Maximizng Shadow DPS in ICC boss encounters--any tips or tricks?

[Kaitelyn]

What are some of the things that you try to do to squeeze out the most dps while you avoid goo and spray and whatnot? Also, if we can keep the discussion focused on on useful vs. superfluous dps (ie actually contributing to the defeat of the encounter vs. padding the meters), I'd be most appreciative. I recognize that they two are sometimes mutually exclusive.

I feel like I personally have a long way to go to achieve the maximum possible dps in these situations and need to work on little things like DoT collision priority, recasting before Tear Gas, etc. While I'm co-leader in my 10man run and have a great deal of input on strategy, I'm subjected to melee-friendly leadership in my 25man who often implement strategies that are particularly unfriendly to spriests.

I know in 10man (last parse here), it's easy for me to keep a rolling Wild Magic SWP on Saurfang through the entire encounter. When blood beasts spawn, I typically DoT up the first focus, quick MF refresh on Saurfang and then switch to second blood beast to DoT up (following focus assist target). Are you doing likewise? Is it better for me to just DoT up both and switch back FT to Saurfang? With a frost trap, totem, slow, roots and more, it's not like my Mind Flay is key to slowing down the beasts.

What do you do on Gunship? I just dot up all the axe throwers, nuke one, dot the guys on the ship. Often, everything is dead just as the "away team" heads across to kill the mage, and I have a hard time keeping up stacks and have to start all over. In my 25man, the average dps is lower with lots more axe throwers and such, making it easier to stay active. I do have to refresh my Inner Fire frequently though...they blow through the 32 stacks pretty quickly. In either case, this is a pretty simple (nearly irrelevant) fight.

So, what do you do in your efforts to really shine and contribute to the encounters?

[Strykie]

Marrowgar
Stand and Nuke, if you are out of the fires you can tank bonestorm.

Deathwhisper
Stand to the Left side of the room, Your main target is Deathwhisper but you can roll 3 sets of dots on the adds that spawn.

Gunship
Dot all the adds, Mages come out, fly across and dot the Goblins, dot the mage and anything else as u fly back over, and Sear/Multidot the Horde boarding party.

Saurfang
If your raid is good your Multidotting options are very limited.
VT the ones further away and switch back to boss.

Festergut.
Disperse Pungent Blight, no need to collect Gas spore debuffs.

Rotface.
Stand Infront of him so you have a less chance of being spewed on as the boss doesn't cleave

Putricide.
Keep Dots up on Boss while Nuking adds, stand out of melee and 5 yards from anyone else to avoid other peoples malleable goo.

Princes.
Your Pad potential is HUGE, but requires some luck.
3 Bosses + 2 Kinetic Bombs.

Queen.
Stand on the side of the room ont he side of the circle, enough room on side to let ppl with fire kite around u and minimal movement when she goes up into the air.

[Nezoia]

Deathwhisper
Stand to the Left side of the room, Your main target is Deathwhisper but you can roll 3 sets of dots on the adds that spawn.

You mean middle for 25man (So you got quick access to killing a Deformed on both sides!)

Gunship
Who cares about dps on this fight? Tell your guild to do [On a Boat] for the lulz!

Saurfang
If your raid is good your Multidotting options are very limited.
VT the ones further away and switch back to boss.

If your raid is bad, put VT up on all adds, and help everybody else by using MF to slow the adds. (Don't bother with multidotting SW:P, dps/mana loss).

Festergut.
Use Shadowfiend on pull, and again when off CD. Make sure to macro it's shadowcrawl ability for extra dps.

Rotface.
Tactical positioning on the exploisions gives you more dps time. More dps time is higher dps (obvious, but most people don't get it for some reason.)

Princes.
Your Pad potential is HUGE, but requires some luck.
3 Bosses + 2 Kinetic Bombs.

Kinetic Bombs is what you got hunters for!-)

Focus on clever tactical positioning in good time, for optimizing dps time as always.

[Myzrael]

On Putricide, you can freely stand in range of Gas Cloud when it spawns and dot it up. Even if you get fixated you can still MF it till it get's close. There is no need to panic and run away same sec you see a read beam reaching you.
And, as you said. Dot him fully up before tear gas.

Blood princes are 3 bosses, but only one of them should be dpsed at the time. Dotting them all up is waste of mana and boost on epeen meter, which OP strictly isn't interested in.

Don't forget to fearward self before Blood Queen fight, so you have it up for 2nd fear as well. That way you can dps her all the time.

On Saurfang (25) I usually VT all adds and focus dps on one that is furthest away from me. in 10men we have ranged on right add melee on left. VT and nuke your add till it's dead (unless your guild has different tactic).

If you are hardcore, you can use Wild Magic Potion pre-pull on most bosses.

[Paolo]

Don't forget to fearward self before Blood Queen fight, so you have it up for 2nd fear as well. That way you can dps her all the time.

This. Because your dps is more important than fear warding a healing priest or druid who can keep the raid alive with some aoe heals during air phase. Go go dps! Oops, dead.

[Myzrael]

This. Because your dps is more important than fear warding a healing priest or druid who can keep the raid alive with some aoe heals during air phase. Go go dps! Oops, dead.

Healing priest has fearward on his own, and he should also massdispel middle to dispel fear, you can help out as shadow if want, but only 1 priest was enough for us.
One thing shadow priests are good at is survival, you shouldn't die while dpsing her with VE up, Shadowform and Dispersion in case needed.
She has very strict enrage timer, it's in your interest to beat it.

