Kilee’s “Old Man” Guide to CoP Shadowpriest (PVE, CoP only, 6.2.3)

[Kilee25]

Hi Marathol,

Hm... For Mind Sear...

as baseline: 1652
as shadowform: 2064 (25%)
as searing insanity: 4128 (100%)

cop baseline: 2312 (40%)
cop shadowform: 2890 (25%)
cop searing insanity: 5780 (100%)

1652 * 1.4 *1.25 *2 = 5782

That's how the damage multipliers work.

Is that what you are asking?

.................

The way your post is worded, it seems like you're just wanting to know what level 45 talents to use on what fight.

This is basically the logic I use to determine that.

1. Are there two or more targets up for the majority/entirety of the fight?

Yes - Surge of Darkness. Ex: Twin Ogrons, Hanz & Franz, Iron Maidens

No - continue

2. Will I cast Mind Sear during this fight in such a way that it is necessary?

Yes - Insanity. Ex: Tectus, Thogor, Beastlord, Kromagg, Blast Furnace

No - continue

3. Can I stand still, or minimize movement to the point that I will not interrupt DoTWeaving, and is the boss targetable for the entirety of the fight, and are there no/almost no adds during the fight, and do I have the tier 17 4p set bonus?

Yes - Insanity. Ex: Gruul, and a bunch of fights in Highmaul

No - Use Mindbender for all else. Ex: Oregorger, Blackhand, Flamebender

4. You could probably put it in one of those flowcharts or something and it would catch like 99% of the fight types.

After we drop T17, the 3rd question might get taken out of this, so that the only time you'd take insanity is if you plan to cast Mind Sear. I will need to play around with simcraft and higher ilevel gear to see if the damage differences still hold. At current/lower gear levels, Insanity isn't beating Mindbender out for single target without t17 4p set bonus. I saw a few sims that were showing DoTweaving beating Mindbender in T18, and if it does it's because Shadowfiend and Mindbender's damage is brought closer in line with each other due to T18 2p set bonus. Right now, Mindbender is a pretty significant damage increase over shadowfiend, due to the reduced CD.

[marathal]

Ahhh. Got it. I was just looking at the tool tip on my screen for values, and saw a difference in totals depending on how the system added them. Mind bender is kind of hard to evaluate since it just says considerably more than Shadowfiend. I was just looking at the talents as a whole to see what else I could fit in.

[Prag]

Now that I'm 100 and trying to put this stuff to use, it's really difficult to decide on gear. I know that as a fresh 100, iLvl is pretty safe to follow due to the massive Int upgrades, but a lot of the BoE options aren't really following the "commitment" to Mastery you talk about. I picked up Stage 4 Sandman's and Copeland's Clarity because they weren't terribly expensive and they beat my 588 Blues... But they're Crit, so I feel like I'm going in the opposite direction.

I will say, though... I played a few Heroics as AS and it was meh. Swapped over to Mindbender CoP and it really did feel fun. I'm starting learning the DoTweaving now.

Thanks again, Kilee.

[Kilee25]

Hi Prag - that happens for a while. In the early levels, iLevel (intellect, raw stats) generally always beats secondary stats. You'll be a bit imbalanced for a while, but this will settle down as you approach the tail end of whatever content you are doing, whether heroics, lfr, or raiding. At some point you will start to pick up mastery gear within the same bracket, and these items will slowly replace the non-specific items that you were wearing due to having a higher item level.

I've gotten a few warforged items out of BRF that have replaced my previous mastery pieces, but were still upgrades. The same thing happened with those garrison missions that reward you with raid gear. It's not a big deal - if you follow the stat weights and look at the pawn values, a higher value will always give you more dps, regardless of the stats. That bit in the guide about "committing" to master was intended to address the people who stop upgrading to mastery pieces in the same iLevel bracket. It was not meant to say that you shouldn't upgrade to higher iLevel items just because they don't have mastery.

Also - yes, AS does pretty bad at low gear levels. I would even go so far as to say that it does very poorly compared to CoP all the way up until you get the 4p tier 17 set bonus, or 25% crit (oh, and that goren soul trinket). AS is highly gear dependent to play, possibly one of the most gear dependent specs in the game right now.

