When I first raided as a shadow priest, I only had around 750 spell damage and was generally around 5th out of 15, barely using any consumables. I'd suspect it's a talent issue, a spell cycle issue, or some of both.
Or, it could be due to the fact that the people in your raid didn't do as much DPS as this raid.
Or, it could be due to the fact that when you were firsts raiding as a SP your 750 +dmg was more in line with the rest of the DPSers.
Or, she may be nervous about peaking over the threat cap and pulling aggro.
I know I was reluctant to go full tilt when I first started DPSing in TBC. You should encourage her to install KTM. I find it to be a valuable tool that allows me to stay just at my threat ceiling.
Really, a better benchmark for her performance is the actual DPS that the raider is generating.
Or, she may be nervous about peaking over the threat cap and pulling aggro.
Also a valid possibility. Is said shadowpriest getting BoS? Shadowpriests are certainly threat capped otherwise, even in some infinite rage situations.
And again, I wouldn't worry so much about her meter position. Meters vary significantly from guild to guild, but your priest should be peaking around 725-750 DPS with 700 +dmg and taking mana pots. Said DPS is not going to be near top 5 or even 10 in my guild, but that's very well a gear issue. If you're in the expected ballpark, then you can expect gear upgrades to be going to the right place.
And again, I wouldn't worry so much about her meter position.
I agree with you. I fundamentally believe the #1 job of a shadow priest is restoring mana, and doing well on damage meters is just #2. What you really want to pay attention to is how well everyone ELSE in the group performs relative to their class mates without a shadow priest. That's the real measure of priest utility.
I agree with you. I fundamentally believe the #1 job of a shadow priest is restoring mana, and doing well on damage meters is just #2.
This would essentially be correct if the mana restored would not be directly proportional to the priests dps. That being said, the priests dps "problem" can easily be fixed if the player wants it to be fixed, most likely with a combination of better gear, fixing possible talent placement mistakes and finding out the optimal spell cycles.
I'd like to thank everyone who replied to my question. Your answers made me realize I'm looking at the wrong information (meter position and overall % of the raids damage) to evaluate DPS classes. I've downloaded the shadow priest dps spreadsheet and will be using it get an idea of what candidates should be capable of, and comparing that to actual DPS figures pulled from SWStats.
I did a BT raid on the PTR with quite a few attempts on the first three bosses, and I was left shaken by the changes. To even approach our previous DPS, you need to get 4/5 Improved Mind Blast and modify your rotation to make heavy use of it. With 1350 +damage (including a 70 damage flask and 42 damage oil), I was going out of mana in about three minutes - and this includes usage of Shadow Fiend and two Super Mana Potions. I think the class might once again be relegated to Mind Flaying, or at the very least be forced to pair up. More testing is needed, but right now, things are looking very, very bad.
I did a BT raid on the PTR with quite a few attempts on the first three bosses, and I was left shaken by the changes. To even approach our previous DPS, you need to get 4/5 Improved Mind Blast and modify your rotation to make heavy use of it. With 1350 +damage (including a 70 damage flask and 42 damage oil), I was going out of mana in about three minutes - and this includes usage of Shadow Fiend and two Super Mana Potions. I think the class might once again be relegated to Mind Flaying, or at the very least be forced to pair up. More testing is needed, but right now, things are looking very, very bad.
Mind Blast is the least efficient damage spell available to a shadow priest. It's natural that you're going to run out of mana a lot sooner if you redo your spec around casting the least efficient spell more often.
But I'm not convinced the nerfs are that bad. The 12 second cooldown on death doesn't affect my raiding that much because I'm threat capped on most fights. (Shadow word: Death is the least threat efficient spell because it also makes you gain threat from vampiric embrace healing.) Many fights I can't even use mind blast every cooldown for the same reason.
It's kind of an interesting interaction. I assumed that as I got more spell damage, I'd use mind blast and death more often, since higher mana returns would result in a greater need for the mana sinks of blast and death. But in practice the threat cap has resulted in even less burst damage and more mind flay. The biggest impact I've seen from more spell damage is increased longevity.
Next patch I lose 5% damage and 12% longevity, but that's not the worst thing in the world.
