AS not all it's cracked up to be in actual raiding?

[Djriff]

What guide? :P

Probably this one.

[Kilee25]

Yes that's the one. It's also in the raiding section on H2P.

It hasn't been very well-publicized this expac, for a number of reasons. Although I did notice today that google is at least putting the MMO Champ link on the first page now, if I include the keyword "CoP". That's only taken a few months...

It's weird to me that my old 4.3 guide is still one of the top links.

Oh well.

[Deleted]

Define "much better" results

Noticeable difference.

/Hankstar

[Deleted]

AS is better on the following fights that I've tried so far keeping in mind progression only so not overgearing the fight:
- HFA
- Iron Reaver somewhat, CoP is pretty good here as well
- Kormrok, again CoP is pretty good here but the movement is pretty rough
- HFC obviously
- Kilrogg, CoP isn't too far off but adds live long enough for AS to outperform
- Gorefiend, unless you are absolutely not able to touch the ghosts, CoP can be better but I doubt it, you should be allowed to SWP the ghosts at least and get away with rarely using cascade
- Socrethar
- Iskar
- Xhul'horac
- Tyrant

CoP clearly wins on Fel Lord and Mannoroth has a lot of adds anyway. Archimonde is AS as well due to the adds but obviously, no experience on mythic. The difference is that there isn't a single spread out cleave fight like Beastlord or Blast Furnace with adds that live for awhile. The best fight for shadow realistically is HFC, good cleave, excellent damage in the bladestorm phase and good healing.

Fights with adds either die quickly or they are stacked which makes specs like Frost, Arcane, MM and Arms more effective.

[Djriff]

CoP really shines on gorefiend because you have so much usage of SW: D. Once the adds start spawning I just dot the boss and focus purely on adds. I maintain dots and just funnel DP's into the boss and MS to my hearts content on the big add.

[Deleted]

Yes that's the one. It's also in the raiding section on H2P.

It hasn't been very well-publicized this expac, for a number of reasons. Although I did notice today that google is at least putting the MMO Champ link on the first page now, if I include the keyword "CoP". That's only taken a few months...

It's weird to me that my old 4.3 guide is still one of the top links.

Oh well.

Yea infact I googled it and found your 4.3 one... :P

By the way... I'm kind of confused about COP now. I used to play it in highmaul with dotweaving, now I'm 514 (over 36% crit) 4p t18 and always used AS in every fight of hfc. How does it work with archimonde trinket? I read your guide but it's not really clear... should I always keep buff stacks at 5 even if to do so I delay a MB/DP/MS? I understand the rotation in your guide, problem with that (which is what i hated with cop even back in hm) is that you often have to move or do something else and then the rotation gets all messed up. With yours you can keep stacks always up, of course, but thats in the perfect world, in raids it happens often that while you should flay you gotta move or cant do it for full ticks or even 2 so... what to do again? Always keep stacks at 5 or lose the stacks and follow the rotation? Not sure I made myself clear... thank you.

[GameFX]

HFC is really coming down to personal preference IMO (which is a good thing)

I actually tried CoP on HF:Assault since I had the Prophecy of Fear trinket (and the fight being farm) and did better than I thought I would. Same thing happened with Iskar as well...I think it just comes down to what you feel most comfortable with & your gear.

At the Heroic difficulty level the only fights that lean heavily towards AS IMO are: Council, Mannoroth, and Archimonde. All others come down to what spec you feel the most comfortable with. At the end of the day play to your own personal strength and play to Shadow's strength and you'll be golden no matter what spec you choose. (save for Void Entropy the poor bastard :P )

[muto]

Anyone tried VE on single target fights? I tried it on Kormrok, and Iron Reaver and it was comparable to Clarity of Power. I felt like it did about the same amount of damage on Kormrok, and more than CoP or AS on Iron Reaver. It was actually really nice on Iron Reaver, because you refresh VE right before he floats away.

[Kilee25]

With Mindbender, you'll have to refresh early sometimes. You will have to learn the rythm of the fight, and know ahead of time when you may have to move. Occasionally, you will just have to rebuild the stacks. The trinket should be strong enough to at least break even, even on fights where the debuff falls off occasionally.

There's a few odd things that I wouldn't mind trying with the trinket. One is having 2 pieces of Mythic t17 gear, and using that plus Insanity for the shorter duration beween DPs, plus the higher rate of MBs, to maintain uptime on the debuff with insanity, with plenty of wiggle room to move and get interrupted yet still maintain the debuff.

The other option would be to stack haste gear above all else, in an effort to recreate the above situation with a hasted GCD.

This appears to work well in simcraft, but I've had people say that it doesn't work in game, due to interruptions and movement.

To be honest I don't have much the class trinket, and that is why that section fo the guide is not more detailed. Once I get it, I will probably play with it full time most nights, so I'll develop strategies to use it very quickly.

