Strawberry ' s Windfury 2 . 1 " This page appears to be severely out of date . Judging by the title , it was created at Patch 2 . 1 . As I write this , it is Patch 3 . 3 . These problems appear to have been addressed . " This is math and analysis done from Strawberry on the USA WoW forums documenting exaustive research on how Windfury acts / will act and what is best to do about Shaman Buffs . It is archived here as it will continue to be useful until significant changes have been made to the talent and posts disappear on the forum . Analysis . After a couple days worth of testing , reading other ' s results and comparing them to my own , here ' s what I ' ve been able to determine regarding windfury , and my take on what needs to change to maintain the viability of Dual Wield Enhancement spec . The nerf wasn ' t as bad as we thought Based on testing , the windfury proc rate , even with the 3 second " invisible cooldown " will remain at ~ 20 % when dual wielding or using a 2h weapon . The exact reason for this is hard to devise - it ' s possible it ' s based on a scaling proc rate ( essentially , a PPM system that scales with weapon speed ) , or that there ' s a sliding chance per swing based on procs in previous swings . Regardless of the reason , though , the proc rate of windfury remains close to 20 % . Over an infinite number of tests , I suspect it would converge on 20 % . This is a good start , and means that blizzard did put some thought into the change . Given that , this change is good in theory . Nobody intelligent would argue that the windfury double - procs weren ' t overpowered , and that getting an effective 30 - 40 % proc rate through using multiple ranks wasn ' t unfair . That part is undisputed , and needed a fix . New Problem Arises . But . . . there is one problem that remains , or more appropriately , I should say was created by fixing one problem . Enhancement Shaman SUSTAINED DPS was on par with where it should be previous to this patch ( perhaps a little high when using the WF5 / WF4 trick ) . The methods used while nerfing the sustained DPS had what I believe is a too significant effect on sustained DPS in the process . This is caused by one simple thing - offhand windfury procs " blocking " main hand procs . Offhand windfury procs suffer the 50 % damage penalty , and thus even with the best possible weapons , offhand procs will be significantly less potent than main hand . This is the source of the sustained damage nerf . How does it work ? It ' s quite simple . Since the 3 second cooldown on windfury is in place , it means that after either hand procs a windfury effect , neither can proc for 3 seconds following . After an infinite number of tests , you ' d find that the procs are in proportion to the speed of your weapons ( slightly skewed based on the remainder when dividing by 3 ) . If you had , say , a 2 . 5 speed main hand , and 1 . 5 speed offhand , you will see about 65 % of your windfury procs being offhand procs , and the other 35 % being mainhand procs . If you replace your offhand with another 2 . 5 speed weapon , you would get 50 % offhand and 50 % mainhand procs , on average . So just use slow weapons ? Sure , that ' s the best way to do it with this system . However , this is inconsistant with blizzard ' s itemization strategy in the past . Formerly , some classes would ALWAYS take slow weapons over fast ones due to the inherent advantages . But , though normalization and other methods , they attempted to make all weapons viable , and weapon ' upgrades ' more clear - cut , regardless of speed . This would not be true for shamans . Upgrading your offhand to a better weapon with a faster speed would in fact LOWER your DPS , due to the offhand penelty . The more of your procs that come from your offhand , the worse off you are . This could lead to situations similar to the " Barman ' s Shanker " - a blue item from a low - level dungeon that , for quite a long time , was better DPS than much higher item level weapons for rogues , due to the simple fact it was slower . An Example . Knight ' s Warhammer 2 . 5 speed one - hand , 118 - 220 damage , 65 . 0 DPS . Random Enchantment , green trash drop . Gladiator ' s Bonecracker 1 . 8 speed off - hand , 111 - 206 damage , 88 . 1 DPS Epic arena award . Going from the green to the epic gives you an additional 13 . 1 DPS from white damage . However , as a result of its faster speed , " upgrading " to the epic offhand means your offhand has approximately 1 . 5x the chance to eat up your mainhand procs , thereby cutting windfury damage in half . When divided by two for the offhand penalty , the difference in the damage of the windfury procs of these two weapons is almost negligable . It ' s safe to assume that your mainhand weapon is going to be at least as high DPS as your offhand . If you ' re using , let ' s say , the main hand arena mace , which offhand should you equip if you want to maximize your DPS ? You guessed it - the green . That ' s the problem . It limits the shaman ' s effective upgrade paths based on weapon speed more than weapon DPS . I should note that If they were to correct this problem , it would still be an advantage to go for a slower offhand due to stormstrike . However , it would still be an upgrade to go from a 65 dps weapon to an 88 dps 1 . 8 speed one - just not as much of an upgrade as it would be to go to a 88 dps 2 . 5 speed weapon . Why not just use a different offhand enchant ? Rockbiter / Flametongue / Frostbrand ? Because Windfury is currently the ONLY weapon enchant that scales with melee stats . Enhancement shamans have no reason to gain caster stats ( crit , spell damage , etc ) , and stacking them to the point that it would improve flametongue or frostbrand to any significant degree would nerf overall DPS far more than what would be gained . Even if the stats demonstrate that flametongue is an acceptable replacement now , it will not be the case when we ' re using 100 DPS weapons and Tier 6 gear - in fact , every time gear improves , flametongue and frostbrand get worse speaking relatively . Even in its terrible state , WF5 / WF5 is still the best combo on the test server due to this . Alright , So how can this be fixed ? Quite simple . Remove the offhand penalty from offhand windfury procs . This will mean that , quite simply , it doesn ' t matter which weapon you proc windfury off of . It will allow for shamans to make choices regarding weapon speeds ( bigger hits or faster ones - your call ) , while maintaining the same relative DPS with the same item level weapons . It will greatly open up the pool of weapons that Enhancement Shamans would be interested in using , and would prevent there from being clear " best " choices for weapons . Wouldn ' t that be a huge DPS boost ? Not really . Current Enhancement DPS is so huge because of the WF5 / WF4 exploit . Even with OH procs being larger , it will not compensate for the extra 10 % proc rate gained from the exploit . On average , shamans will lose about 15 - 20 % DPS as things stand . With this change , the DPS loss would be about 5 - 10 % . Still a slight nerf , but a reasonable one , that still controls the excessive burst damage that Enhancement Shamans were previously capable of . Is this the only solution ? There are quite a few other solutions , but this would be the easiest and most elegant solution . Another way to do it , albeit slightly more complicated balance - wise , is to make Rockbiter ( or a new weapon enchantment ) scale with melee stats in some way . For instance , making rockbiter increase DPS by X plus some percent of your attack power . Or making it function similar to flametongue , dealing a fixed amount of bonus damage per swing - but scaling by some percent of your attack power , and affected by your melee crit . Or something along those lines . Basically , we either need windfury to work , or another option that will scale with melee . The easiest way is just to make WF scale . The harder way , although it may be better for flexibility , is to give us another option for our offhand other than Windfury .