Shadow Priest on Warmaster Blackhorn

[Deleted]

I will step up in his defense somewhat.

He obviously has great gear. But anyone in a decent raiding guild can easily get carried through and have great gear. I started 3 1/2 years ago. I had absolutely no idea how to play. A Shadow Priest in one of our servers top raiding guilds took some time to explain some minor errors in my gear, gems, and chants. Then they gave me some pointers on multi dotting, told me about the better web sites for current info, got me into a few raids with them on Alt nights. I learned a lot. Am I a great Shadow Priest? Absolutely not. I do fairly well, I can keep up with people in better gear than my 395 iLvL, I think I know my class, but I am sure I could learn more.

He obviously could use some one on one time with someone really good at the class. I know a few years ago we had a Mage that was ok, and had great gear. He spent 3 hours one night at the dummies with someone that really knew the class and explained the hows and whys of everything. The next time we did a raid he blew the doors off everyone by a lot.

So before you come down hard on him and bench him. Maybe he just needs to spend a little time in vent at the dummies with someone pointing out things he could improve on. Seeing things happening first hand and having someone tell him what they are seeing can sometimes be a huge help.

I've tried talking with him, his response is 99% of the time "No, I've read that this is how you do it".

[Xandy]

I'm not very experienced at shadow priest, but here's my two cents:

- Pop 4 piece rotation on initial melee adds, unless Shadowfiend can attack Drakes
- If you're multi-dotting is slow, make target macro's with VT for adds
- Depending on which adds are dying faster (melee heavy group vs. range heavy group) place DP on the add(s) you think will die the slowest
- I usually don't bother with SW:P on multiple targets especially if they're dying quickly, I just throw it on whatever target I've DP'd (lol)
- Pop 4 piece rotation on Goriona once she lands

[Deleted]

If he is going to train multidotting wouldn't adding a target a time be the best? Instead of going from 0 to 100.

oh, that depends, personally id say pushing them to the front lines like a crazed tactician would wield the most insane results (does not mean good ones!)

But on a serious note, maybe he had problems targetting things. Keybinds are a must to allow easy target switching (you can use macro's as well but personally id stay away from that). If you're in the same guild/raid with him and you really want to see further evaluation if hes learning anything, be free to post some further logs

[marathal]

I've tried talking with him, his response is 99% of the time "No, I've read that this is how you do it".

Then he is reading the wrong information. If he can't link to you the information he says he is reading then I don't know what to say. Even if I was a #1 ranked SPriest, I would never assume I knew everything.

[Deleted]

I've tried talking with him, his response is 99% of the time "No, I've read that this is how you do it".

So from a casual (if I may call you that) raiding POV he sucks.
He is arrogant in his knowledge, and does not want to change.
Possibly it is dexterity-based. Or just someone who is slow in the head, a drunk or punk.

Either way he is dead weight. After this type of response from him I'd shaft him. He is simply not worth your time or effort.

[Nymie]

I know this thread has had a ton of replies, but I am just going to throw a couple things in as well.

Having played in a 10m group all of Cata until last month, I definitely understand the frustration in having one of your core people performing questionably. Is he lowish dps on all fights? You stated that on multi-target fights he seems low, is that compared to your other players or compared to logs with shadowpriests? I know that in my 10m group we had really crappy classes as far as who provided buffs to my dps and on fights that I was doing less than average dps, now being in 25m I am hitting the 75th percentile and up.
I would be interested in seeing what happens to his dps if he ever gets H Cunning, especially on add fights.

Beyond that- I almost wonder if he has Dot timers or a way to see what adds still have his dots? From the moment you hit 85 and read up on raiding as shadow, uptime on dots is pounded into your head. Even our main tank's alt shadowpriest does 94% uptime in out alt runs. I am betting there is a lack of tracking that is letting his dots drop.

Other than that, his chest isn't enchanted and he looks like he may be able to stand wow-reforge.com(ing) to try to drop the extra hit (and he is a little over the goblin haste plateau- he appears to not betaking the gob racial into account and is hasting for what all other races aim for). His gear is outstanding. He should be doing a lot more dps. His only gear issue is not having Cunning, and that doesn't make up for being low on a fight we should excel at.

