about WoD spec guides

[Deleted]

I feel like you just asked why grass is pink... but anyway.

The majority of the Fix My DPS Thread is people looking for and getting feedback on how to play better.
The last two pages of the Shadow DPS thread have a lot of discussion about best way to play in various situations. If you put even a smidgen of effort into it you'd find a bunch of other discussions in that thread about how to play.
Oh hey look an entire thread focused on an aspect of how to play

Gee I wonder if any discussions have happened over on How To Priest?
Oh hey look it's an entire forum for people to talk about best ways to do each fight.
Use of Mind Flay and Mind Sear Thread
Woaden's Guide has how to play discussion and there are a few discussions which take place throughout the thread. Yea people ask about gemming and reforging, but that doesn't mean the how to play discussion never happens.
Difference between good and great SPriests is a thread full of tons of "Play Better" advice.

Anywho, there's more if you look for it. The point is these discussions absolutely do happen. Now they might not happen often enough, that's a point of opinion. But they do happen.

Fix my DPS thread has 11 pages (on my account settings) after 2 years. That's not a lot. That's like 1 post every second day. And I'm not even going to mention that some of those post are answers that only involve gearing.

The H2P section. It's mostly talents and glyphs that are lilsted there. And if you look at most boss threads it has not even more than a single page of replies. That's over the course of like 1 year? How is that significant?

The Mind Sear and Mind Flay thread is a matter of how you define how to improve. I'd say that thread is more theorycraft than actual gameplay and how you improve at it.

All the threads you mentioned I have read when they were released. My point was that not many people are interested and it's clearly seen in those threads. I'm not denying that there are people out there who would find those videos useful but I don't see the time invested as worth it unless you're bored. The frequency of responses to the threads you linked and the lack of discussion in those threads proves my point.

[Yvaelle]

All the threads you mentioned I have read when they were released. My point was that not many people are interested and it's clearly seen in those threads. I'm not denying that there are people out there who would find those videos useful but I don't see the time invested as worth it unless you're bored. The frequency of responses to the threads you linked and the lack of discussion in those threads proves my point.

A lot of people lurk forums without ever posting - maybe 80%+ of users? My guide has 50 pages, almost all of which is people either asking for clarity or caveats to better understand Shadow (far more there than in the Fix My DPS thread).

I also field a lot of personal messages on the subject, from people who don't want to ask questions they think are embarrassing in public. My MoP guide has 407k views at this point, but only ~1000 posts - lots of those views will be repeat viewers, or me editing/replying - but I'd guess at least 50% of those views (200k) are independent users: not impressions on the same handful of forum-goers.

In a game with 6.8 million subscribers, many of whom don't speak English and therefore fall outside the target market for my guide - where Shadow is just one of 34 specs (averaging 200k people per spec, ignoring population imbalance) - that's about one independent viewer for every Shadowpriest in WoW: that's just on my nooblette guide

So I agree it's a lot of work to make Shadow-specific fight guides - more work than I have time for, but I do think the Spriest community reads this stuff. It would be good if more of them participated, asked questions, or got involved - but they're here (or H2P), albeit lurking in the Shadows

[Clrg]

The problem with video guides is they can be hard to follow if english isnt your first language. A writted guide is more easy to digest and you can either try to understand it or copy-paste over google translate.

[Jimjam38]

I looked at every guide I could find on the internet. Overall, it just felt like the information was fragmented across all the guides, or straight up absent. Using DP on less than 3 orbs, when to Halo, the pull, movement maximising (it's easy to forget a new dpser doesn't innately know this), if it's worth refreshing dots before DP, Mind Sear on 2 targets vs Mind Flay. Mostly the more advanced things, which is what I needed, where much harder to find. I found it eventually, but an "Advanced" version of the Shadow guide would have helped so much back then, just as a compilation of everything in one place.

Even just a "trinkets procs affect Shadow DPS greatly, making them subject to a lot of randomness in their damage dealing. So when comparing with another Shadow priest, look at their procs first" would have saved me a lot of grief :/

Yeah, this is pretty much my own experience, and since shadow wasn't my main spec, I also never really pursued it far enough to gather all that fragmented information. As someone who hadn't played shadow since orbs came into the picture, 5.3 and more so 5.4 shadow guides seemed to emphasize the 'priority' so much that it was easy to fall into the trap of believing (as I did for quiet some time) that shadow's dps was primarily dependent on executing a seemingly simple priority. It was frustratingly confusing to play shadow in LFR and be under the impression that I was executing the rotation as best I could, and yet still not come close to the dps I thought I should be doing. As I now know, this is very much not true, and that snapshotting is what plays the biggest part, and that the finer details (some of which are still beyond my knowledge) are even more subtle, such as what Shahad outlined above.

