[Priest] PvE Shadow Guide (by Newnoise)

[Blammage]

Well that's why its important to take some time and read something every once and awhile. There have been many times where I've read something on a forum and thought "how did I not know that" or "I never thought of it that way". I'm happy I was able to help at least one person by writing this, and it's always nice to hear positive feedback. I hope the gems and reforging helps out your DPS

---------- Post added 2010-12-20 at 04:52 PM ----------



Thank you for reading d-(^_^)z

Rest assured... with this post, you've helped many more people than just one! Myself included. Thank you! =)

[ElAmigo]

Scaling Factors Int Spirit SP Hit Crit Haste Mastery
Scale Values 2.9607 1.1188 2.3045 1.1152 1.2151 1.5745 1.1592
Normalized 1.0000 0.3779 0.7784 0.3767 0.4014 0.5318 0.3915

would someone care to explain what exactly is the difference between "Scale Values" and "Normalized" in this part of the guide

[zsun]

Scale values are the actual weights of each stat. Higher scale values means that the stat is more important and provide better output. However these numbers are quite messy to read so in order to better understand the benefit of each stat we normalize them.

To normalize the stats we first pick a stat which we want to use as to compare all stats to. We usually pick intellect since for normalizing because:
1. Intellect is the most common stat and appears on every gear we wear.
2. It is our most important top priority stat, with the highest weighting.

We then normalize by dividing all the scaling factors (including intellect) by the scaling factor of intellect. This makes the weight value of intellect to be 1, and the rest to be the weight values when compared with intellect.

For past reference, back in WoTLK the normalizing stat was spell power. And hence spell power had a scaling factor of 1, and the rest were: haste 0.98, crit 0.76, spirit 0.59, int 0.22, hit rating 1.88 (before cap)

[Tridus]

Good guide, but be careful on the Spirit gear. Many healers are kind enough to pass on stuff without Spirit for a DPSer that needs it, and taking Spirit gear away from them may go over very badly. Check first. (Particularly true of wands, because there's only one bloody Spirit wand right now.)

[Worshaka]

Just a couple of notes:

1. I don't think stat weights should be based on the complete BiS list for any raid tier, gear decisions that mostly impact any tier are ones well before you reach the BiS list... knowing how the stats play once you completely overgear the content aren't as useful as knowing how they play during the content. For this reason shadowpriest.com's BiS lists have always used what might be described as a medium gear set...

2. I don't agree with the haste plateau section, while haste plateaus are certainly good information, haste still has a rather significant dps effect after any haste plateau, particular because a DoT duration will decrease as does MF channel time, and with faster ticks of SW:P & MF you are going to see an overall increase in shadow orb procs. The truth of the matter is the value of haste is greatly increased from just before a haste plateau to the plateau, this is distinctly different to a linear return and then a drop after the plateau. While you may argue this is a semantical point it's relevent nonetheless.

3. I'm not convinced casting DP while empowered shadows is not present is worthwhile... mainly due to the fact that DP is a 24 sec duration and thus you are losing out on a signficant portion of damage over a decent amount of time (keep in mind DP is 2nd in DPeT and our longest duration dot). For that reason I think it's wise to use your time to proc an orb before casting it, instead of casting it and then having to overwrite that cast very early in it's duration. At the end of the day whatever you do probably won't mean anything in the grand scheme of things but as we are theorycrafting it may be worth some discussion.

Other than that a pretty decent and concise guide.

[wiIdi]

or just spam Mind Spike and you do the same dps because dots are weak sauce

[Strykie]

I wish i could receive recognition for copy n pasting from spriest.com.

My personal guide to Spriest
Empowered > Dots > MB > MF
Hit > Haste > Crit > Mastery
3 DPS Glyphs, Chose Carefully!
8/0/31, 2 Spare, Have fun.
Gem every socket like the rainbow.
Dark Intent Increases DPS.
Reforge Mastery to Haste or Hit IF you can
Reforge Hit to Haste elsewhere.

I hope people found this extensive guide helpful

[eErike]

Gem every socket like the rainbow.

