[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Yvaelle]

For what it's worth, I took a strong dislike to AMR when it first came out - it was legitimately bad originally and I stand by my old position, at that time.

In addition to everything Kilee explained very well (better than I had ever given it thought) - AMR also came out around the time that both Icy-Veins, Noxxic, and another site I don't even remember anymore - began trying (and failing, horribly) to write guides for each class.

AMR got lumped into that nightmare of "Do Not Use!" websites - and the result of those sites was that the Spriest community on the Bnet forums, MMO-Champion, and Shadowpriest/H2P had to pick up the pieces - and undo a lot of the damage those sites programmed into people's heads: they would show up in our "Help me" threads, and state things like, "I'm doing exactly what _____ website told me to do, but my DPS is nothing like the other Spriests I see, and my guild just sat me!" - invariably the problem back then was that the information they originally found was detrimental.

At some point, AMR went through a massive change - particularly regarding Shadow - but I wasn't aware of it until one day I casually dismissed it as usual - and Zoopercat showed up here to inform me of just how different it was now, under her leadership. So there was a lagging effect where - for probably a year after AMR reno'd itself - it still bore a bad reputation (and I helped propagate that reputation).

It definitely doesn't deserve it anymore, and hasn't for awhile now. I have AMR bookmarked on my toolbar, I direct guildies to it all the time, when I meet Spriests who are turned off by SimC's complexity - I send them to AMR. This is the first expansion where I have run my Spriest through more AMR sims than SimC.

They made a fan out of me - and I was once one of their biggest detractors in the Shadowpriest community - so - I extend my sincere apologies for excommunicating something I have grown to very much like

[Shredu]

So I had the belt and wrists and snagged the shoulders recently. Would this be considered lucky? Are the belt/shoulders combo considered the best?

Is there anywhere to practice stm with execute that is not the AT? My recount shows all the old numbers when I enter that area which is not what I am after.

[Yellowfive]

Yeah there's a lot of insight in what kilee says as far as the general attitudes that prevail, and some of the viewpoints that theorycrafters/sites may have.

What's frustrating to me as "the programmer guy" who sold my two partners on the idea of making this free simulator to create some inroads with the TC community... is that everyone insists on viewing us as a "competitor". I just don't really get it... here is a 100% free simulation tool that you can use to do whatever you want: make custom rotations and custom gearing strategies and easily share them with your followers and say "this is MY theory and how I think you should gear, just plug it in and do it." There's no reason that needs to be a competition... we put it out there for people to use in whatever way they want, promote whatever ideas they want, but base it on solid data.

For example, my "vision" for how this should go down: TheoryJoey has a website or forum for a spec he's really good at playing, with a great guide. He promotes and gets people to check out his guide and trust it, because TheoryJoey knows his shit. Part of his guide is a gearing strategy: he did a ton of custom work with the AMR simulator and generated custom strategies, based on totally public data that anyone can see and verify. And he says just follow this link, press "Save and Use", and AMR will customize my dope strategy for your specific character, for FREE. Everyone wins in this scenario, particularly the player.

The premium services that we have on the site are separate from the simulator and free optimizer tools -- they are a convenience layer on top of the core site functionality. There's no "pay to win" going on -- you don't get better gear rankings or a better simulator by paying, you just save yourself a little time. And those features are harder to code and maintain, so the economics of the situation is simple: if we don't get some revenue for them, we can't really provide them, would be too expensive. Web sites as big as ours, that do as much number crunching as ours... are not free to build and operate.


I'm a simulation junkie... you sort of have to be to write a simulator from scratch (three times! this is not my first simulator for a game). I have always liked using simc, but I've also not liked using it... it's pretty "bare metal" as software goes. The guys who work on simc know this too, it's not like anyone is pretending it has a great UI because they just don't know better. It is a hardcore TC tool made by TC/programmers, for TC/programmers. We are good at putting polish on software, and saw an opportunity to propel simulation to the forefront of tools available to players instead of limited to a small group. Too many TCers out there don't know how to use simc correctly and end up arguing with each other simply due to lack of properly-generated supporting evidence.

Having a 2nd simulator for independent verification is valuable in itself, but the fact that AMR significantly lowers the probability of producing incorrect results due to configuration error has huge potential to take "noise" out of TC discussions.

As you can see... my perspective as the creator is just completely different. Here you go -- use my stuff! It's free! It's good! Do whatever you want with it! If you have a problem with how it works, tell me!

[davesignal]

I could have swore the original point of AMR was a reforging calculator, not something that dispensed class advice any more than having a basic set of stat weights and inviting people to enter their own.

[elsus]

The trinket comparison sheet doesn't seem to be working for me. Are any of the kara trinkets good? With the chest?

