First Raid of 5.0.4

[Deleted]

Haven't seen many threads like this, so just going to post findings based on my raid experience from tonight (Full 8/8HC clear)

First and foremost, Shadow PvE DPS is currently in a good place at 85. Whether this will change at 90 due to things like Ascendance (among others) coming into play will have to see, but Shadow is still very competitive at 85 (for a hybrid class), so I wouldn't expect *much* to change come 90.

- Mind Sear does, indeed, hit like a wet noodle. However, on enough mobs (thinking Spine HC Bloods and DW HC Bloods) it still does decent DPS and while we'll no longer be top of AoE, we're still not bottom, not by a long shot.

- We are still very much viable on HC Spine. Weirdly enough (at least, this was my experience, others can feel free to chip in) I found that, using ToF, Bottled and preserving 3 orbs to get immediate DP onto the tendon found that I was very competitive DPS-wise. Not to mention VE in it's current form (with the glyph) is very, very strong, so is useful for clearing healing debuffs if your raid should so require it.

- There is (currently) no such thing as ramp-up time. If you preserve 3 orbs pre-pull from the trash (or even 2 so you can pre-cast Mind Blast) you'll find that opening with a 3-orb DP into SFiend/Mindbender and normal rotation actually nets you disgusting burst damage - I was outbursting everyone in my guild and peaked at 100K DPS. I understand that the new Mastery scaling and some FDCL procs probably played its part but I was never bottom of DPS during openers and finished every fight bar Spine HC on top of the meters.

- However, I did experience a slight bug/glitch (at least, I think it's a bug) with some FDCL procs where my DoTs would actually get removed, has anyone else experienced this? 100% sure it wasn't actually hardcasting Mind Spike unless I wanted it to.

- Due to low procrate on DI, I would think that ToF pulls ahead on all fights bar Morchok, Zon'ozz and Warmaster; my reasoning being that these are the only 3 fights where you can constantly have DoTs rolling on multiple targets with ease. Yor'sahj doesn't work unless you have a group that's bad for AoE and can thus DoT up all the adds which spawn (sadly I don't), Spine you'll want the ToF buff for tendons, and Madness has a large proportion of the fight at sub-20% health on mobs so you can proc a lot of extra damage here.

All in all, quietly optimistic for MoP. I agree it doesn't really feel like the Shadow of 4.0-4.3, but it's not as bad as I first feared (*can* get a bit clunky with DI and FDCL procs, but nothing unmanageable). I'm fairly confident our DPS will be in a competitive place come MoP, so if you were thinking of re-rolling for the pure DPS viability, I think you'll be OK.

These are my opinions, I'm not trying to state them as fact and feel free to disagree with them and post yours here.

[Hoddie]

As it stands, best I can work out - for the most part - now it's simply a case of using whatever's available and off cooldown.

DP with 3 orbs available? Use it.
Mind Bender available? Use it.
Mind Blast available? Use it.
Shadow Word: Death available? Use it.
None of the above available? Refresh DOTs and use Mind Flay.

I suppose the old way could also be listed like this but it wasn't anywhere near as straightforward. I've also yet to try the FDCL but this is where I can see some forward planning being needed, ensuring that DOTs last through a mini MSP/MB rotation. I guess this is the way to go if you like a little complication.

I'm excited about the new talents and what they bring to the class for PVP, but I'm a little underwhelmed about the PVE aspect at the moment.

Feathers are fun

[Deleted]

- However, I did experience a slight bug/glitch (at least, I think it's a bug) with some FDCL procs where my DoTs would actually get removed, has anyone else experienced this? 100% sure it wasn't actually hardcasting Mind Spike unless I wanted it to.




same here at the dummie. i think the erase of the dots is triggered by fdcl-mind spike, which got doublicated by teragosa rest.

[Deleted]

Fact: When your fdcl-ms gets doubled by teragosa your dots are gone

After all i was quite happy with my performance in ds today. Experimented with mindbender, fdcl, tof, di and pi an i would love to have all five of them :P (by this i mean all of them feel usefull in their way)

I also like the fdcl+di playstyle, allways something to do ^^

Only thing that disturbes me is that swd feels laggy for me.
Its like that:
20% cant use swd
19% still cant use swd
18% swd is finally usable

Of course this is a matter of seconds, it just doesnt feel right

[DeiVias]

Not to mention VE in it's current form (with the glyph) is very, very strong, so is useful for clearing healing debuffs if your raid should so require it.

We can't get the glyph till MOP, it requires a higher scribe level then what is available atm.

