[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Deleted]

It's always been like that, maybe you're just getting unlucky?

Maybe. Haven't played for a while, but I remember that it didn't really break until I started actively attacking again when i stopped playing.

[Djriff]

Maybe. Haven't played for a while, but I remember that it didn't really break until I started actively attacking again when i stopped playing.

It could be a certain damage threshold and since our dots hit harder now we hit it sooner. That's just my best guess though.

[Kyrik]

On a side note to StM, do you guys feel comfortable swapping targets with it popped? I did it on manno yesterday and even with mouseover macros it was quite stressful as I felt like 1 screw up or wrong facing requirement and I would just be dead.

Yes, to some extent, but put that down mostly to the camera zoom nerf. They made the default nameplates display debuffs and then decided to fuck the camera distance so they are impossible to use in raid encounters. Infernals on archimonde are an absolute nightmare for me now because if one is near you, it's half of the god damn screen. (I will probably be complaining about this change for as long as I still play this game)

Other than that, I've found myself being slow to react if my main target dies, I keep trying to get mind blasts off before I realise. It is probably never more than 1s of me failing, but with the speed of the spec and having so many mouse over spells for multitarget, I sometimes lose track of the state of my targeted mob. Happens very rarely, but at 90+ stacks with StM that will definitely end up killing me a couple of times at least

[Kasoy]

Regarding Artifact Traits, is the consensus now to go the long way to Mass Hysteria:

Unleash the Shadows > To the Pain > head to Mass Hysteria

and then going for Call to the Void rather than Sphere of Insanity (even though Sphere is only 4 traits away whereas Call to the Void is 7 traits away?)

[Malico]

Question: Are you able to see how many stacks you had in the warcraftlogs? I am talking about Surrender of Madness during voidform stacking.

[davesignal]

Question: Are you able to see how many stacks you had in the warcraftlogs? I am talking about Surrender of Madness during voidform stacking.

You should be able to look at your Surrender to Madness uptime and get a rough estimate from there. Your Voidform uptime during StM will be roughly the same, unless you activate StM already deep into a Voidform (or activate it early and don't turn on Voidform for awhile, for some reason).

[Malico]

You should be able to look at your Surrender to Madness uptime and get a rough estimate from there. Your Voidform uptime during StM will be roughly the same, unless you activate StM already deep into a Voidform (or activate it early and don't turn on Voidform for awhile, for some reason).

Thanks for helping! <3

[Deleted]

Question: Are you able to see how many stacks you had in the warcraftlogs? I am talking about Surrender of Madness during voidform stacking.

You should be able to go to your buffs and track the length of the final time you got the Voidform buff. That time in seconds would be your VF stacks.

[Zungate]

Twintops Insanity Bar now prints a performance status when using STM.


You can find the Insanity Bar here: https://wago.io/4yfC0kJVW (it's really good)

[danik9579]

Thanks for the guide

[Xcuse]

Twintops Insanity Bar now prints a performance status when using STM.


You can find the Insanity Bar here: https://wago.io/4yfC0kJVW (it's really good)

Is that at the end of StM?
That's amazing, Twintop you're awesome <3
Been using the Insanity bar anyhow, of course, as it's the best way to track your insanity by a long shot.

[KingdomOblivion]

Regarding Artifact Traits, is the consensus now to go the long way to Mass Hysteria:

Unleash the Shadows > To the Pain > head to Mass Hysteria

and then going for Call to the Void rather than Sphere of Insanity (even though Sphere is only 4 traits away whereas Call to the Void is 7 traits away?)

Not worth doing it this way in my opinion. Putting in your 14th trait will cost 6.8k AP, then 8.8k for the 15th to get Mass Hysteria. Going the other way you get it at trait #11, and you can go back for Unleash the Shadows, maxing it out on your 14th trait. AP gains are gonna be extremely slow when for a couple weeks, up until you get to Artifact Knowledge ~4-5. Of course it also depends on how much grinding you for AP items.

[N1gh7h4wk]

Not worth doing it this way in my opinion. Putting in your 14th trait will cost 6.8k AP, then 8.8k for the 15th to get Mass Hysteria. Going the other way you get it at trait #11, and you can go back for Unleash the Shadows, maxing it out on your 14th trait. AP gains are gonna be extremely slow when for a couple weeks, up until you get to Artifact Knowledge ~4-5. Of course it also depends on how much grinding you for AP items.

