Damage Cycles

Enhancement Shamans have six ways to make things hurt:

• Melee attacks (sometimes called auto-attack or "white" damage)
• Weapon Imbues (of which by far the most useful is Windfury Weapon, which gives a chance to immediately proc two instant attacks with a big attack power boost)
  
• Shocks (Instant cast elemental damage with a 5 or 6 second cooldown)
• Stormstrike (Instant attack with each weapon with a 10 second cooldown)
• Damage Totems (ranging from the single shot fire damage Searing Totem to the tank-in-a-totem Greater Earth Elemental)
• Lightning Shield (three charges that deliver damage when attacked)

We also have Lightning/Chain Lightning Bolts, but casting these interrupts many of our other damage cycles. These are best used situationally: either to pull mobs to us or because we can't run into melee range for some reason (such as we've been rooted in place by a caster).

Melee attacks -- 45-50% of DPS
Our primary DPS cycle. Just press "T," sit back and watch the enemy die. Enhancement Shamans can use axes, maces or fist weapons (we can also use daggers, but shouldn't). We can use 2H weapons, 1H with shield or dual wield. Dual wielding is, for a number of reasons, the best option.

• When dual wielding, swings from both your hands have a 19% higher chance to miss. At level 70, this is a 28% miss chance. However, "Yellow damage" special attacks (Windfury and Stormstrike) only have a 9% miss chance, regardless of whether you're wielding 2 weapons or 1. Thus the miss penalty from dual wielding isn't as bad as it looks.
  
• Both your offhand and your main hand get additional DPS from your attack power, though the offhand does half as much damage. Thus, dual wielding is like getting 50% more value from your AP.
• Two important shaman mechanics (Stormstrike and Windfury) have mechanics that dramatically improve when a shaman dual wields.

Weapon Imbues -- 25-35% of DPS
Weapon imbues proc off melee hits from auto-attack and Stormstrike. There are four of them, one for each element, but the only one that really matters is Windfury Weapon.

Windfury's power is easy to understand: it delivers two free swings that happen automatically, have a big AP boost, cost no mana and feed back into many other abilities. It does more damage at all levels than any other imbue -- given the right weapons.

Windfury claims to be a "20% chance per hit," but actually it's more complex than that:

• Windfury can never proc twice in a row -- there's a 3 second cool down after each proc.
  
• 20% is the chance to proc when only one weapon has the Windfury Weapon imbue on it.
  
• When two weapons have the imbue on them, both weapons have a 36% chance to proc, outside of the cooldown period.
  
• This increased chance to proc is the main reason all enhancement shamans should dual wield and put Windfury on both weapons. A dual wielding shaman will have more Windfury procs from BOTH hands than a single wielding shaman.

Shocks -- 12-20% of DPS
Shocks have a 6 second cooldown that can be reduced to 5 seconds through talents. They are incredibly mana efficient, having a low mana cost to begin with and a total of 3 talents to decrease their cost.

• Frost Shock: Instant cast frost damage. Will slow an enemy's movement for 8s and does a large amount of threat. Good damage, but the extra threat means you won't use it in groups or raids, and the slow can be annoying when single target farming. Great for PvP. Can also be used as a very effective kiting or escape mechanism.
• Flame Shock: Instant cast fire damage, with a 12 second flame dmage over time debuff. By far the highest damage overall if you let the DoT tick for the full 12 seconds. It also benefits the most from any spell damage you may have, and prevents rogues and druids from stealthing. What's not to love?
• Earth Shock: Instant cast lightning damage. Will also interrupt any spells the enemy is currently casting. If used directly after Stormstrike, it will consume one of the charges and do 20% more damage, making it the second most damaging shock after Flame Shock.

Most of the time, you will probably want to alternate Flame Shock and Earth Shock on any fight where you don't need the interrupt portion of Earth Shock.

Stormstrike -- 8-12% of DPS
Stormstrike is an instant cast attack with both weapons. It has a 10 second cooldown and can proc Windfury. Unlike instant cast attacks for other classes, Stormstrike is not "normalized" -- meaning that you will do significantly more DPS with slow weapons than with fast ones with the same weapon DPS.

Stormstrike also provides two debuffs that can be consumed by anyone who casts nature damage spells for 20% additional damage. Most of the time, we will use this for bigger and nastier earth shocks. However, if there's an elemental shaman in your group or raid, it's a better idea to let them consume these debuffs, because 20% of their spells is greater than 20% of ours. Some shaman go so far as to only use Flame Shock when there's an elemental shaman in the raid.

Fire Totems -- 5-8% of DPS
Fire Totems come in three flavors. Of these, Searing is the cheapest, mana wise, and does a respectable amount of damage. I call it the Little Wooden Imp. Cheap as it is, the only reason not to drop it is that it likes to interrupt CC. Wait until all enemies are sheeped, feared or whatever before dropping it.

Magma and Fire Nova do AoE damage in pulse and burst respectively. They are mana expensive and low dps, but dropping them causes no threat to the shaman so they're safe to use where other AoE is not.

Lightning Shield -- Situational
Time was, Lightning Shield was the cheapest damage per mana (DPM) spell we had when farming/grinding; through mana reduction talents, that honor has passed to shocks. In groups and raids, most shaman are rarely getting hit, and thus Lightning Shield offers little benefit. Lightning Shield is still pretty awesome for PvP, and useful against some bosses that do frequent environmental damage. But most shaman choose to cast Water Shield instead.