Pasch

Here you go, Hexpoll. First reset after the patch.
One thing to notice is that I did not have a meta gem for 3% added crit damage which could possibly put MB and SW: D higher on the list.
Wow Web Stats

I must admit my crit rate on Mind Flay was abnormally high. I had a mage doing Focus Magic on me and we had both boomkin, ele shaman, scorch and a ret pala in the raid (although I forgot which of these debuffs stack).
I also took advantage of the current "bug" where I didn't apply SW:P untill I had a 5/5 shadow weaving stack and had popped my Hex Shrunken Head trinket to boost up the SW: P!

 

warheathen

i dont mean to doubt your ability hexpoll, i just want to be sure that this is what im supposed to be using...

1 - MB
2 - SW:P
3 - SW
4 - VT
5 - DP

One thing i dont understand is why not cast DP first being that its instant cast and you can do it on the pull while getting into position?

thanks in advance for the advice.

 

• Gillingham

My guess is to get Shadow Weaving stacked a few times before casting it to increase DPS. I read of a similar suggestion for SW:P though and am not really sure why the same wouldn't apply for that. I'm still in the process of rolling my first spriest.

 

Kalaghan

Because you're still casting it at least once, so when you cast it matters (minutely)? Plus silence effects, multi-mob fights, movement, and deaths can also all result in a re-application of SW:P (offhand...I'd say about half the fights out there).

That'd be an exception to the rule. It's a priority system and you have to know when to break it (eg. it is probably a bad idea to use MB a split second after the tank gets aggro, but SW:P might be okay).


I'm having trouble finding confirmation with specific regards to shadow weaving and shadow word: pain, but I suspect this is the same issue that arose with trinkets and SW:P (and Lifebloom back in the day for druids). Since these spells are never actually re-applied, but are instead refreshed, initial builds have maintained +dmg from first cast throughout the life of the spell. In so doing, you could use a +150 spell power trinket, and have that effect on your SW:P the entire fight. In build 9014 they adjusted, so that +dmg impact on your SW:P is re-calculated whenever MF refreshes it. However, it sounds like they still haven't adjusted to refresh based on whether Shadow Weaving is up.

i.e. If you put SW:P up at the start of the fight, it will last the duration of the fight without benefiting from Shadow Weaving. Hence, you're better off applying SW:P once you have your Weave 5-stack up. This only applies to SW:P since it does not get reapplied. The impact on other spells would vary so minutely that it wouldn't impact the conclusions (there would be slight variation, since the longer the time between casts, the longer you miss out on the buff for that particular spell).

 

hexpoll

Hey guys, work has been rough, so I don't have time right now to go through the numbers again. What I was trying to demonstrate there was the methodology of determining what the highest DPS spell priority was, because I had seen a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding. That is why i spelled out and explained all of the equations in my post there.

In terms of real practice, I'm sure VT has priority over other spells almost by definition, you will only rarely be casting SWP during the course of a fight due to MF refreshing it (and the shadow weaving mechanic is unclear right now), and starting off a fight with a nuke is not a great idea. Its important to understand the mechanics of spells, however, if people are going to be making spell priorities.

I promise I'll try to get around to rerunning the numbers from Pasch's WWS soon (also taking into account the mistake I made by not adding Mind Blast's casting time to the cooldown as it is not an instant). I'm sure whatever results I get will be obsolete almost immediately due to crit modifying dots and better dot scaling and whatever.

Cheers!

 

Turgid

Nice work, Hexpoll. It's not 100% perfect/accurate, but it's an excellent start.

To me this type of thing naturally screams 'Excel Spreadsheet' so you can just update the factors that change and instantly have all your results re-gonkulated for you.

 

Talax2

Post-3.0.3, how would you rate each stat such as crit, hit, haste, spell power, etc? I tried to find it in the thread somewhere and couldn't. Thanks!

 

Xtoforas

You can see this post for a rough evaluation of the different stats

shadowpriest.com • View topic - Best Raiding Gear Available

 

swankholyman

Im fairly new to playing shadow, however it appears to me that now that SWP reapply's and mind flay can crit (even without stacking crit thats a huge jusmp in dps) that SW really isnt applicable to our rotation anymore. However since the last patch came out I've found myself with a small hole in my rotation (right now its VE,VT,MB,*MF,MF MB,MF,VT,MB) repeate at * (unless its bosses mobs dont usually last long enough for VE's to be cast alot esp in heroics)). but Im finding a roughly .5 sec downtime in my rotation between the recast of VT and that MB that resets the rotation, should I fill that spot with SW and take the 1 sec GCD before Mindblast or find a point to place into the the 5th point of imp MB to drop that CD?

