Raiding Horizons Part One: Gear

March 31st, 2009

I’m going to do a four-part series on getting your Enhancement Shaman properly geared, gemmed and enchanted/glyphed for raiding and then what goodies to bring to said raids.  Consider this as a guide to follow and not a strict set of rules.  You may find things that work differently or even better for you (in which case, let me know!).

Every guild has different rules for their raiders, so I recommend checking with your particular guild as to what raiding requirements they have set.  Then do your best to not only achieve those, but to exceed them.  As for this series, I’ll show you guys a few things to get that will help get your overall DPS up and situate your stats on the right path to raiding glory.

Onward to Part One: Gear!

Update 1/1/2010: Patch 3.3 is here (and has been here – yes, I’m a slacker) and, with it, the long awaited Emblem changes.  From now on, every heroic and raid instance from Heroic Nexus through ToC 25 will drop Emblems of Triumph.  The new Icecrown Citadel Raid will drop Emblems of Frost.  You can also earn up to 2 Emblems of Frost a day by completing a Random Dungeon through the new LFG tool (first random only – subsequent randoms award Triumph).

Now that there’s a veritable cornucopia of gear you can obtain through heroics (blues and one purple from each end boss) and several quartermasters to choose from, I’m going to try to organize this list a bit better by listing out the best gear you can get for your badge farming.  This means I’ll be focusing primarily on Triumph/Frost gear, crafted items (200 and higher) and possibly a few heroic purples sprinkled in there.

Head

Chest

Feet

Hands

Legs

Shoulders

Waist

Wrist

Cloak

Neck

Ring

Trinket

Totem

A quick word on the Triumph Totems.  I’ll go into more detail on this in the gemming post but short version is as of Tier 9, haste is the new black.  You will see a lot of Shamans still favoring Attack Power, which isn’t “wrong” just as haste isn’t “right” – both will work.  I have tested both and found, with Tier 9 level gear, Haste puts out more DPS so I favor the Haste Totem.  You may love Attack Power (highly favored in the Tier 7 & 8 days), in which case, go for the Attack Power Totem.  Both are good and both will serve you well – it’s entirely dependent on your stat choice and your play style.  But as far as pre-raid gearing goes, use your Triumph badges on a Totem as opposed to your precious Frost badges.  Save those for Tier – T10 for Enhance Shammies is the hotness.

Weapon

There is an ongoing debate over the use of Slow/Fast or Slow/Slow.  First off, Enhance Shammies always dual-wield.  There is no reason to ever wield a 2H – your DPS will suck all the more for it.  Prior to Patch 3.1, it was found that a fast offhand boosted lower DPS (i.e. DPS from pre-BiS gear); however, with the rebalancing Blizzard did to Flametongue weapon in 3.1, the ball is firmly back in the court of Slow/Slow.  If you’re using Slow/Fast, get a slow Offhand, period.

Now, some points to consider before you look at the list above and go “Holy crap!  I’m 80 and it’s Christmas!”

  1. Always maintain your hit and expertise caps.  If this means taking a “lower level” piece to do so, do it.  Your DPS is nothing if you’re missing or being dodged most of the time.
  2. Skill and Knowledge > Gear a lot of the times.  For me personally, as a raid leader, I’ll take a player who is knowledgable, skilled and knows how to function in a raid who may have a few blues over an unskilled, unprepared player in full epics.  With the changes in the emblem system, a LOT of people will be running around in Tier 9 gear and a LOT of them won’t have the first clue how to properly use it.  Don’t be that guy.
  3. Research boss strats, practice your spell priority until you’re comfortable with it, make sure your gear is properly gemmed and enchanted, and download any required (and helpful) addons.  For those of you who want an easy to mark goal – 1.8K DPS minimum is good for Naxxramas; 3K minimum is good for Ulduar.
  4. A word on BoE epics – they may not always be available on your server or, if they are, they are at outrageously inflated prices.  Consider these pieces bonus pieces – i.e. if you get one, hey, bonus.  If not, you have exceptionally adequate alternatives.
  5. Craft a Frost Resist Set for fights like Sapphiron and Hodir.  Before you scoff and say they aren’t needed, I tell you “perhaps not” but it’s about perception.  You show up prepared.  You went that extra few pieces and, trust me, that goes a long way with a raid leader.

A word on the Enhance Shaman Tier 9 set.  The bonus is crap on both accounts, but that is my own opinion and nothing more.  However, the overall stats aren’t that bad and a four piece set would definitely benefit you in the long run.  My recommendation, before you begin raiding, is to purchase the Tier Head, Gloves, Pants and Chest for the bonus and then spend your emblems on the 245 shoulders for a bit of oomph to your stats.  Yes you could swap out Head for Shoulders and that’s completely your call but the 245 shoulders are actually a teensy bit better than the 245 helm.

Raiding Horizons Series

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23 Responses to“Raiding Horizons Part One: Gear”

  1. Mamo Rajis says:
    April 3, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    I went to the training dummies in Ironforge.
    The guards killed me.

    :(

    -Mamo
    -Troll Shaman

    ( Kidding :p )

    Reply
  2. SaintStryfe says:
    April 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Don’t recommend ya pick up totem of Splintering. It’s godawful. Splintering only will do extra damage to your WF Weapon. Since so much of our damage comes off of our regular melee and our spells, doing extra dmg with just WF Weapon is just a lousy idea. If you have some friends willing to do some old-world content (get 5 friends and run Kara, for instance) you can easily farm 15 Badges of Justice for Stonesplitter’s Totem from G’ras in Shattrath. DPS wise, it’s best trinket in a raid enviornment. Nothing even close. The second best is the totem of Dueling, off of Heroic Rav, and it’s a pretty fair drop rate. Third best is a totem from a questline in Borean, which acts like a slightly less powerful version of Stonesplitter’s. So if you haven’t done it yet, that’s an option too.

