Quick glance on uptimes:
VT (~78%)
DP (~80%)
SWP (~95%)

Your SWD count seem high, but that could be related to mobility issues. Same reason I won't comment on MB casts.

5% of the total time is 13 seconds, which would be when I originally waited for the appropriate shadow weaving stacks, and several buffs, but you're right, VT and DP are quite low, and I didn't have the mobility issues that may be associated with such a low MB count. I think it's quite clear that my DPS problem can be resolved with better cast prioritization, and will be watching it much closer.

Can anyone recommend a good mod for tracking dots?

I'm new to shadow with WotLK and I ran into a problem this week with another shadow priest in the raid. I had been using Elkanos Buff Bars to track my dot timers on my target, but with two shadow priests in the raid I have no way of distinguishing who cast which dot (leading to terrible uptime on my dots this week).

It's also entirely possible that I've just configured it wrong.

Dottimer is popular, however, I am a big fan of using xperl's big dot feature.
Basically makes my dots look much larger then anyone else's on the target frame and adds a timer on it.

I agree, I use both DoTimer and Xperl's dot feature. I think that if it doesn't clutter your UI too much DoTimer's timing to the tenth of a second is very helpful. Also, the big dot feature seems to mis-time my SW:P often and when I flay with 2 seconds or less remaining on it, the DoT still falls off. I haven't encountered this problem with DoTimer.

This appears to be a problem with the base UI as well. Happened quite frequently when I was using the base unit frames.

I have also experienced this with the base UI. I have chalked it up to "refreshing" the Shadow Word: Pain 18 second timer in between ticks. I.E. SW:P tick and 2 seconds later I hit with Mind Flay which resets the SW:P timer to 18 seconds but does not stop it from ticking 1 second later. What this does is leaves 2 extra seconds after the 6th tick and it seems to me that I cannot refresh the timer during this "extra" (read "pointles/wasted") time.

If I am entirely off track with this just punch me in the face; but it seems to me to be more eloquent (althought likely more technical) to program MF to add [6 - m] ticks and adding [3n] seconds, where [m = time remaining / 3 rounded down to the nearest integer] and [n = 6 - ( m + 1)]. Under this process a MF cast before the first tick would not affect the timer and any MF cast after the first tick would add time in multiples of 3, leading to even ticks and the SWP debuff falling off directly after the final tick.

After thinking about my suggestion it is likely that it would take an entire rewrite of the spell mechanic with the side benifit of making it easier to incorperate "hasted ticks" if Blizz were to so choose.

Hi there. This is slightly off topic, but then most of this thread has been so I'm hoping I can find some info here...

The following is my armory link: The World of Warcraft Armory


As you can see: I am hit cap'd, have 1634sp unbuffed, 248 haste, and 12.64% base crit chance before talents.

I've only gotten a few upgrades so far due to a crappy work schedual. =(

So here is my question: According to all you math gurus out there, approx. what should my DPS be? I've seen a lot of the WWS postings in the 4k range...what can I expect?

I've read through here and found some good information pertaining to spell rotation and new priorities that have come with the expansion. I've seen the arguments for and against SW:D. I will deff. be altering my initial spell line-up due to things I've read here. Pre-WotLK I was doing approx. 2kdps in SWP, top SP in my guild. I'm glad to hear DoTimer was updated, I'll have to re-download that, it was a great help before.

I just want to say thanks in advance for any and all help I have received and any further info you can provide!

-Kami

Please post this type of stuff in Priest: Simple Questions/Simple Answers.

Truth be told, that's a Simple Question/Answer thread, and WWS analysis can be a little more involved and have some back and forth discussion. I strongly encourage people to ask questions in the following thread, and you really should provide a link to a WWS of your own for comparision:

Shadowpriest WWS Thread

Thought this was a nifty and potentially useful bug for the upcoming arena season.

ImageShack - Image Hosting :: wowscrnshot121308182318uw2.jpg

Looks like PoM crits cause holy talents that I don't have to become activated.

I wasn't, my guess is that PoM takes advantage of holy talents even when not talented.

I have an interesting thought about SWD that I wanted to run through you guys and see if theirs any study of this, now that DP is part of our standard rotation we frequently have to cast it off of a mind blast, and including a MF that creates roughly 1.4s (with a little haste) and 2.8 on a MF (4.2 sec), leaving 1.3 Sec left on MB cooldown, so whenever I recast a DP I follow it with a shadow word death and run a mind flay which usually ticks its last tick withing ~.2 sec of MB cooldown (pending lag), Is this a correct dps decision when taking a little damage isnt an issue?