 

Tifi

Out of curiosity, and because DrDamage is dead, I wrote an addon to determine the exact formulas of each spell, and all the effects of the new talents. Here are the spell formulas I came up with (on live, 3.0.2):

SWP tick (base + spell*209/1142)*sform*(1+dark+twin+impswp)*sweav
MF tick (base + spell*0.257*misery)*sform*(1+dark+twin)*twist*sweav*(1 + crit*(0.5*spower))
MB (base + spell * 3/7*misery)*sform*(1+dark)*twist*sweav*(1 + crit*(0.5*spower))
SWD (base + spell*3/7)*sform*(1+dark+twin)*sweav*(1 + crit*(0.5*spower))
DP tick (base + spell*0.1)*sform*(1+dark+twin)*sweav
VT tick (base + spell*3/15)*sform*(1+dark)*sweav

Some of the modifiers are offset by 1. E.g. sform is 1.15 while in Shadow Form, otherwise 1.0. Same goes for sweav, misery, twist, and spower. I hope you're able to see what those abbreviations stand for.

What I found interesting: (not necessarily new, but new to me)
The boni from Darkness, Twin Disciplines and Imp SWP stack additively. Everything else stacks multiplicatively.
MF spell coefficient was raised from 1.5/3.5=42.9% to 77.1%.
Misery is the only talent that applies to spell power, all other talents also increase the base damage.
Twin Disciplines bonus is applied to MF.
Shadow Weaving: The bonus never counts for effects that apply it. E.g. you have 2 stacks, cast MB, then the MB damage is increased by 4%, not 6%. SWD is special, it grants 2 stacks; one of them comes from the debuff on the caster, and this stack does count for the SWD damage. E.g. you have 2 stacks and cast SWD, then you get a 6% bonus from SWeav.
Given the same input, DoT ticks can only be at most two number. E.g. if the formula predicts MF ticks of 876.328, the ticks are either 876 or 877. On average, about 32.8% of the ticks will be 876, and 67.2% will be 877. In other words it's surprisingly exact and fair.

BTW the SWP coefficient is somewhere between 1.09807355 and 1.0980788, so it's a little higher than what DrDamage used.

Edit: Dammit, the WOTLK spriest talent thread would probably have been a better place for this post.

Author of EventHorizon Quartz_LatencyMF2 CooldownWatch

 

Rasa

Here are the armory links to 2 shadow priests.

The World of Warcraft Armory ( 1200 shadow spell dmg ) deeppurple

and

The World of Warcraft Armory
( 1313 shadow spell dmg ) demii

With spells being cast by both characters being the same in the very same raid on the same bosses, with both using the same flasks / oils / elixirs / buffs, can all you number crunchers can effectively tell me, how much dps difference there would be between the 2, based on gear bonuses / raw spell dmg / crit % / mana regen difference alone, if say > deeppurple < did 2 million dps with the gear she has on ( with mind blast contributing 700,000 - so you can calculate the 4p bonus as well based on this number ), how much more dps should the 6 pc t6 geared demii do, all spells order cast being same in lets say a non stop constant mob pulling 5 boss sunwell raid ? ( pls note constant mob pulling would mean that the lesser geared one with low mana regen, in this case deeppurple, would need more breaks for mana than the better geared 1, so thats a total of at least 2-4 min downtime on dps in an entire zone as well )

Thanks

Rasa

 

tedv

What exactly are you trying to figure out? What you're asking isn't easily computable from the armory alone. Are you trying to figure out who to trial or something? These players aren't on the server listed in your user profile, so assuming your profile is correct, why the interest in two people not part of your server?

That said, there isn't a solid answer to give for a number of reasons. Spell damage is only part of the equation. Crit rating, haste rating, and whether you're hit capped matter. And both of these priests have mistakes in their talent specs. Only 4/5 Improved Mind Blast will cost a lot of damage, for example, and having neither dispersion nor meditation will cause problems if the fight goes long. There are also gearing issues. [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] is just better than [Ember Skyfire Diamond], and both players have a few too many shadowsong amethysts (which should be purified, not glowing).

Also, knowing how much damage one player puts out doesn't let us estimate what the other person does. Maybe the first player is playing optimally with worse gear, in which case they'd beat a better geared player with an inefficient cycle. But if the player with worse gear also has a worse rotation, the better geared player should beat them by a wide margin.

Last, the actual DPS you put out depends on fight duration which in turn depends on the rest of your raid. For example, lets say my guild normally kills Brutallus in a shoddy 4 minutes. Now imagine my gear and talents remain constant, but the other 24 raid members are magically replaced with far better geared players who can kill Brutallus in 2 minutes. My DPS will actually increase simply because I'm affected by Bloodlust for a greater percentage of the fight (one third of the fight instead of one sixth).

