[GUIDE] Ribbaz's Enhancement PvP guide

[Ragnorak]

WTB pic of Vaen eating his sombrero

[Cover25]

nom nom nom nom

[Discarnate]

Both me and Ribbaz have been inactive on Shaman since before the merge, lol. I don't even see any other Enhancement Shamans around. I wonder who you could've mistaken him for.

[Cover25]

Both me and Ribbaz have been inactive on Shaman since before the merge, lol. I don't even see any other Enhancement Shamans around. I wonder who you could've mistaken him for.

idk disc, haters gonna hate. I got ribs back <3

[Discarnate]

Well, perhaps, it was an honest mistake. I still find no reason for such posts even if it WAS Ribbaz. It has no purpose, and it's impolite as well as hardly sportsmanlike. Try being a bit more positive, Vaen. Never forget to leave the PvP back in the arena rooms.

Ribbaz, the Grounding Totem is badly bugged. It eats no CC spells at all. You're exposed without it. Feral Spirit still hits like anorexic teenage girls. And, the most important bug of all, I already mentioned in the earlier post. So, it's not THAT pretty.

[Cover25]

Disc, you're so polite Such a gentlemen

[ribbaribbahey]

Disc we didn't reached our ranks while the spec wasn't fully working as well. Maeltrom used to dont reduce your cast time sometimes at random, AP was scaling wrongly with spells and earthbind didn't used to remove your snares.
Rerollers gonna reroll,quitters gonna quit. And we're gonna keep playing for the lulz

[Discarnate]

Oh, btw, your fire totems' spell crit chance still doesn't scale with your own, lol. Nobody knows when these things will be fixed. Barely anybody plays Enhancement. I doubt Trinity even cares.

[ribbaribbahey]

You remembered me another bug we had.But look it in an optimistic way: they used to not crit at all You need a developer in TrueWoW so bad...

[minotaur]

Thank you for your guide. It seems Ribbaz and Discarnate have most experiences here so... I have some questions :
1. Does weapon enchants like FT/WF trigger [Maelstorm Weapon] when they do damage as spells?
2. Does weapon enchants like FT/WF trigger [Elemental Devastation] when they do damage as spells?
3. About Lava Lash, you said it ignores some percent armor... Is it used to be like this or it does in this server?
4. In [Elemental Fury] talent, does it increase spell damage of FT/WF enhances?
5. Are you sure enhance shamans don't need [Improved Shields] talent when they use lightning shield glyph and [Static Shock] talent?
6. Can you give some serious guide for Shock spell using please?
7. What do you suggest as blue sockets? (stamina/spell penetration/attack power+spell penetration/over attack power)
8. Ain't [Brutal Earthstorm Diamond] useful for enhance shaman as meta socket?
Please send me you personal answer before you reply here so I can see differences.

[ribbaribbahey]

He's not answering my PM and i didn't really get why i shouldnìt post it. So here it is.

