Armor Penetration = 0.35 EP
Expertise Rating = 3.18 (Yo's Simulator recently changed to give EP weights to Expertise Rating)

Weapon DPS EP Values
Pitbuller and Rob have shown that it is possible to convert weapon DPS into EP values. This is useful to compute the total EP of a weapon in order to compare two weapons, as seen in this post (link to where you or someone compared Netherbane to MG Cleaver). The following values are only valid for a 2.6 speed weapon. EP would need to be recalculated for any other speeds. These are presented here because 2.6 is the most common speed for weapons.

1 MH DPS = 9.03 EP
1 OH DPS = 3.70 EP

Careful! Only use these numbers for comparing weapons; do not use them for drawing other conclusions. For example, these numbers do not mean that 9 AP = 1 DPS for enhancement shamans. Why? Note the distinction between EP and AP. 9 AP will in fact increase your DPS by more than 1; just as 1 weapon DPS will increase your overall DPS by more than 1. To understand why, imagine that 1 weapon DPS increases your DPS by exactly 1 after glances, misses, dodges, and crits are accounted for. Now throw in Flurry, WF procs, and Stormstrike and realize that the weapon is hitting more often than the tooltip says it is, so you gain more DPS from the nominal weapon DPS.

VIII.2 Itemization – Using Stat Weights
First, you must make a decision whether or not to assume that you will have Blessing of Kings. As a general rule, Salvation and Might are superior buffs, so you can only expect Kings in a 25-man scenario. In this example, we’re comparing 25-man gear, so we’ll assume Blessing of Kings is active. Then, it’s a simple matter of looking at the stats available on each item, multiplying them by their attack power equivalence, and adding them all up:

[Valestalker Girdle]
+27 Agility (x 2 = 54)
+25 Stamina
+18 Intellect
Equip: Improves haste rating by 36 (x 1.4 = 50.4)
Equip: Increases attack power by 76 (x 1 = 76)
Total: 180.4 EP

[Girdle of the Tidal Call]
+35 Strength (x 2.2 = 77)
+30 Stamina
+20 Intellect
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 33 (x 2 = 66)
Total: 143 EP

So, Valestalker Girdle (180.4 EP) is a larger increase to melee DPS than Girdle of Tidal Call (143 EP); for our purposes, we’ll say that makes it a better item. Note that values are not assigned here to Stamina or Intellect; these stats do carry some value for raiding enhancement shamans, but any assignment of value to them would be arbitrary and is for each individual shaman to decide on her own.

Now lets compare two weapons using the weapon EP values.
[Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver]
97.5 DPS (MH: x9.03 = 880.4) (OH: x3.70 = 360.75)
+27 Stamina
Equip: Improves hit rating by 10. (x1.4 = 14)
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 19. (x2 = 38)
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 12.
Equip: Increases attack power by 30. (x1 = 30)
Total MH EP = 962.4
Total OH EP = 442.75

[Netherbane]
96.5 DPS (MH: x9.03 = 871.4) (OH: x3.7 = 357)
+25 Agility (x2 = 50)
+21 Stamina
Equip: Increases attack power by 40. (x1 = 40)
Total MH EP = 961.4
Total OH EP = 447.05

Comparing the two weapons we can see that the difference in the MH for each weapon is relatively minor with a 1 EP difference, but in the OH the Netherbane performs better with a 5 EP difference.

VIII.3 Itemization – Haste
Haste Rating will directly increase the contribution of white swings to your DPS - 1% Haste will generate 1% more auto attack DPS. Prior to patch 2.2 Haste Rating became the superior stat, but the 2.3 patch reduced its EP value closer to that of Hit Rating.

Modeling indicated weapons hasted between 1.51 and 1.41 speed will actually experience a sharp decrease in potential Windfury DPS. The range of 1.51- 1.41 speed was believed to cause the main hand to always finish a swing just before the end of a WF cooldown, making you wait longer for the next eligible swing that can proc WF. If hasted in this period for a long duration, you could expect WF DPS contribution to decrease. However, you'll also experience many more white swings during that time, and so the loss of potential WF procs should be offset by the increased white DPS. It is no longer believed that the 1.5 to 1.4 hasted speed will actually cause any decrease in DPS - you should notice an overall increase.

