I've been playing my Shadow Priest for a long time. However, I've taken a break with it since the start of Cataclysm, playing it casually here and there. I've just recently decided to start playing it a bit more seriously, but I don't seem to be doing something right. I'm guessing Shadow Orbs and Empowered Shadows has pushed me a little out of my comfort zone.
According to SimulationCraft, I'm averaging, only self-buffed, on a target dummy, around 1k less DPS than I should be doing, according to SimulationCraft's "Elite" option. It states that I should be doing about 16.6k DPS only self buffed. I pull between 15.3k and 15.7k depending on how lucky I get with Shadow Orbs, with frequent 3x Shadow Orb Mind Blasts spiking it up a bit for a while. Averaging it out, this puts me at about 15.5k DPS. According to SimulationCraft, this marks me as "Average."
Things I did notice on SimulationCraft, however, is the use of Volcanic Potions, which I'm not bothering with on Target Dummies, and Target Dummies also do not account for any potential DPS gains that Shadow Word: Death during execution phases give.
Could both of these factors account for my DPS being lower than I'd like it to be?
I'm casting Mind Blast on cooldown. I'm keeping my three DoTs up. I refresh Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague between the last and second to last ticks. If I have a Vampiric Touch and/or Devouring Plague not under the Empowered Shadow buff ticking, I recast them as soon as I get my Empowered Shadows Buffs. I have Foul Gift of the Demon Lord and Heart of Ignacious as my Trinkets. I recast my DoTs whenever I get a new Empowered Shadows buff while Foul Gift of the Demon Lord's proc is active, and I recast my DoTs after consuming 5 stacks of the Heart of Ignacious buff with the ridiculous amounts of haste it gives. I also time my Troll Berserking racial for right before I recast my DoTs.
Is there anything I'm specifically doing wrong, or that I'm supposed to be doing but I'm not doing it?
If you're curious, here's my armory link:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ticaine/simple
But this isn't a fix my gear, thread. I know my gear isn't 100% perfectly optimal. I know I have a couple of lame enchants. I know I have a crappy weapon enchant (really hoping I can get that mace from Well of Eternity, so I'm holding off on the Power Torrent until I can get it. Stat wise, it's essentially the same, but I'd rather have the mace for transmogrification purposes).
But that's not the point. The point is I'm not doing as much DPS as SimulationCraft says I should for my current gear setup.
Thanks ahead of time for any advice.