I stumbled upon a Karazhan pug. We wiped on Maiden. (Our eventual victory got me a Shard of the Virtuous, though!) We wiped on Curator. We wiped on Shade of Aran multiple times. We called it after wiping on our third attempt on Terestian Illhoof after hitting the enrage timer for the third time…an enrage timer that WowWiki doesn’t even list because it’s -that- forgiving. (Something like 12 minutes.) We called it there, but I was hooked to raiding. Part of it might have been my topping healing meters (BC chain heal sup?), part of it might have been realizing that despite our wipes the fights weren’t so complex that I couldn’t make a difference (shade pooped on my comp though), and part of it might have just been running with another 9 people who were in the same awkward and afraid boat as I was, but Karazhan went being a scarier place than the Republican National Convention to being number one on my list of “things I want to do each week playing wow.”

My point isn’t that I conquered my fear of raiding, though. My point is that at one time, I suffered the same fear of raiding that a lot of new players have, and that while we might sneeze on heroic gear and say “10s are so easy a Geico Salesman could do it,” there is a legitimate and real fear of trying them. There was a thread on the forums yesterday asking about a “BiS heroic gear list.” Some laughs were to be had, as we assumed the guy was talking about Heroic ICC25 gear, when in fact he was talking about heroics five mans. It got me thinking, though, that while my server might spoil me when it comes to progression (Ranked 15th with 8/12 ICC25 Hardmodes, wut?), there’s a large amount of players playing now for who heroic five mans are the norm, who might not believe that Heroic raiding is ever going to be within their grasp but who still want to do their best when they step into a raid.

To that end, I took it upon myself to utilize Rawr and EnhSim to develop a BiS “Pre-Raid” list- that is, a list of gear to strive for without ever having to step foot into a raid. This is not exactly a “Heroic 5s” loot list, because “BiS Pre-raid” means “Best in Slot out of any gear available without raiding.” To that end, it includes craftable gear and Bind on Equip gear. While I totally understand that not everyone has the funds to buy BoE and craftable gear, this is the utmost “Best in Slot,” and you can make substitutions as you deem necessary. (For example, Boots of Living Scale simmed at 10-15 more dps than Spiked Toestompers, so you should be fine with either. Boots are the clear winner, though.)

The criteria I followed:

• I assumed the character was a Tauren with no professions. Racials and Profession Bonuses will add extra dps, but I wanted a gearset that would apply to everyone and could be tweaked from there. (On a totally random note, all the t9 gear is Alliance gear, because I totally forgot there was a difference until I was actually editing the links in here.)
• All gear choices were simmed with Standard Enhsim settings, assuming 200 latency. As a note, this includes both your internet connection, fps, and reaction time. Most of us aren’t actually playing at 200 latency.
• All Debuffs/Buffs were assumed. While this is a list of pe-raid BiS gear, the design is to make you the best you can be when you step into raids.
• Glyphs were Feral Spirit/Stormstrike/Flame Shock. Flameshock was a shoe-in due to the 4pct9, simming at a 60dps increase over the next competitor.
• Priority System and Spec are cookie cutter, taken from the Enhancement Sticky.
• All raid caps are achieved, assuming Imp. Faerie Fire/Misery.
• Just like I assumed you would have the money to buy BoE gear, I assumed the money for epic gems and the best possible enchants. I also assumed you would spend the time to level up reputations you would need.
• I assumed that you would spend on average a month gearing up. Without stepping foot in a ICC10/25 or a Weekly raid, your EoF intake would be 2 a day. Because of that, I thought a reasonable amount of Emblems of Frost would be 60. Everything else is Triumph/Craftable/Boe/Heroic Gear.
• There is not enough quality off-set gear to make up for dropping 4pc t9. (None of the iLevel 245 Emblem of Triumph gear is worth losing the 4pc for.)
• This is set to net you the best dps. It is NOT a gearscore set. I fully support getting gearscore items like the 245 EoT gear to use it to trick retarded people who use gearscore into letting you raid, but I do not support you than using those pieces in a raid.
• In theory, Enchant Boots – Icewalker is more paper dps than Tuskarr’s Vitality. However, it’s commonly accepted that having 8% runspeed takes the cake on any fight that isn’t Patchwerk (i.e., you need to move), so while there is a 15-20 dps loss not using Icewalker I kept to the conventional choice of Tuskarr’s.

