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  1. #21
    Hi Granyala,

    Yes, I ranted a bit about that in FAQ section.

    That I can tell, it's not a dps increase to Flay, even for one GCD. But if you look at the way the spells work, it seems like that was Blizzard's intention for the spec. And again, if you look at how the class trinket works, it provides even stronger support for it working that way.

    It seems that with enough haste, the class trinket might line up in such a way that we would flay for one GCD just after a Devouring Plague. I don't know exactly - I'm not on PTR. But if it works out like that, then I guess there was some internal design built around us playing that way.

    IMO, CoP shouldn't use Mind Flay ever, only Mind Spike and Insanity. However, my opinion may have no bearing on what ends up happening with the spec long term. Bliz might make some change to the spell mechanics - besides an awkward trinket - in a future patch that makes "flay-weaving" mandatory.

    However, one interesting thing to me is that they've nerfed Devouring Plague by 12% in the next patch. Previously, there was a breaking point where L90 spells like Cascade were worth casting in single target whenever DP was ticking. The nerf to DP will push that breaking point higher, past the damage that Cascade can do against a single target. This is actually even MORE in favor of spiking off the DP dot. The less value DP has, the less important it is to maintain its residual dot damage. Also interesting is that the nerf to DP is a minor nerf to DoTWeaving, which already will take a massive hit with the loss of the t17 4p set bonus. I might even go so far as to say it would kill DoTWeaving as the primary single target play style, in favor of Mindbender. Insanity would then get relegated to AOE fights (where you would still DoTWeave when there's a break between AOEing).
    Last edited by Kilee25; 2015-06-15 at 02:02 PM.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  2. #22
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    Still practicing, but seems like around 50k with bursts to 56k at the raiders dummies in Org



    It dipped down under 50k when I screen shot it. That was with a flask, no food buff.


    And looking closer at recount, some of it was for the dummies at max range off Cascade. I may need to find an isolated condition to test for single target
    Last edited by marathal; 2015-06-16 at 02:02 AM.

  3. #23
    CoP's damage is very consistent and reliable. My DPS does not vary much at all from attempt to attempt, and the harder I play the narrower it gets. I generally find that if I focus harder on not moving, take a few more risks with incoming damage, I can sustain about 500 more dps out of it, but it can often come at great risk...

    In full heroic (bis) gear, I have capped out in single target at around 37-38k. If I can stand perfectly still and DoTWeave, I can get over 40k, but there aren't many fights where I can do this, not even Gruul. I would expect to add another 8-9k onto that with mythic gear. So that the top end should be hovering around 45k-48k depending on the fight.

    When I was in LFR gear, about where you were, I was just starting to break the 30k mark. That's what I'd expect you to be getting in single target. I'm not sure where the 50k is coming from. I assume you must have a lot of evenly spaced target dummies that is bouncing cascade like crazy...
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  4. #24
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    when I looked at the individual spell damage, Cascade was off the charts, the only conclusion I can make is that after the initial hit, it was bouncing to the low level target dummies at the maximum distance, then coming back to hit the 2 adjacent targets.

    Regardless, while it took a bit to learn to just not use MF, VT or SwP on a single target I think I am getting the hang of it. I "Feel" like I am hitting harder.

  5. #25
    Ah, yeah I thought it might be something like that. What you are describing is what I felt. You will reach a point where Mind Spikes/Mind Blasts start hitting like a dump truck. It is difficult to think of dots/flay as tertiary abilities. Unless I'm using Insanity, I never cast Mind Flay, and it might as well not even be on my bars.

    You are welcome to look at my logs to see damage breakdowns and to get a realistic expectation of where CoP is on all fight types (at heroic 685-ish gear).

    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking.../latest#boss=0

    I freely admit that I have struggled mightily with Iron Maidens. I've just now worked out a set of macros that allow me to two-dot and dump SoD procs into a 3rd target. The damage seems to be hovering around 42k-43k. However, a bunch of things conspired against me getting a reasonable parse on that fight. Our guild was on farm before I started raiding, so if I die on the fight, we still get a kill. Additionally, on the 3rd boat, we hit 20% on the bosses and do the entire 3rd boat phase doing 0 dps, just waiting for the boat team to get back. I only get to see the fight once a week, for about 7 minutes at a go.

