How are Enh Shamans for raiding?

[zephyrrdragon 0]

Pretty straight forward question, how do Enh shaman fair for endgame PvE? 

I have been playing a Ret paladin for over 12 years and as much as I enjoy that class, I love playing horde (no paladins yet) and my friend and I want to raid again in vanilla. So shamans have felt like a fun class to me but I have never played one in classic, only wotlk and beyond.

Enh is my favorite playstyle and I wanted to ask those with experience on shamans, how good Enh is for raids. I only remember those that played hybrids it was always best to heal but I don't want to play a full time healer :(

Thanks for any advice and information :)

Edited March 3, 2017 by zephyrrdragon
Added info

[Moonsong 0]

According to this guide, the only thing you can offer to your raid as an enhance shaman is one debuff from one particular axe, which is not all that strong or interesting. Most probably people will not like stormstrike debuff on a boss. It looks like at 60's you have much more use out of enhance spec on BG's than in raids. Pve equipment, if i remember correctly, is dedicated for caster specs. Pvp rewards, in the other hand, are pretty strong for a typical windfuhrer.

 

Edited March 4, 2017 by Moonsong

[zephyrrdragon 0]

1 hour ago, Moonsong said:

According to this guide, the only thing you can offer to your raid as an enhance shaman is one debuff from one particular axe, which is not all that strong or interesting. Most probably people will not like stormstrike debuff on a boss. It looks like at 60's you have much more use out of enhance spec on BG's than in raids. Pve equipment, if i remember correctly, is dedicated for caster specs. Pvp rewards, in the other hand, are pretty strong for a typical windfuhrer.

 

Thanks for the response and info! Will check video when I get home!

[gotmilk0112 10]

Yeah, as Enhancement, you're only going to be there to buff one of the melee groups, and to swing Nightfall for the magic damage debuff. And each raid will really only have one Enh shaman, unless you're in a non-serious raiding guild.

[Ripztorn 0]

But if you get to be that one enh shaman, it is a blast. You will not do the most dps, but you will be useful to that one dps group. You will also want to get the Nightfall axe made. The enh shaman gets the Sulfurus too eventually if your guild is that cool. Most are. Get 300 fr as soon as you can. You will also want a full + heal set , and even sp/heal gear. It is my favorite class. Don't tell anyone though, then everyone will want to be that one enh shm.

[Maxvla 0]

The main problem with enhancement in vanilla is glancing blows. Caster classes have a much greater penalty on glancing blows than melee classes, and unlike paladins, shamans are considered a caster class. One swing you could white hit for 500, the next you could glance for 75. Weapon skill can reduce the glancing damage penalty, but that is difficult to get as a shaman except with axes (Orc w/ edgemasters). Other weapon types, even higher dps/stats would be a large downgrade from an axe.

[Undertanker 88]

Glancing blows are not 15% of normal damage.  This is a huge exaggeration.    Edgemasters +Dagger / Sword / Axe does not include 2H so Orc racial +ax doesn't apply either.

Troll would help push more Nightfall procs in PVE, Tauren has a nice Warstomp CL combo for PVP.

Many people do not understand the synergy of Nightfall for specific bosses.   Your Ret/Enhancement should not be the only one with a Nightfall crafted.  All of your tanks in your guild should also have one.   

Nightfall has a 2PPM based on auto attack only. 17 Autos in 1 minute.  Giving it an 11.66% proc rate.  Or a 16.66 % uptime unbuffed for Hunter / Warrior Ret / Shaman.  Using Counter Weight Stone and +1% head/lead/glove enchants will give 6% attack speed (3.29 second delay).  While to proc rate is still based off the BASED 3.5 speed, the proc rate will not adjust, but your uptime will increase from an average of 10 second uptime out of every 60 seconds to 10.5 seconds giving a 17.66% uptime per person swinging the Axe before factoring in class global cooldowns (Tanks using Hamstring, Hunters using Raptor Strike, Shaman Storm Strike and Flurry, Paladin using SoR)  Storm Strike should increase your Main Tanks threat/damage as Thunderfury proc will easily consume both 20% nature damage charges.

Shaman's can keep an average 31% uptime of Nightfall:

Spoiler

 

Shaman's Windfury Weapon/totem of 20% to give 2 extra attacks, 3 storm strikes in 1 minute, Flurry proc based off of a 33% crit rate buffed (using this for general reference give or take a few percent based on if you use elemental stones).  You hit at 0 seconds and use stormstrike, so 2 hits at 0 second.  Additive percentage that flurry was expected by now, 66% chance of having a crit happen (we'll assume we have to hit 100% before additional damage attacks are considered).  @3.29 seconds you hit again (3rd hit) with an auto and now we've crit starting Flurry, we we get 30%+6% speed.  We are now at 2.24 speed delay.  (33% crit should self sustain this for the remaining of our hypothetical situation).

