Hi, fairly new to the forum. What's the most effective way to max out damage using shadowy apparition? It seems to me you need to be constantly moving in order for it to proc often but it's hard to get into the habit of moving while dpsing. Also how would you rate the tier 11 Spriest set? Is it worth the valor pts? The 4 piece set bonus doesn't seem to wow me in any way. Maybe I'm missing something here.

As for combat rotation, I've been casting MB whenever possible. However is it better for me to wait for at least an orb before casting MB? I tend to cast it whenever it'd cd's up because of the chance of orb not procing, and that seems like a loss of dps for me.

Nice guide, btw.

Regarding the simulation craft results.

I see that in the priority list, that the casting rules refresh DP and VT at 0.5 Remaining.
I think this largely skews realistic stats weights (and expectations.)

I've yet to figure out how to edit and manage my own simcraft results successfully. But im willing to bet that Crit being as close as to haste already, is probably closer to being equivalent, or better than haste. Not to mention boss battles where its not possible to refresh in this manner at all.

Another thing i've noticed recently is that i often have 4 Shadowy Apparitions active. Being at long range and with a 4 limit on this ability i've noticed minor gains in DPS in being within 20 yards of my target if possible. This varies largely on the situation.

I agree on the Mental Agility, but I did take 2 points in Sanctum merely for the 4% spell damage reduction for now. You certainly don't need all three points.

Masochism is very useful when you need to multi-DOT at a minimum...and keep in mind the mana return is only half of the effect. Reducing the damage taken from SW:D by 50% is substantial during execute phases. Get double 18kish crit (for 72k damage total) and you take 72k damage instead of 36k. Even taking 18k instead of 36k (assuming neither crits) can be important on fights with heavy raid damage.

Do you mind sharing why you think the casting rules skew stats weights?, and why you are willing to bet that crit is as good (possibly even better) than haste?

I'm not saying your not right, but I miss some reasoning to support your statements.

It may be worth noting that SimulationCraft's default action list for a shadow priest doesn't include casting Shadow Word: Death when low on mana. This can result in odd stat weights, especially for lesser geared characters. I typically use this command near the top of the priority list to include this behavior, change the percentage as you see fit: actions+=/shadow_word_death,if=mana_pct<15

I am a bit puzzeld as to why SW:D should only be cast when moving (while > 25% HP). Assuming the self-inflicted damage is not relevant for healing (ie. is self-healed by VE relatively fast) and I don't need to move at all for a longer periods (say Maloriak encounter), then SW:D has the highest DPET and DPE values of the possible set of SW:D, MB, MF (and MS).

Of course it's not optimal to cast SW:D such, that you are on cooldown when 25% is reached. But otherwise even when mana is not a problem, it's the highest damage spell per time possible to cast when you don't need to refresh dots.

Masochism isn't tied to reduced Shadow Word: Death damage anymore. Here's the talent: Masochism - Spell - World of Warcraft

This effect got moved to Pain and Suffering, which is of course mandatory: Pain and Suffering - Spell - World of Warcraft

Plus Mind Flay also reduces your shadowfiend cooldown. When you have no orbs and dots are refreshed, what else can you do but spam mind flay? You could mind blast to keep up replenishment, but I doubt that's worth it. Spamming Mind Flay will give you an orb fast enough.

I do think it's a legitimate question of whether you want to let dots expire and just spam mind flay until you get an orb, or refresh your low quality dots without empowered shadow. The answer certainly depends on how much mastery you have. The more you have, the larger the DoT damage differential from having the buff, and the sooner you want the buff up.

You'd think that extra haste would also encourage orb fishing because you have more orb proc chances per second from mind flay (since it casts faster). But you're also losing proportionate DoT damage from the fact that your hasted DoTs aren't on the target.

Anecdotally, when orb fishing I've seen that you normally get the orb pretty quickly but there are some long tail cases where you're fishing for a very long time without DoTs up (except obviously shadow word pain). This suggests that orb fishing has a high chance of causing a minor DPS increase but a low chance of causing a massive DPS loss. The optimal cast pattern could depend on your tolerance for damage variance in a particular section of the fight.

For example, suppose you can choose one of these two damage profiles:
Orb fishing: 90% chance of 16k DPS, 10% chance of 10k DPS (15.4k avg)
Refresh DoTs: 100% chance of 15k DPS

Then suppose you have a burn phase where you need to break a damage shield to interrupt a cast, and you need to sustain 14k DPS to do so. Choosing the Orb fishing option is ludicrous because you have a 10% chance of wiping due to low damage. But in a fight without a short term DPS threshold, the outliers should be mitigated by a sufficiently large sample size to get an overall DPS increase.

Again, that's assuming Orb fishing is even a DPS gain, which we'll have to simulate to determine.

On another note, I have a sneaking suspicion that because there are so many internal tensions in the rotation, the question of how you prioritize the lower priority options doesn't matter much. The high priority things are obviously "keep up your dots", "keep up empowered shadow", and "shadow word: death in execute range". It might be that "Mind Blast when you have 3 orbs" isn't a huge deal, given the opportunity cost of a Mind Flay and all its associated benefits. It's not like blast hits THAT hard.

Yeah it's a bit tricky, I fully agree. I just am not sure if a blanket "keep SW:D ready for movement and execute range, never cast it otherwise" is good advice, as SW:D keeps being largest DPET outside execution range and thus worthy of being casted. Obviously not at the expense of DoT refreshing or ES refreshing.

The reason I asked is that I found myself unable to properly monitor the critical variables with EventHorizon, which I used for the longest time for all my needs. So I wrote a little addon which looks like the old Daemon debuff monitor of TBC times which displays in a small frame those three things: HP of target, color coded to signal SW:D on cooldown, execute range and when outside execute range it is save to cast too (ie. cooldown will not reach into execute range), an ES indicator, showing when it's on, when it's on and I could refresh it with 1 or more orbs and MB off cooldown and when it's off and/or I can't cast MB due to cooldown or no orbs and finally a simple orb counter.

With these three indicators on a very small spot I feel I can better react to the new conditions and I do cast SW:D quite a lot, wheter I need the mana or not since those 10K+ non crit hits for 1 GCD aren't wasted. You also get to notice those bad luck strings that tedv mentioned very well when you start to stare on the ES indicator to finally light up and cursing when you haven't gotten an orb after 10 seconds into the fight.

About hit capping and aside all theory, in practice I found it very annoying not to be hitcapped on Cho'gall fpr exemple, where all the adds are tagged as bosses. If you need to assist on the oozes (blood of the old god or whatever), mind spike is really efficient but you need the hit cap (or near, 15%~should be ok). You also loose a lot of mana when multidotting with low hit and bad luck (and a lot of fights allow multidoting atm) and can be forced to SW or keep your SF for mana instead of pure dps.
So all in all, I would say it's not really a matter of opinion, I tried to raid with between 5 and 10% hit on the first raids, because i couldn't reach the hitcap without sacrifying too much crit/haste (or trinkets, like the excellent jewelcrafting one), and if it showed good DPS results, it was really annoying because of the reasons I stated above. For now I run something like 15% and lost quite a lot of crit, but i've much less to care if my fucking VT missed for the third time on theralion or not, and can use mind spike properly.

This is incorrect, Imp MB is still 0.5/1/1.5; you can confirm this on the talent tree in game. Wowhead has some kind of weird error at the moment where they display it as 1/1/2, perhaps due to rounding. You can also see this on Divine Fury where Wowhead states that the cast time reduction is 0.15/0.35/1 where the actual third point still brings it to 0.5.