retracted

Good enough for me. Now I'll have to consider dropping Marytrdom and Imp. Fort from my PvE spec I guess.

I've been running 3/5 SR plus Imp Fort (because I don't hate our holy priest enough to make her buff 5 groups) for a while now. It definitely helps with the obscene threat gen VE can give.

I'm not 100% convinced on that. There was a thread on shadowpriest.com a while back considering exactly this point
shadowpriest.com :: View topic - "Silent Resolve reduces VE aggro" - huh?

Antiarc made a post on that thread and explained the testing he had done on this issue. However when the testing was looked at in more detail it I didn't think it was entirely conclusive (my username on shadowpriest.com is Karnor) and the issue was never resolved to my satisfaction.

I just read through that thread, and there is definitely something weird going on here. I want to do additional testing to see what is and isn't affected. The only formula that fit the data was the one that also applied Silent Resolve to Mind Blast, which is kind of interesting. I think the tests we want are:

- Mind Blast monster, then see how much threat must be done to pull
- Get hurt, Vampiric Embrace, Mind Blast, then check threat required to pull

And I assume these should be done with 25% shadow threat regardless, as well as 3/5 Silent Resolve (since if it's good, we'll want that much anyway).

Does anyone know how to get highly accurate estimates of exactly how much threat another player is generating? Maybe I can summon Antiarc to this thread for more info.

Hello, I am fairly new to the forums I have read a bit here and there on this thread but it has 43 pages as of now, I don't know if anyone has posted this Spec or not and was wondering if anyone might have tried it or not.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator

I would obviously be hit capped and I would be just wasting the points in SF if I put them there. It would reduce the Amount of mana used on SW: D and SW: P. According to my calculations SW; P would be reduced to 540.5 mana from the original 575. and the SW: D would be reduced by 19 mana, my realm isn't up right now, I can't remember the actual original amount I think it was 360 or 390.

Well it would be awesome to get some feed back on this spec, and see what other people think about it. You all have a good day.

EDIT: I did fix the spec, Accidentally left the point out of VT.

I’m hoping for some constructive criticism regarding my shadow priest. She’s not my “raiding toon” but I still care about doing the best I can with her even if its just ezmode content. I’m familiar with this thread, so I know the general wisdom on a shadow priest, but I think I could use some more specific analysis to improve.

Simply put, I think I can be outputting more DPS in my current gear/spec, and I’m not, and I’m not sure why. My role is to return mana first, damage secondary, so I don’t expect to be the top DPSer in any group, but I am almost always dead last, even of comparably-geared classes. I think I’m a decent player who can do better and I know my raidmates will certainly appreciate if I can save them money on mana return consumables as a result.

At this point, although I’m devoting the bulk of my raiding hours to my rogue, my goal for Merapeh is to be a strong sub for lower raids like ZA and starter-T5, even if I don’t plan to take her full time into that content. I’m part of a raiding alliance (for small guilds who can’t field raids on their own), and they often need good subs. I want to be able to be that good sub.

Anyway, this post is totally TLDR, but if anyone sees anything that stands out as totally fuckall stupid, please let me know.

So… into the (probably TMI) details:

Amory:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Gear
My biggest weakness gear-wise (besides the pvp robe), is that I’m not a tailor. I rolled her as a miner/jewelcrafter for the sake of our small guild that has no other jewelcutters and few active miners. For the greater benefit of the guild, I wont reprofession her. Otherwise, all my gear is from T4 content and badge gear. I wear [Trial-Fire Trousers] for trash and swap them out on boss fights for the [Spellstrike Pants] so I can make the hit cap. Once I get the 2.4 badge loot, that wont be an issue (I can probably even drop to 4/5 SF after that since I’m a Draenei but we’ll see).

As far as the weak spots in my gear, I’m working on getting a new robe (I’d like the heroic MrT one, but badge one is next in line otherwise), badge pants, and a [Belt of Blasting]. Of course, I would like the trinket from Heroic MrT but we’ll see how my luck goes on that.

At this point, I’d say she’s geared enough for a raid starting T5, even if she’s not outputting the DPS. I’ve done fine subbing in ZA, though was likely mostly carried by the superior DPS of everyone else.

Spec
My biggest spec weakness is the three points “wasted” for silence. I’d probably move those over to shadow power but given the general weakness of crit, I’m not sure if I would justify how much I’d miss silence outside of raids.