Spoiler

 

0 second - 1 Auto (3.29 delay), 1 Stormstrike

3.29 seconds - 1 Auto (3.29 delay

5.53 seconds - 1 Auto (2.24 Speed Delay maintained by next 3 swings by 1/3 crit chance until end of fight)

8.82 seconds - 1 Auto

12.11 seconds -  1 Auto

15.4 seconds -  1 Auto

18.69 seconds -  1 Auto

20 seconds - 1 Stormstrike

21.98 seconds -  1 Auto

25.27 seconds -  1 Auto

28.56 seconds -  1 Auto

31.85 seconds -  1 Auto

35.14 seconds -  1 Auto

38.43 seconds -  1 Auto

40 seconds - 1 Stormstrike

41.72 seconds -  1 Auto

45.01 seconds -  1 Auto

48.3 seconds -  1 Auto

51.59 seconds -  1 Auto

54.88 seconds -  1 Auto

58.17 seconds -  1 Auto

 

This is 22 attacks in 60 seconds that can also proc Windfury.    So an average of 4.4 wind fury procs (or 8.8 extra hits from Windfury).  30.8 attacks.  With HoJ equiped this gets pushed very close to 10 extra attacks or 32 attacks that can proc Nightfall every 1 minute.    The proc rate will stay the same based off the 3.5 speed of the weapon.    32 attacks at 11.66% proc rate - 3.73 expected procs each minute.  Assuming no overlaps of the 5 second proc, this gives us 18.65 seconds uptime for the shaman swinging the weapon.  Giving us a 31.08% uptime.

 

 

Naxx DPS Warlocks / Mages can dish 1,100 DPS and beyond.  Mages will have ignite which will push well beyond this, locks become pretty consistent.   But to safe face that not everybody is a super star, lets take away 10% and say they are doing 1k DPS on say, patchwerk and running 5 of each class (minimal you should bring).

10K DPS.    A 15% spell damage buff @ 31% uptime gives an average spell damage buff rate of 4.65%.    This contributes to 465 DPS.  If you had 12 ranged casters, this contributes to 558 DPS.   If you had 15 Ranged DPS this contributes to 697.5 DPS.    This is just addition to the base damage the Shaman should be doing at this point of Vanilla.  375 DPS single target is respectable for a nightfall bot and should be overachiveable, 450 in BiS Nightfall set.   Add this to your Nightfall raid damage increase and you can account for:

840-915 DPS with 10 geared ranged casters

933 - 1147.5 dps with 12 geared ranged casters (contributing more than their 1K dps benchmark - 1040.25 DPS average)

1072 - 1147.5 dps with 15 geared ranged casters (out performing the 1k dps benchmark on bottom end.

This does not even factor in the classes utility of what else they do outside of auto-attacking and waiting 20 seconds for stormstrike.   Even taking storm strike out of the rotation if you are debuff prioritizing, the uptime isn't affected too much.

Note a Hunter can do the same thing on fights light patchwerk to and give a lower uptime however still contributes a lot.  Ret pally has high uptime as well on Nightfall due to SoR.

[Aethelwulf 12]

The thing you are missing is that Hunters and Warriors can force procs off of Wing Clip and Hamstring hits respectively. Hunters in particular can and should spam rank 1 Wing Clip on gcd endlessly, amounting to a 233.3333% increase in procs from Wing Clip hits. In addition, with a Windfury Totem (and Hand of Justice) their procrate will be even higher. A Shaman's Windfury is certainly powerful, but you have to account for the fact that any other Nightfall users should be receiving a Windfury Totem to improve their uptime as well. A Nightfall Hunter is easily worth more than a Nightfall Shaman in terms of uptime.

[telabim 0]

Idk what the optimal raid comp is but all content in the game is doable with an enhancement shaman.  I guess it depends how many shamans you want to run because you certainty dont need 8 resto shamans and some people like to run 8 shamans in their raids.  Obviously hunters spamming wing clip have higher uptime but is it even necessary to have a hunter doing it?  All the tanks should have nightfall for when they arent tanking and them spamming hamstring is enough for permanent uptime.  I could see the argument for 1 enh shaman to be in the super geared melee group in guild for improved soe + improved wf and totem twisting goa but beyond that it seems like a bust.  Honestly I dont even know if the shaman should use nightfall at that point because off tank warriors should already be maintaining permanent uptime.  

[trouble 0]

Can anyone provide a pre- BiS enhancement list of items currently available on Elysium? been googling and so far havet seen anything but the full vainlla list, which is pretty useless this early on elysium.

[Whitewolf 1]

If your raid does not need an extra healer and can still benefit from your buffs Then it wouldn't be beyond reason to include you as you provide a lot of utility. Your contribution to dps indirectly is huge and you have within your power the ability to control your group's threat generation directly. You provide resistance and passive healing. If you aren't carrying your weight there are two options: your raid setup is bad or you suck. If there is a melee group consisting of only rogues and warriors most likely you would fit nice and snuggly in that group.

[jmul1212 7]

If you don't have a nightfall, no one will want you.  

[oloun 0]

which on elysium you cant have since its not out yet

[Whitewolf 1]

On 5/11/2017 at 1:42 PM, jmul1212 said:

If you don't have a nightfall, no one will want you.  

Can you break it down? I mean, if you want to play dirty you should have some dirt. Think about it this way: the enhance shaman pulls just barely 200 dps (low for a properly geared enhance shaman) however his strength of earth totem and windfury totem increases each party member's dps by 60 on average (probably low). That's 440 dps contributible to the shaman. Should a resto shaman be used in the melee group that is 1400 mana per caster missing wasted in a 2 minute fight. If you don't need the extra healer, shaman are great.

[csant 3]

your preaching to the wrong crowd. We (shamans) know what we bring to a raid. Its the min/max'rs out there that can't seem to look at the big picture.