Gem int/spirit in all blue sockets and reforge hit on gear to haste instead.
That way you'll get the socket bonus + bonus and haste.
And, when I need hit, I prefer refoging spirit instead of hit as it gives more ooc regen, not much but allways something when you're runing to the next pact.

Dark Archangel - Gained by consuming stacks of Dark Evangelism, Dark Archangel gives us increased damage to our Mind Flay, Mind Spike, Shadow Word: Death and Mind Blast by 4% per stack consumed for 18 seconds. We also gain 5% total mana back per stack consumed. By consuming these stacks, we lose the 10% bonus to our periodic spells until we can gain an additional 5 stacks of Dark Evangelism. Fortunately, Dark Evangelism will continue to stack through the Dark Archangel effect, giving us a DPS cool down we should pop every ~90 seconds.

I might add that the best use of Dark Archangel is when you can roll two mind flays after without haveing to refresh DP or VT as if you do without mind flaying twice between, you'll loose damage on these dots full duration. (Just saw that you had this very information later in the guide, you might want to put these together for easier read).

As for the spec, I prefer running with http://wowtal.com/#k=a5FBc0RWB.a8t.priest.qikI9Q for the extra 4% spell damage reduction that comes handy to help healers. Taking this requires an extra thought on your mana though and you should stick with 3/3 in Mental Agillity if you are struggeling with your mana!

A very good guide, hope many have a good use of it!

[Strykie]

Gem int/spirit in all blue sockets and reforge hit on gear to haste instead.
That way you'll get the socket bonus + bonus and haste.
And, when I need hit, I prefer refoging spirit instead of hit as it gives more ooc regen, not much but allways something when you're runing to the next pact.

Thats kind of the point, Following the socket bonus (Minimum 10+) will eventually lead to going over the hit cap, reforging will allow you to move that excess hit into other stats.

[Abandon]

I wish i could receive recognition for copy n pasting from spriest.com.

My personal guide to Spriest
Empowered > Dots > MB > MF
Hit > Haste > Crit > Mastery
3 DPS Glyphs, Chose Carefully!
8/0/31, 2 Spare, Have fun.
Gem every socket like the rainbow.
Dark Intent Increases DPS.
Reforge Mastery to Haste or Hit IF you can
Reforge Hit to Haste elsewhere.

I hope people found this extensive guide helpful

Feel free to post a link to where this was copy pasted from. Or do you mean this information is available on that website if you read through it, and so you don't think it's fair that he recieves recognition for compiling it into a guide for these forums while you didn't bother doing anything?

edit: On topic, thanks for the guide, it's convenient having all of this information in one place as an easy reference.

[Cleptic]

You should check enchants, the best haste to bracers is 65, not 50. Guide has a lot of flaws but overall a good start for new shadow priests

[tarkoll]

As a long time Spriest i found a better start up rotation were you use VT->DP->MB->MFx2(=5 dark evang.)->SW:P, this leads to less dps to start but a higher/faster damage/dps ramp up because SW:P will be ticking a lot harder longer

[Deleted]

In the Dispersion macro you wrote, you wrote

#showtooltip
/cast dispersion
/cancelaura dispersion

Wouldn't that cancel Dispersion right after you use it? Wouldn't

#showtooltip
/cancelaura dispersion
/cast dispersion

be better?

[Casimir]

As a long time Spriest i found a better start up rotation were you use VT->DP->MB->MFx2(=5 dark evang.)->SW:P, this leads to less dps to start but a higher/faster damage/dps ramp up because SW:P will be ticking a lot harder longer

This is not really true, because of the refreshing of pain with mindflay. This updates the Shadow orbs buff and Evangelism. So no need to wait with casting Pain.

[New]

I want to thank everyone for their kind words. I'm very happy that I was able to write something that people like and hopefully it helped some people.

To the points of contention: In the original forum for this guide, there has been a lot of great discussion that is worth reading. However, I will reply to some people here as well. Nothing should ever be taken as verbatim, so I welcome this discussion.

