[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[worcester]

You need to make more sense, if you mean the the minimal insanity gain from AS is outweighed by the raw damage increase from Sanlayn, you need to include the extra damage Apparitions will do as well. The whole issue can be resolved empirically with logs or simulation data since the talents are fairly similar in usage. And as far as most simulations go, AS is still better in most scenarios.

Also because crit is strictly worse than mastery without AS

This also is simply not true. Mastery is a linear increasing function while Crit has part of its damage increasing quadratically (SW: P crit effects). At some amount of crit, it will surpass mastery. AS does help lower the amount of crit required to break even.

The real reason mastery is good is Mass Hysteria artificially increasing its value. But for Sanlayn to beat AS would require you have insane amounts of mastery or virtually no significant amount of crit, which are both unlikely.

[davesignal]

And about the crit being worse than mastery thats fine because you dont need crit like with AS. If the damage from vt lasts their whole duration on the targets then it will out do AS in consistant damage.

But on the other hand you may or may not have AS' burst potential change the tide.

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Burst you can't control is no burst at all.

[Malico]

Could someone link me the Insanity Bar addon I keep seeing?

http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=8339

[RsinRC]

Burst you can't control is no burst at all.

But it is there and wont ever get worse the more stats yu gain, like any stat. It has low but it's high is pretty badass.

Also If you're attacking 3 long lived mobs AS would allow you to pump out more damage on those long lived mobs overall on add phases spam swp's and gain extra insanity from AS. Which will be more times going in and staying in VF longer throughout the fight. And the momentum continues.

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[RsinRC]

Anyway its 2 different ways to deal with st and mt fights and it'll be a matter of playstyle and encounter design.

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[heinz0r]

Crit is definately better than mastery, because it is not always just about the flat damage, but also helps you when you might need to pull out a selfheal, or a support heal on a group member. Crit also increases your shield size (doubling it), and crit works on mindblast and mindflay aswell. I am not sure if our crit works on mindbender and psyfiend, but I bet there will be some folks who will test this sooner or later.

Plus, do not forget when comparing just SWP with AS to VT with sanlayn, that it is way more comfortable to dot stuff up with SWP than it is with VT and having to chain cast as a turret. The passive insanity regeneration from the apparitions is also a very nice addition and only gets better as secondary stats increase throughout the expansion.

Oh btw, anyone checked if mastery increases the damage of those apparitions? Because crit does.

[Ryeshot]

Crit is a better utility spell, true, but all damage sources show from a purely throughput standpoint (again, not counting insanity generation of AS since we still don't know how much damage insanity effectively is) that mastery is better. SW:P spamming might feel more comfortable, but VT beats it at 12 seconds uptime, and 6 seconds with San'layn. All pets gain our crit chance, so MBend is affected by crit but not mastery. But that is inconsequential since mastery is better when our mastery abilities account for 40% of our damage.

Only crit increases the damage of SA (and spell power), but honestly that spell's damage is so pitiful the difference in damage using AS or not is pretty negligible.

[Caladia]

Looking at some of the gear available, much more of it is crit/haste oriented. Thus I think it will be much easier to not only gear for crit > mastery, but just that crit and AS will out-weight the raw damage of VT with SL.

My early sims with different gear levels continue to favor haste > crit with the AS talent / relics over haste > mastery with the SL talent / relics.

[Kis]

Looking at some of the gear available, much more of it is crit/haste oriented. Thus I think it will be much easier to not only gear for crit > mastery, but just that crit and AS will out-weight the raw damage of VT with SL.

My early sims with different gear levels continue to favor haste > crit with the AS talent / relics over haste > mastery with the SL talent / relics.

Lets just look at raids:
In short fights, like at the end of the expansion, Mastery>Crit>Haste will most definitely be the dominant stats to have.
At the start, where fights are drawn out and StM is only used for about a fifth of the boss fight, Haste > Crit > Mastery should be what we should gear for. San'layn won't outdo Auspicious Spirits in basically any situation. Think about it, yes it increases VT damage by 20%. But that is it, that is maybe a 5-10% damage increase in the long run, depending on fight type (it will be better in Council fights, but there we need the added Insanity for longer Void Forms)

Insanity generation is KING. Shorter void forms are just that. Short and weak. You lose a lot of the overall damage bonus of all your spells. Also you might have to refresh dots or generally cast dots more often. You cast less Void Bolts, you have less Auspicious spirit damage (which on it's own is a good little damage increase). Also you have to favor Vampiric Touch over SW:P, which hinders movement etc... Also you lose a ton of Insanity during StM. When your dots start ticking in the 1/sec range and you have about 20%+ crit or so, the gains will be massive. (THINK ABOUT THE GAINS, CHILDREN!)