    If I'd gotten some "good" parses... I found the off-dotting technique to give about 39k, up about +2000 from single target. With 3 targets, it goes to about 42k. So adding a third target gives maybe another 2k. Compared to AS this is pretty abysmal. And in addition to this, the amount of work it takes to get this is imho ridiculous. I think it would take me about 4-5 more fight attempts to start to get the rotation down to a point where I can manage it well. But it seems that 6.2 is coming out soon, so I doubt we'll be going back, especially if it hits next week.
    Last edited by Kilee25; 2015-06-17 at 04:57 PM.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by marathal View Post
    Still practicing, but seems like around 50k with bursts to 56k at the raiders dummies in Org



    It dipped down under 50k when I screen shot it. That was with a flask, no food buff.


    And looking closer at recount, some of it was for the dummies at max range off Cascade. I may need to find an isolated condition to test for single target
    If you're testing single target, you shouldn't even bother casting cascade/halo.

  7. #27
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    I was mostly practicing the rotation. There is a slight pause from MS MS to the first MB. And that may be a haste factor. Eventually it starts coming up closer, but I have gotten a half MS cast off before MB is up. Initially I was seeing 50k to 56k spikes and was excited to share. When I looked closer it was a bit of a let down. But overall I am happier playing and taking on bigger targets solo.

    Shifting the entire action bar around takes getting use to. Muscle memory knows where certain things are not. Mind sear got move 2 places so I get tripped up occasionally. But moving SwP to my old Mind Sear spot is working for dotting small adds when I have that half cast delay.

  8. #28
    Ah.. I think that I know what you are talking about. Yes, it seems that although Mind Blast's CD should allow 3 GCDs between casts, the reality of latency and the combat system seems to indicate that there's some wasted time between the 2nd and 3rd filler spell. The worse your internet connection, the more that it seems there is only time for two spells. Lag/latency spiks in particular can really screw up the rotation. I wrote about this some in my guide.

    CoP is very punishing and unforgiving towards poor computers or poor internet connections. The damage loss for a non-optimal physical gaming setup is some of the worst I've ever seen. People don't really talk about this with CoP very much - I suspect because they either have a great setup and aren't aware of it, or they have played with a poor setup for so long they don't know any other way of existing.

    Anyway. That 3rd Mind Spike needs to go off, even you feel that you're wasting part of a GCD. I've done some light theorycrafting on this with SimC and napkin math - the "breaking point" where you are better off waiting for Mind Blast instead of casting Mind Spike is at about 1/3 of a GCD remaining. Although your latency/lag/whatever might have you missing some partial GCD, it is very unlikely that you would only be waiting .33 to .5 (average about .4 probably) seconds.

    Long story short - cast the third Mind Spike and accept the small bit of loss. Over an entire fight, you are literally losing 1, maybe 2 mind Blasts, at the cost of 1/3 of your total Mind Spikes. This is a horrible tradeoff.

    I apologize if you're talking about something different and I've missed the mark. Summary: Mind Blast, 3 GCD of spells, Mind Blast, 3 GCD of spells... infinity.

    There's only one situation where you can only cast 2 spells and wait, and that's with two simultaneous haste buffs active at the same time. A haste trinket and heroism is the most common situation where that happens. DoTWeaving in particular can get ungodly messy with heroism and haste procs - sometimes you just have to adapt and get creative with it.

    (Not sure where to put this, but 2p t17 also changes the rotation slightly, so that you cast Mind Blast -> 1 GCD of spell -> Devouring Plague -> Mind Blast. But this is an exception rather than the rule.)
    Last edited by Kilee25; 2015-06-17 at 08:04 PM.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  9. #29
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    nope, you are right on. So if I see MB is still not up, go for another MS or Cascade. I have been playing the traditional, dots dots more dots, max uptime for so long, this is all new. Of course I am sure once I get the hang of it they will change it up.

  10. #30
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Thanks Kilee. Interesting guide.

