Updated Enhancement for 3.3
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 12:00AM | Stoneybaby 
Patch 3.3 is a week old and there are a few minor tweaks to way we play Enhance. I ran some sims on Sunday night to get an idea what I wanted to do different for raids. I’m still undecided on one or two things but they’re mostly minor points right now.
Sims & Mana
I ran sims for boss-fights, no-adds, 7 min combat length with 20% variance, 5000 hours per run, full raid buffs. The most surprising thing I found was that my OOM time was consistently 0.0% which is good news because that gave some latitude on allocating mana talents in my spec.
A few of you noted in my previous 3.3 post about mana issues. I’m on that boat with ya: for the first time in recent memory mana is a factor, but it's only a matter of comfort level. I instinctively hit Shamanistic Rage when my mana gets low. I have an add-on that dings when I fall bellow 30% mana, let me tell you I abhor that ding. I need it but I hate it. I like my mana at nice safe comfortable levels. Heck, I don’t even like to have my gold reserves below a certain threshold though I rarely spend gold on anything. Those same conservation tendencies come through in my attitude towards mana consumption.
Take the need to redrop totems in high movement fights, add in a good-damage/high-mana-cost/short-cooldown Magma Totem, and then mix in an irresistible new AoE spell that comes at a steep mana cost and you’ve got one nearly OOM Enhance Shaman. I say nearly because I have yet to actually go OOM and there’s a distinct difference between going OOM and “nearly” going OOM.
And that my friends is the essence of it: it’s a comfort level thing. I’m not actually going OOM. But I’m not at my usual 50-80% full like I was for most of the expansion. It’s more like I’m swinging wildly between 10% and 100% every 60 seconds. As long as it’s every 60 seconds and there’ something for me to beat up with Shammy Rage up then I’m good to go.
Glyphs
I was thinking of glyphing for Fire Elemental and wanted to sim it, but unfortunately the Fire Ele glyph and totem spell are not included in the current release of EnhSim. The rule of thumb (is it just me or do you all flash to the opening scene of Boondock Saints when you use the term “rule of thumb”?) is: if the fight length is under 5 minutes then this glyph is a waste. The optimal fight for this glyph is a 7 minute duration with little or no boss movement to get the most out of it.
I decided not to glyph in FE for two reasons. First, I’m already using one glyph that is situational: Glyph of Feral Spirit. That’s a great one but it’s only effective every 3 minutes and I didn’t want to have 2 major glyph spots being conditional on pet usage. Second, Windfury made a comeback.
Yes, in an interesting turn of events Glyph of Windfury Weapon turned out to be a much greater damage increase than Glyph of Flame Shock. Bye-bye FS crits, hello heftier Windfury! This is of course due to Windfury Weapon scaling with weapon damage. As you get better weapons WF starts to retake it’s right place in our glyphing priority. I’m not sure where the break-even is to make the transition from FS to WF but I’d be willing to bet it’s a tradeoff between SP & weapon damage. Anyone feel like running sims and making a chart?
Fire Nova
The current thinking is this: On single targets Fire Nova is the filler spell; when all else is on cooldown, hit FN. On group of three or more move it up in your priority list to just below MW5_CL’s. I felt such a great pressure to use it last week, like it was the new toy and I absolutely HAD to play with it. Now that the initial new-spell-glow has waned it’s assumed it’s rightful status as filler spell. It still has that new-spell-smell but I'm using it judiciously.
Spec
1/1 SF & 1/2 ISS – I’m experimenting with this setup as opposed to the 0/1 SF + 2/2 ISS. The SF/ISS blended sims out as more efficient. We’ll see… I personally prefer the 2/2 ISS setup just from (again) a comfort level standpoint.
1/1 EF – now that this includes mana reduction for Fire Nova it’s become a good choice, I picked it up.
2/2 IFN – 20% damage increase and cooldown reduction make this a no-brainer. It’s easy to pick up by sacrificing points in the Enhance tree.
1/3 IS – Pull the points out of Improved Shields to feed the flames of FN.
Conclusion
After a 10 and 25 clear of ICC I can honestly say that I'm quite happy with the new spec. Mana is never an issue in 25s and is only an issue in 10s when I'm not actively monitoring it. Glyphing for WF weapon made a difference, as did staying true to my rotation and just using FN as filler. Things are looking good!
It turns out that I didn't get nerfed after all, I was just playing pretty poorly!
May al your hits be crits!
Reader Comments (23)
Just out of curiosity, what are your priorties for your rotation?
Hey there,
nice post. I like to read something about the roatation, because i think it has changed a little bit since i did some researches. I'm used to not use Flame Shock because Earth Shock does more dps, but now everyone tell me something about flameshock.
So please, answer to my comment (or write a new blog post), about your rotation and on what sources you use to say, that it's the best one
I have settled on the same spec after running some sims, for my gear level of 10 man raider and 3pcT9. It seems on 1 boss with a normal priority, EF or 2/2 Imp SS come out equal for me in terms of DPS. But on AOE trash situations when I simmed spamming magma and FN, EF came out better with moar DPS overall. I think it activates a lot on FN crits and reduces the cost of the FN spell so you can spam it for longer.
Then there is the question of Glyph of Fire Nova vs Feral Spirit which I will post something on when I've finished writing it!
Great info, thanks Stoney. So did you take Flame Shock totally out of your rotation now that you are not using the glyph? I'm assuming so.
Rotations post coming tonight! Ask and ye shall receive!
Rakhman, looking forward to your post on glyphs. Drop some ka-nowlegde on us.
As long as it gets all the ticks in FS does more damage than ES on average. Its not a huge gain or loss either way though. I'm lazy and use a macro that casts FS,ES,ES,ES.
