1. #1

    Switching to Shadow

    I'm currently thinking of switching from my demon hunter to my priest for my main this tier. I'm fairly good with my priest and know how to do the rotation as shadow, but I would like to know if someone knows just how much haste I need to effectively play shadow? Is there also a certain percent of crit/mastery I should be aiming for? I'm sitting at 31% haste right now, mainly because I've been holy so the majority of my gear is crit/mastery, and feel like that level of haste is way too low to play the spec well.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Roship View Post
    I'm currently thinking of switching from my demon hunter to my priest for my main this tier. I'm fairly good with my priest and know how to do the rotation as shadow, but I would like to know if someone knows just how much haste I need to effectively play shadow? Is there also a certain percent of crit/mastery I should be aiming for? I'm sitting at 31% haste right now, mainly because I've been holy so the majority of my gear is crit/mastery, and feel like that level of haste is way too low to play the spec well.
    You shouldn't reroll to spriest, end of advice.
    No more time wasted in WoW.. still reading this awesome forum, though

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by l33t View Post
    You shouldn't reroll to spriest, end of advice.
    He didnt ask for your opinion if he should reroll but thanks for contributing.


    Most sources say around 13k is optimal, but I´ve played with less as well as with more. If you got fairly high crit it already compensates a bit for that. Shadow Priest is a class which relies on stats, but good play just matters so much more.

  4. #4
    First I'm going to assume you'll be running with 4set if you're rerolling for this tier, because anything else is ludicrous
    You'll want around 12-13k haste without Sephuz and 11-12k with Sephuz for a smooth rotation, slightly more if you also lack the legendary belt. Less is possible, but requires better performance in order to reach 55+ stacks for every void form without the use of dispersion shenanigans. The main objective of having "enough" haste (besides obviously providing a DPS increase on it's own) is to make sure you can line up VoiT and Mindbender at roughly the same place in each Void Form, which requires you to stay in void form for around 55 seconds or more. I pop my VoiT early (normal opener VErr>VB>MB>MB>VB>VoiT with belt) and bender around 30-35 stacks depending on hero and tentaclebro procs with 12.5k haste and belt but no sephuz. I can't do it safely with 11.5k haste, and MagicSim indicates haste is losing value rapidly after 13k in my case. Don't forget that crit also gives you more insanity with AS talented and should never be neglected either. Mastery isn't bad but doesn't help your rotation, and the same goes for vers.

    tl;dr Very rough guildlines from my own experience: 13k+ without sephuz/belt, 12k+ with only one of them, 11k+ with both. Can require 1k +/- depending on player skill. Aim for 10k crit once you crawl towards 930 equipped.

  5. #5
    Just aim to get mainly haste/crit gear with 4set and use sephuz/belt or cloack or shoulders.
    Once u reach around 13k haste u can think of switching gems and enchants into crit. Atleasts for ME that resulted more simdps. Even tho its said that simming SP is irrelevant. I seem do be doing just fine.
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...r/p%C3%A1nisin

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainAlkohol View Post
    He didnt ask for your opinion if he should reroll but thanks for contributing.
    And yet he's right. Shadow is not in a good place right now. People should save themselves the misery.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Annesh View Post
    And yet he's right. Shadow is not in a good place right now. People should save themselves the misery.

    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13#difficulty=4
    and thats only 75% percentile.

    Dude what ? SP is great. Only boss we are "bad" in, is Kj and thats only cuz of p1 and p2. Our execution is more than valuable there.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Biosync View Post
    Dude what ? SP is great. Only boss we are "bad" in, is Kj and thats only cuz of p1 and p2. Our execution is more than valuable there.
    Ummm okay let's see. Even speaking only about raid bosses. I guess Maiden and Gorth don't exist? That's three fights out of nine we're straight up bad on, one of them being the final boss. Three others, we're mediocre. Inquisition and Host, very strong. Avatar reeeeally doesn't count because maiden damage is padding. Subtract a good 25% from our total damage on that 75 percentile Avatar parse and we're hanging out around 840k damage, roughly dead last.

    Note I didn't say dotting the maiden is completely useless, because it generates insanity. But maiden damage does not count because it doesn't need to happen.

    Don't be fooled, no matter how good our parses look on Avatar, that's another fight we're actually bad at, pure single target with heavy movement requirements.

    Soooo, on average for just raid bosses, subpar.

