[Priest] PvE Shadow Guide (by Newnoise)

[Deleted]

After looking over my logs, I am trying to find the value of SWD in raids or am I just doing something wrong? Mind flay and mind blast are doing more then twice the overall damage of SWD and im trying to figure out if its even worth using unless moving?

Maybe I am not using it enough, more testing when I raid again (stupid target dummys)

Are you only casting SWD when your target is below 25% HP??? Cuz if you cast it when above 25% it's a big loss of DPS...

[Blackmorgrim]

The only time I ever use SWD pre-25%, is during a fight like Heroic Maloriak where I'm constantly DoT spamming and moving. Otherwise, once you're above like 95000 total mana, you probably should need to use SWD pre 25% at all, provided you're managing you mana cooldowns properly.

One thing I do personally to get a bit more out of my DA and Shadowfiend... is to make sure you pop them with a +intellect cooldown, that way you're not only getting 3% of your normal mana, but 3% of the enhanced mana. The intellect buff will increase your maximum mana cap, so it may look like you've lost a lot of mana, but its merely because your sitting at the same mana, but with a higher cap.

For example, as an engineer, I have Synapse springs. I have a macro that pops Synapse springs, Berserking, and DA. Within the macro, I always make sure synapse springs are listed before DA, so that I get the intellect buff, and then get the mana regen from DA including the extra mana from the extra intellect. To top it off, I usually pop the macro while I have the 1600 int buff from the Volcano deck.

[ixcuincle]

I've had an issue that has baffled me for the last few days. I have an iLvl 343 Shadow priest which is 85. The priest does a pretty low DPS output, which is often meek compared to other classes, which are often touching 7k, 8k, or 10k+. I've been asked what's wrong with my DPS multiple times in heroics, because 4k and 5k is ridiculous.

I think it might be the rotation, but no matter what I do to change the rotation, I get minimal benefits. I did some research and tried rotations with and without Mind Spike. My original rotation I used leveling up was to pop all DoT's and then Mind Flay, using Mind Blast when the yellow box pops over it, and finishing with Death. I tried changing this rotation, adding Mind Spike at the beginning, and the results are highly inconsistent. Sometimes DPS will dip as low as 3k. I have also tried reforging stats into Haste, but the results remain the same.

I can't post any links so the character name is Goldywn, you can look her up and inspect in detail.

One of my guesses as to the culprit would be the low hit rating I have. I will try to reforge some more to reach the desired hit cap. Other than that, I would venture to guess the issues lie mainly in the rotation.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

[Joyride]

I've had an issue that has baffled me for the last few days. I have an iLvl 343 Shadow priest which is 85. The priest does a pretty low DPS output, which is often meek compared to other classes, which are often touching 7k, 8k, or 10k+. I've been asked what's wrong with my DPS multiple times in heroics, because 4k and 5k is ridiculous.

I think it might be the rotation, but no matter what I do to change the rotation, I get minimal benefits. I did some research and tried rotations with and without Mind Spike. My original rotation I used leveling up was to pop all DoT's and then Mind Flay, using Mind Blast when the yellow box pops over it, and finishing with Death. I tried changing this rotation, adding Mind Spike at the beginning, and the results are highly inconsistent. Sometimes DPS will dip as low as 3k. I have also tried reforging stats into Haste, but the results remain the same.

I can't post any links so the character name is Goldywn, you can look her up and inspect in detail.

One of my guesses as to the culprit would be the low hit rating I have. I will try to reforge some more to reach the desired hit cap. Other than that, I would venture to guess the issues lie mainly in the rotation.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

Low hit rating? From your character sheet, it looks like you have 21% hit.

Is the gear that is showing up in your armory your standard gear when playing shadow? I noticed you have a Holy Offspec.

I am going to give advice based on what is showing up on your armory.

First, way too much hit. For heroic dungeons, I believe you only need 6%(I could be wrong, but I am almost sure it is around that number).

Second, every stat you have that can be reforged, reforge it to haste.

Thirdly, enchant your gear.

Fourthly, your spec and prime glyphs are correct.

You should always maintain your dots on the target, and never allow any of them to fall off.

As far as future gear concerns.......Focus on gear that has haste on it.

Shadow is sometimes a complex spec to play well. Even though I loathe playing with add-ons, Many Spriests would suggest DoT tracking add-ons to help with keeping them up.

[ixcuincle]

Low hit rating? From your character sheet, it looks like you have 21% hit.

Is the gear that is showing up in your armory your standard gear when playing shadow? I noticed you have a Holy Offspec.