Otherwise, my spec seems pretty cookie-cutter.

Playstyle
I have a lot of UI addons (Grid, Bartender, etc) but I think the only relevant mod you’d care about is my cast bars: Currently, I’m using DoTimer. I tried Class Timers but I didn’t like its inability to track untargeted mobs simultaneously.

I think I am okay at refreshing DoTs on time, but I am less good at keeping my spells chaining (ie, sometimes I don’t start my mind flay until my mind blast is totally done casting, rather than starting it as soon as my GCD is up mid-MB-cast). I’m working on that and have seen some good improvement. I’m fairly good with my trinket useage on boss fights but horrible with them on trash. I should probably work on that but I don’t really care too much about trash DPS if we’re not struggling.

My priority system:

1. VT
2. Pain
3. MB
4. Death
5. MF

If I use VE, I usually put it after Pain but before MB. I try to use it on any fight that I safely can, which is probably most everything in Tier 4 at this point between good tanks and subtly on my cloak.

I suspect that I clip mind flay sometimes but I’m not sure how to tell. I don’t use the anti-clipping macro anymore because I found it frustrating it some situations where I felt I needed to clip.

My latency varies. Sometimes it is a huge factor, but mostly it probably only effects me a small amount, and no more than most everyone else.

Couple WWS you can look at (my KZ raid doesn’t bother and the older Gruul ones are expired):
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

This group has a huge variation (some of the folks in that group are moving into Tier 6 content and some haven’t even run Karazhan), so you can’t really compare me well to the rest of the people in that raid. But, the general thing to know is that I usually pull my weight purely by having a good DPS time and by living to the end, not because I’m especially great.

Anyway, thoughts or comments greatly appreciated.

Looking at the second of those WWS parses and by my calculations you cast 11 x SWP, 12 x VT, 23 x MB, 15 x SWD, 6 x VE = 67 x 1.5 second spells = 101 seconds casting. Add to that 46 MF ticks (another 46 seconds) and thats 147 seconds spent casting.

The fight was 310 seconds long so there is a lot of time unaccounted for. Granted shatter will cost you some time, but not that much. Looks like your problem is not getting your spells to cast back-to-back properly as your gear and talents are pretty reasonable.

If you don't already have it then you should get Quartz and try to time your next spell while it is in the red zone of your previous spell.

Great, thank you. That was very helpful advice. I wasn't sure if I needed Quartz anymore with DoTimer and built-in /stopcasting but I'll snag it and test it on Wednesday.

I'd also like to point out to you that unless you also have some other head peice to swap in for the spellstrike hood, when you put on your trial fire for trash, it's pointless. The spellstrike set is better, when combined (because of the proc) than the trialfire trousers + spellstrike hood.

You could also replace the malefic girdle with a girdle of ruination for some added spell damage.

With 1152 shadow damage you should be able to sustain at least 900 dps on an encounter like gruul. If you get a shaman to drop a totem for you you might be able to hit 1k.

Like the poster before, I'm guessing you simply need to practice your spell casting rotations more. Start your VT refresh at about 1.5 seconds, don't reup SW:P until it dissapears.

Unfortunately, the set bonus for the hat/pants is only for tailors. Folks like me don't get it, even with both pieces. But yes, the proc would definitely make them worth the loss of 3 spell damage by ditching the Trial Fire.

Yeah, the Malefic Girdle is kinda subpar. I was hoping to get the belt from Maulgar but that never panned out, and at this point, I'm actually only three or four primal fires away from the Belt of Blasting which I think is a tiny bit better than Ruination. So that will be a huge upgrade very soon.

Everything else requires lucky drops or a lot more badges than I have, so those will come later in time.

So reading a lot about the haste gear really got me thinking that haste does make a dramatic difference for a raiding shadow priest. I personally am not working on a haste set at the moment but trying to get the T6 before i start worrying about haste. If a shadow spec priest in pre-black temple or SSC gear should decide to acquire more haste gear somehow than spell damage gear, is there really much of a bonus on the damage done because of haste for a lower raiding SP as compared to a spell damage geared priest? (if say his damage is around a mere 1100).

I have looked at your armory and you do have a lot of +hit, but aren't that near to the hit cap. Currently you have 154 hit without having made any bad gear choices - it has just ended up that way.

