Shadow Priest help - what the heck is going on?

[G l o w y r m]

I'm going to consolidate the best information in this thread so far into one post.

Your spec is fine, if you know how to use it.

Your main priority should be mind blast, since it deals the most damage in the least amount of time. This means that even before re-casting dots, mind blast should be cast first, always. If you've gotten into the habit of casting VT and THEN MB, you need to break it ASAP. Mind blast first, above anything else and as soon as it comes off the cool down. A good mod to help you with this is called Ghost: Pulse, which basically flashes when your longer cool downs have finished.

Yes... cell, read this.

Also, people may argue this, but I like to also throw a Shadow Word Death on top of Mind Blast, if the situation is ripe for it. That means that all your dots are still going strong and won't wear out any time soon. In raid, because of your high crit, you have the potential of doing a ton of damage in a very short amount of time.

People argue it because you lose DPS to throw in a SW...unless of course, like you said, the situation is "ripe" for it and the only situation which is ripe for it is when you are are on the move and cannot possibly stop or won't stop for 1.5 seconds to cast any of your other spells, because if you CAN cast anything else, SW is a DPS loss.

I'd suggest practising on a dummy, not just with keeping your rotation rolling, but also seeing just at how fluid you can be with how fast you get your mind blasts off, how you keep your dots rolling, etc. There really should be NO down time, unless you're waiting like... .5 seconds to cast your mind blast before a dot...

Yes, make sure to practice very very often. Try to achieve the numbers Worshaka posted that I will quote once again below. Also, there's only 1 kinda "attack" at the bottom of Worshaka's post. All the rest of his information is the best you can possibly get. ALL OF THE INFO YOU NEED IS IN A STICKY THREAD AT THE TOP OF THIS FORUM anyway. I only caps that to make it stand out, not to be a dick. Anyway, here's the best info in this thread, along with what I quoted above.

Talent build is fine, I dare say due to the complexity of shadow dps that your rotation is far from ideal, you can only really check this via combat logs analysis. Basically your MB should be cast every 7.2 seconds, dots need to be up 95% of the time and you should get a MF tick every 1.5 seconds... if you don't achieve these numbers it means your rotation isn't as effecient as it could be.

It most likely IS far from ideal, so don't take that as an attack. Shadow is a pretty difficult spec to maximize correctly when compared to the strict rotation of other classes. Shadow plays off of a "priority" system which means that you don't ALWAYS cast things exactly the same. You cast them based on what is off cooldown and what is the most important to cast relative to each other.

In this case the gear isn't awful but you have far too much hit, a spriest hit cap is 11% as explained above which is 289 hit rating. With ToGC gear or ilvl 232/245 you can expect to possibly be well over the hit cap due to the vast amounts of hit on gear. However at the gear level you are currently at there is really no excuse for being so far over, it's wasted itemisation.

Worshaka is correct here again, OP.

Never gem for haste, there are only really 3 gems worth considering, those being Purified Dreadstone, Runed Cardinal Ruby & Potent Ametrine. Use them per the link i provided earlier for gem advice.

Follow this advice as well.

Finally, read the entire Shadow DPS 101 thread at the top of the priest forum. Then practice practice practice. The effort to maximize your DPS as Shadow is significantly more than other specs due to the "priority" system Shadow uses, instead of a 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,3 static rotation that doesn't change.

That would be really cool if every spec and class played that way, but they don't, so more static and "carved in stone" rotations are spitting out tons of DPS while Shadow Priests have to "stay on their game" 110% and watch all of their abilities SO closely and pick and choose what to do based on what's off cooldown and what DoT's arent on the mob. Then there's MF which is a pain in the butt for anyone that isn't a "professional" Shadow player due to "clipping" the spell (breaking the channel at the EXACT right moment to do something else without losing DPS). This spec just may not be the right thing for her, I know I wouldn't grind my brain to do it when I could be...a rogue or something lol.

[G l o w y r m]

This is a kinda long post, but I want to set this straight. You''ll here 100 Shadow Priests tell you 100 different "priority" lists.

99% of priority lists you hear are incorrect because they don't follow the 2 fundamental elements to creating the best priority list for Shadow.

I'll get into those below.

Uh. Wait. Both, Devouring Plague and VT do more damage for the GCD spent than MB.
(30 seconds, VT will do about 45k damage for 2 GCDs spent. You can fit in 6 MB's each for average about 6,5k. My math tells mit 6*6.5k is 39k. So i use less GCD's and do more damage with VT.)
So 1st maximise your DoT uptime, and then use MB on cooldown.

You're looking at it wrong. You get your priority based on how much DPS you lose when you "delay" a spell. I may be misunderstanding what you said, so this post isn't directly at you.

