which opening shadow priest rotation is better

[Deleted]

I personally use:
VT > MB > MF 3 ticks > DP > (nevermelting ice) > SW:P

A really common combo to get SWx5 before casting SW:P.
As for the MF clip, Im used to wait always for 2 tick at least, then recast my dots when needed.

Anyway, this is what i do, glad to be corrected.

[tatienne]

I personally use:
VT > MB > MF 3 ticks > DP > (nevermelting ice) > SW:P

A really common combo to get SWx5 before casting SW:P.
As for the MF clip, Im used to wait always for 2 tick at least, then recast my dots when needed.

Anyway, this is what i do, glad to be corrected.

uhmm... I know dp is a hugeincrease in dpet and all, but how would nevermelting -> sw -> dp stand in your eyes?. since sw won't unstack the trinket (but dp has a great chance to).

with 4p t10 I'd probably just go mf > mf > nevermelt > vt > sw > dp. it's probably not near the best rotation but I want weaving up before casting my mainspells (vt and dp). ofcourse, this changes if we need my replenishment and/or if there is movement involved. please blizzard, give more rats in bossrooms. rats that can't be killed by non-priests or non-rage classes. I hated deathknights and mages that would DnD/blizz the rats before patchwerk even after pleas about not doing it.

[Deleted]

uhmm... I know dp is a hugeincrease in dpet and all, but how would nevermelting -> sw -> dp stand in your eyes?. since sw won't unstack the trinket (but dp has a great chance to).

It's because DP eats a stack of the trinket on every cast that I chose to activate the trinket after it - this is regarding the rotation (above) Im using.

Actually I have yet to fully test NMI, and im still trying to figure out the best time to use it.

[eErike]

I find it quite interesting how the first guy, who's asking for an opener, gets a 5x wall of texts about clipping mf2, seriusly, if you are the new to figure out the way to open on a target reading pages about MF2 won't help you a bit.

My personal opener is VT-MB-DP-MF3-MF3-*never melting*-SW:P-MB and I usually use Shadowfiend early in fights.
Sometimes I go VT-DP-MB in the first secuene but that's only when I can see that I'm playing with people who can get replen up fast

[fizzbob7]

doesn't really matter, cast vt/dp/mb and at least 2 ticks of MF so that you can throw on SWP with 5 stacks of shadow weaving up. that's it.

now that people are running with 30% haste and everything in between, you will find that different opening rotations allow you to find a "sweet spot" based on how much haste you have

[qjiggy]

My personal opening is as follows.

If I dont have to run. VT - DP - MF - MB - SW:P (when MB hits, you are guaranteed 5 stacks of shadow weaving)

If I have to run, DP - SW - DP - DP - DP - DP - VT - SW:P (i stack shadow weaving to 5 before applying swain)

Nice addon to keep track of shadow weaving is PowerAuras, it shows me when there's 5 stack up.


For shadow priest that have the 4set bonus from t10 and with atleast 800 (some other posters put 700) haste - what I do is MF all the way and I only cast Mind Blast when i'm about to re-apply Devouring Plague. You'll notice a dps increase and it's less hassle to worry about. I try not to cast SW:P on more than one mob, but I keep it on the boss and try to keep it on him/her. VT is your friend and and so is shadowfiend (i use it at the start after the dots are all applied and whenever it's up from cooldown). Try it and see if it works.

I got these info from www.worldoflogs.com of "top" spriest and I notice not many cast Mind Blast much at boss fights. I didn't spend time theorycrafting and doing calculations, but I broke the 6k DPS barrier that I was in for the longest time. Now I can pass 8K and maybe with a weapon upgrade, hit 9k dps on boss fights. Give it a try.

ps. Okay I did lie, I did do some calculations on my own. I compared a log of my own to another spriest who does 9k+ on saurfang. In a 6 minute fight, I have casted atleast 30 mindblast whereas the 9k spriest who did the fight in 4 minutes have casted MB only 10 times.

[MoshPit13]

i usually open with VT -> MB -> MF -> DP -> SW:P so i get replenishment up asap and my DP/SW:P are guaranteed to have w/e caster debuffs can be put up on the boss. this has always seemed to net me the best starting dps i can do

[Weena2]

VT - MB - DP - MF - SW:P

OR

VT - DP - MB - MF - SW:P

[Worshaka]

You know the more you explain it the more i believe it's not that much of a difference.

VT/DP uptime, closer to 100% the more damage you will get from those sources
MF, the more ticks you get the more damage you will get from this source.

The faster your mind flay becomes the harder it becomes to clip mind flay with optimal efficiency (latency, human error). As you gain haste and of course t10 4pc bonus the amount of time you lose on your VT/DP uptime by letting MF finish gets smaller. My mind flays in raid are already below 1.5 secs so the most im losing is .5 secs by not clipping, .5 secs that is not empty but being filled with MF damage.

How much damage are you losing from .25 secs (one tick) clipping MF v.s. .25 secs of VT/DP damage your gaining?

