[Priest] PvE Shadow Guide (by Newnoise)

[Karei]

Can only say, practice makes perfect. Button-spamming on the dummies should bring you to clever and well timed cooldown-use as well as prioritisation. It's one of those things that might seem like a mountain at first but becomes a rather low hill in the end

[HeatM1ser]

Have the stat priorities changed from before:

The Basics

With the announcement of Shadow Priest changes in Cataclysm, ample minds developing simcraft began running numbers and theorizing the values of Intellect, Haste, Spell power, Critical strike, Mastery and Hit/Spirit in terms of their increases of our DPS. Initial reports show stat weight priorities have maintained their importance from 3.3.5 but the new stat, Mastery, was seriously undervalued. After several months, Blizzard continuously revamped our Mastery effect; increasing its value as a gear statistic:

Using Best In Slot (BIS) 372 ilevel Items:

		Int	Spi	SP	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
Scale Factors	3.3311	1.4346	2.5707	1.4433	1.4760	1.7975	1.4218
Normalized	1.0000	0.4307	0.7717	0.4333	0.4431	0.5396	0.4268

*accurate to http://chardev.org/?profile=18129 as of February 10, 2011. Subject to change. Tests are without Focus Magic and Dark Intent.

[Kelesti]

Adding Twintop's BiS list link to the original post, so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

[Wadeheat]

Good guide for starters

[mivulf]

Is this guide still relevant at 4.1?

I am especially interested at two sections: stats priority and rotation priority.

[Arlee]

Yep... not a whole lot changed for us in 4.1.

[Kelesti]

Stat priority might shift. I was expecting someone from HTP to step up to the plate, and bring me a new guide for 4.2, now that New's stepped down...

* shakes fist*

That's it, no more Ice Cream.

[Arlee]

Stat priority might shift. I was expecting someone from HTP to step up to the plate, and bring me a new guide for 4.2, now that New's stepped down...

* shakes fist*

That's it, no more Ice Cream.

Actually the early sims I have seen have changed the weight of our stats slightly... but they are still in the same order so far. This might change of course... but atm sorta looks like nothing really changes.

Can I haz Ice Creams nao?

[Kelesti]

Actually the early sims I have seen have changed the weight of our stats slightly... but they are still in the same order so far. This might change of course... but atm sorta looks like nothing really changes.

Can I haz Ice Creams nao?

........No.

Okay, only for you.

[Twintop]

Stat priority might shift. I was expecting someone from HTP to step up to the plate, and bring me a new guide for 4.2, now that New's stepped down...

* shakes fist*

That's it, no more Ice Cream.

I'm waiting for SimC to get updated with a workable 391 T12 profile before doing final simming for my BiS list. :|

[Veiled]

Kelesti, I'll have Kilee post his guide here, I'm sure he'll be updating it and IMO it's better than New's. I can't wait to see new Simcraft results though... getting excited!!! <3

[Deleted]

Stat priority might shift. I was expecting someone from HTP to step up to the plate, and bring me a new guide for 4.2, now that New's stepped down...

I bet 1000dkps that neither stats priority nor rotation won't shift. Haste will still be our best stat and i guess crit will be slightly more important and mastery slightly less. We'll see :P

[Arlee]

I bet 1000dkps that neither stats priority nor rotation won't shift. Haste will still be our best stat and i guess crit will be slightly more important and mastery slightly less. We'll see :P

Actually in the sims that have been run so far our stat priorities have been working out to be int > Haste > Hit > and then crit and mastery seem to change places depending on if you are doing a patchwork style sim or helterskelter.. It's nothing conclusive at this point though, which is why we aren't posting about it so much yet.

[Deleted]

I guess on helterskelter crit > mastery. And on patchwerk mastery > crit. So if I'm right, Crit > Mastery.

[Arlee]

Actually Mastery seems to be sim'ing higher on patchwork fights and crit is higher on helterskelter fights. I think this is because with all the movement that helterskelter puts in crit wins because of the crit'ing of our dots and the sim might not have enough orbs/es up enough to make mastery really valuable. However, there only is a 0.01 - 0.03 (rounding for sanity) difference, so it is pretty negligible.

[Kelesti]

Is there anything we need to pull from this thread, before letting it fall to oblivion?

[Arlee]

Might be useful to keep this info somewhere handy because it hasn't changed.

Hit Cap = 1742 hit/spirit (1639 for Draenei) for the 17% hit cap
1% Hit = 102.446 rating
1% Crit = 179.28 rating
1% Haste = 128.05701 rating
1 Mastery = 179.28 rating

Also possibly the charts that show when you get extra ticks on VT and DP with and without DI. Also, I am pretty sure the bit about "does your warlock love you?" is still relevant.

Those are just my thoughts though

[Kilee25]

Actually Mastery seems to be sim'ing higher on patchwork fights and crit is higher on helterskelter fights. I think this is because with all the movement that helterskelter puts in crit wins because of the crit'ing of our dots and the sim might not have enough orbs/es up enough to make mastery really valuable. However, there only is a 0.01 - 0.03 (rounding for sanity) difference, so it is pretty negligible.

I just saw this and actually have an answer for it.

The reason the stat weights differ on HelterSkelter vs Patchwerk is because ES falls down occasionally, and dots/spells are applied without Empowered Shadows active. Any spell applied without ES has an effective mastery stat weight of 0. Obviously this drives the value of mastery down while all three of the other stats go up.

Kelesti: The obvious thing that I like about Newnoise' guide is that it is a great technical guide. My guide is written from the standpoint of someone who has played shadowpriests for a while and is looking for tips on gearing and cast rotations. It is unfortunatley very light on miscellaneous information such as what abilities do or how they work.

There's a part of me that feels there should be room for both guides, or that perhaps the site needs a "beginner's guide" which goes into more detail on what the spells are and how they work. What glyph options there are, etc. etc. etc..

I can work on incorporating more technical information into my guide as time goes on, although I was trying to avoid turning it into a "wikipedia" article on abilities which is what I worry it might turn into if I start adding too much data.

If you see anything that you feel needs to be ported over, let me know. I will try to look over this thread and pull out anything relevant.

[Zuziza]

I do not give public-domain use for this guide, and do not condone it's reproduction in any way on this or other websites.

This may present a problem for selectively picking things out to include in other guides, as well as editing anything out (4.1 specifics) to make this an "Intro to Shadow" guide.

Edit: If someone else doesn't step up to the plate to make an Intro guide, I'd be willing to write one up. I wouldn't use New's as a reference since I'd rather not ignore his warning. Info I'd use would be from Kilee's guide, discussions from this forum, wowhead, and wowpedia (essentially within the Curse family). This next week may be a bit hectic considering it's 4.2, but I could give it a shot.

That in mind, I'm totally willing to step aside if someone really wants to do it. Guides can get a bit crazy to keep up, and I'm only an amateur for theorycraft. Luckily all the "hardcore" details for current raiding would be in Kilee's guide.

[Kelesti]

This may present a problem for selectively picking things out to include in other guides, as well as editing anything out (4.1 specifics) to make this an "Intro to Shadow" guide.

New had also spoken to me that he was going to get a replacement here to put something up, so we wouldn't be left in the dark.

That was 2 months ago.