Gearing Shadow Priest

[Thaylen]

So here I am again. In raid. Absolutely fucking miserable.

Bitching out Blizzard and ranting and raving in my mind about the secondary bullshit that they promised wouldn't be a factor in gearing, yet still whole heartedly is. "We want players to feel rewarded when they get higher ilvl gear and be able to just equip it without worrying about secondary stats" they said. Bull... shit.

Since the last patch, I truly have no idea what to equip anymore. It's not simple enough to just play this game and know your rotation, you have to be a master simmer theorycrafter to be competitive. And it's total nonsense. Stay over 10k haste, strive for 12k, stay over 4k crit, dump everything you got into mastery. Don't pay attention to the stat priority of AMR. Don't trust the trinket recommendations. Join the Priest Discord so you can look at the sim'd charts for trinkets and relics everytime something drops.

I tell you... I have just absolutely had it. 2 nights a week. 3 hours a night. And just absolutely miserable. I literally have bags full of higher ilvl gear that I'm too afraid to equip because of how it affects my haste. Total nonsense.

/endrant

[Menthos]

So here I again. In raid. Absolutely fucking miserable. Bitching out Blizzard and ranting and raving in my mind about the secondary bullshit that they promised wouldn't be a factor in gearing, yet still whole heartedly is. "We want players to feel rewarded when they get higher ilvl gear and be able to just equip it without worrying about secondary stats" they said. Bull... shit.

Since the last patch, I truly have no idea what to equip anymore. It's not simple enough to just play this game and know your rotation, you have to be a master simmer theorycrafter to be competitive. And it's total nonsense. Stay over 10k haste, strive for 12k, stay over 4k crit, dump everything you got into mastery. Don't pay attention to the stat priority of AMR. Don't trust the trinket recommendations. Join the Priest Discord so you can look at the sim'd charts for trinkets and relics everytime something drops.

I tell you... I have just absolutely had it. 2 nights a week. 3 hours a night. And just absolutely miserable. I literally have bags full of higher ilvl gear that I'm too afraid to equip because of how it affects my haste. Total nonsense.

/endrant

1. https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/pawn
2. ( Pawn: v1: "SL no-set": Intellect=1, MasteryRating=1.22, HasteRating=1.2, CritRating=1.06, Versatility=0.88 )
3. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1031526082

You don't need anything else for HC raiding

[Thaylen]

I have pawn also with those exact weights. To be honest it just adds to my frustration because I have a number of pieces of gear in my bags with nice pretty green arrows saying it is a 5-8% upgrade, but I'm reluctant to equip it because of my already shit haste level (< 9300).

Examples:

1) Have an 890 Custodian Hood in my bag that pawn says is 5% upg. This I actually WOULD like to wear because of the Haste. But... it would break my 2pc as my current head piece is 880 Purifier Gorget. So in my bag it sits...

2) 895 Bracers of Harnessed Flame. 8% upg Pawn says over my 880 Clasp of Cosmic Intelligence. Sits in my bag though because it has 0 haste and would take my already shit Haste level down another 600pts.

3) 890 Beleron Choker of Misery. 5% upg over my 870 Cursed Beartooth. Same as above, I swap it out I lose nearly 1200 in Haste.

4) 900 Ring of Exclusive Servitude. 2% upg over my 870 Twice Warped Azsharan Signet. Put it on I lose another 770 of haste.

If I put these things on, I lose about 2500 in Haste on top of my already shit Haste level. Yeah my ilvl goes up... which equates to me sucking even harder in the WCL rankings for my gear level. (Which Blizzard already fucked us on being able to take any solace from rankings compared to other comparably equipped people with there 2nd stat weightings, dps variations between legendaries of same ilvl, and shit like people choosing 850 ChronoShard over trinkets 30 ilvls higher.) They got rid of reforge mounts because they wanted people to be able to equip the gear that dropped rather than have to run out of the instance to reforge it first. Same philosophy with reducing gear enhancers (gems, enchants, etc). Well they have FAILED so fucking hard core on this. They have created an environment that is SO far from their vision... where people are enjoying raiding with their friends and not stressing over gear. I used to be that person. Now I loathe raiding and am losing relationships with people as you can tell that I am bitter, resentful, and and just plain angry. And that is my attitude throughout raid. I go from spending hours upon hours OUTSIDE of WoW trying to research what the fuck I'm supposed to do with gearing and trying to find a solution... to saying fuck it. I'll just pass on every piece of gear. Or I won't pass and keep it my bag until I have a clear answer on what the hell I'm supposed to do. To saying maybe I'll just say fuck secondary stats completely and just equip every higher ilvl piece of gear that drops (So I can look like an ilvl boss who can't demonstrate the DPS for it and get shitty rankings). It's just utter nonsense and I feel as though Blizzard has stolen the one of the things I looked forward to each week.

