This post is an additional installment in a series of posts in which Wowgiggity will be providing guidance on spell and skill rotation for the various class and talent specializations. For today, I will be presenting the rotation for the Enhancement Shaman and how to adjust the rotation for different situations.

Due to the interactions among the various abilities available, enhancement DPS does not have a rotation per se, but rather a priority scheme in which the shaman must determine the highest priority ability that is available during each global cooldown. For example, once your melee attacks have procc’d Maelstrom Weapon 5 times, you are able to cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning instantly. This can occur at any time, at which point casting Lightning Bolt becomes (essentially) the highest priority for the Shaman. Read on after the break for more details on these priorities, and some tips to help with determining your own optimal rotation.

First Attempt

First, lets go ahead and define an example priority list. I say “an example” here because unfortunately it’s not always the same rotation for everyone. For instance, if you have 4 Pieces of Tier 9 gear, you have an additional 25% damage to your Shock spells, this can increase the priority of Flame Shock in your queue.

1. Stormstrike (if no SS debuff present)
2. Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks – Lightning Bolt
3. Flame Shock
4. Earth Shock
5. Stormstrike
6. Lava Lash

As you can see, there’s a lot going on here, and this is only a partial list. We still need to add in abilities that you use rarely, but let’s look at these “normal” abilities individually and talk about why their priorities are set where they are.

The attack that defines the enhancement rotation is the instant cast that you can get from Maelstrom Weapon. Every so often when attacking, you will get a charge of Maelstrom Weapon. Each one reduces the cast time of one of your spells by 20%, so when you get 5 stacks, the cast will be instant. This instant cast can be used for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Hex, Healing Wave, Chain Heal, and Lesser Healing Wave. For a single target fight, you will almost always want to use Lightning Bolt as your instant.

Next up is Stormstrike, one of the most iconic of the enhancement shaman’s abilities. Stormstrike is an instant attack using both weapons. Stormstrike is a great damage dealer, but you’ll notice that it is only high in priority if the mob does not already have the Stormstrike debuff. After Stormstriking a target, for the next 12 seconds all nature damage you do will be increased by 28% (if you use Glyph of Stormstrike , which you should), so it is important to keep that debuff on the target to help your Lightning Bolt, Lightning Shield, and Earth Shock.

Next up in the rotation is Flame Shock. This applies a DoT to the boss. Closely following Flame Shock is Earth Shock. These 2 spells share a cooldown, so you can’t hit one right after the other. Now you may ask why you would ever cast Earth Shock if you could just recast Flame Shock. This is because Flame Shock only does more damage than Earth Shock if you let all the ticks of the DoT land.

Now we see Stormstrike again. Most of the time it will live here in our rotation, since you will rarely use all 4 charges of the debuff before you recast it again.

Next up is Lava Lash, which is just an offhand attack with a damage bonus.

Adding More

1. Lightning Shield * (if not active)
2. Feral Spirit * (aka Spirit Wolves)
3. Shamanistic Rage *
4. Stormstrike (if no SS debuff present)
5. Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks – Lightning Bolt
6. Fire Elemental Totem *
7. Magma Totem * if not active
8. Flame Shock
9. Earth Shock
10. Stormstrike
11. Lava Lash

Now we will add in abilities that are what I like to think of as “long cooldown” items; they aren’t something that you do incredibly often, but when they’re available, lookout!  I have indicated these below with a * next to their name. First is Lightning Shield; due to the Static Shock talent, it has a chance to consume an orb to damage your target with every attack, simply put, if you don’t have the shield, you can’t consume an orb. The proc rate isn’t incredibly high, so this isn’t done that often unless you are taking damage. This is especially good if you have the 2 piece T9 bonus: an extra 3% proc rate for static shock. The third ability in this category is Shamanistic Rage. While normally a mana regeneration ability, once you have 2 pieces of T10 you will want to use this whenever it is available. The next long cooldown action is the Fire Elemental Totem. You can pop him out for 2 minutes out of every 10 (5 if glyphed ), and he’ll throw down a few hundred extra dps. Finally we have the Magma Totem, which is not technically a long cooldown, but it has a similar way of randomly inserting itself into the rotation, so I’ve included it here.

