Returned to spriest - confusing results

[bunglehaze]

Hey guys, I have had a stint on my DK for ToS as my raid leader needed him for progression, then I have levelled a Dh from fresh up to ilvl 926 on both specs so as my spriest hasn't been touched since early Nighthold decided to go back and get him up to speed. I had 4pc T19 and was setup for that obviously and have had to get pretty much all new gear again.

I managed to keep 2pc T19 and get up to ilvl 921 equipped with good secondaries, simmed at 1.1M pretty much and usually managed 900-950k in LFR ToS without a massive effort.

I have since got 4pc LFR gear and my sims went up, with a gear shuffle got 1.25M on a reduced 915 ilvl, secondaries nowhere near optimal of course. The trouble is that 750-850k seems to be as good as I can pull without a drop of good luck.

I know my next step is to hit ToS HC and see if I can grab 4pc from there as that will improve things but still, is the difference between fun almost effortless DPS and frantic but lower DPS just down to secondaries in this case? I am baffled why in theory it should still be an increase with lower ilvl but it doesn't seem that way.

Previously I had :

Crit : 36%
Haste : 39/40%
Mastery : 34% (IIRC)

Now I have :

Crit: 33%
Haste : 35%
Mastery : 42%

I also have Sephuz and Mangaza's belt so should be OK for the base recommended haste, currently this is 12100 vs 14000+ it was.

I have found the priest the most irritating of all my toons to get setup for legion, DK and DH seem to get gear that can work just fine but the priest seems like a constant battle to get tiny changes in secondaries over ilvl, yet my new raid leader wants me at 925 minimum for ToS Mythic and opening of Antorus.

Thanks

[Hugginz]

Welcome to being a raiding shadow priest.

Without logs, it's difficult to really tell what the issue is.

My experience is that shadow scales very high at the back end; so the higher your ilvl, assuming that the stats are good, the further you will gain in DPS comparitively. Your relics and netherlight choices will matter as well. What's your Artifact level?

In terms of your raid leader "requiring" a gear ilvl for M ToS at this point, 2 weeks from the next patch, is kind of silly and with a trip or two through heroic TOS I'm sure you'll have some ilvl upgrades.

Again, without logs, this is a simple rant, but hey, this is why they invented these forums, no?

[bunglehaze]

Welcome to being a raiding shadow priest.

Without logs, it's difficult to really tell what the issue is.

My experience is that shadow scales very high at the back end; so the higher your ilvl, assuming that the stats are good, the further you will gain in DPS comparitively. Your relics and netherlight choices will matter as well. What's your Artifact level?

In terms of your raid leader "requiring" a gear ilvl for M ToS at this point, 2 weeks from the next patch, is kind of silly and with a trip or two through heroic TOS I'm sure you'll have some ilvl upgrades.

Again, without logs, this is a simple rant, but hey, this is why they invented these forums, no?

Hi, don't get me wrong - I have raided plenty with this toon. I'm aware as my gear improves so will my output and that's all fine. It's more that my lower ilvl gear is simming higher because of the set bonus but isn't really achievable from what I have found so far compared to my higher ilvl gear showing sims of 150k dps less but feeling like it was somewhat close to the sims when played.

It is almost as though the sims are over valuing the T20 set bonus to me, I may lose 2 of my set and equip my higher gear in place to see how that affects both the sims and actual play as ultimately sims mean nothing if the results aren't as expected.

As you say it's a bit of a rant but the reason community forums exist.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, so just a quick test. Took off 2 pieces, replaced them with non tier and took my ilvl up to 918. Sims say 1.18M, output is just under 1M on a boss

[Deleted]

That stat drop doesn't seem too huge imo. 4p is good and lets you go to 1min VF rotation. I would throw sims out of the window and go checking logs from other with similar gear and kills. You can also go hit dummy and see witch gear allows you to get longer VFs.

Sims might show more dps if it's on elite skill and low movement and executes the 1min cycle perfectly. It can be hard to get cycle going well on practice because of low gears.

[Caladia]

Still haven't provided logs for us to help point out anything obvious or otherwise.

[Spicymemer]

I was wearing a 900ilvl neck from skorp until yesterday.
ilvl is stupid
your raid leader is stupid.

[bunglehaze]

Still haven't provided logs for us to help point out anything obvious or otherwise.

Yeah sorry, I have been pretty busy and not checked back. The truth is I don't really have any logs on this toon with this gear as the last HC run I went on was badly geared and I just equipped anything as an upgrade with a view to sorting secondaries later.

I then went on a NM achievement run so that's not going to show anything of worth.

That said, I am now 923 ilvl, secondaries are where I would like them to be and am pulling decent damage (I think). That being said it has been a long had slog because to get an upgrade meant ilvl AND secondaries having to be right, totally the opposite to most classes that have an upgrade if the ilvl is better.

In the achievement run last night I was consistantly 3rd on fights where there was a decent burn phase, it wasn't logged though. The main thing is that it felt good to play and it was a guild run so enough people saw the lowest geared DPS in the group doing a consistantly high level of damage - most others are 935 to 940. On Host I was pulling 1.25M, on class hall dummy with multi dot that was 2.25M so I believe it's somewhere in the vicinity of where I should be.

My last LFR Log for Goroth (name, Shadowgrieve):

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

[Caladia]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...false%24200174

Your first Void Torrent was rather delayed after Void Eruption, try to cast it at most as the second ability. Void Eruption -> Void Bolt -> Void Torrent. You also cast Mindbender immediately after your Void Torrent, you'll want to hold Mindbender until at least 25 stacks of Voidform, preferably 30 stacks. This will help you push out your Voidform close to 50+ stacks. Which will help you keep close to the 60s Voidform cycle, which includes the ~10s afterwards to get back into Voidform and start the cycle over. Using Void Torrent as soon as you can in your Voidform and Mindbender around 25-30 stacks.

Now obviously this can be hard to do with mechanics sometimes fucking it up, but should be what you strive for. Though that's with 4pc t20, if you don't have that, and once you start getting t21 and losing 4pc t20, that might change a bit since it'll be harder to maintain the 60s Voidform cycle. But to keep your Voidforms as long as possible, you should still aim to Void Torrent up front and Mindbender as late as you can.

[Raiz]

Hi, don't get me wrong - I have raided plenty with this toon. I'm aware as my gear improves so will my output and that's all fine. It's more that my lower ilvl gear is simming higher because of the set bonus but isn't really achievable from what I have found so far compared to my higher ilvl gear showing sims of 150k dps less but feeling like it was somewhat close to the sims when played.

It is almost as though the sims are over valuing the T20 set bonus to me, I may lose 2 of my set and equip my higher gear in place to see how that affects both the sims and actual play as ultimately sims mean nothing if the results aren't as expected.

As you say it's a bit of a rant but the reason community forums exist.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, so just a quick test. Took off 2 pieces, replaced them with non tier and took my ilvl up to 918. Sims say 1.18M, output is just under 1M on a boss

Tbh I'm not surprised. There's a lot of difference between 12k 13k and 14k haste. In practice I feel more comfortable playing with 14k haste. I don't care about what sims is telling me. I didn't have the belt though.