Without further ado, my “Pre-raid BiS loot list.”

• Head: Nobundo’s Faceguard of Triumph, ReD Meta, Accurate Ametrine, Arcanum of Torment
• Neck: Wodin’s Lucky Necklace, Quick King’s Amber
• Shoulder:  Nobundo’s Shoulderguard’s of Conquest, Quick King’s Amber, Greater Inscription of the Axe
• Back: Accursed Crawling Cape, Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed
• Chest: Carapace of Forgotten Kings, Quick King’s Amber x 3, Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats
• Wrist: Crusader’s Dragonscale Bracers, Quick King’s Amber, Enchant Bracers – Greater Assault
• Gloves: Nobundo’s Grips of Conquest, Quick King’s Amber, Enchant Gloves – Crusher
• Belt: Belt of Dragons, Precise Cardinal Ruby x 2, Nightmare Tear, Eternal Belt Buckle
• Pants: Nobundo’s War-Kilt of Conquest, Precise Cardinal Ruby x 2, Icescale Leg Armor
• Feet: Boots of Living Scale, Quick King’s Amber x 2, Tuskarr’s Vitality
• Ring 1: Band of Stained Souls
• Ring 2: Dexterous Brightstone Ring
• Trinket 1: Mirror of Truth
• Trinket 2: Herkuml War Token
• Totem: Totem of Electrifying Wind
• Mainhand: Cudgel of Furious Justice, Enchant Weapon – Berserking
• Offhand: Nighttime, Enchant Weapon – Berserking -Note that this simmed at ~2dps over Black Icicle, meaning that there will be little to no recognizable difference.

The end result of this gear combination says that your Maximum Theoretical DPS is 8488 DPS. You’ll have a little over 40% unbuffed melee critical hit, 4110 Attack Power, 142 Expertise, 375 Hit (Now you guys get the helm gem choice!), ~20.75 melee haste…and like 200 armor pen. Even with all that haste (736 rating in mostly 232 gear!), Haste is still simming as the most desirable stat, with an EP of 2.80.

There you go, future raiders! A BiS gear for all of ya’ll too. Hope it helps!

EP Value- EP commonly stands for “Equivalency Points,” and they’re a way to determine the weight of each stat on your gear. With EP, you choose one stat to be the base stat, which is equivalent to 1 EP. For Enhance shaman, we choose Attack Power, as it’s plentiful- most casters use Spell Power. Your EP value for attack power is never going to change, since it’s the base of all your other stats. 1 Attack Power is ALWAYS 1 EP.

The rest of your gear weight changes, and this is where EP points come in. EP is used to determine how useful another stat (such as critical hit or haste) is when compared to one point of attack power.

Here are the EP values provided by Des in Des’ Simming Service (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677632588&sid=1)

EP                        value     DPS       total DPS      difference

baseline                                      7925.67

ap                                              1.00      0.67      8060.48        134.81

crit rating                               1.96      1.32      7965.24        39.57

hit rating                                 1.88      1.27      7963.73        38.07

expertise rating                    1.02      0.69      7948.26        22.59

haste rating                             1.98      1.33      7965.70        40.03

armor penetration rating  1.76      1.19      7961.27        35.60

spellpower                               1.08      0.72      8034.42        108.75

mh dps                                       4.90      3.31      7950.46        24.79

oh dps                                         2.79      1.88      7939.77        14.10

strength                                      1.10

agility                                          1.72

intelligence*                             1.44
What this sim tells us is that Haste is equal to 1.98 points of Attack Power, Agility is equal to 1.72 Points of Attack Power, and Crit is equal to 1.96 points of attack power. We can then take these numbers and use them to determine how we gear. For example, 40 attack power gems are 40 EP. Right now, Des’ EP for Haste is 1.98. Since Haste gems give +20 haste, 20X1.98=39.6 So, even though it’s a small loss, Des would lose DPS by putting a Haste Gem into a new piece of gear rather than an AP gem.

