Shadowpriest FAQ for 4.0 - Page 13

Nimiks · 11/26/10, 8:10 AM

Unless you are very unlucky and you don't proc at least one shadow orb inbetween two mind blast, you should have empowered shadows up all the time, so you shouldn't have to worry about this, appart from the beginning of a fight.
What I do is opening with MB if I already have some orbs procced (from trash before for exemple) to proc the buff directly before doting, else I normally dot the boss, then wait for an orb to proc for MB, and continue the rotation as usual, thus leaving only the first VT and DP unbuffed by mastery. I doubt that reapplying them at mid duration or so would be a gain, losing half of the DPCT for only a few ticks buffed.

Amonra · 12/01/10, 8:29 AM

Originally Posted by Althor

There are a number of reasons for the reduction in value of +hit rating (and spirit).
First, we have changed the stat to normalize against. We used to normalize against Spell Power but now do so against Intellect. Intellect performs far better point for point than Spell Power so this will obviously drive down the relative benefits of other stats.

This shouldn't have any impact on how hit compares to crit/haste. Hit has gone from nearly twice as valuable as haste pre 4.0 (hit = 1.8, haste = c.1) to less valuable post 4.0 (hit = 0.37, haste = 0.5). That means it's lost nearly 60% of its value compared to haste.

Originally Posted by Althor

Second, Hit is a bonus (like Crit, Haste and Mastery) that becomes better the higher the other stats are. i.e. 1% Hit is worth more when you have 40% haste and 40% crit like the BiS gear at level 80 has. That's just simple math. With the gear reset all of our % stats have been reduced and this leads to Hit being worth less.

This is going to impact all of the stats. Although I agree that it will impact hit a bit more because the amount of hit we have hasn't changed (its still always 100% chance to hit).. Effectively this reduce the value of hit from a 1.4 multiplier to a 1.2 multipler, so will account for about 15% of the reduction to hit value - that still leaves a further 45% unaccounted for.

[quote=Althor;1806250]Third, related to the second point, the combat rating values to get 1% of Hit (or Haste, Mastery, Crit etc) have roughly quadrupled at level 85 compared to level 80 while the the amount of spell power we have has only maybe doubled. As such this throws the relative values again more towards spell power and Intellect and away from the other stats.

Agreed, this accounts for the reduction of hit compared to spellpower. But not the reduction of hit compared to crit and haste.

Originally Posted by Althor

Fourthly, compared to 3.3.5 we've seen quite a few changes that have a direct impact on +Hit. Our DoTs now maintain roughly the same duration irrespective of Haste. This means that we are casting them less often and so the chances for it +Hit to matter have been reduced (as if we *do* miss we can just cast it again). Furthermore, Mind Flay is now a channeled DoT. The practical implication of this compared to 3.3.5 is that it now only has 1 chance to miss per cast and that is on the initial cast. This compares with 3.3.5 where it had a chance to miss both on cast but also on each tick. And so our main spell has had its number of chances to miss quartered.

Maybe - I agree this will have an impact, but I'm not convinced that it accounts for all of the amount missing.

One other thing I was wondering was how Simcraft calculates the scaling factors. My understanding is that it adds a certain amount of haste, crit, etc rating and then simulates how much this increases dps. And for hit rating it subtracts a certain amount of hit and then simulates how much this decreases dps.

Assuming my understanding is correct, this raises two issues. Firstly, if the profile used for the simulation is above the hitcap then does this mean that the first X amounts of hit rating subtracted will not have any effect? So if the profile is say 25 hit rating above the cap and simcraft calculates hit scaling by subtracting 50 hit rating then it is effectively only calculating the impact of a 25 hit rating reduction. So this would halve the calculated scaling factor for hit. The main reason I ask is that I notice that the simcrafted profile is 0.17% above the hit cap.

The second issue is whether simcraft deducts an amount of rating or whether it deducts a percentage? If it deducts an amount of rating then has this amount been updated to account for the increased scaling factors at L85? What I'm getting at is that if it subtracted 50 hit rating before then that was about 2% hit, but this is now more like 0.5% hit so it will make the results a lot more variable. This will have the effect of making the scaling factors a lot more sensitive, although with enough simulations this probably shouldn't have a big effect.

Vaelir · 12/04/10, 8:14 AM

Originally Posted by Delacieux

That´s strange. No matter how I look at the stats on the sim sheet, hit seems to be the second to lowest stat. But the sheet says that mindflay made the biggest part out of the damage, and mindflay is no dot thus it will need hitcap to be most efficient. Also the sheet used the current hitcap on stats for the damage which would made no sense if hit is that bad - you would just reforge it, no?

