(Shadow) 2600 haste, or full mastery for mythic farm?

[Regia]

I've noticed among the couple people beating me in rankings, I can find no difference in the rotation, then I armory them and see that they have foregone the 2600 haste while still running insanity, and are using full mastery with it instead. Did I miss something?

Do we know at what point that becomes the better DPS? All of them have a LOT of sockets on their gear, which I figured might have to do with it. Does it depend on how much mastery (i.e. how many sockets) you can achieve after dropping the haste? Is it just based on the kill times (i.e. having heroism to push you to the threshold instead of static haste) and does it end up changing the rotation? Sorry if I missed this, but I've been having other shadow priests ask me about it and I must admit I'm in the dark at this point and not seeing any other threads about it :P

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...d%C3%BD/simple

[Djriff]

In short yes. All of those are factors in it. If you can maintain 35% haste AND a fuckton of a mastery, you'll do a lot of DPS. Also sockets can make or break it as you can swap in pieces with more mastery. That's what i've seen.

As for the point its roughly before you go sub 2m on kills. 2m+ haste moves ahead but under that mastery is better as you can not cast mind flay at all for ~2m.

[Tehterokkar]

My guild's Shadow Priest has like 5k Mastery raid buffed when he uses that gear set for the shit bosses. He seems to be doing fine.

[Seriv]

2m+ haste moves ahead but under that mastery is better as you can not cast mind flay at all for ~2m.

To be honest both simulations and playtesting tells me that if you are able to play the mastery rotation without errors then mastery is as strong as haste on fights over two minutes (it does not matter if three or six minutes, both result in nearly the same DPS) and stronger on shorter ones, assuming one has at least the mythic version of the classtrinket.

[Regia]

To be honest both simulations and playtesting tells me that if you are able to play the mastery rotation without errors then mastery is as strong as haste on fights over two minutes (it does not matter if three or six minutes, both result in nearly the same DPS) and stronger on shorter ones, assuming one has at least the mythic version of the classtrinket.

Did the "mastery" rotation get posted somewhere?

AFAIK the rotation with RoW is MB->fiend->Mind flay(2)->Mind flay (3)->MB->MSx3->MB->DP->Insanity->MB->Insanity, repeat. That is what I was told with 2600 haste

[Kilee25]

Only thing I have to add is that I run opposite a priest that is running full mastery. When I looked at our parses and started analyzing them, I was beating him during the non-hero moments pretty handily. However, his heroism was about 30k higher than me, and that 40s of the fight made his average DPS higher than mine by the end of the fight.

I was able to fix this issue by changing my heroism rotation. I basically had been doing a 2-fill rotation during heroism, and I went back to a 3-fill rotation. My DPS instantly went up by about 10-15k. This past week I beat the mastery-priest's parses on two fights, and at this point it's only a matter of time before I beat several more of his parses, because all things being equal, I am making up the difference outside of a Heroism state.

I agree completely that on short fights, Mastery will out DPS Haste builds, but I realize now after getting more practical experience that if you're significantly behind someone, the fault probably lies with your rotation and execution, and not the build itself.

Also, be careful of pad-whores when you look at logs. The priest opposite me was doing these things to get ahead on a few fights.

1. On Socrethar, they were standing close to the blue gate and cascading the ghosts every time they popped up, while single targetting the boss.

2. On Iskar, they were standing next to the edge of the platform and not switching targets during the add phases.

3. On Gorefiend, they were not helping with adds, and cascading even when not supposed to, then waiting for an attempt where they didn't get sent downstairs.

4. On Archi, they never swapped targets during phase 3.

Etc... basically it's really hard to compare builds unless I can play the same way and do the same paddy tactics. Just looking at logs alone doesn't give the entire picture. I see a lot of people looking at logs and making assumptions like "this person got a great parse, so it must be their gear". That really only tells part of the story.

ALso, I do agree with Servi that two extremely skilled players will more or less do about the same regardless of what type of build they use. But keep in mind that when Servi uses the word "extremely skilled", he's talking about the top 5% of players in the world. Be very careful as to whether or not this type of advice would even apply to you.

As an example, if you don't have a solid gameplan for EVERY SINGLE GCD that will happen after Heroism expires, you aren't in that camp of players.... because I guarantee you that just winging it is gonna do a hellofa lot worse than a haste build.

[Deleted]

As an example, if you don't have a solid gameplan for EVERY SINGLE GCD that will happen after Heroism expires, you aren't in that camp of players.... because I guarantee you that just winging it is gonna do a hellofa lot worse than a haste build.

I think you might be exaggerating this slightly.

[Seriv]

Did the "mastery" rotation get posted somewhere?

definitions:
MBx = MB used to generate orb x
x:y = yth GCD after MBx

assuming 5 orbs and Bloodlust/Heroism on pull:
opener: precast MS->SF-DP-MB3-Ins-Ins..-MB4-MS-MS-MS-MB5-MS-DP-Ins-MB3-Ins..
during Bloodlust/Heroism we continue to use DP at 5:2

after Bloodlust/Heroism we use DP a little bit earlier each time:
5:2 -> 4:3 -> 4:2 -> 3:3
if the fight will still continue for a while and we cannot aquire additional orbs via SWD for some time we do not use DP at 3:2 but cast a single MF at 3:3
the next DP will be at 5:2 again, making the rotation repeat itself

SF is used instead of a single MS or directly after MB instead of Ins after a DP at x:3 (MB-MS-MS-DP-MB-SF-Ins..)
DP can be used to proc ToF on additional targets even if it means that we lose some ticks
SWD deals less damage than MS so it should only be used to proc either ToF or when one would have to use MF during the remainder of the fight without the additional orb gain (that requires experience, when in doubt it is better to use one SWD too much than too few)

In praxis both the x:3 -> x:2 and the 3:3 MF -> 5:2 parts require around 1100 haste or more (you should aim for roughly 1200 haste less than you would need for the orb neutral rotation). You could make it work with just 900 haste to go for GCD cap during Bloodlust/Heroism but it's as tight as the haste rotation with just 2100 haste.