 

Rasa

Hi. My sp Rasa transferred to blackrock is is now deeppurple so I am one of those 2 ( the lesser geared one ). I had a run with the guild demii is in as a trial and was just wondering about what the percentage between mine ( deeppurple ) and demii's dps should be. Yesterday in sunwell ( my first ever sunwell run 5 bosses ) she outdps'd me 3.2 mil to my 2 mil ( but i didnt use SW etc in my rotation as it was my first time and I was being overly cautious as to not kill myself and was more concentrating on staying alive and paying attention to raid than dpsing ). So my first sunwell run ever had the ret pally with max 6.2 mil damage out, demii with 3.2 mil damage out and me with 2 mil damage out ( i could do maybe 400-550000 better next time since i now know the bosses )

Today i had a BT run which I have done 3-4 times earlier and knew all boss strats so i was at 2.5 million dps total from naj'entus to illidan and demii at 2 million, but to be fair, i dont think she was in on the whole run, so I'm not sure really, maybe she was, but then again, i wouldnt outdps someone that better geared by 500,000, which is why i'm in doubt. So I have just been analysing my performance as was wondering if some number cruncher could give me an idea of how much the damage output difference would be if both of us in the same raid with all the same stuff as specified were together in the entire run killing the same bosses etc. The max damage today was someone with 4.3 million to my 2.5 million so number ratio wise i did better than yesterday at least.

My point here is basically to figure out my performance and improve it. I am 3-4 spots above the tank, but keep in mind I am running with 24 fellas who are decked out in every drop t6 has to offer ( theyre minimum 6 pc t6 ). They all have their 4 pc bonus whereas I have my 2 pc t6 both inferior parts really not to mention my 2 set bonus of 3 secs extra sw: p doesnt help any cuz it gets refreshed with my mf anywayz. so basically my gear bonus is a big ZERO. a 4 pc set bonus at least gives 10% extra mind blast damage which adds 70,000 to that 2 million right there. Today we had the server shutdown so my recount got reset because of that and thats why I am not able to analyse the data in detail as I did yesterday, but i remember my damage out total cuz i was constantly comparing that to see how I was doing in a zone I am familiar with.

my spell cycle on trash mobs is ve > sw: p > dp > mb > sw: d > mf > mf > mb ( i avoid vt cuz the mobs are gone in seconds )

my spell cycle on bosses is trinket pop > vt > ve > sw: p > dp > mb > mf > mf > mb >mf > mf > mb with sw: d on bosses where I can afford to lose some health without risking the character.

So all in all, I'm just trying to better my playing of this class through the analysis and would greatly appreciate if someone who has the knowledge would help me out with it.

Ty for your time

PS. I am 5/5 Mind blast and also 1 point in dispersion which I use effectively actually its 90% damage reduction has saved me on the volcanos at supremus and fatal attraction on mother today alone

 

tedv

A lot of this information has been covered already, so I recommend taking some time to review the shadow priest threads for more information. The best way to figure out how you (and the other priest) might improve is to post a WWS link though and let us look over that. That said, here's a quick rundown of what you're missing.

1) You are WAY over hit cap.

You are capped at 139 hit rating. You have 177, and you're socketing [Great Lionseye]. You should lose 28 hit rating, resocketing [Reckless Pyrestone]s in yellow slots where you need the bonus.

2) You are using too many spell damage / stamina gems

The only reason to use a [Shadowsong Amethyst] is when the set bonus makes up for the loss of damage (as it does in your helm) or when you need two to activate your [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]. So what's up with your [Cord of Screaming Terrors]? It has two amethyst and isn't meeting a set bonus. Just socket [Reckless Pyrestone] or [Runed Crimson Spinel] and get it over with.

On the subject of purple gems, you should use [Purified Shadowsong Amethyst] over [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] when you need them. You also want +15 spirit instead of 6 m/5 on your best, because even small bits of spirit become spell damage. It's not great but it's better than stamina.

3) You have wasted talent points

The -25% threat from Shadow Affinity is a complete non-benefit, given how much threat tanks put out. You should really shuffle these points into 5/5 Twisted Faith and 3/3 Pain and Suffering. Put the last point in 1/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace. Since you're the second tier shadow priest in the raid, having 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace isn't as important.

At any rate, that's the information you'd get from reviewing these threads for gearing advice. Your cast rotation can probably be improved as well, although it's easier to explain how after posting a WWS. However, I recommend reading the threads for more information on what an optimal cast cycle should look like

 

Rosoe

How reliable are sites like MaxDPS for Shadow Priests? I know that with a shaman, you have to take the site with a grain of salt, but I don't know if it's more useful for priests or not.

