[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Djriff]

So question about trinkets i know this has been talked about alot but im still a bit confused i have 880 Swaming pleague, 880 Twisting Winds, 850 Darkmoon, 865 Bough of Corruption, 835 devilsuar and 840 Stat stick. When i run sims im getting the two 880s are BiS but being told otherwise. any help is appreciated thanks again.

Trinkets are buggy in sims, Twisting Winds in particular has a incorrect proc rate which ranks it much higher. I'd go with Plauguehive and your DSB in that case.

Is Swarming Plaguehive really as bad as the trinket sheet suggests? I have a 865 one and it's pretty much worse than all my other Trinkets 845 Int/haste, 850 int/crit, 865 unstable horroslime, 850 oakhearth's..., 835 Shock Baton. Any advice what i should take? According to the sheet i should run with both statsticks.

Personally I'd run Shock Baton and Plaguehive, although if your int/haste stat stick pushes you to your break point use that over the DSB.

My (multiple) logs show a 685 plaguehive doing roughly the same damage as an 840 shock Baton. and the plaguehive has better stats (haste > crit and 88 more stats).
If the sheet says that an 835 baton is better it is simply wrong.

Actually I found exactly the opposite. A 835 Shock baton does more DPS than a plaguehive. Plaguehive also suffers on multi targets because it's a dot and not straight up damage as I've said a few times already. The list is a recommendation, something made quite clear as well.

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I use a naga with shift and ctrl being my modifiers. Seriously couldn't play without it now.
I also use mouse over macros for my dots, VB, and SW: D.

KB:
1- VT
2- VB
3- SW: P
4- MB
5- Sear
6- PW: S
7- Fiend
8- Honestly Can't Remember never use it
9- Levitate
0 - Health Pot
- - Fade
=- Shadowmend

Shift row:
1- Mind Flay
2- Void Torrent
3- Crafted Neck
4- SW: D
5- Shadow Crash (nothing otherwise)
6- Use to be feathers, now it's just an empty spot in my soul
7- Dispel
8- Remove Poison
9- Potion
0-
--
=- STM

Ctrl
1- MC
2- VE
3- Fear/Mind Bomb
4- Silence
5- Dispersion
6- PI
7- Human Racial
8- Mass Dispel
9-
0-
--
-= Res

That's all my keybinds.

[FrothyMug]

I only have 3 slots of gear that don't have haste, and I realize that if I got ~1000 haste on each one, I'd be close to the breakpoint. However, I just appear to be severely unlucky, as nothing has dropped for me that has haste on it in those slots. I think another issue is that the crit-haste gear I do have is mostly crit.

I may just have to craft 850 items to replace non-haste or low-haste items. I was just kind of hoping there was some gear farming tip that I was not aware of. I'll be honest, I only recently found out about the DSB coming from a WQ which was made available after finishing a certain quest in Suramar. I've done the WQ twice now, but no reward has been offered (just resources or gold or AP). Is it just random, or is there something I missed there?

[Djriff]

You have to do the questline up to it to get it as a WQ, even then it doesn't pop up all that often. I haven't seen it since the first time it popped up :/

As for a gear farming guide, you can do specific mythic dungeons after looking through loot drops and hope you get lucky. Cenarius dropped the 870 cloak yesterday which is BiS for us, I of course didn't get it :/ Only semi salty about it.

[Vampiregenesis]

Trinkets are buggy in sims, Twisting Winds in particular has a incorrect proc rate which ranks it much higher. I'd go with Plauguehive and your DSB in that case.

Personally I'd run Shock Baton and Plaguehive, although if your int/haste stat stick pushes you to your break point use that over the DSB.

Actually I found exactly the opposite. A 835 Shock baton does more DPS than a plaguehive. Plaguehive also suffers on multi targets because it's a dot and not straight up damage as I've said a few times already. The list is a recommendation, something made quite clear as well.

- - - Updated - - -

I use a naga with shift and ctrl being my modifiers. Seriously couldn't play without it now.
I also use mouse over macros for my dots, VB, and SW: D.

