Shadowpriest 4.3 BIS list - who's carrying the torch?

[Pontificate]

Do we have one in the works somewhere? Couldn't find one.

[Arlee]

Blackmorgrim (i hope it's not a spelling fail here ><) is currently working on one. I don't know if anyone else is as well though.

[Vargur]

Until then, is there a definite loot table outside of PTR? (and outside of ptr.wowhead, which isn't very specific as to the items' source)

[eErike]

Until then, is there a definite loot table outside of PTR? (and outside of ptr.wowhead, which isn't very specific as to the items' source)

Was just going to ask if there was such a list, I'll get my own BiS that I will work towards when I see a compleated list. After that we can share thoughts!

[cabibi64]

this tier i want to know specific what my offpiece will be!

none of this do what you want bullshit like this teir

[eErike]

this tier i want to know specific what my offpiece will be!

none of this do what you want bullshit like this teir

What ever of the 5 Deathwing endfight drops will be your offpiece, he if drops nothing useful of those 5 just sort out any of the tier pieces with the least haste and replace it with the offpiece with the most haste. Simple as that.

[Pontificate]

What ever of the 5 Deathwing endfight drops will be your offpiece, he if drops nothing useful of those 5 just sort out any of the tier pieces with the least haste and replace it with the offpiece with the most haste. Simple as that.

Well not necessarily...there is heroic level crap to consider. For example if I follow you correctly, applying your statement to T12, I'd get the gloves off Rag, (along with helm I guess) along with the other tier pieces, but at 6/7 heroic and unable to down Rag (like the 18 kajillion guilds out there including mine) you'd actually want heroic helm off Ry along with 4 heroic tier pieces, all which can be gotten w/o Rag.

That's if I'm following you correctly. If not my bad.

[Lucapa]

What ever of the 5 Deathwing endfight drops will be your offpiece, he if drops nothing useful of those 5 just sort out any of the tier pieces with the least haste and replace it with the offpiece with the most haste. Simple as that.

I'd really like to know how to utilize the new 4 set bonus best (i read about the mind spike/mind blast spam during shadowfiend so far) and how much it is really worth, because frankly, there are several pieces in the tier set which have questionable itemisation.

Chest Tier is good: spirit / haste
Glove Tier has spirit / mastery with a 6 ilvl higher deathwing alternative which has crit / haste. So this is the one on the chopping block most likely
Head Tier has crit / haste, the alternative healer piece would have spirit / haste
Leg Tier has haste /mastery, the alternative healer piece would be spirit / haste again
Shoulder is especially ugly with crit / mastery. Offset alternative would be crit/ haste.

So at the first glimpse and based on secondary stats only I'd prefer the alternative piece in 4 out of 5 slots. The questions I'm asking myself right now are:
1) How good is the 4 set bonus really?
2) Can a Shadowpriest get the important caps (haste plateu and hit cap) with no access to the legendary as BiS?
3) How good are the procs on the deathwing weapons? Blizzard has a history of making sucky proc weapons


I just took a small look and didn't do any simcrafting, but i fear that reaching the hit cap and getting decent haste might turn out problematic (again). Not all of us have a legendary and the deathwing weapons all have procs instead of secondary stats.

I'm really interested what the other shadow priests think will be BiS.

[eErike]

Well not necessarily...there is heroic level crap to consider. For example if I follow you correctly, applying your statement to T12, I'd get the gloves off Rag, (along with helm I guess) along with the other tier pieces, but at 6/7 heroic and unable to down Rag (like the 18 kajillion guilds out there including mine) you'd actually want heroic helm off Ry along with 4 heroic tier pieces, all which can be gotten w/o Rag.

That's if I'm following you correctly. If not my bad.

When talking about BiS lists I never bother to take anything but a full heroic clear into consideration.
Neither you or me have been able to kill heroic rag uet, therefor there is no point for us to have the lesser versions from the BiS list equiped.

It's important to make a difference between Best in Slot and Best in slot avaible for me

---------- Post added 2011-11-12 at 07:54 PM ----------

I'd really like to know how to utilize the new 4 set bonus best (i read about the mind spike/mind blast spam during shadowfiend so far) and how much it is really worth, because frankly, there are several pieces in the tier set which have questionable itemisation.

