Jeddius

Hello gracious priests,

I'm starting to get a little annoyed, several peeps in my guild are telling me my dps stinks. Right now I seem to be hovering around 4k. I'm wondering if you guys could look at my gear and tell me where I should be? I use a rotation of VT, MB, DP, MF, SW:P to start things off and try to keep all dots up from there. I keep telling myself it's my gear, but I want to see if I'm over/under achieving. Thanks so much, my last post got skipped over so I'm hoping for some feeback now. Here's the links below:

WWS:

Wow Web Stats

Armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Nurru

While your dps is definitely weak on Vezax (at best), that's a very hard fight to gauge where you're failing due to its mechanics. Do you have any other parses?

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Jeddius

I'm at work so I can't see if the parse from last night is up yet, but I'll post it tonight for you. Vezax hurt me, I had 5 mark of the faceless so I spent the whole fight running away. I really appreciate the quick response and I'll post the current WWS tonight. I'm just frustrated because my guild leader is telling me he's seen spriest doing 5k pre-wrath and that my skill is lacking. I'm sure I can increase my skill, partly with advice from you guys, but I don't know if I can increase it 1k!!

-Frustrated.

Edit:

I also found this parse, I meant to post this originally. I'll still post the other one tonight.

Wow Web Stats

 

Nurru

Your guild leader is full of in it in regards to pre-Wrath numbers. Through most of Sunwell the top end Shadow Priests were typically doing 1.4-1.5k on Brutallus (a few higher outliers for extremely fast kills / rng) and in 3.0 pre-wrath I believe it was more of a closer to 2.8k range but I honestly can't remember numbers from that period since no one cared. I'll take a look at that parse when I have some time.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

wayth

Just an addendum to this note, the first time I heard of spriests hitting 5k dps was on Patchwerk in 3.0 and even that took full 25-man raid buffs with a large percentage of the fight being spent with heroism active.

If your guild leader honestly believes our spec was pushing 5k prior to WotLK he's deluded, misremembering, or flat out lying.

 

Allendana

Jeddius, I compared your figures with mine from the Ignis fight (Wow Web Stats) and apart from the equipment there might be room for improvement. It seems that you do not use MB on CD neither do you use SWD regularly when being kicked from flame jet. Overall you should optimize your dot uptime, e.g. you have 40 ticks of VT in 4´46" compared to 41 ticks I have in 3´18". As a rule of thumb your dots should never fall off the target.
In addition you should skill that 2 points in improved shadow form because the pushback from damage might decrease your dps.

 

Nurru

His VT uptime is better than you make it sound because you didn't count dot crits. His uptimes are:

VT: 82%
SWP: ~95%
DP: 87%

You should be casting Mind Blast approx 38 times (though Flame jets can skew this, and I assumed 7.5 seconds between casts) and you cast it 25 times. Your dot uptimes aren't that bad compared to most people who post questions like these, but there's still some room for improvement. One thing to bear in mind is that with a kill that long your dps is going to be lower than people pushing 3 minutes like Allendana.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Icecx

As of now my DPS is fairly low, even though my gear isn't spectacular (around 1.7-2k, varying depending on if I make mistakes). I am thinking it is my rotation, which looks like this: VT, DP, MF, SWP, MB, MF, VT, MB, MF, MF, DP, MB, VT, MF, MB, MF, etc. This is for bosses and single-target encounters mostly. When there are more than four mobs, I usually just Mind Sear. Is my rotation messed up? What is the best rotation for boss encounters? Looking at my armory, is 1.7-2k DPS standard, or is it low? Thank you for all answers.

 

ildon

Your gear is extremely bad. It's almost all blue, unenchanted, or sub-optimally enchanted, and you're using a bad meta. I would worry about getting your gear beyond blue quality and properly enchanted first. Also, you really shouldn't think of your casting as a "rotation" but as a spell priority. This has been mentioned a lot of times on these forums so just search for it instead of having me retread it here.

Also, if you want advice on your spell casting, you really need to include a link to a WWS/WoL/etc. report. It will help show other things like missing raid buffs that could impact your DPS.