[Deleted]

I will step up in his defense somewhat.

He obviously has great gear. But anyone in a decent raiding guild can easily get carried through and have great gear. I started 3 1/2 years ago. I had absolutely no idea how to play. A Shadow Priest in one of our servers top raiding guilds took some time to explain some minor errors in my gear, gems, and chants. Then they gave me some pointers on multi dotting, told me about the better web sites for current info, got me into a few raids with them on Alt nights. I learned a lot. Am I a great Shadow Priest? Absolutely not. I do fairly well, I can keep up with people in better gear than my 395 iLvL, I think I know my class, but I am sure I could learn more.

He obviously could use some one on one time with someone really good at the class. I know a few years ago we had a Mage that was ok, and had great gear. He spent 3 hours one night at the dummies with someone that really knew the class and explained the hows and whys of everything. The next time we did a raid he blew the doors off everyone by a lot.

So before you come down hard on him and bench him. Maybe he just needs to spend a little time in vent at the dummies with someone pointing out things he could improve on. Seeing things happening first hand and having someone tell him what they are seeing can sometimes be a huge help.

Or he could just read online & do some research? Then practice with the knowledge he has learned? Why should anyone need their hand holding, if they're not going to do the research themselves then they're not worth keeping around imo.

Playing a spriest isn't rocket science, they're actually pretty easy theory wise. The difference between a bad priest, a good priest, and an amazing priest is practice, nothing more.

[Tobbx]

I am checking his gear and he got 2545 haste rating. As a starter I would suggest that he get 2583 haste rating, since that would increase is devouring plague tick by 1 since he is a goblin (Not a major factor, but he is only missing 38 rating, so I would rather get it).

But there is some strange factors in his play style. Like he only got 62,4% up time on Empowered Shadow, and that far from good enough, especially when multi-dotting. He got 82,8% up-time on Dark Evangelism, so that seems fairly good enough. He only used Archangel once (HUGE MISTAKE). His Devouring Plague got 40% up-time (not a huge dps factor on Warmaster, but this should be fixed). He only used Shadow Word: Death 11 times (Huge dps loss).

In general it just seems like he is not multi-dotting fast enough or all targets. After healing it seems like he got 0 dmg output for 15 seconds, and before healing it seems like all his dot's fell off.

His active casting time is 10% lower than the mage and boomkin.

And out from the general picture considering what abilitys did the most damage, it seems fairly strange that Mind Blast is at #1, then Vampiric Touch. Normally Vampiric Touch is just a bit over Mind Blast.


Tips 2 increase his dps:
At the start of the fight, get VT and SW:P on both drakes and MF x5, most of the times you should atleast have 1 shadow orb not, mind blast one of the melee adds and dot them both up. When dragons comes down, refresh dots on 1 drake (and melee adds if its about 2 fall of), put your pet on a melee add (since it seems to bug out if you put them on dragons, at-least for me). Then use AA and mind spike/mind blast the second drake. This should give you quite good start dps, probably even better tactics, but this works for me. After that just keep the dots rolling and whenever moving cast DP, SW:P or SW.

At phase 2 I dot up both targets with SW:P and VT and put DP on Warmaster, whenever I get my pet and Archangel up ill mind spike the dragon while my dot's are rolling on Warmaster.


It's a fairly easy boss to get good descent dps as a shadow priest, as long as you keep Empowered Shadow and Dark Evangelism up at all time, while dot's are rolling. If you want to I can make a shadow video from how I do it this Sunday.

best of luck with your shadow priest

Best of Regards - Tobbx @ Grim Batol Alliance

[Purpleisbetter]

Tell him to reroll Rogue.

