This is a pretty accurate example of what is going on, though it should be stressed that making up the "gear gap" won't make up the "DPS gap" that is currently happening with SPriests. As far as breaking 5k DPS, that is a pretty good benchmark to shoot for, especially if you are aggressive with multidotting. It should be noted that single target burning the snobolds is how the fight should play out, but as a Shadow Priest your placement on Recount will take a hit if you do this. Multidotting is a great way to cheese the meter and get people off your backs.

Saying that it is 20-30% lower than a pure DPS class is misleading, because at this point in the patch cycle, even hybrid melee (druids, Dks) are pulling 20-30% more DPS than shadow priests. Even boomkins are pulling substantially more damage than us in most burn fights. There are a number of threads both on shadowpriest.com as well as the US WoW Forums (Damage Dealing) that have in depth reviews of our current issues. As much as it frustrates me, I am going to keep my complaining off of the EJ forums - everyone here already knows there is an issue.

For the record, if you are at the 232 gear level, you should be doing more than 5k damage. I would expect somewhere in the 5k to 5.5k range. But yes, your damage will be significantly lower than other classes on most fights.

Here's a log of our last week's kill of Northrend Beasts (I was disc this week): World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Admittedly my gear is better than yours, but anyway you should be able to push ~5500 with your gear. Please also note that my gear was worse last week than it currently is. Yes, I *do* multidot snobolds and both worms if possible, but remember you're a shadow priest and that's how we work. Even though some people say it's all meter whoring, in the end it helps killing things faster. All snobolds have to die anyway so dotting all of them is a good idea in this fight, while you maintain your single target dps on the focussed snobold.

On a side note, your gear can be improved. Your meta gem is inferior and also your boot enchant is - 8% runspeed is really nice on Beasts. You could also spec into -2min cooldown on your shadowfiend to further increase your dps.

Thanks for the tips. Ill change up my spec,meta and boot enchant for tonight. I generally dot up one snobold between MB's on gormack. As my guild concentrates all dps to burn them fast there is rarely a time when there are 2 up. Im new to SP and once again thank you all for the imput.

99% of AOE situations end up with the mobs stacked up on each other on a single tank, or on an offtank who pulls them next to the primary target. Mind Flay range is always useful.

Increasing the range on Mind Flay falls along the same lines of putting run speed on your boots, more or less. It lets you set up further away from the boss, and gets you in range quicker on any fights where adds are tanked in different spots. It's a huge benefit for Yogg-Saron, for example.

For Mind Sear, *usually* adds are all tanked together, so the benefit there is non-existent in those cases.

Does Vampiric Touch have the highest priority only because it provides replenishment? I see that Devouring Plague deals the most damage per cast, expecting that it should be the top priority spell.

I'm plain dumb.

You are not taking durations into account. Vampiric Touch lasts 15 seconds, whereas Devouring Plague lasts 24.
The important part of a DoT is how much it ticks for, not its overall damage, and on the log you linked VT is ticking for almost 900 more damage.

What has the change to Twisted Faith done to the scale value for Spirit listed in the OP? It wouldn't be doubled, as there was also an increase in Improved Spirit Tap's up time.

With the changes to IST and Twisted Faith I believe most raid buffed and T8+ geared priests (40% crit, 700+ spirit) will see the best performance out of this build:

13/0/55+3

The addition of Mind Flay to IST means much better uptime and the changes to Twisted Faith increase the bonus spellpower received from the spirit increase. I prefer to put the 3 remaining points in Improve VE and Inner Focus for utility, but you can put them wherever you like based on your preference and raid need.

(Thanks to Frewe for proposing this build to me)