Thank you minotaur, i can fully answer at most of your questions but not to all.
1-2) windfury's proc is considered a melee hit and other than be lowered by armor can trigger maelstrom weapon, i'm sure of this, but can't trigger elemental devastation. On the other side enchants like frostbrand or flametongue do spell damage and don't make proc maelstrom weapon. I'm not sure if they can even crit, but should trigger elemental devastation if they could, you can test it by simply autoattacking a dummy and see if elemental devastation procs.
3) Lava lash does pure fire damage, it's meant to ignore 100% of the armor. It can make proc maelstrom weapon.
4) never tested, simply because if you are PvE you must 5/5 Elemental fury, and if you are PvP the damage increase is worthless any test.
5) I don't recommend to waste 3 talent points on it. In PvP mobility and survivability are far better than 15% shield dmg increase: you would need to sacrifice anticipation, toughness, DW specialization or a tier3 elemental talent to ge it. In PvE you could take it but to the detriment of improved totems: keep in mind that if your totems cause melee dps's to land 1 more white hit and 1 more crit in a boss fight, the damage done will be still bigger than the one gained from the +15% of the shield. In my opinion that is a restoration talent.
7) I would suggest to reach 75 spell penetration to make sure your spell won't be fully resisted, but at the moment that's bugged and your spell pen will only increase your spell damage to a target with some resistance up; then go for +20 AP +15stamina. I'm quite attached to socket bonuses because you often sacifice a negligible ammount of attack power for a quite significative ammount of stamina. Thou I remind you that we talk of 200ish hp's and 10-30 damage per swing increase that will win or lose a game over a thousand. It makes the difference if you socket everything with AP, but that's a gamble if resist was working, and doesn't allow you to stack haste or resilience, and reducing your stamina. You may want to socket stamina if you're into toughness.
8) I didn't even knew this existed, so i searched for some info. I didn't find the proc rate on any of the wikies, but it came out that's 1% or 5% proc chance (depending from which forum) for 1s stun. I was worried about the Diminishing Return but it's an uncontrolled stun so it may interfear only with paladin's seal or something like that. As similar effects have 1% proc chance, I think that's the actual rate, making it next to useless. It could be useful only with lucky strikes, when your interrupt is on cd and your 1% proc triggers right while a caster was prepearing his spell. It sounds funny to use, but if you care of the math don't even consider this meta. The +3 dmg is completely useless, far below the other dmg increases.

I will deepen the use of shocks later.

[minotaur]

Thank you so much Ribbaz. That helps a lot

[ribbaribbahey]

Here comes the small guide for the use of shocks.
As you all already know we got 3 type of shocks: earth, frost and fire.

Flame shock is the one which you will use less, because it has no power-ups in our talent tree. Besides that, it's the one that will land the highest overall damage done, compared to the others not critting. I use it in those situations where I didn't stormstrike my target yet or when I dont want to root a far enemy (a good example, a mix of these two situations is against warriors at the start of a match: earth shock would hit less for the lack of SS debuff and you would only give them rage and the HoT by rooting them). I am not really into tracking patches, so i don't know if the DoTs are supposed to keep you in combat or not, here. They used to, and flame shock back in TBC was used to keep people in combat to not let them go to drink in arenas. Because it is the longest-lasting magic debuff we have,another use of flame shock is to cover the dispels of your partner's debuffs such as immolate, vampiric touch etc. Flame shock is useful against stealthers (ferals, rogues, mages with invisibility), when you foresee that your enemy is about to CC and restealth, light them up. Expecially after a rogue used cloack of shadow, try to keep flame shock up on him.

Earth shock is the spell you will be using to dps. It gets buffed by your stormstrike debuff, and when it crits it's the hardest hitting spell compared to the others, critting. The 20% reduced attack speed is very useful against warriors, ferals and rogues. Another merit of this spell is that it's a physical debuff, it can't be dispelled unlike the other two. If you are sure your target won't escape, go ahead and use this shock.

Frost shock. Dulcis in fundo. This is the most viable shock we have. The root from the talents is quite uncomfortable to use but don't ever consider to not take it. If you are going to melee some ranged dps and there is no LOS, you can stoneclaw totem->frost shock(root)->ghost wolf. Try to organize your GCD so that you can always land a grounding totem or a wind shear!
Best of all, with this shock you can keep busy a melee class even if you aren't going on him. By using the macro i wrote before, you can root them by mouseovering or focus-targetting. It takes some practice because i often find myself having to walk away (even if i'm on another target) to get the right range (by instinct) so then i can root. There are few addons that show you the range of the enemy, but I don't remember their names. If you play beastcleave or any team with a caster, you are supposed to support your partner with this kind of control. Being an instant cast, you can have fun for example by rooting the enemy healer (usually they are always pillar hugging) and luring the other one out of his partner's LOS.
Against rangeds (expecially hunters) always frost shock, even if earthbind totem is down; because they could kill the totem or exit from its range. For example, you can't use earthbind for the whole time against warlocks, you need tremor totem, so frost shock to the infinite and beyond.(PS:after conflagrate, it is good to land earthbind->snare removed->tremor totem asap)