 

Rasa

1. Thanks. after the patch I wasnt able to calculate the number correctly. and i left the 3% from misery out of my calculations so overcapped myself. better safe than sorry. I have regemmed accordingly.

2. My belt, cord of screaming terrors, is normally used for BT and sunwell as I was told by my last raid leader i need to have higher stamina. That belt is pretty much only a stamina booster for me alongwith the +51 stamina trinket which gives me some extra stamina for bosses that need them. I have pretty much been in the same gear for the last 6 months, think my ring of captured storms and the t6 leggings which quite frankly suck compared to solarians drop are the only upgrades i have. I dont ask for handouts nor qq or whine about drops so I have been trying to make do with what I have and can buy off AH. The server I was on earlier sucks raidingwise and so I couldnt even get enough runs in except when I was raiding with my guild there. if you check my armory now I am with the crafted spellstrike belt with the +12 spell dmg gems.

Another thing is you point to my helm and i use the hood of hexing i got last week, there isnt any meta gem socket, so you have mixed that with the other Shadow priest

3. I have also respecced and taken the 3 points out of the reduced shadow threat talent. since I'm not raiding at the moment anyway's I have put those points into the disc tree so by lvl 75 i can have 3 points in meditation for the 30% mana regen.

At this moment I working more towards being exceptionally good in playing this class @ lvl 80 and so the research now will go a long way in helping me when all of us hit 80 and raid. You mentioned there are lot of threads where I can learn but unfortunately I seem to have bad luck finding them even though I have looked around, so any links would be appreciated.

I also spoke to the other shadow priest and found out she was there for 7 bosses. now my 2.55 mil dps on 9 bosses with my gear and her 2.00 mil dps with 6 pc t6 on 7bosses ( considering she had 112+ more spell dmg than me and 4 pc t6 set bonus + 10% mind blast ) and a 2% extra crit stat if you do the math I rocked with the stuff I had on comparatively

Regardless of what people say, which varies from person to person, day to day, hour to hour, website to website, post to post, I am sticking to the following cycle here on in until I can find something better.

Trash Mobs -> VE - SW: P - DP - MB - SW: D - MF ( normally dies by this point but if it lasts >>>)- MF - MB - MF - MF - MB ( On Trash, VT only consumes 1.5 seconds of dps spells which add up until you get to the point where people say your dps isnt good enough. I mean, there are 16 people blasting away at a single target, you barely have any window of time at all to get a proper spell rotation in. VE also can be skipped, unless you raided like I did at one point with 9 paladins in raid and not a single coh priest nor resto shaman )

Bosses -> VE - SW: P - DP - VT - MB - SW: D* - MF - MF - MB - MF - MF - MB - SW: D* - MF - VT - MB etc

 

Spurr

Hey,

Posted this in Tedv's thread as well, didn't know the best place for it.

Hello Ej,

I recently joined a new guild and went shadow to try something new. I raided with my ally lock and druid all through mthyj and BT and am making my UD shad priest my main for the exp.

I am very unsatisfied with my raid stats for my first raid and feel as though my dps is very low. My typical rotation is VT>Pain>MB>Flay(x2)>MB>Flay>mb rinse and repeat. I do have a webstats ill be posting at the end of this so hopefully yall can help my up my dps. I did get the t6 chest from illy last night as well as the dps mace from trash in hyj, but those arent on armory yet. Ill be socketing the chest with 3x Runed crimson spinel.

As for mods I am using dotimer to never lose a tick of vt but sometimes it happens, and I know I need to work on this.

What im looking for is some help or suggestions on anything from rotation to spec to gem choices. My armory might show holy spec as I went that briefly for the day to test something out, but I copied one of the basic 3.0 lvl 70 5/x/ talent builds.

Wow Web Stats



Thanks!

 

Rasa

I have been raiding with an SP since 5 months now and I am telling you I have blasted spells every second of every minute of a fight, whether it be mobs or boss, and I yet have lower dps than i should. To a point where I want to open a ticket and see if there is some kind of wow error on my character. From my own experience I can say you need more of the blast damage on trash mobs to up your dps and these dots help on bosses or mobs that at least live 30 seconds + when there's like 18 people beating the crap out of em.

Just as a trial I would suggest you this. keep in mind I am no pro at this class but I have been learning and maybe you can afford to try this and see if it works. Where trash mobs that die quick are concerned, forget dots and hit mb-sw: d-mf-mf-repeat. if you want to spend 1.5 seconds casting VT, go ahead and try but these days with a shaman's totems around and raidwide buffs and regens, if you're looking at buffing numbers just go all out blasting with dmg spells.