[Brusalk]

I discovered last night that you can force an HP check for SWD by using the following macro whenever you think you hit 20%:

/target [@player]
/targetlasttarget


The game seems to check the health percentage faster than one time a second, but sometimes it can take a while. However the game is forced to check target HP percentage when you switch targets, so using that macro should let you get the check whenever you want. (Most likely spammable once you think you're nearing 20% health)

[Powerslave]

As it stands, best I can work out - for the most part - now it's simply a case of using whatever's available and off cooldown.

DP with 3 orbs available? Use it.
Mind Bender available? Use it.
Mind Blast available? Use it.
Shadow Word: Death available? Use it.
None of the above available? Refresh DOTs and use Mind Flay.

I suppose the old way could also be listed like this but it wasn't anywhere near as straightforward. I've also yet to try the FDCL but this is where I can see some forward planning being needed, ensuring that DOTs last through a mini MSP/MB rotation. I guess this is the way to go if you like a little complication.

I'm excited about the new talents and what they bring to the class for PVP, but I'm a little underwhelmed about the PVE aspect at the moment.

Feathers are fun

Why are people using Mindbender? FDCL is clearly better, especially with MS glyph.

[Brusalk]

Why are people using Mindbender? FDCL is clearly better, especially with MS glyph.

With the Legendary Staff if it procs a MS under the effect of the talent, the procced Mind Spike will clear DoTs.

[Deleted]

Fact: When your fdcl-ms gets doubled by teragosa your dots are gone

Thank you for this. Will almost definitely be using Mindbender on my next Ultraxion attempt then.

I also like the fdcl+di playstyle, allways something to do ^^

Only thing that disturbes me is that swd feels laggy for me.
Its like that:
20% cant use swd
19% still cant use swd
18% swd is finally usable

Of course this is a matter of seconds, it just doesnt feel right

I personally use WeakAuras which tells me when the boss is at 20% and from then I'm just spamming Death anyway. Worked for me :P.

[jonish]

Haven't seen many threads like this, so just going to post findings based on my raid experience from tonight (Full 8/8HC clear)

First and foremost, Shadow PvE DPS is currently in a good place at 85. Whether this will change at 90 due to things like Ascendance (among others) coming into play will have to see, but Shadow is still very competitive at 85 (for a hybrid class), so I wouldn't expect *much* to change come 90.

- Mind Sear does, indeed, hit like a wet noodle. However, on enough mobs (thinking Spine HC Bloods and DW HC Bloods) it still does decent DPS and while we'll no longer be top of AoE, we're still not bottom, not by a long shot.

- We are still very much viable on HC Spine. Weirdly enough (at least, this was my experience, others can feel free to chip in) I found that, using ToF, Bottled and preserving 3 orbs to get immediate DP onto the tendon found that I was very competitive DPS-wise. Not to mention VE in it's current form (with the glyph) is very, very strong, so is useful for clearing healing debuffs if your raid should so require it.

- There is (currently) no such thing as ramp-up time. If you preserve 3 orbs pre-pull from the trash (or even 2 so you can pre-cast Mind Blast) you'll find that opening with a 3-orb DP into SFiend/Mindbender and normal rotation actually nets you disgusting burst damage - I was outbursting everyone in my guild and peaked at 100K DPS. I understand that the new Mastery scaling and some FDCL procs probably played its part but I was never bottom of DPS during openers and finished every fight bar Spine HC on top of the meters.

- However, I did experience a slight bug/glitch (at least, I think it's a bug) with some FDCL procs where my DoTs would actually get removed, has anyone else experienced this? 100% sure it wasn't actually hardcasting Mind Spike unless I wanted it to.

- Due to low procrate on DI, I would think that ToF pulls ahead on all fights bar Morchok, Zon'ozz and Warmaster; my reasoning being that these are the only 3 fights where you can constantly have DoTs rolling on multiple targets with ease. Yor'sahj doesn't work unless you have a group that's bad for AoE and can thus DoT up all the adds which spawn (sadly I don't), Spine you'll want the ToF buff for tendons, and Madness has a large proportion of the fight at sub-20% health on mobs so you can proc a lot of extra damage here.

All in all, quietly optimistic for MoP. I agree it doesn't really feel like the Shadow of 4.0-4.3, but it's not as bad as I first feared (*can* get a bit clunky with DI and FDCL procs, but nothing unmanageable). I'm fairly confident our DPS will be in a competitive place come MoP, so if you were thinking of re-rolling for the pure DPS viability, I think you'll be OK.

