[Priest] Shadow DPS 101

[fabian]

Quick question.

If you use inner focus before a shadow wordain cast, does the %25 crit stay on the dot getting refreshed?
I would assume not since I have never heard it talked about, but I was under the assumption that only the spellpower coefficient got updated when mind flay refreshed SW:P, that and using maybe wild magic potions or potions of speed.

has been tested, and the crit from inner focus does not apply to dots.

[darkmomo]

So i have a question about the upcoming patch 3.3

A friend of mine said that it looks like shadow priest will want to be stacking haste more than spellpower? I was just wondering if this might be true or not.

[fabian]

So i have a question about the upcoming patch 3.3

A friend of mine said that it looks like shadow priest will want to be stacking haste more than spellpower? I was just wondering if this might be true or not.

At this point, we're pretty sure Haste is not better than SP, but better than crit. Note that we're not confident since that early tests showed haste better than SP.

[Draculja]

I have read all the posts (maybe i missed one, because i got distracted by collegues)
First of all I wondered about the build which is stated on the first page. I use a 14/0/57

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...aculja&group=1

Having the inner focus connected to my mind blast. This I have never seen come back. All are so focussed on mana gaining, which isnt a problem at all nowadays. Not when you have veiled shadows and alot of raid buffs running. Hunters and shamans pop into mind.
Then with veiled shadows i summon my fiend at 75% of my mana pool for extra dps. At the time i have mana issues, it is up and running again. Then we also have dispersion at our disposal. During a movement or evasive manneuvre you can pop this instead of a SW;D.

The begin sequence for me is; VT>MB>DP>MF>SW;P VE. Our main task in raids is dps, the 5min timer of VE is nice and helps the overall survivability of the raid and helping healers out, but the dps needs to be ticking first. Then MB gets out of CD and can be casted accordingly.
The rest is VT>MB>DP>MF, use only a SW;D during movement or as a filler, depending on the time left to a new MB or DP falling off (i use Xperl to monitor this in conjunction with facemelter, the latter i use for monitoring MB, Xperl doesnt show CD's only time a spell is running on yr target)

The time to pop wild magic potion is during a heroism, refreshing sw;p manually. There the dps you gain from the potion overrules the dps you get from letting sw;p ticking till MF refreshment.

I run between 4.2-4.5k dps on ToC25 HC. After tonight I will have adjusted some gems to all 23SP, unless I get SP through the socket bonus. The 2 missing enchants on my gear of the date 12-11-2009 will be solved as well then (ofc).

my 2 cents on the subject

[fabian]

I have read all the posts (maybe i missed one, because i got distracted by collegues)
First of all I wondered about the build which is stated on the first page. I use a 14/0/57

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...aculja&group=1

Having the inner focus connected to my mind blast. This I have never seen come back. All are so focussed on mana gaining, which isnt a problem at all nowadays. Not when you have veiled shadows and alot of raid buffs running. Hunters and shamans pop into mind.
Then with veiled shadows i summon my fiend at 75% of my mana pool for extra dps. At the time i have mana issues, it is up and running again. Then we also have dispersion at our disposal.

I am intrigued by this because the current raid shadow spec goes 1/3 Focused Mind and 2/2 IMP VE because mana has become a non-issue(IST is now used a regen talent).

Since if you're OOM, you're not dpsing, both Inner Focus(if you're not looking at the +25% crit) and Focused mind can be considered psuedo-dps talents.

Does 100% mana reduction every 3 minutes equate to 5% mana reduction on 2 spells(only looking at single target)? I am not entirely familiar on how you would do the math, if someone else could do that, that would be excellent.

[Draculja]

Cause it is not only about the mana gaining from the shadowfiend. It is about the extra dps u gain for free every 3 mins, plus the fade ability sooner up. Nice at anub.. being targetted and soon after i could use it again.
Then if mana regaining isnt hard at all... VT is up, mana totem of shaman, etc... u dont have to use mana reducing spells on ability.
It isnt plain comparing mana stats to eachother, it is about more benefits on veiled shadows then focussed mind.