I am going to give advice based on what is showing up on your armory.

First, way too much hit. For heroic dungeons, I believe you only need 6%(I could be wrong, but I am almost sure it is around that number).

Second, every stat you have that can be reforged, reforge it to haste.

Thirdly, enchant your gear.

Fourthly, your spec and prime glyphs are correct.

You should always maintain your dots on the target, and never allow any of them to fall off.

As far as future gear concerns.......Focus on gear that has haste on it.

Shadow is sometimes a complex spec to play well. Even though I loathe playing with add-ons, Many Spriests would suggest DoT tracking add-ons to help with keeping them up.

I accidentally had the healer gear on while trying to save gear sets. I switched to the proper DPS set now.

When the Armory updates: Haste 1645 rating (22%) , Hit 1431 (13%)

I will try to reforge more on haste. I have always been reluctant to enchant gear due to frequent upgrades, but I will give it a shot.

[Joyride]

I'll check back at your armory and see if I can add anything more than what I wrote.

If you are serious about playing a spriest, I would recommend www.shadowpriest.com

It is the most comprehensive and active site for the shadow priest spec.

[ixcuincle]

Anyway, one of the most prominent pieces of advice I've been told over the last few weeks has been to enchant, enchant, enchant. However, I checked the prices for Peerless Stats - Chest materials today. The Maelstrom Crystal costs about 2k on this server. And that's for one, the recipe requires 3.

I have 1500 g, so is enchanting the main issue holding me back here? If the boost gained by enchanting can really increase my dps or double it, I'll find a way to get the G.

[Veiled]

Check out http://howtopriest.com/ -- We've got some great guides/bis gear and some other shadow priesty topics.

[ixcuincle]

Slowly I'm starting to unlock the mysteries of the low DPS and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Can check Armory again under Goldywn.

I filmed a video of myself trying to DPS the dummies and getting values. www . youtube.com /watch?v=0tzYnmntjTI . I was told that my ability to keep up DoT's was pretty bad. I've been trying to practice with the dummies and the Tol Barad quest objectives earlier today, and I will try again tomorrow.

Does anyone have any addons or advice that can help keep the DoT's up? Or is this just an issue that has to be rectified with practice?

[zsun]

It can only be rectified with practice. You can use addons that provide you with a timer to track your dots, but being able to pay attention to these timers and ultimately respond to them is something that can only be rectified with practice. To further elaborate, when I said being able to pay attention to timers, I meant to be able to take minor glimpses of them periodically and without losing much focus (if any at all), and also without taking any useless glimpses. By useless glimpse I meant taking a look at your timer and realise that there is still a lot of time left on your dots.

In the end, you will get used to it so much that you can have a 90 - 96% dot uptime without almost ever taking a useless glimpse.

As for an addon, ForteXorcist is good for tracking dots.

[Abandon]

Does anyone have any addons or advice that can help keep the DoT's up? Or is this just an issue that has to be rectified with practice?

As Zsun said, practice is important and will definately improve your DPS, but there are a couple of addons which will make it easier to track your dots. ForteXorcist allows you to track your dots on multiple targets as well as things like remaining time on Empowered Shadows, and using Tidyplates will let you see which dots you have applied on the mobs floating health bars.

[jinxx]

ixcuincle - I had a quick look at the video you posted. First thing I noticed is there's a slight delay between every single one of your spellcasts. You need to get rid of that delay by not waiting till the gcd is over before hitting the next button. For instance while casting Vampiric Touch you wait till the cast is over then hit SWP shortly after. For better performance you want to hit SWP when the VT cast is almost done so it gets added to the spell queue and cast immediately after VT. Then while the GCD is up for SWP you want to hit DP so it gets queued. It's the same when you are chaining Mind Flay. You finish the cast then wait a split second and then start the next. It's more effective to spam Mind Flay when chaining it and using a no-channeling macro to avoid recasting during a cast. The macro looks like this:

/cast [nochanneling:mind flay] mind flay

It's costing you too much DPS time over a fight to wait for the casts.

Also I noticed you let your VT fall off. You want to recast it so the new VT hits between the second and last tick - the closer to the last tick the better, but it must not fall off.

Those things take a little practice, but I would encourage you to work on that - I'm sure it would help you some.

Don't SWD on a dummy either - it's only for targets below 25% or if you're running out of mana.

Edit: Tried looking at armory, but apparently it's down atm so that will have to wait some time unfortunately.

---------- Post added 2011-03-26 at 11:08 PM ----------

I normally include a SWD after a MB, not always, but still I use it a lot to keep my mana pool high.

