[Priest] PvE Shadow Guide (by Kilee)

[Kilee25]

Hi Karshda,

Yes if you do not get DI often (or ever) it should be a small bonus to single target and multi-dot dps to settle your haste a little lower. You can keep it above 2141 if there's a chance of getting DI every now and then. How low you go depends upon keeping ES active. Experiment with various levels to find what works for you, but do not go below 1602.

[Solia]

Just curious as to your armory to see what gear you are using. I find that reaching 2589 isn't that hard with all the item choices we have now (unless you are running double Int trinkets.)

[Keosen]

At the moment i am quite a few pieces of gear to being able to reach the haste cap (most likely wont be able to get it until i obtain heroic mode drops)

So would it be best for me to drop my haste even low and get more mastery? (If im reading the FAQ right)

Don't call it haste cap, there is no haste cap for shadowpriests it's a terrible miss-conception.
Every point of haste is a plus on your dps unless the mechanics of an encounter are getting in the way (Alysrazor)

Reaching the haste needed for extra ticks is easy and obtainable even in less than a 370 average ilevel.

I do not advice you to gear for something else beside haste, if you are far from add-ticking values then maybe reforge stat but do not gear away from haste, is plain wrong.

A general rule of thumb is get close to hit cap and then get whatever has haste on it, if it doesn't has haste then reforge into haste.

[Veiled]

I, too, despise the term haste cap. I wouldn't mind seeing your armory as well.

Personally I advise against dropping haste for any reason, but that's just me, I guess.

[Karshda]

I know its not the haste cap. Don't really know why I called it that in my post.

But anyway here is my armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rshda/advanced

[Deleted]

hi
i get in my 10 man raid always DI (exept for alysrazor).
So my question: Should i reforge everything into haste (crit and mastery)?
I am a goblin and my haste rating is: 2293 and with all buffs i am over 6000 int.
so with DI haste is always better than mastery? Without DI i should aim for the "haste plateaus"?
thanks for anwering my questions

PS: sorry for my bad english^^

[Kilee25]

Hi Tomson, thank you for your question.

I think it would be best to bring this sort of discussion to your warlock and your raid leader. From a purely logical point of view, you would put DI on whichever priest can generate the most DPS. Specifically, this would be the priest with the highest gear iLevel - especially intellect. Statistically your group should see better success if the overall raid DPS is as high as it can be.

However, the unfortunate drawback of doing this is that you can create jealousy or non-constructive competition in your raid group. Without knowing the dynamics of your raidgroup and how your players interact (ie their mindframe and what their goal for the raid is), I cannot give any more advice.

[Deleted]

¿? Weird answer... Tomson, just reforge everything to Haste, no matter if you get DI or not.

[Kilee25]

LOL sorry. I read a completely different question for some reason. Yes, get as much haste as you can.

[Arlee]

You probably just fried your brain a little messing with the SimC update yesterday Kilee

[Raidwiper]

Hi, amazing guide, I always refer to it and love the discussions.

I was wondering if you have made a 391 BiS gear set?

I played in chardev making my own etc. but I would love to see what you come up with. I inspect many top Spriests and not everyone goes the same way. It would be safe to say that we could just bump all the gear from the 378 BiS and wear those but 391 version. However better gear, more stats, more hit`spirit on them, in the end we might get a better use of some other pieces. I see some Spriests going for the offset 391 legs crit/haste. Probably because heroic rag is not in the bags yet, or maybe it ends up being a better choise and the Tier gloves are quite well itemized with spirit/haste.

So yea would love to see a 391 bis from you please.

[Kilee25]

Hi Raidwiper, thank you for the kind comments and questions.

One of the reasons I haven't listed a BIS 391 set is because of the low number of people who could obtain it. At that level of raiding, you generally don't "farm" content. You beat the content and move on to the next challenge, and you just take whatever you can get along the way. But I digress....

There's two different sets you can build from heroic gear - an intermediate set that doesn't include Ragnaros gear, and the final set that includes Ragnaros gear. The point being that you probably need this intermediate set in order to get the Ragnaros set in the first place.

Intermediate Set
Head: Flickering Cowl of the Undertow - Heroic Lord Rhyolith
Neck: Flowform Choker - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Shoulder: Shoulderwraps of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Back: Rippling Flamewrath Drape - Avengers of Hyjal Quartermaster (Revered)
Chest: Vestment of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Alysrazor
Wrist: Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Hands: Gloves of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Baleroc
Waist: Majordomo's Chain of Office - Normal Ragnaros
Legs: Leggings of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Shannox
Feet: Coalwalker Sandals - Heroic Shannox
Ring1: Crystal Prison Band - Heroic Shannox
Ring2: Infernal Signet of the Avengers - Avengers of Hyjal Quartermaster (Exalted)
Trinket1: Theralion's Mirror - Heroic Twin Dragons
Trinket1: Necromantic Focus - Heroic Baleroc
Main Hand: Chelley's Sterilized Scalpel - Crystallized Firestone Collector
Off Hand: Goblet of Anger - Heroic Shannox
Ranged: Trail of Embers - Crystallized Firestone Collector