Ofc i a long fight the focussed mind will have a bigger advantage towards mana-pool... but not as much advantages in the different aspects of fights.

[fabian]

Cause it is not only about the mana gaining from the shadowfiend. It is about the extra dps u gain for free every 3 mins, plus the fade ability sooner up. Nice at anub.. being targetted and soon after i could use it again.
Then if mana regaining isnt hard at all... VT is up, mana totem of shaman, etc... u dont have to use mana reducing spells on ability.
It isnt plain comparing mana stats to eachother, it is about more benefits on veiled shadows then focussed mind.

Ofc i a long fight the focussed mind will have a bigger advantage towards mana-pool... but not as much advantages in the different aspects of fights.

I'm looking for a more mathematical PoV for the reason to take Inner Focus of Focused Mind. Also, the reason why I want to compare just the mana portion is that because if Inner Focus compares out equal to Focused Mind, then of course Inner Focus is a bigger dps gain.

[Worshaka]

If you link Inner Focus with MB you save 616 mana every 3mins which equates to 616 / 180 * 5 = 17.11 mp/5.

Focused Mind on the other than reduces the mana cost of all MB's & MFs by 5% per talent point (as well as some mana savings on MS but thats obviously cast situationally). Assuming full DPS burn on a single target, it's quite easy to sustain a MB cast every 7.2 seconds which would mean in 180 seconds you could cast 25 MBs. In addition you can achieve 1.5 MF ticks per second which would equate to 120 MF ticks. The tricky thing is that some of these MF casts will be clipped casts so 120 MF ticks doesnt necessarily equate to 40 MF casts. It's more likely to be in the region of 50 MF casts.

5% of MB mana cost = 30.8 mana, 5% of MF cast = 16.3 mana meaning a saving of approx 1585 mana or 44.02 mp/5

In terms of MP/5 focused mind is by far and away the better talent.

There is a DPS effect associated with Inner Focus, however gaining 25% crit on one spell every 3mins leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not exactly sure the best way to measure the DPS increase but it's going to be extemely negligible.

If you take inner focus you are betting off keeping it up your sleeve for utility. Inner Focus Divine Hymn for example will apply the 25% crit rate to the entire channel and save you 2433 mana. Keep in mind you will spend 1161 mana geting back into shadow form so its a rather nice saving for the occasion. You can also use it to get back into shadow form if your raid needs a hymn of hope, something shadow priests should be looking to do if their raid is struggling for mana.

Personally I dont put the extra point into Focused Mind or Inner focus, instead I picked up Psychic Horror, doesn't really help with the average boss encounter but I can't go oom and I just personally perfer to have some world PvE survivability. Mind you it does come in handy for Faction Champs and the occasional bit of trash (obviously not in ToC).

[Draculja]

Thanks for this summary.

One thing i wanted to add to the extra you can create by inner focus, connect it to MS.. huge AoE-effect.

[darkmomo]

Quote from Blizzard staff Priest
Shadow Word: Pain and Haste in Patch 3.3
We removed Shadow Word: Pain from scaling with haste because we thought Shadow dps was too high with all 3 dots hasted.

There is a bug where you can get big SW:P dots and then keep them rolling at that magnitude forever since the spell gets constantly refreshed. It's a nasty bug to fix. However, that isn't why we removed SW:P from Shadowform.

It's important for classes to want the stats that appear on their gear, but it's not a goal that everyone requires all stats in the same 1:1 ratio. It's a bit unfortunate in the best-in-slot-or-nothing mindset of some of our players that the second and third best stats sometimes get labeled as junk even if they still boost dps beyond a non-trivial degree.