There is no need to worry about the 1.51 - 1.41 hasted weapon range. The original claims about the supposed DPS loss had done no empirical or simulated testing to back up their modeling. More recent testing has indicated that whatever potential WF DPS is lost because of swing timer issues is more than made up for by the gigantic leap in autoattack DPS.

VIII.3 Itemization - Hit Rating
Enhance Shaman do not require large amounts of Hit Rating on gear. Effectively, because we can get a large quantity of +Hit from talents (9%), our special attacks (windfury and stormstrike) are already hit capped. All the extra +Hit rating on your gear is going toward improving white damage only, which typically comprises between 45%-50% of your total damage. When you consider the itemization costs of hit rating compared to crit rating and AP, which directly impact 90% of a shaman's total damage, you can see why hit rating is given lower precedence. Take the talents to hit cap your specials, any hit rating on gear after that is icing on the cake.

A common misconception is that you "have to hit before you can crit." This is a fallacy and illustrates a misunderstanding of the attack table. (Note that this is in reference to white damage which uses a single roll system.)

A second misconception is that a miss is a "missed opportunity for a WF proc" and that more Hit Rating will generate more WF procs. This misconception is generated from the flawed assumption that all swings are possible WF procs. However only swings that are outside of the WF cooldown are eligible to proc WF. A good portion of your autoattack hits will never be capable of producing WF procs. A 5 minute fight with no flurry would see 115 white swings with a 2.6 speed weapon. A Shaman might look at that and think that 0.36 * 115 = 41 possible WF procs, but that is incorrect since each successful proc locks out 1-2 hits that follow, shrinking the pool of actual eligible hits. It is actually quite difficult to calculate the number of attacks that you *should* have producing WF in a given amount of time, and that is why we rely on simulators to generate the EP value of Hit Rating.

There is no magic value of +Hit that an Enhance Shaman needs We need as much of every stat as we can get, but hit rating is just less important than the others. That's all it amounts to. Many top tier shaman raid with less than 100 hit rating on their gear and boast some of the highest DPS values recorded for our spec. (That does not mean that the goal is to have low hit rating either though.) Rogues and Warriors require large amounts of +Hit to be effective because of their energy/rage feedback system and because they do not have talents that can hit cap their specials before considering hit on gear. Enhance shaman have no such feedback system and are able to hit cap specials through talents - therefore, hit rating above and beyond your talents is nice to have, but is not a necessity.

VIII.4 Itemization - Intellect and Mana/5
Intellect on gear is not a significant source of DPS contribution. Pater has a short writeup exploring this here.
Mp5 is almost universally agreed to be a hunter stat that is wasted on enhance shaman gear. Note that the more you decide to contribute in a "hybrid" manner (healing to top off yourself and others) the mana pool will become slightly more important, but not such that you should sacrifice significant DPS upgrades to hold on to 15 Int on another item. The combination of Judgment of Wisdom (you are using JoW right?) and Shamanistic Rage (use it early, use it often) should prevent you from running out of mana even in full rogue leather gear - unless you're having to spot heal.

VIII.5 Itemization - OH Weapons
If you are unsure if weapon X is an upgrade over weapon Z, use Yo's simulator (linked in this post) to compare how your simulated DPS would differ using each weapon.

Patch 2.3 Update - Decapitator and Fool's Bane from KZ have been made one-hand and non unique, which will significantly improve early OH choices. Zul'Aman will also feature at least one 2.6 speed fist OH.

OH itemization is fairly poor early on, but recent changes in patch 2.3 have added several new options in KZ and ZA that will help fill the gaps. If you are not yet raiding, the best choices for OH in a WF/WF setup is a 2.6 speed Gladiator weapon from Arenas, a crafted Runic Hammer (2.4 speed) or a blue one-hand weapon available in several heroic instances (Auchenai Crypts last boss drops a 2.6 speed one-hand axe). Failing that, get yourself a green 2.6 speed off the Auction House.

