Gumibear

DoTimer comes with another mod called Cooldowns, which can do what you suggest, though you'd have to configure the ghost timer from the default.

 

Amonra

Very badly is how it works out. Sorry to be so blunt but there are numerous problems with your analysis (in no particular order)

1. You are refreshing SWP 1.5 second late which is suboptimal, although with lag may be realistic.

2. Any rotation which involves waiting around for cooldowns is almost certainly suboptimal. The time is likely to have been better spent casting mindflay (even if you decide to interrupt the mindflay after 2 seconds).

3. The cooldown on MB starts after the spell finishes. So its actually 9.5 seconds between each MB. You have assumed that it starts at the beginning of the cast.

4. Assuming the rotation starts with VT again after the final SWP, you are casting VT 3 seconds early, thus wasting dps.

5. As you can pretty much see from the above, rotations just don't work for shadow priests due to so many different timers needing to be weaved together. A casting priority is what is needed, with VT > SWP > MB > SWD > MF being the typical priority.


Apologies if I'm being rude in how I've said this but I have a tendency to see red whenever someone brings up shadow priest rotations.

 

◊ castille

I didn't say rotation, and that's not what was intended there, at all. Cutting that part of the thread out and responding only to that is not what was intended. In fact, if you go through the entirety of the steps of the casting (and I apologize for using the word 'cycle', I intended it to mean steps of casting, not rotation, I refer to a priority system in an earlier post), you'll see there is no cycle. I was simply showing a cast sequence based entirely on the available cooldowns, and casting only on those cooldowns, with an untalented MB, and how the interweaving of worked out with that.

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

 

woobsauce

I would've quoted your earlier posts Castille, but I figured my previous three posts were massive enough, and I don't see this one as being any different.

What you've neglected to mention is the overall raid dps increase from having the imp mb talent. Yes, the spell itself is designed for burst, but in fights which require much movement or coordination, all the time you may be able to afford, is a brief mindblast, then moving again. What you fail to see is that since mindblast, as shown by your flawless seventh grade math is that though isb may not be up the whole 10 minutes, mindblast is always going to be the higher dps spell no matter what.

For instance, you claim you hit mindflay ticks around 1100, based on experience and just seeing what gear you have, thats a rather rare event. What really happened is probably you trinketed, got a resist, eye of mag procced, and isb was up. All at once. Now, with all of those wonderful extra damage boosters, you say your mindflay was ticking at 1150. 1150 x 3 would lead to an overall mindflay worth 3450. With your gear, and with all these factors in mind, a mind blast crit would be hitting for over 4k, quite easily in fact. Even if it doesnt crit, in the 1.5 seconds that you casted, it would hit for ~2.5k. That is still higher dps than the mindflay, and to top it off you could queue your mindflay at the end of mb and within that 3 second theory window, you still get 1 of your 1150 mindflay ticks off (which i still question with your +dmg, by the way), and lo and behold, 3650 damage overall.

I find it stunning that people still don't see the importance of imp mb. Regardless of whether you can prove this minor dps decrease in rare situations, overall, it does more good than harm. As conceded in other posters in support of this foolish 0/5 imp mb failure, mb is overall more dps, and if you check your, or anyone elses wws, on average will do more damage (and dps for that matter). The fact you can get 2.5 seconds less cd on it is nothing short of a blessing. To put it similarly, its about as foolish as a frost mage going without 5/5 imp frostbolt. Yeah, its your highest raid dps spell, why not be able to use it more often?

Not to mention, the math on the higher dps which has been shown already by previous posters, pretty much cuts your attack on human nature there, sir. Sure, we dpsers love to see big numbers, but we as spriest have a small excuse to see them, for the more damage we do, does nothing but benefit the group. The higher the dps we do adds up to higher mp5 and higher heals over time for the group and really, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a boss you've been learning hit that 0% mark. Granted, its possible to do too much dps at times, as I failed at life this week and pulled aggro off Rage Winterchill (He frost nova'ed the group and with everyone at roughly -4k hp, I was foolishly queuing up a mindblast before he did this, and sure enough crit the guy for 4.1k or so after the nova, and healed everyone. He turned around, smacked me, then ran back to the tank.) To put it simply, snowy pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Really, if you don't have the gear for the imp mb talent, be honest, and just mind flay more often. If you are having such trouble with sustainability, lose the spellstrike, pick up the tier 5 head and pants. Imp mb is only for those who can manage to sustain this mana expensive mp5 friendly spec. Hell, if you really want sustainability, pick up a nice head with a metagem socket, and take advantage of the bugged metagem with the half cast time proc. It doesn't use up channeled spells at the moment, so I've heard you can get off a few mind flays before the gem proc wears out. What you've managed to post, is your optimal raid dps (which is debatable), however, there are those who don't have the gear for your ghetto hybrid spec, or even those who have better gear and remain full raid spec notably, 5/5 imp mind blast. I mentioned this in my first post, but keep in mind, the more mind flays will lead to greater mana efficiency for you, but far lower for your group. Push your dps, it will benefit you, and your group, and in turn the raid.