When you have 2 spells up at the same time, say VT and MB, one of them is going to be delayed by one GCD, which let's say is 1.5 seconds (no haste).

1.5 seconds of MB is a HUGE portion of it's time. Taking 1.5 seconds away from VT is not as much since the spell is longer. This is why MB should be cast right away, ALWAYS. There's math behind it on EJ and the link to the thread is in the Shadow DPS 101 sticky I'm fairly certain.

There's also the matter of "collisions". The reason the BEST priority is Worshaka's is not only because it follows the "delay" model for finding out how much DPS you lose for delaying a particular spell, but it also looks into the "future" of the fight and realizes that you get the best DPS when you DON"T HAVE TO DELAY A SPELL AT ALL BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY ONE TO USE AT A TIME. A collision is when you 2 spells are off CD or must be used at the same time, which is not possible to use them at the same time, which results in delaying one of them, which results in a DPS loss compared to if you had only one choice, make sense?

So this means if you cast in a certain order, a few seconds later you might have VT and DP off CD at the same time, which results in delaying one, which results in a DPS loss. The best situation is to obviously always have only ONE spell that needs to be used at a time, so you aren't delaying any of them, hence losing no DPS. The priority in the Shadow DPS 101 thread has the least amount of "collisions", they are inevitable, and you WILL have to delay a few spells here and there based off the priority system, but if you do it right you can do it less than if you cast them in some other order.

There is a more "mathier" wording of what I just said that proves this on Elitest Jerks forums. It goes into a little more detail and puts it better than I can, but I hope you got my point.

[isfry]

I'm going to have her look into the general rotation, as she's using facemelter and not getting an actual hard rotation. I didn't know about shadowpriest.com, because again I'm not the Priest here. I appreciate the feedback, and the trolls are funny because they're wasted energy.

As far as i know facemelter has been broken since 3.1 (it could be fixed with a little bit of work in 3.1) and totally broken as of 3.2. and with 3.3 with the set bonus and the hast one dots macros will be darn hard to write unless you right one for your gear and update it when your haste changes. a pretty good rule that i follow and fellow spriests can add their 2 cents is you want about 11% haste give or take a little bit i think that works out to the high 300's more then that and it just takes a whole lot more to get back to another sweet spot. As for too much hit it is one of those things that grow on you like a fungus until you can get some gear to get rid of it.

I have not pulled up the armory on her as it is down right now so i am going to speak broadly on this from issues i had in gear at times. +hit trinkets are a good thing to drop if you are way over hit. If you have one of those dreaded + hit staves even if it is the one from Iginus25 Replace it with the dagger from the heroic black knight untill yoiu can get something from toc 10 or Ony. The sash of white down is a good crated piece to get the T8.5 help is very good unless you get lucky and get the one from Ony (the +hate/+crit) the quest reward from Maly with +hit is still pretty good and a good place to have some hit. the T9 chest is better then T8 if you are going 4 piece do not get the helm. pretty much with the gloves and legs you are going to have about half you hit there and if you use the badge wand that is even more. and if you to replace a same Ilevel gear with a piece without hit you may want to bank it just in case you have to go back to it if you replace a piece with bigger stat gain.

In short at this point in raiding +hit trinkets bad and +hit 2 hander REALLLY bad. and i say that as someone that had like 380ish hit as a space goat (263 hit cap) so i could replace a 2 hander with 120 hit and not have to change any gear. Facemelter is old and macros are a bad habit and unless you really know how it works and understanad what you are trying to do and how to tweak it but looks like 3.3 they are going to be really hard to make a one size fits all macro. All of this is my 2 cents and please feel free to add and fix any thing i said and am not claiming to be an expert =)

PS yeah G l o w y r m i think summed it up pretty well just gonna leave my 2 cents on gear. and how to combat hit.

[Strykzor]

wtf is this the walls of text, cant people get to the point.

[G l o w y r m]

wtf is this the walls of text, cant people get to the point.

We did, you might bother taking the 30 seconds it takes to read one of them instead of making your pointless post.

My first huge post was just consolidating the good information in this thread so the OP can skip the less informative post's (like yours).

My 2nd "wall" was setting straight why the priority Worshaka posted in the Shadow DPS 101 thread is THE BEST. A few other people posted different priorities in this thread, and I was explainign why they were wrong.

So, my "walls" certainly "got to the point" which you would know if you took the 30 seconds to read them instead of making that useless post.

[isfry]

So, my "walls" certainly "got to the point" which you would know if you took the 30 seconds to read them instead of making that useless post.