If you are having poor drop luck or no desire to PvP, an epic dagger such as [Malchazeen] or [Guile of Khoraazi] (Consortium Rep) with FT should outperform a green 2.6 speed and possibly even the Runic Hammer with a WF/FT setup. You should still convert to a WF/WF setup as soon as you get a slow drop though.

In short:
OH = [Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver] > [Fury] > [Fool's Bane] > [The Decapitator] > [Runic Hammer] > epic dagger or anything else faster than 2.4

Non arena OH drops from heroics are:

* [Bloodskull Destroyer]
* [Boggspine Knuckles]
* [The Harvester of Souls]


VIII.7.1 Itemization - MH Weapons
The current top choices of end-game main hand weapons for Enhancement are:

* [Rising Tide]
* [Dragonstrike] or [Wicked Edge of the Planes]
* [Syphon of the Nathrezim]
* [Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver] or [Merciless Gladiator's Pummeler]

These weapons are all extremely close in DPS and additional stats. Orcs will always want to wield axes if available for the 1% crit benefit. Beyond that, of these five choices, Rising Tide, Syphon of the Nathrezim, and Dragonstrike (due to its proc) are the highest-DPS options, in roughly that order. Wielding any combination of these three items is roughly equivalent. For those looking for a more concrete mathematical approach to this question, you may compute EP values for these weapons with the itemization formulas above, or you may plug the weapons into Yo's sim and compare DPS output. (The Dragonstrike proc is equivalent to 66 passsive haste; the Syphon proc's value is unknown.)

Nov 7 Update Latest Patch 2.3 information has reversed the Orc racial changes and will now grant 5 Expertise, which is 1.25% reduction of parry/dodge. Orcs should therefore continue to value Axes above mace/fist.

2.x/2.y Weapon Speed Combinations
A frequently asked question is how to wield weapons with differing speeds but similar DPS values, such as using a Rising Tide and a Syphon - is it better to put one weapon in the main/off hand over the other? Simulation results indicate that it makes no difference which hand the slower weapon is wielded in. It appears that in general, a 2.x/2.y = 2.y/2.x.

VIII.7.2 Is a 2H weapon viable for Enhancement DPS?
2H weapons are strictly inferior for PvE DPS situations. Talents and mechanics of shaman DPS at lvl 70 are built around DW. 9% +Hit while DWing through a 0/42/19 build allows all special attacks to be hit capped through talents alone, while a 2H will only receive 3% of the hit benefit. DW also scales better with AP. 2h effectively gains (1.0 * 0.95 hit rate) = 0.95 from AP and DW gains (1.5 * 0.74 hit rate) = 1.11 from AP. The more +hit you have (until we reach cap) the greater the difference between the two is. At a certain point (easily reached when raid buffed), this difference in gain from AP will outweigh the bonus base DPS of a 2H weapon over similar ilevel 1H weapons.

The second largest benefit you bring to your group is Unleashed Rage, and your Flurry and UR uptime will take a large hit from using a 2H, as strings of dodge/miss/non crits become compounded by a single, slower swing time. Threat concerns are even more problematic with a 2H because of large WF procs, requiring that you heavily pad your threat against a tank.

And finally, as mentioned in the Windfury Proc section, DW with WF on both weapons results in an increased chance to proc WF off either hand (36%). 2H weapons will not benefit from that increased proc rate.

To illustrate:

Note the differences here. 2H has a higher flurry uptime because DWing will consume the 3 charges faster, but the Uptime for UR is much higher for DW than 2H, leading to greater group synergy.

