[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Ryeshot]

First question is are you wanting/going to play StM? If so then your talent setup is RoS/AS/MBend and SW:V or ToF. Your stat priority should be haste (25%, 20% if you have 4set) > crit > mast > vers. Also if you don't have 2set, PI yields higher StM duration since Mbend is on min cooldown instead of 20sec.

StM is pretty cancer, though, so you may want a much lower APM build. With LotV you should go ToF or SW:V (maybe FotM, but that damage increase seems very lackluster), VR (RoW trinket), AS or San'layn, and Mbend. If you don't have an AS gear set from live, and instead have a CoP one, this build forfeits high VF stacks for maximum damage without the insanity from spirits. Depending on if you go AS your stat priority should be:
haste > crit > mastery > vers
And with San'layn instead (your CoP set):
haste > mastery > crit > vers

75: San'layn. No spirits from Vampiric Touch without the artifact to make Auspicious Spirits better.

Unleash the Shadows is not what makes AS the best. It is guaranteed insanity generation from your SW:P crits, affected by haste. Vampiric Touch SA generation is actually pretty pathetic considering it ticks 1.5x slower than SW:P, is a pretty low priority spell on targets not living for long, and is doubly affected by RNG.

[Zephirdd]

Before I go insane [...]

You clearly don't understand what the new shadow priest is about

[Deleted]

Hopefully they buff/rework Legacy of the void and mind spike rather than nerf StM, the whole 100 tier is meh af for pvp.

[Ryeshot]

Isn't lotv the only viable talent for pvp since you can't use StM and you will never get a cast off with as much melee training is going on for MSpike to be used?

[RsinRC]

They should've left mindspike baseline and have the 100 talent empower it. Using mf as a filler on burst in pvp feels like swamp ass.

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[Ysgarthiad]

You're not thinking it through all the way I think.
EVEN IF you were to have a voidform so perfect and utopic as you describe it, without running into ANY errors, you STILL wouldn't want to take Shadowy Insight on a 3 Target Cleave. You forget the important factor of gaining haste every 1 second of a consecutive voidform, and this means that our globals become shorter and shorter every second. This, in return, means that EVEN IF (again) we were to have such a perfect Voidform, we simply wouldn't be able to cast Mind Blast after a certain amount of stacks anymore properly, as our VB is already off of its cooldown again, and obviously has priority. That being said, Shadowy Insight will then literally get in the way. Why? Because there's no way you can count on it proccing when you need it, meaning you could very well be casting a Mind Blast, and then MID CAST your stupid Shadowy Insight procs. You have now wasted about 1 second of precious time you could've been using otherwise, run risk of dropping voidform, and on top of that most probably didn't keep void bolt on cooldown. If this happens more than once you begin running risk of dropping a DoT, and then chaos unfolds.

That being said, and after considering this issue even further: Without AS on a Cleave fight you wouldn't even generate enough insanity to have a long Voidform. So even if the above was to happen, or even if we were to have a sweet and perfect voidform: STILL no Shadowy freaking Insight, because it's legitimately useless on cleave fights. A proc that's worth 12 Insanity (FotM considered) for a passive that easily generates 30 insanity in the same time frame?

Shadowy Insight is something I'd never take in a cleave encounter.

Damn is there actually a point where we can just spam void bolt during STM? Haven't gotten that far yet and still needed filler sometimes.

[Ryeshot]

You will never be able to spam VB unless you reached 500% haste which should never be attainable... hopefully. This is because StM stacks at 100% haste, which is multiplicative, increasing your haste at 100 stacks by base_haste * (1+1.00). Because you can never spam VB, and because MB is our second highest IPS ability (excluding SW:V), Shadowy Insight is not as bad as people think since you cut out on your low IPS abilities, replacing them with MB. The only reason it is not used for StM is because there is a point where you need insanity generation off the gc/d in order to continue.

For instance, 100 stacks of VF means 56 insanity lost per second. Since we are at 100 stacks our gc/d is .75sec, so we will multiply each IPS ability by 1/.75. This means that VB grants 64 insanity, and MB grants 48 insanity. Even with ideal procs (like every other cast is a MB, which is a statistical anomaly, but this proves a point), you will be generating an average of only 56 IPS (and each consecutive second after 100 stacks still grants .5 insanity degeneration per second). Eventually you will run out of insanity and die because VBs and MBs alone do not provide enough insanity (this is also excluding your full tick MF which is your lowest IPS ability), so you need AS to buffer your insanity generation past 100 stacks, since you do not gain any more haste (and damage, for that matter), but you continue to lose insanity at the normal rate.

[Apero]

Does anyone have a solution to the pet traveling from target to target while swapping to multidot /voidbolt on multiple targets?

Pet Passive, Pet Attack macros dont seem to work. You can stick to on target and do everything else with mouseover macros, but thats mildly annoying. A traveling bender loses tons of dmg and insanity regen.

[Deleted]

Isn't lotv the only viable talent for pvp since you can't use StM and you will never get a cast off with as much melee training is going on for MSpike to be used?

They should've left mindspike baseline and have the 100 talent empower it. Using mf as a filler on burst in pvp feels like swamp ass.

1.4 sec cast mind spike for 10k direct damage and 20k stored to explode after mind blast has to be a joke tbh. Mind flay does twice the dps and actually slows. Could use some sort of empowered mind flay for more vf stacks you have or something. unless the target is at execute range or you get lucky streak of shadow infusion procs you dont really have "burst". Void torrents only use in pvp is to get locked out of shadow. Start of legion might be rough but after first season of getting raped shadow might get the QoL fixes it needs like: Instant void eruption baseline and some anti-melee tool.