The really important thing to remember about EP values is that they’re -always- changing. Every upgrade you get can and likely will change your EP. To this end, while Des can supply your ep values once or twice, you should become best friends with your own sim, because there will be times your Haste will hit 2.5 and other times you’re better off gemming AP+crit in yellow sockets.

Also, EP values will change from gem to gem, which makes it pretty impossible for us to just come out and say “if your haste is at 2.5, gem haste.” It’s possible, though unlikely, that two gems later your haste will drop crazy amounts and you’ll lose dps by gemming the next 8 gems as haste. A good solution to this, once you’ve learned to use your enhsim, is to sim that change- drop 400 Attack Power from your stats and add 200 haste (or 7.93% haste).

I highly recommend anyone who hasn’t had the chance to look at their ep values yet to drop by Des’ thread (while logged out in enh gear!) and ask for some help!

I felt that it would be a fun project to see exactly how much we do benefit from each debuff, so I opened up my handy dandy enh simulator and simmed my DPS five times, averaging out to 7347DPS with .05% Out of Mana time. I then went and systematically removed buffs/debuffs and recorded the damage lost. For simming unleashed rage, I did one sim without changing my expertise to emulate not taking the talent, but having another 10% ap buff (abom might/trueshot), and another sim without changing my expertise and not having another 10% ap buff. For 3% spell hit, I dropped my hit rating down to 368 as I’m spell hit capped in my current gear. I also looked at the difference between using regular and improved versions of the buffs I remembered to.

Something important to keep in mind here is that these numbers are based on my own individual gear, and that they will probably differ from your own values. Beyond that, buffs and debuffs play with each other, so in order to figure out the exact data you’d probably have to do tons of combinations of sims. So, take these as they are: a basic idea of what you’ll get from different buffs and debuffs. Without further ado, this is the raw data I collected:

No Flask: 7232 DPS. Loss of 115 DPS.
No Potion of Speed: 7316 DPS. Loss of 31 DPS.
No Fish Feast: 7265 DPS. Loss of 82 DPS.
No Replenisment: 7323 DPS. Loss of 24 DPS. .85% OOM time.
No Blessing of Wisdom: 7343 DPS. Loss of 4 DPS. .20% OOM time.
No Judgement of Wisdom: 7345 DPS. Loss of 2 DPS. .11% OOM time
No Arcane Brilliance: 7291 DPS. Loss of 56 DPS.
No Imp SoE: 6995 DPS. Loss of 352 DPS.
Horn of Winter Instead of Imp. SoE: 7297 DPS. Loss of 50 DPS.
No Gift of the Wild: 7204 DPS. Loss of 143 DPS.
No Blessing of Kings: 7135 DPS. Loss of 212 DPS.
Loss of Totem of Wrath/Heart of the Crusader Crit Portion: 7158 DPS. Loss of 189 DPS.
Loss of Ferocious Ins/Sanctified Ret: 7144 DPS. Loss of 203 DPS.
Loss of Mookin/Ret Aura Haste: 7207 DPS. Loss of 140 DPS.
Loss of 3% Spell Hit. (I dropped my hit down to 368/14% for the purpose of this test, as I was spell hit capped in my gear.) 7248 DPS. Loss of 99 DPS.
Loss of 280 Spellpower: 7155 DPS.  Loss of 192 DPS.
144 SP (Flt Totem vs. ToW): 7256 dps. Loss of 91 DPS.
Loss of 13% Spell Damage debuff: 7008 dps. Loss of 339 DPS.
Loss of 5% Spell Crit Debuff: 7218 dps. Loss of 129 dps.
Loss of 5% Spell Crit Buff: 7213 dps. Loss of 134 dps.
Loss of 5% spell haste Totem: 7322 dps. Loss of 15 DPS.
Loss of 10% AP. (Changed expertise to 216 to not reflect loss of expertise in date.): 6916 DPS. Loss 431 DPS.
Loss of 10%AP+9 Expertise. (0/0 UR.) 6797 DPS. Loss of 550 DPS.
Loss of Imp might/BS- 687 AP. 6892 DPS. Loss of 455 DPS.
Loss of Imp Might, using regular might- 550 AP. 7258 dps. Loss of 89 dps.
Loss of 5% Crit- LoTP/Rampage. 7168 DPS. Loss of 269 dps.
Loss of 20%melee haste. 6692 DPS. Loss of 655 DPS.
Loss of 4% melee haste- no imp wf. 7213 DPS. Loss of 134 DPS.
Loss of 4% physical damage- 7191 DPS. Loss of 156 DPS.
Loss of 5% armor reduc- 7288 DPS. Loss of 59 DPS.
Loss of 20% Armor reduc: 7070 DPS. Loss of 277 DPS.

