Tooltip for Starshards Rank 8 on PTR says 785 arcane damage over 15 seconds.
Rank 7 says 650 over 15 seconds.

I used this build.

With 0 +damage, naked and no buffs the spell ticked (Rank 8)

157
157
157
241
242 +
-------
954


With 0 +damage, naked and no buffs the spell ticked (Rank 7)

130
130
130
200
200 +
-------
790


With 693 +damage (arcane), no buffs, only gear (Rank 8)

273
273
273
357
358 +
-------
1534


With 693 +damage (arcane), no buffs, only gear (Rank 7)

246
245
246
316
316 +
-------
1369


Tests were done using lvl 62 mobs outside Shattrath and they were repeated a few times but the results remained the same.

I do not know why the total damage without gear and buffs is higher than the listed base damage, either my mistake or the damage listed in the tooltip is wrong. Also the ticks are uneven as everyone can see.

Server used was the EU PvP PTR.

Assuming a roughly 20 DPS increase with MSD at the T5 level, has anyone modeled [Hood of the Avatar], socketed both with MSD or the 12 Spell Dmg Meta, as opposed to [Cowl of the Grand Engineer] or [Hood of Hexing] with full 9s?

Hood of Hexing and Cowl obviously come out with more raw spell dmg than the MSD combo, as well as some extra crit. Not sure how much spell dmg is = 20 DPS at the T5 level, but another consideration is socketing T5 helm with [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond], which comes out to about 9 spell dmg and 2% -threat, equal to Subtlety. For a Spriest looking to upgrade out of Spellstrike, I wonder if anyone's modeled the efficiency of each choice post 2.3?

Starshard is insanely good, it has to be nerfed, it is by far the most overpowered pve racial ever made, expecially considered that it is mana free with a 30 second cooldown.

For arenas this is even worst, it gives you an additional DoT to stack that is insta cast. I cannot imagine it making it live in its current form, right now night elf shadow priests are basically straight up absolutely better than any other race by a huge margin.

A rather interesting twist considering night elf racials have been absolute crap. It will get nerfed without a shade of doubt, my only hope is that it will still retain some usability.

Maybe Blizzard will let all non-dwarf/draenei/undead priests a free one time race change eh? One can dream..

Well, a good change would be to make it a holy spell, thus making it impossible for shadowpriests to use. Right now this is completely bogus, racials should add flavour and minor utility, not make certain classes absolutely better at their role like the new starshards does.

They didn't take into account the increasing damage when writing the tooltip. Or else they didn't mean for it to accelerate in damage. Just an oversight by Blizz.

For rank 8
157 x 5 = 785 listed on the tooltip

For rank 7
130 x 5 = 650 listed


As a NE shadow priest I made a mess in my pants when I saw the change to starshards. Having to deal with some of the most useless racials has been frustrating, but this change is crazy. Give it a short cast time or have it cost some mana to balance it out.

Why? It will be an excellent bonus for holy priest grinding, and it will be a very good spell for small arenas, expecially since it is completely mana free. Despearate prayer is a holy only racial, but it is still very good even though I cannot use it except in exceptional circumstances.

Giving night elf priests basically a racial that increases their damage by as much as a full-tier worth of gear upgrades is completely retarded.

For shadowpriests, sure. Holy Night Elf Priests would assuredly disagree with you.

I'm sure they will chance the base damage. The tool-tip damage is the same as the old one from when the spell was channeled, I think, so the spell's dps wasn't taken into account. I just hope they don't make it so bad that it won't be worth to spend a GCD casting it. Making it a holy only spell won't change much from where we are now, except for holy priests grinding... But who'd re-roll, or choose a class to grind a bit faster? I don't think that's the idea behind racials, other-wise Chastise wouldn't be a stun.

In arenas Starshards it's still sub-par when compared to Chastise, at least for holy priests, which won't be wearing a lot of spell damage, even with the new 33% of damage from healing gear, and heck ~1.5k damage over 15secs is hardly any burst when considering resilience and that it can only be cast on one target.
It's giving a small lead to Night Elf shadow priests in PvE. Dwarves and Draenei have and always had it as healers, especially in PvP with Stoneform, Desperate Prayer, and an exclusive FW. Now everyone gets FW and they get yet another great PvP racial.

