Proxy

A bit OT, because it has nothing to do with face meltage.
I'm a troll shadow priest and I occasionally cast my racial Hex of Weakness on the boss (Reducing damage done by 35 and healing effects by 20%). I cast this whenever I got spare time, like during earthshakes at Magtheridon, where you can only do instants.

Yesterday, I couldn't sometimes reapply it, because there was a 'stronger version of the spell' active already. Anyone know of some synergy with another class ability or something specific to Mag that can enhance the effect of this spell?

 

• Snowy

It wont stack with Mortal Strike, IIRC -- so you probably had an arms warrior in the raid that time applying it.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Mearis

I thought the Hyjal mace was much worst than than the S3 mace, a good 12 spell damage behind or so.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/images/n...r/s3/gavel.jpg

247 spell damage for the S3 one.

http://www.worldofraids.com/news/sep...fjudgement.jpg

236 damage for the Hyjal mace.

How's it better?

 

vigorouss

More hit and 2 more int?

 

Proxy

Yes, that sounds logically, thx

 

ANSeranov

I went Shadow the other day for a few Heroics. I skimmed through this thread and it helped ALOT. I used to be the world's worst SPriest, and I did pretty really well (compared to my previous attempts at Shadow).

I let VT fall off sometimes, but a DoTtimer will help with that, I'd imagine. My problem was mostly that I'd go through the VT->SWP->MB->SWD->MF, but due to my lag, I generally would have had to cancel MFs to MB as soon as the cooldown was up. (I had 1 point in Imp MB.)

I figure it's probably not a big deal, as I doubt I'll be raiding as Shadow, but would it generally be a better idea to cancel the MF and do MB as soon as the cooldown's up, or should I just wait for the MF to end? I'm not taking threat into consideration, because my Shadow gear is pretty much the same as my smite gear, so I'm not yet at the point where I'm doing more damage than my tank can handle, where I'd have to throttle back.

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

• Snowy

Just let the MF end -- you risk a lot more trying to time cutting your MF short to cast a MB. From the sounds of your lag, I think it would be almost impossible to time it anyways. If you cut your MF off at 1.8 seconds, then you've blown a lot of potential DPS (only .2 sec more to go for another MF tick!)

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Vurrin

It might be more "DPS" to interrupt a Mind Flat for a mind Blast, but it wouldn't be significantly so and possibly not at all depending on how many ticks of flay you got off, but its certainly less efficient, and in a 5 man heroic thats moving along at a good clip a SP is likely to be the only class in a group going oom regularly. This is because it is already mana intensive to apply DoTs that don't go full duration and with multiple targets to DoT each pull, etc. On the other hand its also a DPS loss to not start a spell and wait for Mind blast to CD. So my general advice would be start the flay and cast the mind blast after the flay. If you find you never cast Mind Blast on cooldown, then spec out of it, and put the points into Shadow Power which will raise the DPS on the Mind Blasts you DO cast, rather than simply cool mind blast down before you're ready to cast it.

 

ANSeranov

Alright, I'll keep that in mind.

Another quick question: If I'm dotting multiple targets, is it a good idea to try and keep VE up on as many mobs as possible in a Heroic, or should I just put it only on the target we're focusing on?

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

tedv

Embrace has a 10 second cooldown, so you won't have it up on too many targets, not that you need it up on more than one. I assume you mean touch? In general, I would stick to one target. You get better returns from your touch if you spend more time attacking the same target. Every time you spend another global cooldown casting another touch or pain, you could have been doing extra damage to a target that already had a touch on it, for more mana regen. It's also worth noting that too much damage spread around might cause problems for a typical heroic tank, and pulling aggro would be a Very Bad Thing(tm).

If you ARE dotting a ton of monsters for some reason (for example, during an AoE pack in Hyjal), you generally want to spam 4 to 7 rank 1 or 2 pains and then pick one target and focus it. The low rank pains are partially for the misery bonus and partially so the tank gets aggro. In Hyjal, I usually wear my Ashtongue trinket and spam low rank pains until I get the 220 spell damage proc. At that point, I switch to a target and focus fire it for 15 seconds (ie. until touch wears off). Then I switch to a new target and repeat, to distribute threat. Usually I can get a solid 40 seconds of proc time before needing to refresh pains. It's not as much damage as an AoE class would do, but it's more helpful than anything else I could be doing.

 

Mearis

For 11 less damage?

 

Goatharder

When you get a DoT timer, a big thing is to think ahead about 3 seconds and figure out what your next spells are going to be. If it's 3 seconds till VT expires, it 'makes sense' to put a mind flay in there. But you're better off with MB -> VT so you don't have down time on it.

Just out of habit, I'd suggest not clipping flays. I'm sure there's math behind it somewhere else on the site that explains exactly how much mana you're wasting, but clipping flays is just bad habit.

