Raiding Horizons Part Two: Enchants & Glyphs
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 Two: Enchants and Glyphs!
Enchants
So you have all this fancy gear, it fits so perfectly but there are a couple of things missing. You need some gems and some enchants. What’s shiny gear without shiny gems and cool enchant effects? Boring gear, I tell you, just boring.
Enchants-wise, you have some choices for each slot. Of course, if you’re an Enchanter, you can enchant your rings. If you are a Leatherworker, you have the nifty fur linings, and if you are a Blacksmith you can add sockets to your gear, and if you’re an Inscriptionist, you have the cool shoulder enchants. The enchants listed below are assuming you are none of those (like me).
Keep in mind a lot of these enchants are super expensive in terms of mats needed. If you know you’ll be replacing that piece very soon (like your weapon or chest) then get the enchant just below the one you ultimately want. Unless, of course, you’re a never-ending source of gold then go for the top every time.
I’m going to list them in order of most beneficial/best for that slot to acceptable. While there are a lot of enchants that are best for our class (and other melee/AP-based DPS for that matter), you should enchant (and later gem as in the next article) to attain your Hit Cap of 17% and your Expertise Rating of 26 (6.5%) first and then focus on Haste and Attack Power.
Head
- Arcanum of Torment – Knights of the Ebon Blade Revered
- Arcanum of Triumph – 40 Stone Keepers Shards in Wintergrasp
Shoulders
- Greater Inscription of the Axe – Sons of Hodir Exalted
- Inscription of Triumph – 30 Stone Keepers Shards in Wintergrasp
- Lesser Inscription of the Axe – Sons of Hodir Honored
Chest
Bracers
Gloves
- Precision (If you are not hit-capped…If you are, go to the next one)
- Crusher
- Greater Blasting
- Expertise
- Greater Assault
Belt
- Eternal Belt Buckle – While technically not an enchant, this enables you to put a prismatic gem socket on your belt. More about gems in the next post.
Legs
Boots
Weapons
Weapon enchants are really a matter of personal preference. For an Enhancement Shaman, you will do just as well with Berserking as you will with Mongoose. You may ask why Accuracy isn’t on the list. Accuracy, while having nice stats, really isn’t the best for us, especially given the cost in terms of mats and the fact that we get those same stats through our gear and, if needed, other gems/enchants.
Glyphs
Glyphs-wise, I’ll only cover Major Glyphs. Minor glyphs I see as more of the “fun” glyphs. The majority of them are glyphs that remove reagents for various spells or add a tweak to something else. For me, I love no reagent glyphs so that’s what I chose. For majors, the easiest way to do this is the widely accepted tier system for our glyphs.
First Tier
Second Tier
- Glyph of Flametongue Weapon
- Glyph of Lightning Shield
- Glyph of Feral Spirit
- Glyph of Windfury Weapon
Third Tier
Basically, how this works is, first off, you absolutely must use Glyph of Stormstrike. It is our most important skill and the buff this glyph gives to it is irreplaceable. Secondly, pick two out of the second tier and use them. The two you pick are based purely on your playstyle. If you use your LS 100% of the time, get the LS glyph. If you pop your wolves the second the CD is done to maximize their DPS, get the FS glyph. If you don’t do either of those, don’t use either of those glyphs. My recommendation is, if you’re unsure, grab these glyphs and swap them out during a practice session at the training dummy and see what works best for you.
The third tier is the “meh” tier. For one reason or another, these glyphs aren’t the best for us and you’re much better off never using any of these.
Your glyph choices are up to you and your playstyle and what you use the most in your rotation. Play with them, get to know what they best do for you and go from there.
IMB111 on Elitist Jerks did an EnhSim comparison of glyphs using the Tier 7 4P bonus as a base. Your numbers will change depending on your gear and stats, but this gives you a general idea:
single glyphed:
stormstrike 5978 dps
feral spirit 5972 dps
windfury 5930 dps
lightning shield 5921 dps
flametongue 5917 dps
lightning bolt 5907 dps
lava lash 5897 dps
none 5875 dpsand some combinations:
stormstrike-windfury-feral spirit: 6134 dps
stormstrike-lightning shield-feral spirit: 6124 dps
stormstrike-flametongue-feral spirit: 6121 dps
stormstrike-lightning bolt-feral spirit: 6110 dps
stormstrike-lava lash-feral spirit: 6098 dps
stormstrike-flametongue-windfury: 6078 dps
windfury-flametongue-feral spirit: 6074 dps
stormstrike-lightning bolt-flametongue: 6055 dps
Up next: Gems!
Raiding Horizons Series
- Part One: Gear
- Part Two: Enchants & Glyphs
- Part Three: Gems
- Part Four: Consumables
An interesting list of enchants though i have some qualms with some of them.
I’d definitely drop stats on bracers from the list, it’s quite a bit worse then expertise for a shaman and expertise is cheaper mats.
For gloves the Agi and Crit choices aren’t very good ones. Hit, Exp, and the AP buffs will offer you far more dps for your mats.
As for weapons just like you said with accuracy agility isn’t a good option anymore as Potency outweighs it in terms of dps for a cheap enchant. And 65 ap on a weapon is a waste of mats as well since you might as well save a little more for berserking or sell them for mongoose then waste abyssal shards on 65 ap as bother are far better.
It looks like the consensus is WF/FT on weapons but, I am wondering about MH/OH Weapon Speed. I am still leveling(76) but, I thought a fast OH weapon was fine. Should I be looking for a slow OH instead?
No one says absolutely don’t use a fast OH, it’s just that you may lose some overall damage with a faster OH. Damage from FT scales with weapon speed and the damage from Lava Lash is dependent on the amount of damage the FT puts out. So you have to take into account the overall weapon DPS, it’s speed (how many times you swing it in a minute) and multiply that by the FT scaling and add in the number of swings you can use on Lava Lash (lots of math, trust me) you end up with an edge out in overall damage with a slower OH. Go over to Elitist Jerks and do a search on Fire Knives for a different playstyle using FT/FT on two fast weapons. It’s pretty interesting, albeit, not for everyone.