Spriest logs help

[Djriff]

Hey guys, My old guild imploded so now I found a new home, but as shadow. I'm still making the transition from disc to shadow in terms of gear, and I feel I have an ok grasp on shadow. I just want some tips on what to improve on and how I can get better as I feel i'm under performing.

Here are some logs.
Normal:
HF Assault
Iron Reaver
Hellfire High Council
Kilrogg Deadeye
Kormrok
Gorefiend

Heroic:
HF Assault
Kilroff Deadeye
Kormrok
Shadow-Lord Iskar
Socrethar the Eternal
Tyrant Velhari

Some of the pulls I ended up going heals. Also most of these were learning the fights and getting our strat down. However I still feel like I was under performing.

Armory is in my sig.

[Deleted]

I'll go over it quickly since there's too much to cover, if you want more indepth, ask again in the comments but let's begin per fight. I'll only look at your heroic kills and character. Keep in mind, many fights can be cheesed a bit, HFA can have people padding on adds, Kilrogg depends on who goes in the eye, Kormrok depends on how fast you kill the boss vs grasping hand spawns, HFHC depends on how long blade adds are alive for cascade damage, etc.

685 GSR is getting outdated, I recommend either going back and getting the M version or aiming for IRP from Iron Reaver. I'll assume the neck was a login issue and that you actually have a dps neck.

HFAssault:
- Not enough Cascade usage, in general, you want to use it as often as possible if you can hit an add wave so in essence, don't use it on CD but don't try to save it for the most optimum time since overall, you might end up not casting it enough and lower on damage as a result
- Also seems you don't cast SWP enough although this depends on how long the adds live for
- I would say not enough SWDs, my kill was a minute shorter and I managed more SWD casts but depends on how quickly the adds die

Kilrogg Deadeye:
- Not enough SWPs on the adds that spawn, while its not good to put them on the bloods for example, you can dot up the other adds unless they are dying extremely quickly
- SWP uptime seems a little low as well
- SWDs seem lacking, at the least, you can SWD every add at least once before it dies + the boss below 20%
- Overall, your orb generation was just low, you didn't have insanity up enough, you didn't get good damage from DP. MFlay was a huge portion of your damage

Kormrok:
- Divine Star is bad, just really bad and only has a slight edge when a lot of the targets are stacked and the add spawns are very frequent, go cascade. Halo can be considered but its very risky to get the optimum amount of damage
- Searing Insanity damage is extremely low, a huge % of your DPS comes from this timing

Shadow Lord Iskar:
- Why are you CoP on this? The adds live long enough for nearly 2 full SWP durations, go AS, SWP everything and DP+sear
- You should be able to get 2 cascades off on the adds before they all die depending on your AoE dps
- Shadow performs very poorly on this fight in general compared to other specs so expect to be low on the charts

Socrethar:
- No Searing Insanity damage at all and very poor Cascade damage, you should be AoEing the ghosts as they come unless the construct is assigned to them which is unlikely
- SWP uptime again, lacking, as low as 90% and minimum should be 95%
- SWPs on the ghosts depends on how long they last and whether or not they are imprisoned by the crystal (can they be imprisoned? I don't see why though)

A few things, you have good management of MB overall but you lack knowledge of certain fights and how to recognise the advantages of CoP and AS. I can excuse this however as you did main healer before. In general, prepare more for your fights, learn how to utilise SWP and when to use it. Furthermore, cascade is a very important tool and learning exactly when to be liberal in using it and using it at the most opportune moment is critical, on some fights, cascade will be your highest source of damage but only when you use it regularly and at the right times.

A last note, the first few weeks people are going to perform poorly especially if they didn't research or do PTR. I went into this tier blindly and on some fights, I have questionable performance as well but once you learn the fight, understand the scenarios, your DPS will improve. It's also worthwhile to recognise that if you have a bad parse, consider that you might be in a situation where you can't get that damage boost or pad a little bit.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Djriff]

We learned the fights on normal, well attempted to. We overgeared it that we were able to ignore a lot of mechanics and just steamroll through it.

That necklace is what I use for AS as my only other one is a Haste/Versatility and is a DPS loss according to sims.

HF Assault: I was in the difficult position of searing or dotting as some packs would die in about 5 seconds, others around 8 or 9. I did try to dot stuff that was going to live longer, but its hard to tell with 2 warriors.

Killrog: Yeah i knew after that kill I needed to improve a lot on those. Appreciated.

Kormrok: I was actually testing out Divine Star. 2 Warriors with bladestorm and a boomy = very little sear damage. The damage you do see from sear is me searing what I could.

