Look out... for the force without form...

Enhance shammy time!

Sorry, Fedaykin, took me a while to look up some enhance shammy blogs...

This guy is good. At least, hes in arena, and winning with enhance... which impresses the hell outta me...

Just to understand how bad enhance shammies are in arena... a quote from mr. nerf.

"According to Gangbank Armory, I'm the 3rd Enhancement Shaman in 3vs3 on my ladder (Cataclysme) with 1705, first for Alliance. Cataclysme is considered for French-speaking people as Cyclone for UK. It is just sad that I'm this high in this rating with just 1k7. It's showing clearly where Enhancement Shaman is in the food chain now. As this PTR will probably last at least 2-3 months, I can't wait to see the projects Blizzard have for Shamans."

3rd on the ladder and only 1705? Weep for enhance shammies... WEEP!

And another decent shammy blog, from the raiding enhance POV...

K... so over the weekend, herk talked me into doin the Ogrila attunement quests for my mage and shammy. Now, at this point, the enhance shammy might as well be wearing brightly colored poo... that's how bad her gear is. Meanwhile, Majeure, my love, is all epicced out, and floating around tier 5 in terms of pve readiness. When she ran BM and Arc, she beat the other dps by about 35%.

So why did I end up using the shammy to cull the inbred mountain gron population? Guys... it was just sick. We were four manning these things. Start on Grulloc. Herk's druid healing, our lock friend, anda decent pug warrior. First try, we all but wipe, herk blows his combat rez the first time the tank dropds, and at the end, only herk's druid is standing. And this is with Maj, threat capped, doin insane damage.

So we try again, with the shammy. And Grulloc folds like a plastic chair at a weight watcher's meeting. Shammy, fire elemental, totems... off heals... shammies just bring more. Bloodlust.. oh lord. Anyway... Magebert logged in, and came by to help out, so the quests were easy after that. But still..

I felt so humiliated for Majeure. WHY BLIZZARD? WHY?

I think its takin me a while to get the hang of frost dps in pvp. But by goddamn sure not in pve. Still, Unbound > Majeure in boss fights.

K, since electrons are cheap... basic, remedial information on Enhance shammies. And the reason shammies and hunters hate each other. BTW... Doom, if ya think ganking hunters in BG's is fun for a rogue, try it as an enhance shammy. We kill faster, and hava ranged snare. By the time they notice us, its too late...

Part the first... weapons. Prior to 70, most shammies use green weapons. Why? Cuz blizzard hates us. No, seriously. You get... the Maghar Fury Brand. A fist weapon. That's it for gear between 60-70 unless you run a crap load of MT for the OTHER slow fist weapon.

According to elitist jerks, and I have no reason to doubt them, for each 10% increase in weapon slowness, you get 3% more damage main hand, and 2% off hand. So... a 60dps 2.6 speed fist or axe beats out a 80dps 1.3 dagger.

Now this is based on two shammy abilities... first is windfury. The problem with windfury is that it has a 3 second cooldown. To maximize damage, best to put windfury on both main and off hand. However, the off hand procs will also trigger the cooldown, giving a sorta diminishing return. The faster the weapons, the more often your attacks will fall inside the windfury cooldown, nerfing your damage. Add to this stormstrike, which you should time to fall outside the WF procs...

For pvp, Ima experimenting with frost on the off hand for the snare. Its murder on locks :) But still, it reduces my damage, since WF really does insane damage, even on an offhand proc, as the wf attack power bonus isn't halved with the rest of the offhand damage...

The other reason slow weapons are the pwnsauce is stormstrike... which ISN'T normalized, like almost every attack in the game. You getta stormstrike every 10 seconds or so. Make it count by hitting em with the biggest, nastiest thing you can find. A 1.3 speed 60 dps weapon will do half the stormstrike damage that a 2.6 speed 60 dps weapon will.

K... for non weapons. Hunters suck. Blizzard decided to itemize mail with hunters first in mind, and enhance shammies last. At least hunters can rip off cat druid and rogue leather... enhance shammies gotta steal from bear form druids, and end up with +def items...

In short, Blizz decided its a lot easier to make items with +attack power and +crit than two sets of items, some with lotsa str and others with lotsa agility. The problem for shammies is that we want +agility over +crit. 25 agil equals a point of crit for shammies, whereas it takes 40 for a hunter or rogue. Compare this to 22 +crit for a percentage of crit for all phys damage classes... and asa shammy, you really want +agil over +crit. Since that way you get +dodge and +armor as well, both good for melee classes.

The other problem, is that we want +str. One point of str = 2 points of AP. However, any piece of mail with +str is automatically gonna get DE'd if an enhance shammy isnt around, since +str is useless for hunters. I mean, really really useless.

So what do enhance shammies want? +Str, +Agil. What do hunters want? +Agil, +Agil, +Agil (you get the idea) then +AP, +Crit. What will enhance shammies settle for? yeah... hunter gear. Which always has too much +crit and not enough +agil. Why? Cuz Agil double stacks for hunters with +crit and +ap. So a +ap, +crit, +agil mail item will always be more valuable to hunters than to shammies. But shammies can use it, wheras a +str mail item just makes hunters mad. So blizz makes items with a shammy in the back (very back) of the mind, in the process nerfing them enough that hunters can't get uber agility items for SV builds. And everyone gets mad...

The major problem... blizz has an equivalency scale for items.

1 str = 1 agil = 1 +crit = 2 ap

So do hunters...

40 agil = 40 ap + 1.00 crit %

40 +crit = 1.82 crit %

And then shammies...

20 str = 40 ap

20 agil = 0.80 crit %

20 +crit =0.91 crit %

And the three scales doan match... I doan really see a simple fix tho. But fun game... "You can have 100 points to spend on your mail chest... whatcha buy?"

Hunter = 100 agil (100 AP, 2.25 crit %)

Shammy = 75 str, 25 agil (150AP, 1.0 crit%)

I'll bitch about the futility of shammy crit later...