Almost on the Bench, please help.

[syanid]

I've to jump in just to comment a bit about shadow priest DPS in general - during my entire experience of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum (+3D, when it was hard), Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, ToC - shadow priests we had were constantly on top of the damage meter.
Before we get into the whole "oh the rest of your guild sucks then" comment, if played properly - a shadow priest can be an asset in progression raids.
I could go into discussing how a SP contributes at certain boss, but that's pointless.

If you manage to play properly, meaning not dying, positioning yourself so you don't have to move (a lot), executing the rotation as perfect as you can with huge FPS drop and ping increase that you get in the raid, keeping dots at multiple targets, using your AoE when it's the most effective - you will do high damage.

During Ulduar progression, we had a shadow priest being on top at several encounters (1st - 5th place). At Yogg + 1, that same SP had 7500 dps when the boss died and was having between 6500 - 7000 dps at Northrend Beasts Heroic. Consequently, that was by far the best player and the best shadow priest I've played with, but on the other hand I do believe there are better players out there.

Common misconception is to dismiss a shadow priest as a good dps, but due to the nature of encounters a SP can dish out quite a nice chunk of damage. It is true that every other class can do more at encounters like Patchwerk, but those encounters barely exist anymore.

So to conclude - in order to perform optimally, you do need a timer that shows durations of your dots at your target(s) and a timer that tells you when your abilities are off the cooldown (such as Mind Blast). The rest is just casting them in such way that you refresh VT millisecond after its last tick and to cast MB the moment it gets off the cd. Level of complexity of such action is on par with using a spoon to feed yourself, so it's basically a matter of setting up your UI to show you relevant information.

[Shandas]

Hey lizzil, if you are not using any mods for showing your dots and cds then i would recommand that you use
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ntHorizon.html
it will show you exatly when to recast vt so you dont clip it, when to cast mind blast, and show the duration of all your dots.
in case you are not sure vt and mindblast generally have the same priority, i just prefer to refresh vt before casting mind blast if they conflict

[Worshaka]

Hey lizzil, if you are not using any mods for showing your dots and cds then i would recommand that you use
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ntHorizon.html
it will show you exatly when to recast vt so you dont clip it, when to cast mind blast, and show the duration of all your dots.
in case you are not sure vt and mindblast generally have the same priority, i just prefer to refresh vt before casting mind blast if they conflict

With 3.3 out after tonight this may be obsolete but I want to point out that MB > VT on a conflict if you don't have 2pc T9, reason being is if you do VT before MB you will guarantee a MB/VT conflict every 15 seconds (or every refresh of VT). With 2pc T9 you would never get MB VT conflicts so you put VT ahead.

However when you analyse MB and VT as DPS cycles rather than compare their DPE you would notice that a GCD delay on a 7 sec cycle is a far greater % of lost DPS than it is on a 21 sec cycle...

It's all elementary because they don't actually conflict so you don't need to make that choice, but thats an insight to which you should choose and it may help you if you notice conflicts with your level of haste in 3.3 on which you should decide to cast first.

[Shandas]

yes worshaka i'm perfectly aware of that :P i'm having the 2 set bonus but sometimes human errors or having to move will still get you to conflict on mb-vt, and it is just a reflex after being a shadow priest so long, i dont care if i lose alittle dps, dont want to change my habbits :P

[Worshaka]

yes worshaka i'm perfectly aware of that :P i'm having the 2 set bonus but sometimes human errors or having to move will still get you to conflict on mb-vt, and it is just a reflex after being a shadow priest so long, i dont care if i lose alittle dps, dont want to change my habbits :P

Considering how dynamic this game is, I think it a good idea to learn how to change your habits so you can adapt quickly to whatever new environment you are presented with. Every 1% gain adds up in the long run and sometimes 1% gains make or break clearing an encounter.