    There's nothing wrong with being a heretic and swimming against the current now and then. I like CoP too and since I'm not interested in raiding this time around I've been enjoying messing around with it.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  11. #31
    On Iron Maidens, would it be better to off-DoT SoD CoP or Insanity/SoD AS - considering I have a crit and a mastery set with no set bonuses? The former seems to give better mobility (I don't go on the boat) but the latter seems like it would get more out of my DoTs. I'll be working on it this weekend and really want to do well so the Pally doesn't switch with me and make me heal again.
    Last edited by HDPriest; 2015-06-18 at 09:18 AM.

  12. #32
    Hi HDPriest, thank you for your question.

    Here is a video of how to attack three targets with CoP.



    Macros:

    Mind Spike
    #showtooltip Mind Spike
    /target <bossname1>
    /cast Mind Spike
    /targetlasttarget

    generic targetting macro - Just makes acquiring targets easier. I use these a lot for all kinds of fights.
    /target <bossname2>
    /focus
    /target <bossname3>

    In heroic gear I've been averaging about 42k with this technique.

    AS can do much better, and I've messed around with it on the fight, but mostly I just break even due to lack of a good crit gearset and unfamiliarity with the spec. Anyway, if you want to play CoP, the above technique is the best it can do.

    Good luck. It's taken me about 2-3 weeks of attempts to start getting good at managing this rotation while handling the fight mechanics. Also, keep in mind when the boat phases happen, you need to change to the off-dotting technique (covered in the main guide).

    After 20%, I typically switch to off-dotting a non-essential boss target, as you cannot keep dots up while executing (reduced death damage, plus a general lack of GCDs). Keep in mind which bosses need to die first, and pour executes into that one.

    Oh, I almost forgot. As a control element to balance boss health, pour Mind Blasts and DPs into whichever boss is the highest. Use the boat phases to balance the bosses, keeping dots, MBs, and DPs on the highest health target.

    This is very complex, and very busy. The amount of work spriests are doing and the amount of stuff you have to keep track of dwarfs many other classes in my experience. Oh well, that's just the way the class works.

    PS. I know that I could do better chaining Mental Instincts. I'm still practicing this. Apologies - there's obviously room for improvement here.
    Last edited by Kilee25; 2015-06-18 at 01:22 PM.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  13. #33
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    Reading through all of the spells last night it just seems so very odd the downside of MS being removal of DoT's. I was looking for any way to add in even a SwP tick to the mix perhaps a MS MS, SwP MB DP, but it did not have a good feel and we would get maybe 3 ticks? Possibly 4 with the cast time on MS. Honestly, I would almost like to see DP back as a normal DoT, and switch MS over to an instant cast spell with a 3 orb cost that cleared DoTs.

    Your Mind Spike focuses all active Damage over time effects into a burst of damage to the target clearing all Damage over time spells.

  14. #34
    Hm... well, what you are describing is essentially the same process that brought about DoTWeaving.

    A Shadow Word: Pain deals its damage over a period of 18 seconds, and my current GCD is 1.25 seconds, so let's say that sw: p consists of18/1.25 GCDs - 14.4. In simcraft, the average damage of a single SW: P cast is..57311, and the average damage of a mind spike is... 28916. So a mind spike is 28916/57311 of a sw: p - 50.45%. 14.4*0.5045 = 7.32 GCDs....

    Basically you need to cast about 7 consecutive non MS spells in a row in order to break even.

    The CoP playstyle has extreme difficulty chaining even three spells together without casting Mind Spike...

    So yeah.. Without Insanity it's pretty much a lost cause.

    Seems like a lot of people have been "brainstorming" over the past few months on how to "fix" shadow. More than I've seen in any other expac. Some kind of "dot explosion" sounds neat, keeping in mind however that this is something warlocks already had in the past (I believe).
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  15. #35
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    I sometimes wonder if just years of dealing with complexity have resulted in Shadowpriest theory crafters seeking out complex ways to get the last 0.2% to a point that the designers are at a loss to a way to fix without doing a full overhaul of the spec, but also giving it the background story to fit the class. I can imagine them coming up with a change they consider to be good, then see how it is interpreted to be optimal. I'm sure there have been many stacks of paper tossed over the years.