[kalaratic]

ya the flame wreath trinket is fucking god tier in mythic+. if you miss not having burst aoe this thing will give you some beautiful numbers

[Djriff]

And with regards to your earlier post:



I threw out that "2 million iterations" number because people seem to think it matters... they see "2000 setups" on our gearing strategy report and think it means we did only 2000 iterations, which is wrong, we did about 1000 iterations for each of 2000 data points. That varies wildly of course, we go by margin of error, not number of iterations.

About half of those points are for stats, half are for special items. We do a multiple linear regression fit on 1000 of the data points for the stat weights.

I'm quite confused how you factored out getting decent stat weights with that amount of processing time. There's math that needs to be done, numbers to be crunched, stuff to be computed and that takes time. If AMR really sims that in a matter of 15 or so seconds then either you've developed an extremely quick yet accurate way to generate stat weights (which should be shared) or the process is flawed and you don't realize it.

[Uselessrouge]

is there any point in playing shadow if i allways have 100-200 ping?`:| poeple seem to talk so much about ping with shadow got me wondering if my twink was the wrong one :>

i never played with low latency since where i live i cant get better even if i pay 100$ a month it get shit routing saddly :| even tryed paying for VPN or What the fast and other stuff doest help .

[Djriff]

You're fine if you're not playing StM. If you're pvp'ing ping is still a factor, but not a you'll kill yourself because you can't hit buttons fast enough factor.

[WhatIsLegion]

So I primarily want to play my Shadow Priest in Mythic Plus (yeah I know good luck finding groups) and I'm torn on 3 trinkets.

I have an 855 Gnarled Root, 850 Hive with Socket, and an 855 Darkmoon Card.

Which is the better combination dungeon wise?

[Djriff]

i'd say oakhearts and darkmoon. Plaguehive doesn't get to tick as much.

[Yellowfive]

I'm quite confused how you factored out getting decent stat weights with that amount of processing time. There's math that needs to be done, numbers to be crunched, stuff to be computed and that takes time. If AMR really sims that in a matter of 15 or so seconds then either you've developed an extremely quick yet accurate way to generate stat weights (which should be shared) or the process is flawed and you don't realize it.

Yes, I think you are confused!

Have you ever tried running a "gearing strategy" type simulation on our site? They take roughly 15 minutes to several hours, depending on your settings and your computer. The average strategy takes about 30 minutes, shadow takes much longer with StM usually though due to higher variance, an hour or two is common. simc typically gets stat weights much faster because it does so many fewer simulations (like, 2 orders of magnitude less).

I could have sworn you worked with Swol closely on a lot of the shadow stuff in the simulator... but it seems like there are still a lot of things that you haven't tried perhaps. Feel free to drop by our Discord and we'll gladly show you how to use all of the more powerful features -- that invitation stands for anyone.

[Deleted]

I'm severely lagging on my button pressing skills to get some good damage going. Any suggestions how to properly train to improve? Should I just hit PVP dummies?

In particular I'm only getting 20-30 stacks of Voidform without STM which seems kind of low if I'm looking at logs from really good players. If it's really not a good day I might get only 10-15 stacks of VF on say the Eye in NE. My guess is I'm not dotting enough if there are multiple targets available and my timing when in VF is a bit off so I'm not staying in it as long as I could. Even with STM I'm usually only getting up to 50ish stacks. I usually only activate STM after hitting that 30% mark on the Boss HP I guess it could be a bit too late? But on the other hand that makes it pretty certain I'll live through the encounter and not die to soon.

My current plan would be to "de-clutter" my UI in order to be less distracted, move my Actionbar up in order to stop playing ping pong by looking back and forth between Mob/Character and Actionbar (2k Resolution) in order to know when that next VB is going to be ready and train the rotation on PVP dummies in order to get some options of using SWD. I'm not really keen to actually train STM as I find it really exhausting to stand around for 10 minutes.

Any further suggestions on what to do/try/watchout for?

[Tharid]

I'm severely lagging on my button pressing skills to get some good damage going. Any suggestions how to properly train to improve? Should I just hit PVP dummies?

In particular I'm only getting 20-30 stacks of Voidform without STM which seems kind of low if I'm looking at logs from really good players. If it's really not a good day I might get only 10-15 stacks of VF on say the Eye in NE. My guess is I'm not dotting enough if there are multiple targets available and my timing when in VF is a bit off so I'm not staying in it as long as I could. Even with STM I'm usually only getting up to 50ish stacks. I usually only activate STM after hitting that 30% mark on the Boss HP I guess it could be a bit too late? But on the other hand that makes it pretty certain I'll live through the encounter and not die to soon.

My current plan would be to "de-clutter" my UI in order to be less distracted, move my Actionbar up in order to stop playing ping pong by looking back and forth between Mob/Character and Actionbar (2k Resolution) in order to know when that next VB is going to be ready and train the rotation on PVP dummies in order to get some options of using SWD. I'm not really keen to actually train STM as I find it really exhausting to stand around for 10 minutes.

Any further suggestions on what to do/try/watchout for?

Getting to 20-30 stacks during a "normal" Voidform (no execute, no BL) is totally fine.

