The SotS ring and AD trinket are both underwhelming. Plus, if you're interested in min/maxing your character for a raid environment, "time it takes to get rep" isn't really relevant. Make a Night Elf.

Heya everyone,

I've been trying to get hands on the [Hood of Hexing] or [Cowl of the Grand Engineer] and couple it with the [Trousers of the Astromancer] I already have to have an alternative for my Spellstrike Set. Right now I'm mostly wondering if it's a better choice than Spellstrike in general, or whether it's use is limited to fights where a larger than normal health pool is needed.

I'm fairly sure either hat coupled with the new 2.4 BoJ [Legwraps of Sweltering Flame] will be better than Spellstrike, but should I be looking to replace the set already?

Much appreciated.

I've been looking through WWS log and trying to do what was mentioned earlier in this thread, look for uptime, and find ways to improve it, but I don't know which stat is the uptime. Is that DPS time? How do I know if I'm clipping my SWPs or applying my VT too late? What are some effective ways of reading the WWS log?

Wow Web Stats is from this week's raid.

Can anyone give a few pointers?

Yes, either head coupled with the Trousers will be superior to the Spellstrike set, although not by a tremendous amount. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to change head/legs with a simple upgrade to one as opposed to having to consider teh set bonus. There are threads on shadowpriest.com evaluating the different types of gear both pre 2.4 and post 2.4, and I urge you to check them out.

Kalman, your graph is very interesting. It looks like there are 2 different curves. The higher curve is the result of proper wait times, and the lower one is the result of not waiting long enough. Which one do you think is closer to a real world approximation? I would expect human reactions adjusting wait times on the fly to be closer to the optimal curve. What spell damage did you assume for this simulation?

There also seem to be quite sharp diminishing returns on haste, with a plateau between 150 and 200 spell haste. That would put the sweet spot between 100 and 150.

Evanwill's numbers also show a plateau, but around 100-150. That's one of the places where small amounts of waiting make a big difference, though.

How much +damage does it take to add 1 dps? I'd like to try to calculate the relative usefulness of haste vs damage. I've seen reports of 0.5 haste = 1 damage for live, all the way up to 1 haste = 1 damage for PTR. It should be easy to calculate from the graphs if I can convert from DPS to +damage.

The graph was run at 1400 +dmg. I suspect that human reaction will wind up somewhere in the top-middle of the bounds, as people don't tend to play perfectly; that said, the penalty for being 'close' tends to be fairly low (though not always).

I don't know if Evan is running under 2.4 GCD assumptions; I was. I expect that would make a difference in where the 'plateau' lands. Roughly speaking, 2 +dmg = 1 +dps; on PTR, the haste:damage conversion does appear to be close to 1:1 at the 250 range, Even at the 'plateau', it still appears to be on the order of 0.8:1. There's also some indication that the plateau may end and past 250 it may boost back up, I need to run some more simulations.

For 2.4, I basically expect +haste to be roughly 1:1 with +dmg, between the combination of it appearing very close to that value in simulations and the unsimulated benefits (motion fights have higher cast allowances.)

I'm very pleased to have found this forum... finally, people that speak my language. Shadow Priest.

As a guild leader having to lead Kara runs with my newly-70's and my weekly-casuals (not very elitist... I know...), every week I've been picking up extra badges that, until news of the 2.4 badge rewards, were just burning holes in my bags. I started messing around with spell haste gear and I can confirm that you guys are right on the money with the +3 spell haste = +1 DPS that you've been kicking around in this thread -- Kudos to the math-crunching Shadows! I've found that depending on the piece of gear that I'm swapping out, it's more a matter of what am I losing to gain the haste :: and in many cases, I've come out ahead after the math-splosion (for example... the Runed Spell-cuffs vs Bands of Nefarious Deeds).

Additionally, I picked up the Essence of the Martyr for my healing set (*gasp* A healing set!? not very elitist at ALL... I know...), and I found out that the Essence is on a separate CD from the Icon of the Silver Crescent. So, am I right to assume the following:

In general...

Icon = (155/6) + 43 = +68.83 effective
Essence = (99/6) + 28 = +44.5 effective
TRINKET TOTAL = +113.33

... but for fights that last for 20secs or less (i.e. most trash fights)...

Icon = 155 + 43 = +198
Essence = 99 + 28 = +127
TRINKET TOTAL = +325

Since there is generally downtime between trash pulls (drinking, rezing, moving to the next pull, rebuffing, joking around on Vent, etc...), I've found that this trinket combo has dramatically increased my combat effective DPS, especially since I have both trinkets linked to every damage casting spell in my arsenal using macros (so the trinkets are being popped at every possible chance).

Thoughts?

If I were you I would just look to get [Bracers of Nimble Thought] crafted. They do require hearts of darkness but the prices on those are dropping as 2.4 and the winding down of TBC inch closer. Less people interested in the crafted gear, more guilds in Tier 6 looting hearts, and more established guilds not wanting a repeat of AQ 40 and Naxx stuck with a bunch of worthless scarabs and armor scraps in the bank when they can unload them for gold while they are still relevant.

Does anyone know if the Scryers/Aldors plotline is expected to continue in WotLK (even if it's just based on the established lore, any indicator at all)? I went Scryer basically because I'd like to make my own spellthread and I viewed the dmg vs crit thing to be simply a question of shoulder inscriptions (and I was willing to compromise optimization for a little convenience - moot point now with Nether's becoming BoE). I'm not someone who enjoys pouring money into retraining/rep grinds to min max, but if this trend clearly favoring aldors (for spriests) continues, a switch might almost be a requirement?

Scryers/Aldor isn't likely to continue to be relevant in the new expansion. There's no way to go above exalted for existing characters, and it would create a need for new characters to farm "new old world" zones to catch up. It just doesn't mesh with Blizzard's expansion philosophy (the giant reset button).

I don't think it's that likely lorewise either. The Scryer/Aldor conflict arc has pretty much reached its happy friendly conclusion through BT and SW storylines.

So while the storyline may be utilized I'm sure the reputation will become meaningless. Well, once new shoulder enchants pop up, anyway.

I am interested in the drop off after the 2.75s MF mark. In reality, this should be a plateau at worst when considering delaying spells. Perhaps implementing this into the logic for in the form: delay cast by (time left on CD) iff (damage of next spell in cycle ) / (time left on CD + cast time) > (damage of current spell in the cycle) / (cast time). This is something that could result in more practical data and may be worth the extra time if you are going to long simulation.