If you really want to go full pve, follow what mearis did and dump silence, imp ve, and even some hit talents if you have the luxury. I never recommend hybrid specs though, as it lends itself to sloppy raid dps or pvp. What caught my eye though on our buddy castille here had 14% hit in his pve gear, with his hybrid spec. I saw this trinket simulation and was wondering if the simulation damage given was overall raid dps? or trinket dps. Perhaps one of you could enlighten me, though my sneaking suspicion is that the trinket eye of mag does more damage at 14% hit, but lower overall raid dps for the player (2% more resisted spells for an extra 170+ damage for 10 seconds on resist?). I also use the eye of mag, but because I don't have a blessings deck, I still use the Icon of the Silver Crescent. So, please, someone, enlighten me.

SimulationCraft/Trinkets/Priest - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

Also, in the week I've not checked here, what is this crazy talk about using the double threat reducing trinkets and shrouding pots? Have I gone mad? You must have some incredible luck on Void Reaver, sir. Generally, the more you get orbed the less damage you can do, the fact that you have the sweet grace to be able to hit your dps threat cap is absolutely beyond me. So much free time, in fact, that you don't need to chug pots evidently. My understanding of the trinkets you mentioned was that the aggro dump if it existed, was so minimal that it wasn't even given a second thought. Fade dumped more aggro than the two trinkets, and as such you should just dump the absurd threat trinkets. The best bet you have at a real threat reducing trinket is Fetish of the Sand Reaver from AQ.

If you are really hitting your threat cap, your offtanks are not generating enough threat, or you need to back off on threat - its part of the encounter, and I would recommend a misdirect rotation if necessary. Or, better yet, don't nerf your dps, just wait like..10 seconds...power word shield a couple gents, and then go back to dpsing. Chances are someone will get orbed, just take a sec to assist them, that should eat up all your free time you spend staring at the boss (which I find baffling). Also, losing the extra 100 or so damage (based on your trinkets), is rather substantial for the loss in threat with the two trinkets. It's really not worth the cost from what I can see, as the overall loss in threat you have observed probably exists from your radical gear nerf, not to mention the fact your dps probably suffers, or doesn't even increase at all.

 

◊ castille

I recant. My earlier considerations were including the cooldown of mind blast, and I was considering casting mind flay twice in the same span of time it would take to get a single one down.

Also, it should be noted that the Mystical metagem is fixed on the PTR as of this morning.

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

 

Vilgefortz

Quick question about Bloodboil. As a shadow priest, I find myself standing around a lot during phase 1s, hardly doing any damage due to tanks losing threat permanently over time (and I don't know if Omen is good at detecting knockback aggro reduce on this fight). Normally on Teron, where I can go all out, I am able to break 1100dps if I get lucky, but here, I don't get to go all out and end up with like 800dps, as I have to limit myself to Mindflay and space out my mind blasts to maybe one every 20 seconds (and I still pulled aggro last night...). They wanted to get me to put VE up too, lol, that was a comical notion.

Anyway the question is, do other shadow priests find themselves threat capped on this fight for its majority of duration? Our tanks generate incredible threat usually, but it seems the knockback mechanic here is really hurting their total threat - more so than on like, Void Reaver.

 

• Snowy

Omen models the Ejects correctly for Gurtogg, I've had no issues riding just below the 2 highest tanks on threat.

A couple of issues may be at play here. Are you just using 2 tanks? I think overall that hurts the most, as the threat ceiling is lower as a result. Do you have a shaman in your group? If so, plead, beg, demand that he drops TA.