Perhaps I shouldn't use it that much to gain more dps, but don't you guys feel that when you use SWD after a MB(star pressing swd before the MB cast ends) it seems you don't loose any gcd at all?

You will incur a GCD by using SWD after MB whether it feels like it or not and there's no need to keep your mana pool high through SWD if you have enough mana by using your mana cooldowns. Of course if you are running out of mana even while using all your mana cooldowns you should SWD - other than that it's only for targets below 25%.

[zsun]

I normally include a SWD after a MB, not always, but still I use it a lot to keep my mana pool high.

Perhaps I shouldn't use it that much to gain more dps, but don't you guys feel that when you use SWD after a MB(star pressing swd before the MB cast ends) it seems you don't loose any gcd at all?

To further elaborate, the reason it felt like you didn't lose any GCD is because Mind Blast hits at the end of the first GCD period and SWD hits at the beginning of the second. Hence these 2 damages seemed to be dished out at the same time and it felt like no time was lost. In fact however, 1 GCD has still been lost because in the end, it has still taken 2 GCDs to cast both spells consecutively.

[NotAPieceOfMeat]

Hey all I have a couple of questions that i hope can be answered here. I remember reading somewhere that recount did not properly show a Shadow Priest's dps because it failed to register the damage done by our shadowy apparitions. Is this true because my recount always has a ~2-3K discrepancy compared to the other people in the raid running recount? Also I would like some clarification on the issue regarding procs and buffs. Is this correct: I begin to cast a spell with a proc/buff active on myself but the spell fails to finish casting before the proc/buff falls off. Therefore the spell will not receive any of the proc/buff effects when the cast completes.

Holy Nova is still dishing out more dps than Mind Sear for me on AoE encounters, granted I did glyph for Holy Nova. Is this happening for anyone else?
Thanks for the help.
Side note: Leap of faith is the best baby sitting tool. I can't even remember how many times I've used it to save someone. Fun stuff

[New]

Shadowy Apparitions show up in YOUR recount, but not other raid member's recount. This usually explains the difference in recounts in raids.

For casting spells with/without buffs. The buff must be present in completion of the cast NOT when you start the cast.

Mind Sear's damage is so bad right now that they are doubling it in 4.1. Holy Fire could easily beat it, but as I mentioned, it's getting fixed so don't worry too much about it.

[ixcuincle]

Working on keeping DoT's up but it'd be nice to have an addon which lets you know when VT is about to expire so I can refresh it. I've played around with DoTimers but it's very complex, if this is a great program to keep me alerted to when VT is about to expire, so I can refresh, I'll start using it again. I get carried away MF'ing bosses and mobs and sometimes forget to keep VT refreshed, so any kind of timer or alarm system which flashes in big letters, "HEY, REFRESH THIS HERE" would be very helpful.

I tried the macro, but there was a split second of down time between MF's. I don't know if this is efficient or not, when I use Quartz, I can MF, and MF again in the middle or near the "red zone", I don't know if this is "re-casting" or whether that's a bad thing to do or not.

I made significant upgrades to gear, tried optimizing DPS off AskMrRobot, and still have 5-6k dps, even with ilvl 349! This is high enough for BH and I don't want to go into BH performing this poorly.

[Fevyz]

Shadowtimers is excellent to keep track on dots, VT, orbs and empowered shadow.

[ixcuincle]

Shadowtimers is excellent to keep track on dots, VT, orbs and empowered shadow.

Thanks for this. Got to admit I didn't use my MB much but this addon lets me know when all orbs are ready so I can use MB, which really helps DPS. Still miss the VT every now and then but the green flashing lets me know just in time

Really helpful and I finished 2nd in DPS in the heroic. Thanks again

[Arlee]

Thanks for this. Got to admit I didn't use my MB much but this addon lets me know when all orbs are ready so I can use MB, which really helps DPS. Still miss the VT every now and then but the green flashing lets me know just in time

Really helpful and I finished 2nd in DPS in the heroic. Thanks again

I might be misreading but I wanted to make sure you know if you cast MB anytime it is up and you have at least 1 orb that will help you dps instead of waiting for 3 orbs every time.

[ixcuincle]

I might be misreading but I wanted to make sure you know if you cast MB anytime it is up and you have at least 1 orb that will help you dps instead of waiting for 3 orbs every time.

Yeah, when I go to mobs I put up my DOT and then spam MF 3 times or so until putting VT back up. There's a lot to keep track of at once, I'll try to use MB more.