Season of Discovery Enhancement Shaman DPS Stat Priority

Gear in WoW Classic tends to have useful stats mixed in with non-useful stats, making it hard to evaluate on a pure item level basis. Thus, while knowing about each stat is important, make sure to check our best in slot list as well in order to know about specific items!

1. Hit Chance (9% is the cap for special attacks against Molten Core bosses which are treated as being your level +3);
2. Strength (1 Str = 2 Attack Power);
3. Raw Attack Power;
4. Agility (1 Agi grants a small amount of crit, dodge, and armor);
5. Critical Strike (200% on normal swings);
6. Intellect (more Mana to DPS with).

Hit allows your white swings, which are the majority of your damage, to land more often. Fortunately, Dual Wield Specialization will take care of your Hit and Spell Hit caps outright.

As an Enhancement Shaman, you get a large amount of Attack Power from Strength, making it a strong DPS increasing stat.

Your weapon is by far the largest contributor to your damage, and you should always aim to upgrade it first, if possible. There are three types of stats you are mainly looking for in a weapon: its DPS, its damage range and its speed. Slower weapons have bigger damage ranges, which is very important for certain skills that depend only on the damage range, such as Stormstrike.

Weapon Skill allows you to hit enemies more often and, more importantly, for a lot more damage when you land a Glancing Blow. Glancing blows are regular hits that deal reduced damage. Molten Core bosses are counted as being your level +3, which means 40% of your attacks will be glancing blows, which deal 35% reduced damage if you have the default maxed weapon skill.

Level Difference	Chance to Occur	Base Damage Penalty
0	10%	5%
1	20%	5%
2	30%	15%
3	40%	35%

You can get some benefit by increasing your weapon skill further with racials such as Axe Specialization, Sword Specialization, or Mace Specialization, Runes such as Axe Specialization, or with items such as Expert Goldminer's Helmet.

Having at least +5 skill is a huge damage increase against end game bosses such as the ones in Molten Core as it massively increases your Hit chance and lowers the Glancing Blow penalty, as you can see in the table:

Defense / Weapon Skill Difference	Glancing Penalty	Miss Chance	Hit Cap
15 (baseline vs Molten Core Bosses)	35%	8%	9%
14	31%	7.8%	8.8%
13	27%	7.6%	8.6%
12	23%	7.4%	8.4%
11	19%	7.2%	8.2%
10 (any Rune, racial, or most items)	15%	6%	6%
9	11%	5.9%	5.9%
8	7%	5.8%	5.8%
7	5%	5.7%	5.7%
6	5%	5.6%	5.6%
5	5%	5.5%	5.5%
4	5%	5.4%	5.4%
3	5%	5.3%	5.3%
2	5%	5.2%	5.2%
1	5%	5.1%	5.1%
0	5%	5%	5%

As a Shaman, Agility increases your dodge, your armor and your critical chance. The critical strike value is what makes it a decent stat for DPSing.

Critical Strike for Enhancement Shamans increases your damage and makes you attack faster through Flurry.

Typically a caster stat, the reason Intellect is listed at is because you will be using a lot of Mana with your spells and thus your Mana pool can be of use for DPSing more in long fights. Typically you will keep your Mana refilled with Shamanistic Rage, however.