1. #301
    So I tried soloing MoP raids in prepatch and it turned out suprisingly well. Things were doing much less damage to me comapred to WoD (have no idea why) and even if they managed to bring me down, shadowmend with masochism topped me in 3-4 casts. I thought with removal of DP and overall damage decrease there would be huge problems with soloing, but the only boss whom I killed in WoD and didn't manage to kill in prepatch was Animus due to removal of cascade.

    Honestly, I miss cascade, it was a beatiful spell with huge impact. I wish they replace MS with it and make it refresh dots or something.

  2. #302
    I haven't gotten the chance to really use StM in raids yet, as Mythic Mannaroth and Archimonde there are not many places to do it without dying 12 seconds later, so how are people doing with getting stacks of Voidform? Right now my best is about 48 stacks in a time dungeon, only because our 4pc set bonus scales incredibly well there, and 60 while fighting Iron Reaver, although died because of not paying attention, with StM. Normally I am only getting around 30 or so not using StM.

    I really don't feel like testing something only once every 10 minutes on target dummies. Are those stack levels normal for both with and without StM? When do you find are good times to pop it on various bosses in HFC?
    Last edited by Dontrike; 2016-07-26 at 09:04 AM.

    Dontrike/Shadow Priest/Black Cell Faction Friend Code - 5172-0967-3866

  3. #303
    Hey guys, long time warlock player here, been playing since vanilla!

    I've came here just to get some feedback on how you feel shadow is now, i've played around with it myself and i find it extremely fun to play, my priest is really under geared so i can't judge how it is DPS wise.

    I'm not overly impressed with the lock changes so thought i'd come here for some info to try sway me to re roll, finding it hard to let go of my long time main but this expansion might be a good time to change.

  4. #304
    Quote Originally Posted by Isentropy View Post
    What terrible advice for the opener... there's no reason to delay Mindbender on the pull. It's important to get into Voidform as quickly as possible on the pull and to get off Void Torrent as soon as possible.
    From everything I've experienced you need that Bender to prolong your VF in order to make you able to use VTor in your next voidform (without taking Void Lord), otherwise you waste the cooldown on VTor, which may or may not be worse than delaying Bender. This way I get into a rhythm of 2 VTor VFs > 1 without > repeat. I haven't found this smooth cycle doing Bender on cooldown. Although comfort-ability does not equal throughput, so your way could be best, and most definitely is if a fight is exactly 15sec +xmin.

    - - - Updated - - -

    However, I firmly believe insanity gain inside Voidform is more important than insanity gain outside. This is because insanity doubly increases our VF uptime (and therefore damage) and respectively decreases the time to next Voidform. But we have no Lingering Insanity stacks at the beginning of a fight, so perhaps the best use for Bender is only outside VF at the beginning since you have no Lingering Insanity stacks, and every other cast only inside.

  5. #305
    Hello!
    Been enjoying my priest a lot since pre-patch. Love the Voidform-cycling, alltho it feels pretty bad having such a high ramp up time.

    What I'm curious about is - is there any weakaura or addon or something that tells you the amount of voidform stacks you died with?
    For example I popped StM on Archimonde (heroic only, I'm bad) and I know I had over 80 stacks for sure - but not exactly how many. Is there a way to display this easily through any means? Like an extension to Skada / Recount that shows your highest voidform stack per boss or anything?

  6. #306
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    From everything I've experienced you need that Bender to prolong your VF in order to make you able to use VTor in your next voidform (without taking Void Lord), otherwise you waste the cooldown on VTor, which may or may not be worse than delaying Bender. This way I get into a rhythm of 2 VTor VFs > 1 without > repeat. I haven't found this smooth cycle doing Bender on cooldown. Although comfort-ability does not equal throughput, so your way could be best, and most definitely is if a fight is exactly 15sec +xmin.

    - - - Updated - - -

    However, I firmly believe insanity gain inside Voidform is more important than insanity gain outside. This is because insanity doubly increases our VF uptime (and therefore damage) and respectively decreases the time to next Voidform. But we have no Lingering Insanity stacks at the beginning of a fight, so perhaps the best use for Bender is only outside VF at the beginning since you have no Lingering Insanity stacks, and every other cast only inside.
    From what you're saying, I assume you're using Mindbender as soon as you get into Voidform. You're not getting much extra stacks from doing that because you're already keeping up with the drain very easily up to about 10 stacks (maybe even more). Reducing your initial ramp up on the opener (during Bloodlust and your potion) heavily outweighs any potential benefit you get from doing what you do. And there's no benefit. There's just no point.

