I've read alot of good material in this thread, but to me it seems slightly outdated. I have yet to read anything that relates to t9+ and our new set bonuses. I've been personally working on new rotations, trying to find the best one to fit the (2) set bonus, but also trying to work it out to minimalize the loss of dps from GCD's. Has anyone put any theorycrafting together in regards to this?

ATM the rotation I'm experimenting with is this:

MB-DP-VT-SW:P-VE-MB-MF-MF-MB-MF-MF-MB-DP-VT-MF-MB (rinse and repeat)

With the 6 sec additional time added to VT if cast in this sequence, VT and DP will always be on top of each other for CD's, and so far I've never had to clip any spells or cut my DoT's short to accommodate the casting of another spell. The one downside is that SW:P will be missing 2% dmg, but tbh, it's seems quite negligable considering it's our lowest dps spell. I choose to cast ve in between SW:P and MB rather than at the beginning because it fits quite nicely in the gcd for this rotation, where the only other options are a clipped flay and SW:D.

Any advice would be appreciated, as would any theorycrafting on the new tier set bonuses.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, Generally when itemizing my gear, I look for items with the most crit/spellpower available after hit and haste caps of course, but I also run into the trouble of what and where. I do want to get my 4 set t9 bonus to have a look at what that 5% crit to MF brings to the table, but as I've already picked up the two most transferable items, gloves and shoulders, I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I was almost dead set on the pants, but last night I picked off the hit/crit pants from Anub, which is far better itemization than the hit/haste tier. However, my only other two choices then are the helm and chest, which are for lack of a better phrase, absolutely terrible.

I'm already rearranging gear to keep my hit cap as close to min as possible everytime I switch in a new piece, so to know that the two items I'm looking at have a crapload of hit and nothing else to bring to the table, I'm seriously considering whether or not it's worth it to even bother shooting for the 4 set bonus. As it stands, the chest will fall comparable to the chest already equipped, but the only other place that I can pull hit to make room is my neck, everything else is pretty integrated.

If the 4 set bonus is worth it's salt, should I just take points out of my talent tree and reallocate. Was never a big fan of this because there really isn't a useful place to put them other than 2 pts in imp ve, and maybe 1 pt in IF again....maybe as a push, getting silence or phorror for situational fights like the factions champs encounter.

In the end I don't know, I can figure most of what I need to know through testing and trial and error, but when it comes to the shear numbers, I'll never really be able to figure those out, so I come to you for help.

It's true that ilvl trumps all for holy, but not for shadow. Some of our T8.25 pieces (ilvl 226) are better than the T9.25 pieces (ilvl 245). For example, compare [Conqueror's Circlet of Sanctification] with [Zabra's Circlet of Triumph], assuming Runed Cardinal Ruby in one and Purified Dreadstone in the other.

The T8 piece gains 70 crit and 68 haste.
The T9 piece gains 19 int, 19 stam, 84 spirit, 82 hit, 16 spell power

The T8 piece's 70 crit and 68 haste are worth roughly 90 spell power (.65 value).
The T9 piece's 19 int and 84 spirit are worth 21 spell power (.2 value).

So the final choices are equivalent to:

T8: +90 spell power
T9: +37 spell power, +82 hit

Would you rather have 53 spell power or 82 hit? That depends an awful lot on whether you are hit capped. Also remember that the T8 set bonuses are much better than the T9. When you can pick the 254 ilvl helm instead of the 245 though, it's a clear upgrade over the 226 t8 helm.

That said, remember that hit rating is not amazing, but it's far better than spirit. If your choices are between a piece with hit but no spirit and a piece with spirit but no hit, you should take the hit piece, then find a way to drop hit from other gear slots.

Someone in Dalaran once advised me that for AoE I should stack crit; but wasn't certain and I couldn't find anything here - so I tried to figure it out myself and post it here for the benefit of others.

The nice part of mind-sear is that it is possible to figure out the maximum damage, the dps should on average be proportional to the raid-buffed stats (assuming 3 points in misery):

(220+0.286*1.15*spellpower)*(1+0.5*critChance%/100)*(1+haste%/100)

Or slightly better for crit due to increases in crit-damage, but not much since mind-Sear is not influenced by crit-bonus increases of Shadow Power or Shadowform.

