Shadowpriest FAQ for 4.0 - Page 7

Naphomci · 10/23/10, 1:18 AM

I just did some testing real quick in game on the dummy.

1268 and 1269 haste give 8 ticks of VT.

1267 haste gives 7 ticks.

So it would appear that with rounding and such, 1268 is the lowest number to get 8 ticks.

I can give the gear sets I used, but it came down to switching 2 items and removing 1 at a time for me to hit those exact numbers

Brigandy · 10/24/10, 12:01 AM

Originally Posted by Dominoris

Here are my thoughts on the orbs.

1 - Orb generation is random. We can not chose when we get anothre one like a rogue's combo points or a paladin's holy power. They come or not with the RNG
2 - The added damage per orb is static. Each orb adds the same amount of damage. There is no scaling involved here.
3 - Even without the orbs, Mind Blast is a strong contender and causes more damage for its cast time than Mind Flay so should be worked in when it is up.

Since each orb adds the same amount of damage, you can separate them out. Think of them as little damage bombs you get randomly that can only be applied with a MB. But there can only be 3 orbs up at one time, max. If you have 3 up you can not generate any more orbs. Because of this, I use MB any time it is up to clear my orbs and make room for more. When you hit 3 orbs and the hot button flashes, that is a warning, not a green light meaning ready to cast. It means you could be accruing more orbs but there is no room.

Put another way, say over length of time, you generate 12 orbs total. That's 4 Mind Blast at 3 orbs each. Or 6 Mind Blast at 2 orbs each. The total damage done by the orbs does not change in either case. If a Mind Blast does 5000 damage, each orb will do 34% of that or 1700 damage each for 20.4K total damage from 12 orbs. Meanwhile, the first choice of all 3 orb Mind Blast nets 20K from the spells, but the second scenario yields 30K damage.

So .. bottom line, don't wait for 3 orbs. Cast Mind Blast when it is up and let the orbs come with the RNG. Getting in more MB casts > fewer MB at max orbs.

I think I might be missing something here, In my personal experience with my shadow priest, using mind blast with 2 orbs up wil generate an average of 12k dmg on a crit, where as waiting for 3 orbs and the flashing shiny button, it will generate in upwards of 25k dmg on a crit, it just made more sense for me to save it and let a 3 orb mind blast loose as soon as it procs

skmasq · 10/24/10, 3:13 AM

Originally Posted by Brigandy

I think I might be missing something here, In my personal experience with my shadow priest, using mind blast with 2 orbs up wil generate an average of 12k dmg on a crit, where as waiting for 3 orbs and the flashing shiny button, it will generate in upwards of 25k dmg on a crit, it just made more sense for me to save it and let a 3 orb mind blast loose as soon as it procs

Well i was doing math, and sometimes you have like 4 or 6 sec meltdown where you dont get any orbs, and you are wasting 500-1200 dps just by not suing MB , and therefore i personaly allways use it on cooldown, because 60% i allways have 3orbs , 90% i have 2 orbs and in rare situations ,i dont even recall them i have 1 or 0 orbs, in wich case i dont cast MB yet i just wait for another 3xMF and then i cast MB.

nadoo · 10/24/10, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Dominoris

Put another way, say over length of time, you generate 12 orbs total. That's 4 Mind Blast at 3 orbs each. Or 6 Mind Blast at 2 orbs each. The total damage done by the orbs does not change in either case. If a Mind Blast does 5000 damage, each orb will do 34% of that or 1700 damage each for 20.4K total damage from 12 orbs. Meanwhile, the first choice of all 3 orb Mind Blast nets 20K from the spells, but the second scenario yields 30K damage.

So .. bottom line, don't wait for 3 orbs. Cast Mind Blast when it is up and let the orbs come with the RNG. Getting in more MB casts > fewer MB at max orbs.

Dps is a key point in maximising damage due to the finite nature of encounters and your example does not take time into account
In the situation you give above (assuming a 1sec cast time on MB), the 4*3orb casts = 10k dps (4sec of casting time)
Whereas the 6*2orb casts = 8330 dps (6sec of casting time)
So your suggestion would give a substantial dps lose from the spell MB alone.

In regards to MF, although it may appear to be a lower dps spell it certainly does more dps than 0 orb MB's based on the dps gain to MF from orb procs alone. MF also has another indirect dps gain from Sin and Punishment which futher increases it's dps. So first of all the direct and indirect dps gains from MF have to be calculated. Second that dps has to be compared to the dps of MB also taking into account casting MB before 3 orbs is a dps lose for the MB cast.

So the questions that have not actually been answered yet are:
1) At how many orb procs does MB actually become greater dps than MF (considering MF's indirect dps gains)
2) Does using MB at this point give you a net gain in dps, or does the dps lose via using MB prior to its maximum dps give you a net lose in dps.