As a long time Spriest i found a better start up rotation were you use VT->DP->MB->MFx2(=5 dark evang.)->SW:P, this leads to less dps to start but a higher/faster damage/dps ramp up because SW:P will be ticking a lot harder longer

I'm curious about this. You wish to gain your Dark Evangelism stacks before your Shadow Word: Pain so you can have Shadow Word: Pain hit harder. However, you're okay with Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague being cast early. Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague are a much harder hitting DOTS so it seems that if you were worried about Shadow Word: Pain, that you would be more concerned with the first two. The Shadow Word: Pain refresh mechanic through Mind Flay will recalculate as you gain your Dark Evangelism stacks, so it would be okay to cast before you gain Dark Evangelism. Forgive me if this not your intention.

You should check enchants, the best haste to bracers is 65, not 50. Guide has a lot of flaws but overall a good start for new shadow priests

You're absolutely right. This was an oversight and it will be changed. I welcome your thoughts on the other "flaws" as well.

I might add that the best use of Dark Archangel is when you can roll two mind flays after without haveing to refresh DP or VT as if you do without mind flaying twice between, you'll loose damage on these dots full duration. (Just saw that you had this very information later in the guide, you might want to put these together for easier read).

As for the spec, I prefer running with http://wowtal.com/#k=a5FBc0RWB.a8t.priest.qikI9Q for the extra 4% spell damage reduction that comes handy to help healers. Taking this requires an extra thought on your mana though and you should stick with 3/3 in Mental Agillity if you are struggeling with your mana!

A very good guide, hope many have a good use of it!

The first section is more of an overview of what is new and isn't meant to start getting too much into how to DPS. However, I'll look into doing something about the Dark Arch Angel part. Also, I had toyed with the idea of speccing that way and had some discussion about it in another thread. It is a great idea but I think I would probably go with that later in raiding as a lot of Shadow Priests seem to be reporting mana issues.

I wish i could receive recognition for copy n pasting from spriest.com.

My personal guide to Spriest
Empowered > Dots > MB > MF
Hit > Haste > Crit > Mastery
3 DPS Glyphs, Chose Carefully!
8/0/31, 2 Spare, Have fun.
Gem every socket like the rainbow.
Dark Intent Increases DPS.
Reforge Mastery to Haste or Hit IF you can
Reforge Hit to Haste elsewhere.

I hope people found this extensive guide helpful

I am not sure where the passive aggressive hostility comes from. I don't recall ever having met you or discussed anything with you in the past. With that aside, you make reference to something I tried to explain in my guide, but I will describe further.

There are some things in WoW that are discovered by common knowledge, personal discovery, and study. Shadow Priests have been around for a long time so I'm sure some of my words have been said before. Things about how DOTS refresh, how Global Cool Downs work, etc. are a part of the realm of common knowledge.

Personal discovery is important when trying to verify things for yourself. Reading something and having it come into practice are two different things. In the original post of this guide, there has been a lot of good discussion surrounding core knowledge and how to DPS. This guide is provided as the basis to learn Shadow Priests as a class, as well as provide a handy source of key information. It is important to test things yourself to see if they hold true.

Now the important part of your post, the supposed copypasta. When I first wrote this guide, it was for my guild's forums as a helpful guide for people with Shadow Priest alts or offspecs. Admittedly, there are things I do not know, or things I wanted to include but did not have the knowledge myself. This is where I did what most people should do and read internet forums. Whenever I used someone else's work or thoughts and ideas, I attempted to make a reference with a url link below it. It is important to not only provide the information people need, but also attempt to back up your own assumptions.

I feel my guide was written with good faith in mind and don't feel like I stole anything from anybody without proper citing my references. You may feel put off on the idea that some of the topics in the guide, but I think it is a great source of information and can help a lot of people.

Just a couple of notes:

1. I don't think stat weights should be based on the complete BiS list for any raid tier, gear decisions that mostly impact any tier are ones well before you reach the BiS list... knowing how the stats play once you completely overgear the content aren't as useful as knowing how they play during the content. For this reason shadowpriest.com's BiS lists have always used what might be described as a medium gear set...