On a boss however, where you do have a minute or two of good dps time, start VE - sw: d - vt - mb - sw: p - mf - mf - mb - mf - mf and repeat. VE on bosses so when sw: d takes out some of your health, your mb and mf's following help you regen some back as well. reason sw: p is later is so the first few casts help stack shadow weaving on the guy. If you have 3 points in pain and suffering, your mf's will constantly refresh your sw: p.

But I'm only a shadow priest who churned out almost as much dps in crafted / t5 gear with some bt rings than a guy in 6 pc t6 but yet got passed over, so maybe I am not as good as i think I am. so it's upto you to take this advice or not.

Regarding your questions, the replier to my posts above has linked the gems you can use. SP's should almost always use +spell dmg gems, especially with xpac coming where I have seen +19 spell dmg GREEN gems in the beta. more spell dmg is more mana regen = more spells out, so thats certainly one of the best stats to have.

To be quite honest, this class is more about the right spell rotation than anything else. Timing adds another big factor as so many times I have almost got out a mind blast but the mob would die a split second before it was hit, if you multiply that by about 100 mobs in any zone you are full clearing thats over 300,000 damage. all that does tend to add up over time. hopefully someone will be more specific where spell rotation is concerned.

 

tedv

There's some misinformation in here, so I'd like to correct that.

On trash, it's correct that you don't want to DoT anything that will die in faster than 12 seconds. However, casting Shadow Word: Pain will be a net win on anything that lives longer than 12 seconds. And in AoE scenarios, your best bet is to tab DoT with Shadow Word: Pain and throw in a bit of Mind Blast and Vampiric Touch if the monsters have a bit of extra health. You won't beat mages and warlocks, but you'll do really competitive damage. Remember to use your Shadow Fiend and Dispersion to keep your mana high, as you won't have much time to drink.

Also, it's been said many times before, but it's so important I'll say it again:

Mind Blast is better than Shadow Word: Death

If you are in a situation where you want to cast Shadow Word: Death, and Mind Blast is off cooldown, you are casting the wrong spell (unless the target will die in less than 1.5 seconds). Furthermore, Death is barely a DPS increase from Mind Flay. If you aren't sure when it's the proper time to cast Shadow Word: Death, you are better off not casting it at all. Casting it at the wrong time will decrease your DPS and might run you out of mana (lowering your damage even more).

As a corollary, the cornerstone of every good rotation involves casting Mind Blast as often as possible. If you are casting Vampiric Touch before Mind Blast, you are casting the wrong spell. Even though this decreases replenishment uptime, the increased damage from casting Mind Blast is worth it. I haven't run the numbers on whether this changes when Vampiric Touch gets its coefficient doubled, but that's in part because I think that change will get nerfed from 2x to something like 1.5x.

Also, it's no longer true that "more spell damage is more mana regeneration", as Vampiric Touch has been changed to restore a percentage of maximum mana regardless of how much damage was done.

 

Shadecast

Yes, this will produce more dps....

...but a dead spriest can't do any damage... so on fights like KJ (with LOTS of raid damage) I typically change my spell priorities to only cast SWD when MB is off cooldown so I can follow SWD up with a MB and get the healing benefit of a big MB healing me back up via VE.

BUT, this is a situational exception... and as you say... MB > SWD for overall dps.

 

Manes

You're better off just taking SW out of your rotation than worrying about such trivialities, especially being on an Oceanic server.

 

◊ etrnl

I've been reading this theme on SWD being taken out of our rotation, yet, even though you're all insisting that it will hurt our DPS, it's help boost mine at least by 300. Of course it's taking the least priority over anything and is typically cast whenever MB and SWD are off cooldown (usually almost never on its own). Pain and Suffering, a pretty mandatory talent for spriests, even reduces the damage taken by 30%.

Is this a judgement being made that it should be taken out of our rotation for L80 in Wrath, or is this just one drawn @ L70 for TBC in its current state?

 

Nurru

You don't seem to understand what tedv is saying at all. The point is that you should be casting MB instead of SWD if you have the option, and in most cases you shouldn't be casting SWD at all. He wasn't debating which order to cast the two in.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

chase

Delete

 

tedv

That's basically it. If you're in a situation where you want to cast both though, you always cast Mind Blast first. The extra healing from Vampiric Embrace is meaningless. If you can't count on your healers to keep you up due to massive raid-wide damage or whatever, then that's just one more reason not to cast Death. The fact that you can get extra healing from your shadow spells doesn't mean anything if Death isn't doing better damage than Mind Flay.