KB:
1- VT
2- VB
3- SW: P
4- MB
5- Sear
6- PW: S
7- Fiend
8- Honestly Can't Remember never use it
9- Levitate
0 - Health Pot
- - Fade
=- Shadowmend

Shift row:
1- Mind Flay
2- Void Torrent
3- Crafted Neck
4- SW: D
5- Shadow Crash (nothing otherwise)
6- Use to be feathers, now it's just an empty spot in my soul
7- Dispel
8- Remove Poison
9- Potion
0-
--
=- STM

Ctrl
1- MC
2- VE
3- Fear/Mind Bomb
4- Silence
5- Dispersion
6- PI
7- Human Racial
8- Mass Dispel
9-
0-
--
-= Res

That's all my keybinds.

How do you strafe and move? you say you couldnt play with a naga? what should i say with a wheel only? :S

[Djriff]

I move with WASD, strafe with Q and E. I use my mouse for a lot of movement mainly and I have this terrible habit with StM to just spam move because I can xD

As for a wheel only, I would honestly just bind stuff to your numbers and put WASD back on your binds, but have A and D be strafe instead of turn. Just bind stuff close to your fingers and put some modifiers. I don't "need" all those keybinds I have I just have the luxury of being able to have them all.

[MissAnonymous]

Hey, guys. I've been maining Holy and off-speccing Shadow since the start of the expansion as a sort of swing healer/dps for my raid group, but recently my guild recruited a 6th healer which means I am going dps a lot more often then I expected. Last night, for example, I didn't switch to heals once during a full clear of EN on Heroic, which means if I get stuck dpsing all the time, I can't really be pleased with my middle-of-the-pack dps anymore. I will just drive myself crazy.

I am hoping someone can take a look at my logs and let me know what I can do to improve. These are my logs from last night. My toon's name is Strawberrey:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...Z2XBHg#boss=-2

My trinkets aren't the best (835 stat sticks, +haste and +crit). My stats are all over the place. And I don't think I've ever reached 100 stacks of Voidform, even when just spamming on a target dummy. I know I'm fumbling all over the place, I just need someone to say, "Here, here, and here is where you're fucking up."

[Djriff]

I can take a look later, at work atm. Do you have Mass Hysteria? Also what are your stat %'s.

I would also talk to your RL/GM and say hey it would be better for someone else to DPS since stat priorities are wayyyy different for holy than shadow not to mention the artifact traits are huge for shadow (I'm sure they are for other classes as well).

[MissAnonymous]

I have 23 points in Xal'atath, including Mass Hysteria. The other dragon I have is Call to the Void.

My stats (no food or class buffs) are:

Critical Strike: 4,185 [17.96%]
Haste: 8,064 [24.81%]
Mastery: 7,084 [70.60%]
Versatility: 340 [0.85%/0.43%]

The only two healers that could go dps are either of our resto shamans, both of whom could go Enhance. But we're already pretty packed on melee, and the one who is really good at Enhance is our healing lead, so we want to keep him heals, and then the other, I can out dps him pretty consistently, which just makes me the better option to go dps despite how mediocre I am.

[Thaylen]

Useful Links:
[*]Beotorch - Sim your character without having to configure simcraft


Looks like Beotorch is no longer available?

[MissAnonymous]

Yeah, Twintop has retired, so Beotorch has been shut down.

[Djriff]

Well just from the get go without looking at logs I can see the issue. You need a lot more haste. I know you don't have a lot of options probably since you've been healing, but try and get your hands on some haste > crit gear and you'll see a marked improvement.

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I swear I removed that. fixing it thanks.

[MissAnonymous]

Yeah, since Shadow is technically my OS and Haste isn't all that great for Holy, I am at the bottom of the loot pool. In front of me are 2 main Spriests, a warlock, and for jewelry/cloaks we also have a Boomkin, 2 Frost DKs, a Ret Paladin... and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone else who likes Haste who gets priority over me. And my loot specialization has been set to Shadow for almost an entire month now (I've been wanting to up my Shadow dps for a while now even though it was just an OS), but Mythic+ has not been kind to me in that regard.

Here is the gear I currently have for Shadow:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...wberrey/simple

I'll be sure to keep logging out in my Shadow gear so that it stays the same.

[Djriff]

Yeah it's just a gear issue at this point, not much else you can do except farm, pending log analysis of course.

[Thaylen]

Anyway whats your keybind setup guys?

