Help with Shadow DPS!

[Jake5467]

Hey guys, I am an officer of my guild and our priest seems to be pulling a little low dps and he is complaining that he can't compete with us until he has his 4 set as he never gets orbs. While I understand the 4 set is a massive dps increase, 28k on ultraxion seems pretty poor. Here's the logs for our Ultraxion kill last night and his armory. If you have any advice please let me know and I'll pass it on to him. He also has Rath'rak + Heroic Shannox off hand, Ti'tahk and the dagger off Yor'sajh. If any of these weapons are better for him let me know, but from what I've seen his BiS is Lightning Rod.
Greatly appreciated

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1876&e=2162

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...etool/advanced

Oh also he picked up his 4 set after that raid so we will have to wait til next week to see if this thing about orbs is true. That's if you're wondering why he has it in armory

[hikamiro]

His mindblast count is wayyyyy to low, does he think he's only supposed to mind blast if he has 3 orbs or something?

He's getting around half as many as he should be.

Mind blast should be used around every 8~ seconds, including the cast time. Your ultraxion kill was about 285 seconds. 285 / 8 = 35.6~ He only mind blasted 17 times.

[Raur0s]

He casts Mind Blast every 16.7 sec, which is very very bad. I suppose he's waiting for 3 orbs, but still, that's not how you DPS with a priest...
Tell him to use MB on every CD, and he should be fine

Also, there's already a sticky thread for this kind of questions:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Thread/page13

[Deleted]

Mind blast should be kept on CD but you definately don't want to lose your Empowered Shadow at any time. If your ES is about to drop and you have no orbs, don't cast MB just for the fuck of it; try to get an orb first.

[Kassina]

Hai there! What gear did he use this raid you linked? T12 4 set? or just gear with no set bonuses at all? Because his uptime on dots are 97%+ on all three and that's fine but should try to be more like 98-99% Empowered shadows (buff you get after you Mind blast with a shadow orb) has a uptime on around 70% witch i think could be higher.
What I see hes only done 10 Mind blast witch is to low. I think the problem is that he should do more mind blasts.

But you should try to listen to one of the good priests on this forum^^

[Jake5467]

Sorry I skipped over the stickies. So is the mind blast thing all he is doing wrong? Does the rest seem to be alright

[Deleted]

Well basically what you would WANT to see from the logs is 100% dot uptime and 100% empowered shadow uptime, AND as many Mind Blast casts as possible inside the time given by the fight

His dot uptime is fine, but what you want him to understand is how important empowered shadow is for his dots. That is easily fixed with concentrating more on Mind Blast.

Oh and yeah, for shadow priests it is possible to get fuuuked by rng BAD. For example, on one Ultraxion try (before my 4-set) I didn't get a single orb before the first apocalypse-type-spell-can't-remember-the-name. That will drive anyone nuts, and the dps will suck.

[Rooby]

He also doesn't have DI since you've got no warlock. Sadly that helps with DPS a LOT for us Spriests!

[Kassina]

He also doesn't have DI since you've got no warlock. Sadly that helps with DPS a LOT for us Spriests!

^This if you really want to see him improve much you need a warlock sadly.. ;(

[Qualia]

Besides the things that are already said by the others, he also need to cast more Dark Archangel. Your kill last 4'45s (285s) and he only casted 2 DA (90s cd).

[Ellumina]

Two gear improvements he can get are VP boots (definitely wouldn't pass this up) and VP ring (hit/haste). He could either buy the VP boots with gold or spend the VP to get them, and spend more VP on the ring. Even if he hasn't been capping since DS has been out, he should really have the VP to buy these upgrades. He could also replace his wand with Scintillating Rod (VP) or if he can get his hands on 700 JP and a Crystallized Firestone, H Trail of Embers is what I choose to use.

As others have said, MB usage is low. Only a 74% uptime on EP (which means about a minute of the fight with no EP at all). I understand there might be some crappy orb RNG without T13 4set, but 74% uptime is rather awful especially considering his low MB usage.

Even without DI, his damage should still be higher (I drool over his trinkets). Also, I personally chose to use Rath'tak + H Goblet versus Lightning Rod (I debated between the two but still preferred the MH+OH combo). Rath'tak wouldn't do much for Ultraxion though since it's a single target fight (on my last heroic Ultra kill, my Rath'rak did a mere 1.4% of my total damage).