1. #1
    Stood in the Fire Aviditas's Avatar
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    Shadow Priest Assistance

    So today my guild let me swap to my shadow priest to get some time to dps ToT. I've been working really hard to get my shadow Priest up to snuff compared to the other raiders, usually i heal on my monk. However my dps isn't very high and while I've only been raiding in normal ToT on this toon for 2 weeks now I feel like I could do way better. Gonna link some logs from tonight and see if anyone can give me some assistance on what I should be doing or if im doing something wrong. My armory is also in my signature if you see a issue with my gems/reforges. Appreciate any assistance everyone. Im always glad for some constructive criticism if I can be a better raider from it.


    Horridon: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=2537&e=2879
    Council of Elders: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=3450&e=3712
    Tortos (I was kicker): http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=4031&e=4231
    Megaera: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=6105&e=6509
    Ji-Kun (fell to downdraft at the very end -.-) : http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=7267&e=7541
    Durumu: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=3450&e=3712
    Primordius: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g5...?s=8060&e=8393

    Figured i'd post the bosses we did and yall can pick an choose what to say. One thing i was curious about was how big of an increase an actually dps trinket would be? If you look at my armory you'll see sadly ive been stuck with a PoS on this character for a rather long tAnyway, thanks again everyone.

    I like to add that my gear is a bad example in that i picked up a dagger, offhand, cloak, bracer, and TF boots tonight and just finished with setting that up for tommorrow. I was using a 502 staff most of raid.
    Last edited by Aviditas; 2013-06-19 at 05:24 AM.
    60 Priest - Sinfel https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...eldorei/sinfel
    60 Mage - Redrayn https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...ldorei/redrayn

    I used to have a cool signature, but now its limited it 6 lines and that has my boobs all twisted with anger!

  2. #2
    Only took a glance at Horridon, don't have time to look at the rest right now but I'm sure someone else can come in and give you more tips.

    -You took Insanity on Horridon which is good, but you took DI over ToF, which is no good.
    -DoT uptime was low.
    -Only used Halo twice(I personally like Cascade for Horri, but Halo is perfectly fine).

    Missing socket on your weapon, bad trinket, put haste on boots, Crit>mastery until you get either the legendary meta or UVLS. Your haste is very low for 515 ilvl, but there's not much you can do about that with your current gear. I'm also on Stormrage, PM me if you need/want more help sometime.
    Last edited by Cerbz; 2013-06-19 at 06:01 AM.

  3. #3
    We'll look at Horridon since it's the "Shadow Priest is awesome" fight. If you play this fight well, you're in good shape. As Cerbz already mentioned, Twist of Fate is superior on this fight because you can have a ridiculous uptime (60% or higher) on ToF given that you will be damaging mobs that fall below 20% throughout the encounter.

    First: Make sure you mind blast as much as absolutely possible. Nothing is more important. If MB comes off CD or is reset, you mash the button, with the only exception being casting a 3-orb Devouring Plague so you don't waste the orb generation.

    If you were to take ToF and not DI (so Mind Blast never has its CD reset), on a 5:42 duration kill, that theoretically provides time for 42 mind blasts to be cast. In practice, given the heavy movement required for the fight, you're probably looking at casting somewhere between 35-40 mind blasts. On the logged fight you linked, you cast 38 MB. However, you also took Divine Insight and it proc'd 21 times. This to me says there were periods where MB came off CD either naturally or through a DI proc and there was a delay before it was cast.

    The next huge thing you can do to improve your DPS is to push to have your dot uptime be above 95%. On a fight like Horridon, you should have 98% or more pretty easily since you'll be spamming SWP on all of the adds with the goal of triggering ToF. Given your raid-wide DPS those adds were absolutely melting so your ToF uptime will probably be pretty high. SWP will be your highest damaging spell on Horridon if played well (unless the adds are dying so fast you only get a few ticks, I guess...? Not necessarily a bad problem to have from a make-bosses-dead standpoint).

    Make Horridon your focus target and keep both dots up on him at all times. Assuming the adds are under control, you can cheese your numbers on this fight by dumping your Devouring Plague and Flay Insanity into Horridon. If adds aren't being killed fast enough, however, focus on them, as adds > boss until the doors are closed.

    I recommend snagging AffDots and AffDotsSPriest. This will give you a readout of current buffs/dot strength relative to the power of the dots on the current target. It reads in percentages, so seeing 130% means recasting your dots will place a 30% stronger dot on the target than what is currently there.

    Have a question as to when to refresh dots? HowToPriest is pretty much the awesomesauce for deep details like these. Head there and look for the "When to Refresh Dots" thread by Sheitan in the Shadow Priest -> Theorycrafting forum.

    While VT is important, you often won't want to spend the cast time tossing VT on a bunch of adds that will die before it can run its full duration. SWP gives some leeway in this regard since it has up-front damage and you'll want to be doing "something" to all those melting adds to ensure your ToF stays triggered, especially if you're turning to Horridon to dump your DP/Insanity for several seconds. If your tanks are solid (guessing they are), you'll also be using quite a bit of Mind Sear on the adds. I typically SWP everything that moves while the tank gathers them up from each door, toss a few VTs up to ensure I maintain mana, and then once the tank has more than 4 mobs together, I Mind Sear. As the adds start to melt, look for ones about to fall below 20% health so you can snipe SWDeaths. With Mind Flay Insanity talented, however, you do not want to double-tap your SWD in most cases since your aim is orb generation to maximize Flay Insanity uptime. I break off my mind sear whenever I get 3 orbs to dump DP and full duration Flay Insanity into Horridon. Once DP/Insanity is done, I'm back on the adds.

    TLDR:

    Mind Blast. Always.
    Dot uptime to 95% or higher.
    When you have Insanity talented, you only want to single-tap SWD, wait out its internal 6 second CD and then SWD again (which would provide an orb). If you double-tap, you not only spend an additional GCD, you don't get an orb from it and you lock out SWD for 8 seconds. This time is far better spent on generating orbs and using them for DP->Flay Insanity or anything else higher in the rotation. Our execution phase has become awesome in this regard as you're likely to not go more than a few seconds without being able to DP->Insanity throughout.

    Fun times. Hope that helps.
    Last edited by greasedscotsman; 2013-06-20 at 02:53 AM.

  4. #4
    Very thorough analysis, scotsman. I agree and will just reiterate a few things:

    It looks like you need to go to a basic shadow priest guide and refocus on the basics. High DoT up time (get a dot tracking addon). Mind blast on cool down (get something to track it's CD). Things like that. Even with Divine Insight, your average interval between mind blasts on the couple fights I looked at was around 9 seconds. That's basically what it should be without divine insight, and all of the mind blasts you're not casting means you're missing a lot of devouring plague and mind flay insanity damage, too. Your dot up times are dropping down to as low as 70% on some fights. That's 25% lower than it should be and a lot of lost damage.

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