[Shadow] Valor upgrades and their effect on talent choices

[Deleted]

Ok, so as we get into the long farm period of this tier, we are starting to see bosses steamrolled because of the power of the ring and gear in general. As such, we've started seeing the parts of fights that allowed AS to shine, long lived adds, happen much less often. For example my guild times the legendary ring explosion to one shot Mannoroth's doom lords, so we don't have to deal with his mechanics. This, combined with our 3 Mage, 3 lock setup, has had me actually respec CoP for this fight, since the infernals also get cleaved down in no time at all.

This got me thinking about how CoP and AS are going to scale with gear, and how a better geared raid negatively effects AS performance.

In BRF we saw AS become the go to choice for pretty much every fight as we started to speed kill during farm, contrary to theorycrafting saying it should never, on average, beat CoP on pure single target.

In HFC, I'm starting to feel the reverse is the case, and having won my mythic class trinket a few weeks back, I'm starting to question the need to play AS on fights that have been its staple in the past. As CoP, I'm seeing myself being competitive even during openers, not against rogues and mages, but not right at the bottom like we're used to.

With all this in mind, my question to the mathy guys out there, is this: Does the class trinket's % modifier make CoP scale better than AS as item level increases?

I'm not looking for a discussion about AS vs CoP in terms of their versatility, with CoP being largely useless against small adds, because as we farm the tier out, they really don't matter, as cleave cleans them up no problem.

[Djriff]

AS actually shines more with better gear because more crit = more orbs which translates to more DPS.

CoP shines in its own right and you are absolutely correct in going CoP for those fights. There have been a few times that I've made the same decision to go CoP instead of AS because I was able to put out higher priority target DPS with CoP and other DPS took care of the spread adds (usually in 5-6 seconds). If you're going to play CoP because of this just give your RL a heads up and explain the reasoning why you're making the choice.

BRF was a different beast for AS because of the tier bonus. CoP had to use dotweaving to remain competitive and it was a very punishing playstyle with very little margin for error. AS shined more due to the stupid amount of haste you could get which made you generate more orbs.

As for the mathy question, Since the % is locked at a flat rate any increase in gear will positively affect the way RoW interacts with CoP. Generally speaking you don't use RoW with AS as IRP and UGS are much better for AS's play style.

[Deleted]

most of the top parses atm is already using cop with class trinket

[Kilee25]

Not much I can add that hasn't already been said.

T17 - AS was better in all situations because of the 4p set bonus and the ability to chain DPs in such a way that you had a constant 12% haste while playing the spec. CoP could not beat it. This has nothing to do with the base balance of the specs themselves though. It was just an affectation of the set bonus.

T18 - there's no such favoritism from the set bonus itself, so the specs can play as they were designed. AS is good on multi-target. CoP is good at single target and priority damage.

We are past the point where anyone is glass chewing, from a point of lack of dps (plenty of glass chewing left learning the fights). The legendary rings and the soon valor upgrades is changing the landscape of the game. Everything is going to be dying super fast, and yes AS blows in this situation while CoP shines.

The class trinket is a game changer for CoP. It takes what's just a small advantage and turns it into a powerhouse. Anyone who feels differently hasn't learned to use it yet. The only limiter in your raids is how much the other players can cover add duty. If you're stuck on add duty, well it sucks, but you have to change tactics. You are correct that this is becoming less and less of a problem.

T18 and WoD endgame appears to be going to CoP, in the end. You're going to start seeing very, very few fights where it can't dominate over AS. Maybe 2 fights in all of HFC, and even those will start to dwindle. There's a pretty darn good case these days to have a token shadowpriest in your raid whose sole and only function is to just drill into the boss the entire fight, and put everyone else on the tedius job of handling adds. If you play it to the best that it can be played, I'm not sure how many other classes there are out there that can match it in terms of pure boss damage. I hesitate to say that too loud, but I wonder if it's pretty close to the truth. In my own guild, with a class trinket I'd be clearing most similarly geared players in ST by nearly 10k. The only competition I'd have is a mage, maybe, and I don't think he could sustain it as evenly as I could.

