Need help mastering Shadow Priest Spec (dps just not cutting it frankly)

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

I am currently playing a shadow priest and raiding both Mythic EN and Heroic Trials (as of this week). Now, I have read pretty much everything I can find on playing Shadow Priest and watched so many video's but for some reason my deeps just seems so low.

Firstly my spec (armory: Powdarette on Grim Batol - cant post links as Ive only just joined the forum)

So I read that once you get to 10K haste, Crit starts to overtake haste as the best stat so I started moving away from haste past 10K. The problem was that I felt it effect my ability to get the most out of voidform and S2M (is this true or am I going mad?).

The problem i'm finding is that most raid bosses just dont seem to be spriest friendly apart from xavius and Odyn. The rest involve either to much moving, or to many adds to get any serious flow and so better dps (or at least on par with equivalent geared mages/monks/hunters). On most boss fights I'm around 7th on the list and a good 100K lower than most of the raid group. When we wipe early I'm normally at the bottom, so it seems that unless I spec and have time to use madness, I'm useless. On an average fight without any use of madness I can push to getting around 30 stacks in voidform but even with that my dps is just miles lower than everyone else....

secondly is it me or does our AoE completely suck? Most of the raid are getting 1-2Mil dps on trash groups and I'm struggling with about 400k? I just feel that we are really weak right now, and no amount of playing with my stats and gear is helping.

Maybe I'm just not that skilled but if that's the case then please, someone give me some guidance so that I can improve?

Also don't get me started on mythic + runs, most trash goes down to fast for me to dot, and mind sear is about as useless as a chocolate fireguard, plus a lot of the boss fights don't last long enough to use madness let alone the problems with using it in a mythic + (waiting for a res, 10 minute cooldown etc - save for last boss but the dps on all other bosses is lower than everyone else).

Please help!!!

[tehzor]

Well basically you have two options
1) Learn to use S2M; or
2) Be content with being dead last on the damage metres.

If you can execute a well timed S2M (100+ stacks) then it will be hard for any equal geared class to beat you.

Tricks to a well executed S2M:
VoIT as soon as you enter, void bolt to refresh dots and then pop Dispersion. While your VF stacks don't build in Dispersion, it brings the CD of your VoiT forward making it easier to reach the goal: Casting your third VoiT.

Keep up your standard DPS rotation until around ~60 stacks (this should be effortless) and then cast your second VoIT as soon as it comes off CD. Ideally your target should now be in (or very close to) execute range (35%). After 60 stacks is where the challenge begins. You want to survive as long as you can without popping PI and you do this by banking your SW charges and only using them when your insanity dips low. With correct SW management you should be able to get to ~70-75 VF stacks (taking your gear into account). Pop PI when you run out of SW charges and your insanity starts to dip low.

During PI you can maintain your insanity without using SW so use this opportunity to rebuild your SW charges. Ensure that you end PI with 2 charges of SW.

At this point your rotation becomes a cluster fuck of button mashing, ensuring that you SW any time your insanity dips low. You won't survive long without SW, so space out your remaining charges as best as you can and then pop your second dispersion when you're out of charges. Once you're out of dispersion, do everything you can to maintain your insanity and hopefully you can make it to your third VoiT at 120 stacks. If you do this then congratulations, you have topped the DPS metres.

[Rumstein]

Spriest burst AoE is disgustingly bad. Don't worry about it. DoT the longer living targets, and Mind Sear the rest (I actually want the ring for this reason...).

Movement fights shouldn't be much of an issue as long as you can maintain dps on the targets. S2M Allows you to cast while moving, and other than that we have a few instant cast abilities that let us "stutter step" while casting (Cast Void Bolt, move while GCD ticks, cast next skill).

If you are wiping before execute range, yeah your damage is really gonna suck. Not only do we get S2M, but we get 20% damage buff and SWD in execute, which really backloads our damage, so anything before that is mediocre. That being said, you should still be able to manage around 300k before execute range.

In EN, we have a number of good fights - Nythendra (Aside from MC AoE and luck with rot and S2M), Dragons (DoTs keep ticking on other dragons, you just need to survive the fears), Ursoc (Excellent SP fight - 414k was only 65th percentile! Can focus boss, dot adds and they live basically entire life of the dot, then spam SWD before add dies to maintain 30% or so uptime on Twist before 35% and get free Insanity), Cenarius (Long-lived adds + almost 100% uptime on boss for dots is nice) and obviously Xavius. Elereth and Ilgynoth suck. There's no two ways around that, but you should be able to do well on Elereth if you S2M around the 2nd Violent Winds on P2. Odyn is fine, Guarm should honestly be ok since its a purely ST fight and there's only a very brief time where you can't dps him (charging around room), though Helya will suck.

On M+, yeah it's tough for trash dps, but should be able to do well on Bosses. If you manage to get the SP Ring, it does really nicely for trash. On lower M+, don't worry about s2m though, use LotV.

[Deleted]

Many thanks for your responses, yeah I definitely need to work on my S2M rotation. Any good addons for managing dot timers? I heard that the blizz UI no longer allows for targeting along with the dot timers which is one of my main problems. I seem to struggle to retarget the mobs I want to refresh sometimes when there is a load of crap happening on screen.

I'll practise I guess!

[Deleted]

I still use EnemyGrid for DoT tracking. I personally haven't found a good way to target specific mobs ... nameplates(also with addons) always seem to be fucked as soon as there are many mobs, especially if the mobs are moving or your camera angle changes and tab targettig is sometimes just useless.

Generally if there are just too many mobs i just tab and hope that it is the right mob.

For Mythic+ i generally only use S2M for +10 (especially tyrannical) and the legendary SP Ring helps a ton.

Edit: For lower mythic+ shadow isn't that great ... if you get to the higher ones where the trash lives a bit longer it gets better