[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Caladia]

You have 3 weeks to run dungeons and upgrade your gear, including relics, before raids open. What you got while questing will be irrelevant by then.

[Dawnrage]

Anyone know when we should drop 2/4 piece for shadow?

[methz]

Anyone know when we should drop 2/4 piece for shadow?

Immediately? None of the gear is relevant anymore.

[Sinistrem]

Anyone know when we should drop 2/4 piece for shadow?

Legacy set bonuses are now disabled in relevant content.

[Dawnrage]

Legacy set bonuses are now disabled in relevant content.

2 piece still works for me. Pretty strong bonus with having sfiend/mbender all the time so I was wondering when that would be worth dropping for more stats.

[nicbizz]

Check the first post.

Thanks for the tip.

So if we're allocating only 13pts, we should just stop at 2/3 Mind Shattering? It seems a shame to not pick up any Goldens at all.

[Kazer]

It's amazing how fast you can melt multiple mobs and not take damage. I am just chain pulling 4-6 mobs landing a mind bomb / searing the group. I don't hardly even take damage and when I do its just a quick shadow mend back to full in 1 cast. Shadow is so much fun again.

[Deleted]

Legacy set bonuses are now disabled in relevant content.

WoD bonuses still work. I kept my 2pc until replacing it with ~790 gear at 109

[Dawnrage]

I think you can drop 4 piece if you have good ilevel pieces, but 2 piece just feels really strong to me that I don't know if I should replace it or not.

No pro theorycrafters who have mathed it out?

[bicycle]

I think you can drop 4 piece if you have good ilevel pieces, but 2 piece just feels really strong to me that I don't know if I should replace it or not.

No pro theorycrafters who have mathed it out?

No "pro theorycrafter" is going to waste their time determining the precise moment it's optimal to swap leveling gear. It's plainly obvious that by the time you're 110, you should have replaced your tier, so arguing about whether to drop it for a +20 or +25 ilvl gain while leveling is a waste of time.

[Dawnrage]

No "pro theorycrafter" is going to waste their time determining the precise moment it's optimal to swap leveling gear. It's plainly obvious that by the time you're 110, you should have replaced your tier, so arguing about whether to drop it for a +20 or +25 ilvl gain while leveling is a waste of time.

I'm not really trying to argue to keep 2 piece here. It's just a question, calm down.

I guess I should explain why I think that is the case then, since people seem to be so hostile to the idea of having to use their old tier for some odd reason. With 2 piece sfiend makes up a good 15-20% of my damage done, and obviously this goes even further with mindbender pretty much giving you 3x the insanity due to it's uptime. It doesn't feel easily quantified, so I have no idea why you say it's "plainly obvious". The ilevel difference obviously plays a huge part, but set bonuses tend to do beyond that if they are good enough.

Really, I know there has to be someone who's tried to figure out if it's worth keeping it or not past a certain point, so if you have no good answers besides, "HIGHER ILVL MEANS BETTER LULZ", please, don't respond.

[Rainingblue]

imho, if the set is not good enough it, change it.
If it IS good enough, blizzard will nerf it asap, so change it anyway :P
I'd say +15 IL is a reasonable enhancement.

[Kilee25]

A long time ago, people used to do tests like this all the time, but you don't see as much of it anymore because a lot of things have changed.

1. SimC is more complex than it used to be, so fewer people can use it. And fewer people try to learn it. So basically the number of people left who can do anything with it are diminishing rapidly. It's basically down to to a few really old players, some "hardcore" players who have to be able to use it because they rely on it for raid progression, and the small handful of programmers who work on it.

2. The people who still work on it at this point pretty much only focus on progression, both in terms of APLs and in terms of set bonuses. You basically need to be able to modify APLs at a coder level in order to get anything useful about legacy and/or leveling states. In addition to this the set bonus may not even be implemented.

3. Depending on the state of all this, you may either have to modify the code, or generate some logs with good data, or build some mathematical equations that will give a decent approximation for values.

A long time ago, you'd see long discussions pop up where people did this kind of thing for fun. But for whatever reason it's extremely rare these days. The handful of people who still have the skill don't care about non-progression raiding stuff, and they don't seem to have the patience or mentality to teach younger generations coming in behind them. Tbh the few TC posts I had running last expac on H2P, I felt like I was talking to myself. TC in general seems to be a dying art, and what's left has changed drastically. If there's a community that's still doing it, they have all moved off public boards, and I didn't get the memo or an invite.

Some people moved to Reddit. Some are trying to do it for money, and have set up private communities, which are invite only. It's basically been fractured into pockets of exclusive domains.

