There have been big discussions on shadowpriest.com about "haste-caps" and sweet spots etc.
I crunched some numbers and also ran a bunch of SimulationCraft tests.

For the idealised (and frankly silly) 0 latency situation, then except for a few very small bands (like haste rating around the 50 to 80 mark and again somewhere around the 900 mark or something) there was never a point where it was better to cast nothing while you waited for Mind Blast to come off cooldown than it was to cast a new Mind Flay.
And even in those small "bad" ranges your timing would need to be precise to make use of it. When you factor in variable latency and the like it's simply not worth bothering about it.

In general, more haste leads to more DPS. And it's better to cast a new Mind Flay (or if you like, a SW: Death) rather than waiting for MB to end. Of course if your haste becomes too high then the ratio between your channel time and your variable latency+reaction time etc. becomes smaller and you can become more prone to making mistakes which can reduce the value of haste. When you're at that sort of level then maybe you're better off stacking something else. That though is based upon your connection and skill, not game mechanics.

With 4 piece T8 there are also "minimum" caps you might want to aim for. The first would be to have enough haste to get in 3 GCD's in before the T8 bonus expires so you can squeeze in another Mind Flay. Then 4 GCDs etc. Getting that extra hasted Mind Flay in probably wouldn't hurt. Again though while it's possible to calculate the amount of haste needed to achieve this in idealised conditions, once again reaction time and variable latency needs to be accounted for.

Both of which would be less of an issue if Mind Flay wasn't a channeled spell and so would benefit from the pseudo-spell queue that direct cast spells have.

This is pretty much correct (and a reason why I don't have problems with people wanting to MF2 still though I personally have never really bothered).

However, while it's horribly impractical for Oceanic players like myself, for those of you that play with a very low latency, [nochanneling:Mind Flay] macros might be worth it. You won't benefit from the pseudo-spell queue afaik that proper direct cast spells have, but you also aren't likely to miss that last tick nor start your next cast too late (as you can mash buttons).

One other possible reason why MF2 might not be ideal anymore (though I'll admit straight up I haven't tested this in a little while), is that while Blizzard supposedly fixed channeled spells so the last tick will land near the end of the channel, the times for the other ticks weren't always precise and that 2nd tick of Mind Flay could happen after the (before haste adjusted) 2 second mark.

Your CL apparently hasn't been here to read up on the right way to go about things. Perhaps that's his/her preferred method of opening up on a boss mob, but there's been countless posts in favor of leaving SW:P off of your opening rotation UNTIL you have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving on the mob. You're going to get a lot more DPS in the area of your SW:P and both its regular and crit hits by waiting until 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving are up (and you have popped a Potion of Wild Magic) than by throwing SW:P up at the start and not refreshing it. The Potion of Wild Magic's critical strike chance is going to be refreshed every time you use Mind Flay to refresh it, even after the potion has done its magic in the 15 seconds it's in use.

You don't need to re-cast it at all. You can wait until you have five stacks of Shadow Weaving on the mob before applying SW:P the very first time for a few more reasons. You'll have more damage output because the damage of SW:P is directly affected by more stacks of Shadow Weaving and an increased critical strike chance with Potion of Wild Magic. I highly suggest that you use Potion of Wild Magic right before casting Devouring Plague. You'll have enough time in that 15 seconds to do your entire opening rotation to take advantage of applying SW:P before the potion has worn off.

Here's your ideal rotation:

Devouring Plague -> Vampiric Embrace -> Vampiric Touch -> Mind Blast -> Mind Flay -> Shadow Word:Pain

Since DP and VE trigger only the GCD, you still have 12 seconds to get in a VT, MB, full MF cast and then a SW:P before Potion of Wild Magic wears off. You will also have set up your SW:P and DP to tick harder and crit more. Also, your VE will heal the raid for more because the more damage you do with MF, the more healing you're going to contribute to help take the slack off of the healers.

The only reason your DPS is going to improve with what you have now is strictly because your gear got better. When you can reach a point where you change your rotation and use consumables in an effort to increase your DPS beyond what you can do without getting gear upgrades (meaning that you can do even more DPS ontop of any stat increases your new gear has given to you), then you'll know what you need to do in the future.

The main thing you should have a look at is the difference that your model gives compared to SimCraft. I've tried my own gear set and that of a higher geared Ensidia player, both with seemingly "normal" gear for the gearlevels. And haste gems (Reckless) ranked better than crit gems (Potent), while the SimCraft numbers clearly show it vice versa.