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I've been thinking my WoD guide should include more videos - as example of techniques - so people can see it rather than just read about it or skim over it. Is there anything else you had in mind that would better illustrate how to play Shadow?

An idea I have, but don't have the time to implement, would be for someone to film each progression fight of the tier, and do Shadow PoV guides to each fight, with a Shadow-specific voice-over that shows where to position and how to move, and etc - similar to Tankspot or Fatboss, but solely for Shadow. I can't do it though, so if someone is willing to step up and take a swing at it - they're more than encouraged!

I think this is a great idea, particularly the first part. Boss by boss specific videos are something to possibly include later down the track, but I think small videos outlining specific parts of shadow gameplay is a really good idea as something to supplement the written guides. Audio commentary is a possibility, but wouldn't be mandatory for such videos, as slow-motion editing and on-screen annotations could cover most of what would need to be said. Things like demonstrating the correct way to do dps while moving, how to make best use of SWD, opening and execution phases, etc. I don't really know shadow well enough myself to give good examples of what would be good to do the videos on, but you'd know better than me anyway.

And I really disagree with the sentiment that people don't care and would rather sit and theorycraft. Sparkkugs video on how to do insane affliction dps with the opener on protectors has a ridiculous number of views, and that's exactly the kind of thing I think Yvaelle is suggesting. A lot of players default to youtube for any kind of wow info, from class guides to addon help to encounter strats. I know I absolutely studied Divinity's hc garry kill video, because it was the first one with a disc priest to solo heal it, and it wasn't even intended as a guide, but I still learnt a lot from it and it wasn't things I had ever found in the various written guides or encounter specific advice threads I came across.

[Mctriple]

I looked at every guide I could find on the internet. Overall, it just felt like the information was fragmented across all the guides, or straight up absent. Using DP on less than 3 orbs, when to Halo, the pull, movement maximising (it's easy to forget a new dpser doesn't innately know this), if it's worth refreshing dots before DP, Mind Sear on 2 targets vs Mind Flay. Mostly the more advanced things, which is what I needed, where much harder to find. I found it eventually, but an "Advanced" version of the Shadow guide would have helped so much back then, just as a compilation of everything in one place.

Even just a "trinkets procs affect Shadow DPS greatly, making them subject to a lot of randomness in their damage dealing. So when comparing with another Shadow priest, look at their procs first" would have saved me a lot of grief :/

Unfortunately not all of this is agreed upon. I mean, despite my best efforts, some people still don't believe using DP with 2 orbs is a viable option let alone a dps increase at times (math is like sorcery to some). Many people have their own opinion on what is best to do on the pull, too.

I'm not sure if an advanced section covering a lot of intricate things would bloat a guide too much and if a separate advanced guide would be better, but I agree that it would be good to consolidate more of that information. It's inefficient to try to find it all currently. That's essentially what my blog is for, though: the more advanced points of playing a shadow priest. I wish I thought to post write ups on what I've found to be best for pulls, and also the mind sear vs mind flay thing. Good ideas I will be glad to take topic suggestions for WoD!

One thing I'm planning to cover pretty well is how to check yourself with warcraftlogs. I know some will disagree with me, but I do believe that if people know how to do it better themselves, they'd be willing to try. I get a lot of people asking me what to look for and how to do it, so I'm wanting to put a section covering the things I check for when assessing a guild applicant, for instance (dot uptimes, mind blast intervals, orb generation, insanity vs dp uptimes, how they handled procs, etc.). I hope that will be useful, but again it's likely better off as a separate post. The guide would turn into a manifesto if it included all of these.

And I really disagree with the sentiment that people don't care and would rather sit and theorycraft. Sparkkugs video on how to do insane affliction dps with the opener on protectors has a ridiculous number of views, and that's exactly the kind of thing I think Yvaelle is suggesting. A lot of players default to youtube for any kind of wow info, from class guides to addon help to encounter strats. I know I absolutely studied Divinity's hc garry kill video, because it was the first one with a disc priest to solo heal it, and it wasn't even intended as a guide, but I still learnt a lot from it and it wasn't things I had ever found in the various written guides or encounter specific advice threads I came across.

Very specific videos like that are excellent. More general video guides I think are less efficient than written ones, especially when you just want to quickly reference something to double check. A fight-by-fight video guide specific to shadow tips and tricks (spectral guide saw blades on siegecrafter, good places to stand, good times to start dumping orbs, etc.) would be nice.