[timoseewho]

You mean middle for 25man (So you got quick access to killing a Deformed on both sides!)
Festergut.
Use Shadowfiend on pull, and again when off CD. Make sure to macro it's shadowcrawl ability for extra dps.

Just a question about this, I have mine on auto-cast, is that bad? How much better is macroing it, and to what? Thanks!

[Abandon]

I just macro'd mine to Mind Flay. You can basically stick it on everything as a macro and use a command to hide the error messages so everything you press will activate it.

[Kelesti]

As long as you aren't multi-targetting during the fiend's uptime, I've found it auto-casts Crawl all on its own, without needing macros. This is true for healers as well, if they find a way to target the boss while casting (Clique and/or mouseover macros)

[Nezoia]

Kelesti and timoseewho you're both wrong, in a way.

Shadowcrawl isn't used, even when it's activated as auto cast, unless your shadowfiend spawns out of range of the target. And we're not using it for the teleport ability.

So you want to macro it to Mind Flay and Mind Blast, and make a macro that uses it when you spawn it (press it twice). This should allow you to get it to use Shadowcrawl at least twice during the duration.

[Kelesti]

That's kinda weird. Because as Full Time Holy, I see it constantly reapply Shadowcrawl, and I can guarantee for a fact that nowhere in my healing spells is it macro'd. Anywhere.

[Sharaki]

Rotface.
Tactical positioning on the exploisions gives you more dps time. More dps time is higher dps (obvious, but most people don't get it for some reason.)

- This isn't anything special for shadowpriest only. You can see where those explosions will come (where people stand at the end of the cast), they have very little explosion radius so not much movement needed. Max up your dps time!

That's kinda weird. Because as Full Time Holy, I see it constantly reapply Shadowcrawl, and I can guarantee for a fact that nowhere in my healing spells is it macro'd. Anywhere.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, this in singletarget bossfight. First crawl is applied correctly but second/third need manual cast sometimes. Need to pay more attention for circumstances where this happens..

[zkarz]

my shadowfiend must be one of the smarter ones out there, because it casts shadowcrawl without any macro 3 times in it's 15 seconds life duration if I don't change targets. maybe having it on agressive helps

[Tablemaker]

I just have Crawl macro'd to Blast, Flay, Touch and Plague. Along with my engineering gloves.

[Worshaka]

Kelesti and timoseewho you're both wrong, in a way.

Shadowcrawl isn't used, even when it's activated as auto cast, unless your shadowfiend spawns out of range of the target. And we're not using it for the teleport ability.

So you want to macro it to Mind Flay and Mind Blast, and make a macro that uses it when you spawn it (press it twice). This should allow you to get it to use Shadowcrawl at least twice during the duration.

It's been fixed somewhat since the 3.3 patch, it will cast shadowcrawl twice assuming you have the auto activate feature on for the ability. However, on occasion it will delay using it for a second or 2 and if you manually do it you'll probably get an extra second or 2 of uptime... I also find that if I manually do it I can get a 3rd shadow crawl for 1 melee attack before despawn...

[daenerys]

This. Because your dps is more important than fear warding a healing priest or druid who can keep the raid alive with some aoe heals during air phase. Go go dps! Oops, dead.

Actually as a shadow priest you do want to fear ward yourself. Then 1sec before fear comes out wind up your mass dispell and you just took 1/3 -1/2 of the raid out of fear 1/2 sec or less after they were feared, which allows people to spread out faster and multiple healers to heal sooner instead of just the one you would have warded. If you have 3 priests in your raid, your mass dispels should be able to cover the entire room, and no one should be feared for more than 1/2sec.

[Nezoia]

It's been fixed somewhat since the 3.3 patch, it will cast shadowcrawl twice assuming you have the auto activate feature on for the ability. However, on occasion it will delay using it for a second or 2 and if you manually do it you'll probably get an extra second or 2 of uptime... I also find that if I manually do it I can get a 3rd shadow crawl for 1 melee attack before despawn...

Ah, well.. I had the pet-bar hidden since WotLK launch, and not checked. But if they attempted to fix it in 3.3 it's better, but I still would stick to the safe way.

I've also experienced the 3rd Shadowcrawl from time to time, it's awesum.

[Sharaki]

Paid attention on my little fiendie on 25 Blood Queen today. Used it about same times on every pull, but crawl was totally random (i use macro for it so first crawl is always used): either it used crawl on cd, used it once losing 1-2 buffed attacks or didn't use it at all.

I'd do what already people suggested, insert macro to your spells for crawl to max out dps.

[qjiggy]

on Sindragosa

warning: this is for normal mode only, DO NOT try on heroic mode hence it will rape your raid.

When you start getting the Instability stackable debuff -- keep casting away your spells and have it stacked as high as you want. What you would like to accomplish is to keep dpsing without any interruptions. But save your Dispersion when this buff is about to drop off and cast when there's 3 seconds left. DBM shows you a raid warning bar so it's easier to keep track of this debuff. But try to refresh this buff when on the move by casting either DP or SW and only drop it during air phase.

On phase 3, you start to get the Mystic Buffet debuff -- LOS the boss after 4 stacks on phase 3 by hiding behind the frost tomb. It is also important to drop the Instability debuff, if you have it coming into phase 3. I've died a few times before i realized this.

For heroic mode: Just be 25yards away from people when you are rolling your instability debuff. When this falls off you, raid members close to you will also take damage.