[Deleted]

I'm not really sure why you think there is a 10k haste cap. h2priest states mastery is better unless your haste is under roughly 7500. I have 8500 haste + goblin and hc metronome and do fine.

[Thaylen]

I'm not really sure why you think there is a 10k haste cap. h2priest states mastery is better unless your haste is under roughly 7500. I have 8500 haste + goblin and hc metronome and do fine.

It's littered all over the place in these MMO-threads. Just a quick look at the main discussion thread of this forum (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ussion/page204) has it referenced on the last few pages. And the 10k haste breakpoint is just a soft one - the real one to strive for is 12k:

Icy-Veins says Haste until ~12k (http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/shadow-...-stat-priority)

Wowhead says Haste until 12k (http://www.wowhead.com/shadow-gear-guide)

When you go from this outdated H2P page (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.ph...p=74143#p74143) to the "new" one (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9268" it says "focus on Haste to 9500".

This H2P page from the main Shadow pages (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=9495) says... under the Stat Weights Section... "That said, the advice we have is for players to aim, in the long run, the following criteria: at least 10.000 Haste* at least 4.000 Crit Master"

And you've got AMR stating for generic 890 Priest that the stat priority is Haste > Critical Strike > Intellect > Mastery > Versatility > Avoidance > Movement Speed > Leech (http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/t...tshadowdefault)

And at the end of all of this... the answer to what the stat weightings should be is... it depends. And THAT is precisely my point of how Blizzard has made this such a cluster fuck at this point that it sucks the enjoyment out of playing. You shouldn't have to be a Math genius to know if when a piece of gear drops, it is better for you or not. It should be simple. And that is what Blizzard has stated they wanted it to be. But they are SOOOO far from that right now, that it is just completely confusing and frustrating to know what to equip and what not to. In today's environment, the only answer is "go sim scrub". Which is bullshit.

[bunglehaze]

It's littered all over the place in these MMO-threads. Just a quick look at the main discussion thread of this forum (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ussion/page204) has it referenced on the last few pages. And the 10k haste breakpoint is just a soft one - the real one to strive for is 12k:

Icy-Veins says Haste until ~12k (http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/shadow-...-stat-priority)

Wowhead says Haste until 12k (http://www.wowhead.com/shadow-gear-guide)

When you go from this outdated H2P page (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.ph...p=74143#p74143) to the "new" one (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9268" it says "focus on Haste to 9500".

This H2P page from the main Shadow pages (https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=9495) says... under the Stat Weights Section... "That said, the advice we have is for players to aim, in the long run, the following criteria: at least 10.000 Haste* at least 4.000 Crit Master"

And you've got AMR stating for generic 890 Priest that the stat priority is Haste > Critical Strike > Intellect > Mastery > Versatility > Avoidance > Movement Speed > Leech (http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/t...tshadowdefault)

And at the end of all of this... the answer to what the stat weightings should be is... it depends. And THAT is precisely my point of how Blizzard has made this such a cluster fuck at this point that it sucks the enjoyment out of playing. You shouldn't have to be a Math genius to know if when a piece of gear drops, it is better for you or not. It should be simple. And that is what Blizzard has stated they wanted it to be. But they are SOOOO far from that right now, that it is just completely confusing and frustrating to know what to equip and what not to. In today's environment, the only answer is "go sim scrub". Which is bullshit.

Agreed, it's incredibly frustrating and although you can get a feel for the different gear its a huge ballache to get the gear just to test it out. One of the reasons that theorycrafting is such an intrinsic part of the game is to have in black and white a set of parameters to make your selected class/spec the best it can be for your selected purpose. 7.1.5 was supposed to take away the reliance on secondaries but in my opinion seems to be exactly the same - if not worse - as we've had to respec and gear to get here.

