Enhancement shaman have always been a cooldown dependent class. As we all know, there was absolutely nothing more frustrating in ICC than engaging a boss with your Fire Elemental on cooldown, because you were missing out on damage potential in the thousands, an incredibly unfun prospect. It made Enhancement dps incredibly frustrating to play when learning new fights, engaging bosses that were not far spread apart…or even running heroics.

4.0.1. saw a buff to Enhancement that has left Fire Elemental next to useless for us in non-aoe situations. (Playing perfectly, we can maybe squeeze out 100 more dps with a FE-fire nova last priority rotation.) 4.0.1 also saw a nerf to Feral Spirits duration, dropping it by 15 seconds.

I have a theory that these are the reasons for the high dps drop cited by some shaman in patch 4.0.1- particularly the shaman playing in the best guilds in the world. I selected the first 25 shaman I could find out of the top 80 WoL parses in 3.3.3 who also had parses for Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang in 4.0.1 and compiled some data. Average DPS among the 25 was 18026 in 3.3.3, with the average fight duration being 2 minutes and 25 seconds. That means that on average, these parses were taken after having Spirit Wolves out for about 1/3 of the fight, and having Fire Elemental out for nearly 4/5 of the fight.

Every one of these players saw dps drops, with the average dps drop being 3,258. (3027 if you don’t include one really poor outlier who saw a 9,000dps drop.) Fight length differed across the board, but the average disparity in fight times was 6 seconds-4.0.1 fights were on average only 6 seconds longer than 3.3.3 fights. (If you want to see more of the raw numbers on this, here is the downloaded excel spreadsheet. Shamandps If you are one of the shaman named here and you want your name removed, e-mail me at elamtheshaman@live.com.)

Now, you might be asking me why this matters. This matters because not every shaman is playing in a guild that can down Heroic Saurfang in (on average) two minutes thirty seconds, and my belief is that those of us who aren’t playing at that level are the ones noting dps increases. If you look at my deathbringer parse for this week, you’ll see 13,817 dps on a 3:43 fight. Last week’s parse, however has me at 13,441 for a 3:59 second fight.

I’m only one person, unfortunately, and for some reason I’ve not been able to get a large number others to post parses where fights both this week and last week’s lasted 3:00 or more. (If you’d like to get involved in this, please post your parse links in this thread.) However, going off my own data and some educated guessing, here’s my theory:

For Enhancement Shaman raiding the cutting edge of content who are in guilds that are able to down bosses in under 3:00, patch 4.0.1 was a nerf to damage on those short fights. It lowered our cooldown damage substantially and made an attempt at rolling that damage into Enhancement’s sustained dps. If this is true, this means that longer fights will see consistently higher damage than we saw pre 4.0.1- if you could imagine, a DBS fight that lasted six minutes rather than 2:30 in 3.3.3 would have shaman doing less dps than they would on the same fight now.

The really positive effects of this change would come into effects in Cataclysm, where we’re not at the absurdly high gear levels where we’re not at the tail-end of a year of the same bosses becoming loot pinatas and getting the pve-version of globaled. Since they’re new fights and probably will never grow to be ten months old without being replaced, these fights will be tuned to require more time than the current fights we have do, and Enhancement’s lack of reliability on cooldowns should turn into a real boon. This would mean that 4.0.1 would ultimately be a buff to Enhancement’s sustained damage per second, but the current burst nature of most ICC boss fights means the best enhancement shaman in the world are playing in an arena where everyone else has the handicap.

• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus – Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus – The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus – When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus – Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Shaman
Enhancement

• Earth’s Grasp now also reduces the cooldown of Stoneclow and Earthbind Totem by 15/30%.

That’s pretty much it for now. I’m pretty excited to talk about these bonuses, but it’ll have to wait a few.

Edit: Since it’s only been an hour or two, I’m not going to right a new post about these changes. I’m just going to edit this one.

First off, let’s talk about Shamanistic Rage 2pc. It’s, dare I say it…awesome. It gives us a damage cooldown, something we presently don’t have (excluding wolves, ofc!) Moreover, it’s on a minute long cooldown, and it’s a cooldown we’re already going to be using every single minute. With the new fire nova making our dps even more mana-hogish, we’ll be using SR as much as we can.

For some quick napkin math, this set bonus equates to about 3% base damage increase over the course of the fight, assuming you use SR the second it’s available.  (15/60=1/4 uptime. 1/4X12=3%) Timing SR with things suck as Deconstructors Heart Phase will yield an even higher result, and timing SR with things like Yogg Brain Phase will ensure higher DPS when it matters most. Excited? Yes, yes I am.

As for the second set bonus…the jury is still out on it, but I’m quite excited. I figure that in 4pc t9, I’ll be sitting at at least 7k raid buffed. 1400 AP for 10 seconds is nothing to snear at. Even if it is a 15% chance to proc, it’s a 15% chance to proc on something that stacks to five every fiveish seconds. This means you should be proccing 1400 AP every 30ish seconds. (Note: This is very simple speculation. We sometimes go 10seconds without stacking mw5. 15% chance might mean it doesn’t proc for a minute or so. This bonus is very RNG, and people hate that. I’m just talking in a very specific case that is somewhat normal to give an idea of what it -might- be like.)

So, assuming it does proc every 30ish seconds because you magically convinced MW5 to behave and stack every 5 seconds, we’re looking at 20 seconds per minute of 1400 Attack Power. That’s around 470 static attack power assuming 7k attack power. And, that’s not at all! (If you order now we’ll send you…) On bloodlust + potion of speed, you’re going to stack MW much more quickly. -Any- form of haste buff is going to have you stacking MW slightly more quickly. The quicker you stack MW, the more chances you have at this buff. Personally, I’d like to see the chance upped to between 25-30%, but overall I do lovelovelove the idea of this set bonus. It just seems fun.

(Note: Don’t believe all these numbers, again. I was using assumed static numbers to prove a point- if this thing procs when your trinkets have both fired and stuff, it means even more ap. 7k attack power was chosen because it seemed a reasonable number for t10 but mileage will vary. See store for details.)

(OH! I edited this and forgot to talk about Earth’s Grasp. It’s an awesome change for pvp- 9 seconds off stoneclaw shield, 4.5 seconds off earthbind totem. Being able to use a 3rd Stone claw shield per minute is just amazing, imho. )