[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Lulbalance]

I think those people managing to get past 3 mins are on the 3 target dummies in the class order hall. Therefore no travel time on Void Bolt.

Void Bolt really should generate insanity on cast, not on landing.

I'm surprised that last point doesn't come up more.. While other classes' rotation can actually benefit from the travel delay (fire mages for example), it's a definite hindrance for a class that runs on a resource engine.

[Kaesebrezen]

Void Bolt really should generate insanity on cast, not on landing.

Because it does that already?

[Deleted]

It doesn't even make sense lore wise. Casting spells drives you insane. Not the spell hitting the target.

[Gorsameth]

Void bolt generates insanity on cast wtf are you people on about Oo

[Elofyn]

I think those people managing to get past 3 mins are on the 3 target dummies in the class order hall. Therefore no travel time on Void Bolt.

Void Bolt really should generate insanity on cast, not on landing.

I think Void Bolt generates insanity on cast but refreshed dots on impact - which is another reason to stay on melee range. But the main reason for sitting in melee is that Shadowy Apparitions would generate insanity as soon as a dot crits.

[Deleted]

Void bolt generates insanity on cast wtf are you people on about Oo

Oh it does? Ok. My bad. I assumed it didn't because it refreshes DoTs on impact. My bad.

I've been too busy spamming Void Bolt to pay attention to when it generates insanity. I will go hang my head in shame

Because it does that already?

See above

[Ryeshot]

I am confused by your assertion that crit doesn't scale well... It's not the best stat ever created, but it's more than just a straight damage boost.

I stated that crit doesn't scale ludicrously as others believe specifically because of the haste ceiling. It's still our best stat next to haste, but its gain in insanity is nowhere near the benefit haste gives.

I also question your assertion that the StM nerf makes shadow hit the point where haste drops off sooner. If anything, a nerfed StM makes it harder to reach the number of stacks needed to hit that level of haste and reduces your life expectancy when you do reach that level, meaning you need more base haste on gear to hit that point where exponential scaling turns linear.

This is true. You do need more base haste in order to reach 100 stacks, but what about any point past that? If you stack haste, before you reach your 100 stacks you will be having wasted haste that could be crit for the remainder of your Surrender. Since we can always hit 100 stacks in Legion during execute with VTor, any excess haste we have while Surrendering is a wasted stat during our highest damage potential point, and crit is a way better stat at helping us last past the haste softcap.

I'm not sure if haste "drops off sooner" past the nerf, and I questioned this myself, but I do know that if you can reach 100 stacks (which you should be able to), our base haste breakpoint is the same now as it was pre-nerf.

- - - Updated - - -

We have also been looking at StM in a vacuum... where its use is exactly one fight and we try to game the max length of it as much as we can. Come Legion this will not be the case and we must consider how detrimental it would be to be having only ~25% haste for an entire encounter, whose benefit only plateaus when we Surrender to 100 stacks.

It might be that, regardless, we stack haste > crit because the majority of the fights we will be w/o StM and therefore LotV stat weights are better for us, and the small loss of Surrender length with haste overcap doesn't outweigh the difference of our average VF uptimes before that point with stacking haste instead of crit.

[cruxxy]

For alt spec Shadow, what's the best use of 13 trait points? I know Shadowy Insights is good but alternatively, could head to Sphere of Insanity with solid damage talents the whole way.

[Ryeshot]

Shadowy Insight? Do you mean Sinister Thoughts?



Don't take SoI early. Its current iteration is easily our worst gold trait, and may be worse than certain non-gold ones.

[l33t]

Hey guys, nice to see all of you again

Played Shadow in prepatch, and discovered with a great surprise that on pull our full bar of insanity turns into fucking 20 for some reason. I've read through all of the patch data and hotfixes and found nothing about it. Are we once again being denied of a on pull burst or this is just a bug?

[Nihiel]

It's intentional. It was implemented so we don't "need" to start a fight with full Insanity to play properly. The same was done for elemental/enhancement as well regarding Maelstrom Power, and iirc it also applies to Soul Shards for warlocks or indeed any spec with a built up resource.

[l33t]

It's intentional. It was implemented so we don't "need" to start a fight with full Insanity to play properly. The same was done for elemental/enhancement as well regarding Maelstrom Power, and iirc it also applies to Soul Shards for warlocks or indeed any spec with a built up resource.

I see, thank you for information.

I wonder if people can still write angry feedback to Blizzard via "leave a suggestion" option in WoW?

[N1gh7h4wk]

For alt spec Shadow, what's the best use of 13 trait points? I know Shadowy Insights is good but alternatively, could head to Sphere of Insanity with solid damage talents the whole way.

IF you plan on playing in raids and especially with s2m in mind, you should take the short route to Mass Hysteria. But for better advice wait until it hits live because nerfs are almost certain to happen to that trait.

[Nihiel]

No problem! You could give it a try I guess, haha. I do think it's a decent change though, it was pretty annoying having to save Orbs from trash/build up Orbs on dummies before pulling any boss in HFC.

[l33t]

No problem! You could give it a try I guess, haha. I do think it's a decent change though, it was pretty annoying having to save Orbs from trash/build up Orbs on dummies before pulling any boss in HFC.

Dunno, I prefer being able to burst on pull with my raid instead of wasting 1/2 of a bloodlust on a resource build-up. Not to mention that solo farming old raids suddenly started to require a ton of extra time as well...

[N1gh7h4wk]

Dunno, I prefer being able to burst on pull with my raid instead of wasting 1/2 of a bloodlust on a resource build-up. Not to mention that solo farming old raids suddenly started to require a ton of extra time as well...

Full insanity: eruption at 10 dispersion at 8 prepot at 2 precast mb at ~1.5-haste and vb on pull

[AsaKappa]

Full insanity: eruption at 10 dispersion at 8 prepot at 2 precast mb at ~1.5-haste and vb on pull

Does this work even with insanity getting reset to 25 on pulls?

[l33t]

Full insanity: eruption at 10 dispersion at 8 prepot at 2 precast mb at ~1.5-haste and vb on pull

Yep, thought about something like that as well, thank you very much.

[Solidhype]

Does this work even with insanity getting reset to 25 on pulls?

Yes it does. And I don't think it resets if you already in VF before the pull, I think thats part of why this is the thing, correct me if I'm wrong.
And even if it resets it is in the calculation with the MB and VB exactly on pull and you are already in VF at that moment.

[Deleted]

So we are less than a week away from Legion. any plans on updating the first post with the optimal artifact path to follow? Or should we seek info somewhere else?