[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Djriff]

Popping Surrender to Madness on the pull against High Council has to be one of the most satisfying things ever. Can sustain over 200k dps until I die at 2-2:30, and then remain top dps by a mile even if the fight doesn't end for another minute or longer... and being able to cast while moving for so long is pretty broken.

Your fights last that long? We've been utterly destorying everything in sub 2 mins. Manno was only 3 mins long lol.

[Sxq]

Your fights last that long? We've been utterly destorying everything in sub 2 mins. Manno was only 3 mins long lol.

Lower difficulty with pugs haha. Mythic stuff dies much quicker.

[Deleted]

Very true, especially the whole ToF and FotM idea. This becomes very apparent in the current pre-patch environment

@Isentropy
I mean I even started my post out with the fact that I'm talking about the prepatch, but if you say so...

The ONLY reason I referred to Legion is because I referred to when FotM has a chance of being competitive. And it WILL be competitive in Legion, especially during progression on single target fights. Let's take Ursoc as an example here.

Give me one source from which I can derive ToF procs from before Ursoc's at 35% health? Don't worry, I'll wait.
..
There is none. Priests who are progressing on Ursoc and who are miles away from 35% health will not see a reason to take ToF - because there's no option to proc it.

Let's have another example: Trilliax.

Again, no adds to proc your ToF on. Will it be absolutely justified to take FotM? Oh absolutely!

FotM helps me increase my time in StM, and I can guarantee you that under the right circumstances you are able to use up at least 2 of the 3 minutes of StM. It's really not that hard. The longer the fight, the better FotM. Why? Because the longer it'd take for me to reach ToF, and when left with no chance to proc it before the Boss actually reach 35%, this takes away a LOT of the talents usefulness.

Short fight? Obviously ToF, alone due to the reasons you stated yourself. It's overtuned.

Be aware that again, I totally get that ToF is simply overtuned right now. That doesn't mean FotM is going to be redundant, because it absolutely has it's capabilities.

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Edit: Also Angelo what is that mouse over VB macro? I can only find ones for voidbolt only not both VE and VB

The Macro is:

#showtooltip Void Eruption
/cast [@mouseover, harm] [ ] Void Eruption
/cast [@mouseover, harm] [ ] Void Bolt

Tooltip will change accordingly, no worries! Hope this helps!

[Isentropy]

The ONLY reason I referred to Legion is because I referred to when FotM has a chance of being competitive. And it WILL be competitive in Legion, especially during progression on single target fights. Let's take Ursoc as an example here.

Give me one source from which I can derive ToF procs from before Ursoc's at 35% health? Don't worry, I'll wait.
..
There is none. Priests who are progressing on Ursoc and who are miles away from 35% health will not see a reason to take ToF - because there's no option to proc it.

The Roaring Cacophonies on mythic become targetable, and there will be lots of opportunities to proc ToF here throughout the entire fight.

Let's have another example: Trilliax.

Again, no adds to proc your ToF on. Will it be absolutely justified to take FotM? Oh absolutely!

You will be offdotting the cleaners with SW:P for AS procs, which severely limits your usage of Mind Flay - as I explained in my post, this reduces the benefit of FotM by a lot, since the main benefit from FotM comes from extensive Mind Flay usage, which implies pure single target. Trilliax is not pure single target.

FotM helps me increase my time in StM, and I can guarantee you that under the right circumstances you are able to use up at least 2 of the 3 minutes of StM. It's really not that hard. The longer the fight, the better FotM. Why? Because the longer it'd take for me to reach ToF, and when left with no chance to proc it before the Boss actually reach 35%, this takes away a LOT of the talents usefulness.

Reaching 2 minutes with StM is extremely, extremely easy. You don't need FotM to reach that, because FotM provides very little benefit to your Insanity generation when using StM. Mind Flay usage is very limited past 60 stacks or so (when the rotation becomes VB > MB > VB > MF > VB , with SW squeezed in every now and then), and Mind Blast going from 36 Insanity per cast to 42 Insanity per cast will not cause you to gain a lot more stacks. Mind Blast and Mind Flay also make up a very small portion of your damage breakdown when using StM, as opposed to Twist of Fate which buffs all of your damage by 20%. I don't think you realize that fight length has no influence on ToF at all, because as I said the relative uptime in % will always be about the same on single target regardless of fight length.

Short fight? Obviously ToF, alone due to the reasons you stated yourself. It's overtuned.

It is overtuned, but FotM is a weak talent either way because of the spells it buffs and the fight types that forces it into - pure single target. That's the only fight type where picking FotM isn't an absolutely terrible idea, and even then it still loses. FotM is not good, not by design and not by its numbers. There is zero reason to ever pick FotM because ToF is better in all situations. Literally, all situations. But sure, go ahead and play with FotM and keep telling yourself that it's good and has its uses, feel free to ignore logic and evidence, I really couldn't care less. Just don't try and misinform other people at the same time please. Thanks.

[Djriff]

The Macro is:

#showtooltip Void Eruption
/cast [@mouseover, harm] [ ] Void Eruption
/cast [@mouseover, harm] [ ] Void Bolt

Tooltip will change accordingly, no worries! Hope this helps!