    Insanity gain is equally important outside and inside Voidform, what's more relevant is looking at the source of the Insanity generation and what that means. AS on a single target won't do a ton for your in-Voidform time, it does reduce time between Voidforms pretty significantly. That 4 Insanity per spirit is one Mind Flay global less you have to cast in order to get back into Voidform - that's not as relevant inside Voidform (unless there's multiple targets where it adds up). The same goes for Mindbender, to an extent - Mindbender does allow you to extend your Voidform, especially if it allows you to get a Void Torrent off because of it, but it also heavily decreases the time between Voidforms. If Mindbender happens to come off cooldown just as you leave Voidform, why in the hell would you choose not to use it at that point? It's not a matter of choosing whether you use Mindbender inside Voidform or outside of Voidform, it's that there's no point in delaying it either way. It's not one or the other.

  7. #307
    Why do you say insanity gain is equally as important both inside and out? Inside Voidform insanity allows more stacks, more VBs, and more residual stacks. Insanity outside only grants us access to a quicker Voidform. Granted our Voidform uptime would be larger with this method, since net insanity gain inside and outside is different, but that uptime is for naught if we get so few stacks in our Voidforms. It's a question of lower uptime and higher stacks vs higher uptime and lower stacks. Considering haste and MH scaling is quadratic, I should think the former method performs best.

  8. #308
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    Why do you say insanity gain is equally as important both inside and out? Inside Voidform insanity allows more stacks, more VBs, and more residual stacks. Insanity outside only grants us access to a quicker Voidform. Granted our Voidform uptime would be larger with this method, since net insanity gain inside and outside is different, but that uptime is for naught if we get so few stacks in our Voidforms. It's a question of lower uptime and higher stacks vs higher uptime and lower stacks. Considering haste and MH scaling is quadratic, I should think the former method performs best.
    Saving Mindbender just for Voidform will cause you to lose Mindbender use over the course of a fight, and using it at the start of Voidform won't grant you a lot more extra stacks like you're suggesting. You're increasing the time you're in your weak form significantly and you gain maybe 2 extra Voidform stacks. That's not worth it. It's not about choosing when to use Mindbender, it's about there not being a point in trying to choose. Just use it on cooldown.

  9. #309
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    Why do you say insanity gain is equally as important both inside and out? Inside Voidform insanity allows more stacks, more VBs, and more residual stacks. Insanity outside only grants us access to a quicker Voidform. Granted our Voidform uptime would be larger with this method, since net insanity gain inside and outside is different, but that uptime is for naught if we get so few stacks in our Voidforms. It's a question of lower uptime and higher stacks vs higher uptime and lower stacks. Considering haste and MH scaling is quadratic, I should think the former method performs best.
    The reason is simple: regardless how many stacks you build in a non-StM void form, you loose all the stacks on entering the very next void form (except if you're using the talent).

    And those two things are dependent on each other, i. e. if you build more stacks in a void form, the very next out of void form period will 'suffer' from a very high haste induced by lingering insanity, equaling in shorter cast times and cool downs, resulting in a faster entry into the next void form.
    Last edited by Palaryel; 2016-07-26 at 12:08 PM.

  10. #310
    Similarly, using Shadow Word: Void to extend Voidform is using it the wrong way in almost all scenarios (except if you will only have one Voidform in a fight). You can use a stack for that ocassionally, but its primary purpose is to give you burst Insanity to get you (back) into Voidform as soon as possible. You're not gaining a whole lot more stacks if you use it in Voidform at the cost of increasing your time spent outside of Voidform by a lot of globals.

    Mindbender and Shadow Word: Void have different uses and purposes but there's definitely parallels that can be drawn here if we apply your logic of only using Mindbender in Voidform, particularly at the start is where it makes no sense. You're not gaining a lot more stacks, but you did increase your time spent outside of Voidform on top of causing you to lose Mindbenders over the course of a fight since there's no way your Mindbender will always come off cooldown inside Voidform. Delaying it once leads to delaying it multiple times (and please don't cite some dumb dummy tests where you never had to delay it more than once).