[Shahad]

I love your blog, but it's not something that I found very easy to find unfortunately. MMO-C and Icy-Veins are the places that pop up first in my mind when I want to lookup class info when I don't know if a class has a website community, and both are incomplete at best. If some of the conclusions in your blog would be referenced in the guides there, it would help A TON for less experienced players, but it's not everything either.

I would absolutely love a WCL evaluation post. What I'm doing is still pretty basic and I've been at it for a few months.

[Deleted]

And I really disagree with the sentiment that people don't care and would rather sit and theorycraft. Sparkkugs video on how to do insane affliction dps with the opener on protectors has a ridiculous number of views, and that's exactly the kind of thing I think Yvaelle is suggesting. A lot of players default to youtube for any kind of wow info, from class guides to addon help to encounter strats. I know I absolutely studied Divinity's hc garry kill video, because it was the first one with a disc priest to solo heal it, and it wasn't even intended as a guide, but I still learnt a lot from it and it wasn't things I had ever found in the various written guides or encounter specific advice threads I came across.

It's because it has a good title with something like "How to do 10000000 DPS". Yeah, people are going to click that. Look at the video Sparkuggz made about maximizing DPS on Horridon. It has like less views than a video talking about ReforgeLite. Same with his Workshop videos, they generally have less views than his other videos.

[Mctriple]

I love your blog, but it's not something that I found very easy to find unfortunately. MMO-C and Icy-Veins are the places that pop up first in my mind when I want to lookup class info when I don't know if a class has a website community, and both are incomplete at best. If some of the conclusions in your blog would be referenced in the guides there, it would help A TON for less experienced players, but it's not everything either.

I would absolutely love a WCL evaluation post. What I'm doing is still pretty basic and I've been at it for a few months.

I agree about it not being easy to find. I may try to get it out there some day, but to be honest I have done literally *nothing* to promote it other than adding it in my tiny signature at the bottom of my posts here and on H2P, so it always surprises me when I see how many people have visited it or when I see people linking to it to answer somebody's question on these forums. With a general shadow guide, some WCL evaluation stuff and some advanced topics, maybe I'll try to get the word out more in WoD

[Yvaelle]

It's because it has a good title with something like "How to do 10000000 DPS". Yeah, people are going to click that. Look at the video Sparkuggz made about maximizing DPS on Horridon. It has like less views than a video talking about ReforgeLite. Same with his Workshop videos, they generally have less views than his other videos.

So, you're saying we should Clickbait like HuffPost?

"This one secret to Shadowpriesting WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!!11"

"Watch this to find out which non-entity of the Void is in LOVE with YOU!"

"The Top 10 Secretest Shadowpriest Exploits that THEY don't want you to know!"


Hahah I could see it working too, that's the scary part

[Jimjam38]

So, you're saying we should Clickbait like HuffPost?

"This one secret to Shadowpriesting WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!!11"

"Watch this to find out which non-entity of the Void is in LOVE with YOU!"

"The Top 10 Secretest Shadowpriest Exploits that THEY don't want you to know!"


Hahah I could see it working too, that's the scary part

I was about to say exactly this.

"The mages will QQ once you know how to do THIS!"

"The 3 tricks Warlocks don't want you to know!"

"The top 5 reasons why raidleaders LOVE shadowpriests!"

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Fight fire with fire I always say. It's why in Australia we do burning off before bushfire season.

[Yvaelle]

Fight fire with fire I always say. It's why in Australia we do burning off before bushfire season.

It's also why the solution to bomb disposal is to put it in a box with another bomb, and let them duke it out

[Jimjam38]

It's also why the solution to bomb disposal is to put it in a box with another bomb, and let them duke it out

That's exactly right

[Deleted]

If admins allow it, it wouldn't be a bad idea to let some forum members translate guides in their native languages (me, for example) and post. I think the work some of you do is great and helpful, it's a pity that so many people could not take benefit from it.

[Yvaelle]

If admins allow it, it wouldn't be a bad idea to let some forum members translate guides in their native languages (me, for example) and post. I think the work some of you do is great and helpful, it's a pity that so many people could not take benefit from it.

You certainly have my consent!

