Shadow and gear levels

[Thrayne]

I had taken a hiatus from playing seriously and am not currently geared ideally.

Coming back to prepare for legion I have been raiding and even with better gear my dps hasn't be increasing as I expected. I was hoping to talk to someone to help myself. Here is my character http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Thrayne/simple

I don't have any set bonuses or key trinkets so it is hard to see a resource that accurately sims my max dps for my gear.

Any help would be appreciated.

[anon5123]

Both of your trinkets are BIS for prepatch, IIRC.

And most of your gear is crit/haste, which are Shadow's two best stats right now.

But yeah, the set bonuses are pretty huge increases to DPS...though really, with the expac dropping in 2 weeks, there's really no point in worrying about it.

[Thrayne]

What would you say my dps in mythic HFC scenarios should be?

[Deleted]

Probably around ~60k

[Thrayne]

I'm not close to that, even on dummies. I feel like I'm missing something.

[Kyrik]

Personally I would say that set bonuses and the ring are such a huge deal right now, that 40k would be a more than acceptable target for you to hit in Single Target heavy fight. Especially considering you admit to not having played in a long time.

Gear scaling is not linear, and based on intuition/memory alone, I think you are only starting to approach the point where the exponential nature of it really starts to kick in.

Don't worry about your gear and dps right now, it will be much easier to set yourself reasonable expectations a week or two into the expansion

[Thrayne]

I am doing about 40k (35k with movement heavy fights) and 50-60k in multidot fights, so this makes me feel better.

[anon5123]

The set bonuses definitely are a huge increase to DPS. Especially now that Mindbender grants Insanity.

At 721ilvl with 4pc, I max out around 55k dps after 3-4 minutes on the target dummy, with rune+flask. Didn't use ring or potion or anything.

But again, expac is dropping in 2 weeks. Don't worry about your performance right now.

[Deleted]

Just tried my damage on training dummy without ring and set bonuses. Unequipped one piece of gear to lower my ilvl. Pulled 47k with 682 ilvl.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/vPXxcaDMJhkHmpL2/

Fight lenght = 5 min

52k with "full" (726) gear (still without set bonus and ring): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...bfAaR/#fight=1

So with bloodlust you should be around 55k - 60k (depends of fight length and movement).

[Thrayne]

The biggest difference in my logs from yours (besides dps) is void bolt % in a a 5 minute fight my void bolt isn't my top damage spell despite voidbolting on cooldown.

That leads me to think my voidform uptime is much lower. With Mindbender up I'm getting around 20-25 stacks of voidform casting mindblast and voidbolt on cd and having DoTs up before I go into voidform. Filling with Mindflay.

[truggles]

Well good news is you just found your problem. 20-25 stack of voidform is semi-decent for your standard voidforms but once and a while you should be able to get a, for lack of a better word, "super-voidform? lol" where you can get it up into the 30 and even to 40 stack range. This all comes from dispersion of course. Use dispersion shortly after going into voidform to slow down your insanity rate which then lets you stay in voidform longer and get more stacks. On top of this it's one thing to say you're using voidbolt on cd but technically you really need to using LITERALLY on cd. The difference being even delaying casting a spell for half a GCD if voidbolt will come up in that time. It's faaaar better to do nothing for half a GCD waiting for voidbolt than to cast mindflay and be half a GCD late on voidbolt. Sounds counter productive but voidbolt really is that important.

Hope this helped.

EDIT: Just looked at your armory and someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Void Ray > Reaper of Souls UNLESS you're taking StM

[Wobbythemage]

Well good news is you just found your problem. 20-25 stack of voidform is semi-decent for your standard voidforms but once and a while you should be able to get a, for lack of a better word, "super-voidform? lol" where you can get it up into the 30 and even to 40 stack range. This all comes from dispersion of course. Use dispersion shortly after going into voidform to slow down your insanity rate which then lets you stay in voidform longer and get more stacks. On top of this it's one thing to say you're using voidbolt on cd but technically you really need to using LITERALLY on cd. The difference being even delaying casting a spell for half a GCD if voidbolt will come up in that time. It's faaaar better to do nothing for half a GCD waiting for voidbolt than to cast mindflay and be half a GCD late on voidbolt. Sounds counter productive but voidbolt really is that important.

Hope this helped.

EDIT: Just looked at your armory and someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Void Ray > Reaper of Souls UNLESS you're taking StM

Thanks for that, i am in same situation as the OP, i'm new to priest as i'm going to be rolling it as my new main, after reading this thread i've figured out what i'm doing wrong for single target fights anyway

have been popping dispersion at the end of voidform not the start >.<, and have been averaging 25-28 stacks on first voidform

Good thread thanks heapz !

[Thrayne]

Well good news is you just found your problem. 20-25 stack of voidform is semi-decent for your standard voidforms but once and a while you should be able to get a, for lack of a better word, "super-voidform? lol" where you can get it up into the 30 and even to 40 stack range. This all comes from dispersion of course. Use dispersion shortly after going into voidform to slow down your insanity rate which then lets you stay in voidform longer and get more stacks. On top of this it's one thing to say you're using voidbolt on cd but technically you really need to using LITERALLY on cd. The difference being even delaying casting a spell for half a GCD if voidbolt will come up in that time. It's faaaar better to do nothing for half a GCD waiting for voidbolt than to cast mindflay and be half a GCD late on voidbolt. Sounds counter productive but voidbolt really is that important.

Hope this helped.

EDIT: Just looked at your armory and someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Void Ray > Reaper of Souls UNLESS you're taking StM

Thanks it has helped some still can't get void bolt to my #1 damage spell

[Micronetic]

What if you gained 20-30-40 stacks in voidform, do you go into voidform again when the insanity hits or you just wait till the buff expires?

Use dispersion shortly after going into voidform to slow down your insanity rate which then lets you stay in voidform longer and get more stacks.

Do you cancel Dispersion instantly with a macro or do you wait till it is over?

[Deleted]

Do you cancel Dispersion instantly with a macro or do you wait till it is over?

You wait till it's over because it's not the cast but dispersion itself that block the insanity decay (and that block the increase in insanity decay).

[Deleted]

The biggest difference in my logs from yours (besides dps) is void bolt % in a a 5 minute fight my void bolt isn't my top damage spell despite voidbolting on cooldown.

Probably because i still have so much mastery in my gear, don't worry about that. And secondly, i played with fortress of the mind and void lord because of no execute range (training dummy's hp was aroun 90 - 100%). Normally reaper of souls and twist of fate is way better for pretty much every fight (ofc it sucks if you die before boss reach low hp). So if you test your dps on training dummy, take "no execute" talents.

Void Ray > Reaper of Souls UNLESS you're taking StM

I would rather say: Reaper of souls -> void lord -> Void ray unless you are using class trinket.

[hikamiro]

Probably because i still have so much mastery in my gear, don't worry about that. And secondly, i played with fortress of the mind and void lord because of no execute range (training dummy's hp was aroun 90 - 100%). Normally reaper of souls and twist of fate is way better for pretty much every fight (ofc it sucks if you die before boss reach low hp). So if you test your dps on training dummy, take "no execute" talents.



I would rather say: Reaper of souls -> void lord -> Void ray unless you are using class trinket.

Lots of top parses on fights are void Ray even without the class trinket.

[Sxq]

Void ray is going to pull ahead on super short fights no matter what. If you're killing shit in 30 seconds you don't need the insanity generation from RoS, and SWD doesn't do enough damage for you to care if you get 1 extra use in at 35%. You don't get any benefit from Void Lord. So might as well go Void Ray for a tiny bit of bonus flay damage.

Good example of why top parses are rarely a reliable source of info for normal play.

[truggles]

What if you gained 20-30-40 stacks in voidform, do you go into voidform again when the insanity hits or you just wait till the buff expires?

Yes regardless of how good your stack count is you want to be going back into voidform as soon as you can. The 20% dmg buff is always going to outweigh whatever haste amount you have from your previous buff. The only exception to this is if you know there's going to be a part of the fight coming up where you can't do damage such as an RP cut-scene or a raidwide stun for some reason. Then it's obviously better to wait till that's over.

[Menae]

What if you gained 20-30-40 stacks in voidform, do you go into voidform again when the insanity hits or you just wait till the buff expires?

Not going back into voidform costs you in threeways (more once legion is live):

You lose the 20% damage buff.
You lose ~15% of your globals to dot recasting instead of void bolt damage
Another ~18% of your globals which would have been spent casting void bolt are now spent casting mind flay.
Legion only: you lose Mass Hysteria buffs to your dots
Legion only: you can't cast Void Torrent
Legion only: you don't get Sphere of Insanity
Legion only: Legendaries mostly favor being in void form

If having enough Lingering Insanity outweighs these things, then you should not enter void form, but it would require a lot of stacks followed by the knowledge that you would have a really shitty void form afterwards. Something like 90-100 stack VF followed by a 20 stack, maybe?