[6.2.3] Shadow PvE Guide and Discussion

[Yvaelle]

Nice thread, I'm new to shadow priests, (my main as a warlock but planning on re-rolling shadow priest because the current shadow priest rotation feels a lot like the old warlock one). It would be nice if you could add a bit more detail about the for CoP? and maybe also a per fight recommended talents thing. Thank you

Sorry for the delay, updated to explain Clarity of Power's DoTweaving, beyond that though is there anything confusing you about CoP? The key for CoP, as with all L100 talents, is maximizing Devouring Plagues by maximizing Shadow Orbs: everything else is filler. Hope that helps!

I'm a little torn on posting a "use this talent for this fight" image. I thought about it initially but since it depends on what your role is on the fight, and whether you want to maximize usefulness vs maximize DPS (pad), and depends on gear level / set bonuses, any answer I give like that is going to be wrong for some readers and right for others. Still undecided, maybe I can post two and differentiate between when to use each.


As example, if you have BiS gear, for Mythic progression in ~695+ item level and 4-piece BRF set bonuses, the correct talent choices are as follows:



But most of the people reading this guide are probably not 695+ and are probably not in Mythic (very few are at this point), so linking the above when it assumes much higher stats than most people have would be wrong for ~98% of the audience.

Even if I explain that, how many people really read words - and how many just skip to the pictures?

[Biomega]

Personally, I believe that explaining the mechanics to people and how the relate to fights is more beneficial in the long run than a simple "do this, this, this" instruction sheet. But of course it's also more complicated :P

[Yvaelle]

Personally, I believe that explaining the mechanics to people and how the relate to fights is more beneficial in the long run than a simple "do this, this, this" instruction sheet. But of course it's also more complicated :P

Agreed

The issue is mostly access to high crit % to maintain the 4-piece bonus, which accelerates everything - it gives you more Orbs of course, faster dot ticks, more 2-piece procs, and yet more 4-piece uptime. Maybe I'll do the collapseable tags with each image for a certain item level range (ex. the above would be 690+, with 4-piece, fighting Mythic). That way they would at the very least need to click the corresponding item level range before seeing the image.

[omnipotynt]

Thank you for this guide.

[Dierdre]

Personally, I believe that explaining the mechanics to people and how the relate to fights is more beneficial in the long run than a simple "do this, this, this" instruction sheet. But of course it's also more complicated :P

There's a 195+ page thread showing that people don't like to read. I can say with certainty that every shadow priest mechanic since 6.0 is explained in that thread. People keep asking (even demanding at times) the same stuff without reading first, and even if we keep answering to the extent of our capabilities, I can understand how one can get tired of answering the same stuff over and over. Those people want this "instruction sheet", and that's ok; people who actually want to learn how the underlying mechanics work usually take the time to search first or ask how specific mechanics work, and they're welcome to do so.

[Regen]

Doesn't help that said thread was recently unstickied

[Naux]

Sorry for the delay, updated to explain Clarity of Power's DoTweaving, beyond that though is there anything confusing you about CoP? The key for CoP, as with all L100 talents, is maximizing Devouring Plagues by maximizing Shadow Orbs: everything else is filler. Hope that helps!

I'm a little torn on posting a "use this talent for this fight" image. I thought about it initially but since it depends on what your role is on the fight, and whether you want to maximize usefulness vs maximize DPS (pad), and depends on gear level / set bonuses, any answer I give like that is going to be wrong for some readers and right for others. Still undecided, maybe I can post two and differentiate between when to use each.


As example, if you have BiS gear, for Mythic progression in ~695+ item level and 4-piece BRF set bonuses, the correct talent choices are as follows:

http://i.imgur.com/nU9vNCk.png

But most of the people reading this guide are probably not 695+ and are probably not in Mythic (very few are at this point), so linking the above when it assumes much higher stats than most people have would be wrong for ~98% of the audience.

Even if I explain that, how many people really read words - and how many just skip to the pictures?

Hey I updated my quick talent reference image that I made its in my siggy
And the image is mostly for mythic raiders but should yield good results on heroic too.

[Biomega]

There's a 195+ page thread showing that people don't like to read. I can say with certainty that every shadow priest mechanic since 6.0 is explained in that thread. People keep asking (even demanding at times) the same stuff without reading first, and even if we keep answering to the extent of our capabilities, I can understand how one can get tired of answering the same stuff over and over. Those people want this "instruction sheet", and that's ok; people who actually want to learn how the underlying mechanics work usually take the time to search first or ask how specific mechanics work, and they're welcome to do so.

You're right of course. I was however thinking more of a hybrid thing I suppose - essentially a TL;DR version of the 195 pages in the first thread. I.e. instead of simply saying "use AS for Beastlord", you'd explain things under the AS header - "use this for fights with multiple targets" or something along those lines, perhaps 2-3 sentences, no more. Just a brief explanation of the tools we have available, not just how they work but also what they are used for.

But I suppose that people who don't take more than a cursory glance will still do that, and people who are looking for in-depth information will continue to do so. It's hard to change people's behavior If it wasn't, we wouldn't be in this whole meter-tunnel-vision mess to begin with, huh.

[Yvaelle]

Doesn't help that said thread was recently unstickied

It was unstickied because I would like to shift discussion here, and because since that thread begins in MoP, and deals largely with Highmaul raiding, reading through it all isn't sanctioned (by me, for I am the High Priest ^.^) to be accurate of the current state of Shadow.