[Jimjam38]

So my pretty casual 25man guild hit hc siegecrafter two weeks ago and last week we decided to leave it there for the year. This week myself and some other core raiders put together a 10m hc to aim for garry and last night we cleared to thok. Since it was farm content I went shadow, which was awesome on protectors and nazgrim, but on nuroshen I only did alright and sha was pretty sad. The other fights i either helped heal or was on an alt (eg 3tanked shamans) Compared to my unholy dk alt which is about the same ilevel as my shadow set, I was doing about 50-100k less on single target. This is partially just cause shadow single target lol, partially cause less experience, but also partially because when I was presented with certain situations as shadow, I honestly just didn't know what the correct thing to do was dps wise. Especially when it involved DI procs. The other thing is of course RIP SWD on adds with australian ping (thats the one thing I'll say is good about soul reaper).
Like, say on protectors using ToF and Insanity. Bindings procs, I refresh my dots on all 3, then I MB and get my 3rd orb, but now KTT procs and so does LMG, and I only have 5 or so seconds of bindings left. Do I refresh all my dots on the 3 targets or do I DP>insanity or do I DP and refresh and forget insanity? Even if I was using Affdots shadow to tell me when to refresh (which I suppose I really should be), it doesnt help with this kind of situation.

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Thats the kind of stuff im talking about that I typically haven't been able to find in any guides. And the thing is, yes, im sure that a lot of discussion around these kind of things are available in various threads and forums, but its very scattered and unless you already know where to look, it's not easy to find exactly what you want to know. Comparatively, a lot of mage and warlock guides include stuff like what to do on the pull if all your trinkes proc and what to do if only some proc but others dont. I know this isnt quiet as relevant to shadow since we dont really have cooldowns to juggle, but the idea is the same. Even stuff as simple as finding out that shadowfiend snapshots (doesnt it?) I didnt find out for a very long time, amd I cant even remember where I found out in the end, I think it was actually a disc cm guide or discussion or something.

[Yvaelle]

Very first section in my guide says:

"1. Devouring Plague (3 Orb)
2. Shadow Word: Death
3. Mind Blast
4. Shadow Word: Pain
5. Vampiric Touch"

Generating Shadow Orbs is your top priority - the only thing that takes precedence over Orb Generators is 3-orb DP, and that's because Orb Generators don't generate orbs if you are capped on orbs (3).

Basic logic:

Have 3 orbs: Yes? DP Something!

No? Can you Death something?

Yes! Death!

No? Is Mind Blast Available?

Yes! Blast something!

No? Can you Pain something?

Yes! We'll bring them Pain!

No? Can you (inappropriately) Touch something?

Yes! Touch them in their naughty places!

No? Can you Sear 3+ targets?

Yes! Sear them like a Steak!

No? Flay.


DoT refreshes in MoP, and probably in WoD, are almost never worthwhile - our dots are too short a duration, and do too little damage to really worry about it. By contrast, in Cataclysm we could snapshot a powerful Pain and refresh it with Flay through the entire fight for awhile - that made good snapshot tracking really critical. The same was true in WotLK.

In WotLK and TBC and Vanilla, DoTs were also very significant damage - so making sure they were at max power was very important. In Cataclysm it was slightly less true, and in MoP our dots sort of suck - a result of the nerf to our multi-dot capability - which also made us care less about refreshes. At the bottom of my guide though, I did include two weakauras that will tell you when exactly dot refreshes are worthwhile

Affdots works just as well though, and yes - you should be using them (or something)

[Jimjam38]

but does that still apply to council fights and multidotting? I know in single target that orb gen takes priority, but in multidotting i don't know

[Yvaelle]

but does that still apply to council fights and multidotting? I know in single target that orb gen takes priority, but in multidotting i don't know

Yes - it applies to everything - all about orbs

The only real exception is if you absolutely need to mass AoE something down really fast, and that situation is super rare - usually it can wait a GCD or your raid has plenty of AoE anyways - the only example I can even think of is Heroic Garrosh, where mass AoE is very important - important enough to skip your orb generators during that moment.

[Mctriple]

Delaying MB for more Mind Sear depends on how long you'll be delaying it and how many targets will be hit by your Mind Sear. Shadow orbs, while clearly of very high importance, are not the be all end all for shadow dps. At 11+ targets (Immerseus), for instance, it's better to ignore orb generation and sear your face off (This is including insanity. Without that the cut off is 8 mobs). The exception is if they'll live long enough for your dots to tick through, where you want to dot first then sear, but either way forget about orbs during this time. Less than 11 (8) mobs and you want to keep using MB on CD unless you'll be a) only Mind Searing for a short time (the exact meaning of this depends on how many targets will be hit but as an example only 4-5 seconds for a pack on Garrosh phase 1 where you're searing 7 targets) or b) shadow orb capped and not able to use insanity.

When procs are up, though, you will usually want to just keep Mind Searing, unless the orb generated from Mind Blast (i.e. the DP + Insanity) will benefit from those procs, too.