◊ castille

Nope, it doesn't, but it's still a damn nice set bonus. I'm running it right now. It shaves off 150 mana from a spell, any spell, no matter how much that spell costs. It -doesn't- get consumed wtih vampiric embrace, probably because it costs less than 150 mana..

However, Mind flay is only 195 mana.. -150 makes it 45 mana, which I get returned back to me in one tick. That means Mind Flay because a free 90 mana, basically... and it turns SWP, SWD and even Vampiric Touch into HIGHLY efficient spells, as well.

Edit: I should mention, this bonus procs a LOT. It made it so that when we were learning Al'ar, I was basically able to never worry about potting, ever, as long as I just mind flay spammed and used my shadowfiend intellgently. Huge increase in general longevity.

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

 

Skel

After reading this thread, the other shadowpriest thread and every other piece of info I could find about spell rotations, gear and the like, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't hardly break 700 DPS on simple fights like mag where I just got to stand and focus on my spell rotation. I use the VT -> SW:P -> VE -> MB -> SW -> MF priority that most people here subscribe to and everything else looked good. I'm kind of ashamed to admit what it actually turned out to be, but I'm going to put it here so hopefully at least one other person won't make my mistake.

Your dots tic right when they wear off. If you refresh them before they're off, you lose a tic. If you're paranoid about keeping dots up 100% of the time because you've read that's the number 1 difference between good DPS SPs and the rest and you happen to refresh your dots before they wear out religiously, you will lose hundreds of DPS.

I was casting VT with 3 seconds left on it and casting SW:P with 1-2 seconds left. I noticed from all of the solid shadow priest parses from the WWS thread that EVERYONE had more MF tics than me. Did some math and experimenting and then the light hit me. I was about one MF short every 22 seconds and one short every 14ish seconds. Did some experimenting and I learned about a dot mechanic that probably everyone else on these boards has known for 2.5 years.

That's what I get for speccing shadow after TBC.

 

CoverGhoul

Making sure that your DoT runs completely out, or that you finish your current cast is definately the best way to get your DPS out consistantly. However, Your rotations are also dependant on your build, and distance to the target. How many points do you have in Improved mind blast? are you out of mindflay range? One of the biggest problems ive seen with my fellow priests is the order in which they prioritize their spells, but so far ive seen common sense here.

 

woobsauce

First - Bloodtear. In your infinite wisdom you misread my post and tried to make an ad hominem like attack to me by misquoting me. Read my post, nowhere does it say that the tranquil air is a must. If you read it, it says to the extent, depending on your guilds strat, and the group you are in, you may be getting tranquil air instead of wrath of air. The thought behind this is that it gives the mages and warlocks more leeway to take down the adds, helps prevent the accidental VE healing aggro pull, and it also makes up for any accidental paladin error allowing for any murlocs to break off and toss the poor mage's/warlock's salad.

Next, as much as getting graved may be a small aggro dump, if you are pretty solid about refreshing dots, the chances are pretty much 100% that you are going to have dots up during the watery graves. That being said, the timing on graves with murlocs may also give you the issue as I saw mentioned by "Beatus." You get graved, cannot fade, then the murlocs rush you in the grave and just murder you. Or, if you don't, after the cave in you are dpsing the boss, and with mindblast group healing manage to out threat the healers through VE healing. VE is indeed a luxury for that fight, but nothing short of pausing through the murloc phase, or dumping VE and the FSW bonus will suffice. Personally, since my character seems to have a strange, yet depressing affinity for dying, I don't risk it on that fight, where that threat margin is very sensitive.

Next, not to be the bearer of bad news, but your enlightening comment about using instant casts while running is something that much of the community would refer to as common sense. Using a SW:Pain and ve while running back (or whichever is necessary) is something most of us do while positioning. It was done before being raid shadow was cool.

Next, for some of us, spirit tap is not a necessity, it is a luxury. I personally opted out on spirit tap for the sake of the raid. I felt that the 10% chance to stun most targets (specifically trash) for three seconds, for the benefit of the tanks and healers, is far more effective for the raid. The occasional slip up on either of their parts can result in the death of a nice chunk of the raid, and as much as I would love to have spirit tap, the mana benefit does not justify (at this point in time) the assist I can provide to these two jobs which are, for lack of a better word, thankless.