I need to sim out some glyph changes. Last time I did it, LS actually came out ahead of WF, but with the new spec, It probably won't anymore.
Hey Stony, I'd like to see a rotation/priority post as well! I've been playing Resto mainly and I'm a bit out of touch on Enhance these days. However I just did 7k+ dps on the weekly raid and was #1. I haven't been #1 in ages....woah!
Good post. I made all the changes you mentioned a few days after patch and I've moved up on the meters considerably. At instances with lots of AOE (like VA), I am now always top dps.
I do spam Fire Nova more liberally than you though.
I'm still trying to figure my rotation, gems and glyphing myself. I'm up in the air about the FN glyph vs. the FS glyph. Do I want more damage on something that's going to be used more often or more AP on my wolves once every 3 minutes? That's assuming I save my trinkets until then too. I recently joined a new guild and I suddenly feel like a little fish in a big pond. I guess it's trial and error until I get something that feels right for me and my playstyle. I regemmed back to haste from AP and I'm going to try out the fire nova glyph with the respec suggested above for tonight's raid. Wish me luck!
Sorry for the delay in the rotations post; QT with the GF last night. Definitely up by tonight!
@Baelor, a macro is the best thing for shocks, but I believe you have one too many ES in what you listed there. Check out the link on the right under EnhancementMacros for the castsequence macro
Great job guys on knocking down the meters
@Laara, I’m interested to know how you liked the FN glyph. For boss fights the Feral Spirit glyph will be far better than FN for sure. Also I wonder how haste panned out vs. AP. I’m interested to hear what you liked/didn’t like. For my part I’m an AP stacker and I won’t use the FN glyph in my main spec.
I’ll say this, I am intrigued by Phil’s post in the comments here about a Trash-PvE spec and a Boss-PvE I really want to try this! Phil, that spec is sexy for trash!
The FN glyph was great on the trash mobs. My numbers were superb there with the aoe every 3 seconds but overall I decided to go back to AP stacking and sticking with my FS glyph. In a raid, it's not the trash numbers that matter. Not to mention having it available that often took a toll on my mana pool and I really don't need it that often on boss fights.
Dear lord how the rotation has changed!
Hehe thanks for the plug Stoney! Still rocking that spec as my secondary, and loving it. It's super fun on trash, and my guild is actually still progressing through ToGC25... so it's really shining in there as well. Was toying with the spec last week on a couple Deathwhisper attempts (took us 5-6 tries to get the hang of it), but ultimately decided I was better off in the single target spec burning adds down one at a time.
But I think I will keep that secondary spec for quite a while, for the fun factor. It's a game, after all, right? And I haven't enjoyed any other use of my secondary spec more!
@Laara: wondering why you decided to switch to haste gems and the FN glyph at the same time? I believe haste benefits a single target build much more than multi.
I've decided to run with the FE glyph, just to see how it works out.
pulled 8k on saurfang the other night, with FE putting up 9% of my dps, vs magma, doing 4pc. being that FE is up for 2 mins, then down for 3, and if I'm doing that, Magma is down for 2 and uo for 3, I figure the switch to the FE was an decent choice. sure, I see the math, and I can understand that it's fairly conditional, but hey, 2 mins on a 5 min cd, I'm dropping him every chance I get, smashed the heck outta trash :D
now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this will do more dps than not glyphing him.
I was more trying out of curiostiy, because everything I've read has put it down to math or a sim, without even trying it.
but hey, I've never rolled a huntard, and always wanted to play a pet class.
@Olly: Are your Saurfang kills over 5 minutes? If not then the FE glyph is wasted. You can drop FE for almost every attempt now with it's shortened CD of 10 mins. Though the glyph would let you drop it for trash more...
I wasn't present for my guild first :( but we killed Saurfang again last night and I was present this time. Took us 3 attempts, with the first two being 5:10 and 5:06 and the successful attempt being 4:30.
You mentioned you are using glyph of spirit wolves and glyph of windfury. What is the 3rd glyph you are rocking? I have taken some time away from enhance and am not sure if there is a clear number 1 that you are not mentioning because everyone knows about it
Just wondering how I would spec a 2/2 Imp SS because I need 1/1 SF to be able to get to the next tier. So you either have to take it or waste a point in something else and not have enough to get everything you want in Elemental. I guess you could add to Imp Shields and lose a point in something over in Elemental.
@Phil yeah, we're over 5 mins, but through some very careful tanking, we got the achieve off him
I'm curious to see how long fights in the new wings will be though.
I'm not sure about marrowgar, but FE works on deathwhisper.
on the other side, it's a little underutilised on gunship.
I was wondering if its still optimal to stack haste? i'm stacking haste now i have about 594 and lead my guild in dps ranging from 4-7k in 10 mans, but i see you going AP
If mana as enhancment shaman in pve has ever been a problem even with fire nova in the equasion then you are retarded... Improved storm strike and shocks -30% mana cost shoudl ensure you never, and i mean never go oom more then once every 2-3 minutes and the cooldown on shamanistic rage is 1 min so unless you have the tier10 set bonus theres no reason you even need to use shamanistic rage everytime it's off cooldown....i use it once every 5 mins most the time, but starting tommorow im using alot more with my new tier 10 set bonus.
If put to it's full potential, with a good player who knows what ability to use next in certain situations considering shamans don't really have a set rotation but a complex one depending on the situation....haste stacking > attack power stacking.....why haste? cuz haste increases the rate of maelstrome procs...how much haste? anything above 600 is decent.....enough to say that lighting bolt in a single target encounter is your 2nd best damage output after your normal melee attacks.... when more then one target is involved...the situation changes....chain lightning and fire nova step up to main abilitys in this case...
Any usefull macro's for this that would go down well? + any rotation?
thanks
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