Earlier in the thread we ended up with about 2 spellpower being equal to a 1 dps increase.

Yeah, but I think that section was originally from me-- I was just clarifying how I came up with that number.

From the ZA Timer thread in the general forum:
I've been wondering for a while now how long it would be before how poorly our DPS scales began to outweigh our utility to the raid. Unless the future is filled with encounters like the Illidari Council, I can see this attitude becoming more prevalent with respect to shadow priests.

Well if things were balanced well, no more than one copy of each class/spec combo (27 total) would be justified in a 25 man raid. And as people gear up more, DPS increases which means longevity is less of an issue, so there's less reward from mana regeneration.

I believe the primary shift was from the 2.3 patch making fire mages better than arcane, as a fire mage can last a lot longer without a shadow priest. Shadow priests are only useful when 3 or 4 other people in the raid have enough mana dumps to otherwise run out of mana, and quite frankly, there aren't enough mana dumps. Even Arcane Blast is less than Fireball for fire mages, I believe.

The flip side of adding more mana dumps is that PvP could get imbalanced by giving classes more burst damage, so it's a tricky bit of game design to balance.

AB from fire mages is far far far below fireball DPS. We're talking roughly 25% dps loss for > 50% worse DPM.
Then again, current mage TC is not very favorable of mage arcane spec either -- 1.5s AB barely outdps what you would get from firespec.

The main problem with current shadow priest theorycrafting, as I see it - is the reduction in value of what haste is worth. I personally - and I believe Elegen would also agree with me on this particular topic - believe haste is the scaling answer necessary for shadow priests. You're probably asking *why* haste? Haste does not effect mind blast. Haste does not effect our dots, or shadow word death. So why would you want any haste?

Look at it from this standpoint - our highest DPS spell is obviously mindblast. We want to use that *every* time it's up - simply because, if your average mindblast is something like 3000, that's 2000dps. Not too shabby, but on a fairly long cooldown. SW is even longer. SW:P and VT have even *longer* cooldowns if you look at it from that standpoint.

So in a normal rotation, that leaves us with quite a large amount of filler space. Our filler spell is mindflay - which is quite low dps in comparison to the other options we would have if they were not currently on cooldown. The problem is primarily with the scale factor for mindflay as well as the fact that there is no possible crit component. Being that you reach ~30crit to mindblast/SW:D with BT gear (not going out of your way to stack crit, using the talents) - there's very little reason to go beyond that particular crit level. Stacking +dmg has a small dps increase since well - mindflay's coefficient is quite lacking.

Obviously, if you've read what I wrote or have any clue of how shadow priests function - you can sort of argue that mindflay is bleeding +dmg due to the poor nature of the spell.

However, let's make the case that mindflay was reduced from 3.0s to say, an easily achievable 2.7s. Assuming you were doing say, 563 average unbuffed (no misery, etc) per tick using 1400+dmg- we'll reduce it to something like 550, which is ~1351 dmg.

So, (550 * 3) / 2.7 = 611.111111
563*3/3 = well, 563 :P.

So we got a 48dps increase on our low dps, filler spell while dropping it down by 23dmg on average...\

That's assuming we give up 49dmg to achieve this amount of haste.

Btw, we lose 4.36100dps from SW:P going to 1351 dmg, 4.75300dps from VT. So maybe 10dps lost for a 48dps increase, so a 38dps increase.

I can do more exact numbers based on the gear that's available at the moment and such, and will sometime quite soon - but I figured I'd throw this out so everyone can argue and debate about it - but the way we are really looking at things, I think - is fundamentally wrong. The issue with trying to improve shadow priest dps is to try and improve the weakest link - not bolster what is already above average. We're stuck with mindflay - and no amount of crit is going to help that.

If I can dig them up (if they are still active), Elegen and I have some breaking 1500dps on gorefiend (which isn't necessarily the nicest fight due to pushbacks). We are possibly lower on some fights then desirable - but there are some fights in which we can also do quite well in comparison (Illidan, Archimonde, nearly all of Hyjal). The fights where we are primarily rather weak are ones like Council due to resists and lack of debuffs (Warlocks are worrying more about Tongues then keeping isb up for example). On some of the shorter fights, Jurbtwo and I have gotten close to 1600dps (like Rage Winterchill). Our sustained dps drops sharply when there are environmental factors (sleep, freezing) that cause us to only have dots tick whereas mages/warlocks do not have those issues unless they are fire mages (it's more that we have 100% uptime, which doesn't necessarily mean both dots or ticking or that we are fulltime dpsing, whereas for a destruction lock, 100% uptime indicates that they are casting shadowbolt exactly in succession one after another 100% of the time).

In the end, total dmg is what matters - not necessarily sustained dps since various things can really affect that number adversely for any dot class.

The real question for shadow priests is - at our upper limit (which seems to be about 1500dps on fights where you can actually tell a sustained dps value since movement fights lower our sustained values due to dots still ticking and recount/wws not being able to really garner any useful information regarding that) - are shadow priests still worth it? 5% overall caster damage, 10% more on top of that to warlocks, and a mana battery (which may be less significant now, but could once again become significant during progression) leads me to believe - yes. They are more a tool to help progression more then anything. Passive healing, mana regen, dps buffs, etc. turn them into one of the most useful classes to have around. We may outgear Black Temple and Hyjal, but there's really no telling what tax there will be on healers and dps in Sunwell.