    Now, for Christ's sake just think outside of raid bosses. Think about Timewalking, LFR, questing, trash in both raids and dungeons, low to mid level mythics. We perform terribly in all these modes of game content because of our backloaded design. We suck horribly at 90% of the game so that we can have the privilege of being mediocre at 8% of the rest, and truly strong at the 2% that represents the 2 raid bosses designed to fit our niche. Whoopty fucking do. Everyone else gets to feel strong at exactly the opposite. Their powerful burst and cleave tools let them feel strong at 94% of the game, mediocre at 4%, and weak at 2%. Gotta throw the fucking shadowpriests their bone, right?

    This is what I mean when I say the spec is not in a good place. I mean, if you live entirely in raids and group with mediocre players, you probably think we're doing well. But you just have to pop your head out of the sand. There's a serious problem when a DPS spec can switch to their healing offspec and do more damage in a dungeon.

    And that problem is called ramp-up design.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Annesh View Post
    We suck horribly at 90% of the game so that we can have the privilege of being mediocre at 8% of the rest, and truly strong at the 2% that represents the 2 raid bosses designed to fit our niche. Whoopty fucking do. Everyone else gets to feel strong at exactly the opposite. Their powerful burst and cleave tools let them feel strong at 94% of the game, mediocre at 4%, and weak at 2%. Gotta throw the fucking shadowpriests their bone, right?
    That's not true; shadow is only truly bad at trivial content such as heroic/mythic/low mythic+ dungeons. But when you do those it's not really important if you do well or not cuz it's trivial.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Biosync View Post
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13#difficulty=4
    and thats only 75% percentile.

    Dude what ? SP is great. Only boss we are "bad" in, is Kj and thats only cuz of p1 and p2. Our execution is more than valuable there.
    "Good DPS" and "bad place" are not necessarily exclusive. Mechanically-- i.e. from a design standpoint-- shadow is a fucking cesspit. It needs a revamp into something far less overwrought, underthought, and degenerate in 8.0. Multidot on a few bosses is the only thing propping it up, even if the spec feels like gargling broken glass to play.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by davesignal View Post
    "Good DPS" and "bad place" are not necessarily exclusive. Mechanically-- i.e. from a design standpoint-- shadow is a fucking cesspit. It needs a revamp into something far less overwrought, underthought, and degenerate in 8.0. Multidot on a few bosses is the only thing propping it up, even if the spec feels like gargling broken glass to play.
    if there's one I completely disagree with you about it would be shadow feeling bad to play, lately I've been leveling up all other classes and tried almost every spec, especially for all ranged dps classes and I just keep coming back to shadow because of how much more fun it is to play, I'd like to for example play my lock as in a lot of cases it's stronger than priest but it just feels so slow paced compared to shadow, it's really hard to play anything with long casts after having played shadowpriest.

  12. #12
    When people post their opinions, they fail to use the correct words.
    A forum based around a videogame is one of the least intelligent places on the internet.

    So its my burden to correct the mistakes of everyone here.

    1. The OP asked how to play the class, which means they're not heavily invested in the game, therefor not looking to play the strongest class/spec, so everyone responding to them telling them that shadow is either a good or bad choice are spastics who cant read apparently.

    2. The OP should just read the H2P Shadow Guide, unfortunately this class forum is in utter shambles and its not directly obvious where that may be. The pinned topic reading '[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion' not only has no information in the first post, instead linking to a 3rd party site with information which may or may not be up to date.

    3. Objectively speaking.
    Shadow isnt nonviable to mythic raiding, but the spec offers next to nothing of value to a raid other than its own DPS contribution and slight advantage of self survivability.
    Shadow isn't a very adaptable spec, there is almost no ability to viably change our playstyle through talents, especially with T20 and currently planned T21 set bonuses.
    Our rotation is incredibly strict and HEAVILY punishing when we are unable to stand still.
    Our aoe is beyond dreadful, this means that we only start to break even on fortified m+ weeks.
    Our ideal fight would be that where there are multiple targets for dotting, these fights are few and far between.

    Shadow is the least valuable, viable DPS spec when it comes to hardcore raiding, why bring a shadow priest when a Mage, Hunter, Rogue, Demon Hunter have potential to cheese mechanics which we cannot?
    Those that you may see participating in world first guilds are the products of split-farming heroic, they and their raid as a whole have more gear than most players will receive the entire tier, so naturally they can afford to bring less viable DPS specs if the player in question is worth having.

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