These are my opinions, I'm not trying to state them as fact and feel free to disagree with them and post yours here.

the rotation feels like a 70s pinto that has an engine that misfires and has two flat tires. That is the problem.

The fact mind blast doesnt scale with anything but crit is insanity , the fact mind flay still has a crappy spell coefficient with sp is also an issue.

The fact we have no dps cooldown to use , and the only semblence of one that we have , is a talent and one that is a dps loss based on type of encounter.

The fact SW: Insanity is useless. The fact all 3 of the level 90 talents are just a button to push on a long cooldown to compensate for damage we lost elsewhere ON TOP of them being incredibly weak because they are also heals.

I was suprised by how high the dps output was on live much like yourself but I quickly realized how poorly we are laid out going forward into MoP and up 5 levels in terms of scaling.

Still not looking forward to how Shadow is layed out at this point.

[Forsay]

I discovered last night that you can force an HP check for SWD by using the following macro whenever you think you hit 20%:

/target [@player]
/targetlasttarget


The game seems to check the health percentage faster than one time a second, but sometimes it can take a while. However the game is forced to check target HP percentage when you switch targets, so using that macro should let you get the check whenever you want. (Most likely spammable once you think you're nearing 20% health)

This is really helpful, going to try it tonight.

As for FDCL+Tarecgosa - if you cast Spike with 2 stacks of Surge of Darkness and Tarecgosa procs you'll spend 2 procs and cast 2 Spikes in 1 gcd and not remove your dots, I've found it better than using Mindbender. So if you want to use FDCL untill lvl 86 (when Tarecgosa stops to proc) you can do it this way.

[Deleted]

I got asked to come raid with my Priest when I was doing some UI stuff on my hunter, so my UI wasn't ready but I don't think the result would've change a lot.

I gotta say; I really really like how priests play, and the dps I did yesterday with some fuck ups with DoT uptimes was a lot better than pre-patch. (I think I did 50k which is 5k more than my 2nd highest dps on ultra ever).

I did play use FDCL and DI during the entire dragon soul.
Overall I think priests are in both a good spot and I personally like the play style of it, I just need to work on my DoT uptimes with all theses instants and now that the DoTs have shorter duration

[Deleted]

the rotation feels like a 70s pinto that has an engine that misfires and has two flat tires. That is the problem.

The fact mind blast doesnt scale with anything but crit is insanity , the fact mind flay still has a crappy spell coefficient with sp is also an issue.

The fact we have no dps cooldown to use , and the only semblence of one that we have , is a talent and one that is a dps loss based on type of encounter.

The fact SW: Insanity is useless. The fact all 3 of the level 90 talents are just a button to push on a long cooldown to compensate for damage we lost elsewhere ON TOP of them being incredibly weak because they are also heals.

I was suprised by how high the dps output was on live much like yourself but I quickly realized how poorly we are laid out going forward into MoP and up 5 levels in terms of scaling.

Still not looking forward to how Shadow is layed out at this point.

Rotation is purely down to the player. While I do definitely miss the old buff management and don't like how ridiculously simple the new one is, it definitely wasn't as bad as I'd heard before I tried it. I'd read people saying that it doesn't even feel like a DoT class anymore, which IMO is just silly, but yeah.

While I wish Mind Blast did scale with haste, from my viewpoint I can see why Blizzard may have done it. Giving us haste scaling on Mind Blast would make haste SUCH a good stat for us that there wouldn't be any point in going for crit or mastery, which (I believe) Blizzard doesn't like. Thus, to make it balanced they would have to scale Mastery better for us which would then probably make us OP.
^ This is just a guess. I have no hard evidence or anything like that to back it up so feel free to pick that apart as you wish :P

You can't call Mindbender (assuming you're using it) a 'resemblance' of a DPS CD - it is a DPS CD. Just the same way Shadowfiend is also a DPS CD. Granted they aren't major, but Frost DKs will argue pretty much the same, all they have is ghoul on the same CD as Fiend and Pillar, so they're not *that* different on that front. Plus, lack of CDs means that our sustained damage is going to be high which means that the only time we'll really 'fall behind' is in encounters where there is a specific large burn required, but as I've said, I found absolutely no problems in bursting above everyone in my raid team when required so, for now, this isn't a problem, unless you absolutely crave having CDs to pop but personally I'm not that bothered.

From dummy tests (I don't really like the playstyle so didn't bother doing it in the raid) Insanity really isn't a significant loss, so if you prefer it as your playstyle and can use it at the right time it's (from what I've seen) decent. Not the best, but decent. However, dummy tests are still dummy tests and RNG plays in here, so would need some extensive raid testing to figure out whether it's 100% viable or not just yet.
Not to mention that in a multidot scenario it's more guaranteed dps as DI and FDCL are both procs.

