[Priest] Shadow DPS Guide

[Eldarc]

Hey. I said that I was not so sure but if you say so you must be right. Why do you want to discuss about it again? I don't consider I was wrong because I didn't defend any point, I was only doubting. But if you need it to stop talking about it: YES, I WAS WRONG, YOU ARE RIGHT.

[Ferin]

With DPS in mind: What is the best rotation when using 'Vampiric Embrace' with the glyph ?

I generally try to pop it with 2 orbs and MB about to come off cooldown, that way you get an immediate MB+DP converted to healing, then the DP dot ticking on top of your normal rotation. Make sure your VT/SW:P are refreshed before as well when possible. Below 20% is also better than above due to SW:D.

[Tidders]

Is it worth dropping below 8085haste to pick up 4 set bonus?

[Yvaelle]

Is it worth dropping below 8085haste to pick up 4 set bonus?

Depends exactly how you are picking it up (ie. dropping 509's for 476's isn't worthwhile), but probably yes - the bonus is worth about 600+ int, so even when your haste is approaching 0.8 of Int just before the cap, the bonus is equivalent to losing 750 pre-cap (0.8 of int) haste rating. It's a pretty solid bonus, I'd go for it

[Zethious]

No, u missunderstood me i think. I multi dot, cast mb on cd, etc. But I don't fill with MF but Mindsear when 3 or more targets.

I would agree with doing this 100%, I think it's an obvious answer unless the main target needs to be prioritized, such as p2 of heroic sha if you have three adds up as well as the boss, it would be a personal dps increase to seer, however it's better for the raid that you mind flay, unless of course your'e behind on adds.

[Sonnillon]

Being clueless about shadow priest, but what should be average up-time of skills be on fights like Empress for a spriest? Can't post the logs nor armory to avoid qq, but I'll copy from WoL

Buffs

Name	Amount	Uptime
Shadowform	3	478.0	84.5 %	#
Glyph of Mind Flay	71	358.1	63.3 %	#
Power Word: Fortitude	10	178.7	31.6 %	#
Lightweave	9	135.0	23.9 %	#
Surge of Darkness	33	72.4	12.8 %	#
Renew	6	55.2	9.8 %	#
Fixate	3	46.5	8.2 %	#
Divine Insight	10	31.3	5.5 %	#
Power Word: Shield	4	22.3	3.9 %	#
Berserking	2	20.0	3.5 %	#
Surge of Light	2	20.0	3.5 %	#
Angelic Feather	5	18.8	3.3 %	#
Vampiric Embrace	1	15.0	2.7 %	#
Scroll of Revered Ancestors	1	15.0	2.7 %	#
Hymn of Hope	12	12.8	2.3 %	#
Hymn of Hope	1	6.4	1.1 %	#

Debuffs

Name	Amount	Uptime
Shadow Word: Pain	26	392.1	69.3 %	#
Vampiric Touch	31	378.2	66.8 %	#
Mind Flay	113	178.9	31.6 %	#
Devouring Plague	16	102.0	18.0 %	#
Weakened Soul	4	53.9	9.5 %	#
Sticky Resin	3	12.9	2.3 %	#

Power gains

Name	Amount
Vampiric Touch	1386000 mana
Hymn of Hope	88200 mana
Mind Blast	55 Unknown
Shadow Word: Death	12 Unknown

[Cookie]

Depends a bit on how you deal with the adds and if said sp has any chance to mind sear them a bit, but vt and especially sw should generally be above 90% (I can't think of any reason for it to ever drop below 80%, I guess getting the two big adds cc'd very quickly could result in something close to that). Hard to know exactly what's causing it without WoL but DP uptime seems a bit low at a glance as well, which most likely means that your sp isn't casting mind blast just as it comes off cd.

tldr: Your sp isn't doing a very good job.

[Sonnillon]

For the adds, we keep big ones up for a while. Kill the full pack of smaller adds on one side + 1 add from the other side. Those numbers are from our successful kill, where we CCd one of the big ones in the middle of the add phase and other very close to boss coming out again. And if I recall, the smaller adds where not killed that fast as well. So there was not that much downtime for the DPS.

But in general the uptimes SW and VT should be above 80% (I know you wrote that 90%. but lets give some breathing room here ). What about the rest of the skills? I know that Mind Flay is for getting mana back, but should any other skill have higher uptime or just the 2 mentioned which need some more work?

[Cookie]

Mind flay doesn't give mana back, and in all honesty casting that too much over other spells is what most "bad" sp's are guilty off, the amount of casts/uptime also depends on luck/talents used. Apart from SW:P and VT uptimes the most important parts is probably the amount of mind blasts cast in relation to the time of the fight and the amount of divine insight procs they've had. You can also look at things like DP casts (in relation to mind blasts/sw:d's) and (if they have flcd) the amount of mind spike casts in relation to flcd procs.

[veiledy0]

Being clueless about shadow priest, but what should be average up-time of skills be on fights like Empress for a spriest?