Leliah · 10/25/10, 4:21 PM

I'm curious if anyone on beta has checked the damage of Mind Spike with the orbs. I know Blizzard does not want us to put it in our regular rotation, but I did come across an interesting predicament when dummy testing. Because there seems to be no rhyme or reason to orb procs, I had a few instances where I had 3 orbs, but MB was still on CD. I know everyone is still debating MB for the purposes of what is available on live, but I'm slightly intrigued by this. I did not reforge into any mastery given the discussion that was pending on here, yet I was able to proc 3 in less than 6.5 secs. At higher levels we will surely accumulate more mastery with the new gear effectively increasing the proc rate even more. Are people on beta using Mind Spike at all with 3 orbs if MB is still on CD or just waiting for MB to come off CD?

Ellyh · 10/25/10, 5:26 PM

Given that mindspike now strips all dots from the target I can see no possible case where MS should be used as part of your single target rotation. If you end up with 3 orbs early just curse RNG and wait for MB to come off cooldown.

mrtwigz · 10/25/10, 9:41 PM

Yeah mindspike strips all dots off your target, and Blizzard has mentioned numerous times that MS's design is for use with low hp adds, or when you're spell locked out of shadow. So basically you'd want to use it for fights like LDW when you want to nuke the adds down quickly, or when you get cursed whiled casting a mindflay.

Saying that though, with the way haste and crit affects our dots, would we be better off dotting the adds up or mindspiking them down? If we target a mob, then cast VT and then SW:P we have our gcd to retarget another mob and dot them up the same way. And with these 2 dots and our shadow apperations moving towards each mob, would it be better use to MS to nuke them down, or dot multiple targets up and potentially doing a lot more damage and proccing orbs with dot crits, with the risk of losing half our dot ticks if the target dies early?

Dorsivad · 10/26/10, 9:27 AM

I am very new to playing my priest as shadow so I apologize if I am asking a question that should be very apparent.

My question is has anyone said exactly why mastery is not good for a spriest at 80? I am pretty sure I have read every post so far and we are told in the first post it is bad but I havent seen any reasons why this is a fact. The reason I ask this question is twofold:

1) I have 3 other 80's that I raid with and in every instance when 4.01 was realized every forum said ignore mastery until cata and now I am reforging it on every toon.

2) The discussion of whether to use MB on CD or wait for a 3 orb proc.

Has anyone actually tested doing something like reforging out spirit or crit to mastery and using MB on CD? There doesnt seem to be much argument that a 2 orb MB is better than a MF. Would the added dmg from reforging mastery make a 0 orb MB worthwhile? Has anyone tested this?

I'm just going on instinct here with no numbers to support but it seems to me that if we are saying that with enough haste the odds are in your favor that you will always have at least 1 orb up then even with bad RNG and having 0 orbs a few times the increased dmg from mastery might make it a dps increase.

Just throwing that out there and would love to get some feedback.

EDIT:

As a follow up question:

Even if it is still agreed that we want to use MB only with 3 orbs I still am wondering if the added dmg bonus would make reforging mastery a dps increase

Thanks in advance

Cadfael · 10/26/10, 9:55 AM

Originally Posted by Dorsivad

Would the added dmg from reforging mastery make a 0 orb MB worthwhile? Has anyone tested this?

Huh? Either you are confused or I am now. Shadow Priest mastery increases damage caused by the orbs, not damage caused overall. So a 0 orb MB is exatly the same strength wheter you have 0 mastery rating or 4000 mastery rating. Consequently, your question makes no sense at all.

This is part of the reason why our mastery is being shunned. It only affects MB which is on a cooldown. (Plus Mind Spike but since that purges our dots now, it's not worth casting on mobs that live longer than a few seconds). Also some builds ago in beta it was about a third as strong as it is right now, and that caused it in all simulators to be an entire magnitude weaker stat than any other. At the moment it is still a weaker stat than haste or crit, and those two stats affect pretty much all of our spells, while mastery only really improves MB.

Furthermore, according to current theorycrafting if they wanted to make it as good as haste is, then it is feared that the Mind Blast with 3 orbs up would be far too strong in a PVP setting. This is why many beta-playing shadows are lobbying to have the mastery changed or at least improve more spells than it is currently. At the moment, it's just not worth collecting mastery over haste or crit and at the current build, it isn't either once you reach level 85. It's not as atrociously bad as it was before but it's still considered a bad stat. Don't reforge to it, if anything, you would want to reforge mastery into something else.

Hade$ · 10/26/10, 10:08 AM

Hello everybody, my first time here.
I justed wanted to confirm most of the numbers given by Itsumi.
I ran a bunch of tests that confirm those I could test.

The only one I could potentially disagree with is the 57 for the 6th tic of VT.