[Ryeshot]

Mind flay does 200% sp over 3sec, and MSpike does 105% sp over 1.5sec (so 210% sp over 3sec). Considering less than 10% of our damage is mind flay, this marginal of a damage increase does not warrant taking it over LotV. From a pvp standpoint, you will never be able to get enough casts off of either MF or MSpike to have this talent be useful at all. 99% of the time you are spamming instant casts because you cannot get a single 1.5sec cast off with all the pushback, cc, and interrupts out there.

[RsinRC]

1.4 sec cast mind spike for 10k direct damage and 20k stored to explode after mind blast has to be a joke tbh. Mind flay does twice the dps and actually slows. Could use some sort of empowered mind flay for more vf stacks you have or something. unless the target is at execute range or you get lucky streak of shadow infusion procs you dont really have "burst". Void torrents only use in pvp is to get locked out of shadow. Start of legion might be rough but after first season of getting raped shadow might get the QoL fixes it needs like: Instant void eruption baseline and some anti-melee tool.

Obviously speaking of it being like MindSpike now than how it is in Legion. MS in legion is super lackluster and Mind Spike being a level 100 talent in the first place after years of it being baseline is, and always will be, very lazy/uncreative design.

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[Hhavok]

I tried out shadow priest on the PTR this weekend, and I noticed that my shadow priest was lavender. Is there any way to customize this, via a glyph or something?

I did check wowdb, and I saw the mount glyph that allows you to make your mount lavender too. I'm hoping I missed something though, as far giving your priest the classic shadow appearance (or anything not lavender).

[Djriff]

For instance, 100 stacks of VF means 56 insanity lost per second. Since we are at 100 stacks our gc/d is .75sec, so we will multiply each IPS ability by 1/.75. This means that VB grants 64 insanity, and MB grants 48 insanity. Even with ideal procs (like every other cast is a MB, which is a statistical anomaly, but this proves a point), you will be generating an average of only 56 IPS (and each consecutive second after 100 stacks still grants .5 insanity degeneration per second). Eventually you will run out of insanity and die because VBs and MBs alone do not provide enough insanity (this is also excluding your full tick MF which is your lowest IPS ability), so you need AS to buffer your insanity generation past 100 stacks, since you do not gain any more haste (and damage, for that matter), but you continue to lose insanity at the normal rate.

Out of all the explanations I've seen as to why SI is a bad talent to take over AS, this one makes the most sense to me. Thanks!

[Deleted]

Well quick question: does anyone else think our playstyle now is PURE SHIT? :P
I might be biased since I never even liked demonform with my lock but at least in that case it was instant cast spell and then you did gain few things and a nice aoe dmg... playing priest now makes me cringe... 1.5 (or 2? server is down and cant check, but anyway it feels way too long) cast time to change form to just gain an instant spell that refreshes the dots and also has a cooldown... dunno i really dont enjoy this. I really enjoyed COP playstyle much more (except the way trinket worked but thats another thing). Anyone else feels like this or it's just me? Or am I missing something? Ive only been in beta for few days and only leveled to 110 and did all the dungeons but i really didnt feel like this is what i want to be playing for sure.

[marathal]

You clearly don't understand what the new shadow priest is about

I am glad someone got the joke.

[Ryeshot]

Out of all the explanations I've seen as to why SI is a bad talent to take over AS, this one makes the most sense to me. Thanks!

Keep in mind this is for StM only. Single target I have the same average voidform stacks using AS and Shadowy Insight with crit and haste sets used, respectively (I also have 5/3 UtS). The only point where I see gain with AS is during multi-target. I believe this is because I have a constant chance of high RNG (30% chance) to proc spirits, compared to a constant low chance (10%) of proccing SI on 3 targets. Because of this, AS more frequently allows me to hit my next VB in the cycle and allows me to last longer because of that.

[Djriff]

Keep in mind this is for StM only. Single target I have the same average voidform stacks using AS and Shadowy Insight with crit and haste sets used, respectively (I also have 5/3 UtS). The only point where I see gain with AS is during multi-target. I believe this is because I have a constant chance of high RNG (30% chance) to proc spirits, compared to a constant low chance (10%) of proccing SI on 3 targets. Because of this, AS more frequently allows me to hit my next VB in the cycle and allows me to last longer because of that.

Something that just popped into my mind and I'm curious if anyone has done testing. What's the rough break off for AS to beat out SI in terms of crit %? Like AS and SI are both completely RNG, however I remember from BRF days when AS became decent that we shot for 20-25% crit. Has anyone figured out a rough ballpark? This is for strictly non StM usage.

[marathal]

I think what may be confusing for me, and perhaps to a great many people that do not delve into the finer intricacies of shadow is that the talent choice tool tips are slightly misleading because we do not have our artifact weapon yet. I can see myself trying to learn or grasp a concept that may be obtainable if I was in much higher level gear or better optimized for the changes to stats, if there are any of course.

Thank you for the quick replies, I will try working out what I need to do, and what feels fluid to play.

[Ryeshot]

Non-StM haste still beats everything even past 25%. So I guess until you gear is haste focused but you also have 25% crit? Maybe less with multi-dotting, like 20% crit.

[davesignal]

Well quick question: does anyone else think our playstyle now is PURE SHIT? :P

A lot of people, yeah.

Personally, I think it devolves too much into button mashing. Shadow was at its best when it was about maintaining a larger number of longer dots and buffs on a smaller number of targets, not slamming your face into the keyboard as fast as possible because ~MY INSANITY PER SECOND~.

Ever since Blizzard shoehorned an actual secondary resource system into the class it's all been downhill.