2. I don't agree with the haste plateau section, while haste plateaus are certainly good information, haste still has a rather significant dps effect after any haste plateau, particular because a DoT duration will decrease as does MF channel time, and with faster ticks of SW:P & MF you are going to see an overall increase in shadow orb procs. The truth of the matter is the value of haste is greatly increased from just before a haste plateau to the plateau, this is distinctly different to a linear return and then a drop after the plateau. While you may argue this is a semantical point it's relevent nonetheless.

3. I'm not convinced casting DP while empowered shadows is not present is worthwhile... mainly due to the fact that DP is a 24 sec duration and thus you are losing out on a signficant portion of damage over a decent amount of time (keep in mind DP is 2nd in DPeT and our longest duration dot). For that reason I think it's wise to use your time to proc an orb before casting it, instead of casting it and then having to overwrite that cast very early in it's duration. At the end of the day whatever you do probably won't mean anything in the grand scheme of things but as we are theorycrafting it may be worth some discussion.

Other than that a pretty decent and concise guide.

1. That is true to an extent. But you will see stat weights mostly hold similar values as you gear up, unless you go very heavily into one stat and ignore others. In the discussion following the original post, I do stress that if you want more accurate numbers; to run a simcraft profile using your own armory link. I suppose I could make that more clear in the actual guide section.

2. I tried to make it clear that the plateau section was mostly just for information as many people are curious about what haste they need to gain extra ticks on their DOTs. It was in no way trying to say that gaining more Haste outside these boundaries is unproductive. Haste should continue to scale as our best secondary stat. Forgive me if this isn't what you were trying to say.

3. We have had some discussion in the posts following the original guide on this issue. The choices I have made are based on logic and not on solid numbers. I have stated this a couple times throughout our discussion. I eagerly await some theory crafting on the issue, but I have not seen an air tight case for the opener either way. If anyone has one, I welcome it.

---------- Post added 2011-01-01 at 05:10 PM ----------

In the Dispersion macro you wrote, you wrote

#showtooltip
/cast dispersion
/cancelaura dispersion

Wouldn't that cancel Dispersion right after you use it? Wouldn't

#showtooltip
/cancelaura dispersion
/cast dispersion

be better?

If you spam hit Dispersion, that would cancel it, as would your macro suggestion. However, it won't cancel Dispersion as the command goes in before Dispersion is cast. Both macros should work to get the same effect.

[New]

Zsun you explained that excellently, thank you .

---------- Post added 2011-01-01 at 05:17 PM ----------

Just doing some respecing of my shadow spec cuz i had 2 points in Improved PW:S while leveling for some reason.

From what i found in 5 man instances so far is that i lack some ranged cc like silence. And to my surprise i discovered that Improved Mind Blast needs 3 points and that I don't always use it when its of CD. Is it realy big dps boost having MB on 1,5 sec shorter CD with 10% MS effect? Or can i affor it and pick up silence and short fear CD?

I had actually been thinking about this idea a bit the past couple days. The only thing I can think of to keep Improved Mind Blast is that, Mind Blast with Shadow Orbs has a higher DPET than Mind Flay, so it should be cast on cool down assuming you have a Shadow Orb. While the RNG may negate any gain made by this, I think its important to have your Mind Blast come off cool down so its ready when you need it.

[soulyouth]

Dark Intent on a Feral druid or Surv hunter is much better then putting it on us.

[Violent]

How would you cancel dispersion?

[New]

Dark Intent on a Feral druid or Surv hunter is much better then putting it on us.

At low levels of Crit, a Shadow Priest may not have as desirable of an up time as a Feral or Survival Hunter for the Warlock. However, Shadow Priests will still stand to gain the biggest DPS bonus and increase raid DPS the most. As Crit increases, we will continue to become an even better target for this buff.

---------- Post added 2011-01-01 at 05:32 PM ----------

How would you cancel dispersion?

Game wise or lore wise? Game wise with a macro. Lore wise... good question.

[ikki42]

with a /cancelaura dispersion macro
or click off the buff