Derivation of the Unleashed Rage uptime:
UR Uptime = \\\\left ( 1 - (1 - \\\\text {crit\\\\%})^{ \\\\text{HitsP er10sec}} \\\\right ) \\\\times 100

HitsPer10sec = \\\\frac {10 \\\\times \\\\text{Num Wpns} } {\\\\text {Wpn Speed}} \\\\times (1- \\\\text {Miss Rate}) + \\\\frac {10 \\\\times \\\\text {Num Wpns} }{\\\\text {Wpn Speed} \\\\times \\\\left 1-0.3((1-(\\\\ text {Crit Rate} \\\\times \\\\text {Flurry}))) \\\\times \\\\text {Windfury} + 1}

\\\\text{Win dfury} = \\\\left(\ \\\begin{array}{l l}\\\\text{WF Proc Rate} & \\\\text{Wpn Speed} > 3 \\\\\\ \\\\\\ text{WF Proc Rate} \\\\times \\\\text{Wpn Speed}/3 & \\\\text{Wpn Speed} < 3\\\\end{array }\\\\right)

Flurry Uptime = \\\\left ( 1-(1- \\\\text{Crit Rate})^3 \\\\right ) \\\\times (1- \\\\text {Miss Rate})

VIII.8 Itemization - Relic Slot
The two best choices are [Totem of the Astral Winds] and [Stonebreaker's Totem]

A: Astral Winds EP = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Astral_Winds * Elemental_Weapons
B: Stonebreaker EP = Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3)
B1: Stonebreaker EP to WF = Percent_of_WF_Swings * Stonebreaker * Elemental_Weapons
B2: Stonebreaker EP to SS = Percent_of_SS_Swings * Stonebreaker
B3: Stonebreaker EP to white damage = Percent_of_white_Swings * Stonebreaker * (1 - MissRate)

Physical Damage breakdown:
Assuming two 2.6 speed weapons, flurried to 2.0 speed, means you get around 10 white swings per SS cooldown. 40% of those swings will be WF, meaning 10 white swings, 2 SS swings, 4.8 WF swings. 10+2+4.8 = 16.8
Percent_of_WF_Swings = 4.8/16.8 = 0.286
Percent_of_SS_Swings = 2/16.8 = 0.119
Percent_of_white_Swings = 10/16.8 = 0.595
(This breakdown is conservatively in favor of the Astral Winds Totem. Many WWS parses from raids show the balance slightly shifted away from WF towards white swings)

A: 32
B1: 44
B2: 13
B3: 65 * (1 - Missrate)

A = Stonebreaker_Uptime * (B1 + B2 + B3).
32 = Uptime * (44 + 13 + [ 65 * (1 - Missrate) ]
Let Missrate = 19%
Then Uptime = 29%

As miss rate decreases, so does the required uptime to break even. An enhancement shaman with +9% hit from talents and no hit rating on gear would see a 19% miss rate against boss mobs, resulting in a required uptime of 29%.
Changing some values for more hit gear, we find that even if your miss rate is better than 2% the required uptime is 26.4%. This gives us a fairly good window of possible required uptimes for the Stonebreaker buff over a wide variety of gear, with a good conservative estimate being 30%.

Now what does it take to achieve a 30% uptime? Here’s a simplified formula for determining this.

(Seconds per Shock) = (Stonebreaker proc chance) * (1-Spell miss rate) * (Stonebreaker duration) * (1/Stonebreaker Uptime)

(Seconds per Shock) = (0.50)*(1-0.14)*(1/0.30) = 14.3

This means that on average, a shock every 14.3 seconds is the minimum needed to maintain 30% uptime on the totem buff and thus make it come out ahead of the Astral Winds totem.

Conclusion: The Stonebreaker totem should be superior to the Totem of Astral Winds on average if the shaman can shock at least once every 14 seconds. Note that Stonebreaker has a 10 second hidden cooldown.

VIII.9 Itemization - Gems
Best bets are to use
Red socket: [Bold Living Ruby].
Yellow socket:[Inscribed Noble Topaz].
Blue socket: [Sovereign Nightseye].

The [Rigid Dawnstone] is always the wrong answer for enhance shaman.
The [Bold Living Ruby] will always be better then [Bright Living Ruby] in a raid environment due to Blessing of Kings.

VIII.10 Itemization - Meta Gems
[Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], Best choice. This gem will scale with your crit rating. Without accounting for the agility on the gem, it will raise your DPS by 0.03 * Crit Rate. At 30% crit rate this amounts to nearly a 1% gain in damage dealt.

[Thundering Skyfire Diamond] gives 240 haste rating for 6 seconds. This is your second choice for meta gems as it appears to have a 1 minute cooldown. Shaman with lower crit rates (20% or lower, geared in heroic/blue gear, just starting 25mans and KZ) will benefit slightly more from this gem over the RED.

[Swift Skyfire Diamond] will yield a very minor DPS increase - same for [Potent Unstable Diamond]

VIII.11 Itemization - Trinkets
Trinket gains are converted using the EP formulas above in the itemization stat weights from above, and listed as greatest EP at the top.

* [Dragonspine Trophy] 160.25 EP = ( 40 + ( 325 * HasteRating * 10 * 1.5 / 60 ))
Assuming a 1.5 PPM
* [Berserker's Call] New drop from Zul'Aman. 150 EP = 90 + ( 360 * 20 / 120)
* [Madness of the Betrayer] 142 EP = ( 84 + ( 20 * HitRating ) + ( 2.4 * 10 / 60 * 300 * ArmorPenetration ))
Using 2.4 PPM (see here) the uptime is 40% giving a passive -120 Armor
* [Tsunami Talisman] 141 EP = (( 10 * HitRating ) + ( 38 * CritRating ) + ( 340 * 10 * 0.9 / 60 ))
Assuming a 0.9 PPM
* [Ashtongue Talisman of Vision] 137.5 EP = ( 275 * 10 * 0.5 / 10 )
Corrected in patch 2.3 to have the listed 50% proc rate, and observed at this rate on the PTR.
* [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] 120 EP
At a full stack, since this will take 10-15 sec to achieve, the EP might be considered less valuable.
* [Bloodlust Brooch] 118.3 EP = ( 72 + ( 278 * 20 / 120 ))
* [Hourglass of the Unraveller] 109 EP = (( 32 * CritRating ) + ( 300 * 10 * 0.9 / 60 ))
Assuming a 0.9 PPM
* [Abacus of Violent Odds] 96 EP = ( 64 + ( 260 * HasteRating * 10 / 120 ))
* [Drake Fang Talisman] 84 EP = ( 56 + ( 20 * HitRating ))
* [Kiss of the Spider] 79 EP = (( 14 * CritRating ) + ( 10 * HitRating ) + ( 200 * HasteRating * 15 / 120 ))
* [Romulo's Poison Vial] 49 EP = ( 35 * HitRating )
And some unknown value from the nature damage proc, which is usually 1-2% of your damage. Unless you're totally starved for +Hit this probably isn't a trinket for shaman. Especially as you become better geared the proc will become less and less of your total damage done since it cannot scale with your gear. This trinket was most certainly designed with warriors and rogues in mind, not shaman.
* [Darkmoon Card: Wrath]
According to Thottbot comments the value of this card is low once your buffed crit rate is 30% or higher.


VIII.12 Itemization - Weapon Expertise
Patch 2.3 will change all weapon skill rating into weapon expertise rating, which converts into Expertise skill at a rate of 3.95 expertise rating:1 Expertise, and reduces the chance for your target to dodge and parry by 0.25% per point of Expertise. [Shoulderpads of the Stranger], which used to provide 10 dagger skill rating, will now provide 10 expertise rating (all weapons).

The parry reduction element of Expertise will have only marginal use in raid settings: mobs cannot parry attacks made from behind. Many bosses randomly turn to cast attacks and can parry while turning, but this possibility is too random to value significantly. Unlike parry, mobs can dodge attacks from behind and Expertise is currently the only way to reduce the number of dodges. The dodge reduction element of Expertise will vary from encounter to encounter: it will be useless against bosses that are constantly casting (e.g. Shade of Aran, High Astromancer Solarian, Reliquary of Souls) because mobs cannot dodge while casting, but useful against mobs that do not cast or only cast instant spells. Expertise has been shown to affect yellow damage as well as white damage, so under the second circumstance it is actually more useful than hit rating for enhancement shamans.

