And people say our threat is fine . Our main benefit is our mana regen and we'd have to do half the damage we do now to not be nearly as viable to take a raid spot. Because of that our class becomes less fun to play with shorter range primary spells, channeled with no pushback, and the fun fun fun of having no honest aggro reduction spells so we get to play around on too many fights instead of getting to maintain a consistent dps rotation.

I can understand a standard threat wipe mechanic that affects everyone, but because you are doing 3 things at once (mpr, hpr, dps) you get to play less, since your aggro skyrockets so fast on standard aggro generation phases.

If it's any consolation, Protection Warrior threat gen is due to increase in 2.3

You can't expect to both heal everyone, give them mana AND do competitive DPS and *still* not pull aggro, can you?

How effective do you think it would actually be to drop VE on those fights at least part-time to make yourself able to do more damage and regen more mana to your group, and let the healers handle the healing? Giving up your tetriary job so you can do your primary and secondary seems to be efficient to me unless those fights really are more about VE healing your group than DPSing the boss and regening mana. Anyway my point is that if your problem in the fight is mana and DPS, rather than healing, and you have threat problems, dropping VE shouldn't be out of question, as it may be better than dropping your DPS. You can only do so much without pulling aggro.

Yes, it is an option to drop VE in fights where you would be threat capped otherwise.
Thing is... on the occasions VE generates a lot of aggro, it's often also quite useful, like at Najentus.

To be honest, I don't usually have to hold back, even with VE on.

Najentus: rather not, not worth the risk
Supremus: yes
Akama: yes
Bloodboil: no (usually out of shadowform even, tossing PoM's)
Gorefiend: yes, on every CD (if I'm topped) but not really when we were learning the fight
RoS: no
Sharaz: occasionally
Council: no
Illidan: yes (except for P2 when there are still 2 Flames up)

In general I would say I use SW-D more once I get more comfortabele with the fight and know what damage spikes to expect. If the fight is no DPS race I often don't botherl, unless I'm having a small competition with the other shadow priest.

The absolute worst thing for threat is being in the hunter group when they have their pets out and everyone is taking damage. Healing 9 people = mega aggro.

One of the mantras brought up about shadow priests is that damage is all that matters and stamina is of far far less importance.

It is certainly true that maximising your potential as a shadow priest requires maximising your damage. However swapping damage for stamina will increase your chances of surviving. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact in Hyjal/BT it is required to some extent. Damage output doesn't plummet but swapping a 12 damage gem for a 12 stamina gem, it's a pretty minor reduction.

Now, if you play perfectly, have a lag free connection and never have fat fingers then this minimises the amount of health you require. In these circumstances, using damage gems, damage enchants and maximising your damage at the cost of stamina is the appropriate choice.

On the other hand you need to take a realistic view of how good you are at the game. Everyone makes mistakes, the very best players make hardly any whereas the not so good players make a lot more. More health increases your chance of surviving these mistakes, so unless you play perfectly all the time then it may be worth trading damage for health. This will increase your output over the full length of the fight because damage tapers off rapidly after death.

At the end of the day it is a decision for the individual based on how well they play (and also on the particular encounter). If you find yourself dying more than occasionally then besides learning2play it would be good to consider sacrifing damage to put more stamina on your gear.

A shadow priest who almost never dies and does 90% of his potential full damage is much more valuable to a raid than a priest who does maximum damage but dies on every fifth fight.

I read these forums often and they have been very usefull in answering my doubts and fixing my dps issues with my previous classes(rogue/hunter), but now I am in need of help and well i dont know how to pump dps with my priest.

Even though I am doing better everytime we Raid I would like to improve my performance so I appreciate any of your troubles In going through this reply.

My spell Rotation or what it looks like would be :

VT (with Icon of the silver Crescent)
SW:P
SW: D
VE
MB
MF
VT(Trinket Fades after this)
SW: D
MB
MF
SW:P

This is a semi-accurate version of the cycle I normally go through.
I use a Super Mana pot on cooldown and for consumables 23 spell damage food, Im usually grouped with an elemental shaman, and curse of shadows is always on, I have BOK, Salvation,BOW,Mark of the Wild, Fortitude, Arcane Intelect.

Those would be the buffs i can count on more than 80% of my raiding time.

A link to my gear:

The World of Warcraft Armory

A link to Leotheras the blind kill:
(On this fight in Particular i didn't have spell damage food on me.)

Wow Web Stats

Thank you all for looking into this, I really want to improve and well I can't see what I am doing wrong, or need to improve, Please help.

You don't need a spell rotation as much as you need a spell priority order. Typically, that's:

VT
SW:P
MB
SW
MF

VE's priority is based on how much you feel you need it, and how close you are to being threat capped.

