Shadow Priest: Help me melt faces! - Page 9

Quinnie · 07/07/08, 6:55 PM

Brutallus will kill me eventually, I swear.

I need some shadow priest help. Let me preface this by saying I am the GM of this guild and the raid leader so I do at times have to focus on the raid and others more than myself but I have really, really, really been trying to just focus on me and my DPS and they have taken any responsibilities off me during this fight as possible.

This is our WWS Report of our 8.6m damage Brutallus attempt last night.

Wow Web Stats

Oh for this 8.6m dmg I was in a soaker group (only for our last attempt of the night was I not in a soaker group - just to try it and see - it seemed to help)

I know I'm not casting Mind Blast and Shadow Word Death as often as possible and I know I didn't keep VT up as much as it should been but honestly, just receiving a ton of haste gear in the last 2-3 weeks it has completely screwed over my spell rotation I used to use (read: mindless button pushing while leading raids). Just looking for some tips. =) Thanks.

EDIT: my group make up was a warlock (only one warlock in raid last night so didn't have CoS), mage, boomkin, ele shaman and myself. Waiting for < 20% for heroism for mage - so I never got a heroism.

Ignus · 07/08/08, 8:47 AM

Ok, I'm trying to prove to my friend (who is a shadow priest) that spell hit rating has a quantifiable effect on DPS. His argument is that since it is percent based, there is no way of getting a static value of dps increase out of it.

The root problem here is I'm trying to convince him that even without gem slots in it, spellstrike pants are more DPS than his green "Of shadow wrath" pants that give him +74 shadow damage.

his argument is that he takes an initial drop in the spell damage stat before he puts the red gems in, and that spell hit and spell crit have a negligible affect on his damage output.

I'm really confused after trying to think about it for hours now, I can't wrap my head around the math and I can't find it anywhere, so I really need someone to explain with the math how we know basically that 22 spell hit rating is > 22 spell damage until the spell hit cap.

He's really really thick headed about seeing the math and facts in front of him before he will believe anything, and I take things on a little more faith that the math has all been done and the conclusions have been drawn already, so I never went and memorized everything.

Please help me out, even just linking to the specific posts with all the nitty gritty math we get all our conclusions from would work I think, I'm just clueless how I would even begin to try to search for that.

tedv · 07/08/08, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Poor

We have to bring more healers than most guilds seem to. We bring in 8 healers (4 tank healers, 2 shaman for soak group healing, and a shaman/druid for burns), 2 tanks, 14 pure DPS and one shadow priest. Going back and looking at the WWS, the only healer I outhealed was the shaman on burns. With how healing typically goes in our raids, I'd be afraid to even attempt to drop a healer at this point in time.

We combat mages going OOM with innervates normally. Since one of the druids is in my group getting VT he doesn't need it for himself, The feral tank is responsible for another innervate and the third druid is the burn healer. I'm not sure if mages get better benefit from innervate or from VT. It could be that we're just using a sub-optimal raid set-up because of our healing inadequacies. I will bring this up tonight for sure.

It's really inefficient to use one innervate to mana support one mage when instead you can use one priest to mana support 3 mages (and a shaman too). An innervate will provide 8k to 10k mana, tops. Last Brutallus kill, I regenerated 28k mana to EACH party member. That's 112k mana to the four others, making a shadow priest 12 times as good as an innervate. Besides, on Brutallus, our mages can still use innervates even when I'm supporting them. One innervate is simply not enough.

If you can't convince them to bring 7 healers and 2 shadow priests, bring 8 healers and 2 shadow priests instead. Then you'll see how much easier the healing is and how you're not reaching the enrage timer, so it's best to cut a healer. But at least you'll make it to the enrage timer.

rooj · 07/08/08, 10:30 AM

Ignus,

I am not sure you really need math to explain why spell hit is so important to shadowpriests. The math on it is affected by the amount below the cap you are at. The farther below the cap, the more valueable spell hit is.

First of all, unlike other spellcasters, our DD spells are on long cooldowns. This means that every spell miss means that all of that dmg is resisted and we lose tremendous dps. Even if the spell miss occurs on, say, SWP, where we can just reapply it, it costs us a ton of mana for every spell miss. (and a GCD) That isn't to say that there isn't a value of +spell dmg that can overcome the loss of spell hit, but that will vary on how far below the cap you are etc etc. Besides, for me personally, I don't think i can handle the screwing up the spell rotations.

Poor · 07/08/08, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

It's really inefficient to use one innervate to mana support one mage when instead you can use one priest to mana support 3 mages (and a shaman too). An innervate will provide 8k to 10k mana, tops. Last Brutallus kill, I regenerated 28k mana to EACH party member. That's 112k mana to the four others, making a shadow priest 12 times as good as an innervate. Besides, on Brutallus, our mages can still use innervates even when I'm supporting them. One innervate is simply not enough.

