Missa

So sorry, I didn't know if there was some sort of requirement to make suggestions in that thread, since it seemed to be the main shadow priest discussion topic. I saw this as a help me thread, as you said, and took that to mean that maybe I could "help out" some of the questions as they were pertaining to DPS and gear questions. I'll move the post, hopefully not getting a ban hammer out of editing the post here to point to the new one. Thank you for clearing that up.

 

Jayjayb

Here's my armory. My spell damage is 1202 unbuffed (1282 with a full stack of crusader). I have 240 spell haste.

After reading the posts in this thread and looking at Snowy's posted WWS (who's character is Siawyn in the WWS reports), I have the following question:

Why would my DPS on this Anetheron fight be less than his, but my total damage out is more?

Thanks!

 

Missa

The first thing that stands out to me is that he's undead, so he's using devouring plague which, if I'm not mistaken, makes the undead shadow priest the highest DPS of the races. Also, he's using The Skull of Gul'dan, which is superior to your Darkmoon Card, and is also using the ZA trinket, also superior to your Timbal's. I also see this in your WWS:

Recently Bandaged 1
Sleep 1

Whereas he never was slept, nor bandaged. Both of these take away from DPS time (ESPECIALLY the Sleep). Is the shaman in your group Elemental or Resto? It appears his group makeup was Lock, Lock, Mage, Ele Sham, and him, whereas I see your heals out going to hunter, shaman, mage, and another priest? I'd say the biggest contribution to his higher DPS is his trinkets and plague, but if you aren't getting WoA/ToW and he is, that's also an issue, as well as you being slept and bandaging (unless this is you being bandaged, but the sleep is what - 20 seconds or so?)

 

Jayjayb

I understand that those are reasons why his DPS is higher, but what I don't understand is how my *Total Damage* is higher even though my DPS is lower. Am I missing something here?

Maybe the better question to ask is this: Is total damage done a better measure of utility than DPS?

 

• Snowy

Here's why:

Our kill was 3'18" in length.
Yours was 4'49" in length.

Even though your DPS was lower, you had a lot longer of a fight to pass me up on total damage.

 

Balkoth

No worries. This thread was created to reduce the "item x or item y" questions and such that were popping up. Simulators, mods, and theorycrafting is what is being done in the other thread, such as the Mind Flay bar texture being broken into three sections to aid in clipping.

Yes and no. The no is because of what Snowy pointed out, you only did more damage than him because you had 46% more DPS time than he did. Aka, your raid DPS is lower overall. So he had more utility.

Yes, on the other hand, is because in general, damage done is more important than DPS. In a general sense, a warrior who has higher DPS than a rogue might be threat capped and the rogue can do more damage due to Vanish. As pertaining to shadow priests, damage is often more important because we're not a high DPS class, but we are a high damage class. By that I mean our raw DPS is at the bottom of the heap, but on a movement based fight or fights with aggro resets, we can do more damage than a class which has a higher actual DPS.

Two examples would be Leotheras and Illidan. I'm not sure where you are in progression, but I'll use Kalecgos as another example for where high damage can result. When you're about to leave the demon phase, you can refresh your SW:P and VT so that they're ticking while you're in the dragon phase, and vice versa when you know you're about to be ported, particularly refreshing SW:P on the run to a portal. Using tricks like those can increase your damage, but you'll still be at the bottom for Brutallus.

The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

 

Missa

Curiously, where could I find such a mod for mindflay's bar?

 

SpriestlyFaede

I use quartz mod and a stopcasting macro to avoid cutting off the last tick.

 

Missa

That's what I currently use, but every little bit helps.

 

wow

I was told stopcasting macros don't actually do anything anymore? I raid with 300 ping so they'd be pretty helpful if they do.

 

Missa

If you get lag spikes they can still help. There's a post on my guild forum that helps you reduce your ping ingame if you run XP or Vista. I'll look through the forum to see if its still there and PM you it. Otherwise, I think stopcast is still nice to have bound to a mouse button, since you never know if you'll encounter those nasty spikes. I also use EavesDrop to monitor when my flay is ticking to try to guestimate when the 2nd flay tick has occured to cut it short.

 

wow

I use lowerping.com and the registry fix so it can't really get much better, thanks though
It's a constant 300 ping though, no spikes. Just noticed stopcasting seems to be built in now so wondering if using macros on every spell would do anything to help.

 

Kobal

Maybe a stupid question:

What AddOns are you using to track your DoTs and Cooldowns?
Ideally I would like to have the remaining duration of VT, SW: P, VE and Starshards on my current target, plus the remaining cooldwons of MB and SW: D in one easy to survey place.

I am currently trying DoTimer for my Shadow Priest twink, but most likely I am too stupid to configure it correctly, since I simply get too much other stuff shown there, like Misery, Shadow Vulnerability etc...

 

◊ Kalman

I'll just go ahead and push the mod I wrote for dot tracking, DotDotDot. Index of /DotDotDot/

Doesn't track Starshards by default, you'll need to add it into the core.lua file manually, til I get around to writing a "tracked spells" in game method.

