Although often maligned, the Melee DPS or "Enhancement" Shaman class in World of Warcraft can bring a significant contribution to any group or raid.
While the potential for an Enhancement Shaman to do excellent damage exists, it must be developed properly in order to maximize the Shaman’s output.
The Basics – How to Hit Things
As an enhancement Shaman, around 50% of the damage dealt comes from Melee sources and the other half comes from spells. This is different than a rogue, who deals entirely Melee damage, or a Mage or Warlock, who does entirely spell damage.
This means that the Enhancement Shaman has to be concerned about making sure both their weapons and their spells hit, and hit hard. This is accomplished in two ways. First, an Enhancement Shaman needs to be "hit capped". This is reflected in the Shaman’s hit rating stat on their melee damage tab.
The higher the hit rating number, the lower the possibility that a spell or a melee attack will miss. While it is impossible to attain a 100% melee hit rating, it is possible to do so with spells. The magic number for hit rating is 368, which will show up as a 14% increase to spells landing, but will trasnlate to no more missed spells. This can be obtained through gems, enchantments, and equipment.
Secondly, a Shaman needs to make sure that their melee attacks are not being dodged, parried or blocked by enemies, especially in a raid situation. In order to do this, the Shaman also needs to be “expertise capped”. Higher expertise means a reduced chance for enemies to dodge, parry or block. The magic number here is 26, which should allow all of the Shaman’s attacks to get through, provided they are standing behind the target.
The Beatings – What to Hit Things With
Shaman Melee damage works a bit differently than other classes. Due to the Windfury Weapon buff, which has a chance to cause the currently equipped weapon to gain two extra attacks which both do weapon damage plus 1250 attack power (at level 80), Shamans want the highest damage weapons they can find.
This means Shamans largely ignore the “damage per second” information on a weapon and instead focus on what its low and high end damage numbers are. The higher the damage, the better the weapon – speed and damage per second on weapons are not a concern for enhancement Shamans.
As well, enhancement Shamans always want to be wielding two weapons. While enhancement Shamans are able to wield two-handed weapons or one weapon and a shield, the highest amount of damage will always be done by wielding two one-handed weapons at once.
The Business – What Stats to Increase
The most important statistic to increase as an enhancement Shaman is attack power. Most of the increase in this stat will come from equipment, but can also come from gems, enchantments and other item enhancements. Shamans also receive attack power via their basic stats, strength – which gives one point of AP per one point of strength – and agility – which gives one point of AP and a small amount of critical strike chance per one point of agility.
However, if the Shaman has also maximized the Mental Quickness talent, every point of intellect will also count as one point of attack power.
Also of importance to Shamans are haste rating and critical strike rating. Haste rating makes weapons swing faster, resulting in more base damage. Critical strike rating increases the chance to land a critical hit with weapons and spells, and a good target to aim for is 35% melee critical strike rating – this will cause skills such as flurry and elemental devastation to activate more often.
The Benefits – Talents
There is no “perfect” enhancement Shaman talent build, as the ideal setup will depend on whether the Shaman wants to excel in PvE, PvP or raiding content. The most typical enhancement raiding build will lie heavily in the enhancement tree, of course, but will also take several talents out of the elemental tree as well.
The key in any raid enhancement Shaman build is to ignore talents such as toughness that increase armor or frozen power, which increases the damage done by lightning bolts on frostbrand-affected targets. These are PvP talents that won’t play out as well in a raid. A typical enhancement Shaman raid talent build can be found here.
The Big Time - Simulators and Sites
As stated above, this guide is merely an introduction to the complex world of enhancement Shaman raiding. Sites such as Elitest Jerks delve much further into the topic, and also advocate the use of "simulators" which measure the amount of potential DPS a Shaman could output given ideal conditions. These simulators allow players to input their Shaman's stats, gear and other information to obtain their DPS rating. Two of note inclulde Rawr and Enhsim.
While being a good DPS Shaman takes time and effort and may not always yield as immediate a result as other classes, any enhancement Shaman worth their salt can bring a formidable set of skills to any raid group. For a more detailed look at the Shaman DPS model, take at look at "The Enhancement Shaman DPS System"
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