We still don't know how Expertise's dodge and parry reduction affect the one-roll white attack table. For now, the community is assuming that it converts dodges and parries into hits that do not have a chance to crit. On the other hand, we are now confident that Expertise will allow yellow attacks to crit, since they are resolved through a two-roll system. Thus, we will estimate expertise rating to be similar to the weight of hit rating, with some exceptions.

First, expertise rating is only useful in chunks, because there is no concept of having 2.5 Expertise - the Skill values are all rounded down to whole integers. To get around this, you first need to sum up the expertise rating across all your items, divide by 3.95, take the floor, and multiply by 3.95 again. This gives you a "white hit rating" equivalency. Note that this makes expertise rating EP discontinuous. One expertise rating may be worth 0 EP because it is not enough to give you an extra skill point – e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 15 expertise rating – while a jump of two expertise rating at the same point may have a surprisingly high EP – e.g. you go from 14 expertise rating to 16 and thus 0.75% dodge reduction to 1.00% dodge reduction.

Next, we must account for the fact that Expertise, unlike hit rating, also effects the yellow damage from special attacks in addition to the white damage from auto-attacks. To correct for this, you need to multiply by the ratio of melee damage to white damage, or (Yellow % of damage + White % of damage)/(White % of damage). Also, because white crit rate as a percentage of landed swings decreases as hit rate goes up, but with the two-roll system, yellow crit rate stays constant, we must adjust for that. Finally, we must multiply by the EP of 1 hit rating, to convert our "hit rating" equivalency into EP.

Our final expertise calculation is:
EP = \\\\lfloor \\\\frac {\\\\sum {\\\\text Expertise}}{3.95} \\\\rfloor \\\\times 3.95 \\\\times \\\\frac {\\\\text {Yellow\\\\%} \\\\times (1 + \\\\text{Crit& #92;\\\%}) + \\\\text{White \\\\%}}{\& #92;\\text {White\\\\%}} \\\\times \\\\text {Hit EP}

Example Calculation:
Assume that we are examining a new piece of gear that will bring our total Expertise Rating to 17, Hit EP is 1.4, Crit% is 30%, White% of DPS is 50%, Yellow% of DPS is 40% and the remaining 10% is shocks and searing totem.

Expertise EP = \\\\lfloor \\\\frac {17}{3.95} \\\\rfloor \\\\times 3.95 \\\\times \\\\frac {40 \\\\times 1.30 + 50}{50} \\\\times 1.4
Expertise EP = 45.12
Note that this value is not the EP stat weight of Expertise Rating, it is the total sum worth of the Expertise Rating on all your gear.

X. Useful Links

* DisqoDice - written by Disquette this addon will display nicely sync'd bars illustrating shock, stormstrike, and windfury cooldowns, and a new watershield timer to take advantage of the new watershield in 2.3.
* Enhancer, available at WowAce. This in-game mod will display EP tooltips, can import personal EP values from Yo!'s simulator, and can show a wide variety of shaman data in-game such as WF cooldown, totem twisting timer, etc.
* LootRank is useful for comparing gear based on statweights. This page includes all the new ZA gear as well as support for Haste, -Armor and Expertise.
* Pawn Addon Latest version now supports Haste and -Armor effects.
This will add a "rating" to your item tooltips.

Sample Pawn string to use (uses the Mid-Raid EP values):

* ( Pawn: v1: "EP (Mid-Raid)": RedSocket=17.6, CritRating=2, Strength=2.2, MetaSocket=24, Agility=2, HitRating=1.4, HasteRating=1.48, BlueSocket=17.6, YellowSocket=17.6, Ap=1, ArmorPenetration=0.25 )


XI. Simulators and Modeling
The java applet by Yo! is at this time the most current and accurate sim available to the community.

* Yo!'s java applet : Crazy Shaman's DPS & EP calculator Currently under development, may have bugs. This sim will also help create custom EP values for you based on *your* gear. Required: This java applet requires Sun JDK 6 and will not work with earlier versions of Java. (does not work with OS X Leopard because of this requirement)
* Tornhoofs EquipOptimizer
* joelpt's .NET simulator: The author is currently working on a new version of this sim.