 

Eoreh

I suppose I'll ask for some help here. My gear is fairly decent but people who have less than I do according to wow-heroes (I know it's a shitty way to gauge someone's gear level but it's how my guild works) and I'm not totally sure why. I can't even break 4k unless the fight has some damage boosting mechanic too it that I can abuse in 25 man raids. I've uploaded a parse of a 10 man uld run i did recently. I'll upload a 25 one later today probably.
Wow Web Stats
The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Icecx

I know it's bad, but I am a fresh 80 (about a week ago I dinged) so I haven't gotten a whole lot of Naxx25 gear or best in slot items pre-Naxx yet. My enchants are currently a mix of my leveling enchants (trying to get grand master so I can enchant my rings) and a few enchants recommended on shadowpriest.com for pre-naxx gear. I know about the spell priority thing as well: VT>SWP(after 5 stacks of weaving)>DP>MB>MF>everything else. I know what to cast when everything is up and running, but am worried that my initial casts are a little off in terms of what to cast when. I would have appreciated it if you had answered my question about what is wrong with my rotation at the start of a boss fight instead of just criticizing my gear and enchants.

 

ildon

Personally, I think people spend way too much time worrying about the first 7 seconds of the fight. Just get your 5 stack up then cast SW:P. The probability of anything else actually having more than like a 1% impact on DPS on any fight over 3 minutes seems unlikely. In your case, getting 2 new pieces of gear and then enchanting/gemming them properly would have more impact than anything else you could possibly do with your character. And getting your first 5 spells right doesn't matter when you're doing things like missing mind blasts or clipping VT ticks.

Having said that, 1.7k-2k seems normal for a fresh 80 depending on class/gear/raid comp. So quit worrying about it.

 

Eoreh

Bump I suppose. Here are the WWS I promised. I heard that spriests could easily do around 5k pre uld but I'm having trouble even reaching that number in raids. Most of the time on just sit and dps fights I do around 4.2-4.5 depending on RNG and the like. If anyone could help me figure out what I'm doing wrong it would be great, thanks.

Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

 

Uzziel

Just a blanket caveat that I think is worth mentioning: DPS is not always the best yard stick to look at for every fight. While DPS is great to see how you are doing at fitting in the most damage into a short amount of time (or stand and nuke fights ala Patchwerk) there are many other fights where Damage Done is a much greater indicator of how you stack up to the rest of your raid.

I was reminded of this last week when I went on a simple Saph+KT clean up raid (the best kind!) and on KT was pretty low on the DPS meter - around 6th if I recall. One of my buddies was like "check damage done" and low and behold, I was almost tied with the first place person.

Though I have not yet done Yogg yet, I've read it is a good example of this - Damage Done over DPS. Just food for thought for people that are pulling mid range DPS, check your damage done and see how you stack up there. Also, make sure that you get on your mages for putting up debuffs. In that KT run I talked about earlier, we were lacking mages and shammans. I totally noticed the lack of buffs/debuffs to boost my DPS. Ugh.

 

Rerolled

4.5k on a fight like Ignis is not unusually low unless your guild is killing him in like <3 minutes.

Edit: In fact I'd say its quite good considering your gear.

 

Peni

I am still pretty new to being shadow on any fights, as healing has always been my primary role with my priest. I have always felt inadequate at damage as a shadowpriest compared to others who seem to do considerably better, especially Nurru :P I know that part of my problems arise from getting flustered which causes me to recast things like VT before they actually fall off, but I know I must be doing other things wrong as well, to have such low overall damage/dps.

Here is a link to XT ten man.

Here is Auriaya from that same night.

Also, I know that I need a second damage trinket, as I have been wearing the hit trinket and then swapping to the sub-optimal healing neck from Malygos, since it puts me way over the hit cap and I figured the extra haste would be more useful on that neck than the hit from my others. Any additional insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

tedv

Essentially you have too much spirit on your gear, and its costing you DPS relative to items that don't have it. The priority for loot as a shadow priest is:

No Spirit or Hit > No Spirit > No Hit > Hit and Spirit

Focus on upgrading the pieces with both hit and spirit on them, or even sidegrading them, and you should see a reasonable improvement from that alone. Also, Tuskarr's Vitality enchant on your boots will beat Icewalker by a wide margin, especially when you are already hit capped.

 

Eoreh

A bit of spammage but I'm hoping for a response. I'm trying to reach 5k as it's (supposedly) the benchmark for uld progression and I'm still a far ways away from it. I'm not sure if it's because of my gear or because I'm doing something wrong as far as dps goes but I'm never able to break 3k on the target dummy self buffed and even on fights without movement I can barely break 4.5k.
http://wowwebstats.com/wyqkwvyfy4q3u <-- 10 man uld where we wiped 29034823098 times on reg freya and then again on mimiron.

If it is gear is there any major upgrade that I should look for because I'm finding it hard to get gear from progression raids if my dps isn't good enough to get into the raids at all.

 

Resto

Hey guys, this is a questions more about the damage percentages then my damage in general.