You don't actually need the Void Bolt part, it automatically transforms.

[reynos]

How are DPS numbers looking in beta so far? I know things may change with tuning, but overall I am curious to how shadow is performing among other classes in raids, and dungeons... especially against warlocks... Thanks to anyone in advance!

[Deleted]

Popping Surrender to Madness on the pull against High Council has to be one of the most satisfying things ever. Can sustain over 200k dps until I die at 2-2:30, and then remain top dps by a mile even if the fight doesn't end for another minute or longer... and being able to cast while moving for so long is pretty broken.

Hmmm was wondering one thing... since you can cast while moving with StM... how did you guys keybind spells? I usually strafe with A/D and while I can strafe right with D and still easily press 1/2/3 to cast, cant say the same if i have to strafe left with A... impossible to press these keys then... how do you do it?

[Ryeshot]

@Djriff
A few days back you did speadsheets on SI vs AS insanity gain and damage gain. Any chance you could do one to compare insanity and damage gain for AS without UtS, with 3/3 UtS and with 6/3 UtS. Trying to figure out if UtS is a better talent than Death's Embrace (esp with RoS) since VT ticks 1.5x slower than SW:P and had a double rng chance to proc shadows. Thanks if you manage to do it.

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Hmmm was wondering one thing... since you can cast while moving with StM... how did you guys keybind spells? I usually strafe with A/D and while I can strafe right with D and still easily press 1/2/3 to cast, cant say the same if i have to strafe left with A... impossible to press these keys then... how do you do it?

I use QER for my main abilities and if I need to press 1 (which is my VB) while strafing left, I just use my middle finger to press it. I only did HC once this prepatch and I really hated it. I guess I should have turned my character to face Dia, because every time I tried to MF the other targets I lost the angle to VB her which made me die in my StM way too early.

[Deleted]

I use QER for my main abilities and if I need to press 1 (which is my VB) while strafing left, I just use my middle finger to press it. I only did HC once this prepatch and I really hated it. I guess I should have turned my character to face Dia, because every time I tried to MF the other targets I lost the angle to VB her which made me die in my StM way too early.

Hmmm I dont really think I can play with that kind of binds... :/ I have SWP/VT on mouse atm... I guess i could bind mindblast on mouse too and VB I could use F for when i strafe left... but then I still have no bind for mindflay... :/ Do we use flay a lot during StM? Have yet to try it.

[Ryeshot]

Mind flay is used at least once every VF cycle, and exactly once when you hit 125% haste or so.

[Ilir]

pls give us a legendary that makes Void Eruption refresh dot on the main target. IT FEELS SO WROOOOOOOONG.

[RsinRC]

I like FotM by design but it's usefulness is limited. If FotM included adding +insanity to dots on cast it would make FotM much more competitive.

[KingdomOblivion]

pls give us a legendary that makes Void Eruption refresh dot on the main target. IT FEELS SO WROOOOOOOONG.

I feel like that should be baseline into Void Eruption especially considering it has a cast time attached to it.

[Ilir]

I feel like that should be baseline into Void Eruption especially considering it has a cast time attached to it.

Except it's a well known fact that everything that should be baseline for shadow is put somewhere else like tier set or legendaries or pvp talent, that's why I opted for the legendary... felt more appropriate

[Dontrike]

pls give us a legendary that makes Void Eruption refresh dot on the main target. IT FEELS SO WROOOOOOOONG.

But where are we going to put "VE heals for 250% more in Voidform"? That is incredibly essential.

[Ilir]

But where are we going to put "VE heals for 250% more in Voidform"? That is incredibly essential.

Is this spell even worth it anymore ? I want BC Vampiric Embrace back pls

[Deleted]

Is this spell even worth it anymore ? I want BC Vampiric Embrace back pls

They should let us refund Mana to our Healers, like back in BC. Then there's no discussing whether or not we're worth it in Raids!

On another note, I've uploaded a video discussing Shadow Priest game tips, my two essential WeakAura strings, and my Mouse-Over Macros. I also talk about some of the thought-process that makes our class and spec really interesting in my opinion, especially in voidform! Please leave some feedback if you find the time - and enjoy!

[Dontrike]

Is this spell even worth it anymore ? I want BC Vampiric Embrace back pls

Barely. Only a couple of times have I used it has it done much of anything. That legendary that has that effect needs to be tossed out, along with a couple other ones of ours, like the bracers and the ring. Only legendaries of worth are the shoulders, barely after the nerf, the belt, and the neck, but the neck can be gotten by anyone.

[Ilir]

The ring should be "Void Explosion refreshes the duration of your dots".

[N1gh7h4wk]

The ring should be "Void Explosion refreshes the duration of your dots".

I think they build the ring, implemented VEruption and then forgot to revisit it. Has anyone played with that ring, yet?
I'd like to know whether we get a buff with like 10 sec duration until we can use it. It feels bad to spread dots AFTER we did our little AE shitstorm with VEruption.