[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[elsus]

Hoping Isentropy puts in his two cents soon

[Caladia]

Hoping Isentropy puts in his two cents soon

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752187627

His comments were included in that post.

[beefeetr]

in regards to talents in mythic +, stm is only slightly ahead of Void Ray with LotV :/

Is this with a heavy crit build or with a stm build with LotV+VR?

[Kharum]

I just got the legendary belt, should I change to SI or stick with AS?

[kalaratic]

new flaskataur is up with the tier set. the 2 piece is so fucking bad but the 4 piece is pretty cool. you can enter legacy at 70 insanity with no problem because of the VB spam. if they're really going to go forward with it not fully refreshing dots at least spamming it 5 times in a row when you first enter voidform helps them stay up a lot longer now.

also tried out the belt since he sells all the legendaries, idk how the fuck you guys put up with that queuing bug on mind blast, it is terrible.

[Djriff]

Is this with a heavy crit build or with a stm build with LotV+VR?

https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9324 is where I am getting my information from. Haste heavy. Lower haste levels had more crit.

[Caladia]

I just got the legendary belt, should I change to SI or stick with AS?

For StM you want to stick with AS for the Insanity generation that it provides passively to help smooth out the decay. For LotV, in dungeons, I'm not sure if the damage from AS outweighs the bonus damage you'd get from SI's additional Mind Blasts or not. I haven't tried.

[Djriff]

As In either case.

[RsinRC]

For StM you want to stick with AS for the Insanity generation that it provides passively to help smooth out the decay. For LotV, in dungeons, I'm not sure if the damage from AS outweighs the bonus damage you'd get from SI's additional Mind Blasts or not. I haven't tried.

I like AS in dungeons. It prolongs my VF and frees me from wasting GCDs on MB to do a nice rotation, gaining both Insanity and damage from Mind Sear -> tab VB to keep my dots up.

[Deleted]

Finally I was able to raid with another priest so I had a direct comparison for the fight. He had slightly better gear and out DPSed me but there was something else that stuck out for me. Both of us had VT/SWP as our main damage abilities but for him his third was VB while mine (depending on the fight) was either MB or ... MF? The MF ones where usually fights that were bad for me so I'd ignore them. But what could be the reason he was doing more damage using VB?

Is there a point during VF where you stop casting MB and just focus on VB? I'm usually switching between VB and MB the whole time and even during "low" stacks more often than not both spells are coming of CD around the same time. Is my timing just off or is something else odd that's happening?

[Gorsameth]

Finally I was able to raid with another priest so I had a direct comparison for the fight. He had slightly better gear and out DPSed me but there was something else that stuck out for me. Both of us had VT/SWP as our main damage abilities but for him his third was VB while mine (depending on the fight) was either MB or ... MF? The MF ones where usually fights that were bad for me so I'd ignore them. But what could be the reason he was doing more damage using VB?

Is there a point during VF where you stop casting MB and just focus on VB? I'm usually switching between VB and MB the whole time and even during "low" stacks more often than not both spells are coming of CD around the same time. Is my timing just off or is something else odd that's happening?

Void Bolt should always be cast on cooldown and should be cast first if it comes off of cooldown together with someone else.
Mind Blast gives insanity at the end of the cast. Voidbolt gives it instantly. Therefor Voidbolt will give you the time to cast Mindblast while the other way around is not a guarantee.

[Dawnrage]

The new cloak is pretty freaking good, from messing with it on PTR. Pretty sure it's our second best single target legendary behind the belt.

[bunglehaze]

Just a heads up, the 'fixed' dispersion insanity drain bug has just happened again on live. I'd had a really sucky raid last night that started with a DC half way through but after that just seemed to not be able to keep up with StM - I assumed it was the lag I had picked up as a result.

In any case I had spent much of my final time of each boss flat on my back dead, useless for a spec designed for execute to miss almost all the execute

So despite being at work today I have hit the dummy in Org, LotV specced to start with for a base line reading, rest to allow CD's to come up and specced StM.

Messed up the rotation before going into StM anyway and hit VT beforeheand - no worries it's not critical as I just wanted to tweak my rotation and get better. got into StM and got over the 300k mark as it all went frantic so popped dispersion to get the next VT out.

Instant drain I guess that explains why when I was having a decent raid last night (for me anyway, I am low geared at 863 and low skill really) it all suddenly went to shit.

I actually have started to enjoy the StM play style when previously I loathed it for being too on top. Having played my frost DK for a bit though (iLvl 843 and better DPS than my priest in general gameplay) it was quite nice to have a spec that was so demanding and engaging but until they fix these absolute gamebreaking bugs might go back to the plate wearing slow rotation for the sake of an easy life.

[Romanticide]

The new cloak is pretty freaking good, from messing with it on PTR. Pretty sure it's our second best single target legendary behind the belt.