I do use VE, but I get TA as well -- and I'm in the first Bloodboil group so I get to eat it twice on each phase. Here's our WWS from last week's Gurgogg kill: Wow Web Stats

As you can see I pulled close to 900 DPS, while still doing a whopping 283k effective healing. I did have the advantage of using [Eye of Diminution] each cooldown during a phase 1, which helped a little bit. I also take it VERY easy during the first phase 1, letting all the tanks get a head start, as I know I'll catch up later. Finally I probably don't MB at all during the phase 1's, but I'll do a full burn on each P2 -- MB/SWD every time it's up. Use your trinkets or whatever then.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Vilgefortz

Thanks for the speedy response. We're still working on this boss, so our group make up fluctuates, but normally I'm stuck in the healer group with priests and druids, while the resto shaman drops windfury for the rogues, and the elemental shaman drops wrath for the mage group (they have a shadow priest too). Granted, we're going to be trying something different on Sunday when we return, prayer of healing (I guess much like you if I'm reading this WWS correctly).

We do use two tanks, warrior and druid. The druid OT has problems keeping up threat, though, as he isn't getting enough rage. This is likely something they have to work out, and when they do, the ceiling will hopefully rise.

We tried using VE to help heal the group, but those were our very first initial attempts, so they were horrible and we ditched the strat altogether. Perhaps with a TA (didn't think that would ever get used), running VE would be possible to an extent. We'll try it next time we're back!

 

dedmonwakeen

I show several line items for Mag's Eye at varying levels of +hit. At the bottom of the table you will see the cost of reducing your +hit on purpose.

In general: ( Mag_14 - Mag_16 ) < Hit_Reduction_2

But........... Looking at things from a constant item level perspective, one could ask: How much +dmg could I "purchase" by giving up 2% +hit. We all say: "Get to the +hit cap first!" It's our mantra and we tend to just drown out anybody who says something different. But things are never black-and-white.... it's always a trade-off. People fond of Mag's Eye correctly say that equipping this trinket changes the relative value of +hit and +dmg.

It's quite possible that in dropping +hit and gaining more +dmg (and better procs from Mag) that dps could increase "on average". But the increase won't be large and you will pay in terms of increased mana cost as well as "less predictible" dps.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

woobsauce

This doesn't answer my question very strongly, nor is there any math supporting it. However, until I find out otherwise I'll stick to the hit cap for the sake of just playing it safe. My question was really to the extent of, "is the trade off of 2% hit for a higher trinket dps worth losing 2% overall raid hit?" The simulations have different dps values for the trinkets such as the skull of guldan at different hit values, but I'm worried my overall dps will suffer more than my gained trinket dps. Hence, I have not done the math, yet, can someone please help me who has done it, or already knows off hand what I should do, and is dropping some hit too radical a concept, and should I be hung at the gallows?

I agree that my dps would not be as predictable, but according to the charts the eye of mag and icon at hit cap are a combined 126.6 dps overall, while the eye of mag and skull of guldan are functioning at 167.1 dps. Is that 2% hit loss enough to lose more than 40 dps? Also for those of you who are bound to ask, "40 dps? Who gives a shit?" For the sake of arguement, lets say you can hit ~1100 dps for a boss fight, which might be asking a lot, but that 40 dps is a full ~3.6% overall dps output, so it adds up, and really over a pretty long fight, is rather substantial.

 

Proxy

Don't you mean '+damage' instead of 'dps' for those trinkets? Or is it really such a big difference? Man, I need more time for boring heroics to get the icon even.

 

dedmonwakeen

Scroll to the bottom of the tables..... You will see a cost in +dmg for losing 2% +hit.

That cost is higher than the relative benefit beteen Mag@14% and Mag@16%.

If all you do is drop +hit to make Mag work better, then your dps will DECREASE.

The more interesting question is: How much +dmg do I need to get for this 2% +hit loss to increase my dps.

Under normal circumstances (and current gear), the +hit loss just isn't worth it. Given "equivalent ilevel" gear, you can always find a +hit/+dmg item more valuable than just +DMG even if DMG > dmg.

With Mag's Eye equipped, the relative value of +hit and +dmg changes significantly. I'll put a wiki article together with lots of examples sometime this weekend.....

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

woobsauce

Heh, I feel rather foolish for missing it earlier, but I see the loss damage at the bottom. Also, the simulation gives the equivalent plus damage on a trinket. I didn't read the threadtext and went on my friend's word as to what it was about. Thanks for pointing that out dedmon, my mistake.

After reading the tread, and the piece on the bottom, supposedly if you have both the eye of mag and the skull of guldan, supposedly it is a better choice to go with 14% hit. Whereas for myself the tradeoff is not. It appears as though you need to have those combined trinkets to make dumping that 2% hit viable. I did the math and even with the highest dps trinkets other than the skull, the 14% eye of mag doesn't effectively add any damage, but it comes close.