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You also have to keep in mind that TCing is a lot of work, and it's a skilled craft. If you do it for a long time, which is normal at this point with such an old game, you basically follow a personal progression path of sorts. As you do it more and more, you get better, then you get some notoriety. In a certain way, you build some fame, reputation, even a dynasty of sorts. But where do you go from there? One you've achieved blogger/forum stardom, what's the next point. You basically either burn out and quit, or you reach even higher.

The TCers who are still remaining at this point are the ones who stuck with it and took it to its logical conclusion. They are now monetizing their knowledge, or have set themselves up as dictators of their small domains, or they just simply don't associate with those who they've outgrown. It's basically antithetical at this point in their journey to do anything at this forum level.

2 c from an old TCer...

[marathal]

Some are trying to do it for money

Sadly I think you hit the nail on the head sir. We have all gotten older, find we no longer have the luxury of burning the candle at both ends and the middle, and too feel that what we do, has value, and if we are going to do it, should be compensated. When many were younger and didn't care, were just sharing knowledge because it was fun, being able to say hey, look at this I figured out, here is a cool program I wrote, add on, guide, etc, yeah sure, toss me a few bucks if you want to. TO now where we are married, have families, mortgages, full time jobs, and the things we once shared freely, now come at a cost. I suppose it is an inevitability of any game that runs long enough that eventually people will find ways to earn a living off of it. I can't fault anyone for expecting to be paid for providing a service, but it is a shame that some aspects, such as the TC and using SimC are so far removed now from the mainstream, that they may eventually not be needed because the game will be designed to not require them.

[Kilee25]

Honestly I would be fine with a built in stat system that was derived by devs and a bliz mod to pick gear. The average player can't do that anymore anyway, so basically it's the same thing. I think most of the UI mods should've been built in at this point too. Admittedly the legion ui improvements were basically an effort to address that. So you are probably right that we are heading that way, but at the rate we're going it's still going to take a few more expacs.

[Dawnrage]

-snip-

Well I myself am pretty old and know how popular it used to be, it's just that I have never been much of a theorycrafter who knew how to work the sims and stuff. I did a lot of real world tests in the past but I don't have the time to do that now. I'm sure it's a dying craft but I will be surprised if every single shadow priest has simply resigned themselves to the fact that the tier sucks and never thought for a second during pre-legion, "hmm, would this set bonus still be good at 110?". I'm pretty sure this question has probably been asked elsewhere, or the thought has come up in someone's head and they have tried/math it out and see how it turned out. The world is big after all.

It wasn't meant to blow anyone's mind or to show I discovered something amazing, etc. It was simply a question that I hoped someone had an answer to, that wasn't a simple, "no, you are fucking stupid for even thinking that because higher ilvl = better obv".

Here's hoping.

[Kilee25]

Oh I forgot to mention that the mr robot people are sort of offering an alternative to simc now. I haven't had time to look into it yet, but if it's easier to use than simc then it might eventually replace it.

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@Dawnrage fwiw I was talking about the responses you got and not to your question. I am out of time to answer more thoroughly, but the short answer is that you got an answer already. It's not worth it to keep it and it doesn't significantly affect the leveling process to find the breakpoint.

[Alexieel]

It wasn't meant to blow anyone's mind or to show I discovered something amazing, etc. It was simply a question that I hoped someone had an answer to, that wasn't a simple, "no, you are fucking stupid for even thinking that because higher ilvl = better obv".

Here's hoping.

my thoughts:

I have around 22k int right now.
I have aroung 15k secondary stats.

my ilvl 810 gloves/shoulders have 670 int and 843 secondary stats.
a ilvl 720 myth glove (dont stats of a 2/2 uograded one) has 290 int and 386 secondary.
The difference: 380 int and 457 secondary stats.
With 2 slots: 760 int and 914 secondary stats.
This results in are around 3.4% less overall int and 6.1% less secondary overall stats.

My guess: The damage from the nearly perma mindbender and the regen are enough that you will do more damage with the 2piece then without. Atleast @ 810ish itemlevel, where I am right now.

[Naga Coatl]

If I remember correctly at the beginning of WoD 4p t16 was still so strong that it became obsolete only with full HC Highmaul ilvl, and the only problem using it was the low stamina that could hinder progression. I remember asking in these forums about it because at the times I never read anything about keeping it in the various guides, yet I was still doing more dps with the t16 than with four more blues/epics. CoP was extremely synergic with it and I was answered that, in fact, 4p t16 was better until ~675 ilvl or something if healers could manage my health. I don't think it was nerfed, but maybe I don't remember well.

I don't know about Legion/2p t18, however.

[Deleted]

Quick question, but how does Mass Hysteria work, I don't see a buff on myself to show the exacts amount of stacks or to show the buff is actually active, do we just track it via Voidform stacks ?