Am I going to be able to rank as a Shadow Priest without the legendary?

[Togglespark]

I feel like I've been pushing both my gear and numbers to the absolute maximum, and we're now about 5/8, but I'm only parsing on average at 95th percentile according to Epeenbot. I have only one rank for normal Spine which, it's pretty easy to cheese and not many people bother to cheeze it for a measly rank. Either way, I would like to rank like some of the others in my guild do. We have a Death Knight that has similar gear and a Warlock with similar gear that rank very high on almost nearly every fight. I know for a fact I'm doing the best possible DPS for my gear. Not only that, I just blow my simcraft results out of the water.

Is it just not possible to rank without the legendary staff?

[Soisoisoi]

If you're "Blowing your simcraft results out of the water" I'm guessing you're either multi-dotting whilst simming for Patchwerk or you have the settings wrong.

[Togglespark]

5/8 Heroic isn't good enough to get gear to parse with? o.O

[Arlee]

5/8 Heroic isn't good enough to get gear to parse with? o.O

you didn't say 5/8 heroic... you just said 5/8, and mentioned a normal mode boss.

[Kilee25]

In general, no you aren't going to rank.

You might get a lucky fight every now and then and get in the bottom half of the bracket. I have a legendary, and DI, but no heroic gear, and I'm barely ranking in te mid-100s, and even that is only occasionally. The legendary adds something like 2000 dps, and the rankings are so tight that there's literally like a 3000 dps spread between the top and bottom players (if even that). If you start at 200 and work your way down the rankings, for every boss, every priest you gear check either has a legendary or is sporting about 80% or better heroic gear. They also get DI. And bare in mind this is the bottom percentile of ranks.

You look at a site like raidbots.com - you can gaurantee that those graphs are pulling data with casters with legendaries, and DI. Top 100 parses. Yeah... you'll be lucky to find 5% of the parses used to be non-legendary.

Also, the "margin of error" for dps is quite a bit smaller than some people would lead you to believe. I always do within about 1000 dps of my projected simcraft value (high or low). The better players are meeting this margin as well. At the rankings level, gear does pretty much what it sims. So if you want to rank, you need it.

You might could cheese a fight to get a rank. Like having some severe buff feeding. Have the rogues tricksing you. The disc priests givving you PI. Etc. etc. etc.. maybe you could make up the difference, but generally speaking you have to "pay" people do this for even a single fight. And then you might get unlucky or have a bad attempt. >_>

[Fatirish]

Ranking in this tier doesn't only depend on the gear, but also the strat in which you kill the boss. If you are ignoring what your RL asks you to do and you're padding meters by dotting everything in sight, then sure, I think you could probably rank top 100 on all fights without the legendary. Fights like Hagara will only give you a high parse if you drop him right before a new lightning/frost phase. The downtime between it will kill your dps and you won't even come close. If you're not double dotting on mor'chok, forget about it.

Ultraxion is the only decent measure of legendary vs. non-legendary imo, since it's a single target burn where all priests are likely performing a soak as well as receiving a couple of debuffs and phasing out.

All of the others depend on strat (are you padding on adds on yor'sahj, dotting them all up before aoe?).

Bottom line though, don't expect a top parse if you don't have the staff at this point... :\ Sorry friend.

[Deleted]

You probably need staff, DI and Cunning of the Cruel if you want to rank top 10 on most fights.

[Vawcks]

I feel your pain, OP. It's basically as Kilee says; There's not much possiblity of you ranking without a legendary. If you can, a DI and near perfect CD optimization, DoT uptimes, and ofc volc pots. This from a priest without one ;(. It's obtainable, just gotta try hard af.

[gakpad]

The legendary has never been a substitute for skill. You won't get any high ranks, but if you're actually performing at or above your sim dps (which I doubt, by the way) ranking 200-100 shouldn't be out of the question.

[Deleted]

If you mean top 100 just priests you can def do it without legendary. Ive done 63k in 10m reg without staff CoC or DI or hc gear. Which is about 80th. On madness of course.

[Togglespark]

The legendary has never been a substitute for skill. You won't get any high ranks, but if you're actually performing at or above your sim dps (which I doubt, by the way) ranking 200-100 shouldn't be out of the question.

With my current gear, I don't have the 4 piece, but all offpieces are 410 with 50+ int gems. I do have 2 piece however. My current simmed DPS for Ultraxion on Elite with low world latency (I get 10 world 15 home) I sim 37900, and on our kill, I parsed rank 197th (now unranked as of this morning) at 39,700. I had a really good uptime, only one fading light which I lucked out and timed in between my GCD (0 downtime), and I even had a disc priest PI me at the start.