As an example, if you don't have a solid gameplan for EVERY SINGLE GCD that will happen after Heroism expires, you aren't in that camp of players.... because I guarantee you that just winging it is gonna do a hellofa lot worse than a haste build.

Mastering this rotation is far more complex than the haste one but small mistakes will not make your DPS drop that much. It is actually more forgiving than the haste rotation since you use MF anyway so having to do so earlier than optimal due to movement, latency or mistakes made may not necessarily result in more MF over the course of a fight. You can also just use DP and MF whenever you think it's necessary and still deal nearly as much damage as you would playing perfectly, those handful of additional MF over a five minute fight are not impacting your DPS that much (dropping RoW or even switching targets would be worse).

[Isentropy]

The mastery rotation I use, and the one I believe to be the best, consists of three different rotations that alternate every time you refresh. As long as you have orbs, you only use two of the three rotations and alternate between them. On a really short fight like Iron Reaver this means you should never have to use Mind Flay, but of course this largely depends on your guild's kill times. Even on longer fights it's really not that big of a deal to Mind Flay every once in a while (you have to, even) as long as you're playing the rotation correctly. The mastery rotation isn't quite as static as the haste rotation and is a bit harder to learn, but it's more forgiving when you make mistakes. Both have their upsides and downsides and at the end of the day I recommend people to just play what they prefer. I've settled into a mastery build for a while now, and haven't seen a significant increase or decrease in damage overall, no matter the fight length really.

[Seriv]

The mastery rotation I use, and the one I believe to be the best, consists of three different rotations that alternate every time you refresh. As long as you have orbs, you only use two of the three rotations and alternate between them.

Care to elaborate?

[Deleted]

Isn't it worth to maximize insanity during the first ring under bl by using DP on the first 4:2? Eventually, You will replace a MS by a MF after bl but I think it increases the number of insanity ticks during ring (+procs and pot) which would be worth.

[Isentropy]

Sure. So let's say you open with 0 orbs for the sake of clarity;

(precast) MS -> MB -> Shadowfiend -> MF (5 ticks) -> MB -> MS x3 -> MB -> MS -> DP -> Insanity -> MB -> Insanity -> MS -> MB -> MS -> Shadowfiend -> MS -> MB -> MS -> MF - > MS -> MB -> MS x2 -> DP -> MB -> Insanity (6 ticks) -> MB - > MS x2 -> Shadowfiend -> MB -> MS -> DP -> Insanity -> MB - > Insanity -> MS -> MB

As you can see there's three different sequences here; if you refresh with Mind Flay, the next sequence will be MS > MB > MS > MS > DP > MB > Insanity (6 ticks) ; after this it will be MB > MS > MS > MS > MB > MS > DP > Insanity > MB > Insanity . As long as you have orbs these two will alternate between each other. It's not as strict a rotation as the haste rotation is per se because you can definitely improvise in between depending on movement or whatever, but this plays really smoothly in my opinion.

Edit: It should be obvious, but that's the rotation outside of Heroism/Bloodlust. You do the haste build rotation when under the effect of Bloodlust.

[Seriv]

Isn't it worth to maximize insanity during the first ring under bl by using DP on the first 4:2? Eventually, You will replace a MS by a MF after bl but I think it increases the number of insanity ticks during ring (+procs and pot) which would be worth.

Let's assume the ring is popped at pull lasting for 15 GCDs:
1) SF-DP-MB3-Ins-Ins-Ins-MB4-MS-MS-MS-MB5-MS-DP-Ins-MB3
2) SF-DP-MB3-Ins-Ins-Ins-MB4-MS-MS-DP-MB2-Ins-Ins-Ins-MB3

Both DP and Ins don't deal much more damage than MS per time spent so the difference is not that huge. If the ring is delayed a few seconds you won't gain anything. It is worth on super short fights that don't outlast Bloodlust/Heroism but not in the long run. Also notice that I used DP at 4:3 instead of 4:2 since it still fits completely into the ring and you waste less orbs.

[Deleted]

Obviously it's a detail and I guess it's better to play something we are comfortable with, but I still think it is a DPS gain (if I'm correct a GCD of mind flay is about 0.6 MS and depending on your mastery and class trinket a DP with the full dot should be around 1.1-1.2 MS) thanks to the 100+% DPS increase of the ring.

On another subject, I'd like to take advantage of the audience to ask if anyone knows how the ring order works. Each week, I feel like I'm being scammed on at least one boss (even when only 2-3 DPS have a damage loss, I'm always among them unless I used the ring myself).

[Kilee25]

I'm curious how that works as well. I hear people talk about "so and so didn't get ring damage", but I do not know how it works.

[Deleted]

It's if the ring gets the killing blow, obvious combat log isn't 1 damage hit, it's seperate from each player so just depends where you are in the combatlog

like;

Player1 ring explosion
Player 2 ring explosion
target dies
everyone elses ring explosion wasted

even though they happen at the same time. As for the order, I have no idea. I've been noticing agility users getting hits first but it really could be anything, alphabetical, the order the server receives client instructions, some specific coding blizzard have, totally random? who knows. It's pretty annoying although I usually only notice it on zakuun and kilrogg and occasionally on adds mid-fight

[Isentropy]

Wordup, the enhancement shaman guide author and guildmate, told me many times that the order of rings going off is random. He says it with such gusto that I don't have a reason to doubt him

[Deleted]

The only thing I noticed is that the player that pops it always gets the first explosion. Beyond that it seems to be random.