So, with the raw data behind us, let’s take a look at what this means. First off, let’s look at the buffs you bring to yourself in a raid: One Enhancement Shaman, specced into Cookie Cutter Imp. SoE/Imp. WF/Unleashed Rage (Relying on other for FT in favor of using magma): 1557 DPS. By not dropping your totems or speccing into unleashed rage, you gimp yourself out of 1,557 dps. So, don’t be lazy and drop your totems. That said, if you’re the type of person looking to play better by reading information on blogs, I doubt you’re doing something as silly as not dropping totems.

Now, let’s look at something that a lot of people DO do- try to skip out on improving their own totems to gain talent points elsewhere. The rationale of “oh, the other enhance shaman brings imp. soe” or “the frost dk has imp. icy talons” might work…until they die. And once they die, and you’re left not specced into these abilities and this is the case: One Enhancement Shaman using untalented Imp. WF/Imp Soe/16% Melee Haste= 184 DPS. You gain 184 DPS just by speccing into these talents.

Some of the more important things to look at: Imp. BS/Imp. Might are the best possible buff for us, at 455 dps. Regular might is fine, but we lose 89 dps from not getting the improved version.

Finally, here are some of the best combinations of classes for us (assuming no one else in the raid can provide all their buffs. This is rarely the case- you might not have a moonkin, but your ret paladin will be supplying 3% haste. Or something.):

Boomkin give: 13%Spell Damage, 5% Armor Reduc, 3% Spellhit, 3% Haste 5% Spell Crit/Gift of the Wild: One Boomkin=914 DPS.
One Elemental Shaman: 5%Spell Haste, 5% Spell Crit, 3% Crit, 280 Spellpower: 530 DPS loss.
One Fury Warrior: 20% ArP, 5% Melee Crit, Imp BS: 1001 DPS.
One Arms Warrior: 20% ArP, 4% Physical Damage, Reg BS: 799 DPS.
One Combat Rogue: 4% Physical Damage, 20% ArP: 433 DPS.
One Feral Druid: 5%ArP, 5% crit. 328 DPS.
One Ret Paladin: Imp Might, 3%Crit, 3% Haste, Sanctified Ret: 987 DPS loss.

The kind of really striking thing to me was that the fury warrior ended up giving more dps than the boomkin, proving my own hypothesis wrong. D:

So, there you have it. These are the way debuffs play out for me, and I’d imagine most people would see numbers within a few standard deviations. Hope this helped!

“Enhance Your Game” is my attempt at a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog column. In it, I’ll be covering integral programs/addons that I feel benefit my playstyle, the melee playstyle, and playing an Enhancement Shaman. This is my first attempt at an actual stable column (small, clouded in mystery aside- this might not be my only column starting in the near future. ), so bear with me! This week’s “Enhance Your Game” will be covering one of the most integral addons of Enhancement Raiding- the Enhancement Damage Simulator.

“Sim It” is a phrase heard weeklydailyhourlyminutely on the shaman forums, a phrase that anyone who frequents the forums on a regular basis has probably read. The majority of them have probably said it at one point or another. Other forums have their own response to “sim it,” and these responses generally include the words “spreadsheet” and “it.” Simming/Spreadsheeting is an important part of end game raiding- a way for you to understand how to get the most out of your class’ dps potential. For this, Enhancement Shaman turn to the Enhancement Damage Simulator. I’m here to offer you a short (2500 word, xD!) tutorial on how to use the Enhancement Simulator.

The first thing to know about using this addon is that you need some form of “winzip” or assorted program to extract it to your computer. I’m not going to cover thise because A) I’m rather computer illiterate, and I’ll do more harm than good, and B) it’s not what this blog is about. Suffice to say, once you’ve figured out how to get the Enh Sim program onto your computer, return to this page and we’ll talk!