Basically, even though they may not "scale" as well (although I've been experimenting with best practices and methods to improve scaling) - it's hard to imagine going into any kind of progression without at least 2 shadow priests.

That said, it'd be nice to have mindflay scale much better.

Here's one of me at Gorefiend last week at 1498 DPS: Wow Web Stats
Previous week, 1355 DPS without CoS: Wow Web Stats

This is with +1356 shadow damage unbuffed, then using oil, food, and elixir of major shadow power. Maybe next week I'll get a Rage where I don't have to move out of D&D at all and dont get ice bolted. Generally for the first 3 bosses in Hyjal I run 1300-1400 DPS. With all that said, I don't think there's any worry about shadow priests going the way of the dodo, the ancillary benefits we bring to the raid and our group are still very valuable.

If you're running into a situation where your mages and healers do not need shadow priests, stick them with your warlocks. Our DPS jumps quite a bit as you save us GCDs, and we'll never be mana-efficient enough to not need the mana. That may not be the solution for ZA woes, but it will certainly help out in a 25 man raid.

I'm with Nikita on this issue. Due to the nature of progression content, and the advent of our 41 point talent, we could do 800 dps, and still guarantee 2-3 dedicated raid spots to spriests for conquering content. The mana per5, caster damage buff, and off healing are just far too invaluable to just replace with someone who can do more damage. I, unlike many shadowpriests, actually don't believe that we necessarily need any damage buffs as is. Though the thought of us being able to compete with other dps classes seems like a pleasant idea, it seems unnecessary. Our position in the raid is as a utility class, no longer a top end dps class (largely attributed to the death change, as well as shadow weaving). As is, my dps is high enough (as well as my regen) that I use less than 5 super mana pots in a full BT clear, and that is largely without a shaman. At the endgame gear level, if I'm not mistaken, most of us will primarily use destruction potions, just to push dps and raid regen further.

Keep in mind Nikita, the dps you, Elegan and many other shadowpriests are putting out isn't all necessarily due to haste. I feel it's necessary to point this out, due to the fact that the end dps number sharply decreases with time outside the trinket use windows, and comes back up a bit with the bloodlust phase. However, if you down bosses in less than 2-3 mins, comparing yourself to people who kill the boss in 5 mins is a rather unfair comparison. Higher raid dps (and assuming ideal group composition for you) will net you a higher personal dps time overall. By example: I myself check wws parses rather religiously, and during progression phases for hyjal, though my gear remained largely the same, the fact that we killed the boss faster simply though comfort levels netted a higher dps. Pulling 1100 dps on a first kill, then less than 2 weeks later with no extra gear hitting 1300. Not to mention the wws parses of the kill times nearly halving, which seems to yield a clear net dps increase for the entire raid.

Anyway, more on point, stacking haste is largely unnecessary beyond getting mind flay to approx 2.75s. Generally where most haste pieces go, there is a more suitable piece, if I'm not mistaken the generally accepted slots to stack haste are the ring slots, weapon, bracers, and the skull of guldan.

Nikita put it pretty well. One misconception I see within other posts is that 142 spell haste with 2.75s mind flays is optimal for a haste set. The reality is that 199 haste with 2.66s MF and 1.33s MB fits the two mindflay 5/5 imp MB model perfectly due to the GCD disparity with MB.

I agree that there are a lot of factors outside of gear choice, but we see that the haste builds are at least on par with pure damage builds. Another priest in my guild expressed regret over taking mostly pure damage gear after his damage wasn't keeping up with mine. As he adds more haste pieces our DPS chart numbers are getting closer. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions based on comparing different raids out of guild since makeup and warlock:spriest ratio can skew the numbers greatly, but in doing so I try to look at all of the factors involved. Comparing priests within one raid is much easier to analyze.

Another factor we must consider is scaling. After raid buffs, the spell damage ratio between the two builds is lowered to between a 5-7% difference by my estimates. This seems very minimal compared to what you gain with haste. The value is diminished further when you consider that the bulk of our damage is derived from spells that have less than 100% coefficient after talents and raid buffs. Much of haste's value will depend on Sunwell and WotLK itemization. If haste gear is allowed to scale in damage close behind pure damage pieces, then haste will become a more attractive stat. If haste's damage stats end up falling too far behind then they will lose their worth.

As I see it right now, haste edges out a pure damage build in most end game fights, but not by much. There still are some fights, like Azgalor and Archimonde, that give preference to pure damage builds due to excessive down time. Hopefully we will get a peak at 2.4 gear soon to help determine the future of the stat. Right now haste's future is in Blizzard's hands.

You'll have to quantify why you consider an item "best in slot." If you use the 0.4-0.6 haste per spell damage ratio, then these items fall right in with their pure damage counterparts. The items you have listed give 177 spell haste for a 2.7s MF and 1.35s MB. I personally wear the ZA neck to top the 199 mark. You end up with more options from a spell haste set so you can better adapt what you are casting as more unique elements are added to boss encounters. It is the unique variables of each fight that make it hard to put a static worth on the spell haste stat for shadow priests.