One thing that interests me is that our stat weights change with the trinket in use. Additionally, the DPET of all of our spells change too. For instance, dot spells become less favorable to cast, and AE also requires a much higher number of additional targets before it becomes worth it to use. I just find the trinket interesting and intriguing because it can potentially make the shadowpriest a true single target build. In addition to this, on paper the trinket is incredibly powerful, and that strength should make some of its properties useful outside of what is traditionally considered useful.

For example, there's got to be a threshold for how many seconds a target will live, where it is worth it to rebuild stacks - I haven't seen anyone try to address this yet from a TC standpoint.

........

To answer your question in a more broad sense, I think it would be a very high priority to maintain the debuff, even above using MB. I'll try to put some more time into simcraft though, as this is really something that simcraft should be able to answer.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyone tried VE on single target fights? I tried it on Kormrok, and Iron Reaver and it was comparable to Clarity of Power. I felt like it did about the same amount of damage on Kormrok, and more than CoP or AS on Iron Reaver. It was actually really nice on Iron Reaver, because you refresh VE right before he floats away.

I've said this in the past, but I don't think enough energy is being devoted to VEnt this expac, in general. The same was true of CoP too. I'm guilty of this myself. I keep meaning to look into VEnt, but I just never have the time. I wish that some eccentric TCer would pick it up and run with it.

[GameFX]

If Mind Spike didn't clear VEnt it would be golden by using Glyph of Mind Spike along with Shadowy Insight (would need a buff of course 5% is still too low) you would have plenty of Orb Generation to keep it up on a few targets....Alas it will not come to pass.

[Djriff]

We had a spriest app to my guild about a month back that used a haste VEnt build. Over several different weeks he was doing roughly 60% percentile's with it. The problem with VEnt is that the DoT takes a LONG time to build up and is nigh impossible to maintain on more than 2 targets. AS is better in this case as you are generating more orbs, have more uptime on DP (more survivability), and 100% extra damage from SA's. A lot of testing was done with VEnt that just went to prove it isn't a worthwhile talent to take in any situation.

ST? Nope CoP wins
ST w/ movement? CoP wins if played well, AS is a close second
2 Target? AS wins, CoP with off dotting is good as well
3 Target? AS

VEnt will never be competitive with AS or CoP until they put a massive change into it. Maybe decrease it's ramp up time, make it give a shadow orb on multistrikes (5-7 icd to prevent it from being OP), and the ability to spread it similar to aff locks.

[Deleted]

With Mindbender, you'll have to refresh early sometimes. You will have to learn the rythm of the fight, and know ahead of time when you may have to move. Occasionally, you will just have to rebuild the stacks. The trinket should be strong enough to at least break even, even on fights where the debuff falls off occasionally.

There's a few odd things that I wouldn't mind trying with the trinket. One is having 2 pieces of Mythic t17 gear, and using that plus Insanity for the shorter duration beween DPs, plus the higher rate of MBs, to maintain uptime on the debuff with insanity, with plenty of wiggle room to move and get interrupted yet still maintain the debuff.

The other option would be to stack haste gear above all else, in an effort to recreate the above situation with a hasted GCD.

This appears to work well in simcraft, but I've had people say that it doesn't work in game, due to interruptions and movement.

To be honest I don't have much the class trinket, and that is why that section fo the guide is not more detailed. Once I get it, I will probably play with it full time most nights, so I'll develop strategies to use it very quickly.

One thing that interests me is that our stat weights change with the trinket in use. Additionally, the DPET of all of our spells change too. For instance, dot spells become less favorable to cast, and AE also requires a much higher number of additional targets before it becomes worth it to use. I just find the trinket interesting and intriguing because it can potentially make the shadowpriest a true single target build. In addition to this, on paper the trinket is incredibly powerful, and that strength should make some of its properties useful outside of what is traditionally considered useful.

For example, there's got to be a threshold for how many seconds a target will live, where it is worth it to rebuild stacks - I haven't seen anyone try to address this yet from a TC standpoint.

........

To answer your question in a more broad sense, I think it would be a very high priority to maintain the debuff, even above using MB. I'll try to put some more time into simcraft though, as this is really something that simcraft should be able to answer.

IMO the trinket is really bad designed for us... useless for AS, good for COP but a pain to use... :P
I hope you can get it soon to test it... I always passed it for our locks/palas till last reset when I coined it and got WF+socketed... :P

[Deleted]

The trinket is pretty bad for most classes though. Ret and destro for example use it for single-target moreso that its even more restrictive that the shadow trinket. Only really usable on fel lord in mythic though.

[Blackmorgrim]

Anyone tried VE on single target fights? I tried it on Kormrok, and Iron Reaver and it was comparable to Clarity of Power. I felt like it did about the same amount of damage on Kormrok, and more than CoP or AS on Iron Reaver. It was actually really nice on Iron Reaver, because you refresh VE right before he floats away.

