Emanonevahi

Ive gone over that as well. Its pretty much the same theory. As well, it still doesnt offer a rotation. Thats why I just used Paches to get my own. I think its going to improve our current MT 2 fold.

 

tedv

I've never main tanked a 25 man raid before, but my understanding was that tanking doesn't have a cycle like mages do. It has a priority queue, much like a shadow priest.

Except instead of "Keep dots up, then use cooldowns, then mindflay", the tanking cycle is "always use shield block, then shield slam, then revenge, then devastate and heroic strike if you have spare rage". But what ability you actually use depends on the current cooldown state, how much rage you have, and whether revenge is active.

 

Emanonevahi

right, but reviewing the combat logs from 2 separate tanks, on different gruul kills I could pull a pretty normalized ability rotation out of it.

It pretty much was

HSx2, shield slam, HSx2, revenge, HSx2, devastate

or...

HS, shield slam, HS, revenge, HS, devastate

During either rotation you would be using shield block because it doesn't effect the GCD from what i understand.

I pulled rotations just like either one of these during different parts of the fight for maintained periods of time. Its not going to be perfect, other CDs will have to be added in. For the most part however, it went about like that. This is so off topic for this thread though. One thing I notice in all good tanks, they use HS as 50% of their abilities. So all other abilities have to use 50% combined, HS gets 50% to itself.

 

Halvardr

Brakar is a good example of what to do. I've watched him in a few battles. Keeping DoTs up is something that he has no troubles with unless there are specific mana issues.

The only difference I do than most is I lead with VT at the beginning, unless I'm running into battle like Gruul. You have an easy 3 secs to get VE up before the first tick.

Anyways, can't believe I registered for this site just because someone who had no idea what they were talking about made a comment about someone I actually played with and respect.

Halv

 

◊ Kaubel

And I can't believe you didn't notice that no one else here signs his or her posts.

 

Halvardr

Observant of those types of things, i am not.

 

cheebamonkey

I've been trying to work out a repeatable dps cycle for a shadow priest for a bit now and came up with this. It's a 30 second cycle that maximizes everything except SWP which is down for 6 seconds each cycle. Now if you have the 2 piece T6 set bonus this is only a 3 second window. Each square represents 1.5 seconds and the cycle is broken into four 7.5 second cycles each centered around mind blast and it's 6 second cooldown with 4/5 imp MB.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Shadow Priest DPS Cycle 2

Here is another I made trying to keep SWP up all the time. This one also uses 6sec cooldown on MB.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Shadow Priest DPS Cycle 3

The second one comes out to be a bit higher in dps but I find it harder to maintain.

The basics come from 3 7.5 second cycles which are

1: MB - MF - MF
2: MB - VT - SWD - MF
3: MB - VT - SWP - MF

So for the first cycle the pattler is 3,1,2,1 repeated and for the second it's SWP,2,3,2,SWP,3,2,3 repeated.

 

Brakar

If you're truly trying to maximize your dps there is no small cycle that will do it. Even if you're willing to take the dps loss of forcing a cycle you can't ignore lag. In practice, you're not going to be able to follow the cycles you're trying to come up with anyway. You'll fall behind and eventually diverge even farther from ideal dps. Realistic ideal circumstances would still have ~.25s lag between casts on average. If you still insist on forcing a cycle, you can start a VT 13.51s after the previous one landed and the original will be done before the new one lands. If possible, far better use of SW would be better as well. I also think trying to get a "pure" cycle of around 30s you shouldn't rely on forcing subcycles of 7.5s as it's too restrictive.

 

Proxy

And on what gimmick fights can you sustain a pure cycle anyways?

I just refresh DoT's asap and use SWD and MB cooldowns as often as possible. No cyle, just improvise one

 

cheebamonkey

No I realize it's largly impractical the goal was just to see if it existed and how long it would take to repeat. The only fight I can think of that you can do this is the Tidewalker fight and possible the Astromancer fight. In reality though i just keep my dots as much as possible and use SWD to fill in the blank 1.5 second windows where putting an extra MF would cause me to miss my MB cooldown. I think this is pretty common of other shadow priests, however since this is a theorycrafting seciton wouldn't it be worth trying to figure out how to maximize shadow priest dps? As far as I've seen no one has done this effectively in any priest post, and this claim that it can't be don't is just a cop out.

