Surviving 4.0 as Shadow

[harky]

That is absolutely incorrect, Caine. In fact the last point of haste is by far the most important and represents a massive gain in DPS. The last point of haste needed will always free up 2 GCDs per cast of DP. This means the DoT is doing the same DPS, but you have now got an additional 2 seconds before having to recast the DoT. By reaching breakpoints you get more Mind Flays in your rotation while losing no DPS from your DoTs. When you increase Haste from say 1269 to 1458 you will in fact increase the DPS value of DP, but the damage it deals per cast is unchanged. When you go from 1458 to 1459 you gain a tiny DPS increase on the spell (<.015%), but you increase the damage per cast by 8.3% and get an additional Mind Flay in your rotation for each cast of DP.

Do not underestimate the value of breakpoints.

[Jigawatts]

Well I was going to respond to that but harky summed it all up, thanks harky

[Tablemaker]

Mastery has been added to the game. Our mastery is Shadow Orbs. When MF or SW:P ticks we get a chance for an orb to proc. Each orb adds X% damage to our MB when we use it, the more mastery the more damage that is added (after 80 we get Mind Spike and it will increase the damage of Mind Spike as well). We can only have a total of 3 orbs up at one time. Unfortunately this stat only effects one spell and so does not scale as well as haste or even crit for us shadow priests and as of right now you do not want to go for mastery (only way to do so at the moment is to reforge for it, more on that later).

With the new addition to Shadow Orbs, is Mastery a more wanted stat now?

Basically, whenever the shadow orb "buff" is consumed you gain a % gain to your damage over time spells. Shadow Orbs are consumed by either casting Mind Blast or Mind Spike... or whenever the buff just wears off. I am not 100% certain, but I believe the buff for my character on the beta is currently 15% for 15s. It does not matter how many orbs are consumed when getting this new buff.

[Jigawatts]

This guide was written specifically for 4.0.1 and as of yet the mastery change has not hit live servers. If it does before cata lauches I am certain mastery will jump up in value (at least higher than crit and possibly on par if not better than haste). I will also update the guide if the change does come before cata launches.

[Pontificate]

Wish December 7th would just get here already...

[Deleted]

Wish December 7th would just get here already...

Honestly I don't. I could give a list of valid Shadow Priest concerns right now :-). With one month to go, there still is hope to see some of them being addressed.

[Sharaki]

Honestly I don't. I could give a list of valid Shadow Priest concerns right now :-). With one month to go, there still is hope to see some of them being addressed.

With mastery reworked and SW fixed being as real dps during execute, I'd like to hear what are those remaining problems? Only ones I could think is half-useless Mind Sear and no choice in spec, which won't be fixed anyways.

[zsun]

Ok, I'd like to know how exactly are the "additional DoT tick breakdown points" important at all. With new dot mechanics you refresh them right before they run out, instead of right after, anyway so whether the DoT would have additional tick if it were to run the whole duration or not is completely irrelevant. DP ticks with nearly exactly the same speed whether you have 1459 or 1458 rating after all - so the DPS is unaffected by the breakdown.

That is absolutely incorrect, Caine. In fact the last point of haste is by far the most important and represents a massive gain in DPS. The last point of haste needed will always free up 2 GCDs per cast of DP. This means the DoT is doing the same DPS, but you have now got an additional 2 seconds before having to recast the DoT. By reaching breakpoints you get more Mind Flays in your rotation while losing no DPS from your DoTs. When you increase Haste from say 1269 to 1458 you will in fact increase the DPS value of DP, but the damage it deals per cast is unchanged. When you go from 1458 to 1459 you gain a tiny DPS increase on the spell (<.015%), but you increase the damage per cast by 8.3% and get an additional Mind Flay in your rotation for each cast of DP.

Do not underestimate the value of breakpoints.

Caine, allow me to describe it to you in the simplest way possible.

In a hypothetical situation where you have 1458 haste, you cast DP, it will tick 12 times. You normally refresh it right before they run out right? OK. Say you refresh it after the 11th tick, and that means your DP would have done 11 ticks worth of damage (excluding the initial instant damage part).
Now when you have 1459 haste, you cast DP, it will tick 13 times. You refresh it after the 12th tick, and that means your DP would have done 12 ticks with of damage (again, excluding the instant damage part). So what does this mean? I know you've probably already figured it out..but I will say it anyway:

1. You will still get an extra tick of DP per average DP duration, which is a significant DPET increase (9% excluding the instant damage part)

2. Improved Devouring Plague does 30% of its total periodic effect. This means that at 1458 haste, it will do 30% of 12 ticks worth of damage. However at 1459 haste, it will do 30% of 13 ticks worth of damage. A slight increase.

EDIT: I have done some testing regarding the Improved Devouring Plague I've mentioned just above. Although I am not sure if anyone else tested this before, but I've came up with some rather unexpected results:

At 862 haste: Devouring Plague has 11 ticks, each doing 1299 damage. 11 x 1299 = 14289 damage for all 11 ticks. Hence 30% of this is 4287 damage. My Improved Devouring Plague hits for 4286, so this was expected.

At 1462 haste: Devouring Plague has 13 ticks, each doing 1278 damage. 13 x 1278 = 16614 damage for all 13 ticks. Hence 30% of this is 4984 damage. My Improved Devouring Plague hits for 4603, which is less than expected for 13 ticks... However it was right on target if it was 12 ticks instead, since 12 x 1278 =15336, and 30% of 15336 is 4601 damage.