For lower levels of gearing, as in normal/heroic, where crafted gear can be BiS, VEnt can compete with CoP for single target. (And then do better multitarget) However, the thing is that you actually need a very haste heavy set, which is somewhat hard to get. Once you get upwards of 25%+ haste, keeping VEnt on multiple large targets becomes much easier without the use of SI, where well timed PI's can make up the difference. Keep in mind that VEnt gains 60% SP approximately every 5% haste per cast, which can add up on a fight like council. Also because a large portion of your DPS is dot damage, its very resistant DPS loss in movement heavy fights. You're talents for VEnt in t18 would almost always be Mindbender and PI.

However, in the realm of Mythic raiding, the itemization just isn't there for VEnt, which unfortunately has placed VEnt in a bad light all expansion. I've seen many times at lower levels of raiding that VEnt actually became my best single target spec (even vs dotweaving) in Simcraft, mainly do to the gear I had access to at the time.

I'd almost say VEnt would be good for a fight like Xhul. Since you have two large targets up a good portion of the time. You can use glyph of mind spike to use spike+MB+SWD on imps, increasing your orb generation. (glyph of Mind harvest might go too far) My main issue with a fight like Xhul is the importance of the execute phase, which VEnt just really lacks compared to CoP or AS. Honestly, I've felt the lack of the upfront burst and execute is what killed VEnt for most this expansion. If VEnt built up over the course of a fight, it would have worked out.

[Tojara]

AS is pretty good.

Hellfire - Make a case for either or, dotting non-priority, dumping into priority. If it's heroic just DoT everything though.

Iron Reaver - CoP for this one, bombs don't last long enough to make a difference IMO.

Kormrok - CoP

Council - AS easily

Kilrogg - Depends on difficulty, on Mythic the adds will live long enough, whereas heroic it might not be as clear cut

Gorefiend - Depends, I find CoP better downstairs, and there is a lot of movement upstairs to warrant CoP as well, the big add does live longer on Mythic (and there are two of them, so AS is good in this regard. Some guilds do use shadow priests to break souls too, as they are excellent execute and on demand burst, and CoP does play to that strength. However, I imagine guilds that don't have heavy access to passive AoE to bring them down would benefit from just having their shadow (responsible for souls) doing AS and just dotting a souls, and dumping DP into priority targets prior to breaking).

Iskar - AS, dot adds, dump into priority. Really great if you just burn him in the air on the final phase too, rolling pain on the 3 targets while you nuke Iskar is solid

Socrethar - AS, dot adds and game ghosts while dumping into priority

Tyrant - AS, dot adds, dump into boss

Fel Lord - CoP

Xhul'horac - AS, pretty straight forward

Mannoroth - AS, although CoP might be better for burn, but the previous phases are still a large learning curve to which you likely won't want to give up AS

Archimonde - AS on heroic, I don't know what priests use on Mythic. I can't see the bonus phase being super AS friendly, considering all of the adds that spawn during that phase don't last any particular length of time

To note AS strength does go down if the particular content you're doing is getting massively over geared. For instance on my shadow priest I do a heroic with a pug and find that Kilrogg is barely worth doing AS because the speed at which adds die, makes it way less attractive. On an unrelated note I find insanity really underwhelming this tier, but I'm sure that has a lot to do with how good mind bender is. I mean searing insanity is still pretty good, but why bother doing AoE when other classes can do it much better or for free.

[davesignal]

If Shadowfiend is off CD, even that isn't true. Insanity's DPET is barely ahead of Mind Spike. The only thing Insanity has going for it at this point for trying to add more ST burn is the fact that it doesn't erase DP's dot.

For reference:



Edit: Actually, it's not even above Mind Spike anymore...

I get this distinct impression that, for the first time in forever, somebody at Blizzard actually looked at some Shadow Priest posts and this one was the one they saw, because:

Devouring Plague now deals 10% more damage. In PvP combat, Devouring Plague now deals 10% less damage.
Mind Blast now deals 10% more damage. In PvP combat, Mind Blast now deals 10% less damage.
Mind Flay now deals 20% more damage.
Mind Spike now deals 10% more damage. In PvP combat, Mind Spike now deals 10% less damage.

[masterprtzl]

Also on the point of AS, everyone is stacking crit to the point of losing way too much haste and getting gcd locked. Haste is actually much more valuable especially for fights where AS shines.

I dunno, my armory is in my sig atm and I have no problems with haste. I am sitting at 30.62% crit (2708 rating) and 24.42% haste (1665 rating) unbuffed at the moment, and i never have GCD cap problems except on like iskar with amazing RNG crit strings.

[Deleted]

How can you not have enough haste, like almost all your pieces have crit.

[masterprtzl]

The trinket is pretty bad for most classes though. Ret and destro for example use it for single-target moreso that its even more restrictive that the shadow trinket. Only really usable on fel lord in mythic though.

Trinket seems fine on Zakuun, Velhari and maybe Kormrok. I bonused mine warforged while going for edict for my disk spec, so I got use it where i can.