[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Baloneyman]

Did they buff the shadow priest pvp stats? My crit in skirmish went from 13 to 15% haste up some % and mastery aswell. Shadow mend also heals for ~45k instead of ~36k.

[Kyrik]

Just done some LFR on live, so even though I had the beta, this is the first real world testing I've actually done. Biggest shock is the impact of the camera zoom reduction and my ability to multidot now. I cannot get the camera out as far as I want to be able to see things within casting range of myself, and I swear the nameplates are behaving different in some way, because they are even more of a cluster fuck than before. Mouseover void bolts for refreshing dots feel nigh on impossible unless it's an add that gets it's own boss frame. It's a real shock to the system and feels like an enormous issue for me. I was someone that in WoD had no complaints about multidot too. Now it feels horrible

[Kis]

Just done some LFR on live, so even though I had the beta, this is the first real world testing I've actually done. Biggest shock is the impact of the camera zoom reduction and my ability to multidot now. I cannot get the camera out as far as I want to be able to see things within casting range of myself, and I swear the nameplates are behaving different in some way, because they are even more of a cluster fuck than before. Mouseover void bolts for refreshing dots feel nigh on impossible unless it's an add that gets it's own boss frame. It's a real shock to the system and feels like an enormous issue for me. I was someone that in WoD had no complaints about multidot too. Now it feels horrible

Multidotting does feel horrible. I really despise the camera change, I really need to see all bosses and adds in one picture. This is just infuriatingly bad.
I can not understand people that say that this change is "fine" or "it's going to be ok, I can see just fine" who can not understand that there are people that need this much screen space.
I really. Fucking. Hate it.

In other news: Playing with StM gives you heart attacks and I was killed on Mythic Mannoroth by Shadowforce because I am an idiot (didn't save Dispersion for the last phase - I am not a smart man). Same on Tyrant. Well. Now I do know the timings.
My logs from a full mythic run can be seen below in my signature, review if you like!
Of course I didn't really know the timings etc... so on some longer fights I didn't start the fight with StM when I should have or pressed StM a bit early etc...
Next week will be much stronger though, when I know all timings.
If a fight doesn't last past 1:30 minutes or something, DPS will suffer quite significantly.


PS: I sincerely hope the ring dies a slow and painful death. I hate that thing so much. It isn't fun to have 1/3 of the explosion of a mage or rogue just because our ramp up time is that high when you don't play with StM at the start (basically any fight longer than ~2:30 minutes, that was what I managed to sustain I think).

PPS: Does anyone know how to stop Mind Flay from fixating my camera to the target? That was the worst on High Council. I tried
/console cameraSmoothTrackingStyle 0 but it doesn't work anymore.

[Djriff]

I'm still not sold that crit is super good compared to mastery, and therefore San'layn/SI compared to AS, once we get MH trait. I only think crit is best with StM/multi target, the gain in insanity is not noticeable single target with AS vs SI, and San'layn makes you do so much more damage with mastery.

You know this set me off into a 2.5 hour simcraft run lol.

So i did a bunch of tests using Pathwerk and the same varied fight length, data is here
Unfortunately i'm unable to test out StM due to a ton of SIMC errors with it, but LotV is a good second IMO. It's interesting to see the difference in Insanity gain, especially as the # of targets go up, and how much the DPS isn't really that different in the grand scheme, but with AS being the far outlier.

Chart of what I mean:

[Ryeshot]

I made a Time to Die weak aura specifically for StM, so I know ~10sec into the fight how long a boss will last, and I can easily time my 2min or 3min StMs out based on the time remaining.

[N1gh7h4wk]

Yeah thats really shit compared to wod multidot. most if the times our stacking nameplates just overlay and you can just cast mind sear.
To Crit: Our AS ips is very important to buff our StM execute range. The longer we can stay on 100 stacks, especially with MH, the more damage we will be dealing.

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You know this set me off into a 2.5 hour simcraft run lol.