Coming back to other content:
I don't see San'layn in it's current form beat out AS in any form of content other than World Quests and Dungeons, where there isn't enough time spend in Void Form anyways and travel times make AS undesirable. But then you may also think about using Shadowy Insight...

But more sims will come and preach to us the right way of the Spriest.

[Deleted]

also you lose a ton of insanity during stm. When your dots start ticking in the 1/sec range and you have about 20%+ crit or so, the gains will be massive. (think about the gains, children!)

coming back to other content:
I don't see san'layn in it's current form beat out as in any form of content other than world quests and dungeons, where there isn't enough time spend in void form anyways and travel times make as undesirable. But then you may also think about using shadowy insight...

But more sims will come and preach to us the right way of the spriest.

preach it boy!!

[Ryeshot]

Insanity generation is KING. Shorter void forms are just that. Short and weak. You lose a lot of the overall damage bonus of all your spells

My crit on beta is 22% and the only difference in VF stacks is 2 if I take AS instead of San'layn (single target). The ability to cast one more Void Bolt and a 2tick mind flay is hardly considered a gain. Now I understand AS enables more VF uptime with procs happening to get you into the next VF quicker, but this can also delay your VTor if you don't get nice crits. I have 5/3 Unleash the Shadows trait and I'm not seeing the amount of gain AS gives over San'layn that people are claiming.

This argument is only toward single target, we all realize that AS is king on multi and because of that, I will be getting a crit focused set for StM and multi-target fights.

[Djriff]

This is something that people bring up so often. They did it in WoD as well. It's not a relevant enough detail to stand in the way of AS being viable, nor does it stand in the way of being the best choice of the row. Shadowy Insight is absolutely garbage for multidotting because you simply don't have enough globals to spend on everything that you need to in order for Shadowy Insight to be good. The talent contradicts itself and it's just not good at all. Actually, scratch that. It sucks.

While that was true in WoD voidform and Void Bolt changes things though doesn't it?

Hear me out and if I'm completely off the marker i'll drop it, but on a 3 target multidot fight, once we get the ball rolling and we're into voidform we'll maintain our dots without having to manually recast them. While AS will still be good here, if I'm not running into the global wall of having to reapply dots i'll have a bunch of free globals we don't have in WoD due to dot refreshing. How is SI bad in that sense when I would be casting flay for 1 second as opposed to another Mind Blast which has more DPET.

[Ryeshot]

You need to think about the relative damage gain for globals. Yes MB does more DPET than MF, but there are 5 distinct points you can have SI proc during your VF cycle, and 2 of them pretty much waste it and 2 are ideal. What San'layn and AS give instead is free damage off globals, so there is no loss of opportunity cost. Procs may be different with 3 targets, but your VF cycle pretty much stays the same so you will almost always be losing the cost of MF in exchange of MB.

[Isentropy]

While that was true in WoD voidform and Void Bolt changes things though doesn't it?

Hear me out and if I'm completely off the marker i'll drop it, but on a 3 target multidot fight, once we get the ball rolling and we're into voidform we'll maintain our dots without having to manually recast them. While AS will still be good here, if I'm not running into the global wall of having to reapply dots i'll have a bunch of free globals we don't have in WoD due to dot refreshing. How is SI bad in that sense when I would be casting flay for 1 second as opposed to another Mind Blast which has more DPET.

SI was bad in WoD for more reasons than just it requiring a lot of globals. Even on a 3 target fight, you'll occasionally have to recast your dots at some point - especially with the introduction of Void Eruption. Maybe SI sounds okay on paper, but it just doesn't work in practice. AS provides more Insanity generation, and again people should stop underestimating the damage from apparitions on multitarget. The benefit SI gives you is maybe 4 - 5% extra damage, apparitions alone will do almost as much as that on their own on top of giving you passive Insanity generation which leaves you more room to do other things. You'd also use Mind Sear instead of Mind Flay at 3 targets because it's a bit more damage as well as more Insanity generation. The hypothetical 3 target multidot fight doesn't even really exist in the first tier. A talent that requires you to multidot in order to maximize its benefit while the talent takes up globals that stop you from being able to multidot is just terrible design without giving it a stacks system (and no, the legendary doesn't even do much to help SI in your hypothetical situation).