I use Hourglass2 to track cooldowns.

 

SpriestlyFaede

I use ClassTimer and I place my bars right underneath my targets portrait for easy tracking.

 

Darnon

I have a couple questions about gems. Currently I've been socketing all my gear with 4 spell hit/5 spell damage gems, and 5 spell damage/6 stamina gems since most everything has a yellow and blue socket. Recently I've far exceeded the spell hit cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus, and as a result have temporarily switched to 4/5 shadow focus.

(1) Would it be better to replace the spell hit/damage gems with spell haste/damage gems or straight spell damage gems? From an earlier post it sounds like haste/damage, but I want to make sure that is the best for my current gear.

(2)As I progress further should I keep using the spell damage/stamina gems, or is there a better choice?

As a side note, my server has not yet unlocked the QD gem vendor which is why I haven't done anything yet.
Armory: Darnon - Kirin Tor

 

rooj

The general idea is to ignore socket bonuses that do nothing to +dmg or haste once you reach the spell hit cap.

While additional stamina maybe nice for certain encounters, I just tend to throw on a couple of pieces of arena/pvp gear (the honor rings/neck, and maybe a high stam trinket) if I need to push my stam past a certain threshold.

Otherwise, just go for straight damage (read, red) gems and ignore the other stats for now. Haste will become equivalent to damage, but only after you reach a certain amount of +dmg (iirc about 1300 +dmg). Before you get there, +dmg is still better bang for your buck than haste. Besides, even the +5 haste 6 dmg is worth slightly less than +12 dmg unless there is a yellow socket bonus (such as with gloves of absolution)>

 

Iluminati

+9 damage in red slots.
+dmg/haste in yellow slots
+9 damage in blue slots.

 

spooge

delete please.

 

Slox

My general question is: what are the ideal professions for a shadow priest? To be more specific, I am concerned with raid dps, above all else. Personal dps is also considered, but only in the sense that by increasing my personal dps, I am also increasing raid dps.

I currently only have one profession and that is tailoring. I depend on a few of the FSW pieces to fill gear slots, however, once I no longer need to use the FSW pieces, is there another profession worth picking up over tailoring?

Enchanting offers 24 spell damage, and basically nothing else. Jewelcrafting, tailoring, and engineering all have patterns which would provide gear upgrades. Alchemy provides a trinket which would be a temporary upgrade, but not much else. Leather working would provide no gear boost, but drums are amazing.

My current thinking is that leather working seems to be the obvious choice to fill my second profession, just for drums. Am I wrong in assuming the increase in party dps would far outweigh any small buff that the other professions would provide me with?

Additionally, if I do pick up leather working, and end up replacing my FSW pieces, is another profession worth picking up in place of tailoring?


Any help or information on this issue would be appreciated. I ran several searches and could come up with no information regarding professions and shadow priests.

 

tedv

The ideal profession set depends partially on your progression level and partially on your budget. If you want the absolute maximum, you want to:

- Get best in slot rings, level enchanting, enchant rings, drop enchanting
- Level Jewelcrafting, make BoP spell damage gem, drop Jewelcrafting.
- Level Tailoring, make Sunfire Robes
- Level Leatherworking, use Drums of Battle constantly

That's going to get the biggest DPS increase. A lot of people keep enchanting instead of tailoring or leatherworking because of how painful enchanting is to level, however.

 

rooj

If you have the time, money and inclination, the ideal would be to level up enchanting first, enchant your rings, and then drop enchanting to get LWing. I currently am tailoring/LWing and I have to admit that using Drums is extremely fun in more than just pve raiding. (Speed is fun for certain pvp battlegrounds and panic isn't bad if your Scream cooldown isn't up).

There is a point where I may drop tailoring for a short period to level up enchanting and then pick up tailoring back up once we start hitting Sunwell in earnest. Tailoring seems to be far easier to pick up again and not dependent on an alt having a gatherer profession. But this would happen only when I am able to retire at least one more piece of FSW.

 

Brekk

It can also be extremely profitable.

 

slob

i think the length of the fight issue was covered above but further as to why your dps is crazy low for your gear level:

your not casting mind blast nearly enough, your 5/5 in improved mindblast its a 5.5sec cooldown, with 240 haste cast time should be about 1.29sec that s a 6.79sec total cycle, you had the opportunity to cast 42 mind blasts, you only cast 22.

Your dot uptime for VT was only 78% which also killed your dps and more importantly meant for 22% of the fight you weren't even doing your job as a spriest.

SW is also low at 6 casts, you could have cast up to 24 (wouldn't expect this to be 100% usage due to the situational nature of using SW versus your health level and the carrion swarm in this fight)

-slob

edited: 6 deaths cast not 8 oops...

 

Asmodeu

Does anyone have specific EP values for shadowpriests?

if there are any i would assume there would be some for ~1300, then a set for over 1300?