So i did a bunch of tests using Pathwerk and the same varied fight length, data is here
Unfortunately i'm unable to test out StM due to a ton of SIMC errors with it, but LotV is a good second IMO. It's interesting to see the difference in Insanity gain, especially as the # of targets go up, and how much the DPS isn't really that different in the grand scheme, but with AS being the far outlier.

Chart of what I mean:

The thing about AS we should not neglect is: they stretch our active decision making frame versus random SI proccs that we have to process into our rotation, especially at execute range. I think it is very important to not get distracted from random proccs while we dive into 750 ms gcd + ping/interface lag.
My interface just facerolls at 100 stacks VF so you can just guess the right timing of your skills. This is a huge disadvantage of that system.

[Ryeshot]

Thank you for the post and data @Djriff.
Do you have any idea why the insanity gain for AS single target is lower than the two but the damage itself is a lot higher? This seems counter-intuitive. And have you tried San'layn VS AS with mastery set? Considering AS doesn't give that much increase of VF uptime, the exchange in damage might be worth it.

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I have never doubted the strength of AS for StM, I have always been curious if its strength is solely in StM and multi-target, contrary to what others think.

[Djriff]

The thing about AS we should not neglect is: they stretch our active decision making frame versus random SI proccs that we have to process into our rotation, especially at execute range. I think it is very important to not get distracted from random proccs while we dive into 750 ms gcd + ping/interface lag.
My interface just facerolls at 100 stacks VF so you can just guess the right timing of your skills. This is a huge disadvantage of that system.

I agree, i'm not arguing for SI, AS is quite obviously superior, it's just nice to see it in a data format as proof.

Thank you for the post and data @Djriff.
Do you have any idea why the insanity gain for AS single target is lower than the two but the damage itself is a lot higher? This seems counter-intuitive. And have you tried San'layn VS AS with mastery set? Considering AS doesn't give that much increase of VF uptime, the exchange in damage might be worth it.

I'll run some more tests and add them to that table. We'll see.

I have never doubted the strength of AS for StM, I have always been curious if its strength is solely in StM and multi-target, contrary to what others think.

I was curious about it, which is why i ran the tests in the first place.

[Ryeshot]

I personally like SI because I get to cancel more mind flays

[N1gh7h4wk]

Thank you for the post and data @Djriff.
Do you have any idea why the insanity gain for AS single target is lower than the two but the damage itself is a lot higher? This seems counter-intuitive. And have you tried San'layn VS AS with mastery set? Considering AS doesn't give that much increase of VF uptime, the exchange in damage might be worth it.

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I have never doubted the strength of AS for StM, I have always been curious if its strength is solely in StM and multi-target, contrary to what others think.

I don't actually see what the Simulation tracked as Insanity gain.
But you always have to watch the overall performance of the SI proccs.
In his data he casted 57.13 MB with AS and 68.39 with SI.
But the SI proccs were 21.17. In comparison SI now had 11.24 MB more but simcraft tracked 21,7 more MB that account for SI's ips. After all that generated only 134,88 insanity more than AS with MB only. Meanwhile AS had 218.59 additional insanity @25% crit.
Simcraft tracked all SI proccs as SI ips so it accounted 260,4 insanity to SI.
Over all AS had 83,71 more Insanity gain. Simcraft just tracks it, but does not interprete it.
In the high stats SI+FoTM we see the same misinterpretation. AS generated 315.74 insanity, whereas the additional MB just generated 168,62 additional insanity. Accounting the increased insanity of the remaining MB cast, you actually score 307,54 insanity with fotm MB+SI, so you drop on TOF for no real gain.
You could now count .4 insanity for every MF tick, but thats data that is not available to me.

[Djriff]

I personally like SI because I get to cancel more mind flays

Now with San'Layn:


I updated it on the chart as well.

-snip-

Took me a minute to understand what you meant.

The way i calculated the insanity gain from SI was SIMC lists the amount of SI procs. I multiplied that by 12 (which you should be able to see in the table, i did the same thing for FotM, but 12*1.2) to calculate how much Insanity the talent itself gave. While the number of actual cast mind blasts isn't all that different between the two, that can be accounted for by assessing that AS = longer voidforms. Let me go through and look at Voidform uptime as well as Lingering Insanity uptime and add everything and another chart.

