Item Level 559
Expectations: Some Damage?
Armory Link: Tidbitsy US-Thrall
Warcraft Logs Link: none... yet
Apparently new posters may not be able to post links, so I’m Tidbitsy on US-Thrall. The gear is a bit of a mess, but it’s essentially what I have at the highest item level for each slot. My understanding is that the 2 pc pushes you to 1:1 crit:mastery. The current haste breakpoint I’m able to reach is the 14875ish one, and that’s what Ask Mr. Robot has indicated I should gear towards. I am a little wary about the recommendations to ditch some socket bonus to make the breakpoint, but perhaps that’s standard now?
So I returned to WoW late into MoP and have been mostly pugging as Disc trying to catch up in heroic progression, but the group I found most recently has asked me to main Shadow and off Disc for their heroic progression. I haven't touched shadow since Firelands, so it's taken me about a day to brush up on the rotations and set up all the weak auras nonsense, etc... The first couple of boss pulls were fairly discouraging, as I was pretty handily the lowest dps. So here I am asking a few particular questions to clarify rotation priorities, and set some realistic expectations for where my dps should be:
(Please stop me if I get something wrong)
Dot snapshotting is still a thing. When I see my Int procs start rolling, I probably want to refresh my VT and SW:P, and then perhaps again at the end of the proc? Haste is also snapshot? I am currently treating the legendary proc the same way. Ditto for lust? I've read some conflicting information about when it's appropriate to refresh dots given no procs, or at least assuming you have a longer proc like immersus and you need to do things while it's rolling. I read somewhere that DP:3 -> insanity is essentially the bread and butter of our highest dps, and mind blast on cd is what gets us there. To that effect, people were recommending refreshing VT and SW:P ~6 to 8 seconds left preceding a DP:3 so that you can insanity without the dots falling off? Similarly, on some fights I'm running DI, should I interrupt insanity to cast MB procs?
Most of the posters here advocate for higher MB usage, and better dot uptime (when it's low). Ideally, you would never let dots drop off? Or are there some cases where you'd rather MB -> DP:3 -> insanity first. I guess the crux of my question is should I ever delay MB or DP:3 to refresh dots. Presently, I'm willing to delay CDs like shadowfiend and Halo, and will hold off on DP:3 to refresh dots, assuming (perhaps erroneously, given DI) MB will be on CD for the full duration and I’ll have time to get the DP:3 off and use it without delaying the next orb-generator. I assume I treat the first tap of SW
like MB in these cases. SW:P while on the move, etc…
All that said, I find I'm getting around 160-175k self-buffed single target dummy damage. We did a few pulls on Malk last night and on the longer attempts I think I was sitting around 210-230k when we wiped. These are all perhaps rosy recollections of the best-cases where I managed not to trip over the priority. Either way, I had heard shadow was near the bottom of the single target totem pole and hoped to get a vague idea of where my gear might put me and to try and head off any rotation issues before they start to sink into muscle memory.
P.S. – I know the intent of this thread is more for fixing shadow dps, but I actually prefer to push the limits of my disc dps where appropriate (different gear/gemming/etc…). Assuming I’m not having mana troubles, what yields the highest dps throughput: gemming pure int or crit, maintaining relevant socket bonuses? At the moment I am trying to stack crit and do around 120-130k best-case single target dps in roughly 555ish gear.
P.P.S – thanks for slogging through my post if you made it this far! Any and all help is greatly appreciated.