It seems 101 guides are all the rage these days, which makes enhancement shaman 101 a convenient place to start with my inaugural WoW.com post. Playing an enhancement shaman, and playing it well, means dealing with the most extensive spell rotation in the game, having two caps to hit in gearing, and a dozen cooldowns to track. Not to mention the need to run out of fires, avoid whirlwinds, and generally dodge all that hate on melee. It's safe to say enhance is one of the most complex specs to play. It's also one of the most fun.

My favorite part is that we're right up front making a mess of things with both physical and magical damage–to deadly effect. You want to play enhancement? Let's dive right in to get you started!

Spec & Glyphs

First things first, a spec. 19/52/0. Okay, that's done.

The best two glyphs are Feral Spirit and Stormstrike. I swap between Windfury Weapon and Fire Nova depending on the fight, but if frequent glyph changes isn't your thing then go with Glyph of Windfury Weapon.

Hit

After the spec and glyphs are nailed down it's time to dive into priorities. First and foremost, before doing anything, before you invest one single gem in anything at all: get spell hit capped.

• 341 for Alliance
• 367 for Horde

These numbers are for raid bosses and assumes you have a balance druid with Improved Faerie Fire or shadow priest putting Misery on the boss. Don't worry about those debuffs with 5-man dungeon bosses because they are level 82 and their required hit cap is much lower.

Going over the hit cap is good but as a rule don't gem or enchant for more than the spell cap. Hit the cap and any extra hit from gear is a bonus. And we don't worry about the melee cap because we have other priorities than hitting 100% of the time with our off hand weapon; occasional melee misses are perfectly acceptable.

Expertise

Because you're an intelligent enhancement shaman and took the above spec you now have the required 3/3 Unleashed Rage, which increases expertise by nine. You now need an additional 140 expertise rating. The end result is that upon opening the character sheet it reads 26 expertise.

Extra expertise over 26 is bad. Sometimes you don't have a choice such as with trinkets and gear, but as a rule, if you can avoid going over exp cap, do so.

[View Remaining 18 Paragraphs]