Chest Tier is good: spirit / haste
Glove Tier has spirit / mastery with a 6 ilvl higher deathwing alternative which has crit / haste. So this is the one on the chopping block most likely
Head Tier has crit / haste, the alternative healer piece would have spirit / haste
Leg Tier has haste /mastery, the alternative healer piece would be spirit / haste again
Shoulder is especially ugly with crit / mastery. Offset alternative would be crit/ haste.

So at the first glimpse and based on secondary stats only I'd prefer the alternative piece in 4 out of 5 slots. The questions I'm asking myself right now are:
1) How good is the 4 set bonus really?
2) Can a Shadowpriest get the important caps (haste plateu and hit cap) with no access to the legendary as BiS?
3) How good are the procs on the deathwing weapons? Blizzard has a history of making sucky proc weapons


I just took a small look and didn't do any simcrafting, but i fear that reaching the hit cap and getting decent haste might turn out problematic (again). Not all of us have a legendary and the deathwing weapons all have procs instead of secondary stats.

I'm really interested what the other shadow priests think will be BiS.

I can't say to much atm as I havn't looked at the droplists myself yet, will do soon tho. But I am very much considering to skip the 4set bonus as I don't like it at all. I will have to do some testing with simcraft with it first though.

To the third question, the proc can be huge and the biggest question I ask is if it will be like the ICC staff. Do they forsake a seccondary stat to aply the proc on the item or will they just lower them? This have a huge impact on the worth of the weapon.

[Lucapa]

[...]

To the third question, the proc can be huge and the biggest question I ask is if it will be like the ICC staff. Do they forsake a seccondary stat to aply the proc on the item or will they just lower them? This have a huge impact on the worth of the weapon.

Some links to the weapons I'm talking about:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=78475
http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=78477
It's ptr of course, so there might be changes, but it looks like they replaced all secondary stats for the proc and it is getting quite close to the release.
As one of the casters who will not get a legendary I'm a bit concerned about that.There are 410 alternative versions for the 416 DW ones, so worst case they will just be useless.

[eErike]

Some links to the weapons I'm talking about:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=78475
http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=78477
It's ptr of course, so there might be changes, but it looks like they replaced all secondary stats for the proc and it is getting quite close to the release.
As one of the casters who will not get a legendary I'm a bit concerned about that.There are 410 alternative versions for the 416 DW ones, so worst case they will just be useless.

It's a though call, someone in the raid will need to have "Ti'tahk" considering it's a pretty good boost for more than the wielder. But the lack of seccondary stats are making me a little worried about the actual use of these items. I'm not rolling with a ledgend either so I'm probably up for any of these to, we will have to wait and see about internal cooldowns on them. It should be rather high (80-100 secconds) and in that case, no thanks, I prefer set in stone stats.

And I'm not even considering the dagger either. Not my taste at all considering the randomness of it and the problem with range?

[scoops]

I made a holy priest one and can definitely make a shadow priest one in the same format too! Just waiting on moderator approval for my post to show up.

[Veiled]

Yes Blackmorgrim is working on one that will be posted over at HowToPriest.com first, then here a bit later once he's done some revisions. He should have it done within the next week and I'm sure Arlee or someone will post a link or something here.

[Purpleisbetter]

I just looked ata ilevel 410 510 int (static) + 3.2k Haste proc.

I'm dead sure it's BiS :X. I mean...a trinket with a ton of INT and a chance to proc a bloodlust? =O

[Hesp]

Well not necessarily...there is heroic level crap to consider. For example if I follow you correctly, applying your statement to T12, I'd get the gloves off Rag, (along with helm I guess) along with the other tier pieces, but at 6/7 heroic and unable to down Rag (like the 18 kajillion guilds out there including mine) you'd actually want heroic helm off Ry along with 4 heroic tier pieces, all which can be gotten w/o Rag.

That's if I'm following you correctly. If not my bad.