48 Hits + 22 Crits = 70

Also playing with ToF, and still got 65 Mind Blasts off



Which is a lot more than

Buffs

Name	Amount	Uptime
Divine Insight	10	31.3	5.5 %	#

Power gains

Name	Amount
Mind Blast	55 Unknown
Shadow Word: Death	12 Unknown

Here's a source WoL of the images I linked, if it may help.

[ptz]

so i had a good night tonight and got some drops. The Thunderforged 528 pants from jinrokh dropped - the ones with hit mastery, alset smthn smthn. So i went and changed my t14 2/2 upgraded normal pants 504 ilvl and also changed my 2/2 normal t14 chest with the 509 ilvl robes of bla bla nightmare from meljarak hc, convinced that the ilvl increase would easily rank over the t4 set im losing. Its like 29 ilvls that im gaining. After making some math now with twintop's tables im not so sure its the better thing to do, it seems the almost 800pp i get from 4 set t14 ranks a bit ahead of these upgrades.

What am i missing bros?

[sauzer]

Hi... I just started playing a SP... im 480il right now (less than 8k haste), how can I know if im playing it right?
I mean, after a boss (yeah i know some are situational...), what should my dps stats be? Mind blast first then dp and mf?
Anything I can check out of logs to see if im doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[Kelesti]

Heeeeeeey, time for me to be a pain and all that. Did you want to do a rewrite on the new Solace and Insanity talent?

Also, update the bit on Glyph of Mind Spike?

[espoire]

Hi... I just started playing a SP... im 480il right now (less than 8k haste), how can I know if im playing it right?
I mean, after a boss (yeah i know some are situational...), what should my dps stats be? Mind blast first then dp and mf?

I find my ordering varies a lot with the type of fight. To paraphrase Cap'n Barbossa, the DPS guide is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Shadow spec, sauzer.

[Cookie]

Heeeeeeey, time for me to be a pain and all that. Did you want to do a rewrite on the new Solace and Insanity talent?

Also, update the bit on Glyph of Mind Spike?

The following info should be reasonably accurate until Yvalle has time to change the guide (I shamelessly copied some parts):

Single Target Spell Priority
1. Devouring Plague (3 Orb)
2. Shadow Word: Death
3. Mind Blast (@Yvalle, I’m a bit curious why you put mind blast a step below sw:d in the priority, is this simply due to the cast time, which in practice results in a longer cd & possibly lower dpet? If so DI:MB procs should still be a step above sw:d, no?)
4. Mind Flay: Insanity
5. Shadow Word: Pain
6. Vampiric Touch
7. Mindbender
8. Halo
9. Mind Flay

Solace and Insanity
The new Solace and Insanity talent empowers your Mind Flay by 100% after a 3 orb Devouring Plague. To get the maximum gain from this talent try to ensure that you can channel Mind Flay for most, if not all, of Devouring Plagues duration. This is primarily accomplished by making sure that your dots still have a fair bit of time left before you cast the Mind Blast that will give you a 3 orb Devouring Plague. You can get some extra benefit from the talent by recasting Mind Flay just before Devouring Plague disappears from the target, Mind Flay will then keep ticking for the double insanity damage for the entire duration of the channel. Do ensure that you still cancel Mind Flay insanity in favor of Mind Blast when it comes off cooldown, more Mind Blasts = more Devouring Plagues = more empowered Mind Flays. This talent should prove to be the best for most encounters, excluding those with multiple equal priority targets and/or heavy movement.

Power Infusion
Power Infusion will be fantastic for fights with important burn phases. Conceivably, the 20% haste bonus could be something we will gear around to see additional ticks of Devouring Plague while PI is active. In general however, the benefit of haste is lost on many instant casts such as From Darkness and during execute phases (SW: Death), and therefore Divine Insight is likely to be the superior talent most of the time. With the 5% damage increase added in patch 5.2 this talent should prove superior in most “patchwerk type” encounters where you are unable to multidot (favoring Divine Insight) or proc Twist of Fate outside of the last 20% of the encounter.

Glyph of Mind Spike
Considering the scarce usage of mind spike outside of flcd procs this glyph is largely useless for pve purposes right now.

[Frmercury]

I just finalized mine with the 5.2 updates:

[H2P] Shadow Raiding: the Primer, 5.2 Edition!

[Noradin]

I just finalized mine with the 5.2 updates:

[H2P] Shadow Raiding: the Primer, 5.2 Edition!

Those links you include are partially outdated and might now be missleading.

[Vailen]

Those links you include are partially outdated and might now be missleading.

Its the new guide its not outdated at all

[Frmercury]

Those links you include are partially outdated and might now be missleading.

Its the new guide its not outdated at all

^ This should be the case, BUT if you find anything please let me know so I can fix it.

[Noradin]

At the end of "II. Talents" you link "Lux and Umbra", a priest mechanics guide, which contains outdated information (it claims to be updated in Februa 28th (5.1) but there is some information in there that was outdated in Cata.