XII. Totem "Twisting"

18 Oct Update Eyonix posted that at some point in the near future the ability to twist totems will be removed.

You may be aware that Windfury Totem places a 9 second duration buff on party member's weapons to imbue them with the extra attack mechanic. This can be manipulated to allow Grace of Air or Tranquil Air totems to be placed "simultaneously" with Windfury Totem. Note that this is very likely NOT an intended behavior by the developers since it gives the benefit of two totems from a single element, and will likely be changed in the future if this sees widespread use.
You'll most likely want a macro to do this if you so choose. A common one looks like this:
/castsequence reset=8 [combat] Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem
Totem Twisting has both its advocates and its detractors, it is not an agreed upon mechanic or strategy.
Pros:

* Party gains 88 Agility or extra threat reduction
* Overall DPS of the party is increased

Cons:

* The shaman is placed on constant global cooldown, impairing his ability to decurse, purge mobs, spot heal
* The mana cost of refreshing 2 totems every 9 seconds while Stormstriking is roughly 14,000 mana every 2 minutes. This will limit the ability to use shocks, and requires very careful timing of Shamanistic Rage, may require JoW from a paladin, and definitely requires 5 points in Totemic Mastery.
* Until you are very practiced with the technique you will find your attention devoted to watching the timers which means you will be less attentive to changes in the game environment
* Latency or simply being late to refresh the Windfury totem will cause the Windfury buff to run off your party's weapons, which means they are losing opportunities for a Windfury proc. The potential DPS gain from a GoA totem might be offset by the potential for a loss in Windfury procs.

XIII. Swing Timer
Shaman instant cast spells such as shocks and poison/disease cleanse do not reset the swing timer.
Certain things do however - obviously stopping to cast a LHW or HW will reset the swing timer, and so will War Stomp for Tauren. Less obvious is the T5 2pc set bonus - an instant cast LHW proc. It has been confirmed that using the Invigorated proc to cast a heal will reset your swing timers. Natures Swiftness will also reset your swing timer when you use up the buff for a cast.

XIV. Consumables
Translating the benefit of consumables using the Pawn values above we can assess DPS consumables in order of greatest benefit:
Enhance Shaman: The Collected Works of Theorycraft, Vol I

* [Flask of Relentless Assault] 120 EP
* [Elixir of Major Agility] 110 EP
* [Fel Strength Elixir] 90 EP
* [Haste Potion] [(1.48 * 400) * 15]/120 = 74 EP
* [Elixir of Major Strength] 70 EP
* [Insane Strength Potion] (120*2*15)/120 = 30 EP

The flask is clearly more expensive however so the Agility pot may make more sense for farm content, keeping the flasks for progression raids.

XV. Dealing with Threat
Enhance Shaman are severely threat capped - not as badly as a Ret Paladin, but worse than a DPS warrior. With no active threat reduction we rely on buffs, items, and strategy to reduce our threat. Methods to reduce your threat are listed below in order of Most to Least effective. Remember that threat reduction is multiplicative, not additive.

* Spirit Weapons - Enhancement talent that reduces melee threat by 30%. This is a staple talent for our spec. If you don't have this, you're walking the crazy line. Most effective since its always on and isn't reliant on a paladin.
* Blessing of Salvation - 30% threat reduction. If you only have one paladin in your raid, this is the buff you need. If you don't have a paladin in your horde raid, you need to pressure your leadership to recruit one.
* [Prism of Inner Calm] - until Blizzard changes this the item is worth around 10% threat reduction as long as your raid buffed crit rate is over 30% (and by the time you're killing Vashj it damn well better be). Keep an eye on this as Blizzard may buff it at some point.
* Strategy - A lot of this depends on your tank and his TPS generation. If your tank can generate around 800 TPS you can give him a 10k threat lead and then unload without much worry of catching up. I generally remain at around 80% of the MT threat as long as he's able to stay at that level of TPS. If you find yourself approaching the threat cap you should stop shocking first since they aren't affected by Spirit Weapons. A suggestion was made in this thread of "downranking" your weapons for a few seconds, allowing you to continue to provide Unleashed Rage to the group with lowbie weapons so that your threat isn't increasing.
* Battle Ankh - the improved ankh talent can certainly come in handy when clearing raid zones. You need to be extremely careful about pulling aggro however - if you pull and die, the mob will pick the next highest threat target to attack, which may not be the tank. A much safer method is to allow yourself to die to AoE, and have buffers primed to give you DPS buffs when you ankh. At that point you'll be free to take Blessing of Might if you didn't have it before, in order to make up for any buffs you lost.