As stated by a previous poster, best in slot is best in slot, not merely the best of what you have access to. For t12, the bis option was to take the healing shoulders as your offset, although to be fair the next best option (spirit/haste rhyolith helm) was merely a few dps behind. The higher ilvl Ragnaros gloves were not the bis option in this case because you went from a favorable tier itemization (spirit/haste) to a less favorable one (haste/crit) which did not outweigh other choices. This next tier will be a little different however. The higher ilvl gloves which drop from Spine give you a more favorable itemization over the tier option as well as increased int in the form of higher raw int and an additional socket which will become even more beneficial with epic gems. Offset gloves are the clear winner for a bis setup, but that's not to say you can't make a better gear setup before you have access to the heroic gloves by taking a different offest piece.

As for the set bonuses and how offset pieces stack up compared to the dps tier pieces, we can use the current stat weights to estimate their value.

Using the t12 bis stat weighting (which are a mix of patchwerk and helter skelter; single target and multi dot) of:
Spirit = 0.5901
Hit = 0.5911
Crit = 0.4499
Haste = 0.5218
Mastery = 0.4584

We can get some idea of how good the tier items are relative to their healing and non-tier counterparts. Bear in mind that these stat weights do no factor in Dark Intent or Focus Magic and I also believe they don't use DTR in the simulation. This little experiment also doesn't take into account the likely scenario that stat values will change in value a good bit in 410 gear, so again, take it with a grain of salt.

The pp values are listed in order of dps tier option, healing tier option, raid drop non-tier option (if applicable), followed by the pp differential between the best option (bolded) and the dps tier option.

Hat
947.5184
987.5681
+40.0497

Shoulder
692.51226
739.40488
726.5754 (Morchok)
+46.89262

Robe
999.2591
997.18868
1012.6724 (Morchok)
+13.4133

Gloves
710.02626
706.50186
763.09244 (Spine)
+53.16618

Pants
976.32068
1000.8949
+24.57422

First off, we can see that unfortunately not a single piece of the dps tier is the literal bis, so we'll be depending on the set bonus to make them worthwhile. We can also see that given the current stat weight, the gloves from Spine of Deathwing appear to be the winner for the offset piece if you are going for 4set. Going for the 2 set (chest/pants are most valuable) and using all other offset pieces would net you 140.1085 pp. If one were to ignore set bonuses completely and only choose based on raw pp, you would gain and additional 37.98752 pp by choosing all offset pieces. To put things in perspective, the t11 2 set was worth 108.08175, the t11 4 set was worth 99.33525, the t12 2 set is worth 55.85265 and the t12 4 set is worth 258.084225. I can say with 99% confidence that the 2 set will be more worthwhile than taking all offset pieces. The 4 set is a little less clear cut and I couldn't begin to estimate how good it will be. The benefit of a mind spike/mb rotation with nearly infinite orbs during shadowfiend during an increased boss damage phase is mouth watering, but it will be hard to say how much shadow orb overlap will occur during normal dps phases without legitimate testing. All that can be said is 140.1085 pp gained from offset pieces at the expense of the 4 set won't be a horrible option even if it turns out that the t13 4 set is similar in value to the t12 4 set (which it likely won't be). In the case where the bonuses are exactly equal you would lose somewhere near 472.1 dps.

As far as trinkets go, the stacking int trinket looks to be a good contender for bis, but it's hard to evaluate the other trinkets without info on the proc rates.

So there's some food for thought. Again, keep in mind all the calculations here uses numbers which will be irrelevant come 4.3 and may very well differ substantially for you now depending on you access to buffs and how your gear compares to the simcraft bis setup. This is just a jumping off point for some more in depth analysis and hopefully the numbers on the t13 set bonuses come through quickly so we can really begin to draw legitimate conclusions on how offset gear will compare to tier gear in 4.3.

[ambident]

As stated by a previous poster, best in slot is best in slot, not merely the best of what you have access to. For t12, the bis option was to take the healing shoulders as your offset, although to be fair the next best option (spirit/haste rhyolith helm) was merely a few dps behind. The higher ilvl Ragnaros gloves were not the bis option in this case because you went from a favorable tier itemization (spirit/haste) to a less favorable one (haste/crit) which did not outweigh other choices.

the shoulders are better itemized? if you are taking individual weightings of gear and then making a bis lis maybe, but if you were in otherwise bis gear and you put on those healing shoulders you would be considerably over hit cap, so instead you are gaining crit or mastery (through reforging) which is what you seemed to be avoiding by wearing those. put on the rag gloves and you find a net gain in stats (ilvl)
if you neglect that hit has a cap, you might have a point.