- Plus, at the 25 man gear curve, you should probably not have any real mana issues with the amount of mp5 you are bringing to the table, unless you have such weak dps you can't even manage to surmise your own maintenance, in which case you are probably a wasted raid spot.

Finally, as a final response to the VE placement, I have a rotation which I will post later tonight which will allow for a pretty solid early placement of VE while maximizing your dps. Generally though, as a rule of thumb, I just stick it between casts when there is ~1 second left in between my rotation, just because I feel the .5 second loss is really too minimal every ~1 minute.

Now, to Brakar: what on earth do you mean mindflay is spammable? You mean it doesn't have a cooldown? What situation could possibly necessitate the chain casting of mindflay? And the answer is yes, on most fights where it isn't a necessitated role for me to heal the group, I will wait for a time to fit VE into a 1-1.5 second slot in between rotations. Generally if the group isn't getting murdered, the extra healing threat will be far better used on just straight dpsing and bringing mana back to the group.

Generally, from what I've gathered, most endgame guilds bring 2-3 spriest to every raid (the minimum two being - one in a dps group, and one in a healer group) and the mana you are bringing back to them will go much farther than the small amount of healing, for a brief margin. Now, the fact that I don't keep VE up 100% of the time as I do with VT does not mean I don't use it. Fights like Lurker, Gruul, etc. necessitate the use of VE, as in those situations you must identify your role as an assist healer/utility manabattery. Also, with Leo, I agree that keeping VE up shouldn't be a problem. Generally the group can use the extra healing assist in case the healers get an inner demon, or if the group fails and gets cleaved by a whirlwind.

And as for the early rotation, you don't necessarily -need- to fit VE into a 1.5s slot in my opinion (as nice as it is to have a clean rotation). But as you said earlier, VE is generally not too much trouble, and is probably worth having up most of the time regardless. However, in fights where that extra aggro is not worth having (hydross in my opinion would be one example) keeping ve up is, yes less than that of mindflaying. VE is low enough a priority at this point in time, that many priests are even dumping the imp VE talent which used to be oh so valuable and realizing that VE healing is not necessarily worth it 100% of the time. Pick your objectives each fight. Identify which fights necessitate the VE healing, and set your priority accordingly.

Also, I agree with tedv's post which mentions the threat cap issue. More than anything if the paladins screw up on the murlocs the entire raid suffers. Let alone a main tank's threat issues. Though, I'm curious if aftermath ever used the tranquil air strat for tidewalker, I know GS and ascent tried it for a while early on.

 

◊ Asgorath

As I understand it, most people use an AddOn like DoTimer to track their DoT times. However, since you guys have a spell priority queue, would it make sense to have some kind of graphical display of the spell durations or cooldowns in priority queue order? I'm thinking of something simple with 5 timer bars, showing:

VT duration
SWP duration
MB cooldown
SWD cooldown
VE duration

where the order never changes, with ghost bars for 5+ seconds when something expires or becomes available again. Does such a thing exist? It seems like including the MB and SWD in the list, in the fixed priority queue order, might really simiplify the choice of which spell to cast next.

 

• mutagen

I've gotten the best improvement from having the Quartz timer bars set to show whatever is going to run out next on top. So I think I'd rather have the bars bouncing around with the next in priority on top than in a fixed priority order.

I was thinking of addon similar to what you describe but a single bar that continuously 'flowed', showing the best current choice and the best choices coming up based on priority, global cooldown and individual cooldowns. Color code the different spells and you'd have a nice obvious visual cue (at least if the player isn't color blind) as to what is coming next.

Anything that needed to be up would keep getting inserted into the flow so that you'd have a constant reminder to get stuff like VT and Pain back up.

My attempts at an ASCII mockup are dismal, I'll try to put up a Photoshop mockup tomorrow.