Also, keep in mind what I was saying about CoP being a "jack of all trades" spec. CoP really does have few weaknesses. It's not necessarily stellar at anything, but it's not horrible at anything (except council style fights, and even then it's not particularly the worst class at those). AS by comparison is basically a one-trick pony - it does this one thing really, REALLY freaking well, and that's pain up a bunch of targets and dump Devouring Plague into a focus target. It just so happens that some of the hardest fights in Mythic allow you to abuse that trick better than any other class in the game. So, it's a thing. But... you have to keep in mind that if you aren't chewing major glass on those fights.... or... I mean, like if you're just in a normal/heroic guild and just want to beat the content before the next tier, CoP is actually probably a better all-around spec for that. AS, in addition to having that one trick, requires your raid to kind of work with you a little bit, and not do things like kill the spears. I've gone in with a lot of groups that kill those darn spears on Darmac in like 2 seconds, and I've seen an AS priest flounder on that fight while CoP just keeps doing what it's doing with no problems whatsoever. I even saw the same problem pop up on Blast Furnace after groups over-geared that fight. I think there's something to be said for the consistency and easy of use of CoP... a lot of people don't seem to give it much credit. AS to me is a progression spec. I would build a set for it if my guild was pushing mythics, no questions asked. I'd consider myself letting my guild down if I didn't... but I'm not in a guild like that, and like 90% of the priests out there aren't either... sorry... ugh, bit of a rant there... anyway yeah hopefully that gives a bit more insight.

[Prag]

Not at all. Everything you've provided is extremely valuable to me. Hopefully I can find a way to someday return the favor. If you ever find yourself with an alt on Emerald Dream, send me a PM.

[marathal]

I don't see a need to change. But does the 12% DP nerf have any major impact? I just got rid of my LFR 2 piece which only really gave +100 Intellect for a gear token drop that gave me 675 shoulders, and got the 695 pants. Together was more than the +100.

Getting better with rotation. Oh crap moments can trip me up. Riding into an area to have 12+ level 100's can have me mashing buttons really hard. Overall I am happy with this style. Be better if we had one more thing to do.

[Kilee25]

Hi Marathal,

I'm slowly updating the guide. Emphasis on slowly.

The stat weights have already been adjusted for 6.2. The only change to weights due to the nerf was that mastery got bumped up a tad higher than it was before, due to the fact that mastery-related spells (ie. DP) are taking up even more of the share of damage than before.

Damage across the board (for all sims) went down by about 600-800. The DP nerf affected CoP too. Actually it was a pretty big hit, just not as big compared to AS, so maybe people aren't as upset about it for this spec, but it's sad.

Preliminary tests with tier 18 show that DoTWeaving is still strong, due to the fact that the 2p set bonus makes Shadowfiend and Mindbender do pretty much identicle damage, in such a way that taking Mindbender is almost like not taking a level 45 talent at all. In case it's not clear, this basically makes Mindbender a null talent choice for pretty much the entire tier AFTER you get the set bonus. Everything in the guide is still accurate for a "default" shadowpriest. I'll probably address this issue by bringing the tier sets section more to the front of the guide, rather than in the gear section.

At the moment I've been playing around with trinkets mostly. My free time is severely limited, so I apologize for not being faster.

One interesting trinket is Prophecy of Fear. I think some shadowpriests might be underestimating this trinket. It might be good enough that it makes Mindbender play style still viable, and it would certainly be the best option for AE fights where you aren't dotweaving, but instead saving orbs for moments of Searing Insanity (ie the first fight in HFC).

What you might end up doing is switching trinkets out based on spec and fight type, which may mean you'll want to pick up a couple different sets of trinkets this tier.

[marathal]

I tried using this in a Timewalker dungeon last night. I swapped everything back to old style playing, Dot all the things. But so far in Tannan, I seem to hit really hard using the set up

[Prag]

Yeah... I think you'd want a specific gear set for Timewalking. I tried it as well and it felt incredibly lackluster. I probably just don't have pieces optimized for the scaling down.

Edit: It's also highly likely that I'm just doing something wrong, too.