3 abilities to use and a fu**tonne of undeserved damage, both from single target and LOLflurry

Btw, i did 41K dmg(ilevel405 no hc trinket) last night, wit no Tarecgosa, no Dark Intent, no Sp10% nothing, just did the "piano player" thingy burning my hands. Yet our rogue, wich is good (seriously is like pretending to be "good" with arcane mage) with his constant tricks on tanks (WTF!?), without even knowing the name of his class spells, did 50k straight, not entirely BiS ( he got his free-legendary edition, tho) without ever turning off tardflurry.
How sad is that!?

[Deleted]

Tell him to reroll Rogue.

3 abilities to use and a fu**tonne of undeserved damage, both from single target and LOLflurry

Btw, i did 41K dmg(ilevel405 no hc trinket) last night, wit no Tarecgosa, no Dark Intent, no Sp10% nothing, just did the "piano player" thingy burning my hands. Yet our rogue, wich is good (seriously is like pretending to be "good" with arcane mage) with his constant tricks on tanks (WTF!?), without even knowing the name of his class spells, did 50k straight, not entirely BiS ( he got his free-legendary edition, tho) without ever turning off tardflurry.
How sad is that!?

Tricksing the tanks means they get more aggro on the adds quicker which is important. First set of adds aren't initially aggro'd to tanks due to ranged multidotting early (even if you dot only the drakes, you then get initial aggro and even if tank taunts if you then unload spike rotation into an add it'll almost certainly aggro to you), second and third set appear just before Onslaughts/Sappers usually so tanks have other things to focus on as well.
Please think about a rage post before you actually post it. Tricksing the tanks isn't bad at all, at least until P2.

[marathal]

Or he could just read online & do some research? Then practice with the knowledge he has learned? Why should anyone need their hand holding, if they're not going to do the research themselves then they're not worth keeping around imo.

Playing a spriest isn't rocket science, they're actually pretty easy theory wise. The difference between a bad priest, a good priest, and an amazing priest is practice, nothing more.

Well from the posts above it sounds like he is reading online and researching. But it sounds like he may be either looking at out of date information, Gasp, I know right?, or he is interpreting it wrong.

I was taught, get your rotations down, maintain DoT's, watch your threat, stay alive. The only good Shadow Priest is the one alive at the very end of a fight, DPS meant nothing, it was total damage done.

Mage: Woo Hoo, check out that DPS 48k single target, boo ya! Awe the little Shadow Priest only did 35k, L2P noob
Shadow Priest: Yes I only did 35k DPS, but I did 8.9 million in damage, had close to 1 million in healing, soaked 3 times popped hymn to recharge the raid healer that was OOM, oh and rezed your a$$ after the fight. How much damage did you do in the 18 seconds you were alive?

You are right. it comes down to practice. Is he running as Shadow in every raid, 4 nights a week, or is he splitting his time between healing and shadow. Is the raid comp ideal for him to pull big numbers, is he in a bad location connected with satalite and has 600 latency, does he have a 6 year old computer with hamsters for a graphics card. There was a time a few years ago when people spent months leveling toons, learning their class, guilds had class leads, the forums were filled with people discussing mechanics and strats, people helped people becasue it meant your guild downed internet dragons.

Now even a brand new to the game player can hit 85 in a month or less, has no idea how to play their class, has no idea where to look for the correct information, questions in trade about class usually are replied with L2P. When I went Shadow there was a class lead in the guild that was an original Vanilla beta tester. He had played Shadow in BC. I asked if he could give me some info or tell me where to look. He posted in our guild forums a bunch of information. It wasn't even a little wrong. It was like saying make sure you get agility gear, you need that to make sure your spells hit wrong.

[Purpleisbetter]

Ohhh mind you, a bear druid and a blood DK is our tanks setup.

Seriously, 500% threat bonus on 21K+ DPS Tanks. Meaning i would need something like 100K dps to over aggro them. 100K.

Tricks...on...TANKS its SIMPLY AWFUL. End of story.


Oh btw, don't really care about TotT. The point is: efforts vs results.

Rogue takes no efforts and give huge results, its the opposite of a Demo lock.
And...we ALL casters got nerfed at least once, then balanced around a buff (DI fiasco), then balanced HAVING a legendary, then nerfed the buff where we are balanced around and even nerfed the legendary itself!