So, on to using Enh Sim. As soon as you open your EnhSim folder, this assortment of varied links should become available:

I not so subtly have a certain tab highlighted. Why might that be! ^_^

As you can see by my blatant highlighting of it, the program we are looking for is the Enh Sim Gui. Double click it, right click and go to open, roll your face on your keyboard toward the enter key, or sacrifice virgins to Cthulu, but do something to open that program. Once that happens, you’ll be faced with:

The Scary GUI of Death and Dismemberment. (Click4bigz!)

This is the main tab of the GUI. We like this tab. This is where we get to feel good about ourselves and plug our stats in. ^_^ Head on over to your local World of Warcraft realm, log onto your shaman, and open up your character tab.

It should look something like this. If it does not, you might be from outer space.

Now, this point relies on a lot of alt-tabbing, so you might be better off putting wow into windowed mode for a few minutes and going back and forth. You want to make sure you’re using unbuffed stats to begin with. (The Enhancement Addon Shock and Awe also features an export function. I won’t be covering that tonight, but will in a future Enhance Your Game post.) For most of these stats, your mainhand should be the same as your offhand (such as for the mainhand/offhand crit categories.) However, orcs are weird, and if they have an axe/fist weapon in one hand and a mace in the other, they’ll have 3 more expertise in one hand than the other. Make sure for any category that has a % next to it you put the % number- the simulator does not need to know your critical or haste ratings, just the actual % they increase.

If you're me, your EnhSim GUI probably looks like this now. If you're you, the numbers are different!

The  middle part of the EnhSim is your boss frame. The developers already supplies default boss values for you, so we’re just skiping straight over that tab to procs and stuff. As you might be able to imagine, procs and stuff is where your procs AND STUFF, go. Most of these tabs are pretty self-explanatory. Mainhand imbue is windfury, offhand is Flametongue, not FT9. The enchant section only lets you put proc enchants- agi/ap enchants (you should be using berserking anyway, btw) would simply be stat additions at the beginning. We’ll go besererking/berserking, because we know that’s best.  MH weapon only applies if you’re an orc, so I’m not filling it in- if you’re an orc and you’re wielding an axe or fist weapon, go for it!

For trinkets, totems, and set bonuses either use the pulldown menu or use wowhead! (While the config files for the simulator have been changed to include set bonuses, the gui has not, so you need the spell numbers.

For Trinkets: Blood of the Old God: 45522. Death’s Choice/Verdict Reg: 47303. Death’s Choice Heroic: 47464 Dark Matter: 46038. Comet’s Trail: 45609.

For Totems: Totem of Electrifying Wind: 47666. Totem of Quaking Earth: 47667.

For t9 Set Bonuses: 2Pc: 67220, 4PC: 67221.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, if you have 4pc Enh sim automatically counts 2pc in it’s calculations, but putting both in to be on the safe side doesn’t hurt. If you have glove/cloak enchants, fill them in quickly and we’ll move on to glyphs! For glyphs for your first time, you might want to stick with the cookie cutter Stormstrike, Windfury Weapon, Feral Spirits. The awesome part of EnhSim is that once you know the basics, you can tweak these to figure out what really works for you.

Now, once again, if you're me, you might look like this! If you're not, than you'll look differently. Lets move to rotation!

The rotation tab is a pretty packed tab, and one that will be pretty difficult to decipher upon first look. So, let’s try to break some of this information down.

1) MH/OH Auto Attack: Check this, you want to be white hitting.

2) Wait SS w/ WF: Keep this on the default 0.00. This harkens back to a time where we believed it was better to proc after WF ICD in order to increase the chances of a proc. Since SS puts a debuff up that is quickly consumed AND is a chance at at least 2 MW charges, we don’t wait on it anymore.

3)Cast Lava Lash only if WF is on CD: You’ll see I have this checked in my upcoming screenshot- this is a mistake. You might not want to check it. As far as I can tell, this was meant for when we still believed WF on both hands was the way to go, so we didn’t want to risk using our instant offhand attack to proc windfury. You probably don’t want this checked. (I saw a 2dps increase not checking it! xD)

4. Bloodlust Casters/Sync trinkets with bloodlust: First part shouldn’t matter, as you can no longer chain bloodlusts. 1 is enough. Second part you want clicked, particularly if you have clickable trinkets. (I’m not sure how this treats wolves- I don’t think they’re always popped prior to bloodlust.)