Our stance on simulations remains that they can be good tools when used correctly. We will continue to not pay a lot of attention to posts that simply say "Sims say our dps is too low. Please buff." You can't just accept a simulation's estimate of your dps as what you'll actually see on an encounter. Sim output is fundamentally not empirical data -- it is a model; an attempt to imitate what will really happen. Simulations can be really useful for predicting say an optimal talent or gear configuration for your character. Players have learned a lot of things about class mechanics from the better sims out there. "True dps" is not one of them.


So I'm a little confused on this being said...are they saying that the whole dots being buffed is not going to happen anymore just because it can out dps other classes?

[Worshaka]

No, they removed haste scaling from SW:P but it remains for VT & DP. While the ability to prolong temp buffs continuously to a rolling SW:P is seen as a bug GC says that the ability to apply vast amounts of haste to SW:P wasn't the reason they removed haste scaling, they did it because they felt spriest DPS was going to be too high.

That sort of stance confounds me, obviously a bug that allows you to prolong in excess of 100% haste is a game breaking bug and if they can't fix that for technical reasons that should be the only reason to remove the haste scaling. I actually find that response rather insulting, I can't believe they would attempt to utilise a bug as a way to balance classes.

[Deyus]

I think it actually makes a fair amount of sense. Assume he's telling the truth, and Shadow DPS was higher than they would like. If that is the case I would suggest it is a good decision to apply the nerf via SWP. This course of action allows them to avoid fixing the P&S bug (which presumably would have taken a fair chunk of their time) and prevents them from having to open up another ability / talent / etc. (which would have taken up even more time).

I just hope that once we get into Icecrown we agree with their DPS targets for the class!

[Verzerrung]

enlightening

[Worshaka]

I think it actually makes a fair amount of sense. Assume he's telling the truth, and Shadow DPS was higher than they would like. If that is the case I would suggest it is a good decision to apply the nerf via SWP. This course of action allows them to avoid fixing the P&S bug (which presumably would have taken a fair chunk of their time) and prevents them from having to open up another ability / talent / etc. (which would have taken up even more time).

I just hope that once we get into Icecrown we agree with their DPS targets for the class!

I think you're missing my point, or perhaps i'm not illustrating it very well.

Lets just assume that Shadow DPS was at the level they wished it to be with the SW:P haste rolling bug. Wouldn't that indicate that they are happy to use a bug as a way to balance a class? They speak a lot about intelligent game design, how does making a player have to exploit a bug to be competitive promote intelligent game design? Simple answer is it doesn't.

Would Shadow DPS be too high without the bug? From my estimates, if the bug is abused to its full potential you can get over 700 DPS just from the bug. Obviously the best outcome would be to fix the bug, so instead of 900 - 1000 DPS from an exploited hasted SW:P we would get an extra 200 dps from it. However there are technical issues so the options are no haste or exploited bug haste.

Considering how much you can exploit it, and how it would promote race changing to troll, changing professions to engineering, abuse consumables, getting PI from a disc priest, weapon changing... basically all the things they dislike, surely this is the reason to remove it. Instead they say this has nothing to do with the removal just that DPS was too high.

This just inforces to me that it's ok to use a bug to make a class balanced which is an absurd philosophy. In this case you might say the bug put our DPS too high then surely its an issue with the bug not the mechanic.

In any case that response is appauling (from my point of view), bugs of this nature need to be fixed or made a non issue (which is what they are doing in this instance), you don't let them go on in the game to this scale and factor it in to balancing issues.

[Chell82]

ya i tend to agree with everything he just said ...
in my case for example... prior to a boss fight i have to like toss pw:s like crazy around cause that the only way to charge up Illustration and Eye of the Broodmother , pop a wild magic pot at just the right time... wait for my lightweave to pop and then im safe to say : " Yeah i can pop sw now so the dks in my guild will only be 2.5k ahead of me instead of 3.5k " ... it is a very nasty bug and blizz refusing to deal with this and just taking advantage of it is a real insult to its customers

[Worshaka]

ya i tend to agree with everything he just said ...
in my case for example... prior to a boss fight i have to like toss pw:s like crazy around cause that the only way to charge up Illustration and Eye of the Broodmother , pop a wild magic pot at just the right time... wait for my lightweave to pop and then im safe to say : " Yeah i can pop sw now so the dks in my guild will only be 2.5k ahead of me instead of 3.5k " ... it is a very nasty bug and blizz refusing to deal with this and just taking advantage of it is a real insult to its customers

0 point waiting for lightweave to proc, MF refreshes temp SP gains... basically you can't roll temp SP gains to an entire duration of SW:P.