I agree with your point that, once scaled at 90 our DPS is likely to be pretty poor, however only time will tell.

As I said, in my opinion it's not as bad as I'd first feared, so I'm still quietly optimistic. My main worry was that Shadow damage was going to be utterly appalling (from what I'd seen on streams and so forth) and I'm just pleased that it's currently in a good position, so am just waiting on MoP to drop now.

This is really helpful, going to try it tonight.

As for FDCL+Tarecgosa - if you cast Spike with 2 stacks of Surge of Darkness and Tarecgosa procs you'll spend 2 procs and cast 2 Spikes in 1 gcd and not remove your dots, I've found it better than using Mindbender. So if you want to use FDCL untill lvl 86 (when Tarecgosa stops to proc) you can do it this way.

Thanks for this. Will probably do some extensive HC testing or maybe run FL HC with a mix of Mindbender/trying this and see where it goes from there. But, if I'm right, you effectively wait till you have 2 procs of SoD before you use one, and don't use up the second unless it's taken by Legendary proc? Seems similar to Masterfrost on DKs where you'd have to hold an Unholy rune, but seems interesting.

[Hesp]

Even with the DTR bug, I would still argue FDCL is better than Mindbender. Mindbender is ahead on the current patchwerk sims, but patchwerk is hardly representative of most encounters and simcraft's action priority list fails to take into account several benefits FDCL provides. FDCL gives you something decent to cast on the move, becomes stronger when multi-dotting, and is capable of lowering the effective cd of Mind Blast when coupled witht he glyph of Mind Spike (more below). Additionally, since the procs can be held on to they should only compete with mind flay for globals, unlike DI, whose procs have a bad habit of interfering with dot recasts due to MB's higher priority. I'm not a fan of DI since when faced with 3 or more targets you are simply overwhelmed with FDCl and DI procs to the point where DI procs directly compete with both FDCl procs and dot recasts for globals. On a single target, ToF and DI are nearly equal and the choice will come down to whether the fight has a tougher final health % phase or not, but for multi-dotting there are simply not enough globals to field both proc-based talents. Once you get into execute range, the problem is only exacerbated with the extra swd casts and orb generation, devaluing the talent further in multi target. Given that DI and ToF provide similar dps gains as is, and that I prefer FDCL to Mindbender, my choice was to drop DI for most fights. Not to mention most fights have exploitable adds where you can gain the ToF buff mid-fight, making ToF all the more desirable.

Anyways, aside from aoe I was pretty pleased with both Shadow's performance and playstyle, aside from our aoe obviously. Thankfully Mind Sear was buffed a bit today (buffed by 30%, which means it's down by 46.7% damage from it's pre-nerf state rather than 59%); it might need a bit more but it isn't the worst aoe in the game by any means. The extension of the glyph of Mind Spike's buff duration from 6 to 9 seconds is a nice qol change, but I rather enjoyed the skill interaction it provided. The change doesn't seem to be live yet since the buff still only lasts for 6 seconds, but currently you can save your FDCL procs so that the glyph's buff will always be applied to the next mind blast. This has the effect of lowering the effective cd of Mind Blast by reducing its cast time. A normal, casted mb has an effective cd of 8 seconds + the length of the cast. You will only cause damage with MB once per this time period, not once per 8 seconds, hence the effective cooldown. By making the MB cast instant with two stacks of the glyph's buff, or halved with one, you can shorten the effective cd down to 8 seconds. This dramatically increases orb generation and dps over the course of a fight, so until the buff duration increase makes it live, every priest should plan their Mind Spikes so that the buff they grant will be up for the next MB cast. All this really means is that you should avoid casting Mind Spike immediately after using MB for fear of losing the Glyph's buff (unless your proc is about to expire of course).

I'll miss the t13 burn rotation, but shadow is certainly more interesting as a whole and I'm rather excited to optimize the spec for the new encounters.

[Yvaelle]

@Hesp

Using both DI and FDCL on multi-dot fights is overwhelming as you mentioned. So with FDCL currently bugged to wipe dots, we're using Mindbender not just because of the dot wipe, but because it makes it less hectic/annoying to only manage DI procs and a 60s CD Mindbender rather than both FDCL and DI procs - which can be overwhelming. Those definitely may end up best, but for now I wouldn't be too shocked by people busting out their Shadowy Octopussies: they're cute and awesome!