[Kilee25]

From what I can tell, Timewalking is all about abusing old legendaries. If you have the MoP cloak and the Cata staff, etc. etc.. basically you spike up above 4k. But if you j ust have regular items you sit around 2k. I don't feel like I'm doing any worse than anyone else playing CoP in Timewalking. However, my haste is lowered, so the casting is slower, and it throws off your timing. You have to slow your pace down. Sometimes if things are dying faster, you "whiff" spells mid-cast because other classes beat you to it.

So far, Timewalking seems pretty faceroll, so getting higher numbers is mostly just icing.

[marathal]

I just looked over a lot of Void Storage. Found a lot of old 264 gear and most of a 4 piece tier set. So far I have 15 sockets to gem. And an alt bank of old gems itching to be used. I was not planning on doing any more Time walker since I don't need 660 gear, but it may be fun to be a Heroic Raider in a dungeon once or twice

[Kilee25]

Haha, I admit there's a charm to it. We went into that Manastorm Millhouse dungeon last night and I had some good memories. We even wiped once because of silencing debuffs - when was the last time we saw mechanics like that? I admit it's kind of fun if for no other reason than nostalgia.

[Prag]

I just tried my first Mythic dungeon (Iron Docks). Wow, that's awesome! I know a lot of geared raiders are probably rolling them, but it's the perfect pace for me. I actually have to pay attention to mechanics...

As long as the adds last, is it typically enough to warrant AS? CoP just wasn't putting out much damage (although I was in a group with 2 Warriors...).

[Kilee25]

Prag,

Priests in general suffer greatly from loss of raid buffs. Without spell power we're losing like 2-3k dps off the top. Mythic groups generally only take one caster so we almost never have it in 5 mans. Meanwhile every class benefits from what we bring. QQ.

Aside from missing critical buffs. You generally want to be in insanity spec, so that you can spam aoe. That's why the other classes are doing so well. They are in " AE" mode.

[Prag]

Prag,

Priests in general suffer greatly from loss of raid buffs. Without spell power we're losing like 2-3k dps off the top. Mythic groups generally only take one caster so we almost never have it in 5 mans. Meanwhile every class benefits from what we bring. QQ.

Aside from missing critical buffs. You generally want to be in insanity spec, so that you can spam aoe. That's why the other classes are doing so well. They are in " AE" mode.

That explains it! Thanks!

[Deleted]

How much mastery is too much? I've got some other items which could add more crit.. I.e. Goren trinket. Feet bracers and also I could use tier shoulders and swap chest

Can you take a look and give me your thoughts?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...iferael/simple

The guides very useful and has helped me regain a lot of dps as before I was struggling. Not sure how little crit is acceptable though.

[Kilee25]

Hi Lucifuriex,

I'm glad the guide has helped.

Have you installed Pawn and put the stat weights into that program? If you follow the weighting of each piece of gear, you can use that as a judge for which items are better than others.

Mastery is very linear. There is no cap or breakpoint or anything like that. It just gives a flat damage increase. The only change in its behavior that I have seen is that it seems to scale a bit higher as your iLevel increases. In other words, mastery gets stronger as your gear gest better. Many stats do this, so this is not unusual.

Your gear looks great. You may want to replace the crit gem in the ring with another mastery gem.

If you are working on crafting items, the Alchemy trinket is stronger than Sandman's Pouch when upgraded.

For raid trinkets (again, for CoP only), it's looking like Prophecy of Fear and Unblinking Gaze of Sethe are going to be our BIS trinkets. PoF looks well ahead of the others.

[Deleted]

Brilliant. Thanks for that.

Is there a reason that the alchemy trinket is better? I would of thought versatility wasn't brilliant.

[Kilee25]

Oh, the intellect proc is just stronger. It actually procs pretty often, and reliably. Versatility still helps us and is good for us. Sure, if there was another, better crafted trinket, we wouldn't want it, but there's not a lot of other choices. The type of stat it gives doesn't always mean it's an automatic take/leave. Trinkets in particular are notorious for not obeying their item level budget.

[Kilee25]

Posted an update to trinkets, food, and races to reflect updates and changes in 6.2. If a mod can, please change the title of this post to say "6.2" instead of "6.1.0".

I haven't included the 30% buff to Repudiation of War yet, but that should put it on equal footing with the other trinkets in the same iLevel bracket.