 

Xanana

I have yet te be able to successfully include VE in my Kara rotation (sometimes I have to drop SW or MB, too). I'm guessing that I am having a tank issue as opposed to being "overpowered" -- heck my +shadow is only in the mid-900s. (it doesn't help that my other main is a tank that does hold aggro pretty well).

Last Kara run, I waited until the cows came home to start dps and left VE on the cutting room floor. Even so, I kept pulling aggro (even with Omen & a lot of careful aggro watching). Do I wait even longer to start dps, or do I drop SW from the rotation (I hate nerfing myself that much)?

 

Amonra

There is no particular reason to drop MB as it doesn't generate any more threat than other forms of damage. SWD will only generate extra threat if you are using VE and healing yourself. Although if you are having to limit you damage anyway, the there is little point damaging yourself when you could avoid it.

After that there are shrouding potions which could be chugged every 2 minutes. Not much but I guess every little counts. Uses the same timer as mana potions but if you are threat capped you probably don't need those anyhow.

There are two trinkets which reduce threat and have a 2 minute cooldown - could wear both of those. Would reduce maximum damage, but again if threat capped this won't be an issue.

I guess for completeness I should probably mention fade. If you manage to cast it right at the end of the fight so that the mob dies before the fade buff wears off then I guess you have bought yourself a tiny bit of extra aggro! You may not be able to make use of it within the 10 second duration of fade tho. A similar minor benefit could be gained on any mob with an aggro reset.

Finally of course dying resets your threat to zero, but isn't a particularly great way of doing things.

 

Meltface

In genenral, you drop MB because it is the highest DPS, lowest DPM spell. If you are truly threat capped, you are probably already not using VE or SW: Death. The only ways to reduce threat at that point is to either slow your DPS down, or stop DPS. Since most tanks can out-TPS DoT+Flay, dropping MB allows you to continue regening mana with VT while reducing your TPS.

Most of the potions / trinkets have the same effect as just not casting for 6 seconds. They seem like too little of a benefit to be of any real use.

 

crescentwindx

The problem with that is that it's very likely that if you're threat capped, you've already burned your mana potion timer and would have to wait for the timer to finish before you can drink the shrouding potion in the first place, by which point a mere -800 threat (assuming the numbers listed on wowhead and thottbot are correct, of course) isn't going to make that much of a difference.

Do those work well at all? I've still got the Hypnotist's Watch banked from that level 60 quest, but never really bothered to try it out. I'm running with the Crusade card and the Icon now so having to swap either of them out would be a massive hit to my DPS, but in aggro-sensitive fights it just might save me some grief.

Clearly, you've never played an Enhancement shaman.

 

Proxy

Don't you get a Salvation or Tranquil Air then? If not, then your tank may learn a bit from these forums in TPS numbers.

 

vokzhen

You're giving those items way too much credit. Stopping casting for ONE or TWO seconds will reduce threat more than any of those items >.>

Also, it should be noted that the first half of Kara is really fun as a shadow priest. It's incredibly easy to to out-threat any of the tanks up to and including Curator and Nightbane if you really want to.

 

LucidityAxel

This is the 2-piece Priest T5 buff:

Relentlessness - Spells - World of Warcraft

It does last fifteen seconds, but says your "next" spell costs 150 less mana.

This is the 4-piece Shaman T4 buff:

Energized - Spells - World of Warcraft

The wording is pretty much identical.

 

Amonra

All the methods I suggested are very marginal improvements at best.

I know on void reaver for example I don't bother using any consumables. This is because I can easily take aggro on this fight without them, so using them would just be a waste. I won't be using a mana potion on this fight because I'm not dpsing hard enough to need one - I can get plenty of time outside the 5sr to regen all the mana I need. I admit I'm too lazy to use shrouding potions, but they would help a tiny little bit to maximise my dps.

Swapping trinkets for thread reduction ones has two effects. Firstly it lowers my dps while casting, but I can make up this loss by simply casting a bit more and still reach my aggro limit. The second effect is that it slightly increases my aggro limit. It's certainly very marginal again, but every little helps.