Iskar: I went CoP after trying AS and having the adds die to quickly. We had someone swap and I never swapped back. Def going AS tomorrow.

Socrethar: Our strat is freeze all the adds and just let the casters through and burn the boss in P2. I dotted them just for orb generation really.

I noticed the my MB usage is crap with AS, it's something i've been working on and I have a bit of a groove now. I actually thought I was casting cascade at an alright time, i've been timing it when adds comeout to get the most DPS on the boss, since that's the DPS that matters.

This helps a lot, thank you.

[Deleted]

I looked at the log simply from a pure DPS overview, this is often not the right mentality if a certain mechanic/add is a problem for you. Most of the top logs currently are able to "cheese" the fight by getting very high AoE damage or being the ones that get the most out of the fight (eg. Kilroggs eye). You will naturally have less DPS as shadow if the adds die quickly, less SWP procs, less chance of double SWD, etc.

Obviously there are things to work on, I'm actually having issues with wasting shadow orbs at the moment due to the very high amount of crit on my gear compared to my haste levels (2.6k with buffs) so this is what I'm focusing on for the next clear. Have a goal, identify what to work on for awhile and once you've got a good grasp on it, move on the next improvement you can make.

[Djriff]

Awesome, thanks again for the advice.

[IamStardust]

After quick glance, SW usage is not optimal and is nearly lower than what it should be on every fight. I have shorter kill times and nearly double the usage on fights such as Tyrant and Assault (I have a hard time sniping as well, due to heavy raid aoe dmg that we run with, but yours is still significantly lower than what it should be, make this a focus to improve upon).

Reflective shield has minimal usage in your logs, which can be used as a filler during movement (if no other instant cast is available and dmg is incoming).

Searing Insanity on Kormork is low, maybe this is due to hands being spread? Cascade is much better here than DS.

If you find adds die too fast on Kilrogg or you dont get sent to his eye, try CoP.

On the fights I looked at about ORB management (Tyrant and Kilrogg) you had little wasted, so you got that going for you.

[Djriff]

After quick glance, SW usage is not optimal and is nearly lower than what it should be on every fight. I have shorter kill times and nearly double the usage on fights such as Tyrant and Assault (I have a hard time sniping as well, due to heavy raid aoe dmg that we run with, but yours is still significantly lower than what it should be, make this a focus to improve upon).

Reflective shield has minimal usage in your logs, which can be used as a filler during movement (if no other instant cast is available and dmg is incoming).

Searing Insanity on Kormork is low, maybe this is due to hands being spread? Cascade is much better here than DS.

If you find adds die too fast on Kilrogg or you dont get sent to his eye, try CoP.

On the fights I looked at about ORB management (Tyrant and Kilrogg) you had little wasted, so you got that going for you.

I've definitely been working on it. We killed Xul last night and I made sure SW was basically always on CD when I could, 2 warriors, DK, and a boomy make it hard sometimes.

I do actually pop Reflective Shield quite a bit, after going through my logs and looking at the damage its doing I've come up with 2 answers. I'm avoiding the mechanics I shouldn't be to do the DPS or the damage I'm taking is environmental and thus doesn't trigger Reflective shield on the boss. I'm probably just going to drop it and take fade instead.

For kormrok :

Kormrok: I was actually testing out Divine Star. 2 Warriors with bladestorm and a boomy = very little sear damage. The damage you do see from sear is me searing what I could.

I don't get to go into the eye, Spirest bottom of the totem pole and all that jazz.

Twintops Shadow Apparitions WA is fantastic for me not wasting any orbs when I can avoid it. I highly recommend it.

- - - Updated - - -

So I have another question regarding a specific fight. I've checked my logs vs other spriest logs and they are around 15-20k DPS ahead of me, but our uptimes are extremely similar.

Here is the boss in question: Tyrant Velhari

Any idea what's going on? Is this just RNG smacking me in the face or am I getting lower damage due to our strat?

[Deleted]

You have a mouse over macro for SWD? I can't play without it honestly, makes sniping SWD so much easier.

[Djriff]

Trying it out tonight. Not really seeing the use here on tyrant, but it will be nice on Xul.

[CrowEU]

Don't know if this is the case or not, but your armory shows you with only 2p T17m while the top parsers are using either 4p t17, 4t18 or 2p t17/18. This might a part of the reason.

[Djriff]

Oh i dropped the 2pc for mannaroth to get some more crit. That's probably what it is. I did better today ending at 56k but that's still only a 40% mark xD I'm super jelly of those with t18 at all, haven't even seen a token yet.