  11. #311
    At the beginning of my time playing the beta, I had trouble trying to find Voidform's purpose. I thought possibly it was getting enough stacks to make it only beneficial to go into next VF once VTor was off cooldown. Maybe something like the haste benefit outweighed the 20% damage, VB and Mb casts, and haste. This would allow opportune VEr casts for burst windows, but new shadow isn't as on-demand bursty like with CoP. All our damage comes from VF abilities (MH/VB, and haste benefits), which is all ramp-up. So we need to be able to have as much VF uptime with as high stacks as possible. Entering our next Voidform may drop those high stacks, but Lingering Insanity's purpose is to reward the priest for going for a longer VF.
    Last edited by Ryeshot; 2016-07-26 at 12:21 PM.

  12. #312
    The point of Voidform is to provide us with a playstyle that has periods of weakness and periods of strength. You will always stop being strong for a while, the goal is to stay in your weak form for as short of a time as possible. Devoting all of your resources to stay in your strong form a tiny bit longer will ultimately end up being worse than spreading your resources and making sure that you don't stay in your weak form for too long. The balance is key, and setting up rules for yourself to only use Mindbender inside your strong form will not be beneficial for you in the long run. Especially not when you use Mindbender at the start of Voidform, where most of its Insanity generation will be completely wasted. You're tunneling way too hard on staying in Voidform as long as possible - that's a fun minigame to play on dummies, but doesn't translate to any DPS benefit. But whatever, I'm done with this discussion. You're clearly too stubborn to even listen to the actual arguments, let alone address them using arguments of your own.

  13. #313
    Quote Originally Posted by Isentropy View Post
    Similarly, using Shadow Word: Void to extend Voidform is using it the wrong way in almost all scenarios (except if you will only have one Voidform in a fight). You can use a stack for that ocassionally, but its primary purpose is to give you burst Insanity to get you (back) into Voidform as soon as possible
    From everything I have experienced, using your example with SW:V (I will try not to compare it with MBend), the difference in time to next Voidform vs the difference in Voidform stacks (seconds), is the same. Meaning that you have the same amount of seconds inside Voidform (if we count x seconds of the next Voidform using SW:V for outside insanity gain). But the time spent in the previous Voidform is better because it benefits from more haste and MH stacks. Meaning insanity gain is better inside than outside.

    Now this does not work for MBend, since MBend actually does competitive damage unlike SW:V, and delaying it could provide an extra cast loss. What, then, do you think of delaying your VTor very slightly to sync the two up to maximise VF uptime for every VTorred Voidform.

  14. #314
    Delaying stuff slightly to line up for a better execution is only natural, however the previous posts were not about slight delays.

  15. #315
    Were Mindbender and Shadowfiend ever considered pets to the game? I noticed simple pet commands no longer work on them, we no longer have access to their abilities via action bar, and functions that return boolean for pet stats return nil when I try them with my pet out( such as PetHasActionBar()). I was wanting to try to create a weak aura for when they are active, but I can't find a single indicator for them existing using any function.

  16. #316
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    Were Mindbender and Shadowfiend ever considered pets to the game? I noticed simple pet commands no longer work on them, we no longer have access to their abilities via action bar, and functions that return boolean for pet stats return nil when I try them with my pet out( such as PetHasActionBar()). I was wanting to try to create a weak aura for when they are active, but I can't find a single indicator for them existing using any function.
    I think they changed it because of the bad interaction it had with our overnerfed as fuck Dominant Mind talent.
    _____________________

    Homophobia is so gay.

  17. #317
    Quote Originally Posted by Dontrike View Post
    I haven't gotten the chance to really use StM in raids yet, as Mythic Mannaroth and Archimonde there are not many places to do it without dying 12 seconds later, so how are people doing with getting stacks of Voidform? Right now my best is about 48 stacks in a time dungeon, only because our 4pc set bonus scales incredibly well there, and 60 while fighting Iron Reaver, although died because of not paying attention, with StM. Normally I am only getting around 30 or so not using StM.

    I really don't feel like testing something only once every 10 minutes on target dummies. Are those stack levels normal for both with and without StM? When do you find are good times to pop it on various bosses in HFC?
    With StM and 2 piece, you should honestly never "die" till a little after you max out your stacks (100 stacks), or about 2 mins+ of StM. It depends on whether you pick up void ray or soul reaper too, since soul reaper makes up a huge chunk of your insanity gain once you start hitting the 90ish stack mark of StM and casting a mind blast might screw you over.

    In that sense, you should also make sure to never use StM and having it run out before you get into execute range to be able to use SW: D, since then your StM will probably last till about 1:30ish (this is in legion though, prepatch with mindbender being up almost 75%+ of the time, you can get higher without SW: D).