Also, to proxy, you're right, again I should've thoroughly read the thread before posting, once again I apologize. I didn't mean 40 dps, it was the equivalent of 40 more plus damage. Which amounts to about ~18dps, which amounts to about a 1.7% dps output increase. Again, I can only apologize for not being more careful. Either way, it seems rather interesting that once you get the right combo of trinkets the hit cap is no longer a necessity.

Edit: The second part on the simulation I linked for the trinkets is probably going to suit the majority of priest specs 14/0/47 run at the hit cap, but also at a 1200 damage gear curve, though, in retrospect I'm uncertain if the -26.4 is subtracted from each individual trinket, or from the overall plus damage. If it is from each trinket, then there should be no reason not to be hit capped, but if it only from the overall +damage, 14% hit with the skull of guldan and eye of magtheridon is probably the superior choice.

 

dedmonwakeen

A slight correction: If you are at 14% +hit and equip the Skull then you are effectively at 16% which means you need to look at the Mag_16 line item, not the Mag_14.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Amonra

Using double threat trinkets and shrouding potions was never intented to be a particularly serious suggestion. I doubt many raiders find themselves in the situation where the additional threat they gain outweighs the lost dps.

However I do remember when my guild was first killing voidreaver, with 2-3 tanks and the fights went on so long we would barely beat the enrage timer. I would pull aggro about 2/3 of the way through the fight whatever I did. My aim was to maximise my dps and also to stay alive for the whole fight (I was the only SP so wanted to keep misery on).

I was already doing plenty of standing around doing nothing. Mana pots were useless as were consumables. My dps trinkets were doing nothing that I couldn't easily make up by standing around less. So I was effectively giving up nothing by using threat reduction items.

You are right that they don't do much really. Even with my low dps on that fight, each potion/trinket only bought me about 3 second extra of dps. But 9 seconds every 120 seconds is getting on for a 10% damage increase.


Finally, if you are heavily threat capped then standing around is all that can be done. Bandages & shield all generate threat, and we had people already doing these jobs without much of a problem and more importantly those people weren't threat capped. So doing these jobs just reduced my overall dps with little to no overall raid benefit.

 

tedv

The only situations where you are seriously threat capped are those where Vampiric Embrace isn't generating any overheal, like Gurtogg or Reliquary. If I had a [Fetish of the Sand Reaver], I would absolutely use it on those fights. But most anti-threat trinkets are crap because they don't reduce a percentage of threat, only a fixed and inconsequential amount.

 

woobsauce

Dedmon, I wasn't particularly sure if they ran the simulation with the +hit included, but if so then there really isn't and reason not to be hit capped, though it was an interesting thought.

Tedv, my issue was that typically most spriest didn't have access to the aq40/naxx trinkets. The typical pubbie spriest I see using said threat reducing trinkets are typically limited to the "hypnotist's watch" or that trinket from shadow labyrinth, which I typically chuckle at. Most guilds back in the 40man raid days didn't pass out coveted trinkets such as the eye of diminution or the fetish of the sand reaver, or they couldn't afford to. Shadowpriest such as Beckon had rare opportunities to get rather interesting raid gear pre tbc including the saph trinket from naxx. Not to mention the math I saw on the shrouding pots/watch/slab trinket was pretty much an aggro dump which amounted to nothing.

Amonra, I believe, is exaggerating on the threat dumped. According to what I've seen/read (and yes back in the day I actually tried the hypnotists watch once, though it was nothing short of stupid) the shrouding pots/trinkets ended up dumping less threat than fade. Meaning they do little to no good. Amonra you might want to check just how much threat these little items dump, also mention which trinkets you use.

For instance, the hypnotist's watch dumps (on a 5 minute CD) 720 threat, The Jewel of Charismatic Mystique dumps (on a 5 minute CD) 1075 threat, and shrouding potions dump 800 threat on a 2 minute cooldown. Personally, I have horrible luck on void reaver, so this won't apply to me, nor are we going to be doing tk much anymore. Anyway, fade rank 7 dumps 1500 threat on a 30 second cooldown. Now, if you are really so fortunate that you can stand around and nuke so consistently I assume you have VE up, and am going to wager you are probably producing (with salvation) ~700 tps or so. So assuming your guilds dps is solid overall, you probably killed VR in lets say 6-8 minutes. So that amounts to 3-4 shrouding potions (2400-3200 threat dumped) and possibly two uses of the ghetto threat trinkets (1440-2150 threat) or both trinkets (3590 threat). Now, the fetish of the sand reaver from what I've seen dumps the most threat, however I failed to understand the algorithm provided by thottbot ("Reduces the threat you generate by (70-2*max(0,PL+)% for 20 sec.") for which it reduces your threat by at 70, so I couldn't include it in this comparison.