With a 0/0/0 spec, SWP got its 7th tic at exactly 273 haste rating.
273 haste rating goes for 8.3257% of haste bonus which is rounded UP to 8.33 to reach the first cap for SWP. (8.333333 rounded down this time)
With the same calculation, 56 haste with 3/3 darkness and 1/1 shadowform goes for 9.9970% haste which should be rounded up to 10.00%.

I'll try to figure out if it's either 55 56 or 57.
I think I also managed to do a sheet that give every cap considering the rounded values.

S is for ShadowForm, D is for Darkness :

Conditions	DP1	SWP1	VT1	DP2	SWP2	VT2	DP3	SWP3	DP4	VT3	DP5	SWP4	DP6	VT4
S0/1 D0/1	205	273	328	615	820	984	1025	1367	1435	1640	1845	1913	2255	2296
S0/1 D1/3	171	238	293	577	780	942	982	1321	1388	1591	1794	1862	2200	2240
S0/1 D2/3	137	204	258	539	740	900	941	1276	1342	1543	1744	1811	2146	2186
S0/1 D3/3	104	170	223	502	701	860	900	1231	1298	1497	1696	1762	2093	2133
S1/1 D0/3	39	104	156	430	625	781	820	1145	1210	1406	1601	1666	1991	2030
S1/1 D1/3	7	71	122	393	586	741	780	1102	1166	1359	1552	1617	1939	1978
S1/1 D2/3	-26	38	89	357	548	701	740	1059	1122	1314	1505	1569	1888	1926
S1/1 D3/3	-57	6	56	322	511	663	701	1017	1080	1269	1459	1522	1838	1876

Bold numbers is those who I could really test and confirm.
By confirm, I mean, I tested that just before, the additional tic doesn't exist.

I'll take the time to confront the maximum of these numbers as soon as possible.
If you have different results, please, let me know about.

/E I manage to quickly confirm most of the numbers, but my speculations were stopped when I tested the following 1080.
1080 haste rating is 11 tics of DP
1081 haste rating is 12.

With 1080 haste rating, my tooltip tells me that I have 32.94% bonus haste from haste rating.
With D3/3 and S1/1, my total haste should be ((1080/3279)+1)*1.0815 = 1.32936871*1.0815 = 1.43771226 > 1.4375 which is the assuming threshold.

The red 820 also seems to be wrong with a lower result this time : 819.
My tooltip indicates 24.98% with 819.

Ninahagen · 10/27/10, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by nadoo

Dps is a key point in maximising damage due to the finite nature of encounters and your example does not take time into account
In the situation you give above (assuming a 1sec cast time on MB), the 4*3orb casts = 10k dps (4sec of casting time)
Whereas the 6*2orb casts = 8330 dps (6sec of casting time)
So your suggestion would give a substantial dps lose from the spell MB alone.

Ouch,

I don't think that's a good model, because you think the dimension is 'dps', where in your example its 'dpct' (damage per cast time).

In fact it's the exact opposite, a strategy with 2 orbs MB will produce more dps from Mind Blast than a 3 orbs strategy (if it implies waiting for the third).

If you admit the dps from orbs is constant and related to the orb generation frequency (favorised with a 3 orbs strategy by the way because you launch more often Mind Flay), then mathematically the dps from Mind Blast alone (not the orbs effect) rises when you cast it more often than not.

To me, the best strategy by far is a 2 orbs strategy, seeing that
- Mind blast with no orbs is not much better than Mind Flay, considering orb generation and sin and punishment.
- Waiting for 3 leads to losing orbs because either you gained the third orb at the first tick of Mind Flay (losing the ones from 2nd and 3rd), either you gained the third orb at the third tick of mind flay (not reacting fast enough and chaining with another Mind Flay, thus 3 ticks lost) either Pain gave you orbs while all this time (including casting Mind Blast).

Myah · 10/27/10, 2:22 PM

Hey guys, 2 questions:

- The hit rate got from Spirit gear/buffs doesn't show up in the Hit stats in the Character panel?

- Does spirit still work the same way for mana regen in Shadow?

Ninahagen · 10/27/10, 3:08 PM

- Yes. Although there is no such thing as spirit buff. And it's spirit from stuff only, ot base spirit.

- No. Zero regen from spirit while in fight (whatever you cast spell or not).

Cadfael · 10/27/10, 3:09 PM

Spirits influence does show up in the character pane, but under Hit chance and it does not differentiate between what is being contributed by hit and what part by spirit.

Spirit does nothing for us in-combat. All it does besides being 100% hit replacement is out of combat mana regeneration. Note also that only spirit above the base spirit does contribute to hit, so not all of it, just the part you add with gear, enchant and gems.

saberkittie · 10/27/10, 8:16 PM

Could someone just clearly lay out the stat priority for me? I am still leveling my priest, and as I start to gear her up it'd be nice to know.