Are you using Reaper of Souls? If so, you should be able to sustain much more during Voidform in fights like Ilgynoth, because you can SW: D the blobs/tentacles/nightmares. Proper usage of SW: D in general is key; you want it to not waste any Insanity, so you have do drop fairly low on Insanity to guarantee that.

You don't have to train S2M to get better at your rotation. Just train your normal rotation! Spamming VB is the single-most important thing to do during VF, and one of the main issue that "mediocre" priests have. You have to cancel any other action when VB is back up (except Void Torrent) during VF, and you have to spam the shit out of it, especially in S2M. But first, you have to nail down your rotation during normal VFs.

Cleaning up the UI can help. I suggest you get yourself some sweet Weakaura/Tellmewhen strings to import (see MMOC thread) that contain a proper insanity bar. You could even tie a sound notifier to your VB so you don't have to follow it visually (although that might hurt your ears during S2M).

Regardin the "dieing to soon": If the boss is on farm status, dieing is not too bad. You have to train S2M in encounter situations, and your raid has to understand that. There will be times when you die 2 seconds before your third Void Torrent while the boss is still on 10%, but you'll most likely stay in Top 3 damage-wise.

Oh, and get yourself a "Time to Die" Weakaura string, that estimates how much time you have before the boss dies. Try it out during farm runs on Normal/Heroic by popping S2M at the 1:30 mark and work from there.

Playing Shadow is a matter of courage! Push yourself, do not fear death, and you shall be rewarded. Get used to your rotation, get a proper UI setup, and have the heart to pop S2M earlier and earlier.

[N1gh7h4wk]

Yes, I think you are confused!

Have you ever tried running a "gearing strategy" type simulation on our site? They take roughly 15 minutes to several hours, depending on your settings and your computer. The average strategy takes about 30 minutes, shadow takes much longer with StM usually though due to higher variance, an hour or two is common. simc typically gets stat weights much faster because it does so many fewer simulations (like, 2 orders of magnitude less).

I could have sworn you worked with Swol closely on a lot of the shadow stuff in the simulator... but it seems like there are still a lot of things that you haven't tried perhaps. Feel free to drop by our Discord and we'll gladly show you how to use all of the more powerful features -- that invitation stands for anyone.

I still wonder how you get those fast processing times. If i want to get a target error of <0.1% for s2m, the sim will take a whole bunch of time, even for like 50 data points per stat. If i increased that by 20x, I'd be way higher than 2 hours. Still you will want to optimize your gear under multiple circumstances, so you will need to run like ~ 20 sims per weight.
I think we have a core communication problem, as where you advertise AMR as being superior due to the simple fact of better ui. I say that it's not that easy and fast to generate good weight data, as it let's a casual user under the impression that it is so easy as generating 3 sims and you are done, or even only one. Because when we generate statweights, we usually also run Simulations to create Graphs, that lets you see whether a simple annealing is safe for the interval.

Also speaking of AMR: is it possible to let the best in bag tool be a little bit more dynamic? like allowing breakpoints? that would be hella useful for a lot of people i assume.

[Deleted]

can anyone explain how this is possible?
http://i.imgur.com/WkdYspY.jpg

edit: nvm, seems like after the patch, a lot is going wrong with voidform and people instantly dropping out etc.

[Tharid]

can anyone explain how this is possible?
http://i.imgur.com/WkdYspY.jpg

Dispersion toggle macro?

[btorz]

is shadow a really weak spec to level as, i'm level 104 and really finding it a grind to level this class the aoe is terrible(mind sear crits for 15k), I mostly have to pull only one or 2 mobs, pulling like 4 or 5 can mean death basically because of how terrible the cleave is. doing 30k dps single target outside of voidform. Leveling my affliction warlock was far easier, multi dot multiple mobs and just drain life them all while your void tanked them and walk away with full health.

i don't see the point, I can spec disc. to level and do the same dps but have a heap more survivability

[Gorsameth]

is shadow a really weak spec to level as, i'm level 104 and really finding it a grind to level this class the aoe is terrible(mind sear crits for 15k), I mostly have to pull only one or 2 mobs, pulling like 4 or 5 can mean death basically because of how terrible the cleave is. doing 30k dps single target outside of voidform. Leveling my affliction warlock was far easier, multi dot multiple mobs and just drain life them all while your void tanked them and walk away with full health.

i don't see the point, I can spec disc. to level and do the same dps but have a heap more survivability

Yes.

It gets even worse when you hit 110 and the 109-110 scale difference hits you. It becomes terrible until you get to 840 ilvl orso.
And even then you will always be worse then pretty much every other class when doing solo outdoor content.

We are build for bossfights. And we suck at everything else.

[davesignal]

You should probably level as Discipline, yeah. You will kill each individual mob a little slower (maybe), but you're going to be chain-pulling any number of enemies without fear of death so you'll make it up in efficiency.