I found belt+bracer to be the best combo, but that's just feely-craft.

[Nyel]

I found belt+bracer to be the best combo, but that's just feely-craft.

Belt is definitely better, bracers seem to be better when you can multi-dot, the cloak is a pure ST legendary. Many are forgetting the legendary ring. I don't know if I want to change it for another legendary because it's dot spreading component just feels so good.

[Deja Thoris]

in regards to talents in mythic +, stm is only slightly ahead of Void Ray with LotV :/

I don't really agree with this statement. Theres too many variables to sum it up in one sentence.

At some stage you wrote this "What this tells us is that while we may do excellent boss damage, we're not bring a whole lot to the table for trash DPS. You will have to decide what to run depending on your groups needs and your gear available." which is pretty much what it boils down to rather than "whats sims ahead overall"

With fortified a broad generalization would be that the importance of trash dps outweighs that of bosses because the trash is more dangerous and it has relatively higher health pools.

With tyrannical you'd want to look at the dungeon and factor in how many uses you can get out of StM. On top of this you'd want to factor in the "danger" from each boss - in other words how much your increased dps will reduce the risk of a wipe. The last factor would be "convenience". You don't lose 5 seconds from dying but a res will have to be cast or a CR "wasted".
- So for example Nelths lair you can StM the first boss and dying and releasing takes you past the barrels so you can re-eat by the time the group arrives. The worm boss is also a good place to use it as the last boss is trivial.
- CoS is a no brainer on tyrannical. You can StM the first boss and carry that over to the add after the first boss. Last boss it's almost mandatory because the raid wide AoE counts as a soft enrage.
and so on.

I construct my build based on the affixes and dungeon and to a certain extent my comp.

[RsinRC]

So pretty much been playing on the ptr lately and theres a few concerns I have.

With the set tier the VB spam lacks heavy in a pack of adds. I'm missing out on plenty of AoE damage spamming VB. On live with the ring I can have a group taking damage from my dots with the damage of Mind Sear on top of that. On the PTR VB can do enough damage on a few adds but after a certain amount of adds the damage of the 4 VBs isn't going to cut it. What sucks is having that sweet button light up and knowing you can hit 4 VB back to back but having to Mind Flay instead, to gain the aoe damage.

I'm not liking this. I would want the set tier to have the 2pc bonus be what the 4pc bonus is now and replace the 4pc bonus with 'When you enter VF your VB does X damage to nearby enemies for 6s. That or make VB do splash damage baseline. I don't like having to hold out on free spammable VBs, it's counter intuitive.

Also I haven't noticed but does 4pc bonus let VB extends our dots above max or to max cap?

Lastly, I've been using Mania exclusively to get a feel for it and I think it's a bummer that it doesn't provide any extra improvement to your speed at 0 Insanity. I think Mania should have a passive bonus of 10% and scale up with insanity or have a static increase when inside VF. It feels like im running too slow when I'm trying to run from a hazard and about to fall out or starting the ramp up of VF.

[Alanar]

So pretty much been playing on the ptr lately and theres a few concerns I have.

With the set tier the VB spam lacks heavy in a pack of adds. I'm missing out on plenty of AoE damage spamming VB. On live with the ring I can have a group taking damage from my dots with the damage of Mind Sear on top of that. On the PTR VB can do enough damage on a few adds but after a certain amount of adds the damage of the 4 VBs isn't going to cut it. What sucks is having that sweet button light up and knowing you can hit 4 VB back to back but having to Mind Flay instead, to gain the aoe damage.

I'm not liking this. I would want the set tier to have the 2pc bonus be what the 4pc bonus is now and replace the 4pc bonus with 'When you enter VF your VB does X damage to nearby enemies for 6s. That or make VB do splash damage baseline. I don't like having to hold out on free spammable VBs, it's counter intuitive.

Also I haven't noticed but does 4pc bonus let VB extends our dots above max or to max cap?

Lastly, I've been using Mania exclusively to get a feel for it and I think it's a bummer that it doesn't provide any extra improvement to your speed at 0 Insanity. I think Mania should have a passive bonus of 10% and scale up with insanity or have a static increase when inside VF. It feels like im running too slow when I'm trying to run from a hazard and about to fall out or starting the ramp up of VF.

Voidbolt should just refresh it for full durtion period. We have it now and it's not to good or to bad..

[worcester]

Or maybe voidbolt shouldn't have anything to do with refreshing/extending dots and should just be good enough to use by its own.

Tie dot duration manipulation to void form itself: something like dots duration don't decrease during voidform (functionally each tick would just add another tick). So outside of vf you have to refresh dots, inside you don't.

[Nyel]

Or just give Void Torrent per tick +3-4sec DoT duration if you keep Void Bolt as it is on the PTR... Void Bolt on the PTR just feels wrong if it will go live this way.