I think skilling the execute trait is just a waste of time and resource, why would you want to skill that. In the long run you will have to wait 3 traits longer to finish everything else, which is far more useful than that trait. I would recommend to never skill that shit trait until you maxed out everything else. Maybe before you get that last points for mind sear damage which is a joke aswell.
I think if you are very committed to your class, MH wil be obtainable within the first few days anyway.
Sphere of Insanity is not worth getting, you can aswell just skill the 3 shadow damage traits before for the same gain and then go to call of the void. The tentacle is a nice ST DPS gain, while the sphere is an annoying joke. Seriously if you want to play with sounds on, don't skill the sphere. Your raid will hate you.

[Kretan]

Question: Are you able to see how many stacks you had in the warcraftlogs? I am talking about Surrender of Madness during voidform stacking.

Warcraft logs will show the number of stacks you have.

[LocNess]

Warcraft logs will show the number of stacks you have.

Yep. Click on your character, go to buffs, then go to "Events" in the top right corner and it will show you your stacks you gained throughout the fight.

[Kohz]

It get's that strong due to Mass Hysteria. Without it, yeah our dots still do a bunch of damage, but it's not as big of a margin until we get that trait.

On a side note to StM, do you guys feel comfortable swapping targets with it popped? I did it on manno yesterday and even with mouseover macros it was quite stressful as I felt like 1 screw up or wrong facing requirement and I would just be dead.

Although StM can be unforgiving, you have dispersion to make up for that one screw up during an encounter

[KingdomOblivion]

I think skilling the execute trait is just a waste of time and resource, why would you want to skill that. In the long run you will have to wait 3 traits longer to finish everything else, which is far more useful than that trait. I would recommend to never skill that shit trait until you maxed out everything else. Maybe before you get that last points for mind sear damage which is a joke aswell.
I think if you are very committed to your class, MH wil be obtainable within the first few days anyway.
Sphere of Insanity is not worth getting, you can aswell just skill the 3 shadow damage traits before for the same gain and then go to call of the void. The tentacle is a nice ST DPS gain, while the sphere is an annoying joke. Seriously if you want to play with sounds on, don't skill the sphere. Your raid will hate you.

It is literally in what you quoted why I stated to go the shorter route to MH as oppose to the long way just to avoid the SW: D trait...If you feel like you can grind AP early (dungeon spamming, only a select few world quests give some) then sure go ahead the long route.

Edit: We all know SoI is trash, obviously avoid going that way and just backtrack back towards the other way to Call to the Void.

[Kaesebrezen]

I think skilling the execute trait is just a waste of time and resource, why would you want to skill that. In the long run you will have to wait 3 traits longer to finish everything else, which is far more useful than that trait. I would recommend to never skill that shit trait until you maxed out everything else.

I agree on that. Death's Embrace is a huge waste of points, and will just delay unlocking the better DPS stuff in the long run.

Mass Hysteria is not necessary until raiding starts - which is roughly one month of time. Questing will net you 12 Artifact Traits, you need two more (still decently low cost) to reach MH if you go there first, and take the long route. Just that you have immediate access to Creeping Shadows (which is one of the better traits).

Taking Death's Embrace will delay you unlocking all 3 major nodes by 3 trait points unless you skip Unleash the Shadows (which is bad).

[davesignal]

I'm not quite getting how Death's Embrace is being considered 'useless', but Unleash the Shadows-- a small percentage on a small percentage for an apparition-- isn't. Like, it's not the most impactful talent in the world, but it better than.. what, a 13% chance for an Apparition on your slow dot, if you have 30% crit baseline? Shit's not exactly compelling.

[Ryeshot]

Apparitions and SW and it have the same relative damage with multipliers. With AS (because let's be honest, you're using AS) a single spirit does 60% sp. SW does 380% * .1 = +36% sp. Which means that a VT'd spirit does more than the difference in damage of SWD.
Now let's take the largest multiplier example:
spirit does 60*1.2*1.2 = 86.4% sp
SWD does 360 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 518.4% sp * .1 = 51.84% sp

In both cases, 10% of SWD does 60% damage of a single SA.
This means that in order for damage increase of SWD to be worth it (excluding insanity cost) you must cast 1.7SWDs per SA spawned.

Side Note:

Even without AS, you still need need to cast (30/36) = .83 SWDs per SA spawned. Which is unlikely with decent crit, and the numbers go up substantially when multi-dotting is occurring.