I've been striving for 12k haste, usually 11.6k, occasionally dropping just below 11k to try and keep my stats close to recommended and earlier today though screw it.. I put on pretty much all my high ilvl gear with mastery at the expense of haste and crit (though my crit is high with the pieces I have anyway) and now sit at 16% crit, 24% haste (sub 9000) and 82% mastery. I'm doing more consistent dps than before and although the rotation feels clunky and slow don't feel like I am losing too much dmg for my comparatively low ilvl (879)

So yes, I agree that the gearing weights being listed differently from site to site, day to day, scenario to scenario gets mind boggling. I've wasted time and gold that needn't be wasted but in the end ignored the "must have at least 10k, soft cap at 12k" and my output improved... That makes no sense

[Jullyx]

I'll tell you what I do (with ok results), and you can use it as you please.
I don't sim anything anymore, so this is purely based on intuition, experience and studying of others.

The optimal ST dps is in my experience achieved when you can use the following void form dependant cooldown rotation
1st VF: Vtor+PI
2nd VF: Vtor
3rd VF: Nothing
Start at 1.

When this is possible, I'd get enough haste to make sure i can get it off, usually requiring around 41-43/30-33/25-28 VF stacks on the respective void forms to make it smooth. I get around 10k haste for this. More if you need to move during void forms, less if your movement is between void forms. I have the belt and a chrono shard, which makes it slightly easier. Might (probably do) need more haste without belt/shoulders/haste proc trinket.

If you don't have enough haste to do this, or the fight brings secondary targets which doesn't allow for this rotation to take place, or the added targets just favors mastery, just go with w/e is your "best" gear, aka more mastery and intellect heavy. I would still not drop haste below 9k or so, unless the item upgrades are extensive (10+).

[Clrg]

The only way stay above 11k+ haste and a lot of mastery is with m+ gear, the items in nighthold have shitty stats for us and if you follow pawn you will end with like 6k haste and a bunch of crit, mastery and versatility, also there is no 12k haste cap, is the point where haste drop below versatility so its not something you need to reach, a lot of top spriest played with like 20-25% haste and everything else to mastery for progress, the tier and legendary wrist make mastery a very strong stat.

[Deleted]

For what is worth I feel EXACTLY like the OP. This game used to be fun . Now is all about simcraft and other BS that we need to master to get some results . My take in this is that this is intentional and it adds to the grind that Blizzard is enforcing (along the AP grind) to keep ppl "interested: .... I have 900 items in my bag that are worse than 860 ones ......

[Menthos]

I have pawn also with those exact weights. To be honest it just adds to my frustration because I have a number of pieces of gear in my bags with nice pretty green arrows saying it is a 5-8% upgrade, but I'm reluctant to equip it because of my already shit haste level (< 9300).

Examples:

1) Have an 890 Custodian Hood in my bag that pawn says is 5% upg. This I actually WOULD like to wear because of the Haste. But... it would break my 2pc as my current head piece is 880 Purifier Gorget. So in my bag it sits...

2) 895 Bracers of Harnessed Flame. 8% upg Pawn says over my 880 Clasp of Cosmic Intelligence. Sits in my bag though because it has 0 haste and would take my already shit Haste level down another 600pts.

3) 890 Beleron Choker of Misery. 5% upg over my 870 Cursed Beartooth. Same as above, I swap it out I lose nearly 1200 in Haste.

4) 900 Ring of Exclusive Servitude. 2% upg over my 870 Twice Warped Azsharan Signet. Put it on I lose another 770 of haste.

If I put these things on, I lose about 2500 in Haste on top of my already shit Haste level. Yeah my ilvl goes up... which equates to me sucking even harder in the WCL rankings for my gear level. (Which Blizzard already fucked us on being able to take any solace from rankings compared to other comparably equipped people with there 2nd stat weightings, dps variations between legendaries of same ilvl, and shit like people choosing 850 ChronoShard over trinkets 30 ilvls higher.) They got rid of reforge mounts because they wanted people to be able to equip the gear that dropped rather than have to run out of the instance to reforge it first. Same philosophy with reducing gear enhancers (gems, enchants, etc). Well they have FAILED so fucking hard core on this. They have created an environment that is SO far from their vision... where people are enjoying raiding with their friends and not stressing over gear. I used to be that person. Now I loathe raiding and am losing relationships with people as you can tell that I am bitter, resentful, and and just plain angry. And that is my attitude throughout raid. I go from spending hours upon hours OUTSIDE of WoW trying to research what the fuck I'm supposed to do with gearing and trying to find a solution... to saying fuck it. I'll just pass on every piece of gear. Or I won't pass and keep it my bag until I have a clear answer on what the hell I'm supposed to do. To saying maybe I'll just say fuck secondary stats completely and just equip every higher ilvl piece of gear that drops (So I can look like an ilvl boss who can't demonstrate the DPS for it and get shitty rankings). It's just utter nonsense and I feel as though Blizzard has stolen the one of the things I looked forward to each week.

You don't NEED that much haste. The stat weights are also dependant on your latency. Pure haste is good for Patchwerk fights, but not so good for moderate movement/light cleave (which is exactly what NH is).

Try to avoid versatility at all costs, but other than that, go for every upgrade possible, according to Pawn. If you find yourself at high crit levels (27-30+), run AS instead of SL

[Polybius]

The only way stay above 11k+ haste and a lot of mastery is with m+ gear, the items in nighthold have shitty stats for us and if you follow pawn you will end with like 6k haste and a bunch of crit, mastery and versatility, also there is no 12k haste cap, is the point where haste drop below versatility so its not something you need to reach, a lot of top spriest played with like 20-25% haste and everything else to mastery for progress, the tier and legendary wrist make mastery a very strong stat.

So much this ^^^

[Deleted]

It really isn't that hard to figure out wich piece is better than the other one unless you are really going for some hardcore raiding and want to max out every single number you can. And honestly i think this thing has been arround since TBC with maths, it's just that ppl where not as aware of it as they are now.

You don't need to be a math-god to get your PAWN string. Download Simulationcraft, then go to curse and download simulationcraft there aswell as an addon ingame. Now all you do is typing /simc in-game, copy everything that comes up there, paste it into Simulationcraft and press simulate.. That's it. Now you have your PAWN-string wich says wich stat gives you a little bit of more dps than the other one.

[Spicymemer]

Focus on ilvl, ignore verse, try to get 8-12k haste (gem/enchant for it if need be)
vt>shadow>swp> all other relic types.

perfecting your gear isn't that important, spriest is mostly dead weight, especially outside of raids.

[Deleted]

Focus on ilvl, ignore verse, try to get 8-12k haste (gem/enchant for it if need be)
vt>shadow>swp> all other relic types.

perfecting your gear isn't that important, spriest is mostly dead weight, especially outside of raids.

You obviously haven't met any good ones then. SPriests are insane in mythic+. 15+ with fortified? 1-2mil DPS on trash packs. Ofc at a cost of weak DMG vs low hp targets and medicore on pure ST bosses. But 800k+ DPS in average mythic run is NOT a dead weight.

[Thaylen]

This week I decided to say fuck getting bent out of shape about my haste levels and passing on gear that were 30 ilvls higher but didn't have haste. I decided I'd just equip the gear Pawn was telling me an upg. I also did a gear sim for my character and looked what gear was suggested based on that stat weighting, and it was relatively the same. I felt confident but skeptical.

My total ilvl went up by 7 (895). Plus Krosus was nice enough to give me my 4pc.

My DPS stayed relatively the same; up for some fights, down for others.. My average ranking for my ilvl dropped from 71% (52-96 range) to 43% (25 to 63 range) from last week.

It's ridiculous.

And even more ridiculous is that without the wrist legendary and arcanocrystal trink, I really can't be competitive with others in my class (at my level) right now. When I compare my fights to other Shadow Priests, the top 25 parses all have (mostly both) those items. I have neither.

So no matter if I execute a better rotation... no matter if I am wearing higher ilvl gear... I can still get handily beat by someone with a lower ilvl with a good (not great) rotation. Well done Blizz.

[Spicymemer]

You obviously haven't met any good ones then. SPriests are insane in mythic+. 15+ with fortified? 1-2mil DPS on trash packs. Ofc at a cost of weak DMG vs low hp targets and medicore on pure ST bosses. But 800k+ DPS in average mythic run is NOT a dead weight.

Fortified is only up half the time.
Volcanic is up 25% of that time.
So roughly 1 in every 3 weeks a spriest can be capable of on equal footing to top tier DPS?
Fighting negative stigma and contending with clearly superior specs like Outlaw, Frost, Fury, WW, Havoc, MM, Fire in an age where people push keys which are AoE cleave friendly?

1-2mil DPS on trash packs? this doesnt happen, you might peak at 1mil DPS after a really good string of crits of you might be running shadow crash? but the ramp up time DESTROYS shadow priest DPS, the first 2.5 seconds (for each mob you're attacking) is effectively 0 DPS, Meanwhile mr Melee comes in and starts the pull at 1m DPS and holds that 1 mill DPS.

I have a 3 boss lead in Mythic NH, 3 ilvl higher than you and have my +15 dungeon achieve 1 month before you.

Im telling you, spriest is so niche that its actually detrimental to its playability, ESPECIALLY in dungeons.

[Deleted]

Fortified is only up half the time.
Volcanic is up 25% of that time.
So roughly 1 in every 3 weeks a spriest can be capable of on equal footing to top tier DPS?
Fighting negative stigma and contending with clearly superior specs like Outlaw, Frost, Fury, WW, Havoc, MM, Fire in an age where people push keys which are AoE cleave friendly?

1-2mil DPS on trash packs? this doesnt happen, you might peak at 1mil DPS after a really good string of crits of you might be running shadow crash? but the ramp up time DESTROYS shadow priest DPS, the first 2.5 seconds (for each mob you're attacking) is effectively 0 DPS, Meanwhile mr Melee comes in and starts the pull at 1m DPS and holds that 1 mill DPS.

I have a 3 boss lead in Mythic NH, 3 ilvl higher than you and have my +15 dungeon achieve 1 month before you.

Im telling you, spriest is so niche that its actually detrimental to its playability, ESPECIALLY in dungeons.

1mil DPS only with Shadow Crash and with lucky RNG... yeah... you never met a good SPriest, like I said. Chain pulling and abusing Dispersion is the way to go. But hard to explain to someone who has no idea about how to play in M+

[dmfg]

This week I decided to say fuck getting bent out of shape about my haste levels and passing on gear that were 30 ilvls higher but didn't have haste. I decided I'd just equip the gear Pawn was telling me an upg. I also did a gear sim for my character and looked what gear was suggested based on that stat weighting, and it was relatively the same. I felt confident but skeptical.

My total ilvl went up by 7 (895). Plus Krosus was nice enough to give me my 4pc.

My DPS stayed relatively the same; up for some fights, down for others.. My average ranking for my ilvl dropped from 71% (52-96 range) to 43% (25 to 63 range) from last week.

It's ridiculous.

And even more ridiculous is that without the wrist legendary and arcanocrystal trink, I really can't be competitive with others in my class (at my level) right now. When I compare my fights to other Shadow Priests, the top 25 parses all have (mostly both) those items. I have neither.

So no matter if I execute a better rotation... no matter if I am wearing higher ilvl gear... I can still get handily beat by someone with a lower ilvl with a good (not great) rotation. Well done Blizz.

Equipping Pawn upgrades at the cost of haste (even dropping under 10k haste) is usually still a real-world DPS gain. I wouldn't stress out too much about the breakpoints though if you drop below 8k haste I would manually sim as it'll start affecting your Pawn weights.

At the end of the day you have to decide what's important to you. If you equip item Y instead of item X, get a real world DPS increase, but your ilvl warcraftlogs ranking % goes down, you're still helping your raid. Is your ego that important that you're willing to run a lower DPS setup just to look better on logs?

[Thaylen]

Is your ego that important that you're willing to run a lower DPS setup just to look better on logs?

I'm not that guy. But must be you missed my point that my real-world dps didn't go up consistently. It went up for some fights and down for others. Overall it was probably a wash.

And while I agree that real-world dps is more important and logs shouldn't matter, when your dps is nearing the bottom of the pack, many guilds will then go to the rankings to see if is you or the class. Thankfully mine is not one of those guilds, but they exist. Point being is that parse rankings are more than just for stroking ones ego.

[Spicymemer]

1mil DPS only with Shadow Crash and with lucky RNG... yeah... you never met a good SPriest, like I said. Chain pulling and abusing Dispersion is the way to go. But hard to explain to someone who has no idea about how to play in M+

Instead of showing any proof, your rebuttal is mostly unintelligible, would you like to try again?