enhancement-shaman-spellpower-weapons
Latest
Totem Talk: Enhancement and spellpower weapons, a problematic pair
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Do your likes include bladed weapons, the elements, and fights with little to no movement/target switching? So does Josh Myers, new kid on the block and now host of Totem Talk: Enhancement! To some enhancement shaman, wielding a spellpower weapon in their main hand is an abomination. More unholy than a death knight, more wicked than a warlock, using a spellpower main-hand just feels wrong. I've never agreed with the majority on this point. Having hit level 80 and started raiding at the time enhancement shaman started realizing spellpower main-hand/dagger off-hand was the optimal build, spellpower weapons were my ace in the hole. I felt a small thrill of victory every time I topped DPS after being threatened to be kicked from a PUG Naxxramas for my peculiar weapon arrangement. At that time, a spellpower main-hand felt more like a handy trick, a DPS sleight of hand that helped you top meters while annoying every caster in your raid. When patch 3.1 hit, the neat trick that made spellpower weapons optimal for enhancement was patched out. At Wrath of the Lich King release, Flametongue Weapon always did the same amount of damage, regardless of weapon speed. This meant that Webbed Death, a 1.4 speed dagger and the best-in-slot enhancement off-hand, would do the same amount of Flametongue damage as Angry Dread, the 2.5 speed mace we were supposed to be using. When you coupled that with the massive spellpower and the fast speed of Torch of Holy Fire, our Flametongue Weapon gave us very reliable, sustained DPS. I was slightly melancholy when patch 3.1 hit and the Flametongue Weapon formula was tweaked to make it scale with weapon speed, and the spellpower weapon fell from grace. However, my personal opinion is that anything that allows me to perform well is welcome, so I got over losing my fiery fists of doom right quick. My regret at the time was more because enhancement started to lose its footing as the highest DPS hybrid spec, a decline that hit rock bottom in the soul-sucking past year of raiding Icecrown Citadel. Regardless of how the end of Wrath of the Lich King happened, though, Cataclysm has brought to us a resurgence of my old favorite trick, the spellpower weapon. With that resurgence comes questions, questions this post hopes to address.