5. Cast Lava Burst if “blah.” These three are all only activated if you activate LvB in the rotation bar. They’re useful for testing purposes, but you probably don’t want LvB in your rotation when just learning to use it. Leave these alone, and leave Lava burst unchecked.

6. Cast Flame Shock only if dots left: Once again, requires FS to be clicked in the priority frame. For just learning it, don’t click it.

7. Cast Lightning Shield only if charges left: This means that, once it gets to LS in your priority with nothing else up, it will check to see if it has this many or fewer charges before refreshing. Typically, I do between 0-2.

8. Cast Shamanistic Rage only if mana left: Default setting is 750. With the one minute cooldown, 0 points in improved stormstrike, and less mana back than we used to, I prefer to do it around 3-4k.

9. Use mana potion if mana =: Only does this if mana potion is checked on the consumable page.

Next, on to the actual priority tab.

• SW= Spirit Wolves.
• MW5_LB=Lightning Bolt with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.
• ES_SS=Earth Shock if Storm Strike Debuff is up.
• SS=Stormstrike
• ES=Earth Shock
• LL=Lava Lash
• MT=Magma Totem
• LS=Lightning Shield
• SR=Shamanistic Rage
• FS=Flame Shock
• LvB=Lava burst.
• Frost-Frost Shock
• CL=Chain Lightning
• LB=Lightning Bolt
• MW#_CL/LB=Self Explanatory.
• ST=Searing Totem

You organize your rotation in order of priority. Once again, the power of this is that you can fiddle with priority based on gear. For example, I have 4PCt9/5/5 Reverberation, so I go Earth Shock before Stormstrike as long as the SS debuff is still on the target.  Spirit Wolves is put first so that they are always popped as they come off cooldown. Mess with this to see what your ideal rotation is once you’re comfortable!

This would be my priority list, hastily thrown together!

The next tab you’ll see is “Talents.” As you might expect, this is where you would go to input your talent choices. This section is pretty self explanatory, and there’s not much that could be confusing about it, so I’m not going to spend any more time on it. Here is what mine looks like!:

Notice the 5/5 Reverberation, with 2/3 Call of Flame and no Imp. SS. Don't follow my spec- it's not cookie cutter.

The next section is an awesome section, devoted to debuffs/buffs on you. Remember, Enhancement Shaman scale pretty well with almost every buff/debuff in the game, so you want as many of these as possible. If you’re unsure as to what debuffs you do have present, think of your normal raid and compare it to these:

• 20% Armor Debuff. Brought by Prot Warriors/Smart DPS Warriors or Rogues in a Prot Warriors absence.
• 5% Armor Debuff: Druids of any spec, hunters with wasp pets, warlocks.
• 4% Physical Damage Debuff: Arms Warriors/Combat Rogues
• 20% Melee Haste. Yourself/Frost DPS warriors
• 5% Melee Crit: Fury Warriors, Feral Druids
• 688 attack Power: DPS Warriors/Ret Paladins. Tank warriors/other pally specs have worse versions.
• Attack Power Multiplier: It uses your unleashed rage if you don’t put points in, so don’t put points in to this. Would be blood dk/marks hunters, though.
• 5% Spell Haste: Mainly resto/elemental shaman, but you possibly could.
• 5% Spell Crit Buff: Elemental Shaman, Moonkin
• 5% Spell Crit Debuff: Imp. Scorch Mages, Frost Mages, Imp. SB specced Destro Locks.
• 13% (Make sure you change this from 10%): Moonkin, Unholy DK, Warlocks
• 280 Spellpower: Elemental Shaman. If you’re one of the rare few who run with a demo pact lock, this number might be slightly higher.
• 3% Spell Hit: Boomkin/Spriest
• 3% Haste: Ret Paladin, Moonkin
• 3% Damage Increase: Retribution Paladin, Feral Druid
• 3% Crit debuff: Elemental Shaman, most Paladins- in the Retribution tree.
• 10% stat Multiplier: Paladins, any spec.
• 52 Stats: Druid Gift of the Wild
• 178 Agility and Strength: You. Death Knights give 155.
• 60 Intellect: Mages

For flasks, you generally want flask of endless rage, for 180 AP.  Since you’re using a flask, skip guardian elixir. For potion, try out potion of speed, and for food use Fish Feast (assuming they’re dropped in your raid.) 80 AP+46 Spell power? Ffs yes plz.