You seem to understand how to gear yourself, so no worries there.

Taking a look at leo specifically... Honestly, it's not a mana intensive fight, but you should try to keep VT up as much as SW:P. Since the whirlwinds are typically hell on Mind Flaying, try to up your MB count. You may have been holding back due to threat issues, which is all the more reason not to apply VE so liberally. In most circumstances, VE healing is not nearly as important as mana regen or dps.

After checking the first post and seeing the meta gem recommended I was wondering if Thottbot World of Warcraft: Swift Starfire Diamond may be a better choice now the Mystical Skyfire has been given a cooldown? Two orange +spell hit/damage gems would get you the requirement and not have a huge impact on damage.

The Mystical Skyfire Diamond does have a cooldown, but it also procs more often. After seeing it in action from a few ZA clears on the PTR, I prefer the new MSD over the old. The new proc rate almost guarantees a hasted MF or MB between DoT renewals. The old back-to-back procs won't happen anymore, but neither will the unlucky streaks.

From a math standpoint, you're only gaining 6 damage switching from 1 Runed Crimson Spinel (+12 damage) and 1 Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst (+6 damage, +7 stamina) to 2 Veiled Pyrestones (+6 damage, +5 spell hit). Even socketing the Handguards of Absolution for the +2 spell damage bonus, the Swift Skyfire Diamond is a small damage upgrade.

The MSD still seems like the clear cut choice for a raiding shadow priest.

I've discovered that making mistakes gets you one shotted, and you just can't have a reasonable amount of stam nor the AC to save one shot. Higher stam levels are required for the best of any dps caster class, there's wholly unavoidable encounter damage that you must suck up. Dying to mistakes will be a much better wake up call then a hit that doesn't kill you and half the raid doesn't notice because you just got NS crit healed.

The best and the worst (worst can't be that bad once you're in T6 range) should both be aiming for the same stamina levels. Extra stam helps vs bad luck, not mistakes (in many cases).

First Gorefiend kill for my guild, I wasn't threat capped, but I had no shaman/heroism and improved shadowbolt uptime kind of sucked since 2 warlocks were spec'd demo.

Wow Web Stats 1100 DPS or so is the highest I have ever pulled off, and I don't think I could go any higher without a shaman and heroism, I am quite happy though with that performance, and expecially with how useful VE is on that fight towards the end.

Demo should have good imp SB uptime afaik... 2% more crit isn't it?

How did you guys in T6 content prioritize your upgrades? Outside of the obvious upgrades like Trash Mace, Cloak, and Rings, looking at Shadowpriest.com's Best Raiding Gear topic, there's obviously some non-T6 pieces that are better than T6 itself, however the set bonuses often push T6 over.

Looking around, the [Leggings of Channeled Elements] off Kaz'rogal seem to be the largest improvement over the T6 counterpart, [Leggings of Absolution]; so the common strategy is to aim for them over the Council. T6 Hands, [Handguards of Absolution] are also a bit underwhelming, but they're the first piece available, so it seems optimal to get them in order to meet your early 2 piece set bonus.

Currently, I'm thinking of going for the two Tier pieces in Hyjal, and using [Hatefury Mantle] in the Shoulder slots until the T6 Chest off Illidan, in which case I would switch to the T6 Shoulders, [Shoulderpads of Absolution] off Mother for the 4 set bonus. This would leave me with an early 2 set bonus after Archi, and in higher DPS pieces such as Hatefury and Channeled Elements until the optimal pieces for the 4 set bonus become available, instead of moving to obvious downgrades such as T6 Legs and Shoulders.

Did anyone else do something similar, or did you guys use different strategies for gearing yourself to meet your set bonuses?

Actually going back to Rings, do most people run with 2 [Ring of Ancient Knowledge]? Or do some run with 1 and [Band of the Eternal Sage] or [Ring of Captured Storms]? As I'm currently about to enter into the T6 content with a lot of saved up DKP, just interested in seeing what the preference for other Shadow Priests in T6 content is. Thanks in advance!

I chose to get the off-set items first, namely Rage's bracers, the trash cloak, Anetheron's belt, Kaz's leggings, and the spell haste ring. I'll probably go with the Band of the Eternal Safe in another 15k rep. I decided to pick up t6 last, and thus far I have the gloves.

So, basically, the only drops I need are t6 shoulders, helm, and chest.

In terms of Anetheron's shoulders...it really depends on your guild. They haven't dropped yet for us, but I wouldn't have gotten them regardless unless no one else wanted them. However, depending on your DKP system, they might be a good buy (we use council loot). In that case, they're worth getting early on, but not if you're working on Gorefiend.