If you get the hex lord's head you would get another +15 hit to bring you up to 169. But that is still some way short of the 212 hit required to drop all points from shadow focus. I guess if you could always guarantee that you have an elemental shaman in the group then you could maybe justify 0/5 shadow focus (although better hope your shaman doesn't die or get out of range on any encounter.

However, even in those circumstances I would prefer to have 2 points in Improved VE rather than in Mental Agility, simply because you shouldn't be having mana issues at your level of gear.

Plus as you upgrade your gear further, you will almost inevitably find that your +hit drops and you would need to respec back into shadow focus.

It was mentioned a while back that it possibly could be better dropping a point in Focused Mind instead of Meditation so I decided to look into it a bit more. Looking at one of our Brutallus kills focused mind was worth 22mp5. The spreadsheet tells me 25mp5. Meditation is worth almost exactly 40mp5 for me raidbuffed.

So unless I'm missing something it's not even close, meditation in 2.4 is much stronger per point than focused mind.

Actually, looking at the math, nothing explains it. Even if we assume SR and SA both reduce VE aggro, I get:

1621*(.75 + .25*.5*.75*.96)*1.1 = 1497 - still too high.

The only thing I saw that worked was to halve the heal aggro again, as if another mob was on the global threat list, and assume SA doesn't affect it, giving:

1621*(.75 + .25*.25*.75*.96)*1.1 = 1444.31

Which fits the profile for damage dealt.

Servers come back up, I'll see if I can find someone to test with.

I did the math for myself as well based on a Brutallus WWS, and my calculations fall in line with yours.

While both Meditation and Focused Mind scales with gear (spi/int for Meditation, spell haste for Focused Mind), Meditation scales much better, which clearly indicates talent points in Focused Mind should be dropped before Meditation if you want to cut back on the efficiency/mana regen talents.

lalala nothing to see here

Nope but you forgot that the talent is 3 points and each point is 5%. Dropping an individual point would be 1/3 of 73 which is 24 mp/5, just as stated above.

Question on Spell Hit.

I am sitting at 143 Spell Hit (11.34%) and I am rolling with 4/5 Shadow Focus.

The original post states that we only need 76 hit rating to be capped with 5/5 Shadow Focus.

Where is the data/research to back this up? I have been under the impression that we need 146 hit rating along with 4-5/5 Shadow Focus on SW/BT/MH bosses. Am I getting wrong information?

Thanks for your help folks.

Your information was wrong. Bosses is counted as level 73 with lv 70 players, means that they have 17% chance to resist your spells, and since bosses can always have at least 1% chance to resist, you will need 16% hit to be hit capped.

16%-x%(%hit given by Shadow Focus) = % hit you need from gear. If you have 4/5 Shadow Focus = 8% hit, you only need 8% more, which is ~101 spell hit rating.

Hey guys, I'm fairly new here. Been reading this thread off and on (haven't had time to read all 43 pages just yet though). I'm looking for tips to increase my dps. You can see my gear here. My last average dps on a boss kill (Rage Winterchill) was 700dps. I know I can hit higher than that but I'm struggling to do so. Here's my breakdown for that fight.

Shadow Word Pain: 28% of overall damage totalling 37672dmg. It ticked 53 times with an average of 710 max of 882.
Mind Flay: 24% of overall damage totalling 32270dmg. It ticked 44 times with an average of 733 max of 841.
Mind Blast: 20% of overall damage totalling 27182dmg. it hit 11 times with an average of 2192. 8% crit max of 3070.
VT: 17% of overall damage totalling 22738dmg. It ticked 36 times with an average of 631 max 776.
Shadow Word Death: 8% of overall damage totalling 10809dmg. It hit 4 times average of 2022. 20% crit max of 2720.

Present from 21:12'23 to 21:15'35 (52 %)

DPS time : 3'06'' (97 % of presence), DPS : 702
HPS time : 2mn (90 % of presence), HPS : 974

Damage dealt to foes : 130,671 (4 %)
Damage received : 36,719 (3 %), heals received : 86,175, overhealed 57 %
Effective heals on friends : 28,040 (2 %)

Any tips or suggestions for spell rotations would be great. I will be downloading quartz tonight as I have just been manually watching it with xperl countdowns. I dont like DoTTimer.

Thanks

Did some testing post-raid tonight and I'm pretty much convinced that SR does *not* affect VE. Have forwarded the info along to Antiarc and attached both the combatlog and description/quick analysis for anyone who'd like to confirm it.