Speaking of which, Highpriest would be a good name for a stoner priest if anyone wants it, but then most stoners are resto druids, in my experience

[Deleted]

You sure that is correct rotation for no-tier? I barely remember the rotation but I think using DP after Mind Blast was always bad and that rotation listed required a filler between the second MB and DP. I'm also quite sure the rotation for 2-set also works for no-set.

[Relapses]

It was unstickied because I would like to shift discussion here, and because since that thread begins in MoP, and deals largely with Highmaul raiding, reading through it all isn't sanctioned (by me, for I am the High Priest ^.^) to be accurate of the current state of Shadow.

I agree, perhaps add "/ Discussion" to the thread title so we have parity with the healing threads?

[Yvaelle]

Hey I updated my quick talent reference image that I made its in my siggy
And the image is mostly for mythic raiders but should yield good results on heroic too.

I don't feel confident supporting CoP and SoD as often as your image suggests. It's mostly good for the instant Mind Blast + CD reduction, but that benefit is static and unscaling, so as the tiers continue and item level rises, CoP will continue to fall behind. This makes CoP good for pre-Mythic, but by Mythic it should really be AS or bust for almost every fight.

SoD vs. Insanity, Insanity+Searing Insanity is just better for everything IMO

Actually, we could express the CoP's Mind Blast benefit as a fixed amount of haste if we wanted:

So, the -3 seconds on the cooldown works out to 35.71% haste (only affecting Mind Blast of course).

The instantaneous cast works out to between 17.65% (0% haste from gear) and 11.24% (50%+ haste from gear, GCD capped), which is 53.36% to 46.95% haste (only to Mind Blast, of course). And yes, you're reading that right - the more haste/gear you have - the less the Mind Blast benefit becomes from Clarity of Power.

That benefit declines with gear, while AS only gets better the more haste+crit we have, even the deplorable Void Entropy does grow stronger with gear (there is just no amount of gear, or type of fight, where it will ever be good).

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I agree, perhaps add "/ Discussion" to the thread title so we have parity with the healing threads?

I did that but it felt cramped, I'll do it again though so you guys can see/vote

[Naux]

The CoP or AS for certain fights is so they can choose to use whichever they have better gear for (or feel comfortable with), but yes I run AS for every fight on mythic.

[Deleted]

So how do people think shadow will fair later into this expansion?

Personally I was a bit annoyed with spriest game play at the start due to movement destroying us when playing CoP and not being able to play AS until BRF but now that we are starting to get decent levels of crit and will continue to get higher crit levels then do you think we'll start to be one of the higher dps specs later on in the expansion? I guess it will depend on the style of fights in the next tier, if it's still a lot of AoE oriented fights then I think we'll still be quite strong if its single target then maybe we'll be mediocre

[Dierdre]

So how do people think shadow will fair later into this expansion?

Personally I was a bit annoyed with spriest game play at the start due to movement destroying us when playing CoP and not being able to play AS until BRF but now that we are starting to get decent levels of crit and will continue to get higher crit levels then do you think we'll start to be one of the higher dps specs later on in the expansion? I guess it will depend on the style of fights in the next tier, if it's still a lot of AoE oriented fights then I think we'll still be quite strong if its single target then maybe we'll be mediocre

My bet is:

CoP will remain unchanged.
Void Entropy will be a dummy talent until 7.0.
AS will follow the fire mage cycle: It'll be nerfed and suck at the start of every raiding tier and will only become viable and awesome once you have perfectly itemized current content gear.

[Biomega]

Well SOMETHING is going to happen, or AS will completely overshadow all other options. It may very well go as @Dierdre suspects.

[Setheria]

I think AS will certainly scale very well.

There's a positive feedback particularly on multi-target between orb generation from crit/haste and the 4 set that in turn will allow faster orb generation which in turn gets higher 4 set, and so on.

But in saying that, even with the strength AS will gain with higher stats and better itemised gear is not likely to place us in some outrageous scenario of OP-ness. You'll find similar scaling strengths with quite a few other classes and I think this 'problem' will be more widespread that just 'zomg OP shadow scaling'.

[Regen]

As crit gets higher, the 100% additional apparition damage becomes stronger, so eventually (imo) it will get nerfed down to "additional apparition damage 90/80/70%" so on so forth, if I had to guess.

[Naux]

I like AS play style and CoP. I'm probably the only one

[marathal]

thank you for the guide post

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There are a great many of us, that try to comprehend guides and talent choices written for a part of the game we may never see in an expansion. Some how or another I have managed to get my gear just above 660. Mostly though crafted pieces, and getting lucky one night on a Blackrock trash run. Tier sets? To be honest, last time I saw one of those was during DS LFR. I think in Cata near the end I did manage to get a 2pc. So when I try to wrap my mind around guides suggesting certain builds based on iLvL gear I do not have, or tier sets I may never own, it can be frustrating to see numbers considerably off what others see.

Don't get me wrong, those guides are extremely useful for those trying to squeak out that last 1-2%. But for me having a guide like you have posted, more of a meat and potatoes outline is extremely valuable. I use to love reading Kilee's guides on SP, he had a knack for putting together the information in a way that made sense to me. And if you did not quite grasp something, he was more than willing to explain an aspect in different terms that you could understand. A guide needs to be a fluid entity, that changes and adapts to the people reading it. So thank you for putting something together. I will try to make more time to keep up with reading it, and will try to ask intelligent questions if I do not understand the reasoning behind something.