But putting things in perspective, your threat reduction items do little to nothing when essentially you buy yourself under 10 seconds of full dps on that fight (wasn't sure what your gear looked like so I couldn't include the dps nerf from the lost +damage from trinkets (2.2 +dmg ~1dps?)). Honestly, probably not worth it. As for shielding and bandaging, they probably aren't generating nearly the tps your dps or hps (with ve) are. Though, to those of you fortunate enough to have a fetish of the sand reaver, as a priest, are probably gonna be doing some awesome burst dps/hps in the later content in the game, and I must admit I'm rather jealous. I'd honestly recommend dumping death from your rotation or dumping ve, that would lower your own threat cap significantly (dumping ve is probably about ~100 tps overall, so that more than anything would help in my opinion, and death is close to 1k threat on a 12s cooldown, so that too would help). Personally dumping ve and keeping death would be the recommended course of action for that fight. The orbs do an incredible amount of damage (4675–6325 according to wowwiki), and the hps you put on them in between orb intervals -probably- won't save anyone from a second orb, unless someone puts a downranked heal from them, and that is the only heal they get, or some freak accident like that. But for the most part, a second orb is probably going to mean certain death for most ranged on that fight. Generally, ve healing on that fight, aside from the melee group, won't do much good.

 

tedv

PL is the player's level. And the formula is: (70-2*max(0,PL-60))

At level 70 this is: (70-2*max(0,70-60)) = (70-2*max(0,10)) = 50%.

It lasts 20 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown, so it's up 9% of the time. Ideally you'd use it in conjunction with other high threat abilities like Devouring Plague, but we'll just model the worst case of using it indiscriminately every cooldown.

At your estimate of 700 TPS generated, a 9% reduction over an 8 minute fight is 30,240 threat reduced. That makes it 8 to 10 times as good as the alternatives.

 

• Snowy

I have an [Eye of Diminution] myself, and absolutely use it on Gurtogg. It's pretty good there since I can use it pretty much every other non-Fel Rage phase. It's still 25% less threat, and that adds up when I use it typically 3 times in a Gurtogg fight.

Fixed threat drop trinkets are crap, the amount dropped is just so miniscule that it's hardly worth mentioning. If you're threat capped as a shadowpriest on Gurtogg, like most are, the best thing you can do is sub out some of your gear for Arena gear should you have any. It'll cut your damage down a little bit, and if you get Fel Rage, will increase your survivability.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

woobsauce

I wouldn't mind a slightly more thorough explanation of the algorithm if you wouldn't mind (not that this wasn't informative). its 70 - 2 x ____? I wouldn't mind a brief step by step and an explanation of each bit, ie what does the max(0,10) stand for, etc. I appreciate the help so far, but would also like a little more help.

Also, that much threat reduction is making me rather egar to go back to aq40 for that trinket, especially for incomming fights where we will function once more as shadow heal bots (back to pre 41 pt talent aq40/naxx shadow days).

 

tedv

The formula is 70 - 2 * min(0, level - 60)

* means multiply. This is used instead of x because * looks more like ·, the official symbol for multiplication in all mathematics beyond grade school. (x isn't used because it would be confused with the letter x as a common variable name.)

min(A,B) is the minimum of A and B.

So of your level is over 60, it reduces the 70% reduction by 2 for each level over 60 that you are. At level 70, the penalty is 20%, for a net of 50%.

I'd love to go back to AQ for the trinket, but the drop rate (1 in 12) means almost 3 months before anyone in your farming group would see even one copy.

 

woobsauce

Ah, I see, so it's a very similar setup to calc questions (Similar setup to an Integral or Derivative). It's been a while, so I wasn't able to recognize it right away. So the trinket functions from 60-70 and reducing the amount of threat reduced for 20 seconds, by 2% each level. Hence the 20%. Wow, that's incredibly impressive that at 70 it reduces the threat by 50% still, that scales far better than I originally imagined. Also, thank you for helping me recognize the equation again, that was a temporary lapse, I hope. Think it's worth going back to try to farm? Especially if one's guild is close to such content? Or are the hps encounters pretty feasible, and aggro reasonably manageable without the trinket anyway?

What came to mind:

70 - [ 2 x (B-60) ]; where B must be greater than or equal to 60 = Percentage of players threat reduced at level B.