While I'm not saying this is wrong, it does sound a lot like "It just feels like more damage!" and other such anecdotes. At the risk of being a stickler for hard data, what theorycrafting do you have to show how much spell damage is worth trading for 199 haste rating? I'm talking about perhaps one or two minutes of actual cycle mapped out with and without the gear, so we can see exactly how much damage the extra mind blasts give.

If we take the sticky to be correct about Bloodlust/Heroism and the GCD, what's best to do while you have the buff - keep up your normal spell rotation, or drop SW:D and possibly also MB in favour of MF spam? I'd imagine at least SW:D should be dropped, since it doesn't benefit from haste whatsoever.

Nope, you still want to use MB and SWD every cooldown. Bloodlust means your DPS from flay increases by 30%. Lets say your average Flay tick is 900. You'll do 1170 DPS with Bloodlust. Now assume your averaged mind blast between normal hits and crits is 2500. That's still 1666 DPS. Even if it was only 2000, you'd still do 1333 DPS. The same logic applies to SWD. In short -- don't change your priorities at all, unless you are concerned about mana in which case mind flay would be superior.

I am not what you would call a 'math oriented' guy but, anecodotally (if that's even a word), from my own experience using Illidan staff, crafted bracers, ZA boots, and one haste trash ring, I wasn't impressed with the numbers. Granted, that was with about fifty or so less +haste than what is now being touted as the ideal but I still remain skeptical.

As Hope said, though, I would like to see a controlled test on Doctor Boom or whatever where everything is equal save for the swapping of the haste gear. WWS reports from raids only go so far because there are a lot of variables such as the presence or absence of an elemental shaman (or any shaman at all), BM hunter, how many warlocks you have with improved shadow bolt, etc. My gear isn't even completely maxed out (lacking ZA trinket, etc) but I can hit 1450+ DPS fully raid buffed without much difficulty. That's not to say that 1500+ isn't better just that it might not be a matter of the gear itself and merely raid/group composition and/or reflexes... and I'm sure the Skull of Gul'dan plays a large role in that and shouldn't be considered 'haste' for purposes of the passive haste itemization debate.

All of that said, and to respond to the larger issue of shadow priest scaling, I would certainly hope Blizzard does something in the expansion by way of new spells and talents to ramp up the damage output of a shadow priest. One will always be fairly important for the mob debuffs alone. The main issue is will the mana return still be viable enough to justify taking a second over DPS classes that scale a lot better.

That makes sense, thanks. I was thinking of SW:D's DPS as its average damage divided by the spell cooldown, and thought I'd just ask so I wouldn't have to do the math and check if that's the best way to think of it and so on.

I don't really have time to do it right now, but if someone wants to make a cycle that factors random pushback, MF cancellation after 2nd tick and a boss moving randomly in and out of range, then they are welcome to try. These are major factors in most end game fights right now, but I've never seen a rotation simulator takes these all into account. What does take them into account is real world data, which is strong.

I did do some more Dr. Boom tests, and I got the same results as before. ~200 haste with 1226 shadow damage yielded almost identical results to the set with 1321 shadow damage when looking at total damage and DPS, which supports the 0.5 haste=1 spell damage theory.

I'm a 52 shadowpriest alt and just trying to get through the pre-bc grind till i can go to outlands. JW, when and where can i start getting +spell hit? Resists are horrible and i like killing/kiting mobs 2-3 levels ahead of me for better XP. Any ideas where to find some of that stuff without spending the 75-85g for the spell hit to gloves.

Elegen if you did the tests on Dr. Boom it sounds to me like there are quite a few people interested in either the WWS of the tests or the raw combat log file.


In your talent tree you get 10% hit, if you want more than that from gear go to wowhead or thottbot and search for it.
Put some effort in to finding what you want instead of asking people for it and remember you are on a forum which is more interested about min/max in an end game raid, not about leveling an alt.

To be fair, in a raid setting you'd have more spell damage buffs: flasks, food, oil, and totem will add to 80+23+42+101 = 246 spell damage. While at 1321 spell damage, 1 haste = .5 spell damage, at 1567 spell damage you might get better results. Still just in the .55 to .6 range though.

At any rate, I'm not convinced the intangible benefits of haste against a mobile boss are enough to make spell haste better than the estimates. Keep in mind that spell damage is relatively better against mobile bosses because your DoTs get full damage even if you can't cast you direct damage spells on them for a moment. In other words, in every situation haste might make you finish your mind flay fast enough for one last tick, extra spell damage will make pain and touch tick for extra damage.

Regarding pushback, there are few fights where this is an issue. And if it is, you either get concentration aura and earth shield or your damage is in the gutter. A little bit of spell haste doesn't affect your damage that much.

How do you guys deal with Mind Flay getting clipped? I just posted a bug report in the EU forums, which might be interesting to spriests.
Quartz Latency is not helpful in that regard, as even [nochanneling] macros are not reliable. Any suggestions (maybe addon-wise)?