[Shadow] Tips & Tricks

[Juicebox]

Hi fellow shadowpriests and others interrested in the class.
I thought I'd share some tips and tricks on how to improve your dps.
Feel free to add your own suggestions and I will edit this post to add them!

Multi-dot!
Multi-dotting is when you keep your Damage Over Time spells up on multiple targets.
For example, if a boss has an add, focusing your DPS on that add while still keeping your DoTs up on the boss will increase your dps!
A great way to learn this is just standing at the training dummies and making sure you keep those DoTs up on more than one of them.
The DoT that will be falling off first from the mobs is your Vampiric Touch. If you keep your Shadow Word: Pain up on the same target, just Mind Flay it to reapply it after you've reapplied your Vampiric Touch, instead of hardcasting it again.
A great way of keeping tracks of your DoTs is an addon for it. Head over to the Interface & Macros forum and there'll be plenty of them there!

Empowered Shadow also increases the damage of your Mind Flay and Mind Sear!
This is because Mind Flay and Mind Sear also counts as DoTs.
Therefore, when doing heavy AoE for example, it can be worth making sure you keep your Empowered Shadow up (if possible) when you're using Mind Sear!

Cast Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death while moving to position yourself!
For those moments where you have to move, you wont be able to cast your Mind Flay or Mind Blast.
But, because of the Improved Devouring Plague talent, it's not a DPS loss to cast Devouring Plague while moving!
However, it's greatly dependable on your mana situation. Make sure you got the mana to cast it, seeing it's capable of quickly draining your mana if used a lot.
If you're casting Shadow Word: Death, make sure you're doing it when it can't kill you.

Shadowfiend is a DPS cooldown!
Your Shadowfiend does a moderate amount of DPS. Therefore, use it at the beginning of a fight to have it available again during the boss fight!
This doesn't mean you should save it for a certain moment where you might need some extra dps if you're struggling with your mana, but you could add in some Shadow Word: Deaths into your rotation instead if you need mana.
(With T13 4-set, you might want to wait for your Archangel and Shadowfiend to be up at the same time.)

Move when casting your instants!
Our Shadowy Apparitation talent increases our chance to summon a Shadowy Apparitation to 60% when we're moving. Because of this, you'll have a higher chance proccing one if you're moving while casting instants. The instants you'll mostly be using during a fight is Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death after 25%, but also Shadow Word: Pain if you're applying DoTs to new targets, or targets where it has fallen off.

Shadowfiend
Your Shadowfiend will benefit from heroism if you cast it before heroism is applied! It can be hard foreseeing when your group will use Heroism, but ask for a countdown before they do!
Your Shadowfiend also scales with temporary spell power/intellect procs, but only during the buff's duration.

Clip your Mind Flay properly!
With your Mind Flay counting as a DoT, you can recast your Mind Flay before your previous one has finished casting with no loss except for the extra mana cost. However, when clipping your Mind Flay to cast other spells, do so just after your Mind Flay ticks.
A good addon is the easiest way to keep a track of your Mind Flay ticks.

Thanks to:
- Funkthepunk

Upcomming updates
- Linking spells to WoWhead.


Last update: January 14, 2012.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the effort but this is in the shadowpriest guide as well (and they are pretty obvious).

[Juicebox]

Thanks for the effort but this is in the shadowpriest guide as well (and they are pretty obvious).

Not all of them are, but thanks for your reply. The thought behind this is that more tips and tricks will be added here over time.

[Deleted]

My turn:

Shadowfiend
- Shadowfiend will get heroism buffed if you cast it before heroism is applied
- Shadowfiend scales with temporary spell power/intellect procs, but only during the buff's duration

When to use pot?
When you use your volcanic potion you want to meet a couple, if not all, of these criteria:
- heroism/bloodlust will be up
- Cooldowns will be ready (archangel and shadowfiend)
- Execute phase (very powerful with 2set t13 and glyph)
- Burn phase where you know you want to deal higher damage

How does my dots work with temporary buffs?
Your dots scale with temporary bufs, so each time you get a powerful buff it is worth considering refreshing your VT and DP. If you have very good gear, it's very likely that's its not worth refreshing your dots only when small buffs such as power torret is proccing. It will be very likely it's worth refreshing your dots just as heroism/bloodlust has been used and also when it is about to end.
Remember that shadow word: pain is being auto-refreshed, so you should never be recasting it during procs.

Use mind blast!
It is very important that you use mind blast almost on cooldown. Some times it can be a pain having to refresh vampiric touch with no empowered shadows up, but that will rarely happen the better gear you get. It WILL be a dps increase if you mind blast as much as you can on single target fights.


Clip your mind flay properly!
On every fight in DS you will be doing single target damage. At this point you want to clip your mind flay almost constantly.
- You want to clip your mind flay in order to cast mind blast, your Dots, shadowfiend, shadow word death AND mind flay
- You should aim to clip your mind flay just as a mind flay tick just happened, it takes a lot of practice and a good cast bar addon in order to maximize the dps gain from this.
- You can always clip a mind flay with a mind flay.


Always plan ahead
Know when you are about to AoE. Know when you will be able to multidot. Make sure you have dark evangelism and empowered shadows up for the full duration before you AoE, because often it will be a dps loss to if one of these buffs fades during this phase. If this happens though, it will often be a dps increase to cast a shadow orbed mind blast to get 15 seconds more of empowered shadows (unless the AoE phase is about to end).

Know in what order to cast your spells!!
Know your priority and what spells has the highest DPET!

[Juicebox]

Thank you Funkthepunk. I added two of your tips, the others should be covered in the Shadow Guide or is obvious (such as the "know your spell priority").

[Deleted]

Tip: Keep your DoTs up and Mind Blast on cooldown and suddenly you're better than 99% of the Priest community.