I did a BT raid on the PTR with quite a few attempts on the first three bosses, and I was left shaken by the changes. To even approach our previous DPS, you need to get 4/5 Improved Mind Blast and modify your rotation to make heavy use of it. With 1350 +damage (including a 70 damage flask and 42 damage oil), I was going out of mana in about three minutes - and this includes usage of Shadow Fiend and two Super Mana Potions. I think the class might once again be relegated to Mind Flaying, or at the very least be forced to pair up. More testing is needed, but right now, things are looking very, very bad.
I'm not sure things are looking very, very bad is a good statement. Things aren't as good as they were - but they for sure aren't even remotely bad. I did a bunch of tests on the ptr - and I guess I lost about 80ish dps on my max dps cycles, but it's not the end of the world. Sucks - sure. Very, very bad? Not really.
I'm not sure things are looking very, very bad is a good statement. Things aren't as good as they were - but they for sure aren't even remotely bad. I did a bunch of tests on the ptr - and I guess I lost about 80ish dps on my max dps cycles, but it's not the end of the world. Sucks - sure. Very, very bad? Not really.
I have experienced a similar loss in dps, but that's not the issue. The issue is that I am experiencing something like a 50% drop in longevity if I want to output even 90% of the damage that I was outputting before. It looks like a sustainable cycle is now going to now consist pretty much exclusively of mind flays, with shadow word: death and mind blast only thrown in to dump mana towards the end of an encounter. The Shadow priest experience is moving from very complex, sustainable cycles, with a lot of tradeoffs and decision-making in terms of threat generation, aggro consumption, etc - right back to pressing one button for the duration of the fight. My job in raids is going to become a lot less interesting. This is very, very bad.
I have experienced a similar loss in dps, but that's not the issue. The issue is that I am experiencing something like a 50% drop in longevity if I want to output even 90% of the damage that I was outputting before. It looks like a sustainable cycle is now going to now consist pretty much exclusively of mind flays, with shadow word: death and mind blast only thrown in to dump mana towards the end of an encounter. The Shadow priest experience is moving from very complex, sustainable cycles, with a lot of tradeoffs and decision-making in terms of threat generation, aggro consumption, etc - right back to pressing one button for the duration of the fight. My job in raids is going to become a lot less interesting. This is very, very bad.
I'm able to maintain fairly complex rotations - I haven't experienced an insane drop in longevity to be honest.
How are you seeing such a drop in longevity with only a 5% loss of VT Mana (well, over 5%, but fewer SWs)? I currently can sustain a max-damage rotation with 2.1-level pot usage pretty much indefinatly, and you have sufficiently better gear than me that your post-2.1 damage shouldn't be much lower than what I can do now.
First thing i want to know is... what gear are you all using that you are in the 1100 +damage range.
I am finding myself sitting in the [Item not found!] the whole set, about to be in the full [Spellstrike Pants] set with some other very good items, although not the EPIC stuff yet. Nor do I have +9 Damage gems in every slot. But im killing myself to get to 700+damage... with 4/5 Crafted pieces im using right now... im 650+damage I am seriously finding it hard to conceive 1100... where the hell are you all getting another 550+ damage? Im very Jealous if this is true. But aside from that... If my calculations are correct, sitting on 1100 damage with +9 Damage gems in all slots and +damage/ spellpower enchants and any other enchant to boost damage... you are gimping your HP to near 5500 and 6500-7k Mana unbuffed.
I occassionally raid Karazhan with Dark Portal Syndicate on the KT server, and im considered to be a pretty decently geared Shadow Priest, not the best, and by far not the worst. but I cant for the life of me think you people can 1... sustain combat for more than like 5 minutes using MANA POTS, Feind, VT/ VE (no flasks) (no damage pots) and be able to take a quick barrage from say Nightbane in the range of 7k Damage. It seems to me, that anyone attempting to enter Karazhan needs bare minimum 7500 HP buffed.
Sorry to go on a tangent here... but the numbers that you all are putting up are amazing, and I want to learn from the best.
People who are sporting 1100 +dmg have about 90% of that list.
I would recommend that forum for other tips aswell.
And yeah shadowpriest who go that high sacrifise their hp and base mana, but the fun part is, that that doesnt matter. You need about 8k hp buffed for most encounters, which you manage perfectly with those item. Base mana doesnt matter at all, if you have enough mana, you regen much more with VT due to the +dmg then int can give you.