At 1962 haste (Potion of Speed): Devouring Plague has 14 ticks, each doing 1278 damage. 14 x 1278 = 17892 damage for all 14 ticks. hence 30% of this is 5368 damage. My Improved Devouring Plague hits for 4985, which again is less than expected for 14 ticks... However it was right on target if it was 13 ticks instead, since 13 x 1278 = 16614, and 30% of 16614 is 4984 damage.



EDIT:
Finally worked out why my previous test produced unexpected results....
Improved Devouring Plague's damage calculation does not take our haste talents into account (don't know why it doesn't but it should). This means that with talents, yes I get 13 ticks of DP, but without them, I still get 12 ticks. And hence Improved DP's damage calculation is still based on 12 ticks.

[Deleted]

With mastery reworked and SW fixed being as real dps during execute, I'd like to hear what are those remaining problems? Only ones I could think is half-useless Mind Sear and no choice in spec, which won't be fixed anyways.

Well, I made a list of not-so-awesome-things about Shadow Priests at sp.com a month ago and so far only Shadow Orbs have been changed (not saying my list is final or that Blizzard has to change thing by it).
1) Mind Spike
2) Talent Harnessed Shadows
3) Dispersion (I couldn't skip it, could I)
4) Improved SW:P and Improved Psychic Scream
5) Paralysis as a unreliable root effect
6) Devouring Plague gives us nothing special (compared to SW:P and VT)
7) Glyphs (although another pass on them is expected)
8) Mental Agility
9) SW isn't in our 'normal boss rotation' while it should be, to spice things up

[Sharaki]

I remember that list, thou I don't find those as real issues. Mind spike is awesome on situational use (having such skill with archangel on XTs heart would have been awesome, for example). Talent issues are mostly personal issues.
While SWD would spice it up, it could be burden on progress raiding. If player is gimbed in fights becouse his major dmg spell does huge backslash and aint allowed to use it, it's clunky mechanic in world of low% VE and healer mana.
Numbers can be changed easily, major mechanics need to be addressed (which happened with mastery and SWD).

[Jigawatts]

I think with the nerf to SW: D glyph and the fact that they took it out of our rotation above 25% health except for mana regen and nerfed VE, might be a good time to finally get rid of the backlash of SW: D, but we will see. I have to agree with Sharaki that Mind Spike has some awesome situational uses, and I am just happy to finally have a way to take my dots off of a target so when we are about to transition to a phase but we dont want to yet I can remove them. Such a pain to have to watch that or stop at like 5% before and just sit there with flay while RL gives go ahead to push boss in next phase.

[Missbenedict]

i did some testing on VT ticks

my VT ticks 8 times
i refresh VT after the 7th tick
the tick i skipped gets added to my next VT
now VT ticks 9 times
i refresh VT after the 8th tick.

your asking why do i do this?
well now that i can refresh dots without clipping the last tick, i essentially have 100% dot up-time with no risk of clipping.

[Kelesti]

I think with the nerf to SW: D glyph and the fact that they took it out of our rotation above 25% health except for mana regen and nerfed VE, might be a good time to finally get rid of the backlash of SW: D, but we will see.

Gods, I hope not. While I may smile that you've found the awesome reason for Mind Spike, I disagree with removing the self-damaging aspect that is our CC immunity. Reduced? Sure. But getting rid of it completely would cause more problems to the class than it actually fixes.

[Jigawatts]

Gods, I hope not. While I may smile that you've found the awesome reason for Mind Spike, I disagree with removing the self-damaging aspect that is our CC immunity. Reduced? Sure. But getting rid of it completely would cause more problems to the class than it actually fixes.

I stand corrected, thanks Kelesti for reminding me of the good of that ability. This just proves why players do not always have the best ideas, we often tunnel on either PVE or PVP without balancing the two.

[Ananan]

It's also our Mending-bouncer. Even if that's a bit mana-heavy nowadays I for one will still do it.

[ThreeLions]

Abbreviations:

Our Priority should go something like this:
Above 25% health
Vampiric Touch
Shadow Word: Pain
Devouring Plague
Shadowfiend when off CD
Mind Blast
Mind Flay
[/COLOR]As an added note I do know I miss spelled the title and feel retarded for doing so. Not sure if I can change it, sorry about that.

Normally after the innitial VT and Shadow word pain in one GCD (Hit it right at the end of the vt cast), Can't you use up mind flay and at the end of that cast use devouring plague so you can get straight into the mind flaying for orbs, You are not going to get orbs straight off the bat, you might as well use the mind blast because its small damage plus you get the dmage from devouring plauge when it's landed, all of this happens in 2 global cooldowns, And youve set up your main rotation, Thoughts? Am I doing it wrong?

[Vampiroth]

This is the haste information without talents/buffs


Vampiric Touch

Shadow Word: Pain

Devouring Plague

Mind Flay

[Jigawatts]

I updated the part about the Mastery due to the recent change. This guide will be slightly out dated once we can go to 85, this Tuesday (haste platueaus will change, stat priorities might change some, hit rating, etc). It will take me a few weeks to do all the work to do up the new guide (as I will also be playing the new content) but if no one else has done a guide by then I will post one. Thanks for all that took the time to read this or give some suggestions, and I hope that people found it helpful for the last few weeks of Wrath.

[Kelesti]

As this no longer is relevant, I'm letting this one die off.