I don't want to brag, but stationary fights like Ultraxion, I have a near perfect rotation. I'm also really really good at tracking multiple target DPS. I had really high parsed ranks in Tier 11, but I also had every best in slot at the time. I had 102 at the time of the kill on Sinestra, and most of the BWD bosses I had 50+ ranks. We've changed quite a bit since Tier 11 however, so I was concerned that I might be missing something.

I have ranked this tier, but mostly because I was one of the first to kill the boss. Our guild took a break, so we're only 5/8 heroic. 25 player raids are just strapped for more raiders. :/

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. It seems with just the sheer availability of these staffs that it'll be very difficult to rank without one.

[gakpad]

Not that I care really, but getting external buffs like PI in your kills that you did "more than simcraft said you should" kind of voids that claim >_> Anyway, for my own personal sanity, would you mind providing parses/armory just so I can see for myself? I realize there are the few and far between players that can perform exceptionally well (have a moonkin guildie doing more than I do on my warlock in equal gear (granted he has a legendary and I don't), but it drives me crazy). Anyway I would be grateful if you could oblige my request :P

[Ellumina]

You probably need staff, DI and Cunning of the Cruel if you want to rank top 10 on most fights.

I got none of those =[ And I never rank

*munches on some chocolate in the corner of the room*

[Gandrake]

rank on world of padded logs means nothing

it's nice to show that you can do it better than anyone else, but guilds you apply to are going to be looking at more than your rank on WoL

although, i don't know why you aren't working on getting the Legendary (if you are not). every day bitches be getting legendary staff on this server, right after one sequence ends another sequence begins.

[gakpad]

rank on world of padded logs means nothing

it's nice to show that you can do it better than anyone else, but guilds you apply to are going to be looking at more than your rank on WoL

While I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, that's completely irrelevant to the thread. On another note - there's not terribly much padding to do in DS, almost all of the adds present actually do need to die, so there's no "cheesing" your way into top parses just by multidotting the same things that every other good player is already multidotting. And if you're talking about external buffs a la FM/DI/Tricks very few of the top ranked parses actually get external buffs stacked on them if you'd take the moment required to check them for yourself.

Not to mention how extraordinarily ironic it is considering you have a damage meter screenshot of yourself doing half of a group's damage in your sig. GLHF buddy

[Gandrake]

OP is complaining about ranking, so I am telling them that ranking is not that big of a deal. I don't understand how that could be irrelevant, but OP never said anything about Ultraxion either. Just that they couldn't rank on any fights because they didn't get a legendary staff.

I don't know what it is, but that's just the way things are this tier.

I can't rank at all on WoL, every Warrior from 200-1 at least has Gurthalak and Eye of Unmaking, and I just got eye this week. Still waiting for a Gurthalak so that I can sit at the cool kids table with all the other cool kids

[Rayr1fe]

Is it just not possible to rank without the legendary staff?

It's possible, but not very likely.

Some things to consider:
~ 9% from the weapon proc
~ 6% from Dark Intent
~ 3% from trinket proc
= up to 18% from having the best gear and buffs.

WoL only tracks the top 200 per spec (and there are more than 200 priests with legendaries now) so getting 95% of that means you are probably also beating some priests who have legendaries. The right gear and buffs can make a big difference, but playing perfectly can still have its rewards. It's always fun to beat someone who out gears you, especially if you are considered to be the "underdog".

[Deleted]

One of the largest things with getting ranked is your raids tactics. I'm currently sitting at 2 decent ranks (1st for zonozz and 3rd for hagara, 25hcs) and get <20 for morchoks usuallys. point is I'm well aware the only reasons I'm getting ranks is because our raid tactic allows me to maximise my DPS (standing in the middle for hagara during ice), standing in range of 5 targets on zonozz and not needing to move / disperse / soak etc.
Sure I get crappy ranks on other fights because... well... I'm not as good as other players. I don't rank top10 for ultraxion for example cos I'm crappy at cutting fading light short. I don't get ranked on yor'sahj cos our tactic uses 1 less black phase than the top ranks (and I actually stop AoEing to kill the ooze).

In short, you'll get ranks without a legendary if you're working a tactic that allows you to optimise (eg, get the most possible aoe phases on yors'ahj and you're allowed to attack whatever you want to maximise DPS)

[Professor Oak]

I ranked once, beat our staff wielding shadow priest.
He's just bad though.
It was on Hagara. I didn't have DI, nor the staff, but I did have LFR Cunning of the Cruel. I think I was 80-something :l
Not the highest, but still ranking.

[Eons]

As people have said before, it's definitely possible to rank without the legendary and cunning. Just last week I had ranked log for ultraxion heroic 10 man that was 54th at the time the log was posted (43.5k DPS). I do not have either the legendary or cunning. Just gotta try hard and get some RNG in your favor.