I'm sure a lot of Dwarf priests that do PvE mainly are feeling like all the Night Elves felt the past 2.5 years... A lot of those that do PvP will love Chastise, and wouldn't trade it for Starshards...

~70dps at the cost of only a GCD is great, maybe a bit too great; changing the base damage and maybe increase the CD to 45secs would make it more balanced. Making it a holy only spell would make it unfair for us shadow priests.

This is the reason people shouldn't pick their class/race based on what's the most OP at the time. Almost every single dwarf priest in game picked their race because of a unique and OP racial. This is wrong. I'm glad it was changed, but I cannot feel sorry for those people who picked their class based on a single racial alone. Spells change all the time and this one was a long time coming.

Back to starshards... no other class/race combo has such a class imbalancing spell. This skill in its current state effectively adds 5-10% increased dps on a mana-free spell with a 30s cooldown. This is broken. Making it holy would be a good fix.

Does desperate prayer being holy some how make it unfair for human/dwarf holy priests? There is zero reason that a spell should somehow make it so you can are one tier of itemization ahead relative to other races, fear ward was dumb, I am glad they are changing it, but somehow it doesn't entitle you to an overpowered spell to compensate your time in the dark.

In raids, it's not as good as people are making it out to be. It's got a 10% resist chance and doesn't scale with anything but CoS and Misery, and shadow priests tend to have at least several hundred less damage as shadow damage. From memory, someone over at shadowpriest.com came out with 12DPS increase and 5mp5 less from the VT loss - so about 1% damage increase and 1.5% less mana regen at 1200dps.

The place where this will really shine is arenas, especially 2v2 and 3v3.

Someone over at shadowpriest.com is wrong. They are, in fact, so wrong it causes me physical pain in my math bone. Yes. I have a math bone.

First off, it doesn't have a 10% resist chance, because most spriests are already sacrificing points in Shadow Focus due to hit they just can't avoid. I'm going to use Axolia's (Blood Legion) gear as an example for these calculations, because, well, he's a very well geared spriest.

9% +hit from gear.
1104 +dmg.
1268 +shadow.
+80 damage from Crusade card when stacked.

OK.

Now, as I've stated, the only spell that Starshards takes priority over is Mindflay, assuming Mindflay isn't under ~100% hasting. Let's assume the current damage is bugged, take the tooltip as correct, and assume the 84% +dmg coefficient observed is correct. Assume a flask of pure death and no imp DS (unfavorable to Starshards, since it benefits from +dmg better than MF.) So, total +dmg is 1184, total +shadow is 1428.

Starshards deals:

(785+(1184*.84))*1.1*1.05*(.93) = 1911 damage per GCD used, average (Misery, CoS, resists are the multiplicative factors here)

MF deals:

((528 + (1428*.57))*1.1*1.15*1.1*1.1*1.05*.99)/2 = 1068 damage per GCD used, average (Darkness, Shadowform, CoS, Weaving, Misery, resists). Ignoring haste for a second here, I can address it later.

So, you gain 843 damage spending a GCD on SS instead of MF. Since you do this once every 30 seconds, that's a 28 DPS gain.

You also lose out on 1068 shadow damage, or ~9mp5 return to your group averaged over the 30 seconds.

Now, if I factor in Ax's haste (177 spellhaste) for an 11.2% haste, that yields MF DPGCD at:

((528 + (1428*.57))*1.1*1.15*1.1*1.1*1.05*.99)/((3/1.112)/1.5) = 1187 DPGCD.

So, it's roughly 24 DPS gain factoring in haste, and ~10mp5 loss.

edit: Obviously the MP5 losses are to the spriest's groupmates, not to the spriest; the spriest will be coming out ahead, and potentially netting themselves a tick out of 5SR (Mindflay->Starshards->VT can potentially tick non-5SR, since you exit 5SR 0.5 seconds into the VT cast).

edit2: Yes, I'm ignoring ISB, since ISB uptime varies widely.

