Help me get my dps up? Long-term shadow priest potentially underperforming

[DeltrusDisc]

Howdy friends and thanks for taking a look at my thread!

Came back to WoW about a month ago, and I've started up with a fairly casual raiding guild (6 hours a week spread equally across 3 nights, it's pretty nice) and my dps just doesn't seem to be up to par. Granted a lot of these people in my guild are anywhere from 5-10 ilevels above me, many with their best legendary pieces, but I still question my performance and so do they, though they figure it's mostly from gear. Prime example of them believing my skill isn't an issue is seeing how I ran with them on heroic Nighthold and without reading/seeing a strat and just hearing an overview of the fight over Discord, I managed to stay alive through heroic Elisande, so they were all happy to have me join.

Here's my armory: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...mrage/deltress

4 piece tier was only achieved tonight after The Desolate Host. I then switched from the legendary shoulders to the 900 tier I am now wearing.

UPDATED logs from the OP: Here's 8/9 heroic last night (August 1), they forgot to log the heroic KJ kill tonight. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dVTaMjr4Rkn1AJwY (As you can see I was not doing well, I think some of that has to do with waking up 10 minutes late for raid and was feeling sick to my stomach the entire raid.)

Here's a solid normal run (July 27) where we had some very high-end parsers and even I was able to do better numbers. Now if only I could do that consistently... https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings
(Feel free to check out that night's entire normal ToS raid)

Hopefully my next legendary will at least be either the belt or cloak, but who knows when that will be, I only got the chest a week ago.

Thanks ahead of time for any help!

All of the legendaries I have:

Wrist, chest, Twins ring, shoulders, Zeks cloak.

In my bags:

I have 935 tier cloak.
930 tier chest.
925 haste/mastery wrists.
915 haste/crit helm.
915 Haste/crit shoulders.
905 haste/mastery pants.

Trinkets:
915 Charm of the Rising Tide
910 Tome of Unraveling Sanity
895 Whispers in the Dark
890 Erratic Metronome

[Valette]

Hi. I don't quite have the time right now to look deeply into why, but your voidform stacks (how long you're staying in voidform) does seem a little bit low for your gear. I do see you're casting your mindbender at the start of the encounters, don't do that. You want to save it and use it as late in your voidform as you can manage and fall out of voidform about the same time mindbender despawns. Thats usually around 25ish stacks.

If you dont know about it already, you should really check out howtopriest.com. You can also use their discord, there's a ton of discussions and information going on there.
https://discord.gg/HowToPriest

- - - Updated - - -

I personally hate whispers in the dark. And would change it out for the charm for any fight you can reliably stand atleast 5ish seconds in it (preferably all 10)

[DeltrusDisc]

Hi. I don't quite have the time right now to look deeply into why, but your voidform stacks (how long you're staying in voidform) does seem a little bit low for your gear. I do see you're casting your mindbender at the start of the encounters, don't do that. You want to save it and use it as late in your voidform as you can manage and fall out of voidform about the same time mindbender despawns. Thats usually around 25ish stacks.

If you dont know about it already, you should really check out howtopriest.com. You can also use their discord, there's a ton of discussions and information going on there.
https://discord.gg/HowToPriest

- - - Updated - - -

I personally hate whisper's in the dark. And would change it out for the charm for any fight you can reliably stand atleast 5ish seconds in it (preferably all 10)

Damn...

I just tried that out on a dummy and holy smokes... Pulling near 1 mil with only food buff left over from raid. With flask, pots? Who knows... obviously movement will affect it, but gah. I feel like a bad now! I need to remember to read the entire tooltip on things, I didn't realize that about mindbender. =X

[Waynebrady]

Here are some good suggestions I have gathered. I have also been looking for input to improve my DPS, although mine is around the 900k mark.

For raids:

1. Stack Haste and Crit (We used to stack Haste/Master with San'Layn)
2. Use Auspicious Spirits and Mindbender
3. Use Mindbender at 20-30 stacks, preferably 30 if you can manage it (I find 25 to be manageable)
4. I find that using Void Torrent towards the end outputs more damage out of Void Torrent and helps me get to that 50-55 stacks of VF
5. Obviously utilize Lingering Insanity to get back into VF asap

[DeltrusDisc]

Here are some good suggestions I have gathered. I have also been looking for input to improve my DPS, although mine is around the 900k mark.