Then you see retard Gurthalak wich procs more damage then DTR, the unbelievble underperforming DW bow, the so-so Rathrak
The 20%AP and the 30% hp nerf perfectly suited for Bandit Guile mechanics or BL/TW @INC with CD stacking classes (ret palas for example); nerf Fire damage because it was out of control without ever going in further balancing.(rogues, again).

We've seen our dots nerfed more then once, then our passive, while our "OP multidotting" can just dream of a Blade flurry cleaving (plenty of cleaving this tier)
Just to point how odd Blizzard behaved in the last tier; wich is, hopefully, over soon enough.

[Deleted]

Now even a brand new to the game player can hit 85 in a month or less, has no idea how to play their class, has no idea where to look for the correct information, questions in trade about class usually are replied with L2P. When I went Shadow there was a class lead in the guild that was an original Vanilla beta tester. He had played Shadow in BC. I asked if he could give me some info or tell me where to look. He posted in our guild forums a bunch of information. It wasn't even a little wrong. It was like saying make sure you get agility gear, you need that to make sure your spells hit wrong.

Sorry, that is bad excuse. It is easy to get the information you need on how to play your class in general, and for specific fights you can use this wonderful tool called Google. You don't need fellow freindz in guild who can tell you about your class mechanics, you don't need a class leader in 10m raiding. The information about how to play shadow priest is right there, especially 8 months after the content was released. If he just read EJ shadow priest thread and some topics on shadowpriest.com (haste caps etc, which are barely there) then he'd be on right track. He also claims he already read into his class, he refuses help. We already established his biggest mistake is his lack of DoT uptime and general lack of usage of CDs. But he does use the CDs, he knows they're there. The problem is the player, the player claims he did what he could and read up. What more can one do for a player? He isn't a baby. No amount of reading is going to improve his DoT uptime. The problem here is not his (in)ability to read. He, as a player, is the problem. You might say: a DoT tracker can help with it. I wonder if he is even trying.

All I hear is excuses:

That's why i made this thread. We have tried to help him and during Dragon Soul progression he blamed it on his gear and now when he's still not performing we have to take action accordingly.

Excuses. Got carried. Should've failed his trial long ago.

Personally I just use Ultraxion to measure not how good a player is, but if someone is a bad player it will show especially here. It is a simple fight with a tiny RNG element which one can handle well if skilled (< 1 sec to get out, not a major DPS loss). The rest is planned couples (unlike Baleroc) and it is single target, static which is something you need to take into account when comparing classes. You can easily see something like DoT uptime on a fight like this (with spriest, also take into account 4pcT13 here).

I agree on damage done vs. DPS and even then damage done doesn't tell everything. Above some fellow says he'd multiDoT on Goriona and Warmaster. I lolled. You totally do not have to do that to beat the enrage timer (but if you do SW:P on Warmaster after fiend it does give you more apparitions). MultiDoTing the drakes IS important, this is where your DoT uptime is important.

[Deleted]

Ohhh mind you, a bear druid and a blood DK is our tanks setup.

Seriously, 500% threat bonus on 21K+ DPS Tanks. Meaning i would need something like 100K dps to over aggro them. 100K.

Tricks...on...TANKS its SIMPLY AWFUL. End of story.


Oh btw, don't really care about TotT. The point is: efforts vs results.

Rogue takes no efforts and give huge results, its the opposite of a Demo lock.
And...we ALL casters got nerfed at least once, then balanced around a buff (DI fiasco), then balanced HAVING a legendary, then nerfed the buff where we are balanced around and even nerfed the legendary itself!

Then you see retard Gurthalak wich procs more damage then DTR, the unbelievble underperforming DW bow, the so-so Rathrak
The 20%AP and the 30% hp nerf perfectly suited for Bandit Guile mechanics or BL/TW @INC with CD stacking classes (ret palas for example); nerf Fire damage because it was out of control without ever going in further balancing.(rogues, again).

We've seen our dots nerfed more then once, then our passive, while our "OP multidotting" can just dream of a Blade flurry cleaving (plenty of cleaving this tier)
Just to point how odd Blizzard behaved in the last tier; wich is, hopefully, over soon enough.