    As for stack levels, I feel there's a lot of emphasis from people here about them, but keep in mind that whether you hit 29 stacks or 30+ stacks, it's a small amount of haste, that you are not going to keep for very long because most people don't take void lord and with that amount of haste you will end up in void form very, very fast, so it's a negligible gain at most. 30 stacks seems about right for me, but it depends on whether you are getting lucky with AS or not, as well as whether you are able to use SW: D or squeeze out a MB before your insanity drains etc. Talents make a difference too.

    Quote Originally Posted by Proxeum View Post
    Hey guys, long time warlock player here, been playing since vanilla!

    I've came here just to get some feedback on how you feel shadow is now, i've played around with it myself and i find it extremely fun to play, my priest is really under geared so i can't judge how it is DPS wise.

    I'm not overly impressed with the lock changes so thought i'd come here for some info to try sway me to re roll, finding it hard to let go of my long time main but this expansion might be a good time to change.
    There are some glaring issues, like -

    StM being our only raid viable talent, though I know several new spriests who are ecstatic over that talent and love it. I feel it's going to lose it's flavor eventually though, and having a talent that is tailored around us dying is going to be a nightmare to balance.

    Lack of proper AoE. This will be a real issue in legion where mythic dungeons + are a thing and dots aren't allowed to tick for most runs.

    Our dots making up far too much of our damage. This is an issue because we seem to have this problem at some point every expansion, where they buff our dots to keep us competitive with the other classes, but once we hit the first council type fight in a raid and they see how strong we are multidotting, we get nerfed, and there's never any compensation that comes. The other issue of course is dots aren't necessarily good for the other two relevant content in legion (soloing/dungeons).

    Overall, I think shadow is still fun to play and definitely more than viable in raids, just don't expect much outside of them because almost every other class does it better in soloing and dungeons for the most part

    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    Were Mindbender and Shadowfiend ever considered pets to the game? I noticed simple pet commands no longer work on them, we no longer have access to their abilities via action bar, and functions that return boolean for pet stats return nil when I try them with my pet out( such as PetHasActionBar()). I was wanting to try to create a weak aura for when they are active, but I can't find a single indicator for them existing using any function.
    They were pets before pre-patch, yeah, and you could issues pet commands to them. It's weird because they still count as something that exist (I.E. you can fade something on them, and a mob could kill them in the fade time if they hit hard enough) instead of just some damage entity.
    Last edited by Dawnrage; 2016-07-26 at 04:45 PM.

  18. #318
    For Manno I pop StM right as we enter Phase 3. From there I can keep it up and use SW: D on the Doom Lord. It makes casting during Shadowforce amazing as well. I save dispersion in case I get it and get knocked out of range which can happen.

    For Archi I pop it the second we go into the nether realm as we basically just ignore everything and burn the boss.

    I'm getting roughly 30-35 stacks on a non StM voidform, and 100 stacks with one. Like @Dawnrage said, the downtime between voidforms is very small with that amount of haste. Once we have the artifact and access to VTor, it's going to be even better (if gear is good).

  19. #319
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryeshot View Post
    Were Mindbender and Shadowfiend ever considered pets to the game? I noticed simple pet commands no longer work on them, we no longer have access to their abilities via action bar, and functions that return boolean for pet stats return nil when I try them with my pet out( such as PetHasActionBar()). I was wanting to try to create a weak aura for when they are active, but I can't find a single indicator for them existing using any function.
    They are guardians, not pets I believe. So yes you have no control over them because the game isnt coded to handle having 2 pets (Shadowfiend + talented MC).
    It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death

  20. #320
    Hej my lovely shadow priests!

    There has been an issue that has been plaguing me quite a bit recently and has taken away some of the fun I have when playing spriest:

    I feel like I "have" to get 100 Insanity before every pull, it's almost mandatory if you want to be competitive.
    This makes me have to get out of the instance, get my insanity, get summoned back by a warlock... At this point, you sometimes lose 3-4 insanity during the loading screen before you can Mindsear someone to maintain your Insanity, forcing you to respec into Shadow Crash to get your final insanity, wait 30 second for it's cooldown and spec back into Mindbender.
    What a pain....
    Is there any clever way to avoid dealing with that?
    How are you going to handle this once progression in Legion starts?

    Thanks in advance for your insights!

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •