Shadow Priest Single Target DPS

[Tihr]

Our utility is 3% hit, Replenishment and VE. That's it.

It's down to Blizz to realise we're underpowered, even as a hybrid dps, and buff us slightly. Even 500-600 or so dps would make a lot of difference. I'm used to sitting at the bottom of the meters on tank and spank style fights, along with our Ele Shaman, but since 3.2.2, he's a lot higher. Their buffs were considerably better than ours, which I cannot understand.

[Alesna]

10m Anub HM, Caster group?
Going for Mad Skill atleast?
don't want a shadow priest?
yea i thought so.

Sure shadow priests are fun, but Im not a care bear casual who will settle for play style.
SHADOW PRIESTS NEED DPS OR UTILITY, if you disagree, there is no words to describe how ignorant you are.

After getting mad skill quite easily...(49 attempts remaining, wiped on anub at 4000 HP because holy paladin DC'd at 12%)
I don't really see how shadow priests' dps is lacking...
here is a World of Logs - log from our heroic 10 anub kill:



As you can see.... our shadow priest is the top damage/dps.
So I don't see why you would sit a shadow priest when trying to go for mad skill?

[Weena]

After getting mad skill quite easily...(49 attempts remaining, wiped on anub at 4000 HP because holy paladin DC'd at 12%)
I don't really see how shadow priests' dps is lacking...
here is a World of Logs - log from our heroic 10 anub kill:



As you can see.... our shadow priest is the top damage/dps.
So I don't see why you would sit a shadow priest when trying to go for mad skill?

^^ THIS MAN CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HIS TALKING ABOUT. Here have this WWS of me just dpsing dummies - http://wowwebstats.com/dg6wc3zzny5wc. This shows that i can do 7,773 dps unbuffed, arnt i amazing?? No really you linked a WMO that shows a shadowpriest doing 6k dps, which is perfectly acceptable, but still the other dps is lowish and the fight in 10man depending on your strat can favour that shadowpriest. Oh and to be sure, there isnt any tab dotting what-so-ever on Anub 10man hardmode, amirite???

[Zka]

My gear is itemized correctly. I gem for crit/sp as disc

Crit gemming is quite stupid as disc, even if you only tank-heal.

[zamolxis]

Here have this WWS of me just dpsing dummies - http://wowwebstats.com/dg6wc3zzny5wc. This shows that i can do 7,773 dps unbuffed, arnt i amazing??

Tab dotting 4 target dummies is not relevant - or mb I missed your point and I actually agree with you
Multidotting is not what it was back in TBC. Back then it was a way of life . Doing it now on some fights where strong single target dps is needed makes me feel like a cheat (recount epeen)

Felt a little bumbed when our shaman heal leader turned offspecc enhancement on beast 25hm last night and actually did more dps O.o while I did a pretty nice 5,7k

Two issues affecting us atm:
1. Our single target dps is 10-15% below others (nuke down the kobolds any1 or heart dmg etc etc etc)
2. Casters just dont scale with each other as good as melee do. Melee scale so damn nice with eachother and have so much sinergy it makes me go "bleahhh why do I bother" on some fights. If our elem shammy or boomkin is held up and can't raid I feel like cancelling as well

[Worshaka]

I Rolled my Spriest IN BC, I don't have a problem with being last on DPS, this is because shadow priest had the single most unique and overpowered utility in the game.
Now that Blizzard are completely retarded and we suddenly want to bring the player, not the class + a Shaman + a Demo Lock + god knows what if u want to min/max DPS.
You are right to an extent that you are talking from a casual PoV.
Me? I want to be useful in a raid.

I can think of 1 Fight we utterly shine on in wotlk, that is ONY, hell, casters are supposed to be on Ony herself anyway.
Inb4 mim/freya/yogg
Once people are comfortable with said fights they start to increase their dps/damage done.

Lets talk about Anub25 HM
-Swarm Scarab, after each burrow phase and there is a million and 1 adds running around lots of movement too, sounds like it is good for spriest dps? well it is until you want to do hardmode and everyone gathers around and melee AoE them down whilst u get 1-2 puny VT ticks.
-Burrowers, VT+SWP all the adds is the 2nd best aspect of this fight for spriest since they have a decent health pool and you get a full VT duration out of them
-Phase 3, VE/DP > Leeching Swarm, without ANY heals i stay at 7k Hp give or take, which is crap.
i NEED to be at 2-3k HP,but it does heal the group for a good ammount, combined with a Shamans healing stream that group requires no heals unless they get penetrating cold. THIS IS HARDMODE NOT LETS PICK FLOWERS AND THROW THEM AT ANUB AND JUST HEAL LIKE NORMAL 25M.

10m Anub HM, Caster group?
Going for Mad Skill atleast?
don't want a shadow priest?
yea i thought so.

Sure shadow priests are fun, but Im not a care bear casual who will settle for play style.
SHADOW PRIESTS NEED DPS OR UTILITY, if you disagree, there is no words to describe how ignorant you are.

If this is true then why do high end guilds still take spriests on world first kills and why do people still spec shadow? If what you say was 100% true this wouldn't occur.

[Strykzor]

If this is true then why do high end guilds still take spriests on world first kills and why do people still spec shadow? If what you say was 100% true this wouldn't occur.

15% reduced magic damage, Self healing, Fade, Dispersion.
Basically, survivability.

Also @ person who posted WoL, post the actual log and not a SS, also other dps sucked.
I do 6-7.5k DPS depending on Pursues Etc

[Alesna]

^^ THIS MAN CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HIS TALKING ABOUT. Here have this WWS of me just dpsing dummies - http://wowwebstats.com/dg6wc3zzny5wc. This shows that i can do 7,773 dps unbuffed, arnt i amazing?? No really you linked a WMO that shows a shadowpriest doing 6k dps, which is perfectly acceptable, but still the other dps is lowish and the fight in 10man depending on your strat can favour that shadowpriest. Oh and to be sure, there isnt any tab dotting what-so-ever on Anub 10man hardmode, amirite???

First of all, the reason I posted that, if you bothered to read my post, was because the person I quoted had said that you wouldn't bring a shadow priest to mad skill/insanity for 10 man. I never said there weren't multiple targets to dot. I was merely showing that we got mad skill(barely missed insanity, 4k HP wipe) with a shadow priest not only present, but at the top.

Also @ person who posted WoL, post the actual log and not a SS, also other dps sucked.
I do 6-7.5k DPS depending on Pursues Etc

You were going on about how no one would take a shadow priest to heroic anub 10 for mad skill,
all I did was merely post a screenshot of our mad skill kill with a shadow priest at the top.
Sure, shadow priests could use a buff DPS wise, but they are by no means so gimped that they shouldn't be taken to a 10/25 man.

[Strykzor]

Sure, shadow priests could use a buff DPS wise, but they are by no means so gimped

Okay Shadow Priests aren't Gimp, Every other class is overpowered.

That WoL report i can see that a warrior is doing very little DPS.
He has
Mangle
Leader of the pack
Faire Fire
Shaman totems
Pally buffs
and POSSIBLY 10% ap.
Yet is sitting smack in the middle of the DPS? lol okay.

Shadow Priest has Elemental to buff them, so i would have to say that shadow priest has a decent clue how to play but the rest of the group, i would have to say are hardly playing near their full potential.

[walach]

of course that picture shows nothing of gear. it could be that the shadow priest is stacked with a lot of 245+ stuff while the others are not. certainly a warrior with middling weapons is going to do middling dps regardless of buffs (at least that's what i've seen in guild runs and pugs alike)

i agree tbh - shadow needs a buff, but they're hardly so useless nobody would take them.

and imo, better the current situation than in TBC where 'it's ok you guys are miles at the bottom, because you have VE/VT' .... ><

[Greid]

Shadow isn't dead, it's still a viable spec, but only 1 per raid in all actuality.

If i could copy all of my gear exactly to a warlock, I would be doing A LOT more dps on almost every fight, i mean that, every fight...affliction can multi dot and be awesome at yogg and onxyia, desto can own the single target meters, and locks have more utility.

Survivability is nice, but when exactly does a proper raid RELY on one caster's ability to survive (Not counting algalon shadow-tanks), basically if i need to use dispersion defensively something has slipped and 15% DAMAGE REDUCTION!!!! ....that's nice, so the add hitting me for 20k will hit me for 17k....i win.

There are issues with scaling (no reason to have over 350 haste and theres way too much hit and spirit on everything still) and mind flay is buggy and messy. That being said, i still have fun with it when it all works out and i get the timing perfect, its the most satisfying dps class to play (t9 2-peice ruins that)

[Deleted]

If this is true then why do high end guilds still take spriests on world first kills and why do people still spec shadow? If what you say was 100% true this wouldn't occur.

They usually take 1 spriest, there could be many reasons why:

1. because he/she is an exceptional player
2. because there is no other geared dps to replace the spriests spots
3. because the raidleader is not an #@!hole and doesn't want to bench a loyal guildie when the raid dps is suffient even with the spriest

The reason I still spec shadow is because there is no other choice if you want to dps. I'm cba to reroll a warlock/mage 3 tiers into the expansion. People don't want to abandon the char they've put a lot of work in and that's why spriests won't dissappear in WotLK no matter how bad they get. If spriest had been in this bad state at the start of WotLk, there would be practicly none right now, same goes for TBC. The threshold to reroll in early content is much smaller.

Because of the above, I don't think spriest representation can be used as a measure of the spec performance, the results are not comparable to classes with 2-3 dps specs. If Affliction was the only warlock dps spec, their representation would be a lot higher in raids right now, maybe even 1 or 2 in top guilds runs. They were also strong in early content and now they are tolerable, like spriest. Affliction warlocks didn't have to stick with the broken pve spec though, as they could respec destro.

It's pretty clear that spriest dps is not top notch and the only unique utility is VE, so in a 25-man raid it's hard for me to argue why a RL should take even one spriest and not a mage/warlock/ele shaman/hunter/boomkin instead. I can't think of any good reason within the game mechanics why not to raid without a spriest, which brings me back to my earlier points 1.-3.

[Worshaka]

They usually take 1 spriest, there could be many reasons why:

1. because he/she is an exceptional player
2. because there is no other geared dps to replace the spriests spots
3. because the raidleader is not an #@!hole and doesn't want to bench a loyal guildie when the raid dps is suffient even with the spriest

So you are in agreement that spriest dps isn't so low as to compromise the raid and guilds have the luxury to bring the player and not the class which is the curret design philosphy. I'm really not seeing any evidence how comparitively lower spriest dps is a negative thing other than the fact it doesn't stroke the egos of individuals who think the be all and end all rests with dps meters.

[Heywes]

So you are in agreement that spriest dps isn't so low as to compromise the raid and guilds have the luxury to bring the player and not the class which is the curret design philosphy. I'm really not seeing any evidence how comparitively lower spriest dps is a negative thing other than the fact it doesn't stroke the egos of individuals who think the be all and end all rests with dps meters.

those are the sorts of people who are idiots and do not belong in the raids.
Shadow priest single target dps needs to be buffed, it is currently too low. Bring the player over the class is great, but when you are looking to get the most damage out of the raid to defeat a boss and it is solely single target damage, then shadow priests just don't cut it.

[Deleted]

So you are in agreement that spriest dps isn't so low as to compromise the raid and guilds have the luxury to bring the player and not the class which is the curret design philosphy.

I don't think you read my whole post or then you just intentionally ignored the rest of it. Within the game there is no good reason to take a single spriest to 25man ToC, just take another arcane mage for example, loss:VE, gain: 1000-2000dps more raid dps. There is no luxury of bringing 2-3 spriest to a raid, no matter how good they are, without severely gimping the raid performance.

The benched spriests in top guilds might disagree with "bring the player, not the class" happening.

I'm really not seeing any evidence how comparitively lower spriest dps is a negative thing other than the fact it doesn't stroke the egos of individuals who think the be all and end all rests with dps meters.

A dps spec performance is measured by dps + utility. You don't see how low dps could be a negative thing as dps spec? What can I say to that.. ???
Is there something spriest can do better than others that doesn't show on meters? What is it?

[pistonhonda]

before i get flamed to death here check this out. so i do have a clue of what im talking about:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/553/6129dps.jpg
its no burst... boss is allrdy at 45% and without poping hero. got to 7.1 when hero was poped + fiend closer to the kill.

the only problem is see with single target dps is the relatively long "setup time".
we switch targets (if old target aint ticking with dots for some reason) we loose dps.

not like mages,boomkins,destros,ellies with relatively small set up time our dps mostly dots based starts ticking only like 15-20 sec into the fight.
thats around 7-8 sec of seting up all dots and stacks and another 7-8 sec to compensate for the first 7-8 seting up low dmg...

that means that any boss that resets (changes phases like xt heart, toc worms, razor p1, anubarak p1, etc) you have like 15 sec each "reset" before u truly start hitting hard, and if u can hit the boss for 45 sec before next reset that means your max dps will be ticking for only about 30 of his uptime.

now for your problem:
GEAR - if you were holy meaning most of your gear is spirit stacked forget about dpsing... you need spellpower and crit as your main stats.
i do not know what gear you have but im guessing its not dps oriented, so first get some dps gearing spellpower and crit max those as much as you can. as some one said 15% crit is very low.
and ofc glyphs...

Rotation - are you sure u keep all dots up? in the correct order? do you clip VT or DP? do you clip mindflay where you shouldnt ? or do clip it when you should?
most bosses arent single target do you multi dot and keep all offtargets doted (with bos)? do you pop fiend and other trinkets use on hero?

EDIT:
get improved shadow form as a shadow priest u channeling alot of your mindflay and each aoe hit steals from you one tick or so... on a 8 min boss fight thats alot of downtime.
and get a spd increase enchant for your boots if u dont have it allrdy. get out of bad stuff faster meaning more time for doing your job.

can someone tell me what this guy is using for a cooldown timer?

[isfry]

They usually take 1 spriest, there could be many reasons why:

1. because he/she is an exceptional player
2. because there is no other geared dps to replace the spriests spots
3. because the raidleader is not an #@!hole and doesn't want to bench a loyal guildie when the raid dps is suffient even with the spriest

Yeah in the guild i am in on 25 mans they still take me, the token Spriest, but on 10 man heroic runs i am on the bench unless there is poor turn-out or the 2nd night of it.

[Worshaka]

You all miss the point again... spriests are still involved in world first kills. You are saying spriest dps is too low and needs to be buffed. If this was true and spriest dps was so low as to compromise a raid then world first kills wouldn't involve spriests.

The very fact that spriests are in those world first kills shows that the top end guilds are not subbing our spriests in favour for other classes. It also shows that while the spriest dps isn't as high as most the other classes that lack of dps isn't preventing them from clearing the hardest content available.

Simply stating over and over again that something needs to change completely ignores my argument that in the current state our dps level isn't preventing anyone from clearing content. If we can clear content just fine as we are the only need for a change is to make people feel better about where they stand on the dps meters. As i've stated before the people who play wow are very vain and think dps meters are the be all and end all. There is very little team thinking, who for example talks about raid dps? These forums are littered with, how can I do more damage, why is my dps is so low... there is 0 thought for how your total raid works together.

Fact is 99% of people who play dps want the dps meter to reflect how great they think they are personally. As stated our dps isn't so low to compromise the ability to participate in world first content which is the hardest thing you can do PvE wise in the game. Until the top end guilds uniformly stop taking spriests citing that their dps is a hinderance you are really pushing shit uphill to convince anyone that our dps is so bad we can't contribute.

[Worshaka]

This post makes a far better argument to my opposing point of view... if a lot of the high end guilds take the same philosophy you start to have a compelling argument. However at this stage Ensidia are still prepared to take 1 spriest, so it's not like the class is being completely ostrasiced and we are talking about a very cutting edge guild who are paid (sponsered) to play and get world first kills.

At the end of the day taking a couple of spriests won't stop any guild clearing content, perhaps it might stop them being cutting edge competitive for world first kills.

[isfry]

This post makes a far better argument to my opposing point of view... if a lot of the high end guilds take the same philosophy you start to have a compelling argument. However at this stage Ensidia are still prepared to take 1 spriest, so it's not like the class is being completely ostrasiced and we are talking about a very cutting edge guild who are paid (sponsered) to play and get world first kills.

At the end of the day taking a couple of spriests won't stop any guild clearing content, perhaps it might stop them being cutting edge competitive for world first kills.

I think that is the point that there is no point in having more then 1 that makes for a very small group to fit into when you want to raid. My guild has one main-speced spriest that is it. and i think you will find most guilds have just one raider spriest. on a typical server you might have 30 to 50 raiding guilds do the math... I think it is because we have been so de-valued that there isn't a reason to bring more then one and if things don't change none at all just looking at the big picture and the trend. Unless GC can come out and say something that can change alot of the spriest's minds that is how it is seen i think from the Q&A and his last most they aren't ready to make any changes.