[Ryeshot]

This is mastery focused gear, but how much crit do you have?

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Another thing, is there a time threshold when SI/San'layn beat AS in damage just because not enough spirits spawn to have a significant gain in insanity/damage? Asking because I'd like to see which talents we ought to be taking in dungeons where trash is a larger concern than bosses, and trash doesn't live that long.

[Djriff]

This is mastery focused gear, but how much crit do you have?

24.95%, says that in the table.

Another thing, is there a time threshold when SI/San'layn beat AS in damage just because not enough spirits spawn to have a significant gain in insanity/damage? Asking because I'd like to see which talents we ought to be taking in dungeons where trash is a larger concern than bosses, and trash doesn't live that long.

This is mainly for raid testing, not dungeons. That's a completely different set of variables.

Also interesting to see the comparison of Voidform vs Lingering Insanity Uptime between the talents. Definitely explains why AS and SI have similar MB counts.

[Kyrik]

While I'm bitching about nameplates - They seem to have changed the range that they appear. Pre 7.0 they would only appear for mobs within around 40 yards. I'm not sure on the exact number, but I found myself stumbling a lot now with trying to use mouseover macros on out of range mobs, which is something I had never noticed happening before. Then I checked an old video and name plate range is much greater now.

So not only have they forced the camera to be more zoomed in, they are filling the screen with even more name plates. I used to react to seeing a nameplate as being something that I was able to immediately cast spells on, but that's not possible now.

[Djriff]

Yeah i've noticed that on manno. Gul'dan is just chilling above and i could never see his nameplate before, kind of annoying as it has this annoying habit of staying dead center in my screen.

[Kyrik]

Thank God there is a solution. Either run this command..

/run SetCVar("nameplateMaxDistance", 40)

or add this line to your config.wtf file

SET nameplateMaxDistance "40"

[Deja Thoris]

Thanks for that kyrik, its been driving me nuts. Trying to DoT up Guldan on mannoroth. Trying to DoT up players in strand of the ancients where closer inspection shows they are on the other side of a wall. Seeing nameplates for every trashmob in firelands (hello lag)!

[Chetnik]

I had a 45 stack non-StM in raid because of lust at start, is it worth losing that by going into another voidform where I won't be able to get nearly that much?

[Deleted]

Two quick questions here if you guys dont mind:

1. A little trivial but is there a way to check how many stacks you got in StM after you died? In full StM-Button-Smashing-Extravaganza I find it hard to keep an eye on my WAs... so it happened to me a few times that I died without knowing how good I actually did.

2. So i know there is no definitive answer to that but how is shadow going to be overall in Legion? I mean we know Shadow is pretty damn good in council and will continue to be, single target maybe and AoE, well...
I have two concerns that make want to reroll to about 50%, I wanna hear you guys opinions on that:

Spriest seems pretty unviable in Mythic+ dungeons. Normally I wouldnt bother even thinking about 5-mans but with Legion, well, it´s going to be a pretty good and how it looks mandatory progression path. So might we get in trouble finding groups even in our guilds because people just want to take fire mages and warlocks? I may be overreacting a little bit so please tell me what you think.

Second, StM is the talent to go atm. Not that it bothers me per se, its a pretty fun talent, but in a progression environment its pretty lackluster. The first 100 pulls till you get to whatever boss % to use it you will always do damn mediocre damage, especially on non-council-fights. And pretty much after 30 stacks targetswitching is a no-no if what i have experienced so far is correct. That would lower our already poor priority damage even further.

So, please feel free to erase my concerns

[Ryeshot]

Two quick questions here if you guys dont mind:

1. A little trivial but is there a way to check how many stacks you got in StM after you died? In full StM-Button-Smashing-Extravaganza I find it hard to keep an eye on my WAs... so it happened to me a few times that I died without knowing how good I actually did.

Create a new tab under combat log having only beneficial auras, deaths, and timestamps, that should give you a general idea of how long you were in voidform (even past 100 stacks)