Tricks on tanks for initial aggro on mobs is absolutely fine. Even if threat isn't usually a problem it just ensures they don't lose aggro which is very important. On a fight like Warmaster where there are adds spawning fairly often it's not a bad thing to do. If he is giving them tricks in every other fight all the time, fair enough.

I agree that Rogue doesn't take much effort to yield good results, but using Demo Lock as an example of the opposite is bad. Sure, they have the hardest rotation, but they also currently have the highest single-target DPS in the game. That's just high effort high reward.

Also, Dragonwrath in FL wasn't anything close to balanced. 10% free DPS for farming easy content for a few months? Not to mention that Melee got s**t on ridiculously hard in Firelands that the only fight they really shined on was Majordomo HC, and that was purely because they could keep 100% uptime on the buff.
Of course Dragonwrath got nerfed. If it didn't and the proc rate stayed the same it would be so unbelievably strong because it scales with your gear. There were even arguments (though how accurate they were with their maths I do not know) that it would be good enough to start progression in MoP with, purely because of scaling.

Gurthalak Normal/LFR doesn't actually proc a larger % of a melee's damage than DTR. I'm not sure on HC but I doubt it'll be much more.
I will also point out that, below 25%, Shadow Priests are one of the strongest classes (Drain Soul beats it but requires standing still and channel time) and considering how much uptime you can get on your Improved Death (with 2pc bonus) if you don't abuse it that's your own fault. Oh, and you do realise that we technically stack CDs now to get our best DPS? -.-
Fire was so ridiculously OP that it made progression easy. Rogues have only become strong since they all started getting legendary, before that they were actually a lot closer to being balanced than Fire ever was.

No offence, you just sound like an angry teenager who is mad just because you want things handed to you on a plate. You somehow thought Dragonwrath was balanced in Firelands (lol) and you complain just because Rogues (who have a class specific legendary this tier) are very strong at the moment, and have to do comparatively little to get their DPS. Funnily enough, it was the same for every single caster with the Legendary in Firelands. Do your rotation as per normal, get 10% free DPS added on top of it and top meters on every fight bar Domo. Just because a Rogue's rotation is slightly easier than ours (which, if I'm honest, isn't that hard either) doesn't mean they deserve hate.

Just because we have one slightly worse tier (where we're still the strongest hybrid class and still bring competitive DPS and amazing utility to a raid) compared to when we were pretty much god-like in Firelands/T11 doesn't mean that Blizz hates us. Our nerfs were deserved and Melee needed to buff to compete with Dragonwrath. Imagine if the AP had stayed at 10%, melee would (again) be nothing compared to casters and the only melee you'd see in 10m comps would be Rogues as they have the Legendary to boost their DPS. It's just that simple. The fact that we compete with melee who have had their entire damage buffed by 10% this tier is proof enough on its own that casters were broken.

[Purpleisbetter]

Tricks on tanks for initial aggro on mobs is absolutely fine. Even if threat isn't usually a problem it just ensures they don't lose aggro which is very important. On a fight like Warmaster where there are adds spawning fairly often it's not a bad thing to do. If he is giving them tricks in every other fight all the time, fair enough.

I agree that Rogue doesn't take much effort to yield good results, but using Demo Lock as an example of the opposite is bad. Sure, they have the hardest rotation, but they also currently have the highest single-target DPS in the game. That's just high effort high reward.

Also, Dragonwrath in FL wasn't anything close to balanced. 10% free DPS for farming easy content for a few months? Not to mention that Melee got s**t on ridiculously hard in Firelands that the only fight they really shined on was Majordomo HC, and that was purely because they could keep 100% uptime on the buff.
Of course Dragonwrath got nerfed. If it didn't and the proc rate stayed the same it would be so unbelievably strong because it scales with your gear. There were even arguments (though how accurate they were with their maths I do not know) that it would be good enough to start progression in MoP with, purely because of scaling.