I've been fiddling around with my Rawr settings to see if I can get a gear set that does show crit being better than haste. So far I haven't found a set yet, which makes me wonder if your model is off or not.

In a few days/weeks, there will be a thread appearing asking for priest input, questions, and comments on the priest class. I'm planning to ask for a buff for single target DPS, since ours is low compared to other classes on most fights.

Here's what I plan to ask for. I'm seriously doubt we'll get more then two, and only then if we are lucky. If anyone has any thoughts on the following ideas, which are a compilation of priest suggests on the US Dps forums, let me know. I'd rather have you guys say "that's probably not enough" then for a Dev to come back later and say "We gave you what you asked for, if that's not enough you'll have to wait for the next PTR" sort of deal.

1) Make Haste convert into Spellpower; which is a unique talent. roughly 1 sp = 1 haste for mages, I don't think 1 haste = .30 SP is too much to ask. That would translate into 100 extra spell power for the average priest, perhaps more. Base mind sear damage would probably have to be lowered, to prevent our AoE damage, which is already high, from going off the chart.

2)Give us a button to push for burst Spriest DPS on Demand; I can't see them doing this, but it would fix a lot of our PvP and PvE complaints about lack of burst. A spell, on a 3 minute CD, that boosted Mindflay and Mind Blast damage by 25% or something would be ideal. Again, it can't be +% to shadow damage due to AoE concerns.

3)Fix the Inner focus/SW:P bug; Pretty self explanatory, and is likely one of the things Blizzard will fix, should they decide to buff our single target damage. +25% crit on SW:Pain with casted with Inner Focus. Pretty reasonable, since this should already be in effect.

4) Change our Tier 8 4 piece set bonus: I'm going to go on the record and saying the current implementation is bad design. Mindflay clipping, although effective, is annoying and very luck-based to do correctly. No other class/spec combination is required to clip casting a channeled spell to do better DPS. I'd like to see the Haste rating changed to crit rating, and if this is too vanilla, I'd like an interesting set bonus, perhaps something like "After casting Dispersion, you gain 15% more spellpower for 15 seconds. Or something.

5) Increase our benefit from Spirit, most likely via spellpower. Boring, but effective. Bumping up our 10% spirit to 25-30% spirit is an additional 100 spellpower gained, assuming ~500 spirit on your average raiding Shadowpriest.

I'd like your input on these changes before suggesting them on the official thread.

Thoughts?

I think your perceived notion of where Shadow Priests lay on the overall dps charts is pretty far off base. We may not necessarily be the top dps on single target fights, but I can't think of a fight besides Razorscale/Ignis where we don't shine in one way or another. We take less damage via Shadowform, heal outselves significantly via Imp VE and have other little bits like PW:S and Dispersion on hand as well. We're also a great AOE class, though we've been toned down with the removal of Devouring Plague spreading. A minor dps tweak might be acceptable and it would be wonderful if Mind Flay's ticks were less subject to lag, but anything more than that is going to just tip the scales too much in our favor.

Addressing your points directly:
1: Haste presently is roughly equivalent to .6-.7 spellpower per point. This change would be ridiculous, especially when combined with stackable haste / sp procs.

2: We already have burst on demand via Mind Blast / Shadow Word: Death. Why do we need to be a cooldown/burst class? Mages exist already.

3: While the interaction between Inner Focus and SW:P is non-intuitive, asking for it to be fixed is just wishful thinking. You would be asking them to buff SW:P's base by approximately 25% and it would result in them balancing this by offseting the damage somewhere else. They aren't going to just say "Sure, take 25% SW:P damage. Oh, and have a pony too"

4: Errr, I think your understanding of Mind Flay dps and mechanics at 80 are sorely out of date. Perhaps you should read the last couple of pages in this very thread? As for the bonus itself, it's fine as it is. The bonus is already a playstyle altering dps boost that allows for increases flexibility with our spell priorities. That's exactly what we should want out of it.

5: This is another case of you being shortsighted about scaling. Take a look at your own Armory. Before any raid buffs you're at 570 Spirit. Add in Divine Spirit and Kings and it's over 700. Add in spirit procs and it gets even higher. Right now all spirit does for us is provide 10% spellpower, and increasing that slightly would change nothing insofar as stat priorities. We still want to avoid it like the plague if possible and only will begrudgingly take it if the item is still an upgrade somehow.