For raids:

1. Stack Haste and Crit (We used to stack Haste/Master with San'Layn)
2. Use Auspicious Spirits and Mindbender
3. Use Mindbender at 20-30 stacks, preferably 30 if you can manage it (I find 25 to be manageable)
4. I find that using Void Torrent towards the end outputs more damage out of Void Torrent and helps me get to that 50-55 stacks of VF
5. Obviously utilize Lingering Insanity to get back into VF asap

Thanks, I do however do all of these things. :P The Mindbender thing was an issue until the person above mentioned it. ^_^

Void Torrent should be used on CD, actually.

I aim to stack haste/crit but gear has been crap for me overall. Gotten a couple decent ones recently, but for instance, still running with a damned 885 neck. I've always been an AS priest.

[Annesh]

Holy shit I was just looking at your logs yesterday, sort of. I raided with your guildie Pypo one night a few weeks ago, he joined my weekly pug. He basically complimented my DPS on Mistress and I was feeling nostalgic, so I was looking at his logs and saw your parses in there and took a look because we're both shadow priests and yeah.

Anyway unfortunately I'm not very good at reading logs to identify rotational issues. I will say that yeah your gear is pretty awful. The right leggos is a pretty big deal, belt and Sephuz, and your haste is a good 10% too low, which is gigantic. I know you don't control what drops for you, but that's a big part of your problem. Not all of it, most likely. But a lot. You did 811k on your July 11th Goroth, which parsed in the 57% percentile. That isn't that bad. That tells me that the potential is there, and personally I think you just need practice. Knowing exactly what button to press and when, and where to stand, and what you're going to be doing in the next 5-10 seconds. It's a hard spec to do well with. It's also likely that the spec is wildly different from what you're used to, whenever you played last. The Mindbender timing thing that you seem to have already fixed is a big big deal too.

Couple things: you speak of a shadow priest dot bug, but I'm not aware of any such thing. What are you experiencing, exactly? Also, it's not 100% accurate to say that Void Torrent should be used on CD, as in the first thing you do every Void phase. That's how guides have been written this tier, but some very high level shadowpriests have been waiting for later into the phase before Torrenting, not just because it gives more ticks of Torrent but because you're extending the phase by longer that way. The idea goes that the insanity decay delay mechanism of Void Torrent is better used when the decay is fast, especially if you have your Mindbender up and refreshing insanity. I myself have been experimenting with waiting until about 20-25 stacks before Torrenting, and I've found that I can achieve 2-3 extra seconds of Voidform, on average, that way. I average about 53-55 stacks, often reaching to like 58 if I do everything well. My best yet was a 61 second voidform, mostly because Heroism was busted at about 25 stacks, so I had it for the higher stacks. I must've also had good tentacle and apparition RNG. I'm sure a better spriest could do even better.

Ultimately the "correct" timing for VTor depends on how long the fight is going to be. If the exact fight length will allow for an extra VTor at the end if you bust it immediately, then that's the right decision. If you won't get an extra if you do that, then it's better to wait. But that's a super high level tactic that only works if fight length is predictable, which usually only happens in really strong, like 6/9 mythic guilds on their weekly plowing through of Heroic, fishing for titanforged crap.

Anyway, tell Pypo I said hi! He was cool.

[Deleted]

Yeah, your main problem is that your void forms are really small. On average you only last about 30 seconds (kek), hence the bad damage. Ideally you want something i like to call "cycles" that last 60 seconds or more. A cycle is time between finishing casting void eruption to finishing casting next void eruption. I.e. it's the entire duration of your void form, time spent getting insanity back up after it ends, and time spent casting your next VErr. Once it hits 60 seconds, it means you can use your cooldowns (VoiT and mindbender) every void form. This means you want your VFs to last around 50-55 seconds on average. You can get that by extending your VFs using said cooldowns. VoiT timing does not matter, but if you're struggling, you can delay it to 20+ stacks, so that while you channel it, some of your insanity would be restored by AS. The main helper would be mindbender, which generally allows you to stay in VF for the entire duration, given you did not cast it too late. Also, be weary of "slipping". It's when your cycle ends before hitting 60 seconds. Sometimes you'll fuck up, dropping out at 40 stacks, and there's nothing you can do. But the worse ones are when your cycle is just under 60 seconds. That means in your next voidform MB will still be on CD at the stacks you used it before, forcing you to use it later, increasing the chance that you will drop out early. Sometimes it's worth delaying VErr, and staying at 100 insanity for a few seconds, sometimes it's better to just eat a small VF next time, to readjust timings. As you play more, you'll learn to recognize when to do what.

Some additional things I've noticed:

Your gear needs some work. I know legendaries are a pita and you don't have much control, but you can try spending nethershards, attempting to target a specific one. That would be sephuz's. Regarding tier pieces, you don't want to be using gloves and shoulders, they have horrible stats.

Your casts are very frantic. Check them in the logs, mainly MB and VB. They are all over the place, while what you want, are near mechanical, same interval casts, especially for VB. MB can be a bit erratic, delaying it here and there for VB, and sometimes you would loose almost a GCD when you started casting MB when VB was almost off CD, but ultimately only reason you should not be casting VB is because you're channeling VoiT.

Strangely, I've noticed your damage sometimes goes down at the end of the fight, even though it should be your highest phase. Make sure you don't just cast SWD on CD, but instead prevent it from capping, and use the rest of the charges to fill in flay channels and extend your VF.

You're using deadly grace potions. Stop it, use PP.

[DeltrusDisc]

This thread is a bit out-dated, I'll fix the OP to have a newer log, since at least now I am pushing into the 40s, potentially upper 50s in Voidforms, as I did seek help from some of the moderators at Howtopriest.

Reason I am using glove and shoulder tier, believe me I know they're not BIS, is simply for the 4pc. When I get the proper legendaries, I'll be able to afford changing out the legendary cloak and chest that I have equipped now. It's frustrating to use a crit/vers 900 tier shoulder when I know I have a haste/crit 915. >_<

Here's 8/9 heroic last night, they forgot to log the heroic KJ kill tonight. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dVTaMjr4Rkn1AJwY (As you can see I was not doing well, I think some of that has to do with waking up 10 minutes late for raid and was feeling sick to my stomach the entire raid.)

Here's a solid normal run where we had some very high-end parsers and even I was able to do better numbers. Now if only I could do that consistently... https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings
(Feel free to check out that night's entire normal ToS raid)

And thanks for the pointer about PP potions! I didn't know we had switched to them!

- - - Updated - - -

Holy shit I was just looking at your logs yesterday, sort of. I raided with your guildie Pypo one night a few weeks ago, he joined my weekly pug. He basically complimented my DPS on Mistress and I was feeling nostalgic, so I was looking at his logs and saw your parses in there and took a look because we're both shadow priests and yeah.

Anyway unfortunately I'm not very good at reading logs to identify rotational issues. I will say that yeah your gear is pretty awful. The right leggos is a pretty big deal, belt and Sephuz, and your haste is a good 10% too low, which is gigantic. I know you don't control what drops for you, but that's a big part of your problem. Not all of it, most likely. But a lot. You did 811k on your July 11th Goroth, which parsed in the 57% percentile. That isn't that bad. That tells me that the potential is there, and personally I think you just need practice. Knowing exactly what button to press and when, and where to stand, and what you're going to be doing in the next 5-10 seconds. It's a hard spec to do well with. It's also likely that the spec is wildly different from what you're used to, whenever you played last. The Mindbender timing thing that you seem to have already fixed is a big big deal too.

Couple things: you speak of a shadow priest dot bug, but I'm not aware of any such thing. What are you experiencing, exactly? Also, it's not 100% accurate to say that Void Torrent should be used on CD, as in the first thing you do every Void phase. That's how guides have been written this tier, but some very high level shadowpriests have been waiting for later into the phase before Torrenting, not just because it gives more ticks of Torrent but because you're extending the phase by longer that way. The idea goes that the insanity decay delay mechanism of Void Torrent is better used when the decay is fast, especially if you have your Mindbender up and refreshing insanity. I myself have been experimenting with waiting until about 20-25 stacks before Torrenting, and I've found that I can achieve 2-3 extra seconds of Voidform, on average, that way. I average about 53-55 stacks, often reaching to like 58 if I do everything well. My best yet was a 61 second voidform, mostly because Heroism was busted at about 25 stacks, so I had it for the higher stacks. I must've also had good tentacle and apparition RNG. I'm sure a better spriest could do even better.

Ultimately the "correct" timing for VTor depends on how long the fight is going to be. If the exact fight length will allow for an extra VTor at the end if you bust it immediately, then that's the right decision. If you won't get an extra if you do that, then it's better to wait. But that's a super high level tactic that only works if fight length is predictable, which usually only happens in really strong, like 6/9 mythic guilds on their weekly plowing through of Heroic, fishing for titanforged crap.

Anyway, tell Pypo I said hi! He was cool.

lol took him a moment to realize who I was talking about, he says you're a gangster. :P

You say my haste is a good 10% too low, how much are you suggesting? I'm currently at 41% out of raid, unbuffed, and sometimes the haste gets overwhelming in comparison to GCD, to be honest with you, at high voidform/heroism, so idk how much more is really smart. At some point crit likely has to take over as top stat, no?

[Annesh]

You say my haste is a good 10% too low, how much are you suggesting? I'm currently at 41% out of raid, unbuffed, and sometimes the haste gets overwhelming in comparison to GCD, to be honest with you, at high voidform/heroism, so idk how much more is really smart. At some point crit likely has to take over as top stat, no?

Ah you must've gotten some big upgrades, you were at 27% when I commented. How is your dps now?

[Clrg]

I looked at your avatar log and what happen in the first 30 seconds of the fight? you cancel your void eruption, then casted mind flay, mind blast mind flay again then vampiric touch, you didnt casted void torrent at all, next vf you used mindbender 20 seconds in to your void form, i understand that the first unbound chaos is a few seconds in to the fight but your priority is getting into void form asap.

I know your ilvl is low and you dont have the bis leg but you need a lot of work in the basic: Void form is love, void form is life, your damage outside VF is crap, get in to void form then torrent, mindbender around 25 stacks with your gear and avoid "bleeding" mindbender, this mean stay in void form for the entire duration of mindbender, can you hold 50-53 stacks? then try to use mindbender 1-2 seconds later, keep in mind of the mechanics too, like using mindbender at 30 stacks then droping around 45 stacks because you need to do a mechanic and you cant hit the boss then your next void form you arent going to have mindbender.

Your haste is more than fine, i recommend watching videos and streams of shadow pov and see what they do.

[DeltrusDisc]

Ah you must've gotten some big upgrades, you were at 27% when I commented. How is your dps now?

Still less than what I'd like to have, however I'm being told I've massively improved, but it's like, well of course guys, not 880 anymore, and I have my rotation at least not completely wasting Mindbender. >_< I posted some new log links.

I looked at your avatar log and what happen in the first 30 seconds of the fight? you cancel your void eruption, then casted mind flay, mind blast mind flay again then vampiric touch, you didnt casted void torrent at all, next vf you used mindbender 20 seconds in to your void form, i understand that the first unbound chaos is a few seconds in to the fight but your priority is getting into void form asap.

I know your ilvl is low and you dont have the bis leg but you need a lot of work in the basic: Void form is love, void form is life, your damage outside VF is crap, get in to void form then torrent, mindbender around 25 stacks with your gear and avoid "bleeding" mindbender, this mean stay in void form for the entire duration of mindbender, can you hold 50-53 stacks? then try to use mindbender 1-2 seconds later, keep in mind of the mechanics too, like using mindbender at 30 stacks then droping around 45 stacks because you need to do a mechanic and you cant hit the boss then your next void form you arent going to have mindbender.

Your haste is more than fine, i recommend watching videos and streams of shadow pov and see what they do.

Aw hell lol asking what happened specifically in a particular fight? Uhhh... guessing some mechanic forced me to move? =S

Sigh, I miss the days of StM being the winner.

[Annesh]

Avatar first 15 seconds is weird, Unbound Chaos happens right when you get 65 insanity, so often if you actually finish your VEru cast you'll die.

[Deleted]

Your casts have gotten better, keep working on that. But I also notice your cooldown usage is still shaky. You generally don't want to use VoiT after MB, unless you are forced to by mechanics. I see you often delay it to good 40 seconds in tot he fight, making you loose a cast or two over the course of the fight. Casting it early slows down insanity drain relative to your VF stacks, so it's more beneficial to use it early, as it makes higher stacks easier. Latest you want to use it is ~26 stacks, especially in the opening. Earliest it can be cast is right after VErr.

I would suggest you doing a good half an hour of practice on the dummies, so that you're much more comfortable with he rotation. Makes dealing with fight mechanics way easier. BTW, if you're gonna use the class hall ones, make sure you put SWP on a different dummy, from the one you're attacking. That way you will still get insanity from AS, but not from mind sear, effectively simulating single target fight.

Right now you need to work on your voidform consistency. You have enough gear to pull off 60 second cycle, you just need to get used to it. Sure, there are fights that suck for us timing wise, like Harjatan's adds spawning at the time when applying dots can drop you out of VF, maiden's first blowback being at the worst possible time or previously mentioned avatar's UC timing, but they can be dealt with planning ahead, while your voidforms vary drastically even outside of those hurdles. Remember that unlike many other classes, shadow does not get a get out of jail free card like a blink or displacer beast, so you need to plan ahead for mechanics and be as selfish as you can, without actively harming the raid.

Avatar first 15 seconds is weird, Unbound Chaos happens right when you get 65 insanity, so often if you actually finish your VEru cast you'll die.

It depends on your haste and crit, I get through VErr and a tick of mindflay, before I have to move. But it does mean you can't do double VoiT opener there, which is really annoying.