The new tier 5 seems to be . . . almost worth using. If you use four pieces (not the gloves, they are terrible) over the equivalent ss/fsw, you get:
40 stam 76 int 74 spirit 30 hit -10 crit -23 damage
- spellstrike 2pc
- frozen shadoweave 3pc
+ t5 2pc
+ t5 4pc
+ one talent point (the excess hit will bring most people over 100.8 hit rating)
Compress all this, with all raid buffs, and you get something like:
40 stam 76 int 30 hit ~30mp5 -10 crit -~6 damage
Which seems pretty good. However, the tier 5 4-piece is a gigantic pain in the ass to model. I estimated it at about 26 +damage, but it needs to be modeled inside an actual rotation to get a better number. In its current behavior, it has no hidden cooldown, grants a bonus to all of our spells, but is not consumed by Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, or Mind Flay. Would the original creator of this spreadsheet care to take a crack at incorporating this information into a new version?
I agree heel, it's a very interesting set -- and I think it's exactly at the right level now. If all of us were just starting TBC now, we wouldn't have felt like we were shoehorned into tailoring, knowing that just by getting to mid-grade raid content that you could pick up an equivalent set.
However, the tier 5 4-piece is a gigantic pain in the ass to model. I estimated it at about 26 +damage, but it needs to be modeled inside an actual rotation to get a better number. In its current behavior, it has no hidden cooldown, procs off of all of our spells, grants a bonus to all of our spells, but is not consumed by Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, or Mind Flay. Would the original creator of this spreadsheet care to take a crack at incorporating this information into a new version?
I don't know anything about the Tier 5 proc, outside of the data mined information. http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37603 This doesn't appear to match what you've described. Care to elaborate?
I don't know anything about the Tier 5 proc, outside of the data mined information. http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37603 This doesn't appear to match what you've described. Care to elaborate?
Whoops - remove "procs off of all of our spells" from what I wrote. The fact that it's not consumed by those three spells is from PTR testing.
That makes sense, and with a non-swd / (non-imp) mb rotation, one can almost expect the buff to always be up. Nonetheless, with even a full burn, damage will average above spellstrike's proc. The extra stats are the icing.
My only issue is needing all four pieces to consider a switch, which is fairly daunting when thinking about my raid not receiving on-the-spot upgrades.
That makes sense, and with a non-swd / (non-imp) mb rotation, one can almost expect the buff to always be up. Nonetheless, with even a full burn, damage will average above spellstrike's proc. The extra stats are the icing.
My only issue is needing all four pieces to consider a switch, which is fairly daunting when thinking about my raid not receiving on-the-spot upgrades.
Yeah, I have a problem with taking a sought-after piece of gear from my guildmates that I won't be able to use until I have three other sought-after pieces of gear, two of which drop from bosses we haven't killed yet. I suspect that I will pick up t5 around the time we start making serious headway into BT, though.
I suspect that I will pick up t5 around the time we start making serious headway into BT, though.
Where we'll most definitely need the STA increase, which makes sense. All in all, for the non-tailor shadowpriest (blasphemy!), one will be looking at competitive pieces -- good. The double token drop will also speed along the rot, and it probably won't be a huge issue.
Would someone care to explain how the Spellstrike set bonus works? I don't fully understand which spells it procs off, which spells the +dmg affects (dot ticks, or only dot casts while the effect is up?). I'm figuring about a 20% uptime (25 spell casts per minute=1.25 ppm, or 12.5 seconds per minute). With that gimped math, it works out to about 18-19 +dmg. There are several things I haven't taken into account, such as extra casts from Quag's eye/Heroism.
Would someone care to explain how the Spellstrike set bonus works? I don't fully understand which spells it procs off, which spells the +dmg affects (dot ticks, or only dot casts while the effect is up?). I'm figuring about a 20% uptime (25 spell casts per minute=1.25 ppm, or 12.5 seconds per minute). With that gimped math, it works out to about 18-19 +dmg. There are several things I haven't taken into account, such as extra casts from Quag's eye/Heroism.
It's any damage spell, which includes all direct damage spells and all DoTs, including Devouring Plague. The only standard rotation spell that won't proc it is Vampiric Embrace. If you're dispelling, that won't proc it either. Your 20% uptime estimate matches my anecdotal evidence with the set.
04/18/07, 10:44 AM
s)? I currently can sustain a max-damage rotation with 2.1-level pot usage pretty much indefinatly, and you have sufficiently better gear than me that your post-2.1 damage shouldn't be much lower than what I can do now.
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