Killing Free Time

Finally, we reach the third category of abilities, which I like to call “filler”. This is basically what you do when you are waiting for one of the other abilities to come off cooldown. The only damage dealer in here is the Fire Nova spell, which does an AoE around your fire totem. The rest are things like refreshing totems that haven’t expired yet, and refreshing a lightning shield that still has charges.

1. Lightning Shield * (if not active)
2. Feral Spirit * (aka Spirit Wolves)
3. Shamanistic Rage *
4. Stormstrike (if no SS debuff present)
5. Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks – Lightning Bolt
6. Fire Elemental Totem *
7. Magma Totem * if not active
8. Flame Shock
9. Earth Shock
10. Stormstrike
11. Lava Lash
12. Fire Nova
13. Refresh Magma Totem *
14. Refresh Lightning Shield *
15. Refresh All Totems

Keeping Track

Whew, that was a mouthful, and by now you are probably wondering how you can possibly figure out what you should cast next. Fortunately, the Enhancement community has an answer in the addon ShockAndAwe . This addon will allow you to input your own priority, and will show you the cooldowns associated with each ability, how many charges each of your buffs and debuffs has, and can even show you the icon of your highest priority attack. We’ll close out by discussing what can change.

Why you might change your rotation.

Gear Differences

As mentioned before, there are various set bonuses that change the proc rates and damage for various abilities. These can and will affect your optimal rotation, so the only way to know your best rotation is to input your gear and simulate  various rotations to see which is best. See the How to Customize Your Rotation below.

Situational Awareness

In fights where you are moving great distances, you will want to redrop your totems whenever you may be near them for a while, so that you can get the added bonuses they give.

One ability that has not been mentioned here is Heroism . There has been good analysis (link unavailable ATM) that when you blow this is irrelevant to the total fight duration, it merely “fast forwards” a portion of the fight. With that in mind, it is usually up to the group leader to decide which portion of the fight is best sped up. There is a caveat to this however, both the Spirit Wolves and Fire Elemental only get the heroism speed bonus if they are out at the time it is cast.

The Fire Elemental can only go so far from his totem, and is uncontrollable by the player, so you may elect to pop him out when you know that the boss will not be moving, or right before you blow Heroism.

Shamanistic Rage also has a component that decreases damage taken by 30%, so you may elect to hold off on that ability slightly to time it with a damage spike, especially if you don’t have 2 pieces of Tier 10 yet.

The wolves summoned by Feral Spirit will heal you for a portion of the damage that they do, so there may be a reason to hold off on bringing out the wolves if you expect you will need some additional healing. Also, see the note above regarding Heroism.

And don’t forget, not every fight is a DPS race; sometimes there are more valuable things that you could be doing with your time. Wind Shear is not actually on the GCD, so there’s no reason not to interrupt any time you can. Also Purge can be incredibly valuable as well.

AOE

Last but not least AoE! When there is more than one enemy, it can be advantageous to swap out abilities, and adjust priorities. For instance, you will want to swap in Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt, and you will want to move Fire Nova up greatly in your rotation, ahead of Flame Shock.

How to Customize Your Priority List

While the above rotation is the best known for gear that is entirely best in slot, the best rotation for you may not be the same. If you really want the best of the best, you need EnhSim . The easiest way to use it for rotation work is to type /saa in wow to bring up the ShockAndAwe control panel. Find the button to Export to EnhSim and copy the text from the box that pops up. Then, open EnhSim and press the Copy From Clipboard button to import your data. Then you can find the priorities tab and move abilities up or down and use the simulate button to see what the predicted maximum dps for that priority will be.