ToF also solves this problem tidily - but taking both proc talents feels kinda gross.

[h3lladvocate]

I main Holy/Disc, so my experience may be skewed, but I do have nearly full heroic gear as shadow as well (though some of it is reforged towards Holy). I went shadow a few fights tonight, H Morchok and H Ultra, and I felt like my damage was terrible compared to our mages/boomkin/mages who were pulling ridiculous numbers while I was sitting at around 43k. Mind Sear hits like a wet noodle indeed, while messing around in H FL, I was assigned to spiderlings, and Mind Sear did almost no damage to them... The rotation is awkward, and quite frankly, boring... Mind Blast is the only resource generator that does not scale with haste, meaning that DP essentially also doesn't scale with haste, 2 of our 5 abilities don't scale with haste..... Mind Flay takes up most of my time, and of course, still has that terrible coefficient.

Maybe DI + Mindbender was a bad choice, but I felt really weak tonight... I used to be competitive, occasionally passing people with staffs, now I feel weak.

Holy seems good, thought mana was tighter. Ran MB + DI most the night, and had DI procs so often. Tried FDCL on one fight, H Spine, two healing, and while I could remove debuffs like a boss, my mana was terrible. Really really hate having to bind more keys for Chakra, thinking of setting up my keyboard/mouse to use my old Chakra button as a key toggle and make all my heals that would proc Chakra in the past have key modifiers built in to cast Chakra is the key is toggled. Hopefully my software lets me do this, I hate having 3 buttons to do what 1 button did before, such a dumb change...

Didn't try Disc, was Holy/Shadow tonight, but Disc doesn't look that different besides forced AA for everyone and SSh for funzies.

[Arlee]

@Hesp

Using both DI and FDCL on multi-dot fights is overwhelming as you mentioned. So with FDCL currently bugged to wipe dots, we're using Mindbender not just because of the dot wipe, but because it makes it less hectic/annoying to only manage DI procs and a 60s CD Mindbender rather than both FDCL and DI procs - which can be overwhelming. Those definitely may end up best, but for now I wouldn't be too shocked by people busting out their Shadowy Octopussies: they're cute and awesome!

ToF also solves this problem tidily - but taking both proc talents feels kinda gross.

Easy solution... make both hands into fists... start mashing your keyboard.. profit!

But yes that is the main reason I went with Mindbender and DI. I knew I wanted to play with DI and get a feel for that instead of ToF, but I also knew I would probably already be making enough mistakes and wanted to simplify things a bit.

[Ellumina]

I'm still getting used to the new Shadow rotation. I was kinda crappy with it on Tuesday while clearly 8/8HM DS (only DPSed Ultraxion) and am still I'm the processing of "forgetting" our old rotation.

Only thing I'm slightly annoyed with is DP at the start of a fight. If you start a fight with 3 orbs, you can burst insanely high. With 0 orbs, damage would be low. It reminded me on Boomkin's Eclipse a bit, where damage is fairly crap at the start of a fight when you're not eclipsed. I sort of which there was a "3 orb generator" out of combat on perhaps a 1 minute CD for example, or something similar to the old Soul Harvest that Warlocks had.*

For the talents that only affect DPS, I have only tried Shadow Word: Insanity and Mindbender in Tier 2 and Divine Insight in Tier 5 talents. SW:I is definitely not worth it, but I do want to try out FDCL still. Also, it took me a while to realize "DI" is not Dark Intent =P

A moment of silence for Dark Intent. RIP Cataclysm Dark Intent, the most fought over buff by all the peoples!

[Deleted]

Only thing I'm slightly annoyed with is DP at the start of a fight. If you start a fight with 3 orbs, you can burst insanely high. With 0 orbs, damage would be low. It reminded me on Boomkin's Eclipse a bit, where damage is fairly crap at the start of a fight when you're not eclipsed. I sort of which there was a "3 orb generator" out of combat on perhaps a 1 minute CD for example, or something similar to the old Soul Harvest that Warlocks had.*[/i]

This. Said that when this rotation went live (on beta). I would really love this kind of thing. Now Moonkins have it, but in combat (if i remember correct), now spriests needs it! Out of combat.

[Blain]

This. Said that when this rotation went live (on beta). I would really love this kind of thing. Now Moonkins have it, but in combat (if i remember correct), now spriests needs it! Out of combat.

Or they should simply vanish over time, when out of combat.

But for now...Does someone know if the engeneer target dummy is still targetable (2 min CD seems ok for generating 2 Orbs between the tries), or if there are other things you can kill, if you run out of trash?