Kilee’s “Old Man” Guide to CoP Shadowpriest (PVE, CoP only, 6.2.3)

[Haunted01]

Yea, Im playing with class trinket and DSI.

[Djriff]

Well you can swap to mastery gems if you want, personally I'd go for enchants and leave the gems. With haste food buff you should be right at ~2600

[Haunted01]

Ok, thanks for the feedback. I guess I will change my haste buffs to mastery. Cheers.

[Kilee25]

Slight issue with the haste execute advice. You only want to not use SW: D when your mindspikes are dealing more damage than SW: D. That being said Insanity > SW: D anyday.

I finally got around to looking into this tonight. There's no "logical" level from normal to heroic where the advice in the guide would chance in terms of how to deal with execute and Shadow Word: Death. Basically at all levels of gear, it's about the same whether you use it or not, and if anything there's a slight tip in favor of using a bare minimum to cut out Mind Flays once below 20%.

This falls in line with what I'd been thinking when I wrote that section. The situations where you'd fall below such a mastery thresh-hold that you'd want to start using Death liberally do not exist under normal circumstances. In other words if you're following the weights and gearing appropriately, you'll never have to worry about it.

Also I can't really get the mastery levels in that chart that keeps getting posted to show the kinds of results it implies. At the lowest level of BIS - normal mode + normal RoW, I'm sitting at about 2500 mastery, and death is still well below Mind Spike, and in about the same proportion as it is with higher iLevels and higher versions of RoW. I'm inclined to think there might be something missing in the chart that isn't being accounted for.

...........

However, I did discover something interesting tonight while playing around with different levels of RoW.

With a normal mode RoW, the haste build is well above a mastery build, beating it out as quickly as two minutes and continuing to pull ahead from that point onwards.

A heroic RoW however maintains the same ratio as a mythic RoW, crossing at around 5 mins.

I'm thinking of clarifying my stat weight recommendations to have the haste build apply from normal to mid-heroic, then mastery from heroic to mythic, with the swapover point being as soon as you get heroic RoW and most of your heroic gear.

I need to work on this a bit more just to flesh out the charts and so forth, but the logic seems sound and seems to be holding up across lots of different gear levels.

[Djriff]

Are you talking about normal gear with the normal RoW? I'm a bit skeptical the stats influence that much off of a couple %.

I still recommend Haste over mastery, better for progression.

[Seriv]

The situations where you'd fall below such a mastery thresh-hold that you'd want to start using Death liberally do not exist under normal circumstances. In other words if you're following the weights and gearing appropriately, you'll never have to worry about it.

This may be true for progression since you probably wont have a mythic RoW with mastery focused gearset yet but if you get to this point the difference becomes more and more noticeable. For instance with my items Shadow Word: Death deals around half the damage of Mind Spike and Devouring Plague doesn't look much better. Looking at this weeks Zakuun log if I would have used Shadow Word: Death on Cooldown I could have used it six times instead of just once resulting in a DPS loss of around 2% over the whole fight. The difference gets bigger when there are adds available due to more possible Shadow Word: Deaths per time so even if you just have regular mythic items without much warforged or socket bonuses you will end up in a comparable ballpark on such encounters.

Also I can't really get the mastery levels in that chart that keeps getting posted to show the kinds of results it implies. At the lowest level of BIS - normal mode + normal RoW, I'm sitting at about 2500 mastery, and death is still well below Mind Spike, and in about the same proportion as it is with higher iLevels and higher versions of RoW. I'm inclined to think there might be something missing in the chart that isn't being accounted for.

Those charts are just the snapshot mastery values so they include the mastery raid buff and there is also the mastery weapon enchant.

[Deleted]

I would say your data is a bit dangerous to use because you 1. have casted mind spikes during your ring and all procs and 2. only have 1 cast of swd to base the comparison from.
I do however agree with the message of your post.

edit: this is without taking a look at what the actual numbers looked like.

[Kilee25]

@Seriv I am not advocating using it on cd. I am saying that there is no difference between using it to eliminate mind flays or not, at all gear levels.

[Seriv]

@actionhank: I compared noncrits of spells cast below 20% HP, so no ring there.
@Kilee25: Ah, yes, this way around it's true, my bad misreading you. With enough Mastery Mind Flay will outdamage Shadow Word: Death anyway.