[Jullyx]

Dps difference between AS and SI correlate with amout of targets, in favor of AS. The Void Forms you can get on 3 targets with well timed torrents and disperse are crazy (with AS). You can get close to 70 stacks with certain builds, without StM or Hero, which is just rediculous with Mass Hysteria.

[Djriff]

SI was bad in WoD for more reasons than just it requiring a lot of globals. Even on a 3 target fight, you'll occasionally have to recast your dots at some point - especially with the introduction of Void Eruption. Maybe SI sounds okay on paper, but it just doesn't work in practice. AS provides more Insanity generation, and again people should stop underestimating the damage from apparitions on multitarget. The benefit SI gives you is maybe 4 - 5% extra damage, apparitions alone will do almost as much as that on their own on top of giving you passive Insanity generation which leaves you more room to do other things. You'd also use Mind Sear instead of Mind Flay at 3 targets because it's a bit more damage as well as more Insanity generation. The hypothetical 3 target multidot fight doesn't even really exist in the first tier. A talent that requires you to multidot in order to maximize its benefit while the talent takes up globals that stop you from being able to multidot is just terrible design without giving it a stacks system (and no, the legendary doesn't even do much to help SI in your hypothetical situation).

Ok that's fair and thank you for explaining it to me in such detail. The only time I could think that you would ever not use searing is if the targets are spread out (not likely) so we can basically ignore that.

Are we still going to be shooting for a rough amount of crit or just as much as we can get? I'm curious if there's a rough point where AS moves ahead of SI or if it is always ahead.

[Mechonics]

Without the AS trait on our Dagger, is crit going to be as strong?

What do you guys see yourself building for bosses in HFC and how are you enchanting/gemming this coming week?

Iskar -
Socrethar -
Tyrant -
Fel Lord -
Xhul -
Manno -
Archi -

[davesignal]

I spent the entirety of a mythic Vault of the Warden swapping between different gear sets and talent setups to try and eke out as much damage. The overarching conclusion I came to was: why am I even fucking bothering, the monk with 25 fewer item levels and a shitty, underleveled artifact weapon is pulling one million DPS on trash and pushing out numbers I only get during Surrender to Madness on bosses.

This fucking spec, I swear to God..

[N1gh7h4wk]

Without the AS trait on our Dagger, is crit going to be as strong?

What do you guys see yourself building for bosses in HFC and how are you enchanting/gemming this coming week?

Iskar -
Socrethar -
Tyrant -
Fel Lord -
Xhul -
Manno -
Archi -

I'll run stm and build some roleplay makro to it.

when i'm done trolling i'll run haste>crit>>vers=mastery with RoW,AS, void ray single target or void lord multi target and maybe StM but thats just crap w/o MH. Mindbender ofc with T18 2pc.. dem juicy Insanity

[Dontrike]

You guys are silly. The legendary shoulders were beyond stupid for multidotting since the stacks weren't affected by extra drain, meaning that if you entered Voidform with 13 stacks because of the shoulders, the drain would still start at 9 insanity per second. The headstart this gives you is absolutely massive if you take into account that Mass Hysteria works off of your Voidform stacks. So in the same example, if I enter Voidform at 13 stacks my dots will immediately do 26% more damage. More damage from the beginning, and even more damage at the end of Voidform. It was dumb and you're a fool if you think that this wasn't going to get changed. Legendaries aren't supposed to be this impactful to player DPS. Just because there are some other really strong legendaries right now (I don't even know if any other got nerfed, I doubt many of you do either) doesn't mean that they won't get adjusted before live or that we should retain our really strong legendary. The relative difference between shadow's legendaries was way too big and it's probably a bit more in line now, though the shoulders will still probably be quite strong for multidotting.

That may be that shoulders were really strong and we might have been OP with them, but when you look at all of the other class specific legendaries they have so many more interesting and powerful ones than us. Even their weakest ones sound much better than ours. I mean Mages get two bloodlusts, and yet that isn't being nerfed not the ground, but we have one that might make us powerful, even a little bit, and for some reason that's a bad thing. I don't know about you, but with us being so weak in so many areas I would love for something to make us stronger, as Blizz is just ignoring some glaring major flaws of ours.