If you can't convince them to bring 7 healers and 2 shadow priests, bring 8 healers and 2 shadow priests instead. Then you'll see how much easier the healing is and how you're not reaching the enrage timer, so it's best to cut a healer. But at least you'll make it to the enrage timer.

We actually brought in another shadow priest instead of a third mage. The mages that were getting VT got to use molten armor rather than mage armor so their dps was actually increased. However, due to some mt healer issues we didn't do as well as we did the night before. Thanks for the input though.

As for my dps goes, I was concentrating on landing more Mind Blasts over SWDs and I definitely saw an increase in dps. I also had a Wrath of Air last night where as in previous attempts, I didn't. The combination of the two I was only able to do ~46 more dps. (Granted, each of our attempts from last night were considerably shorter than the night before.) And I also started using Berserking after a trinketed SWD so I'd get extra bonus from the racial.

Sinful · 07/08/08, 1:04 PM

Hey Everyone,

I've been working on improving my DPS Recently. I've worked on different Spell "rotations" and keeping my cool downs popped as much as possible. I figure with the shadow Damage that i have i should be cranking over 1k dps by now.

On a recent gruul i managed 917dps with regular buffs (no flasks or food just oil) and buffed to 1357shadow damage (flask food oil) on lurker only 996 dps...

WWS Logs:

Gruul: Wow Web Stats

Lurker: Wow Web Stats

Hydross: Wow Web Stats

I appriciate any feedback for improvement!

• Snowy · 07/08/08, 6:19 PM

Originally Posted by Sinful

WWS Logs:

Gruul: Wow Web Stats

Lurker: Wow Web Stats

Hydross: Wow Web Stats

I appriciate any feedback for improvement!

Okay I had a long post typed out and the forum went AWOL on me for a few minutes so I completely lost it. I'm going to give you the very short version:

Work more on VT uptime vs SWP uptime. You were missing a bit of VT uptime.
Work a lot more on MB (and to a lesser extent, SWD) casts. You were casting 4-5 MB's per minute, when it should be more like 7-8 per minute.

Finally a reminder that these fights aren't the greatest for analyzing, Gruul is the best out of them, but the other 2 are fairly poor to analyze. This is due to things such as aggro drops, and add phases.

Kaossi · 07/08/08, 6:37 PM

Hello, first time posting here, I have quite a simple request; Recently my guild managed to kill Illidan and is now working it's way towards Sunwell by farming through pre 2.4 T6 content. During this time I've picked up most of the bits and piece I'd like for my gear set. Currently I'm trying to come to a descision on whether or not I'd be better with 1357 Shadow Spell Damage (Unbuffed) Or 1272 Shadow Spell Damage and 103 (6%) Haste.

Now believe me when I say I've done some thorough research into haste mechanics for a Shadow Priest - As I've come to understand it 1 haste is equal to 1 spell damage as long as you are above 1400 Shadow Spell Damage (Raid buffed) However it seems as if I'm throwing an awful lot of extra Spell Damage away. I've looked for a while now for a solution to this and have seen so many different opinions and comments on the matter I'm not sure what to think. I would like an answer once and for all if possible, and if no definate yes / no some discussion on the issue would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Tymir · 07/09/08, 2:34 AM

Ignus-
Due to the nature of the class finding the equivalence of spell hit compared to spell damage isn't as easy as doing a bit of napkin math. Spell damage and haste require full on simulation but you can get a rough idea of the value of one spell hit rating with the following formula:

(((Current DPS/Spell Hit Rate)*(Spell Hit Rate+0.00079268292682926829268292682926858))-Current DPS) = DPS Gained from one spell hit rating

0.00079268292682926829268292682926858 being the % of spell hit rate gained per spell hit rating.

At the 1500 dps and 98% hit rate gear level this formula shows a gain of 1.21 dps per spell hit rating. Even without simulating DPS increase from spell damage you can tell any shadow priest who thinks they can get this great DPS scaling from any other stat (with the exception of spell penetration versus a target with SR) must be delusional.

Poor-
A shadow priest should allow your mages to not only use molten armor but also some combination of Destruction Potions and Flame Caps.

Quinnie-
15'08.571 Quinnie's Vampiric Touch dots Brutallus for 682 Shadow damage
15'08.852 Quinnie's Shadow Word: Pain dots Brutallus for 760 Shadow damage 281ms
15'11.086 Quinnie's Mind Blast hits Brutallus for 2320 Shadow damage 2234ms (assuming you have zero haste, didn't check)
15'11.508 Quinnie's Shadow Word: Death hits Brutallus for 1945 Shadow damage 442ms
15'15.305 Quinnie's Mind Flay dots Brutallus for 782 Shadow damage 3000+ ms

Kaossi-
Your spell haste set will be superior by a decent margin. There are AT LEAST three different, independant, simulations that all confirm the same results with haste-damage equivalency.

tedv · 07/09/08, 9:26 AM

Originally Posted by Kaossi

Hello, first time posting here, I have quite a simple request; Recently my guild managed to kill Illidan and is now working it's way towards Sunwell by farming through pre 2.4 T6 content. During this time I've picked up most of the bits and piece I'd like for my gear set. Currently I'm trying to come to a descision on whether or not I'd be better with 1357 Shadow Spell Damage (Unbuffed) Or 1272 Shadow Spell Damage and 103 (6%) Haste.

Decide on a piece by piece basis, maximizing spell damage + haste. Looking at your current armory, you have some great haste pieces and some terrible ones. The set you're wearing is better than a 0 haste set with 1357 damage, but neither is the best set. For example, the Zul'aman boots are just worse than Frozen Shadoweave. And you gloves are downright attrocious. The gloves from Attumen the Huntman would be an upgrade with living rubies alone!

A few other pieces of gear nitpicks:

- Put a spinel in your wand. It's not worth losing 4 spell damage for 7 stamina.
- Get 15 spirit on your chest. It beats 6 m/5 by a large margin.
- Either become Aldor or use the 18 spell damage enchant from Zul'gurub. The Scryer shoulder enchant is downright worse by 5 spell damage.

dyelynn · 07/09/08, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by rooj

Could it be that you have reached the debuff limit? I am not sure what happens in those scenarios, whether the VT gets bumped off or, whether it will kick a different debuff off first and be given priority.

I don't beleive it's the debuff limit, if it were I think my vt would pop up then dissapear... as it is, it's not showing up at all. I think by trying to get into a MB or MF cast immediately, i may be clipping the end of the cast somehow? But this only happens with VT.

Battlemaid · 07/09/08, 3:36 PM

Could you please analyze my WWS (one of the best DPS I can put on Brutallus):

WWS: WWS Loading...
Profile: Battlemaid <Unity> Jaedenar (doesn't show S4 necklace yet)

Highlights
1. Gear: everything that is on me now, except HSH (used DMC before attained ZA trinket last night). Any advices about my gear are welcome (xcept maybe arguable replacing non-meta gem in head).
2. Latency: I have rather unstable latency (that ranges from 200 to 500+ spikes on boss fights), so I understand that must be eating a good % of my DPS.
3. Spellcasting: What would you advise as a way to minimize spell-spell and gcd-spell gaps? I tried spamming buttons, but to be honest I find it to be very alien to me. Any other ideas/workarounds?

tedv · 07/09/08, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by Battlemaid

Could you please analyze my WWS (one of the best DPS I can put on Brutallus):

WWS: WWS Loading...
Profile: Battlemaid <Unity> Jaedenar (doesn't show S4 necklace yet)

Highlights
1. Gear: everything that is on me now, except HSH (used DMC before attained ZA trinket last night). Any advices about my gear are welcome (xcept maybe arguable replacing non-meta gem in head).
2. Latency: I have rather unstable latency (that ranges from 200 to 500+ spikes on boss fights), so I understand that must be eating a good % of my DPS.
3. Spellcasting: What would you advise as a way to minimize spell-spell and gcd-spell gaps? I tried spamming buttons, but to be honest I find it to be very alien to me. Any other ideas/workarounds?

You are doing fine given your latency. And sorry, just get used to spamming buttons when the cooldown is close to up.

Ignus · 07/10/08, 9:13 AM

Thank you tymir, what I'm looking for is actually all the simulation data, and the formulas and how they were derived,
with no holds barred and no "prettying up" of the data, and again, the math behind all that data. I tried checking the spreadsheet but I can't find it's root formulas anywhere.

dedmonwakeen · 07/10/08, 5:03 PM

Originally Posted by Ignus

Thank you tymir, what I'm looking for is actually all the simulation data, and the formulas and how they were derived,
with no holds barred and no "prettying up" of the data, and again, the math behind all that data. I tried checking the spreadsheet but I can't find it's root formulas anywhere.

Tons of simulation vomit found here:
http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.p...ests_and_Haste

Links to simulator source found here:
http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.p...imulationCraft
Since I never checked in 2.4.x updates, just remove the 1.5sec gcd-cap in wow_player.cpp and that will get you close enough.