With these latest Enhancement changes, the math is officially settled: Grace of Air + Flametongue Totem is strictly better for our personal damage than dropping Windfury Totem.
Why Windfury Totem is dead for Enhancement personal DPS:
Zero Personal Stacking: As a 2H Enhancement Shaman, we are running Windfury Weapon on our 2H weapon. Our 2h weapon enchant does not stack with Windfury Totem on the ground. Dropping WF Totem gives us literally 0 personal benefit.
GoA Feeds both Melee & Spellhance: Grace of Air grants massive flat Agility, giving us raw Melee AP, Ranged AP, and Critical Strike chance. Crit is what keeps Flurry (+30% attack speed) active on a slow 2H weapon, which in turn fuels our Maelstrom stacks for those heavily buffed instant Lightning Bolts.
Flametongue Totem Value: Adding FT Totem further increases our spell/elemental damage profile over wasting Air totem budget on WF.
The Verdict:
If you put us in a group with Hunters, Feral Druids, or Casters, Grace of Air is objectively better for the entire party.
If you put us in a group with 2H Warriors or Combat Rogues who demand Windfury Totem… sorry, but Enhancement is no longer just your buff bot. Our personal scaling is way too high to give up GoA and self-gank our own parse unless we explicitly decide to Totem Twist… oh wait we totem twisting isn’t in the game anymore
Melee: It’s time to supply your own damage. We’re busy blasting 5 stack Lightning Bolts!
Was this even a question? We’ve known that FTT was better for personal DPS over WFT since they made Imbue totems stack with our weapon Imbue.
Also really not sure what the whole second half of your post with group stuff is about… GoA, WFT, FTT all are raid wide now so it doesn’t matter what group you’re in, you’re still dropping WFT for the melee otherwise it’s griefing.
For the record, I don’t like that this is how the Shaman totems work, it’s absolute hot garbage, but this is apparently how Blizz decided Shaman should work.
Unless Raid dps somehow averages higher with GoA & FT than WF, your going to be expected to drop WF. Given totems are Raid wide and few shamans will be needed, you will be easily replaced if you don’t put the raid above personal performance.
Raid-wide mechanics don’t change 5-man dungeons. In a 5-man party, dropping WFT gives 0 value to a Shaman, Caster, or Tank who doesn’t benefit from it over GoA. In 5-mans, dropping Windfury is a complete waste GoA gives party-wide Agility that boosts our personal DPS and anyone scaling off Agi/Crit. We’re not dropping WF in 5-mans, period.
Spoken like a Rogue who thinks the entire group design revolves around their auto-attacks. Raid wide is one thing, but in 5-man dungeons, dropping WF Totem is a massive net-loss for the Shaman’s personal scaling for literally zero return to half the group. If you’re relying on a Shaman to gank their own damage just so you can hit buttons in a 5-man, you’re the one getting replaced
I love reading people absolutely mald out over changes like this. It actually brings me joy I can feel in my bones.
Please, keep going on about how you’re going to parse green instead of grey now because you are going to be min-maxing your DPS to the nth degree by not dropping a windfury totem in a melee heavy group.