RoW version	Mind Spike	Mind Flay
715: normal	3739	4853
721: normal WF	3592	4686
730: heroic	3366	4430
736: heroic WF	3210	4253
745: mythic	2978	3988
751: mythic WF	2816	3804

This table shows how much mastery is needed for Mind Spike or Mind Flay to outperform the usage of Shadow Word: Death. All values are unbuffed so mastery gained from the raid buff (550) or bufffood (up to 250) has to be subtracted individually. Also the trinkets are assumed to be upgraded twice.
Below the Mind Spike value Shadow Word: Death should be used on cooldown, above the Mind Flay value never and in between both as much as necessary to not letting the trinket drop. In case only one or two Shadow Word: Death would suffice to keep the trinket debuff running for the remainder of the fight then Shadow Word: Death is always the better choice.

[Djriff]

I'm assuming that's with a mastery heavy build and not the 35% haste one. Otherwise you have no need to cast SW: D unless you're moving, as you should be casting Mind Spikes.

[Kilee25]

Yes, I mentioned that in the guide. After last night's round of simming I'm pretty happy with how that section is worded.

Re. mastery at BIS levels.

Normal BIS = 2800 mastery
Heroic BIS = 3200 mastery
Mythic BIS = 3400 mastery

Those are generalizations, but the point is that you end up at those points almost by default, and there's only about 600 points or so that you travel through as you progress through the instance.

I tested casting death on the lowest gearset, and it's most assuredly a DPS loss, and the only time it breaks that model is if it's used sparingly and only to eleminate Mind Flays. It resembles the exact same behavior as with the mythic set. I'm not sure why it's not following the chart you've described, but I don't see anything like "mastery break points" happening.

[Seriv]

I tested casting death on the lowest gearset, and it's most assuredly a DPS loss, and the only time it breaks that model is if it's used sparingly and only to eleminate Mind Flays. It resembles the exact same behavior as with the mythic set. I'm not sure why it's not following the chart you've described, but I don't see anything like "mastery break points" happening.

2800 mastery from gear means 3600 mastery in a raid and 4100 mastery while the weapon enchant is active. The 3600 is really close to the normal mode Mind Spike breakpoint so the weapon enchant may cause the difference in result. Also, the numbers are for "worst case" meaning Shadow Word: Death becomes worse even if you could use it for a third of DP and one GCD of Insanity, otherwise less mastery is required for Mind Spike surpassing it.

[Hankmarvin]

RoW version	Mind Spike	Mind Flay
715: normal	3739	4853
721: normal WF	3592	4686
730: heroic	3366	4430
736: heroic WF	3210	4253
745: mythic	2978	3988
751: mythic WF	2816	3804

This table shows how much mastery is needed for Mind Spike or Mind Flay to outperform the usage of Shadow Word: Death. All values are unbuffed so mastery gained from the raid buff (550) or bufffood (up to 250) has to be subtracted individually. Also the trinkets are assumed to be upgraded twice.

Not disputing... just seeking clarity.

Shouldn't that be: All values in the table include raid buffs?

[Seriv]

Well, it means if you have no buffs those values represent your mastery from gear, if you have buffs you need less mastery yourself. I can see it being worded misleading though.

[Djriff]

Table showing what you need raw on gear to hit those break points:
Pandaren:

RoW version	Mind Spike	Mind Flay
715: normal	2939	4053
721: normal WF	2792	3886
730: heroic	2566	3630
736: heroic WF	2410	3453
745: mythic	2178	3188
751: mythic WF	2016	3004

All other races:

RoW version	Mind Spike	Mind Flay
715: normal	3064	4178
721: normal WF	2917	4011
730: heroic	2691	3755
736: heroic WF	2535	3578
745: mythic	2303	3313
751: mythic WF	2141	3129

[Hankmarvin]

Well, it means if you have no buffs those values represent your mastery from gear, if you have buffs you need less mastery yourself. I can see it being worded misleading though.

No worries. I think the wording to subtract from an unbuffed value just confused me.

[Djriff]

No worries. I think the wording to subtract from an unbuffed value just confused me.

Table above your post, shows what you'll need outside of raid/food.

[Seriv]

Assuming you are a pandaren using the 125 mastery food.

[Djriff]

Ah yeah, forgot about that little fact.

I'll fix it after raid.

Fixed it.

[Deleted]

Just to clarify a bit for myself about what I've read in the last few pages:

It's better to be playing the mastery build over the 35% haste build even if your kill times for some bosses are still above 5-6m?
Shadow Word: Death is not worth using at all under 20% unless you are moving, and only worth casting on adds to get ToF procs.

I've been thinking about swapping over to a mastery build rather than a haste one for a while now, but even though my guild has been 13/13 for a few months now we still have quite messy kills on Xhul/Archi/Manno most of the time so I've sort of been stagnating. That and tyrant hasn't managed to give me a mastery/multi ring and a lot of my haste gear rolled in wf.