I'm going to consolidate the best information in this thread so far into one post.
Yes... cell, read this.Originally Posted by Direshadow
People argue it because you lose DPS to throw in a SW...unless of course, like you said, the situation is "ripe" for it and the only situation which is ripe for it is when you are are on the move and cannot possibly stop or won't stop for 1.5 seconds to cast any of your other spells, because if you CAN cast anything else, SW is a DPS loss.Also, people may argue this, but I like to also throw a Shadow Word Death on top of Mind Blast, if the situation is ripe for it. That means that all your dots are still going strong and won't wear out any time soon. In raid, because of your high crit, you have the potential of doing a ton of damage in a very short amount of time.
Yes, make sure to practice very very often. Try to achieve the numbers Worshaka posted that I will quote once again below. Also, there's only 1 kinda "attack" at the bottom of Worshaka's post. All the rest of his information is the best you can possibly get. ALL OF THE INFO YOU NEED IS IN A STICKY THREAD AT THE TOP OF THIS FORUM anyway. I only caps that to make it stand out, not to be a dick. Anyway, here's the best info in this thread, along with what I quoted above.I'd suggest practising on a dummy, not just with keeping your rotation rolling, but also seeing just at how fluid you can be with how fast you get your mind blasts off, how you keep your dots rolling, etc. There really should be NO down time, unless you're waiting like... .5 seconds to cast your mind blast before a dot...
It most likely IS far from ideal, so don't take that as an attack. Shadow is a pretty difficult spec to maximize correctly when compared to the strict rotation of other classes. Shadow plays off of a "priority" system which means that you don't ALWAYS cast things exactly the same. You cast them based on what is off cooldown and what is the most important to cast relative to each other.Talent build is fine, I dare say due to the complexity of shadow dps that your rotation is far from ideal, you can only really check this via combat logs analysis. Basically your MB should be cast every 7.2 seconds, dots need to be up 95% of the time and you should get a MF tick every 1.5 seconds... if you don't achieve these numbers it means your rotation isn't as effecient as it could be.
Worshaka is correct here again, OP.Originally Posted by Worshaka
Follow this advice as well.Never gem for haste, there are only really 3 gems worth considering, those being Purified Dreadstone, Runed Cardinal Ruby & Potent Ametrine. Use them per the link i provided earlier for gem advice.
Finally, read the entire Shadow DPS 101 thread at the top of the priest forum. Then practice practice practice. The effort to maximize your DPS as Shadow is significantly more than other specs due to the "priority" system Shadow uses, instead of a 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,3 static rotation that doesn't change.
That would be really cool if every spec and class played that way, but they don't, so more static and "carved in stone" rotations are spitting out tons of DPS while Shadow Priests have to "stay on their game" 110% and watch all of their abilities SO closely and pick and choose what to do based on what's off cooldown and what DoT's arent on the mob. Then there's MF which is a pain in the butt for anyone that isn't a "professional" Shadow player due to "clipping" the spell (breaking the channel at the EXACT right moment to do something else without losing DPS). This spec just may not be the right thing for her, I know I wouldn't grind my brain to do it when I could be...a rogue or something lol.