    Don’t waste your precious EoH on that crap-tacular totem.

    Reply
    • Ailis says:
      April 3, 2009 at 2:56 pm

      Good points. I’m more focusing on gear you can attain before going into Naxx that’s pretty easy and fairly painless to get but I love my Totem of Dueling!

      Reply
      • SaintStryfe says:
        April 3, 2009 at 3:00 pm

        I dig, but I think slumming down to do some BC Dungeons or hoping getting a trinket from Borean would definitely qualify.

        Here’s to hoping Uldar will have some better totems for us. It’s one of the only things I think they really botched for ENH Shaman in Wrath.

        Reply
        • Tolio says:
          April 3, 2009 at 3:30 pm

          I definitely agree that the totem of splintering is worse the the BC one. But the BC trinket is not the second best trinket around as the one from 25 man naxx is in fact better, and it will be by quite a bit more once 3.1 hits.

          Reply
  3. SaintStryfe says:
    April 3, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Also, if you’re Championing Argent Crusade anyway (And you should, that chest will keep you right to Naxx 25), they also offer Boots of the Neverending Path, which while you have to slum to leather, will give you more hit then anything else I can recall on the feet. DPS sucks but if you’re really desperate to get hit capped, you’re gold to do it.

    Reply
  4. SaintStryfe says:
    April 3, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    And yet one more relatively cheap crafted blue: Blue that’ll really help out: Ring of Scarlet Shadows. a lousy blue slot, but outfitted with a Vivid Forest Emerald, you get a ring that has +46 hit, plus DPS, a bit of STA and a nice chunk of Crit. I had the ring from Gundrak on but I replaced it with this and got a net DPS gain by hit capping.

    Reply
  5. Tolio says:
    April 3, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    A nice article for shaman looking for some gear and pretty much on base.

    I think it would be helpful if you put a little on the goals a shaman is looking for in their gear in addition to the list.

    Have them aim to have 369 hit, 26 expertise (not rating) and not even worry about what their attack power and crit is at until they reached those two. Doing this will have them doing quite a bit more damage then simply grabbing a bunch of gear with more ap and crit.

    Reply
  6. Levva says:
    April 3, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Given you are mentioning addons you might consider ShockAndAwe http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/shockandawe.aspx which is specifically designed for Enhancement Shamans to maximise their dps.

    Reply
  7. The Claw says:
    April 3, 2009 at 8:27 pm

    Is agility actually good for enhance shammies these days? Or are you just forced into it because all physical dps mail has loads of agility to keep the hunters happy?

    Reply
    • Ailis says:
      April 3, 2009 at 10:59 pm

      It actually is. I gem/enchant for it after Hit and Expertise because Agility adds to our AP, Crit, Dodge and (on a lesser note) Armor so it helps as a good secondary boost to our stats in case you don’t have the “room” to gem for any of those individually.

      Reply
  8. Ander says:
    April 4, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    What about the Trollwoven Girdle for a relatively cheap but high dps belt?

    Reply
  9. vstrom says:
    April 16, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    This is just super useful. Do you think you would be able to write down a guide similar to this also for shammies willing to get a resto spec?
    I think your writing style, knowledge and attitude could lead you towards being an increasing point of reference for shammies. keep up the good work!

    Reply
  10. collete says:
    May 13, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    I’m not sure it it was mentioned nor am I sure of the ppm of the bc totem but wouldn’t the totem from borean tundra provide more dps? 94 ap guaranteed on shocks vs a chance for 110?
    If nothing else it should make the list IMO

    Reply
  11. Jon says:
    June 13, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    I will write more at some point, but I wanted to take a quick moment and thank you immensely for these posts. I have referenced them constantly as I took my Enh Shaman through base instances, heroics, Naxx 10, and now into Naxx25. It was immensely helpful – I am constantly on the lookout for Enh Shaman data, and these posts are by-far the best post I found for those of us looking to start raiding. Thanks for the great work.

    Reply
  12. collete says:
    September 4, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    With season7 arena running now the old totems went to honor. 16k or so if I remember. Winter grasp and a few bgs and you can have deadly glads totem of indom. 120 ap when you lava lash for 10 sec.

    Reply
  13. Salvador says:
    December 21, 2009 at 3:37 am

    Are you gonna update this guide soon? cause theres new stuff now :)

    Reply
    • Ailis says:
      December 21, 2009 at 11:46 am

      I know I’m such a slacker – I am planning to as soon as Christmas is over. I’ve just been horribly busy with family activities and the pregnancy that I just haven’t found time to sit down and redo the whole thing. I promise it will be done soon, though!

      Reply
  14. Ashta says:
    December 21, 2009 at 6:36 pm

    wow nice guide, very detailed an very useful. I didnt realise the importance of expertise cap until capped it, makes a big diffrece, always had the hit cap never payed attention to the expertise cap. However there is one thing many mail items have armor penetration on it how usefull is this for enchancmnet shamies?
    Agian thanks for the guide

    Reply
    • Ailis says:
      December 21, 2009 at 8:42 pm

      Armor Pen is really low on the list of stats for us but, since we share an armor class with Hunters, it appears on all our armor since Marksman Hunters use it in spades. I wouldn’t worry about it, really, instead focus on Attack Power and Haste after you get your Hit and Expertise capped.

      Reply

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