Despite the answer, how much harder is it to get that damage rather than just letting mf finish. How much raid awareness are you going to lose? ( of course i know this can't be calculated but it is a variable in a in game situation) From my experience on a dummy, which is lots i never saw the difference in dps. I did notice how much more i was working to trying to mf2 clip. Basically the difference was never more or less than what my RNG was on the dummy, In a raid situation that difference is negligible.

For pure math purposes if the theory of DPEt is correct then yes your right at least it would be about the same not worse but to me it is at most a minor dps increase. I don't know if you would agree about the minor dps increase part, but I am interested in the actual numbers, how much dps are we talking about here the difference between mf2 clipping to refresh dots v.s. finishing mf cast and refreshing dots immediately after? Like i said I'm not a math guy here so i would fudge it up if i tried.

I have to say from a theoretical stand point i was wrong to say "don't clip mf" Practically from my experience from both raid and test dummy the difference can't be any different than the normal fluctuation from RNG.

Thanks for your replies it has been informative and fun for me.

It doesnt' work that way and i'm finding it hard to explain it tbh... the only way you gain extra MF ticks is when you delay VT or DP by an entire cycle... ie 5 ticks of VT or 8 ticks of DP... the moment you do that you open up a GCD's worth of time to MF which equates to techincally 1 tick but lets assume 2.

So the DPEt of VT and DP are about 20K and 25K for my stats while raid buffed. That means if I delay an entire cycle of these spells I lose out on 20K or 25K and replace it with 2 ticks of MF which is worth about 7K.

The trick is just because you spend some extra time before refreshing a DoT doesn't mean you have gained MF time. What you've done is offset the MF time at the front of the dot refresh for what would ahve been used just after the dot refresh. To physically gain more MF time you have to remove a GCD refreshing the dot which only occurs once you've delayed it for your VT/DP cycle length.

[Strykie]

VT MB MF If there is no boomkin
MB MF DP If you can nuke from go.
SWD MB MF If you need to move into position.

Last 2 Maximize the chance of procing IST/Shadowy Insight and spellpower procs b4 applying dots.

If you are using Nevermelting.

SWD MB MF TRINKET VT DP SWP MF MF MF <- MF does not eat stacks of trinket.

[axxey]

Do you guys start most fights already in perfect possition?

I generally start running in SWP > DP > death > am in position > VT > MB > wild magic pot > trinket > SWP > normal priority rotation.

Other shadow priest pre pots on the pull, I'm too cheap.

[fabian]

Don't listen to this guy.

Actually, he is somewhat correct. Opening rotations have very little effect on the outcome of the fight because of RNG. The reason why there are opening rotations is to increase our efficiency at stacking SW, and timing buffs with SW:P.

Now, if you want a very efficient opening rotation, look either on shadowpriest.com or at some of Worshaka's posts. The other opening rotations have very little math behind them, if any at all, since most of them are based on flow instead of math.

[Worshaka]

Do you guys start most fights already in perfect possition?

I generally start running in SWP > DP > death > am in position > VT > MB > wild magic pot > trinket > SWP > normal priority rotation.

Other shadow priest pre pots on the pull, I'm too cheap.

Why you would choose to cast SW:P first and not DP is beyond me... Imp DP hits for about 2 ticks of SW:P and by the time you come around to overwriting your SW:P you could stand to delay ticks from 3 sec to upto 6 sec apart... never cast SW:P until you have the max number of SW stacks + other relevent raid buffs/debuffs.

[Nezoia]

The best starting rotation is prepotting a glass of wine, port, cognac or rum in real life!

True story!

[eErike]

If you are using Nevermelting.

SWD MB MF TRINKET VT DP SWP MF MF MF <- MF does not eat stacks of trinket.

Why would you waste trinketstacks on VT and DP before SW:P..?

[Abandon]

Why would you waste trinketstacks on VT and DP before SW:P..?

Vampiric Touch does not use up a stack. It is not a direct damage spell. Neither does Devouring Plague, although the separate direct damage portion can use one of them.

From that rotation it seems they want to get 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving before applying SW:P and want the trinket bonus to apply to VT and DP as well, at the risk of losing 4% crit on SW:P if Improved Devoruing Plague crits.

[Worshaka]

As per usual the community is worrying too much about something that borders on insignificance... just ensure you have 5 SW stacks b4 casting SW:P... how you get there is mostly irrelevant. What is best probably changes depending on the circumstances...

I suggest 1 or 2 MF channels followed by your dot priority... if you do 1 MF channel VT, DP will proc 4 and 5 stacks so SW:P is right to cast, if you do 2 channels of MF, you get VT and DP at max stacks as well as SW:P

At the end of the day what you do for the first 3 or so seconds won't mean anything (assuming u dont cast SW:P without max SW stacks) over a 5min encounter... and encounters like putricide go for a lot longer and require you to recast SW:P at times anyways.