For mana return buffs, click replenishment if you have one of the million replen giving classes present. Do not use water shield, as you are using LS. Choose either Blessing of Wisdom or Mana Spring totem, as they are the same thing. And, use Judgement of Wisdom if your raids normally have a paladin judging it.

This is what it will look like with a fully optimal raid.

We’re skipping over the EP tab-much like the bosses at the beginning, it is set up with default EP for a shaman. So, we’re going straight to the final side- “simulation variables,” also known as “oh noez scary math class! D:”

First, there is simulation time. This means that the simulator will run and pretend that it was going for however long is in that box. The generally accepted practice is to throw in an extra 0 to make it 10000 hours.

Second is Simulation Time Combatlog. This is what is used if you choose combatlog output vs. simulate.

Fight length: The number of minutes of each fight. So, if you’re doing 10000 hours of simming, it might be simming 120,000 5 minute fights. Fight length is important because it determines the amount of time cooldowns/trinket procs/bloodlust/etc are active. 5 minutes is a pretty stable amount of time, and is what is used in the Enh. BiS Gearing thread.

Report count: Actually not sure, will look into it. Same with threads.

Lag. 0-0 MS. Enh Sim is awesome because it can tell us how well we can play at perfect latency. However, the world doesn’t operate on perfect latency, and neither do our reflexes. Set this lag for what you normally play at- for me, 100-200.

Simulate Mana: Simulate mana is a powerful tool, but also one that can ruin your report if you forget to prioritize something like shamanistic rage. You should learn to use simulate mana to your benefit, but it is understandable to run your first few sims without this box checked. I know I did!

Output file: Output.txt

Combat log output file: Combatlog.txt

Simulate is a clickable box that will simulate your damage over the simulation time.

Calculate EP is a powerful tool that can be used to teach you how to gear better.

Combatlog output shows a basic breakdown of your damage over the past (however long you put in the combat log time box.)

Info shows you relevant information, such as caps you might have gone over by a small bit.

And finally, use the button after the box at the bottom that says path on top, and find the file that ends “EnhSim.exe” Throw that into the box, and then go up and click one of the buttons!

(Also, make sure to check out the organe donate button: these designers work hard.)

This is what my Simulation Variables typically look like prior to a sim!

Now, after all that hard work (It really only takes ten minutes at most), we’re finally ready to simulate! Hover your mouse over that nice simulate button and press it down. Watch the numbers scroll past. (note: If the simulation length is set to 10000 hours, the numbers won’t scroll fast initially. The simulation will take a bit long.)

Yes, that is 7366 DPS!

So, as you might be able to notice, there is a wealth of data we can see here. However, I’m only going over the very basics- I think next week I might go into what sort of conclusions/knowledge we can gleam from the simulator. And remember, these numbers are based on an ideal, patchwerkesque, five minute long fight- fights are often much different in reality.

Now, really quickly, I’m going to do a quick show of the other great function of the Enh Simulator-Calculate EP values. This one is a really useful tool- EP values are the value of an item as it relates to one point of attack power. I’m also not going to go in depth into thise (maybe next week! ^_^), but they are useful, so clicking that calculate EP values button helps.

Look at that stunning 3.09 haste EP. I've never seen numbers that high before. O_o

That’s it for my guide to using the Enh Simulator. I hope everyone who reads this can enjoy it, or at the very least use it. It is now 5:45 AM, and I’ve been working on it for nearly three hours, so I’m going to take a well deserved nap. xD

(That said, I think I’ve put as much effort into this blog as my enhancement sticky, and I’d really love to get the word out there. Even if people don’t want to read anything else on my blog, I would love to see anyone who needs help with simming get directed here! ^_^<- I’m addicted to this emote omg.)