[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Djriff]

I'm just not going to bother with getting Insanity before the pull. Lingering Insanity stacks on the other hand, sure. Much easier to have 20+ stacks of that from a mob outside since it lasts for a minute. It'll be an annoyance for sure, but when your raid/guild is just a bit DPS off, every bit helps.

[Ilir]

Gosh I wish they'd let us get our artefacts before legion... I want to play with VTor.

[Djriff]

Gosh I wish they'd let us get our artefacts before legion... I want to play with VTor.

You have beta right? It seriously fills the gap we're missing.

[davesignal]

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!

Just stop doing it.

Entering a fight with 100% insanity is ultimately detrimental to the class overall, because it skews the numbers we report in log sites. The difference between a 0% start and a 100% is very large, but the circumstances that make it possible are tedious at best and unreliable at worst. All you're doing is raising expectations in a way you cannot be assured you can meet, both your own, the raids, and the developers looking at the results of raiding.

In the grand scheme of things, the amount of skew it introduces is small, but non-zero. It makes Shadow look better than it can reliably expect to be, which affects tuning. At the end of the day, reliable DPS is what's important.

[Ilir]

You have beta right? It seriously fills the gap we're missing.

I do yeah but I don't really want to play it too much to keep a sense of discovery when Legion is live. I pratically stop playing on the beta since early june/end of may

[Djriff]

I do yeah but I don't really want to play it too much to keep a sense of discovery when Legion is live. I pratically stop playing on the beta since early june/end of may

Ah ok. I'll admit i haven't been playing it as much as i was. Mainly just to double check stuff, but i don't want to burn myself out and i'm taking a bit of a break before xpac drops.

[MissAnonymous]

If the GCD is longer than the wait time before Voidbolt or Mind Blast come off cd, is it worth still getting a tick or two of Mind Flay in or is it better to wait for those spells to come off cd so that you can hit them right away?

For example, if Voidbolt will come off cd in .8 seconds and your GCD is at 1.4 secs and Mind Flay triggers the GCD, is it still worth hitting Mind Flay?

[britishbubba]

If the GCD is longer than the wait time before Voidbolt or Mind Blast come off cd, is it worth still getting a tick or two of Mind Flay in or is it better to wait for those spells to come off cd so that you can hit them right away?

For example, if Voidbolt will come off cd in .8 seconds and your GCD is at 1.4 secs and Mind Flay triggers the GCD, is it still worth hitting Mind Flay?

Void bolt is a 4.5s CD before haste I believe. You cast so many during a VF that it's really hard to say if you'll actually lose a VB cast during a VF due to sitting on the cd for ~0.5s due to being on GCD for MF. I'd imagine that most of the time you'll just want to MF unless you know that using the MF will lose you a VB usage.

Example:

1.0s GCD VB is 0.8s off CD and you'll leave VF in 0.5s

You want to mind flay, you're dropping out of VF before you can cast the VB anyway.

1.1s GCD VB is 0.8s off CD and you'll leave VF in 0.9s

You want to hold off for VB as you'll lose a VB cast due to GCD after you drop out of VF therefore losing the VB that came off CD during that channel.

I'd imagine this is all a very minor DPS gain, and it's likely best to just follow the mantra of "always be casting".

[Ambereldus]

If the GCD is longer than the wait time before Voidbolt or Mind Blast come off cd, is it worth still getting a tick or two of Mind Flay in or is it better to wait for those spells to come off cd so that you can hit them right away?

For example, if Voidbolt will come off cd in .8 seconds and your GCD is at 1.4 secs and Mind Flay triggers the GCD, is it still worth hitting Mind Flay?

In general I agree with britishbubba, however, I think a case could be made when you're in higher stacks of StM. I can't provide timings at the moment, but I've run into situations where flaying around the 80+ mark nearly got me killed early because of the GCD.

Just something to consider, maybe someone else can provide more insight on this aspect.

[Kainslife]

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.

If your DoTs aren't ticking to their completion then you're not doing the appropriate Mythic+ difficulty.

[Djriff]

If your DoTs aren't ticking to their completion then you're not doing the appropriate Mythic+ difficulty.

