Patch 4.0.6: Enhancement Shaman Windfury Changes

As many of you know Patch 4.0.6 has some changes for shamans incoming. Blizzard hopes to get us away from using caster weapons in main hand for good. They will reduce the damage from Flame Tongue by 20% and add an additional swing to Windfury, basically increasing its damage by 50%.
While I do not like that they again increase the RNG in our dps by reducing the reliable steady damage from Flame Tongue, it looks like this is a slight buff for us. Let us look at some fights.

Patch notes

Lets have a quick look at the Patch notes:

Shaman

• Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.
• Healing Rain now has a 40-yard range, up from 30, to be consistent with other shaman heals.
• Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.
• Spiritwalker’s Grace duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 10.
• Tremor Totem has been redesigned. The totem is now usable under Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects, and pulses much more rapidly, but lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown.
• The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.

Elemental Combat

• Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Elemental Overload (Mastery) procs of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning can now generate Rolling Thunder charges.
• Lava Burst’s damage has been increased by roughly 10%.

Enhancement

• Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
• Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.

Restoration

• Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.
• Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
• Earth Shield can no longer be dispelled.
• Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
• Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman’s Spirit, exclusive of short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped. In addition, its effects are now raid-wide.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Hex now reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds, down from 15.

Sample Math

A Blue Post said that the Flametongue Weapon damage change will result in a bout 20% drop of its damage, while the Windfury Weapon Buff will increase from 2 to 3 swings (= +50%).

Argaloth

Lets do some math looking at example fights. The first one being a pure single target fight versus Argaloth in Baradin Hold.

If we apply this simple math the Flametongue damage will drop 20% from 389572 to 311658, we’d lose 77914 damage. At the same time our Windfury Damage rises from 313125 to 469688, gaining 156563 damage. Adding both together I would still have gained 78649 damage overall.
With Pets I did 3605980 damage, meaning the overall gain would be around 2,2%

FT: 389572 * 0.8 = 311658 = -77914 damage
WF: 313125 * 1.5 = 469688 = +156563 damage
Total: 156563 -77914 = +78694 damage = (78694/3130009) * 100 = +2.51% damage

Conclave of Wind heroic

FT: 610924 * 0.8 = 488740 = -122184 damage
WF: 471276 *1.5 = 706914 = +235638 damage
Total: 235638-122184 = +113454 damage = (113454/4792878)*100 = +2.37% damage

Maloriak heroic

This fight is particular bad as Enhancement Shaman with our total lack of AoE capabilities and the constant moving around.

FT: 994507 * 0.8 = 795606 = -198901 damage
WF: 779725 *1.5 = 1169588 = +389863 damage
Total: 235638 -198901 = +190962 damage = (190962/8731674)*100 = +2.19% damage

Summary

Looking at these numbers we do not need to fear the coming Enhancement changes. They will even turn out to be a slight buff for us. The examples above do not include pet damage, but even with that included we still gain 1.9%-2.2% damage. I still wish the Devs would do something about the absolute horrible Enhancement AoE Situation.

Related Posts

• The Enhancement Shaman 4.0 Guide
• Patch 4.3 General and Enhancement Shaman changes
• A look at the first PTR 4.3 Changes
• Patch 4.1 Fire Nova Preview
• Does Feral Spirit benefit from Heroism?