A little background on me, I've been a heroic raider since ToC, across numerous toon and all roles and have enjoyed it very much along the way. I greatly like the min/maxing aspect of it and learning to play my toons to their highest potential. Lately I've grown tired of it and have retired raiding and looking to PVP to fill that void. I've always PVP'd on the side, nothing crazy, just for lulz, so I have some experience but am learning more everyday. My main is a warrior who I'm also PVP'ing on with huge success, and I'd like to think it's not because my class is OP because the main gimmick warriors use to wreck people (5 stacks of TfB) I don't use because I don't have the rng for it...
I have terrible rng... always have, when it comes to my classes and procs anyway. Me and proc dependent classes have never been friends.
Which brings me to my main problem, it seems I'm struggling with Shadow some. I'm full Dreadful with some pieces of Malev, got my weapon yesterday (finally!), all gemmed, all enchanted, but I'm still not as powerful as other spriests with somewhat equal gear. I've tried various talents, tried full resil vs full power (currently full power), tried all different stat focuses for reforging (haste heavy or mastery heavy or crit heavy), it all feels the same with roughly the same output. I come on various forums and read how much of a powerhouse spriests are, and then I see some of our nerfs for 5.2, and I'm just at a loss of words because no matter what I try I don't get these 'omfg amazing' results that everyone else does.
The question I fear to ask... are we that rng dependent?
I ask that because when I'm in an arena or bg and the stars do finally align and I get MB and MS procs repeatedly then yeah I can bring someone down hard and fast, but that rarely rarely happens. Most of the time I'm casting MF while I wait for something to come off of CD or proc, and the proc never comes. I realize that my spriest doesn't have nearly as much burst as my warrior, so I'm still getting used to this methodical control and bring them down slowly play style, but that doesn't work to well against healers or opponents that know how to counter and interrupt.
So yeah, I come here asking for advice on what works or if it's rng or if I'm just terrible and should delete my toon.
Says the button smashing warrior.
<insert troll face>
On a serious note, playing shadow isn't the easiest caster but I don't think it's ever been a fotm reroll so people playing know how to blow things up. Hence the amazingballs stuff your hearing.
It's an RnG class in pvp at the the moment which means when things aren't lined up you need to be doing other things to add pressure.
One tip, dot everything. Spend time putting up shields etc. mind flay as often as its safe to. Your not playing a "pic something, pop everything" class, it's about wearing things down until the moments right.
Watch vids and streams, not that the streams are great at the moment.
Thanks for the post Zaxil, that's kind of what I was starting to figure out. I enjoy it so I'll stick with it, it's just been a learning curve and not quite what I was expecting. One question though, since I keep seeing different things and I'd like to get a consensus on it, how do you reforge? Haste? Crit? Mastery? I understand how they all work but depending on where I look I see different weights attributed to them.
Haste, haste, haste, haste, haste = more dot ticks and a shorter GCD ftw. Crit > Mastery for me. Mastery is a great stat (maybe even more so in 5.2, I'm trying mastery on the ptr), but crit gives people those oh crap moments. I do use mastery in RBG's though. Don't forget crit helps your heals, FH crits are a life saver :-). I dont think there is a definitive answer anyway.
What stat to go for usually depends on what kind of playstyle you have and especially what kind of team you run with.
If you are the cannon in your team, you need to go for Power in gems and haste as a stat, Power provides burst and haste is a more controlled in terms of damage than mastery whcih is bursty in a uncontrolled way.
Crit is somewhat risky, if you crit with DP you're one lucky basterd but if you don't, well then you only have mind blast left for the big hits. Dots critting makes no difference in todays burstrace.
Mastery is given for RBGs, you have so many dots up everywhere that haste doesn't contribute as much because your FL:CD and Divine Insight procs tend to come faster than you can use them.
Haste is also a better in arena due to it's defencive attibutes such as faster Flash heals and Mass dispells.
If you run with a warrior or any other very bursty in arena you can go as a combination of a damage dealer and healer and should gem for resi and hope that your warrior does most of the work for you, probably won't work as well in 5.2 though.
If your doing rated arena don't gem power > resil. RBG's yeah maybe, your not often going to be the kill target there.
A good team will spot that.
In randoms you'll be hitting full power players harder than they'll be hitting you.
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