Gentlemen, Choose your Weapons

Choosing your weapon is one of your most important choice as a Enhancement Shaman on World of Warcraft. And it is also one of the most difficult challenge to face.

What does a Shaman wants from his weapons ?

1. First of all, he wants a slow weapon, both in Main-hand and Off-hand, actually the slowest weapons as possible. Why ? Simply because around 30% of a Shaman DPS comes from Windfury, so you want your Windfury to hit the strongest as possible. And you got to know that since the 2.1 patch WF got a 3 sec. cooldown, that means that the faster is your off-hand, the more you risk to see WF proccing on this same off-hand, which you should not want to see happened because it is your weakiest hand*. Here is a nice graph taken from Malan post on EJ forum :
   
   
   
2. You want the weapon with the highest base DPS possible, considering the previous factor.

Now that we know how to choose the weapon, let's see what you should spend your DKP at thanks to Spacetotem who created the Shaman Weapon DPS Index (WDI).

Here is his calculation to choose a weapon : ((DPS*Speed) + 0.5*DPS)/3. Seems really logical to me as we knows from above that the more the weapon is around 3.0, the prettier our DPS will be. I just add the Merciless Gladiator calculation to his Index, as it wasn't available when he has done his calculation.

   Weapon DPS Index
Rank
DPS
Speed
Index
Ratio
Differential
Weapon
1
100.2
2.8
110.2
1.1
10
Syphon Nathrezim
2
98.7
2.7
105.3
1.07
6.6
Rod of Sun King
3
97.6
2.7
104.1
1.07
6.5
Dragonstrike
4
97.6
2.7
104.1
1.07
6.5
WickedEdgePlanes
5
100.2
2.6
103.5
1.03
3.3
Rising Tide
6
97.5
2.6
100.8
1.03
3.3
Merciless Gladiator's Slow
7
93.7
2.7
99.9
1.07
6.2
TalonPhoenix
8
91.1
2.7
97.2
1.07
6.1
Dragonmaw
9
91.1
2.7
97.2
1.07
6.1
Black Planar Edge
10
93.7
2.6
96.8
1.03
3.1
Netherbane
11
92.1
2.6
95.2
1.03
3.1
The Decapitator
12
91.2
2.6
94.2
1.03
3
Gladiator's Slow
13
87.5
2.6
90.4
1.03
2.9
Fool's Bane
14
84.3
2.7
89.9
1.07
5.6
Planar Edge
15
84.3
2.7
89.9
1.07
5.6
Drakefist Hammer
16
87.6
2.5
87.6
1
0
Big Bad Wolf's Paw
17
83.7
2.6
86.5
1.03
2.8
The Bladefist
18
83.5
2.4
80.7
0.97
-2.8
Runic Hammer
19
100.3
1.8
76.9
0.77
-23.4
Boundless Agony
20
71.7
2.7
76.5
1.07
4.8
Reflex Blades
21
98.6
1.8
75.6
0.77
-23
Fang of Vashj
22
83.4
2.2
75.1
0.9
-8.3
Fel Edged Axe
23
71.7
2.6
74.1
1.03
2.4
Boggspine Knuckles
24
93.6
1.8
71.8
0.77
-21.8
Heartrazor
25
71.6
2.5
71.6
1
0
Terrok's Gavel
26
91.9
1.8
70.5
0.77
-21.4
Malchazeen
27
65.5
2.6
67.7
1.03
2.2
AH GREEN
28
87.5
1.8
67.1
0.77
-20.4
Emeral Ripper
29
100.3
1.5
66.9
0.67
-33.4
Tracker's Blade
30
100.3
1.5
66.9
0.67
-33.4
Swiftsteel Bludgeon
31
62.6
2.5
62.6
1
0
Mag'Hari Fury Bnd
32
93.7
1.5
62.5
0.67
-31.2
Claw Phoenix
33
91.1
1.5
60.7
0.67
-30.4
Gladiator's Fast

So you can see that 100 dps weapons from BT are less valuable than that AH Green you gought for 10 golds.

I've Fool's Bane (#13) as MH and a 2.6 AH Green at OH. As you can see, there is not an huge amount of OH available before BT. As I got 240 Arena points (sic.) and no DKP available, I'll go for that sweet Runic Hammer (#18 but #6 OH) as off-hand with a Mongoose enchant on it.

Now that you have choosen your weapon, you're probably wondering how hard it would hit on mobs ? Thanks to Hedin post and assuming that you've farmed Mana Tomb Heroic for the Totem of Astral Wind, there are the results :

• MainHand Damage :
  ([Weapon Damage] + [Fully buffed AP]/14 * [Weapon Speed]) * 1.10
• MainHand Windfury :
  ([Weapon Damage]+([Fully buffed AP] + WindfuryAP + [Totem of the Astral Winds AP])/14 * [Weapon Speed]) * 1.10 * 1.40
• OffHand Damage :
  ([Weapon Damage] + [Fully buffed AP]/14 * [Weapon Speed])/2 * 1.10
• OffHand Windfury (2.1 patch mechanic :
  (([Weapon Damage]+AP/14*[Weapon Speed])/2+(WindfuryAP + [Totem of the Astral Winds])/14 * [Weapon Speed])) * 1.10 * 1.40

Hope that this post will help you to find your correct weapons too.

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* As a Shaman, your Off-hand will always do half the damage that your main hand would have done with the same weapon.