I think you're best off getting the first 4 T6 pieces that you can get, since the bonus is so good. I think eventually you'll want to end up with the Kaz'Rogal legs though. If I had to prioritize non set drops, I'd go with the cloak first, then the ring -- then the rest is dependant on what you already have. People on a strict DKP system are better off saving for trash drops first, since those can be wildly unpredictable (read: Both of us shadowpriests in EJ still don't have a Nethervoid Cloak since hardly any have dropped) and T6 is going to be there regardless.

That was basically my plan as well. However, I considered using T4 + haste shoulders instead. I'm not sure what will be best, but I'm sure I'll have all 5 pieces in two months anyway, so I can figure it out then.

One thing to consider with the Kaz'Rogal legs is that while they are slightly better than Shahraz legs and T6 legs, they are far, far superior for mages. Aftermath uses an auction system, and the Kaz'Rogal legs are selling for twice that of Shahraz' legs. They're also selling for more than T6, and we've been killing Kaz'Rogal for 2 months longer than council. If your system has self correcting prices, it's very likely the mages will pay more for the legs than its worth to you. You'd be better off taking one of the other options for a much lower price in this case, which is a nice way of saying it has a better net benefit to the raid.

Ok, not sure if this'll work, but here goes. I didn't get a Naj'entus parse, but I did get one from our first Shade kill. It's here. (That's just me.) It's from all of our attempts on him. =X I think you can view just the kill separately but a lot of my guildies complained that it wasn't matching SWStats (where I was 50k behind the other SP, Phalloceros, in 5th place).

I'm really at the end of my rope. :/ It's getting to the point where every raid I'm massively disappointed in myself. Any advice is welcome as long as it doesn't rip me to shreds. Thanks.

This figure fails a basic sanity check. Specificly, spell damage =>dps is reasonably close to linear, so if 12 spell damage was really 26 dps, people in kara gear would be doing something like 2500 dps.

My napkin math* suggests the real dps loss is more like 6. Still, it's good to point out that when making tradeoffs you want to bargain hunt. Going for a lot of +5/+6 gems is marginally better than going for some 9 spell and some 12 stam; boar's speed or fortitude over vitality is a better dps trade [also, offtopic, boar's speed is really nice]. There are likely a fair number of gear choices in the mid tiers that offer you a better ratio than 2:3 too.

*assumed everything gets hit/refreshed on time, but ignored crits and external buffs/debuffs like CoS.

"playing the system"
=(


@ Yodaddy

Please explain why you think your dps is bad in that parse? That's fairly good from my persepective.



@ Nhala

I don't think the Shade is a very good place to compare, because its not a controlled setting-- there are different roles in that fight. But regardless, here's what I've noticed

1)
Phall triggered IotSC 19 times versus your 9
17 innerfocus versus your 13

[top]> implies that you aren't triggering your cooldowns often enough
I manually trigger my trinkets and IF, but if you need help with it, bind it to your VT button.

2)
His 199 crusader versus your 276

> This means you are letting your buff stack wear off more times. Are you running out of targets? I'm pretty much constantly casting spells and searching for new targets such that I have no downtime.

3)
He has over 200 more pain ticks than you do, as well as 100 more VT ticks. The interesting part is that you both have near equal VT regen ticks, so it appears its more of a spell selection issue. Pain is our highest DPC and DPM. Either you are not refreshing pain quick enough or he is multi-target-dotting and you are not. Priority is pain,vt first, then mb and flay. You have been flaying and mbings a bunch more. The catch is, this particular fight involves add control, so I'm not sure its a good meter.

4)
He had a elemental shaman. You did not.
He has slightly more +shadow than you.
Nothing you can do about that, the numbers should be in his favor.

Ack, my bad. The ratio is 9/20, not 20/9. It's around 5.4 DPS. Must have been really tired. Still, that's a significant trade for extra stamina that really shouldn't be needed.

If you spend 5% of the fight switching positions, doing it 8% faster will result in a 0.4% DPS increase, which if you're dealing 1200 DPS is 4.8 extra DPS. On fights with more movement it's proportionally more useful (although the higher your %time moving, the less accurate this simplified calculation is, as if you switch positions 100% of the time, doing it 8% faster will increase your DPS from 0 to something, but let's face it most fights the %time spent moving is somewhere close to 0 thus the calculation is rather accurate).
8% move speed also means you get away from nasty area damages more easily, and 8% is just damn huge, I'll never walk around with any of my characters without something that gives that bonus (generally boar's speed on boots is the best way to get it, for casters at least).