Also, using VE on heroics (especially on multiple targets) depends heavily on your tank. If you have the Real Ultimate Paladin Tank, then go for it. If you've got a warrior who doesn't do anything but spam sunder armor, then maybe VE isn't a great idea.

 

galzohar

Cutting a flay is the last on the list of things you should do in the "I have enough mana and want more DPS" scenario. If you're cutting it after the 2nd tick with the same amount of time wasted as you would waste after the 3rd tick (like, if after every MF you lose on average 0.3s due to not wanting to lose the last tick, and if you cut it short you cut it on average ~0.3s after the 2nd tick as well, and *not, say, 0.8s*), it'll be a DPS increase to cut it short when a higher priority ability needs casting.

What I wonder what's the break even point between waiting for another spell before refreshing SW:P and waiting for SW:P to do the last tick and refresh it before casting anything.
For example (assuming safety of 0.1s after DoTs to not clip and lose nearly 3s worth of DoT) if SW:P gets its last tick in 0.1s (plus latency, of course, or else with >100ms you should cast SW:P anyway), I bet you'd still be better off not casting anything but rather waiting 0.2s and refreshing SW:P for max DPS/DPM.
Another example is if SW:P's last tick is in 1.3s, you should probably cast something else first and only then refresh it rather than wait 1.4s. You lose 0.1s of SW:P but gain 1.4s of casting something else (the last 0.1s would've been there even if you waited for casting SW:P, of course).
Now when you look at middle-ground scenarios, say, 0.7s until SW:P does it last tick, where would the break-even point be? Any model showing this?
Same can be said for VT, except losing it is more of a mana loss and less of a DPS loss compared to SW:P, and you need to add 1.5s to the latency due to casting time.

 

Yrael24

OT a bit here but I am having trouble getting above 700 dps, sometimes dropping as low as 600 on boss fights. I have a DoT timer and I am using quartz to show when to stop channeling MF etc but what kind of dps were people hitting with ~1040 shadow dmg unbuffed?

On the priest dps spreadsheet it says that I should be able to achieve just under 1000 dps, presumably that is when every factor is perfect so is unlikely to happen but I would have thought I could get somewhere approaching that on a fight like Morogrim where my role is pretty much to nuke the hell out of him?

 

Mearis

Do you use mindblast/SW:D on every possible cooldown?

 

Yrael24

Yes unless my hp is below 50% or so I always SW: D, I only have 1 point in IMB though

 

Mearis

Get 4/5 improved mind blast, SW every cooldown, refresh DoT perfectly. 800-900 DPS is easily doable.

 

Beatus

Yes, I think close 1000 dps is reachable with that gear level, your task should be to get as close as possible to 'optimal' situations, in other words: don't loose time between casts, good spell rotations, don't move too much, etc.

As an example, on Al'ar, every now and then you have to move from platform to platform; if you do the moving just after you have cast an instant, you are not wasting spellcasting time.

 

Yrael24

Hmm ok well it looks like i need to stack a wee bit more +hit or lose silence to get that 4/5 IMB, ok well thanks for your input guys

 

Beatus

Stacking +hit will cost you spelldamage, so not a good idea. And yes, 4/5 IMB is good, but doesn't explain the difference to what you should do on static targets (~850- 950) and what you do.

Silence has no value in a raid environment, so dump it.

 

tedv

Check if you are clipping off your DoTs or Mind Flay ticks with a WWS or recount parse. If you refresh those too soon, you'll see a dramatic loss in damage. Also, you might want to pick up a better trinket than riding crop. (I'm assuming that's your normal gear because it puts you at 1037 spell damage, close to the 1040 you listed in your post.) The Crusade deck is ideal, but even the level 62 trinket bought with PvP tokens from Zangarmarsh would be a huge upgrade.

Oh, and your hit is fine. You have 7% from gear, 8% from talents, and 1% from being Draenei.

 

Beatus

He meant dumping talent points in hit in favor of imp MB, and compensate by getting more hit from gear, or at least that's how I read it.

 

tedv

I suppose, but the 3 points in silence are wasted, and you can easily drop improved vampiric embrace, which would even be enough for 5/5 Blast (which is clearly overkill).

 

Yrael24

I just had my riding crop equipped as I was doing my dailies last night :P

Usually i have the scryer bloodgem which is 32 +hit IIRC so I would only need 15 or so more hit to drop to 2/5 Shadow focus....I keep silence as I would like to be of some use in arenas and I am too cheap to pay 200g a week in respeccing fees!

I was playing around with WWS last night for the first time so I will see what information I can get out of it this weekend when I am not at work or raiding

 

galzohar

Instead of dropping points from focus, work on upgrading that scryer's bloodgem... You can do a lot better than that (such as darkmoon crusade, heroic badge trinket...)