Gurthalak Normal/LFR doesn't actually proc a larger % of a melee's damage than DTR. I'm not sure on HC but I doubt it'll be much more.
I will also point out that, below 25%, Shadow Priests are one of the strongest classes (Drain Soul beats it but requires standing still and channel time) and considering how much uptime you can get on your Improved Death (with 2pc bonus) if you don't abuse it that's your own fault. Oh, and you do realise that we technically stack CDs now to get our best DPS? -.-
Fire was so ridiculously OP that it made progression easy. Rogues have only become strong since they all started getting legendary, before that they were actually a lot closer to being balanced than Fire ever was.

No offence, you just sound like an angry teenager who is mad just because you want things handed to you on a plate. You somehow thought Dragonwrath was balanced in Firelands (lol) and you complain just because Rogues (who have a class specific legendary this tier) are very strong at the moment, and have to do comparatively little to get their DPS. Funnily enough, it was the same for every single caster with the Legendary in Firelands. Do your rotation as per normal, get 10% free DPS added on top of it and top meters on every fight bar Domo. Just because a Rogue's rotation is slightly easier than ours (which, if I'm honest, isn't that hard either) doesn't mean they deserve hate.

Just because we have one slightly worse tier (where we're still the strongest hybrid class and still bring competitive DPS and amazing utility to a raid) compared to when we were pretty much god-like in Firelands/T11 doesn't mean that Blizz hates us. Our nerfs were deserved and Melee needed to buff to compete with Dragonwrath. Imagine if the AP had stayed at 10%, melee would (again) be nothing compared to casters and the only melee you'd see in 10m comps would be Rogues as they have the Legendary to boost their DPS. It's just that simple. The fact that we compete with melee who have had their entire damage buffed by 10% this tier is proof enough on its own that casters were broken.

[sry for the OT]
Whatever on Tricks, its just anedoctal more then practical.

Its the concept behind everything: you do act in a way wich is right, then when you got to reapply your own policy you close both eyes and THATS is wrong.

Its not even melee vs casters but rather everything vs damage out of control from rogues.

I found myself, balanced around a class who rarely got played nowadays (lock), and i'm balanced having my DTR, wich, oh pity me, i don't because i simply lack time and i struggle to get my 1 night per week raiding due irl stuff to manage.
Funny, isn't it? I'm severly gutted because of that, but well, world ain't falling, isn't it?

Now, where the same FUC.KING situation happend again, you see no "rogues balanced with DTR in mind" design.

FAIL, nothing really to say.

Because this time you can't abuse of the usual caster vs legendary crap (where in FL 2 boss where training dummy mode, where even Raggy 'till p4 was a melee training dummy, leaving just the first 3 beeing more caster flavored..bnut ehy, shannox was quite the mover, so not realy the arcane mage/demo lock kind of fight).
This concerns every DPS spec in game.

I try to simplify for you, before you get some no sense idiocy like beeing an angry teenager:

Caster damage out of control with DTR --> nerf. Flawaless logic, deserved one

F Mages damage out of control (RNG not factored) --> nerf. again, flawless logic and had-to-be-done kind of action

Rogues damage out of control w/o legendary ---> ? [i'd like you to see, that numbers of rogues are gone mad even with regualr 410/416 weaps,those you usually de evry time you see one dropping on regular bosses or DW]


Keyword: COHERENCE. Do you see any in this last tier? Just to let you remember, because i do think your memory is quite short, when we were ahead by big in parses, it only took 2 days to bring us, RIGHTFULLY (<-- another keyworld) in check with others. When our multi dotting damage was SERIOUSLY out of control, it agfin took a few weeks before tuned down.

Coherence and in Dragon Soul, Blizzard forgot about it.


Edit: little thing about Gurthalak: lol, with quite a good RNG on your side normal Gurthalak can actually pump up to a milion damage. And thats ona warrior and a Unholy DK. Saw that so many times, with our hunter taking a laugh when he see his H Bow from madness barely doing 100k damage. Actually, i took serious laugh as well everytime i saw the "tentacle of the old good" out performing DP SWP and SWD damage all together. Lol.