First of my Armory and a Yogg kill. (Have not got any data on a stand still fight like Ignis or XT will try get it this Week)
Eruliaf Armory, Note: Posting due to recent Name Change
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis (ignore the failed attempts at IC and OS+3, they were our attempts of bring in alts)

Questions -
1. Many forums (Mainly shadowpriest.com) have been saying that mind flay should be at 25% of your overall damage, mine is sticking around 32-36%.

2. How do people feel about have the passive SPower trinkets, (Eye / Illustration) Compared to badge/Dying Curse.

3. Is SW viable in a rotation, i personally save it when i have like a 1second CD on MB / Get thrown up in the air in Ignis.

I have been looking around on WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay but its hard to really find a decent meter with most priests spamming the crap out of mind sear. But in everyones opinion whats a decent DPS to be aiming for through all of Ulduar.

Thanks for reading, looking forward to some replies.

EDIT1: How do SPriests feel about haste, personally i cant justify having over 400 not to mention the set bonus that is up 24/7 anyway (As it falls off the only spell affected is the next mind blast)

 

AndrejKosciusco

Shadow word: death is always a great option when the fight requires you to move, such as stacking back up from auriaya's fear, or when instant cast spells are the only ones you can get off, such as ignis flame jets, or the elder's spell lock before freya.

Mind flay damage is greatly affected by multi-dotting. When I'm fighting kologarn and dotting either 2 or 3 targets, mind flay nearly disappears, where as on ignis, xt-002, or especially vezax, I use the spell with a lot more frequency. I'm not sure you can come up with a generalized % of your damage you should be getting from mind flay without specifying a fight.

My personal method of choosing between trinket types is also based on the dynamics of the fight. If the raid is having issues getting razorscale permanently grounded early enough to beat the enrage timer, or you're trying for the close shave achievement, I feel fine sacrificing some overall dps by switching from eye of the broodmother to living flame. If you're doing xt hard mode and you're comfortably killing the heart before it retreats, I go back to max average dps. I know it doesn't answer your question exactly, but each fight is going to weigh the heroism time period, heart exposed, or similar burst situations differently.

 

Aural

Caveat here: Make sure that whatever trinket set you're using, you're at Hit Cap. Missing with Devouring Plague on XT's heart is going to hurt your dps a lot more then being 3 stacks short with Eye of the Broodmother.

The dynamics of the fight certainly play a roll in the trinket choice. For instance, you'd be better off using Spark of Hope on Vezax hardmode than Illustration of the Dragon Soul.

 

Resto

Thanks for the quick replies, and the answers were exactly what i was looking for.

I normally find myself swapping to Embrace of the spider for Vezax, Eye is a relative easy trinket to stack up and starting a couple of weeks ago we started to use the Hard Mode strat for him (All ranged in one location) so it is hardly falling off anymore. Not to mention if worse comes to worse i can always throw in a Mindflay just to keep it up.

As for the haste question of my post, Does anyone have any ideas of what a decent amount should be, I personally an feeling that with the changes to shadowform Crit is alot more valuable.

 

shib

Afaik you're already at the haste cap with the shadow crash buff, giving yourself more from embrace won't do anything.

 

wazzah

Hey Everyone,

First up not familiar with playing a shadow priest at all, i'm an officer in our guild and I'm trying to sort out our raid members so we can focus on Hardmode Ulduar.

One of our shadow priests is doing rather poorly and i wanted some advice if possible.
Here's a WWS from last nights Hardmode XT kill.
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Here's a WWS from an Ignis 25man if thats easier for comparison.
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

First thing i notice is obviously Devouring Plague uptime apart from that I just really wouldn't know where to begin.
She's done 25% of her damage to Life Spark's which is good as it's what we asked for but I doubt this is the reason her dps is so low, especially seeing as XT is one of the more static fights in the instance...

Her gear is also alittle low in comparison to our other raiders however it's not terrible by any means.
The World of Warcraft Armory

Appreciate any thoughts on this, I'm about to go read up on spriest rotations and such to see if I can help at all... but someone with actual knowledge would be better.

Cheers.

 

Akhtal

A shadowpriest switching target will obviously lose a lot of DPS time, especially on quickly dying adds like Life Sparks...

Your Mimiron parse is much more interesting.

Her VT/DP uptime is pretty low when compared to SWP (I'm assuming SWP is always up, because it's kinda hard to get real numbers on a fight like Mimiron with phase switches)

Her MF damage (in % as opposed to the rest of her spells) looks rather low too, I usually hover around 35%