Yeah his walls are good

the short short version the story this:

[shadet]

I would suggest spending a bit of time on test dummies in your city of choice. Get recount and do a test of a decent length in time (I usually do a 1 full mana bar test, or 1 full mana bar with shadowfiend) once you've done this, open recount for the fight and plug the numbers into the following tool...

http://wotlk.bloodlineguild.info/tools/spriest_uptime/

This will tell you how good your uptime is for that fight. Then try and get it better!

Hope this helps

[Abandon]

I would love to see some DPS comparisons from the test realm with the current haste scaling and other damage buffs in effect to see the change it is having on single and multi-target DPS.

[talrob]

some addons you may like to look at (in depth):

ShadowGreenLight

recast SWP when advantageous (and there are times when it is advantageous to do so)

Quartz LatencyMF2 (this is an add on module for Quartz)

clip off the third Mind Flay tick to cast MB if it comes off cooldown before the end of a Flay.

Whats the point of the second one btw? Maybe I have too much haste but I always get 2 mindflays to a mindblast cooldown.

[harky]

Uh. Wait. Both, Devouring Plague and VT do more damage for the GCD spent than MB.
(30 seconds, VT will do about 45k damage for 2 GCDs spent. You can fit in 6 MB's each for average about 6,5k. My math tells mit 6*6.5k is 39k. So i use less GCD's and do more damage with VT.)
So 1st maximise your DoT uptime, and then use MB on cooldown.

Wrong. MB has priority due to its shorter effective cooldown. Pushing it back results in a dramatic loss in Mind Blasts per minute. Pushing your DoTs back has a very small impact. Push MB back 4 times and you've just about lost one cast for that fight. Push VT, or DP back 4 times and you've lost 2 DoT ticks. Unless you're some sort of magical super-genie your MB should do more damage than two ticks of either VT, or DP. So, I guess you're right... in a world where you have enough SP for that to happen. Wonder how much it would actually take...

[sleekit]

Whats the point of the second one btw? Maybe I have too much haste but I always get 2 mindflays to a mindblast cooldown.

so do i.

the point of knowing where the 2nd tick of MF is (including latency) becomes important because MB, MF, MF, MB is not all you cast is it ?

lets say a DOT comes to its end and you recast it and then Flay because MB is on CD and all your other DOTs are rolling just fine, but MB will come off CD before the end of the Flay.

at that point you clip off the 3rd Mind Flay tick by casting MB straight after the 2nd tick to maximise the DPS from the spells cast within the timeframe.

another use might be a quick 2 tick Mind Flay cast during fights where you are having to move about a lot or as part of an opening.

knowing when that 2nd tick lands is important for maximising your DPS.

it is known as MF2 and you will see it mentioned all over shadowpriest.com and other forums in relation to shadow priest spell casting.

My first huge post was just consolidating the good information in this thread so the OP can skip the less informative post's (like yours).

i thought my post was alright :'( :P


anyway go read the PTR patch notes guys we just got buffed to hell ;D

[Chainz]

It wasn't AOE. She said she can pull 5k on AOE damage, but she was forced to stay on Ony the whole time. The guy didn't assign her to whelps which has left me confused and made me wonder if he actually had a clue.

well the guy has a clue , and it seems you dont. at this fight ranged MUST stay on boss and melee aoe adds. else ony never comes down

[sleekit]

that depends on the ranged/melee balance in the raid.
Mind Sear is one of the best AoEs atm and owns on the adds there.
that said DOTs are (famously) what you want on Ony.

but hey don't actually add anything to subject the topic is about just come in and criticise a poster on an unrelated minor comment. awesomesauce -.-

[telemain]

well the guy has a clue , and it seems you dont. at this fight ranged MUST stay on boss and melee aoe adds. else ony never comes down

If you can't AoE the adds, get back on the boss, and still bring her down quickly your ranged DPS SUCK. It takes seconds to kill the whelps and get back on boss.

[beatcore]

5k single target dps is a high mark and not easily achievable on every encounter tbh...in Coliseum e.g. mages will be far superior compared to us, while we rock on fights like Yogg Saron. With AoE it should be no problem at all, especially when dpsing the 50+ drakes at Onyxia. As the other guys said, hit cap without a Draenei and fully talented is 289 hit rating! You wanna gem for spellpower first and i wouldn't gem for haste or crit atm, and especially not for spirit - lol. I'd rather bring Crit up to a certain percentage (with gear!) and keep haste at or below 11%, so you can fit 2 Mindflays inbetween the Mindblast CD, but not with gems. I'm currently at ~2800 spellpower selfbuffed, ~25% crit and ~280 haste and all my gems except 3 are +23 spellpower. The other 2 are 12 sp / 10 spirit to activate the Meta Crit gem and the last gem is a yellow 12 sp / 10 crit gem for the T9 shoulder which is better than 23 sp if you get the socket bonus.