According to what i've read Mindflay is affected by Empowered Shadows and therefore is now considered a ''DoT''
in addition the trinket from sindragosa 25 which procs from DoTs procced for me using mindflay only on a target dummy.
Strange i know, but it seems Mindflay is considered a DoT now.

In addition your question on wheter we should reapply DoTs when you gain empowered shadows, the only time this should come into play is at the start of a fight due to the fact you should have 100% uptime on the buff anyway. Even if i dont have x3 shadoworbs i refresh the buff with a x1 or x2 mindblast to keep my DoTs at maximum damage. But to answer your question on whether to reapply your DoTs i personally would say yes, a 10% (or more) increase on VT and DP is significant especially when VT is our hardest hitting DoT and DP is instant cast - therefore still worth it. I may be wrong in assuming this, however with high mastery rating it will be inevitable that reapply will increase damage significantly as when i had 20 mastery from reforging it increased the buff to a 25% damage increase, which is definately going to make it worth reapplying the 2 dots.

I know there isn't much maths in my post but to be honest, 10% or more damage increase on 2 of our DoTs for around 2 seconds of casting to reapply seems to be a good deal. In addition seen as this should only happen at the start of an encounter you may fancy starting a new opening cast sequence such as SW:P > Mindflay and then spam minfdflay till you get your first Orb and cast a mindblast to get your buff up. then you can apply your VT/DP - i have no idea if this would work, personally i havent thought of reapplying before i saw your post and have simply being making sure to keep the Empowered shadows buff up 100%. I will now have some time on the dummies to check opening sequences

thanks for bringing it to my attention

However (one last point) on fights i tend to not get a shadow or untill my first VT is over, or almost over as i open with VT, DP, SWP, then mindflay and so on. So by the time my SWP and Mindflay have had a chance to tick (or i have been spamming MF with my haste potion (pre pot) by the time i get round to casting MBlast for the buff the first time i am reapplying the DoTs anyway, and i keep the Buff up 100% from there on.

- If you don't fancy reading all that, basically:
-- Mindflay is considered a DoT by the EmpS buff and Sind25 Trinket.
-- It is worth reapplying VT and DP for EmpS, tho by the time you get shadoworbs it might be time to referesh anyway, even more significantly if you have reforged to, or have high mastery at 85.

• Snowy · 12/06/10, 3:46 PM

I'm going to leave this open for the time being, but if someone out there would like to volunteer to maintain a shadow thread, that would be great. I'm not sure if I'll have the time to keep up on it at the moment. Otherwise I'll just make a basic thread and rely on posters for updates.

See previous shadow priest guides in this forum for an idea of what it should look like. It's generally not too big of a guide.

tedv · 12/09/10, 5:36 PM

I'm not volunteering to maintain a shadow thread (yet, anyway), but I wanted to share my thoughts on shadow right now. I really don't understand the spec well enough to be offering constructive support, and I sincerely doubt anyone does. Let me start with the conclusions:

* Shadow is much harder to play than ever before, even TBC.
* The number of ability interactions is so high that simulators are required to estimate stat values.
* Providing mana to healers is extremely important.
* Managing your mana matters.

Here's a brief rundown of the different abilities we have at our disposal:

Damage over time:
Vampiric Touch
Shadow Word: Pain
Devouring Plague

Nuke:
Mind Flay
Mind Blast
Shadow Word: Death
Mind Spike

DPS Cooldown:
Shadowfiend
Archangel

Mana Cooldown:
Dispersion
Hymn of Hope

Let me ignore the cooldowns for a moment and just list the interactions between the dots and nukes. For each ability, I'll list the reasons you'll want to cast it after a different spell

All DoTs:
Cast after Mind Blast so you have Shadow Orb mastery buff.
Cast after Mind Flay so you have Evangelism buff.

Mind Blast:
Cast after Vampiric Touch so you provide Replenishment.
Cast after Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay so you have shadow orbs for the mastery buff.

Mind Flay:
Cast after Shadow Word: Pain for damage bonus.
Cast after Shadowfiend for cooldown reduction.

Mind Spike:
Cast before DoTs are up or have just worn off to mitigate dot removal effect.

As you can see, this creates a cyclic graph. There's no proper "opening". That doesn't matter for Patchwerk, but startup time matters a lot on any boss fights with adds, which is nearly all of them.

The biggest bottleneck in the whole spec is Mind Blast. There are many of good reasons to cast Mind Blast: to put up replenishment, to keep your shadow orb mastery buff up, or to use a 3x stack of shadow orbs. But there's one very bad reason to cast Mind Blast: it's on cooldown. There's also the issue that Mind Spike will consume your shadow orbs, but doesn't keep up Replenishment. So it forces you to use Mind Blast on some (other) target to keep the buff up, and probably without the bonus shadow orb damage.

Juggling DoTs on multiple targets will definitely sap your mana, but it's also the key to maximizing your overall damage. For packs of three to four adds, it might be worth keeping dots on all but one, and then using Mind Spike on the last. I just don't have a good feel for under what circumstances Mind Spike is the optimal tool to kill adds.

Last, the deflated impact of crit and haste stats at 85 makes it much harder to reduce the cooldown on shadowfiend (crit + haste) and proc shadow orbs (haste only). Here are the effects of stacking the different stats, in addition to the obvious "more damage":

Hit: Smoother cycle. No lost replenishment or shadow orb uptime due to Mind Blast resists.
Crit: Shorter Shadow Fiend cooldown.
Haste: Shorter Shadow Fiend cooldown, more shadow orbs, more mastery uptime.
Mastery: Better DoT damage (including Mind Flay).

It's worth noting the effect that Mastery has on DoTs alone. There are certainly situations where spamming Mind Spike is optimal, generally during some burn phase on an add, and stacking Mastery won't help that. I suspect the relative stat weights will depend heavily on how much time expect to spend casting Mind Spike, which implies different stats could be optimal for different fights.

The priority queue for these spells is pretty complicated, especially during the start, and I'm convinced we can't answer even basic stat weighting questions without a simulator that can handle it.

Brekk · 12/10/10, 1:21 AM

With the long cool down and the severe issues with mana currently I would argue Shadowfiend is still a Mana gain ability first and foremost.

Elimbras · 12/10/10, 8:09 AM

Mastery also increases the mind blast (and spike) orb damage bonus.

Xtoforas · 12/10/10, 2:27 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

Mind Spike:
Cast before DoTs are up or have just worn off to mitigate dot removal effect.

Shouldn't we also account for Mind Spike triggering Mind Melt reducing Mind Blast cooldown as well?

Chemii · 12/11/10, 12:24 PM

Mind Melt only reduces the cast time of your Mind Blast ability but it doesn't reduce or reset the cool down.

Balkoth · 12/11/10, 12:48 PM

Well, it technically does of sorts. If Mind Blast has a 5.5 second cooldown and a 1.5 second cast time, that's 7 seconds between casts (the cooldown doesn't start until the cast is finished). However, with a Mind Melt instant cast bonus, then you could use it every 5.5 seconds instead.

Kittyashley · 12/11/10, 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

Mind Flay:
Cast after Shadow Word: Pain for damage bonus.

Not around anymore:

Originally Posted by Hotfix patch notes, dated November 23rd

Twisted Faith no longer gives a 4% damage increase to Mind Flay when Shadow Word: Pain is active on a target. Listed here

Balkoth · 12/12/10, 12:03 AM

I think the Glyph of Mind Flay may have been what was being referenced.

Kittyashley · 12/12/10, 12:08 AM

Originally Posted by Balkoth

I think the Glyph of Mind Flay may have been what was being referenced.

Indeed! How did I miss that? I pondered if that damage bonus had vanished, I guess it didn't!

Chemii · 12/12/10, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

All DoTs:
Cast after Mind Blast so you have Shadow Orb mastery buff.
Cast after Mind Flay so you have Evangelism buff.

I have no experience of theory crafting so appologies if this seems a little slow. I assume by this information you mean the dots cast prior to these buffs do not scale gradually, particularly shadow word: pain, almost like the old shadow weaving talent used to work.

Can anyone confirm if this is true as it makes the fight openers very different?

I have also been running into some issues starting fights, taking the tier 10 set bonus for granted and under estimating how much haste I would lose through the scaling at level 85, meaning my mind flay ticks are (or were) incredibly slow. The point is, when opening on an encounter at this early stage in this expansion it can be some time before even one shadow orb shows its head (Even on boss fights this can be a nightmare) and waiting around to cast DP & VT is going to hit our initial dps pretty hard, atleast it has in my experience, although I have tried to scale my haste & crit to match one another, which has helped a lot.

Mind spike seems very good for burst damage, used with Mind Blast and the double SW

eath finisher but you run OOM very quickly.

punch · 12/12/10, 5:44 PM

This may be a dumb question, what haste rating are we looking for? Before i think it was 1278 was the magic number i was just wondering what the haste break downs are now because i dont know if i should stack haste or if i should just stack int for now.