[Hesp]

the shoulders are better itemized? if you are taking individual weightings of gear and then making a bis lis maybe, but if you were in otherwise bis gear and you put on those healing shoulders you would be considerably over hit cap, so instead you are gaining crit or mastery (through reforging) which is what you seemed to be avoiding by wearing those. put on the rag gloves and you find a net gain in stats (ilvl)
if you neglect that hit has a cap, you might have a point.

Hit/spirit are more beneficial stats to dps currently than crit or mastery by a good margin. The healing shoulders allow you to go from an average itemization (crit/haste) to an optimal itemization (spirit/haste). By choosing the Rag gloves as your offset piece you go from the optimal spirit/haste to crit/haste, which detracts from the raw intellect gain. Going over hit cap is relatively hard with all the non-spirit pieces you need to take for a bis gear set, and it is only barely reachable with the healing shoulders. Naturally you reforge as necessary. The current bis gear list looks something like:

http://chardev.org/?profile=273746

with a few minor alterations depending on your race/professions.

Other gear options are viable and perhaps better suited if you don't have access to the heroic Rag helm, but they are not best in slot. Spirit/Haste Rhyolith helm is a close second but you have to win the rng lottery to get it (fortunately I did), with Alysrazor offset legs and Rag gloves as offset pieces not much further behind. My personal problem with the Rag gloves is that you can not cap hit with them (while making sure haste is on every piece), whereas you can with other options. That said, all of these gear options are within 100 dps of each other so you should realistically take what you have access to when it drops rather than wait around hoping something better drops. But regardless, the true best in slot setup takes the healing shoulders.

[ambident]

make a troll profile if you don't mind. human is not best dps.

---------- Post added 2011-11-13 at 08:04 AM ----------

every time i try, a rag hands setup comes out on top.

---------- Post added 2011-11-13 at 08:06 AM ----------

something to compare to
http://chardev.org/?profile=273762

top spriests i've seen use alys legs or rag hands, i have not seen any of them using the healing shoulders.

---------- Post added 2011-11-13 at 08:33 AM ----------

here's an alys leg one to compare to
http://chardev.org/?profile=273773
reforging might not be perfect i did it rather quickly

[eErike]

Hesp, no BiS list have ever included the healing shoulders once you have acces to every gear prices avaible.

I've said it a thousand times before and I'll say it again, intellect is our best stat, get that first and don't look to much at the seccondary stats untill you eyes bleed. If one intellect have the value of one (normalized) and the diffrence in the gain you get by having haste instead of crit is about 0.01, well, then you'll need 100haste per intellect on your piece you'll change. The difference in int between tier HC gloves and Rag HC is 19 int and I promise you that no shoulder in the world have 2k haste on them.

Not to mention that the shadow shoulders have haste/crit on them, making them far from bad itemized.

[Tihr]

Not that it's relevant to a 4.3 BiS topic, but here's the math for the offpieces in this tier:

Cowl of Cleansing Flame (Healing) - 831.7551
Flicking Cowl of the Undertow (Haste/Spirit) - 828.9294
Hood of the Cleansing Flame - 804.0914

Mantle of Cleansing Flame (Healing) - 615.0089
Shoulderwraps of the Cleaning Flame - 583.9485

Fingers of Incineration - 622.8154
Gloves of the Cleansing Flame - 605.5372

Legwraps of the Cleaning Flame (Healing) - 831.7579
Leggings of the Cleaning Flame - 808.2743
Leggings of the Billowing Flame - 798.8256

1) 4pc + Healing tier shoulders - 3664.5552
2) 4pc + Healing tier head - 3661.1585
3) 4pc + Rhyolith Spirit/Haste Head - 3658.3328
4) 4pc + Fingers of Incineration - 3650.773
5) 4pc + Healing tier legs - 3656.9784
6) 5pc Heroic - 3633.4948
7) 4pc + Billowing Flame - 3624.0461


No matter how you try to explain it, the healing tier shoulders ARE the best offpiece. The reason why most Priests opt for the Alysrazor legs is because the tier legs lack haste, whereas the Alysrazor ones give a really decent chunk of it, and possibly take the Priest over the next haste plateau.