    I have only played since mid Wrath, and all of my raiding experience was tail end of ToC into ICC. I know DoTs. It's what I learned initially. Keep maximum uptime, get above 95%. It was learnable. Perhaps too simple for many, but it made sense to me. When Cata introduced Mind Spike, I was ready to flip a table. Clearing DoTs? What madness is this. To my way of thinking a Spike is a quick sharp jab. Something you should cast on the move. The slow cast time, and yeah it does feel slow, sand losing the cast if you happen to need to move, or get tossed feels counter intuitive to the types of fights we see with constant moving and avoidance.

    I am enjoying what you put together, in a party with a melee it allows a nice chain of decent hitting spells. It just feels odd only using 5 offensive spells. But that could be just years of trying to learn complex.

  16. #36
    Oh.. yes in 5-mans it's quite nice and much more effective because dots just don't have time to tick down. I can't touch freaking beast mastery hunters though. They can sustain close to 80k for the entirety of most 5m bosses. It's ridiculous. I barely even get 15 seconds to dps. Feels like the old Wrath 5-mans back in the days around ICC period where people were just zerging the instance - tanks and healers in dps spec. I kind of wish there was more of an incentive for higher level players to queue for heroics. You still see tanks and healers occasionally farming for runic pouches, but it's not as common. I ran with a mythic DK the other day - their AOE is off the charts. He was pulling like 15-20 mobs at once and just AEing down. Good fun, and lots of fun as CoP too because AE is very high with Insanity.

    I do think it would add a great dynamic if Mind Spike could be cast on the move, similar to how Scorch can be cast with mages. Perhaps if they just added it as a glyph... but no, just make it baseline for CoP, and allow it to be a very mobile spec. I admit that's pretty high on my list of wishes for CoP.

    I understood the point of MS even back in cata. I used it while leveling and it worked exactly as intended - a spell to kill targets that would die faster than about 12 seconds. I used it raids occasionally too, especially when dps was so high that targets would die too quickly to use dots on. Blackmorgrim made a post on H2P a few weeks ago TCing out the numbers to show that it's still a beneficial spell even for AS priests. I think MS is a pretty valuable tool for the priest toolkit, and it was much needed. I don't want to see it go away.

    I do agree completely that CoP doesn't feel fleshed out yet as a play style. There's a lot of "clunky" things going on with it, and I think that's hurting players perception of it as being an enjoyable spec. One can only hope that blizzard doesn't abandon it entirely with their next round of class changes/overhaul.
    Last edited by Kilee25; 2015-06-18 at 07:47 PM.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  17. #37
    Thank you so much, Kilee! I've been practicing it how you showed me, and I'm doing much better. I'm so grateful you took the time to help me out!

  18. #38
    Pandaren Monk Bodom's Avatar
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    Nice guide! I've been playing CoP + Mindbender on my shadow priests for a while now simply because it's easy and relaxing and perfect for LFR. Mind Sear on trash, the easy rotation on the bosses and numbers aren't bad either. I went AS for a little while but because I'm multiboxing making sure dots are rolling on all characters wasn't optimal and the simplicity of your casual rotation came out on top. I too believe that CoP breathed some new life into shadow and made the specc more interesting as a whole.

    When a friend struggled with his shadow dps I explained to him what the first part of your guide explains and he could indeed play it and have fun shortly after

  19. #39
    Thanks HDPriest, I'm glad I was able to help.

    Bodom - that was the initial spark that made me want to write it. Very happy to hear that about your friend.
    "Falling from heaven is not as painful as surviving the impact."

    DPS Loss - my guild on Proudmoore
    The Old Guard - my guild on Earthen Ring
    Revenant - my guild on Echo Isles

  20. #40
    The Patient marathal's Avatar
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    the additional damage to Mind Sear with Insanity, is that the base increased 40% and 100% of the base for insanity or are the totals lumped together?


    (8735*40%) + (8735*100%)= 8735+3494+8735 = 20964 over 4.43 seconds

    or

    8735*40%*100% = 24455 over 4.43


    trying to weigh using Mindbender over Insanity, and not sure does Mindbender survive the full 12 second duration in a raid

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