 

Emanonevahi

You are not an elitist. A static script will NEVER be the most efficient way to DPS. Theres to many factors. You have to be smart enough to know how to play to be able to do the right stuff at the right time. You have to just have a priority list and follow that. Seeing as you only have 6 spells, its not that hard to have a priority list. If your DPS is so dependent on being 100% perfect then youre messing something up anyways. Go look at the DPS Spreadsheet. That will give you a spell rotation for how ever many minutes you want. Good luck remembering it.

 

cheebamonkey

So then what is your priority list and why?

 

heel

VT>SWP>MB>SWD>VE>MF, for most fights. Keep your dots up, cast the spells that have cooldowns, make sure VE is up, then flay until you have something better to do.

 

Halvardr

I would swap SWD and MB in my priority because of mana and once MF is cast it should be left out for all 3 seconds once its cast unless other circumstances indicate otherwise.

 

Kobal

Out of curiosity, what would the present Shadow Priests do in the following Situation (assuming a stand-and-nuke fight):

- You just cast VT, MB and SW
- Your SW:P will expire in 4,5 seconds

Do you

- Mindflay twice, then recast SW:P
- Mindflay once, wait 1,5s, then recast SW:P

I would think Mindflaying twice is the correct answer (even if it means 1,5s SW:P downtime), as doing nothing is very bad for DPS. But maybe I missed something.

 

Lazare

There's also a 3rd option - Mindflay twice but interupt your second mindflay early to cast SW:P.

 

Proxy

That would really depend on the type of fight and how much mana you have left or if you expect to go OOM etc.
Really, a discussion on cycles is wasted on these forums, there are too many variables like the boss, the time, the group, your position, your mana, your cooldowns.

Better to give a rich picture description in the situation where you need to decide, and we could tell what we would find the smartest thing to do. Although that is hardly theorycrafting anymore :-/

 

Calypso

I personaly start with SW:P-->VT-->SWD-->MB-->MF-->MF-->MB as you can get VT up before the pain ticks for the first time.

I would also like to comment on the cycles if you do not have good enough gear. I think that the best way to compete in the dps race is first of all to swap your F(lask)oSP with EoSP & EoMM and still go for 4 out of five on imp MB and still go all out for as long as you can with abusing mana pots and clever uses of the shadow fiend (which can net you the largest dps increase if you use it properly)

 

◊ castille

Doing nothing for a long time is bad for DPS, but 1.5s in a boss fight is not very long. I'd wait, cast SWP, because casting a channelled spell consumes mana at the beginning, so all you're doing by interrupting the cast is wasting mana -- 1.5 seconds is NOT long enough to get 2 ticks, only 1, so you'd hardly even begin to get into what Mind Flay's strongest suit is: DPM.

23:40:55> [Illidan Stormrage's] [Shear] was blocked by [Castille].
^ Yes, this actually happened. Yes, Castille is a shaman.

 

Dyslexicmonkey

When you're talking about fights that last upwards to 10 minutes and beyond, having that extra bit of mana regen and a free spell every three minutes (I use SW:P for mine) is definitely something that I don't see living without. Even still I'm chain chugging mana potions and hoping that one of my friendly feral druids has an innervate for me.

As for the increased wand damage, I don't use wands in raids unless I'm silenced like on some of the trash in SSC, and even then it's 1 maybe 2 wand hits. It's primarily for farming purposes outside of raids. Same goes for Martyrdom. I'm an herbalist, and the best thing for me is to solo farm the elite trees in Skettis.

Ideally, you have your holy priests (hopefully at least one) spec'ed for Divine Spirit. You let those folks handle that buff while you provide a few fort buffs/shadow protection.

 

Faytte

Sorry not to interrupt, but following a more or less optimal cycle what kind of DPS (single target) are priest popping out? Have been away since the expansion came out. I've heard rogues are up around 1200-1400 raid dps for instance, given gear and encounter.

Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.
~Paradise Lost (bk. IX, l. 171)

 

Emanonevahi

This is a bit off the top here, but its a shadow priest DPS page eh... Can someone explain to me where this person is getting their extra 54 shadow damage? Armor shows 1242 shadow damage. I calculated all their gear out to be 1188 shadow damage. Thats 54 shadow damage not accounted for?

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kael'thas&n=Lenara

 

Tri

Adding it up myself, I seemed to get the right number right off the character sheet. Typically though, phantom shadow damage can be attributed to superior wizard oil, which doesn't show up as a buff or as text on the weapon.

edit: 54 is the amount of damage soulfrost gives, so that might have been the problem.

 

Emanonevahi

Is that always or on a proc?

 

• Snowy

Soulfrost is a permanent weapon damage enchant, just specific to two schools of damage (+54 to shadow and frost spells)

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah