Shadowpriest FAQ for 4.0 - Page 2

Raiek · 10/13/10, 4:37 PM

Originally Posted by Passover

I had 34% Haste upon logging out last night (Rounded up) I log in today and New Talents are supposed to give me 3% from Darkness & 5% from Shadowform but i still remain @ 34% - Did we lose 8% from somewhere else or are we bugged?

I'm fairly certain it's bugged. Dropping in and out of Shadowform last night didn't show any change to my spell haste in the character panel. Hopefully this is just a display bug, and we are in fact still getting the haste. I haven't tested to see if my ability cast times cast faster in or out of Shadowform yet.

I'd like to reiterate what was asked up above by Mmpriest. Would it be worth it to save MB for 3 shadow orbs, or should we just ignore that mechanic entirely and cast on CD, regardless of orb stacks?

Passover · 10/13/10, 4:58 PM

Originally Posted by Raiek

I'm fairly certain it's bugged. Dropping in and out of Shadowform last night didn't show any change to my spell haste in the character panel. Hopefully this is just a display bug, and we are in fact still getting the haste. I haven't tested to see if my ability cast times cast faster in or out of Shadowform yet.

I'd like to reiterate what was asked up above by Mmpriest. Would it be worth it to save MB for 3 shadow orbs, or should we just ignore that mechanic entirely and cast on CD, regardless of orb stacks?

Im in a Raid right now and im hitting my 1st MB then just leaving it until the button lights up (which i presume is wows way of letting me know that My ORbs are ready, i just havent paid attention to how many orbs are up when the button lights up) - If the button only lights up on 3 orbs, not 1 then im getting a Proc every 1.5 VT Casts. So it seems to be worth saving - my only problem is fitting in SW: Death @ 25%.

Shivaekul · 10/13/10, 5:00 PM

The haste that shows on your character sheet is your haste rating/32.79 (32.79 is for characters at level 80 only). This does not factor in shadowform or darkness.

Talents that increase spell haste actually stack multiplicative with spell haste from haste rating.

This takes the form
"Cast Time" = "Base Cast Time"/((1+("Haste Rating"/3279)*(<TALENT1>)*(<TALENT2>))

Or, in the specific case of shadowpriests
"Cast Time" = "Base Cast Time"/((1+("Haste Rating"))*(1.03)*(1.05))

This factors out into
"Cast Time" ~= "Base Cast Time"/(1.0815+("Haste Rating"/3030.30))

Edit: Itsumi has (probably) better numbers, so i'm just going to quote this up here so its on the first page.

Originally Posted by Itsumi

Strikethrough wasn't showing up, but I see that you see it's off now... :P Here's what *should* be a correct list.

At 0 haste rating you have 9 ticks of DP
At 6 haste rating you have 7 ticks of SWP
At 57 haste rating you have 6 ticks of VT

At 322 haste rating you have 10 ticks of DP
At 511 haste rating you have 8 ticks of SWP
At 663 haste rating you have 7 ticks of VT
At 701 haste rating you have 11 ticks of DP

At 1016 haste rating you have 9 ticks of SWP
At 1080 haste rating you have 12 ticks of DP
At 1269 haste rating you have 8 ticks of VT, and are GCD capped

At 1459 haste rating you have 13 ticks of DP
At 1522 haste rating you have 10 ticks of SWP

At 1838 haste rating you have 14 ticks of DP
At 1876 haste rating you have 9 ticks of VT

There are a few fairly large plateaus here, which I spaced between. I left in values in the 1800's because it's obtainable through a haste potion if you're heavily haste stacked, though realistically I'd probably cut your haste as close to 1269 as possible. These values are all approximate, they might vary by 1 haste either way.

You gain 1 SWP tick every 505 haste, with the first starting at 6 haste
You gain 1 VT tick every 606 haste, with the first starting at 57 haste
You gain 1 DP tick every 379 haste, with the first starting at 322 haste

Note that 1258 is actually a bit too low to reach 50% haste:
(1+(1258/3279)) * 1.05 * 1.03 = 1.4964, or 49.64% haste.
(1+(1268/3279)) * 1.05 * 1.03 = 1.4997, or 49.97% haste.
(1+(1269/3279)) * 1.05 * 1.03 = 1.5000, or 50% haste and GCD-capped.

Also note that I was completely unable to get a 4th tick on mindflay, so I'm assuming that it's not updated on live. With 1945 haste (59.32% tooltip, 72.3% with talents) I still only had 3 ticks. I wasn't able to round up a shaman to test for certain with lust, but I should easily be hitting 4 or 5 ticks with that much haste.

<DEL>
On a related note, you gain 1 tick of:
DP ~ every 131 haste rating
SWP ~ every 197 haste rating
VT ~ every 358 haste rating
</DEL>

Just a note, haste plateaus on dots only take effect if you are aiming for 99.99% uptime, and refreshing just after they expire (As we have been doing for years). If you are aiming for 100% uptime, and taking advantage of refreshing dots, there is no need to worry about haste plateaus, as more haste will always mean faster ticks.

If anyone has any issues with my math or numbers please let me know.

*Disclaimer* All numbers are approximations.

Edit: Edited to update equation to eliminate rounding (Lead to numbers being off by about ~1%), to steal itsumi's numbers, to update information in light of new numbers/information.

Ketchup · 10/13/10, 5:27 PM

It seems that, unlike DoTs, Mind Flay clipping mechanics stayed the same after the 4.0.1 patch.
It still clips if you begin the cast before the last tic, regardless of how close to the tic you started casting the next Flay.

I spent about half an hour trying variations on ways to clip MF.
Not wanting to rely solely on MFClip's detection, I checked the combat log as well.

Example: (starting a new flay as close to the end of the cast as possible, minus latency.)

23:19:24> Grandmaster's Training Dummy is afflicted by Bremir's Mind Flay.
23:19:25> Grandmaster's Training Dummy suffers 1 Shadow damage from Bremir's Mind Flay.(303 Overkill)
23:19:26> Grandmaster's Training Dummy suffers 1 Shadow damage from Bremir's Mind Flay.(607 Overkill) (Critical)
23:19:27> Bremir's Mind Flay dissipates from Grandmaster's Training Dummy.
23:19:27> Grandmaster's Training Dummy is afflicted by Bremir's Mind Flay.
23:19:28> Grandmaster's Training Dummy suffers 1 Shadow damage from Bremir's Mind Flay.(303 Overkill)
23:19:29> Grandmaster's Training Dummy suffers 1 Shadow damage from Bremir's Mind Flay.(303 Overkill)
23:19:30> Grandmaster's Training Dummy suffers 1 Shadow damage from Bremir's Mind Flay.(304 Overkill)
23:19:30> Bremir's Mind Flay dissipates from Grandmaster's Training Dummy.

2 ticks from first cast, 3 ticks from second.

In this thread GC specifically mentions Mind Flay working like the other dots.
Did I miss a post saying that it's not yet implemented in the 4.0.1 patch?
(Googling returns nothing relevant.)

Ericmelvin · 10/13/10, 5:40 PM

So why does the tooltip for my priest show that I have 0.00% chance to miss on level 83/skull mob, even though I'm only at 395 hit?

• Snowy · 10/13/10, 5:45 PM

Are you sure you're looking under the Spell tab, rather than Ranged or Melee tab?

Passover · 10/13/10, 5:57 PM

Originally Posted by Raiek

I'm fairly certain it's bugged. Dropping in and out of Shadowform last night didn't show any change to my spell haste in the character panel. Hopefully this is just a display bug, and we are in fact still getting the haste.

@ Shivaekul - Your Haste Math doesnt explain this aspect of the new change even if it equals out the Talent Haste when the character panel shows Totem drop buffs and it also shows Boomer Crit aura.
I dont seem to be casting faster than Tuesday night either while i was at the dummy compared to today at the dummy.
These are why i thought it might be bugged.

Shivaekul · 10/13/10, 6:28 PM

@Passover - No, My math doesn't explain why the talents don't show up on the character screen. It does however explain How much haste we actually have. Try something real quick. Take off all your gear. MF in shadowform, Now, drop shadowform and MF. You should notice a .1 second difference. Guess what? Thats the 5% haste from your shadowform talent.

moowalk · 10/13/10, 6:44 PM

I didn't macro in gloves to VT (bartender issue), and I didn't pop zerking on the pull. Our other shadow priest popped both gloves and zerking, and ended a 3 minute fight with 24 more SW:P ticks than me (30% more). Yes, we both had 96% uptime.

If this is the case it would mean that the 500 haste from speed pot is superior to lock in than 200 crit from wild magic.

Malapropia · 10/13/10, 7:21 PM

Originally Posted by moowalk

My numbers suggest otherwise!

I didn't macro in gloves to VT (bartender issue), and I didn't pop zerking on the pull. Our other shadow priest popped both gloves and zerking, and ended a 3 minute fight with 24 more SW:P ticks than me (30% more). Yes, we both had 96% uptime.

If this is the case it would mean that the 500 haste from speed pot is superior to lock in than 200 crit from wild magic.

Shadow Word: Pain has always been that way, and was not under discussion at that point. The implication was towards the other dots in our rotation, which do not preserve the stats from the first cast like Shadow Word: Pain does.

Edit: After doing a bit of looking, it appears that I was mistaken. Blizzard has seemingly removed all rollover effects.

Tarhuil · 10/14/10, 12:28 AM

I did some testing on the Heroic dummy over the course of a few minutes a run using nothing but [Nevermelting Ice Crystal], casting SW:P, and refreshing it only using Mind Flay. I've got 28.02% crit from base/gear and an additional 5% to SW:P from the 2-piece Tier 10.

In which case, I guess I was expecting to see around 33.02% SW:P crit baseline and something like 50% after using the trinket, casting, and refreshing. After multiple tests, the highest I ended up with after 100 ticks was 35.9% crit, with trinket.

The trinket effect definitely does apply, as I'd usually get 50-70% crits on the SW:P ticks prior to refreshing with mind flay, but it dropped down afterward. It's those few initial crits that I'm crediting the overall better crit rate, though marginal. It certainly wasn't giving me 50%+ for the entire time.

It appears to me that the SW:P staying locked in got nerfed with the clipping change, at least as far as crit rate is concerned.

Mindaika · 10/14/10, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Tarhuil

It appears to me that the SW:P staying locked in got nerfed with the clipping change, at least as far as crit rate is concerned.

I'm working on finding the original post, but one of the stated changes for 4.0.1 was that dots recalculate for each tick now.

zaxbysauce · 10/14/10, 3:40 PM

Any early napkin math on what the nerf to SW

's coefficient does to it in terms of priority in the system?

3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.

MMOChampion

moowalk · 10/14/10, 4:15 PM

Unfortunately our logs are private, but this is a screencap of our two priests' damage.

Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/j8priestsg

You can quite clearly see 1 priest with 108 ticks of SW:P and one with 84. Both have > 95% uptime.

Here's a Thorim excerpt. The initial SW:P was cast on the run on the platform. The second one after debuffs and haste buffs were up. The SW:P tick interval is reduced.

zaxbysauce · 10/14/10, 8:57 PM

Disregard that last. Apparently the coefficient nerf was a rumor and they actually nerfed the Glyph.