[Deyus]

I think you're missing my point, or perhaps i'm not illustrating it very well.

No you've illustrated the point well. It just comes down to a question of whether you believe priest DPS was too high due to the bug, or was just too high period. I'm inclined to believe GC that it was too high period, even without the bug taken into account. If what I'm suggesting is correct, then they have both given us the ~200dps nerf they were looking for, and removed the need to fix a nasty bug.

Alternatively, if DPS was only too high because of the bug then I agree you completely. It's a low rent solution.

I'm inclined to believe the first scenario however. I think if our single target DPS is ever near the top of the heap then we'll be due for nerfs. Top end single target DPS would tend to make us overly strong in multi-target situations (which make up a sizable proportion of raid encounters).

[fabian]

No you've illustrated the point well. It just comes down to a question of whether you believe priest DPS was too high due to the bug, or was just too high period. I'm inclined to believe GC that it was too high period, even without the bug taken into account. If what I'm suggesting is correct, then they have both given us the ~200dps nerf they were looking for, and removed the need to fix a nasty bug.

Alternatively, if DPS was only too high because of the bug then I agree you completely. It's a low rent solution.

I'm inclined to believe the first scenario however. I think if our single target DPS is ever near the top of the heap then we'll be due for nerfs. Top end single target DPS would tend to make us overly strong in multi-target situations (which make up a sizable proportion of raid encounters).

Note that Blizz has a different standard on what dps should be based off than the player base.

The perfect encounter for Blizz to see class rankings is a boss fight with movement on both the tank and range(boss being kited/void zones), multiple adds in where bot multi-dotting/ceaved and AoE will be needed accordingly, and burn phases.

The perfect encounter for the player base is Patchwerk.


If the simulators can be configured to taken into account the mechanics on how Blizz balances dps, then we can know what the actual reason why SW:P lost the haste scaling.

[greysin]

Note that Blizz has a different standard on what dps should be based off than the player base.

The perfect encounter for Blizz to see class rankings is a boss fight with movement on both the tank and range(boss being kited/void zones), multiple adds in where bot multi-dotting/ceaved and AoE will be needed accordingly, and burn phases.

The perfect encounter for the player base is Patchwerk.


If the simulators can be configured to taken into account the mechanics on how Blizz balances dps, then we can know what the actual reason why SW:P lost the haste scaling.

or you can accept the fact that they couldn't properly configure SWP to NOT LOCK IN ALL HASTE BUFFS for the duration

at this point in time, they can't fix SWP to work properly with haste

it's either bugged and doing more damage than they want or it can't be affected by haste

[fabian]

or you can accept the fact that they couldn't properly configure SWP to NOT LOCK IN ALL HASTE BUFFS for the duration

at this point in time, they can't fix SWP to work properly with haste

it's either bugged and doing more damage than they want or it can't be affected by haste

It is not fact because of one simple thing, you do not work at Blizz. You do not know what they've done in terms of testing this, you were not at the meeting in which they've decided to go with the change, and you do not know the exact conditions in the fight/mechanics in which they were able to determine why spriests dps was too high.

I am also not the only one thinking that to actually criticize Blizz we'd actually have to see a parse on how they determined spriest dps was too high...

It just comes down to a question of whether you believe priest DPS was too high due to the bug, or was just too high period.
Alternatively, if DPS was only too high because of the bug then I agree you completely. It's a low rent solution.
I'm inclined to believe the first scenario however.