[Pitpat]

As of now you can afford to lose like 56 hit points and 82 points if you are running with a draeni. Also if you are worried purely about your dps, not that I would suggest making this change, then spec into improved shadowform and drop improved vamp embrace. Strictly speaking less pushback and chance to drop movement impairing effect will boost dps. Also a head enchant will improve things. Finally if you are going to gem for socket bonuses blues are spell/spirit, yellows should be haste and red spell or spell/haste. GL in Icecrown

[KresnikHellfire]

No I don't... I like how people just make this assumption... most spriests play their class badly, I don't play mine 100% optimal and I have no doubt there are plenty better spriests out there than me. But I play my spriest rather well... if you can do that you can be competitive with other casters in a majority of encounters assuming the content isn't on farm and completely on farm. When content becomes easy the potential DPS of other classes will drown a spriest but when people are worrying about staying alive and doing all the non optimal DPS things you do in progression type content, spriests do decent DPS.

The real argument is whether the amount of effort and execution we have to output is worthy of being simply competitive. Perhaps that's a good argument because there are blues which indicate feral DPS is somewhat elevated due to it's complexity and the worries they have about nerfing it due to the numbers mediocre players would output. Personally I don't care too much, I enjoy having a reasonably complex class to play, it keeps me entertained.

While I'm sure your anecdotal evidence is indeed correct, I have to agree with the other poster here - in 3.2, you just mustn't have played with very good other pure casters. The only fight I was close to being top 5 dps on in my guild was Anub'Arak (25 heroic), an aoe/multidotting fight skewered towards helping shadowpriests do insane amounts of dps.

Things in 3.3 have changed. In the 4 new 25 man fights in Icecrown, I was top 5 for all of them (and there isn't a great deal of multi-dotting to be done in them, generally just single-target dps - although Gunship battle obviously isn't a good fight to measure). The haste changes have put me much higher up the dps meters, and rightfully so - and just proves the fact that given the right conditions and gear, I outplay most of the pures in my guild (the 4 above me were generally a combination of: 1 arcane mage, 2 hunters and a rogue, with the warlocks doing well on Deathwhisper).

The thing I always compare it with is my dps before/after. I quite easily pull 7k (all but) single target now (raid buffed, of course), whereas I was pushing about 6k if I was lucky in ToTC. That's quite a big difference, and much needed.

edit: OP, I apologise for derailing your thread with this post.

[Dreamtail]

so did the buffs make your dps better?
other then that dot timer FTW and lose SW death on dummies

[Toonz]

Off topic slightly, but just wondering what addons you are using Worshaka for cooldowns and timing?

[hezzaba]

i'm going to guess forte as it tends to be first one up to date

[JohnGalt]

In regards to Event Horizon.

The add-on still functions though you have to Load "Out-of-Date" add-ons.

Through some of my testing I'm finding that the mod tracks your dots just as effectively as it did in previous versions.

Anyone who is currently struggling with dot up-time and is not using any kind of tool to monitor the timing will benefit greatly from using this mod.

I'll re-link:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ntHorizon.html

If you do pick it up, do yourself a favor and read the instructions on modifications it will be worth your time to know how to re-size the addon.

Good Luck and enjoy your buffs.
(Side-note, Dps increase for me was from 3.4 - 4.4k on the dummies. I must have been doing something wrong before the patch)

[Pontificate]

I love Event Horizon and was grateful to see it still worked post-3.3. In order to resize the window so it's much wider do I just type /ehz and move it or do I have to screw with the code? I'm at work right now so I can't try /ehz at the moment. If I need to mess with the code could you possibly explain how to widen/lengthen the frame? Thanks in advance.

[Dorgana]

she is kicking ass now on phase 1 of ony, 5027 during the first phase on our last attempt, gonna try to get a screenshot entering phase 2 with her numbers and dps time to give you the pharse info needed (as long a she doesn't kill me for helping >..<)

I wouldn't say 5K is kicking ass in ony, i was hitting 6K prior to buff. I expect to hit 20K+ dps on the whelps alone.

[JohnGalt]

If I need to mess with the code could you possibly explain how to widen/lengthen the frame? Thanks in advance.

Basically you need to edit the config.lua file found in the EventHorizon folder in your interface folder. You can do this in notepad.

The settings that I use for sizing are:

-- Width and height of a single bar.
config.width = 300
config.height = 30

-- The space between two bars.
config.spacing = 0

-- The overall scale of the main frame.
config.scale = 1

There are plenty of other options in there for configuration, take a gander and see.