So farming a keystone to upgrade is the wrong difficulty?

[Ilir]

If your DoTs aren't ticking to their completion then you're not doing the appropriate Mythic+ difficulty.

lol.

/10char

[N1gh7h4wk]

In general I agree with britishbubba, however, I think a case could be made when you're in higher stacks of StM. I can't provide timings at the moment, but I've run into situations where flaying around the 80+ mark nearly got me killed early because of the GCD.

Just something to consider, maybe someone else can provide more insight on this aspect.

To die under 100 stacks VF with StM with high end gear at the end of the xpac is very unlikely. It may happen because you delay too many VB in order to flay. If you however reach 100 stacks:
You got just one kind of setup on capped VF stacks
VB->MB->VB->MF(2-3 ticks)->VB
and this repeats. If your gear haste level is higher, you more likely squeeze in only 2 ticks of flay. You pretty much spam VB so it goes off asap. The insanity generation is so much higher that you really need to use it on CD. You should never experience a scenario where you start a MF in the 2nd gcd after a VB, because then you will already be ready to cast another VB.
The only exception to the rotation above is when you use your SWD instead of flay, or do some micromanagement with SWD to squeeze in another bender.

But then you reach those 155 magical stacks and kill the lich king. Ask Isentropy

[MissAnonymous]

Speaking of SWD, when it first comes up, are people just spamming both charges or is there anything special/funky that we should be doing with them?

Also, what enchant are people using on their weapon?

[Kainslife]

So farming a keystone to upgrade is the wrong difficulty?

If you just set the difficulty to the appropriate level for your group then things will last long enough for at least a round of DoTs. If you're farming lower difficulty then you're outside of the scope of what's reasonable to expect.

https://youtu.be/k6q95YhZ6Us For example.

[Ryeshot]

I always keep a charge on cooldown and try to only use SW during my 2tick MF, since that the lowest insanity generation part of our VF cycle. W/o RoS capping isn't an issue since 2 sec in VF you start losing 10 IPS. Using StM, I always use it to remove my full channel MF at 100+ stack cycle, at less than those 100 stacks, same as above with normal cycle.

I also snipe with it because 30 insanity + ToF. ^.^

- - - Updated - - -

Before SW didn't have the charge system it does now. It just allowed a second cast after the first, meaning delaying the second cast cost you the cooldown of your next one. Since it is now a proper charge ability, we can delay it for more opportune times and not lose any throughput.

[Ilir]

If you just set the difficulty to the appropriate level for your group then things will last long enough for at least a round of DoTs. If you're farming lower difficulty then you're outside of the scope of what's reasonable to expect.

https://youtu.be/k6q95YhZ6Us For example.

Anyone know the addon for the diablo like UI ?

[Kainslife]

Anyone know the addon for the diablo like UI ?

http://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/mistras-diablo-orbs

[davesignal]

Speaking of SWD, when it first comes up, are people just spamming both charges or is there anything special/funky that we should be doing with them?

Also, what enchant are people using on their weapon?

If I'm about to have two charges, I use one immediately. If I have one charge, I wait until I'm in Voidform and replace a GCD of Mind Flay with a cast of it. The rolling nature of the CD means you've got wiggle room.

[BobAwesome]

So... I feel like Blizzard dropped the ball by not giving us the option of the older shadow priest shadowform play style. I wish they would have gone with level 100 talents that worked like the following:

Surrender to Madness effect is given to Legacy of the Void and Surrender to Madness become a permanent voidform that increases damage/haste by a fixed percentage, like 20%.

To me, Legacy of the Void seems like a better name for the current Surrender to Madness effect given that legacies are usually impressive feats, and usually by someone who's passed. What better of a legacy than doing insane damage with 100 stacks of insanity then boom, you're dead. I don't really care or know if they should keep the ability to enter voidform at 70 instead of 100.

I think that Surrender to Madness would imply that you've given into the insanity, you're no longer fighting it, therefore you'll assume a permanent voidform.

That's just my impressions after playing with the new Spriest style for a couple of days.