[Discarnate]

Thank you for your guide. It seems Ribbaz and Discarnate have most experiences here so... I have some questions :
1. Does weapon enchants like FT/WF trigger [Maelstorm Weapon] when they do damage as spells?
2. Does weapon enchants like FT/WF trigger [Elemental Devastation] when they do damage as spells?
3. About Lava Lash, you said it ignores some percent armor... Is it used to be like this or it does in this server?
4. In [Elemental Fury] talent, does it increase spell damage of FT/WF enhances?
5. Are you sure enhance shamans don't need [Improved Shields] talent when they use lightning shield glyph and [Static Shock] talent?
6. Can you give some serious guide for Shock spell using please?
7. What do you suggest as blue sockets? (stamina/spell penetration/attack power+spell penetration/over attack power)
8. Ain't [Brutal Earthstorm Diamond] useful for enhance shaman as meta socket?
Please send me you personal answer before you reply here so I can see differences.

1/2) FT and FB will not proc MW. Only physical abilities and Lava Lash. Remember that WF is a bundle of attacks and therefore will produce multiple MW stacks if you're lucky. FT and FB can both crit, scale with Elemental Fury and proc Elemental Devastation.

3) Ribbaz said it already. It's working as intended.

4) Yes, it does as stated in the first answer. FT and FB are instant spells. Nothing more, nothing less.

5) The combination of Static Shock, Improved Shields and Glyph of Lightning Shield is for 2v2-casual-duel specs. Especially in duels, pretty much your highest damage source is Lightning Shield against any melee. But, in 3v3, although it depends on your comp, people rarely ever go for the Enhancement because it's a waste of time. They will always try to throw all of their CCs on you to prevent you from doing the annoying things you do and kill your partners in a tunnel or switch. So, perhaps, going for alternative options as Ribbaz stated will be for your best interest.

6) Ribbaz got that covered.

7) Normally Spell Penetration. It depends on your comp and your amount of Armor Penetration to determine how much Spell Penetration you need. Ask yourself. Do you need to do a lot of spell damage? Or are you just securing your CCs? 135 for the first, 75-85 for the latter as Ribbaz already stated.

8) AP/Reduced Stun or Agi/Crit metas are common. It really doesn't matter much. Use whatever suits your style.

Personal Tip #1 -- Windfury has a 3 sec internal cooldown. Make sure your active haste keeps your weapon speed near 3 or 1.5 or 1. I'm giving some unreal examples there, but the theory behind is what's important. I suggest 340 haste. That'll give you around 1.5 weapon speed while using 2.6 with Flurry and untalented Windfury Totem. If you didn't understand what the heck I'm talking about, ask for it. Even though I'm pretty inactive on the forums these days, Ribbaz can still explain you. I've itemized like that for years. I still do it on AT. Works like a charm.

Personal Tip #2 -- There are two ways of gearing. While maintaining Hit cap, you either go for Crit/Haste offsets or ArP/Haste offsets. They're useful for different purposes and comps. For ArP builds, you will never gem for ArP. You will use DBW (giving you 11% ArP) + 4 other offsets (most commonly neck, belt, ring, boots/bracer ~ approximately giving 5% ArP each). You'll obtain a total of 30% passive ArP. You must gem for AP/Haste as usual to maintain the most optimal Windfury proc rate. Remember that the DBW haste proc can screw up this proc rate sometimes. The more popular way is to go for Crit/Haste offsets. You need to use trinkets like Death's Choice heroic or Whispering Fanged Skull heroic for this. You get to use a bit more PvP gear thereby increasing your survivability. That is all.

Good luck.

[ribbaribbahey]

Updated.