Originally Posted by
Castochi
Alright, I'll try to elaborate a little on why Wushoolay's Final Choice is not a good... choice on DoT classes. First of all, a little about myself. I chose to main my Shadow Priest for this patch. I'm nowhere near what you could call a hardcore player/raider, but I do play a lot every day, and raid 9 hours a week on a semi-casual guild. We are 9/12 ToT at the moment and I'm ilvl 517. I have read countless threads/guides, and like you, I actually purchased the Mr. Robot subscription to use the Best in Bags feature and hoped it would solve all of my problems. Sadly, I was wrong. This is not to say the site is useless, as you can edit your own stat weights. Let me begin by talking a little bit on Stat Weights.
The order of stats
The order of stats on a Shadow Priest in 5.2 is Intellect > Hit (via Spirit or Hit until 14.5-15%) > Haste (even after reaching the two haste breakpoints) > Mastery > Crit. Why Mastery and not Crit? Why aren't Mastery and Crit a personal choice? Well, take a look at your Mastery, Shadowy Recall. Every time you deal periodic damage, you have a chance for the dot to deal damage TWICE on that particular tick. This synergises extremely well with your best secondary stat, haste, because it gives SW:P, VT, and DP additional ticks. Now take a look at your talent, Divine Insight, which you should be using on 75-85% of encounters. Periodic Damage from SW:P has a 5% chance on giving you instant Mind Blasts, which in turn generate more Shadow Orbs, which in turn allow you to have more Devouring Plague and Mind Flay: Insanity uptime (Solace and Insanity is the ONLY choice in that talent tier after nerfs to Mind Spike). An extra tick of SW:P because of your Shadowy Recall will cause an extra 5% chance of triggering the instant Mind Blast and this is one of the main reasons why Mastery is better than Crit at the moment. On encounters such as Jin'Rokh the Breaker, you should be taking Power Infusion instead of Divine Insight, and in this encounter, Crit outweighs Mastery by a tiny bit, because of the absence of the Divine Insight talent and the fact there are no extra adds in the encounter, it's just you and Jin'Rokh.
Your Mastery synergises too well with too many things for it not to be prioritized
Take a look now at your Shadowy Apparitions spell, which by itself, sucks. Critical periodic damage from SW:P triggers a Shadowy Apparition that moves slowly toward the target that received the critical periodic tick (not necessarily your current target), and deals a crappy amount of damage to it. Pretty crappy, right? Not really once you start getting your set bonuses together.
Take a look at the Tier 15 2-set and 4-set bonuses. The 2-set gives your Shadowy Apparitions a 65% chance to extend the duration of both SW:P and VT so they deal one additional tick each. This effect stacks, so if your SW:P critted Jin'Rokh 3 times, and you were lucky enough so the 3 Apparitions extended the duration, your DoTs will now deal 3 Additional ticks in damage, which can also deal double damage thanks to Mastery: Shadowy Recall. See the synergy now? This does mean, however, that the 2-set actually gives Crit a bit of spotlight, but not nearly enough to outweigh Mastery. Especially with the 4-set bonus.
The 4-set gives each tick of your VT a whopping 10% chance of triggering the Shadowy Apparition, no Crit involved. With Shadowy Recall procs, you get extra 10% per additional tick. When you get your 2-set bonus while prioritizing Mastery, you won't notice that big a difference on your DPS, but boy, just you wait until your 4-set, even an LFR 4-set, and you're in for a treat.
How DoTs work
Here's one very important thing about every single DoT in the game (with a few exceptions): The DoT will deal damage based on the stats your character had at the moment of applying it.
Suppose you start the Jin'Rokh the breaker encounter by applying SW:P and VT, and then the Shammy in your raid group uses Bloodlust and you gain 30% spell haste. Your DoTs will continue dealing damage based on the stats your character had before receiving Bloodlust because you applied those DoTs before receiving Bloodlust. You need to re-apply the DoTs for them to receive the benefits of Bloodlust.
DoT Clipping
Now, a little bit about DoT Clipping. Every DoT class user worth their salt should know what DoT clipping is. Fundamentally, DoT Clipping is the action of refreshing an application of a DoT before its duration expires. And the thing is, this can sometimes work to your advantage or disadvantage, depending on when you refreshed the DoT.
Suppose you refresh SW:P and VT once your Shammy has Lusted, from a previous application that didn't benefit from Lust. The first tick of the newly applied DoTs will be a weaker, non-Lusted tick, and the rest will be stronger, Lusted ticks.
The opposite of that can also happen. If you refresh your Lusted DoTs once your character is no longer under the effects of Bloodlust, the result will be that the newly applied DoTs will have a stronger tick, and the rest will be weak. This can also happen if you re-apply your DoTs after you gain Jade Spirit, Power Infusion, or... Surprise, temporary stats due to Trinket procs.
What you should always keep in mind is trying to re-apply your DoTs once you get Bloodlust, Jade Spirit, Power Infusion, Trinked Procs, etc. so that they can benefit from the better stats your character temporarily has obtained. It is also important to Clip the DoTs in the last few seconds of those buffs, so that for the rest of their duration, they hit as if you still had the buff, even though it has expired.
I know it can be a bit confusing and I apologize as English is not my first language, and perhaps I am not explaining myself clearly enough.
But what does this have to do with Wush?
Everything really. The main problem with Wushoolay's Final Choice is that it doesn't give you the procced Intellect at once, and instead gives you about 1100-1500 per 2 seconds, depending on whether you have a Raid Finder, Normal or Heroic version of it. This means that to take full advantage of that extra Intellect, you would have to Clip your DoTs every 2 seconds, and if you do this, you might as well start digging a grave for your DPS to rest in peace. What I did instead, when trying out the trinket, was re-appying the DoTs in the last few seconds of the effect, at or near max stacks, so that the DoTs would have the extra Intellect for the rest of their duration. This does boost your DPS, but not by as much as I would have hoped. If you are a Frost Mage, on the other hand, you haven't got a single DoT, and your Frostbolts and Ice Lances can benefit from each of the Intellect stacks. (I am aware you can have a DoT, but it sucks, Frost Orb is better).
All in all, Wush is not a good choice for any DoT Class/Spec.
What then, are my Best In Slot Trinkets?
Breath of the Hydra and the Shado-Pan Trinket. Even an LFR version of Breath of the Hydra is better than Wush on a Shadow Priest.
So why should I belive you, you noob?
You shouldn't, actually. Just as I didn't believe the dozens of guides on threads and websites, including MaxDPS, Noxxic and Mr Robot. Noxxic had the better general idea, but it wasn't until I tried it out myself with hours upon hours of reforging, talent, and gemming combinations on the dummies that I really could come up with the underlying theory of what I wrote in this post. This is purely my own observations and testing, after days of research.
I do believe, though, that this should shed a little bit of light on the sometimes confusing situation were many websites all say different things about BiS, stat weights, and talents.
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