It really depends how badly threat capped people are for whether these ideas are worth using. If its just a case of replacing MB with more MF then almost certainly these aren't worth using. But if you are spending half your time not casting simply to avoid picking up aggro then it would help a little bit.

 

Mearis

I gave up my old ghetto hybrid spec which I used when we were not raiding that much and switched to a full PvE spec. How many points in improved mindblast are required for maximising DPS? It seems that a full 5 points is wasted since I cannot quite mindflay twice between mindblast, and one mindflay + 1 gcd is barely too fast - is 4 enough to max it?

 

◊ castille

My advice? 0 points in Imp MB. Imp MB is more a pvp talent, as it's your most inefficient damage spell, and there's always something else you can do in the priority queue while you wait for it to come back in a PvE environment. However, you can take the points you would be putting there into something like the +crit talent, or making sure you can pick up IF/Meditation.

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

 

Mearis

IT is highly inefficient, but it is a lot more damage than mindflay, and I was trying for a more sustained damage build. I drink mana potions like water and usually I get an innervate, so the sustained mana isn't a problem. I also have 5/5 crit and meditation/if, I gave up improved VE (sigh) and silence (double sigh)

 

◊ castille

Higher DPS is not just about big numbers across the screen. I think the idea that mind blast doing 'more damage' than mind flay is simply a tendency of people to dismiss streams of smaller numbers, while focusing on big, giant, eye-popping SCT messages. Sure, if it crits, it does, but if it doesn't, my mind flay does as much (and sometimes more) than my normal mind blasts do -- on top of that, mind flay is a predictable, steady amount of damage that is doing what your real focus is -- returning mana to yourself and the group you're in. At my gear level, it ticks for about 800-1000 depending on what buffs are up on the boss. That is 2400-3000 damage, more than the average 2200 mind blast at the same gearing level, and I've had mind flays ticking for 1130 on Al'ar, even. If you have good ISB uptime, that can sometimes equivocate to a 2500-2800 non-crit mind blast, having it rank about even -- BUT it still costs you a ton more mana for that spell.

You said you are looking for sustained DPS, but are specing into a burst talent. Mind flay is sustained DPS, and weaving in SWD and MBs while keeping up dots is the best way -- not throwing away mana. I put out fairly respectable damage across all fights, and my current gear means that I pot once every now and then, depending on the fight. In fact, you could even throw out MB from the rotation entirely, using only SWD (a much more efficient spell for damage, that can crit) and mind flay, and really churn in some good numbers -- especially if you picked up the Mystical meta gem for hasted mind flays.

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

 

Proxy

Hm, MF is 3s and 3x850dmg ticks = 2550dmg.
MB is 1.5s and 2600-3800dmg. So that's more than double dps right? Not insignificant. I MB every cooldown with 5/5 in the talents for it.
These are just numbers I make up now, but that's about what I see in my raids with 3 destro locks keeping up ISB a lot

Also on VR: wouldn't it be better to go fullout as much as possible from the start? When you are holding back, the damage you can do later on is even less. Better to use up as much mana as possible before too many knockbacks have happened. So I buff and pot as much as possible. Better to do 900dps for 5 minutes, than to do 500dps for 8 minutes I'd say. Aggro problems get worse over time.

 

Thezilch

He has asked for a maximized DPS build, which would include 4/5 Imp. MB. As a base spell, MB does about 2x the DPS as MF, and MB has more DPS increasing talents/gear. For myself, MB is sometimes on pace with MF in overall damage, on any particular fight. If your gear and consumable use supports not going OOM, there's no reason not to use a MB rotation.

As for 4/5 Imp. MB, you'll often find yourself using MB, MF, MF, MB. If you can't support that build, I would recommend 1/5 Imp. MB, because there are other times where you are casting MB, MF, (SW:P, VT, SW, or VE), MB.

 

◊ castille

Double DPS? Even at its best, MB is a 5.5s cooldown. That's 1 MB every 2 MF cycles. So, you've just done 5100 damage in the same course of events that you MIGHT have been able to do 5200-7200, and that's not double DPS, and relies on faulty numbers as it is. Not to mention that your DPM is now horrible.

