[Priest] PvE Shadow Guide (by Newnoise)

[Vzelik]

Moana is correct that discussing it in detail would be better suited for the threads already happening here on MMO-Chapmion. However, I'll share some information here. Napkin math puts it around a 8% DPS loss. Simulation craft has it coming out around a 4.5% DPS loss.

New, is this compared to 4.0.6 live? Or 4.0.3 values?

I know this week I did 22k in BH, but I had grand #%$ up my rotation fairly badly. At first when I read it I thought they reduced Shadow Orb Power, not our entire damage across the board .

[New]

New, is this compared to 4.0.6 live? Or 4.0.3 values?

I know this week I did 22k in BH, but I had grand #%$ up my rotation fairly badly. At first when I read it I thought they reduced Shadow Orb Power, not our entire damage across the board .

The nerf was to Shadow Power, our passive 25% Shadow Power for speccing into Shadow. This is not to be confused with our Mastery, Shadow Orb Power. The recent hotfix was a nerf to all damage we do as all our spells are now affected by the change. The tooltip will continue to read 25%, despite actually being 15%, until a future patch fixes this.

The results I provided were the supposed differences in the Simulation between 4.0.6 release, and after the Shadow Power nerf. Unfortunately, there have been some fixes to the code unrelated to the Shadow Priest changes over the last couple versions, so I can't compare with 100% accuracy whether 4.5% is still true. However, the 8% napkin math is still generally accepted as the amount we were nerfed by. There is discussion about this taking place in the State of Shadow thread in the stickies.

[Deleted]

hi peeps.
I have just a few?. what is the best rotation and is mastery better than crit now. I can not get my DPS higher than 10k. which is pretty bad compared to my gear. I am hit cap and etc

[zsun]

hi peeps.
I have just a few?. what is the best rotation and is mastery better than crit now. I can not get my DPS higher than 10k. which is pretty bad compared to my gear. I am hit cap and etc

Crit has a tiny edge over mastery in general at the moment.

As for the best rotation, would you like to hear the short answer or the long answer?

Short answer:

Keep dots up, maximize empowered shadows uptime by using mind blast frequently, fill the gaps with mind flay, use archangel and shadowfiend when they come off CD, use SW when in execute range or when a long fight is anticipated and/or mana conservation is crucial.



Long Answer:

Start with dots, and keep them up, mind flay after dots has been applied until you get shadow orb, mind blast to trigger empowered shadows, refresh VT and DP immediately after. This maximizes empowered shadows benefit. Although by doing such premature refreshing will lower the damage of your initial cast, it is easily compensated by the earlier gain of empowered shadows on dots as well as having new DP/VT cycles start earlier than otherwise.

Use shadowfiend as a DPS cooldown. That means use it once your trinket procs and everything ramped up, NOT when you need mana, and each Shadowfiend that comes up after that must be used immediately on cooldown regardless of trinket proc or not. Use Archangel as a DPS cooldown as well, but you should time it so that it gets used when no dots are in an immediate need to refresh. This is because using archangel removes your evangelism stacks, and you won't get that back until after 2 mind flay casts. So using archangel, only to immediately refresh VT/DP without evangelism, isn't ideal.

Mind Blast is something that should be used frequently, usually used with at least 1 shadow orb to refresh empowered shadows. Whenever you refresh empowered shadows, you can afford to cast the next mind blast that's coming off CD without any orbs, since by that time there is still enough time to wait until the mind blast after that for refreshing purposes without jeopardizing the empowered shadow's uptime. However by doing so, you are slightly gimping your chances to accumulate any shadow orbs from mind flay, since the time spent casting the 0 orb mind blast could have been 2 ticks of mind flay, hence 2 chances to generate an orb. However in the long run these 2 extra chances are relatively quite small, and usually taking that risk (as opposed to playing safe) to cast the 0 orb mind is more worth it in terms of overall dps. However again there is an exception to this risk in the circumstance where dots are close to falling off soon. In that case I'd rather play it safe and NOT cast that 0 orb MB because I don't want to risk refreshing those dots in case I lose my empowered shadows at the same time.

Use SW on CD when in execute range (<25% health). However careful not to use it on fights with massive damage multipliers such as halfus. Also you can use it whilst moving or if there is a need to conserve mana (such as on fights where you might need to use Mind Sear often and that drains a lot of mana).

In some situations where there might be some adds such as the green slimes from toxitron, or maybe those spark adds from alakir, you might just wanna nuke it down with mind spike.

So key points:
1. Keep up dots
2. Keep up empowered shadows
3. use archangel/shadowfiend on CD
4. Use SW when in execute range or when need to conserve mana.

Once you got those 4 points covered up, just use Mind Blast and Mind Flay and have fun.

[nagina]

Crit has a tiny edge over mastery in general at the moment.

That is for BiS gear?
>
>
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If you have, let's say 30% haste, worth going for more?

+1 +2 +3 +4 +5
Vampiric Touch 10.00% (0220) 30.00% (2588) 50.00% (4956) 70.00% (7324)
Shadow Word: Pain 08.34% (0024) 25.00% (1996) 41.67% (3969) 58.34% (5943)
Devouring Plague 06.25% (0000) 18.75% (1256) 31.25% (2736) 43.75% (4216) 56.25% (5696)

With dark intent i've got 32-33% haste, that means I get +3 ticks on DP and 2 of VT, yes?

Since other extra ticks are so far away, maybe focus on crit or mastery?
I dunno if my simcraft was correct last night, but values for crit, mastery and haste were the "same", haste were maybe bit better but not much.

[zenkai]

If you have, let's say 30% haste, worth going for more?

I Say it's always worth going for more, its like this...

The only time tick duration really matters is on fights you will be multi dotting, because on a normal boss you will be refreshing your dots anyway so hitting a plateau really won't increase your dps all that much

On top of that, each piece of gear comes with 2 stats, so if you chose haste your second stat will either be going for spi/hit/crit/mastery, and it's not like you can reforge your secondary stat for more haste if it already has haste on it.

[Kimpan]

I got a question about Dark Intent.

What class would benefit the most from it under MALORIAK 25HC (Under add phase! ADD PHASE! black / green).

Fire mage with Combustion, Living bomb, Pyro and Ignite or a SP with their dots and mind flay?

[Abandon]

I got a question about Dark Intent.

What class would benefit the most from it under MALORIAK 25HC (Under add phase! ADD PHASE! black / green).

Fire mage with Combustion, Living bomb, Pyro and Ignite or a SP with their dots and mind flay?

Shadow Priest, definately. It amounts to about a total of about an 8% DPS increase when used on a Shadow Priest, and provides the biggest benefit to raid DPS as a whole.

In the original post, there is more detailed information in the section marked "Does your Warlock love you", and here is a link to the direct math on Dark Intent:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tent-The-Guide

[New]

In general, a Shadow Priest does come out the best. Gherkin's guide does need a small update and we will lose some of our dominance over the other classes with the recent nerfs and improvements to the simulation craft coding. However, you describe a very specific situation that has gotten a lot of attention on it's own. It used to be that Boomkins were kings of that fight. With enough skill, they were a better target for Dark Intent. However, that brings up a key issue surrounding Dark Intent itself. It comes down to skill.

In both phases, a Fire Mage will have an easier time hitting big numbers on that fight than a Shadow Priest. A Shadow Priest who is correctly doting every add will provide tough competition for other classes. It's up to you to play at a competitive level to gain the Warlock's Dark Intent. Don't forget to occasionally Mind Flay for Dark Evangelism stacks and Mind Blast to keep up Empowered Shadow.

Specific to green phase, it's important for you to have DOTS rolling on the adds BEFORE they lose their damage reduction buff. This way, you will have DOTS ticking on all of them, and you will be able to Mind Sear them down to provide maximum DPS for the burn (I created a /tar tank /cast mind sear macro for simplicity). This will help ensure your competitiveness for the buff during this phase because if you're just using Mind Sear or DOT the adds too late, Dark Intent is not being as useful as it could be in this situation.

[Nuljan]

Hi, i got a question regarding statvalues as a nearly-raid ready SPriest...
Everywhere i look, i see people saying something similar to Int>Spellpower>>>Haste>Crit~Mastery~Hit/Spirit. They also say that one should use SimCraft to get the more precise values, which i did, and the results baffle me - i get something similar to Crit>>Hit/Spirit>Haste>Mastery.
My question is, is the difference only because of the (somewhat) high difference in my ilvl compared to everyone elses (mine's 344 atm), or am i missing some settings in SimCraft that makes up for these VERY different numbers?
If you wanna check for yourselves, my priest's name is Keranos, on EU Anachronos.

[New]

Simulation craft will return, what appear to be, strange values depending on what profile and settings you use. Things like having Focus Magic and Dark Intent enabled will skew your information right off, so you will always want to make sure those are off (unless you do always get them, then it may be helpful to turn them on). Even things like fight length will change values to some degree. There are very many factors you can consider when trying to interpret your results. Unfortunately, I won't list all of them off for you, but there are some things to consider:

1. When you ask simulation craft to scale your stats, it runs separate fights and increases your stats from -200 to +200 in order to scale it. It runs a simulation increasing or subtracting 1 rating then averages the DPS across all the fights it has run. This is how it scales your all of your stats.

2. Simulation Craft will see crossing Haste Plateaus as additional DPS gains. These can be anywhere from a 15 to 50 DPS gain and will potentially affect your supposed Haste value if you are near these levels. Being within a +/- 200 range of a Vampiric Touch or Devouring Plague threshold will affect what you could consider your "true" value of Haste.