[GameFX]

The only thing that might change is if people completely over gear and thus brute force bosses while cheesing mechanics. The fights that you play AS now will still be AS fights and the same holds true for CoP...The increase in ilvl will simply decrease the amount of time it takes to defeat an encounter.

[Djriff]

Well that's not entirely true. AS really shines on fights that have adds that last for more than 10 seconds, or 2-3 targets that are up for a long time. So fights like Tyrant, Xhul, Mannoroth, Archimonde, Council, and Killrog will still be AS fights (killrog is debatable). If gear gets to the point that those fights have adds that are no longer living 10 seconds, CoP will move ahead imo.

[GameFX]

Maybe not but I see it as a glass half full - half empty thing. AS will scale the same - with more critical strike and more haste. Right now we're at 35% Crit buffed - that's going to go up to 40% then let's say you're using Sandman's Pouch (upgraded) and it procs....you're looking at an orb and DPlague fiesta. The other stat is haste which will make our DoT's tick much faster allowing for SWPain crits to come in much faster....I'm sure you can see the synergy there..

The fights you mentioned I agree with as well as Gorefiend, if you're allowed to DoT will still remain AS fights.

[Djriff]

True, but I think your DPS will be better as CoP (ST at least) if you don't have to swap to the adds if they're spread and let other DPS take care of them.

Interestingly enough I actually prefer CoP on Gorefiend as it is better at burning things quickly than I find AS being capable of unless you get godly RNG.

I think your crit number is a little low btw, the other spriest in my guild currently has 37% crit buffed which would push it even higher with valor upgrades. Will be interesting to see for sure.

[GameFX]

I don't particularly like the CoP style but I almost always play it on Kilrogg, Gorefiend and sometimes Iskar for the reasons you mentioned. My Crit rating number was low but I was just being generous - As you pointed out though 37% already will probably push him to 50% with Valor upgrades and procs. My guild already hates the amount of apparitions they see floating around LOL

[Djriff]

You know now that I think about it, with the valor upgrades AS could become competitive with CoP on a ST fight if crit gets pushed to that point. Will be interesting to see how everything pans out.

[Deleted]

Well that's not entirely true. AS really shines on fights that have adds that last for more than 10 seconds, or 2-3 targets that are up for a long time. So fights like Tyrant, Xhul, Mannoroth, Archimonde, Council, and Killrog will still be AS fights (killrog is debatable). If gear gets to the point that those fights have adds that are no longer living 10 seconds, CoP will move ahead imo.

On Tyrant CoP with RoW does about the same dmg as AS. Log parses are filled by both specs.

Also on Xhul CoP performs better at killing Imps if your guild needs it. Its at the cost of dmg to bosses, but you can be one of top damage dealers on both Imps and Voids.

Only boss fight, where I could say that CoP is weaker, is Council. Haven't tried mythic Mannoroth yet, but on other bosses it depends..

[Djriff]

True. As always it depends on what role you need to play in your raid group. For me we have 3 warriors and 2 locks so imps are a non issue. I'm debating using CoP with RoW on tyrant tonight to see how it compares. Although with the movement in p3 I'm not sure how well i'll do tbh.

[cwlee3]

You know now that I think about it, with the valor upgrades AS could become competitive with CoP on a ST fight if crit gets pushed to that point. Will be interesting to see how everything pans out.

Eh, currently, high-level priests are getting to the CoP magical 35% haste at the sacrifice of mastery. With the valor upgrades, people will attain the 35% haste much easier and can therefore add more mastery to their set. RoW is quite possibly the best single target item in the whole instance (across all classes), and I really can't see AS catching up to CoP on ST. Mastery too stronk for ST.

[Djriff]

Eh, currently, high-level priests are getting to the CoP magical 35% haste at the sacrifice of mastery. With the valor upgrades, people will attain the 35% haste much easier and can therefore add more mastery to their set. RoW is quite possibly the best single target item in the whole instance (across all classes), and I really can't see AS catching up to CoP on ST. Mastery too stronk for ST.

I'll agree that CoP will still probably pull ahead, but like we saw with BRF I think AS will remain competitive especially with higher crit and haste. Also haste and mastery are very close for CoP, to the point where haste is moving ahead at higher levels from what kilee has been seeing in sims and in game testing. I also tested this, swapping out IRP for DSI while still being at 35% haste and I did 4k less DPS on the target dummy.