Keep in mind, these suggestions are not only mine, they are a compilation. First and foremost, I disagree with you on most points. Shadowpriest single target DPS is low compared to other DPS classes. our AoE is high, but that shouldn't be a trade off for single target DPS, as per Ghostcrawler. I agree with him.

My Shadow priest can hit approximately 5.5k DPS on Patchwerk. A Mage or Warlock or Rogue can easily hit 7k. Perhaps 8k, if they are fortunate with RNG. There's a pretty huge difference between 5.5k DPS and 7.5k DPS. I'm pretty sure it's greater then 5%.

On Hard modes, it becomes detrimental to bring excess amounts, read, more then one, Shadowpriest; High end guilds, like Ensidia, are already restricting Shadowpriests to one a raid.

1) I'm pretty sure there are trinkets that pop for 450 haste. Using my conversion, that's converted into about 135 spellpower on use + haste. Perhaps that's too high, but considering we don't scale, not like other classes do, with haste, not entirely unreasonable. This number, as far as I know, was just pulled out of the air. Could be more, could be less. It's a unique idea, something that hasn't been done before. It completely fixes our scaling issues, and we DO have those.

2) Bring the player, not the class. Some encounters REQUIRE burst DPS. We don't have it. We should. Somehow. Mindblast+SW isn't burst DPS.

3) 25% additional crit for inner focus is approximately 12.5% more shadow word pain damage, not 25%. considering, on average, my shadow word Pain accounts for about 15% of my total raid damage. This change would translate into an extra 2% more DPS on a single target mob.

4) I don't like clipping mindflay. I find it rather cumbersome and antiquated, based on luck and lag. I think it's bad design. I'd like it changed to something else. This is my opinion, but I'm not particularly excited about my 4 piece tier 8.

5) Even 700 spirit, that's currently an extra 70 spellpower. Buffed to 30% spellpower converted into spirit, that's an extra 140 spellpower. Spirit is a stat we designed to want. It's built in to most of our gear. Currently, we couldn't care less about Spirit. We take it because we have too. It would be better if we took it because it did make a noticeable difference, like mages, boomkins, and warlocks. Your free to disagree, of course.

As you can see from the link, my current talent spec is a bit of a mess. After reading whats been said here I intend to drop both points from improved spirit tap, and move them into improved mindblast.

After that, I am considering rejigging my talent points to take:

Shadow reached
Imp. VE

Candidates for donor talents as I see it are:

Imp. Psychic Scream, Silence and psychic horror

Or

A combination of Spirit Tap/Focussed Mind

Personally I feel that Silence and Psychic horror add a great deal of situation utility allowing greater control of some trash, and that the number of Spirit tap procs that can be generated during a fight is under estimated. (A well timed mind sear on groups of adds almost always procs a spirit tap) A more likely source of points at the moment would be focussed mind, as mana isn't too much of an issue at the moment.

Do you feel that this loss of utility and potential source of mana regen is a worthwhile trade off for the additional range and Imp VE?

I would like to know where you are getting your information. Eoy, from Ensidia, stated in a thread on shadowpriest.com not too long ago that all of their Shadow Priests were pushing 6k DPS on Patchwerk pre 3.1, He attributed this, among our amazing mobile DPS abilities, to the reason why they currently rock 3 Shadow Priests, and possibly looking for another. Regardless if they have done a 180 on this position or not, citing Ensidia's choice of raid composition as an example of why Shadow Priest dps requires a buff is a logical fallacy called Appealing to Authority. I would recommend a stronger argument.


I do believe that Shadow Priests have room for improvement, but I would not go as far to say that our DPS is abysmal.

This is true. Good point.

And perhaps abysmal was an overly dramatic choice of words, I'll amend it to low single target DPS.

And Ensidia, in 3.1, uses one shadowpriest now, to the very best of my knowledge, due to the lack of single target DPS for hard mode raiding. I read they said our AoE was highest, which is again, absolutely true.

Shadow priests are fine for casual raiding. We're nowhere near bad our DPS was in TBC. It just could be, and should be, higher then it is currently.



Edit: Spelling and grammar.

Yogg-Saron is a special fight, based on the mechanics. It's not your average ulduar fight. It's very exceptional for a Shadow priest, the one fight where we absolutely excel on.