XVI. Evaluating Enhancement Performance in a Raid
Determining if an Enhancement Shaman is performing to his potential is tricky for a raid leader as the damage output can be very random from one raid to the next. The following list is intended to assist raid leaders on where to focus their efforts.

* First and foremost, familiarize yourself with this article so that you can talk the talk with the shaman. You need to understand what Stats benefit them and what sort of weapons they need, as well as getting a good understanding of just how random our DPS can be.
* Examine your Enhancement Shaman on the Armory. Ensure that his gear meets the principles outline in this article. He should not have Hit gems, his gear should be properly enchanted for maximum DPS benefit, and he should be wearing the most appropriate gear for the spec. You may need to do some research on WoWHead or Thottbot to help make gear upgrade recommendations. He should not be trying to wear hybrid gear for spell damage or healing.
* Group buffs are the primary reason you're bringing this shaman and so you should check to make sure he's fulfilling that role. Using WWS you can check to see how many times a totem was dropped on a fight by viewing the Shaman's record for that event. Check the "Performed" section and see how many times a totem was dropped. Multiply that by 120 seconds and compare to the length of the fight. The estimated uptime should be pretty close. If there are several minutes of uncovered time, your shaman is not keeping totems down and your melee group is suffering. Unleashed Rage should ideally have 100% uptime which approximately requires a 30% crit rate fully buffed.
* Evaluating personal DPS contribution is tricky because it depends on armor level of the boss, your strategy on the boss, and the nature of the fight itself.

His spread of damage should follow a general trend though. Windfury attacks should account for 30-40%, Stormstrike for 10-12%. If its significantly less than that, the shaman may have forgotten to put Windfury on one or both weapons (or it ran out) or may not have been using Stormstrike on every 10sec cooldown.

Shocks should be anywhere from 0-15% of his damage depending on the threat situation or magic immunities. His shock damage should come from a roughly equal number of Flame and Earth shocks, indicating a good DPS rotation of Flame-Earth-Flame. A perfect rotation would have 10 shocks per minute of combat, but given interference with stormstrike and using GCDs for consumables we could consider 7 shocks a minute to be an acceptable range.

AutoAttack should make up the rest of his damage, normally 40-50%. There should be a minimal level of Parried attacks, indicating that he attacked from behind the boss.
* In the rare situation that you had two Enhancement shaman and need to compare their performance this becomes very difficult. You cannot simply say that they have 'similar gear', you will need to compare fully raid buffed stats including all group buffs for Hit, Crit, and Attack Power. Group composition is extremely important. If one shaman only had Trueshot Aura but the other had LotP and Battle Shout, the second shaman (all else being equal) should have a significant advantage over the other. Differences of 100 AP or 5% crit can easily explain large gaps in DPS output. Also check and compare Shock rotations and Stormstrike use. More often than not though, the culprit is group buffs or using an Elixir instead of a Flask.


XVII. Changelog

* 14 Jan 08 - Add clarification that Yo's Simulator requires Java 6.0
* 8 Jan 08 - Removed references to Lootzor since its a dead site, changed to LootRank.com as an alternative
* 7 Jan 08 - Added a note that all future discussion of Elemental vs Resto subspecs (16/45/0 vs 0/45/16) should be taken to a newly created thread for that purpose. Enhancement Cage Match: Two specs enter, One spec leaves
* 7 Jan 08 - updated elemental devastation section stating that shocks are now 10-15% of our damage.
* 3 Jan 08 - Added a changelog