You didn't count in ISB or Weaving? I think you also messed up the second haste calculation, you divided by 1.5 instead of 2, unless I'm missing what it is you did there. And you calculated the haste rating as melee and not spell (haste is x% more attacks in a set time frame, spell is casttime*(1-haste), and 100% haste causes the universe to implode).
Counting those in, it's 1844 versus 1964 with 60% ISB uptime, and 60% is pretty low. You gain 9DPS casting SS.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be used during movement or something when other things are on cooldown or don't need refreshing, but including it in a normal cycle is a very, very small bonus to damage.

ISB uptime isn't a constant and heavily depends on raid comp/spec, I did miss Weaving. The haste calc is correct (it's /1.5 because of the GCD). If spell haste operates differently from melee haste, that's news to me, so I'll keep my haste calcs as is, thanks.

Add a 10% damage bonus to MF, you're still looking at ~28 DPS gained. Even if ISB uptime is 100%, you're looking at, at worst, 16 DPS gained. Worst-case, the racial is worth 16 DPS. ISB uptime drops, it lowers. For an spriest gearing towards standard stats, as opposed to haste, the disparity is even wider.

It should always be used over mindflay. Always.

Blah. Throw us humans a bone IMO. Make feedback do 10% of our damage as mana burn or something (including the mana burn spell), same CD, same mana cost it is now. Feedback was an active effect in Warcraft 3 (and I'm not justifying it because of that), which was a lot more fun.

Edit: Wow I just wrote a whole post about racials. Good work!

On to other shadow priest gripes. New gloves bonus for S3 gladiator set. Steempy, whaat were they theenking?

How about we stop putting in damage related racials completely? I like that idea better.

If the S3 gloves go live, I will be picking up the healing ones. -3 seconds to fear cooldown, is that even a question? You would have to be a 0/0/51 spec priest to consider the -10% death backlash as a worthy opposing bonus.

Really, you should expect this stupidity from Blizzard. If its not blatantly obvious why warriors/paladins score so well, or warlock/druids eat their cake, you are a Blizzard Class Designer. Crowd control wins the fight. Fear, despite all the nerfs, wins the fight. Immunities to CC wins the fight. Crowd control is vastly undervalued by Blizzard's class designers.

Well the first ticks are for 157 damage, and 157 * 5 = 785 damage from the tooltip, so its pretty clear where they got the numbers from (albeit the wrong numbers).

It's not clear whether they forgot to factor in the increased damage for later ticks into the tooltip, or whether they forgot to take out the increased damage when making the spell.


Edit: I see I got beaten to this reply - missed that on my first read through.

The question is will the -3 sec cooldown stack with Improved Psychic Scream? If not, then that's not attractive at all. And some bonuses stack (see warrior Intercept) while others in the past have not (see hunters Rapid Fire 2 min cooldown from talent then 2 min cooldown frmo their AQ40 set, which did not stack.)

I hope Blizzard reconsiders, since usually I'm pretty laid back about these sorts of things but the glove bonus is an absolute joke. It might as well not even be there. A much better bonus would be to give Mind Flay 70% pushback resist -- that way with Conc Aura you'd not suffer any pushback, yet of course you'd still have to worry about interrupts like normal, which usually there's plenty of since you're the first target in most arenas.

Could anyone who has the gear provide some feedback on the spellhaste versus +dmg discussion?

My thoughts at the moment:
For me mindblast+mindflay is about 50% of my total damage assuming a single target and a situation where SW:D spamming is not healthy. With enough haste to squeeze two mindflays between fully talented mind blasts one would be going from a 7.5s rotation to something just below 7s. Adding more haste does nothing (unless mb is ignored). This will increase my mb&mf dmg by at most 7% (ignoring unhasted gcds that are spent on vt, SW:P or even SW:D). So getting 170 haste will increase my total damage by at most 3.5% and increase mana spent on mf&mb by 7%. Getting 70 spell damage instead will increase my dps by 3% (according to some spreadsheet).

Now just getting spelldmg has lots of advantages over spellhaste if the fight contains more then one target, movement or spellpushback, while also being more mana efficient. I guess I will pass over that Greatstaff (especially in the view of the new s3 weapons) unless I am missing something. I would be rather thankfull for such insights

Been answered to some extend here:
The Shadow Priest Thread