Stats:
6583 int
1756 hit
2606 haste
772 mastery
920 crit

Final Set
Head: Hood of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Ragnaros
Neck: Flowform Choker - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Shoulder: Shoulderwraps of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Back: Rippling Flamewrath Drape - Avengers of Hyjal Quartermaster (Revered)
Chest: Vestment of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Alysrazor
Wrist: Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom - Heroic Majordomo Staghelm
Hands: Fingers of Incineration - Heroic Ragnaros
Waist: Majordomo's Chain of Office - Heroic Ragnaros
Legs: Leggings of the Cleansing Flame - Heroic Shannox
Feet: Coalwalker Sandals - Heroic Shannox
Ring1: Crystal Prison Band - Heroic Shannox
Ring2: Infernal Signet of the Avengers - Avengers of Hyjal Quartermaster (Exalted)
Trinket1: Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor - Heroic Ragnaros
Trinket1: Necromantic Focus - Heroic Baleroc
Main Hand: Ko'gun, Hammer of the Firelord - Heroic Ragnaros
Off Hand: Goblet of Anger - Heroic Shannox
Ranged: Trail of Embers - Crystallized Firestone Collector

Stats:
6779 int
1769 hit
2696 haste
720 mastery
943 crit

Notes:

I built this set with a human in mind. You'd probably have to tweak the reforging around to reach hit cap with other classes. You can get 50 more haste if you need it by switching the glove enchant out with mastery.

You can play around with using the heroic Wings of Flame from Alysrazor, but from what I can see you just lose too much hit and there's no where else you can make that up without going into a hole. Maybe if I sit around and play with gear long enough I could see a "path" to hit cap and haste benchmark, but I don't see a good one at the moment. You're basically sacrificing about 30 intellect by wearing the 378 cloak, but it just seems to fit better and allows you to stay hitcapped while passing VT+2.

If you don't care about going under the hit cap, you could wear the wings of flame. You'll probably lose about 1.5% hit from building this set, but a Dranei could do this easily without making a sacrifice at all (go Dranei).

You don't want to use the Alysrazor pants. You loose too much raw intellect with those plus the intellect lost from having to take tier gloves.

On the final set, there's a third tick of DP coming at 2737. If I had this gear, I'd probably tweak it around until I hit that point.

If you have the legendary, of course you'd want that.

[Raidwiper]

Snip

Thanks for all the info

[zakaluka]

Kilee, thanks for this guide

My guild recently nominated me as the dps switch for 2-heal fights (damn druids and their efficient throughput), and I had to learn shadow in a hurry. Your class guide is beast. <3

Started with retard dps, couple days later I'm performing adequately.

[Karshda]

So I was wondering if it worth it to refresh dots early if say Power Torrent or Volcanic Destruction proc and then refresh them again before they fade?

Also, is there any safe fight to double tap (or even use) shadow word: Death on below 25%. I've happened to kill myself quite a few times with it so far.

[Kelesti]

Volcano, yes. Power Torrent, not so much.

[Deleted]

I've made new guide, explaining how to deal damage with a shadowpriest, spellwise.
For the ppl that already know a lot about it, it will not offer anything new, but it would be good for people that want to check it out how to play shadowpriest.
It's not perfect but I hope it's a good start.

[eErike]

I've made new guide, explaining how to deal damage with a shadowpriest, spellwise.
For the ppl that already know a lot about it, it will not offer anything new, but it would be good for people that want to check it out how to play shadowpriest.
It's not perfect but I hope it's a good start.

Good video
I really hope it gives some of the new shadow priests out there a clue what to do as I see many who refresh dots strange or standing mind spiking/MB ing the bosses >.<

Edit: Kilee, just noticed that the Mace in the 378 BiS list is from Heroic ragnaros. I'm sure most of the people here understands that it's ment to be a normal mode, but it still might be something you want to change

[Kilee25]

Hi Karshda, thank you for the question. I apologize for the lateness of the reply.

So I was wondering if it worth it to refresh dots early if say Power Torrent or Volcanic Destruction proc and then refresh them again before they fade?

Yes, for both procs, you want to put up each of your dots at least once before they have faded. In the case of Volcanic Destruction, you can do this at any point and get an increase in DPS. In the case of Power Torrent, you will only get an increase in DPS after the first tick of the original VT (so another words at least 3 seconds in).

In both cases, the ideal situation is that you refresh your dots only once, when they normally would have needed refreshing. You only want to over-write existing dots if you would miss a proc otherwise. As a result of this you generally should be refreshing VT either when it is necessary, or at the tail end of a proc (ie the last second). Not before.

Also, is there any safe fight to double tap (or even use) shadow word: Death on below 25%. I've happened to kill myself quite a few times with it so far.

Hm... for normal modes, the only fights where this is truly dangerous is Beth'telac and Lord Rhyolith. On Baleroc, you don't want to use it if you have the shadow debuff. You just need to be aware of a fight's mechanics and only use the spell when you know it's safe. The loss of DPS from SW: D is not going to sack a boss kill, but dying early definately will. So if you're in dobut, just don't use it.

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 09:48 AM ----------

I've made new guide, explaining how to deal damage with a shadowpriest, spellwise.
For the ppl that already know a lot about it, it will not offer anything new, but it would be good for people that want to check it out how to play shadowpriest.
It's not perfect but I hope it's a good start.

I love the video Omirr, thank you for posting.

---------- Post added 2011-08-29 at 09:49 AM ----------

Kilee, just noticed that the Mace in the 378 BiS list is from Heroic ragnaros. I'm sure most of the people here understands that it's ment to be a normal mode, but it still might be something you want to change

Oi.. thank you eErike, I'll fix it in my next update.

[Arlee]

Hm... for normal modes, the only fights where this is truly dangerous is Beth'telac and Lord Rhyolith. On Baleroc, you don't want to use it if you have the shadow debuff. You just need to be aware of a fight's mechanics and only use the spell when you know it's safe. The loss of DPS from SW: D is not going to sack a boss kill, but dying early definately will. So if you're in dobut, just don't use it.

Normal Shannox can be a bit of a pain in the last phase for double tapping too.