This will likely be troll bait but I'll come clean that I'm a keyboard turner. I use the standard movement keys and numbers 1-5 above for defensives and/or openers (pots/charge, etc). That's what the left hand handles (also use 'r' for speed boosting abilities usually (i.e. rush for warlock, cheetah aspect for hunter, etc). The right hand handles all the main abilities from the numpad.

I tab target and only use the mouse for reticle spells (i.e. rain of fire, earthquake, heroic leap, etc) and when quick turns are needed.

Flame away, it works for me!

[Djriff]

Hey if it works for you, then it works. I mean it's not optimal sure, doesn't make it unviable. I actually use to play guildwars on a laptop using a trackpad and numpad. Was in one of the best GvG teams at the time and constantly held HoH with [GANK], ahh the good ol'days.

[Apero]

So, they nerfed double surrender on xavius? Did not reset after first dream on xavius mythic today. Sucks a little bit. Mages still cleave 60million damage to tentacles.

[Caladia]

I double StM'd on Normal Xavius last night, though they could have done something special with Mythic I suppose.

[Vampiregenesis]

This will likely be troll bait but I'll come clean that I'm a keyboard turner. I use the standard movement keys and numbers 1-5 above for defensives and/or openers (pots/charge, etc). That's what the left hand handles (also use 'r' for speed boosting abilities usually (i.e. rush for warlock, cheetah aspect for hunter, etc). The right hand handles all the main abilities from the numpad.

I tab target and only use the mouse for reticle spells (i.e. rain of fire, earthquake, heroic leap, etc) and when quick turns are needed.

Flame away, it works for me!

Not gonna flame , i played without strafe and awsd in the past as dps and did great but strafe is too good and mouseover usefull , i also though about numpad skills but i cant turn without mouse , im too used to it.

Binding abilities to 1-5 while having movement to awsd will make me slow maybe , its not very comfortable for me , the only keys i can use right now are QERFC and wheel button / up and down , i can bind cds to 1-5 but not dots or flay/blast , Q-E are dots , R is sw d , F is blast , c is void torrent , 1 is stm , 3 is bender , i still need two keys for flay and eruption , its kinda tough , i though to merge blast and flay and then just bind eruption to wheel. Blast and flay into one skill might not be so terrible.

Btw guys 2 questions:

1. I asked this but didnt got an answer , do you spam your flays? do you want it to clip? or should i make no channeling macros?

2. is 19% haste too low? i currently have 19% haste around 53% mastery and maybe 20-23% crit not sure and small% vers , my ilvl is 855 , i do around 180k dps on the dummy and i did around 210k dps on a real fight but i played really badly. anyway what numbers should i reach with my gear and stats?

Forgot to add i have 18 rank on shadow 2 gold traits.

[Djriff]

So, they nerfed double surrender on xavius? Did not reset after first dream on xavius mythic today. Sucks a little bit. Mages still cleave 60million damage to tentacles.

I hope not, would be silly otherwise. Might have just been a bug?

Also I felt like an idiot last night, Xavius heroic hit 97% right as we popped lust, thought I was in the dream so went Ham, died about 95s later and was like wtf? Yup, wasn't in the dream. Oops.

[Zephirdd]

I hope not, would be silly otherwise. Might have just been a bug?

Also I felt like an idiot last night, Xavius heroic hit 97% right as we popped lust, thought I was in the dream so went Ham, died about 95s later and was like wtf? Yup, wasn't in the dream. Oops.

ahahahahha look at this guy who would do that hahaha I totally didn't do that on one of our first tries hahaha definitly wasn't my fault that the boss killed the raid at 2% that I could've taken out of him had I been alive, cause that definitely didn't happen ahahahahah T_T

---
So I FINALLY got my Chrono Shard. I had the Strand of Stars neck piece forever but I realized something: the chrono shard, 840, alone would put me at beyond 13k haste(the soft cap was 12k I think?) so it seems to be that using both neck and CS together would be kind of overkill.

Then it hit me: I also have Prydaz. The question is: should I toss my 1.2k haste/640 crit neck for Prydaz when using Chrono Shard(that places me at ~41% haste w/ proc), should I use Strand of Stars(which would place me even higher on the proc, but I lose a lot of crit/mastery from the 895 neck) or should I keep using my haste/crit neck(which was my choice over Prydaz before chrono shard).