Rate My Build - Enhance Shaman

hom

Grandfathered
Hello,

I've had a 39 enhance shaman collecting dust and I have wanted to turn him into a twink for a while. Please rate the below build, let me know if there are better items for him.

Really trying to max out Versatility and Haste

Link:
ENHANCE 39 TWINK
 
I think your build is interesting and I have more questions than answers because:

- you sacrifice a lot of agi to max haste
- conventional wisdom says primary stat in current patch is waaaaaaay more valuable than secondaries; agi scaling with WF and stormstrike is very good
- I question this conventional wisdom because I was playing with a twink priest yesterday who prioritizes haste until 20% at expense of the rest and kicks major ass
- Comparing enhance sham to any type of priest isn't apples to apples though -- stronger classes can get away with unconventional a lot more easily
- Enhance Shaman have (very!) limited tools now without frostshock, purge, grounding totem -- on top of that maelstrom is a bitch - not much room for error or to recover from mistakes (no defensive cooldowns); so to mitigate our real strength (bursty DPS) in order to auto attack faster and decrease the GCD -- unsure how it will feel - because by the time I atually get into melee range I am already at 80% health
- is getting auto attack weapon speed from 2.6 to 2.2 noticeable? worth sacrificing burst damage for? (unsure) might noticeably help with maelstrom starvation and free SS procs but I am skeptical.
- is lowering GCD to 1.1 worth it? (unsure) but we have so many buttons to push and are a reactive class so it might be.
- does lowering damage on WF and SS damage matter? (unsure) Part of the fun of enhance is big numbers and your build will have smaller but faster numbers -- maybe that is just as fun?

kudos for creativity! would love to hear how you like it.
 
I think your build is interesting and I have more questions than answers because:

- you sacrifice a lot of agi to max haste
- conventional wisdom says primary stat in current patch is waaaaaaay more valuable than secondaries; agi scaling with WF and stormstrike is very good
- I question this conventional wisdom because I was playing with a twink priest yesterday who prioritizes haste until 20% at expense of the rest and kicks major ass
- Comparing enhance sham to any type of priest isn't apples to apples though -- stronger classes can get away with unconventional a lot more easily
- Enhance Shaman have (very!) limited tools now without frostshock, purge, grounding totem -- on top of that maelstrom is a bitch - not much room for error or to recover from mistakes (no defensive cooldowns); so to mitigate our real strength (bursty DPS) in order to auto attack faster and decrease the GCD -- unsure how it will feel - because by the time I atually get into melee range I am already at 80% health
- is getting auto attack weapon speed from 2.6 to 2.2 noticeable? worth sacrificing burst damage for? (unsure) might noticeably help with maelstrom starvation and free SS procs but I am skeptical.
- is lowering GCD to 1.1 worth it? (unsure) but we have so many buttons to push and are a reactive class so it might be.
- does lowering damage on WF and SS damage matter? (unsure) Part of the fun of enhance is big numbers and your build will have smaller but faster numbers -- maybe that is just as fun?

kudos for creativity! would love to hear how you like it.

Thanks for the in-depth reply!

With all the other bursty classes out there I really wanted to see how a tanky versatility based shaman would play. The haste is mainly for the gcd reduction, letting me get off as many abilities as I can when I get close enough or the opportunity arises.

The haste also reduces the cooldown of stormstrike and increases the chances of getting stormbringer and windfury procs. Sure having high agility will make cause these abilities to hit for more, but increasing the chance of them occurring yet sacrificing 10-20% damage on them seems like a fair trade to me.

I drafted this build before realising that most of the items would be better off replaced with scaled 39 greens, I normally roam the 60 bracket where this is rarely the case. Hopefully I'll get this toon geared and see you guys on the battlefield to compare it's usefulness.

Thanks again for your feedback!
 

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