Also as far as high haste ratings go if you get your MF down to a 2.5 sec cast (2.5 as an example, this becomes just as interesting at more extream levels of haste) is it worth it to cast a third MF and let it tick once clipping your MB CD by ~ .4 sec and costing 280 mana, should you blow SWD and let it clip ~ .8 sec (but dealing alot more damage intermitantly) or do you let a .4 sec downtime into your rotation to get a MB off right off CD. This question also takes into account the inconsistancies of MF that if you finish your first 2 MF in 5 sec you might not get a MF tick until ~ 1.5 after MB comes off CD and you might get it within that first .5 sec.

A new (as of last week) mod that I would suggest you now consider is the completely re-written Natur EnemyCastBar. This mod pretty much shares it's name only with the old vanilla and tBC WoW version, and now works great for priests both Shadow and Holy. I found it to be much easier to personalise and configure than DoTimers. You won't lose track of your DoTs as the bar will tell you the name of your target as well as the time left to a tenth of a second. It can also track DoTs from other shadow priests should you need to know this. I prefer it to DoTimers (still a great mod), which I have now removed entirely.
As a slightly random bonus it also warns you when there are enemy rogues detected in the vicinity, which can save you life whilst waiting at a summoning stone or wherever.

Why do people always use dotimer? ive tried it several times but it is just not really good.
Im using classtimer, much better to configure it the way you want it.

I will check out the new nature enemy castbar for fun tho. Even if the addon im currently using is working just fine i like to check out other similar ones, even if only to widen my horizion :P (heck maybe its even better and im missing out)

I used a combination DoTimer and a custom mod I wrote to track all the information I wanted in one little area. DoTimer can be set to show to tenths of second. Reordering based on time remaining or not. Worked for all DoT's and would show for multiple targets by name and most importantly it would show raid icons. (Knowing that a DoT is about to wear off on three adds with same name is less helpful than knowing triangle needs a refresh.)

My custom mod showed the CD on SW:D and MB in the same format as DoTimer. (not as useful now)

I think people should use what works best for them, but X sucks, Y is good isn't exactly useful information in a decision on what timer to use.

Thankfully all the issues with Mind Flay ticking well after the channel ends and any clipping involved with this has been resolved on the 3.0.8 PTR. I dusted off the thirds texture for the first time in a while and it worked as well as it used to pre-3.0.

Tedv, I did some work on this. I picked up 5/5 Blackout and mine sheared a pack of mobs out in Ice Crown. Three out of the eight of them where stunned from the AoE. I made sure not to put up any DoT's at all. Also I don't have any trinket's that would proc a stun from damage.

Has anyone else tested this? I will try again later tonight to make sure that this has not changed. You never know when Blizzard will sneak in a fix and not have it documented for us to see.

I was blackout specced on sunday, and yes, blackout does proc from mind sear.

Another interesting note, the individual ticks per mob on blackout also stack Shadow weaving, which I'm sure many already know, but also illustration of the dragon soul, the sartharion 25 man trinket. The only difference is, on the initial mind sear cast you get a stack of the trinket, but not shadow weaving.

I've been thinking some about using blackout in a raiding spec. Basically something like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

One reason is that there's an awful lot of stunnable monsters in boss fights these days. I'm specifically thinking about Sartharion + 3 drakes, as both the whelps and fire elementals can be stunned by Mind Sear-- and it's genuinely useful to do so. But there are a number of fights in Naxxramas where Blackout would be useful if the entire zone weren't such a pushover.

There's also the question of what talent points are lost to get Blackout. In the build I linked, the points lost are Improved Vampiric Embrace, Veiled Shadows, and Inner Focus. We can write off Inner Focus as a complete non-issue. Improved Vampiric Embrace isn't much of a loss either, given how easy raid healing is these days. And losing veiled shadows is only a problem on fights where you could have cast two shadow fiends and now can only cast one.

Alternatively, two points from Improved Spirit Tap (or all five from Spirit Tap) could be cut for these talent points. I know people love the synergy between Improved Spirit Tap and Twisted Faith, but the actual DPS gained from 5 talent points is just not that great. If you have 1000 spirit and 100% uptime on Improved Spirit Tap, then the talent gives you a bonus 100 spirit which translates into a whole 10 bonus spell power. This is nothing to write home about.

I really like the look of that spec, I'd have to agree that the talent point losses can be justified, but I've never actually done 3 drake sartharion. Are the adds involved actually numerous enough to justify the point switch just for the fight?

Actually I was about to spec into blackout last night after spending the weekend PvPing as disc for our Sartharion tries... A mage talked to me against it saying it would be annoying if a few mobs were stunned while the tank was trying to move them around to dodge the lava walls...

I'll definitively try that spec (not taking imp spirit tab/imp VE/inner focus) next week.