The key to high dps is a high uptime You can train this on dummies. I personally open a fight with Vampiric Touch, DP, Mindblast, Mindflay, SW:P, as the SW:P now gets the full +10% more dmg from talents and is being refreshed during the fight anway. From that point on you wanna cast Mindblast as soon as it comes off CD and fill the gaps between with 2 Mindflays, refresh your dots rather after the last tick than cutting the last tick, optimum would be (without haste) 1.4 secs before VT ends you start to refresh it, but don't cut the last tick!!! You click slow? your dps will be low! You can click fast - your dps will be high! You can cut Mindflay if needed, but only after 2 ticks, after 1 tick it's a dps loss. Best to have 3 ticks running (Quartz LatencyMF2).

Was also mentioned before, get these addons for max performance:

- Quartz
- Quartz LatencyMF2
- and an accurate dot timer to see when your dots tick off


The logic will change once the new patch with haste for dots is being released. We gain haste on all our dots and more spellpower from spirit. So we have to find out if its enough haste to get more haste gear and ignore a perfect Mindflay/Mindblast rotation or if it's only a minor upgrade and crit is still worth more in total.

[talrob]

so do i.

the point of knowing where the 2nd tick of MF is (including latency) becomes important because MB, MF, MF, MB is not all you cast is it ?

lets say a DOT comes to its end and you recast it and then Flay because MB is on CD and all your other DOTs are rolling just fine, but MB will come off CD before the end of the Flay.

at that point you clip off the 3rd Mind Flay tick by casting MB straight after the 2nd tick to maximise the DPS from the spells cast within the timeframe.

another use might be a quick 2 tick Mind Flay cast during fights where you are having to move about a lot or as part of an opening.

knowing when that 2nd tick lands is important for maximising your DPS.

Arr good point, so if VT has 1.5 seconds left (pre-haste) and I have 0.5 seconds before the next mindflay tick I should wait until the second tick despite that delaying the recast of dots? Humm learn something new every day.

[Worshaka]

5k single target dps is a high mark and not easily achievable on every encounter tbh...

Don't agree with you here... I achieved 6.3k DPS according to recount for Northrend Beasts in 25man ToC last night. I was in the process of linking the WoL but it seems we didn't combat log it unfortunetly. I also suffer from particularly poor FPS in 25man content for an undetermined reason, so i'm sure that figure could be improved on. Yes I'm a troll and yes there is some limited opportunity to multi dot but I've seen myself be above 6K dps for every encounter in 25man VoA, 2 of which are complete single target encounters with one having some very limited multi-dot capability and I definitely don't MS pad on adds.

[beatcore]

Don't agree with you here... I achieved 6.3k DPS according to recount for Northrend Beasts in 25man ToC last night. I was in the process of linking the WoL but it seems we didn't combat log it unfortunetly. I also suffer from particularly poor FPS in 25man content for an undetermined reason, so i'm sure that figure could be improved on. Yes I'm a troll and yes there is some limited opportunity to multi dot but I've seen myself be above 6K dps for every encounter in 25man VoA, 2 of which are complete single target encounters with one having some very limited multi-dot capability and I definitely don't MS pad on adds.

Hmmm, well, it first depends on how many buffs you get in your raid... is there a boomkin for crit aura? a fire mage for scroch debuff? a shaman for totems? focus magic on you? And secondly on you gear! Then you say you hit 6.3 k in 25 man northrend beasts ToC, but the next sentence says above 6k in Voa ? While i agree that we can easily hit 5k on VoA bosses, i don't agree that we can easily hit 5 or 6k in ToC tbh... just had a look on wow meter online, the world best priest is doing 6,326 k dps, should i say gratz? (http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/classrank/8) - can you link your armory pls???

I also suffer from particularly poor FPS in 25man content for an undetermined reason, so i'm sure that figure could be improved on.

So you have lags, bad fps and think you can easily improve the dps above the current best priest dps ? good luck seems you have very very high skill m8 )

[lordlucien]

2.9 single dps on ony is acceptable, mainly, because its a mobile fight, when she moves out of range, ur dots continue to tick interrupts her rotation which lowers dps considerably, but if we are talking single target dps on everything, then yeah , shes needs a lil help....
vt ve sd dp mb mf , then cast mb whenever its up, keeps the dots refreshed...
drop some hit for sp or spirit..and dont worry, spriest love is coming in 3.3....

[Jayded1]

How is the best priest only doing 6.3k? My friend stopped playing but he was doing 5.5k in T7 gear on 90% of fights.