Priest_Shadow_T11_359 : 23682dps @ 2224 Haste
		Int	Spi	SP	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
Scale Factors	3.1651	1.3329	2.5034	1.3178	1.3768	1.0734	1.3123
Normalized	1.0000	0.4211	0.7909	0.4164	0.4350	0.3391	0.4146

Priest_Shadow_T11_372 : 27141dps @ 2451 Haste
		Int	Spi	SP	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
Scale Factors	3.3509	1.4122	2.5825	1.4349	1.5024	1.8062	1.4410
Normalized	1.0000	0.4214	0.7707	0.4282	0.4484	0.5390	0.4300

The 359 profile is not within +/- 200 of a haste plateau. However, the 372 is. This is not an all encompassing explanation of why changes in Haste's value happen, but it captures some of the variability you may see in your own tests.

3. People say to run your own simulations because, in reality, it is very hard to make a true blanket statement of stat priorities for every Shadow Priest. If you're super serious about min/maxing, and you see you could gain 30 DPS by reforging Haste into Crit, then you could use simulation craft to help back up those claims (I wouldn't recommend it). However, while Crit may have some added benefits than just pure DPS, the ability to get quicker casts off on the run may prove to be more helpful in the long run.

4. The idea of getting hit capped and the value of Hit and Spirit is another topic entirely. I would read up more on the debate of whether to be hit capped in order to make up your own mind on how to interpret the value of Hit and Spirit.

Again, this is not an exhaustive list of every thing to consider. I hope this was helpful.

[Kelesti]

Adding the link to this in the Guides sticky.

[heriana]

Is anyone else having trouble running simcraft? If I run it off of my amory, it shows me doing 0 dps. If I run int off of the 372 BIS, it shows haste as having a higher value than spell power... Any suggestions? I already tried downloading the latest version of simcraft.

[Deleted]

"Changes in % damage modifiers, critical strike chances, increased casting speed, spell power bonuses, etc., are not reevaluated with each tick of Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch. The damaging values of each tick are determined by the stats your character has at the time of casting the DOT. This means, in order to gain the added benefit of buffs like Dark Evangelism and Empowered Shadows that have procced after our DOT's application, we will need to recast our DOTs to increase their periodic tick damage. This information is provided as a clarification of how DOTs work and is not saying to recast your DOTs immediately upon receiving damage modifiers. Further explanation of how to DPS as a Shadow Priest is provided below"

Are you sure about VT/DP getting the dmg bonus when casting the spell? Just did some quick testing and it seems that VT/DP only gained a damage bonus when the spell landed and the buff was still present (Empowered Shadows in this case)

What I did was casting VT with less than 1 sec remaining on ES (ES not present when VT landed), and i noticed VT hitting for far less then when i refreshed VT and still had 2 secs on ES (ES still present) (Did remove other gear with procs/trinkets, so that couldn't influence)

[New]

That is what your quote of me intends to say. I realize now how that can be interpreted and it was an error caused out of avoiding wordiness. You are correct, if you start a cast with a buff, and that buff falls off before completion of the cast, then the following buff/debuff will not gain the additional benefit. Your example is fitting for explaining it well. I will change the wording to be more clear for future readers. Thank you.

[zito]

For the rotation when 25% hits, wouldn't MB x3 orb do more damage than SWD and higher in the priority if its 3 orbs?

[New]

Yeah, that's a product of left-over 4.0.3 stuff that was not updated. I'll fix the spell priorities. Thanks for noting the error.

[Blackmorgrim]

For Heroic Maloriak, Dark Intent should never be on a shadowpriest (unless there's really no other dps). For an aoe intense fight like that, any shadowpriest should gladly give up DI to your best moonkin or fire mage, for the sake of the raid.

If you're locks pay attention though, they should have an assigned shadowpriest to swap their DI to in the final burn phase, however.

Of course, this might change come 4.1... with mind sear damage being doubled and all.

[zito]

After looking over my logs, I am trying to find the value of SWD in raids or am I just doing something wrong? Mind flay and mind blast are doing more then twice the overall damage of SWD and im trying to figure out if its even worth using unless moving?

Maybe I am not using it enough, more testing when I raid again (stupid target dummys)

[New]

Overall damage isn't really the important because of course more of your total damage will come from Mind Blast and Mind Flay for many reasons.

If you want your method to be effective, you will want to find out how much each of your spells are hitting for in a similar interval of time. This means similar buffs + procs across all results. I believe you will find Shadow Word: Death with a DPET superior to that of Mind Flay.

---------- Post added 2011-03-21 at 01:24 PM ----------

Also, in regards to Dark Intent during Heroic Maloriak, it depends on the skill of your players. As with all target selection for Dark Intent, a valuation of skill + effectiveness must be taken into account.

This is not an elitist statement, but if your Shadow Priest continuously out DPSs your Boomkin on that fight, then the Warlock should swap it to the Shadow Priest. Boomkins and Fire Mages have the ability to be very competitive on those fights so it's a logical choice to choose them. I'll leave it to the Warlock to decide what is best in that situation.