[Kilee25]

There's some kind of disconnect between simcraft and real life that isn't being accounted for. It's weird, but in previous expacs I never minded or paid much attention to latency and whether or not the game could maintain the sim expectation. This expac, it's practically all I've thought about or noticed. I want to say that I never had internet issues like this in the past, but maybe it's just simply that I didn't know what to look for. It feels like everyone in my guild has been having internet problems lately. I wonder if there's some larger infrastructure problems that are happening on a national or global scale that's affecting people's ability to play MMOs or something.

The value of not letting the debuff drop on targets is near priceless, so I don't even know what level of haste you would need to be completely safe, but frankly even where I'm sitting right now, I'd be happier if I had closer to 3000 haste, so I don't see myself switching to mastery stacking for quite a while.

[Djriff]

Well in the past it latency was a finite point and didn't impact shadow as much. For AS latency is a non concern as it doesn't deal with anything that requires strict timing. For AS you're more likely to get cornered by being GCD capped rather than any latency issues. CoP on the other hand is much less forgiving when using RoW. It's not even a skill cap, which sucks because you could be playing perfectly and still mess up because of outside factors. At least we don't have spell travel times

[cwlee3]

Well in the past it latency was a finite point and didn't impact shadow as much. For AS latency is a non concern as it doesn't deal with anything that requires strict timing. For AS you're more likely to get cornered by being GCD capped rather than any latency issues. CoP on the other hand is much less forgiving when using RoW. It's not even a skill cap, which sucks because you could be playing perfectly and still mess up because of outside factors. At least we don't have spell travel times

Yeah, RoW is a pain in the ass, but Fragment of the Dark Star for destro is just a nightmare with that incinerate travel time. Ugh.

And as to the haste/mastery ratio question, I guess it's just conjecture for me. Hesp (possibly the best CoP player right now) alluded to the fact that he thought haste would lose value after reaching the amount needed to reliably complete Kilee's "golden rotation," and mastery would overtake it. This was also in reference to the impact of valor-upgraded items in the coming patch. Obviously he isn't a fortune teller, but with how well mastery scales up our spells, it sounds feasible.

Spriest ST right now is so reliant on RoW, and although you are correct that AS competed and/or passed CoP in BRF, that was largely due to [more orbs = more set bonus uptime = more orbs] coupled with ri-donk-ulously well-itemized trinkets for AS and poorly itemized trinkets for CoP. It's the reverse now, with CoP gaining soooooo much damage from RoW (62.87% of my damage on H Archi as CoP was from 'mind' spells) and AS gaining so little from RoW. It also doesn't help that probably the second best trinket for AS ST is UGoS, which is an aoe/cleave oriented trinket in the first place. Added on, DSI can fairly reliably (damn thing has insane uptime) line up with the legendary ring, and on ST as AS you aren't going to have the 10-incoming orb dream for ring padding that you would on add-based fights.

[Deleted]

ot but when starting to gearing up shadow(fresh dinged) what is best as or cop?

[Kilee25]

AS takes a while to start seeing good results, both from the standpoint of gear and from the standpoint of having a bit of a learning curve. CoP is stronger at lower gear levels, and has a smaller learning curve associated with it. This is of course imo. However, objectively speaking, gear is very easy to get, and should never be viewed as an obstacle to playing the way in which you want to play. You must also consider your end goal - what level you wish to raid at, and how you want to be percieved as a player - AS and CoP have various strengths and weaknesses associated with them. Ideally you would aim to play both, either by focusing on a crit-haste set, and using CoP as a a minor offspec for ST fights, or you would collect two sets of gear. There's no one-answer-fits all.

[Djriff]

Honestly it doesn't matter, get the gear you can and worry about stats later. They are 2 very different gearing strategies. AS Favors Crit/Haste while CoP favors Haste/Mastery.

In terms of upgrade Order:

Weapon
Trinkets
Tier
Jewelry/Armor

For AS go for Crit pieces, preferably those with haste. For CoP go for Haste pieces, preferably those with Mastery.