If you could spam mind blast, this would be a different conversation, but you have very viabale DPS/DPM options in the priority system, and better talents available, then Imp. MB. Back when all you had was MB, MF, SWP and VE? Sure, 2 into Imp MB just made it fit better into the rotation with lag. Nowadays? I don't think the need really exists for improved mind blast.

We'll skip using VE, and talk only about the damage causing buffs. You can either assume VE is up before the rotation begins, but that would also mean having to weave it in, or just not use it and let some healer hot you or toss you back up to full whenever you swd.. but, as it stands..

0 VT - 15 second uptime
1.5 SWP - 24 second uptime, waiting on GCD
3 SWD - 12s Cooldown, 12 VT, 22.5 SWP, waiting on GCD
4.5 MB - 8s Cooldown, 10.5 VT, 21 SWP,
6 MF - 6.5 MB, 9 SWD, 9 VT, 19.5 SWP
9 MF - 3.5 MB, 6 SWD, 6 VT, 16.5 SWP, lag/wait half a second for mind blast
12.5 MB - 2.5 SWD, 2.5 VT, 12.5 SWP, realistically, lag is in play and the VT buff is going to expire right after casting, for the sake of numbers, we'll say we have to wait a second for it to go.
15 VT - 6.5 MB, 10 SWP
16.5 SWD - 5 MB, 8.5 SWP, waiting for GCD
18 MF - 3.5 MB, 7 SWP, 10.5 SWD, half a second left on MB after this MF
21 MB - 4 SWP, 7.5 SWD
22.5 MF - 1 SWP, 4.5 SWD, 5 MB
25.5 SWP

You can kinda see how that cycle works out. Now, you could make the argument for 1/5 MB, or maybe a 2/2 MB to shave off the missing heartbeats here and there that mathematically exists, but with lag and movement that most fights require, I think speccing into that talent is basically a waste.

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

 

• Snowy

In the interest of being perfectly clear for other readers:

Mind Blast is low DPM compared to Mind Flay. (Damage per Mana)
Mind Blast is high DPS compared to Mind Flay. (Damage per Second)

With just those 2 statements, it's clear that putting points in Imp MB is a good idea if you still have extra mana to play with, and will increase your DPS by a good amount. Looking at my WWS parse for the entirety of Wednesday's raid -- Siawyn - WWS -- you can see that my average DPS for Mind Flay is 779, and for Mind Blast it's (830417 / 293+61 ) / 1.5 = 1564. That puts MB at almost exactly twice the DPS of Flay.

Typically the choice is between 4/5 Imp MB or 1/5. 5/5 is fairly worthless since if you're casting back to back Flays, that's taking 6 seconds -- so a 5.5 second cooldown on MB is wasted.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

• Snowy

Wait, what? What does spamming it have anything to do with the conversation? At any point in a given fight when your MB cooldown is up, you often are faced with a choice of casting MB or MF. Casting MB is twice the DPS of MF. It doesn't mean it increases your DPS for the whole fight by 100%, it means for that particular 1.5 second interval, you're getting twice the return in damage on it. And if you aren't mana constrained, you want to be doing this. It's more DPS and it's more mana back for your party.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Zure

I'd also talk to your warlocks/pay attention to imp shadow bolt uptime when deciding how often to cast MB/SWD. There is some set of circumstances in which MB/SWD is a net raid dps decrease.

In fact, I'd love to see a mod that enlarges and shows the duration of ISB.

 

Thezilch

In 1.5 seconds, MB does close to double DPS. By your argument, I should never cast anything but Mind Flay (and VT, because why else would I be brought). In a vacuum, where you can only use one ability, Mind Flay is the best DPS, but that is not how DPS is calculated. DPS is calculated against how much damage one does in a particular GCD. SW: P, VT, MB, and SW: D are a shadowpriests highest DPS GCDs.

If the option is half a Mind Flay or a Mind Blast, Mind Blast is without question a higher DPS choice. And considering a rotation will always support a MB, MF, MF, MB cycle, there is a strong argument for 4/5 Imp. MB.