So the relative benefit of each term is (=derivative of the logarithm):

Spellpower: 1.15*0.286/(220+0.286*1.15*spellpower)
Crit-rating: 0.5/(1+0.5*critChance%/100)/4591
Haste-rating: 1/(1+haste%/100)/3279

Basically each stat has separate diminishing returns, and relative values for 2500 spellpower and 20% crit/haste: spellpower 1, haste 0.8, crit 0.3 - or in other words don't trust random people in Dalaran. (And since spell-power is still the best stat it will mostly be the same as the normal gear.)

Patch 3.2 PTR Build 10433 buffs Improved Spirit Tap and Twisted Faith:

• Improved Spirit Tap: Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes have a 100% chance and your Mind Flay critical strikes have a 50% chance to increase your total Spirit by 10%. Mana regeneration effect remains unchanged.
• Twisted Faith: now increases your spell power by 4/6/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

I wrote about this here: Improved Spirit Tap Update @ dusknoir.net.

The math, of course, might be wrong, don't hesitate to correct me. :}

Spirit tap works out to be 15 spell power for 5 talent points, leaving it to be a completely worthless waste of talent points.

How much is spirit worth for shadowpriests?

Using:
Glyph of Shadow
5/5 Twisted Faith

Looking at:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I have an average uptime of 70% on shadowy insight, so we are looking at:

30% multiplier on spirit, or spirit still being utter garbage.

If you toss in blessing of kings AND improved spirit tap, we are looking at maybe a 34-35% multiplier.

This is a welcome buff (hell, any buff is welcome) but it still means that gear with spirit is junk and should be avoided like the plague if at all possible.

For the average raiding shadowpriest this probably means a net ~70 spell power increase or so, which works out to be ~100ish DPS or a 1.5% ish dps increase.

Nothing has changed, move along.

I read the change as "spirit does suck less now, but it still sucks. At least you get passively a bit more SP". Well it's a buff. A minor one but a buff nonethless.

Yeah, pretty much. However, I'm not sure why they would bother throwing us a small bone, as opposed to the former two options you suggested.

For multi-dot crit will increase in value (since the dots have 100% crit bonus damage and not 50% as for mind sear), but still not good enough, and the weightings will be close to the normal single-target weights:

For VT damage will be proportional to (850+2*spellpower)*(1+critChance%/100)*(1+haste%/100)
and for SW:P to (1236+1.1*spellpower)*(1+critChance%/100)*(1+haste%/100)

(Assuming I got the numbers right). VT should do more damage, but SW:P works on the run - that's why it makes sense to include both.

So for 2500 spell-power, 20% crit and 20% haste (note: 20% crit for the spell you use) the weights are (same idea as in previous post):

Mind sear: spellpower 1, haste 0.8, crit 0.3
Vampiric touch: spellpower 1, haste 0.74, crit 0.53
Shadow word pain: spellpower 1, haste 0.92, crit 0.66

However, lag will cause more problems when multi-dotting so you might reduce the weight of haste for VT and SW:P, and the weights are close enough to single-target weights that you probably should not bother with having a separate set for this.

A buff is a buff
but most of the EJ contributors don't put points into Spirit tap anyway so it's not a buff at all.
Will you respec in 3.2.2 ?

Having grasp the horror of SP spirit scaling, I struggle to get rid of Spirit Tap but can't decide where to invest the talents.
Improved VE would seem the best choice.
Improved focus ? what spell would need this ? a mind blast once in a while ?
Reaching Silence ?

I'm curious if you've done the math comparing the mana and DPS returns of the new Imp. Spirit Tap versus the mana and DPS returns of Focused Mind and Inner Focus? When I do the math, I come up with Imp. Spirit Tap on top in both DPS and mana on any fight that doesn't involve heavy usage of Mind Sear.

The specific numbers I'm coming up with (based on a single target fight for 5 minutes from my own spreadsheet, so you may want to take these with a grain of salt):

Inner Focus (used with Mind Flay): 12 DPS and 15 MP5
Focused Mind (per point): 46 MP5
Imp Spirit Tap (per point): 16 DPS and 116 MP5

So for 4 points in the first two you get about 3 DPS and 38 MP5 per point. For the 5 points required to max out Imp. Spirit Tap you get about 6 DPS and 46 MP5. (Given that your current spec has one superfluous point in imp. PW:S, I assume that there is nothing else in either tree that you think is superior to Inner Focus or Focused Mind)