I'm only an offspec sp, but i had a similar question regarding spellpower trinkets once and got as answer that trinket procs which increase spellpower don't require a recast of sw: p. Can somebody clear that up?

The illustration stacks count as spell power and thus should be automatically taken into account when mind flay refreshes swp, no? Otherwise, wouldn't we have to recast swp during [Sundial of the Exiled] procs as well?

I was specifically looking at this tab: Wow Web Stats

You can see a 250 damage per tick difference between the two shadow priests while the other average damage values are much closer. While I haven't tested it, I vaguely remember that you are right about spell power buffs being recalculated. But something is causing that damage disparity. Perhaps Shadow Word: Pain is getting locked in with a lower spell crit value, or without a full stack of Shadow Weaving.

Heyh0

so i read a lot of wws threads and it seems that i have to do a lot to raise my dps but i don´t know how
theres the last wws log
Armory Link

so how can i improve my dps?
is it my gear?
spell rotation or dot uptime?
wrong raid setup?
how many dps should i do with my gear?

btw. i don´t use a pot of wild magic on this wws log

You can calculate your own dotuptime just check the start of this thread.

As it is from the wws you linked:

VT: 81% uptime
SW: P: 90% uptime
DP: 86% uptime
MB: Of 31 possible you hit with 25 which is 80%.

so basically, increase your uptime of your dots and MBs and you should see an dps increase. You have pretty good gear so you should be able to do a lot more. You could probably break 5k if you get up to 90-95% uptime of all dots and use a Wild magic potion.

Here is my latest wws and I know I should be doing better, although I am still working on gear as this is just my second naxx 25 on my priest. Is 3.9k DPS reasonable for approximately naxx 10 man gear, maybe a little better?

EDIT:
Doing the math quick it looks like my uptime is about
VT: 82% uptime
SW: P: 90% uptime
DP: 88% uptime
MB: 16 out of 22 (72%)

So it looks like I am not hitting MB fast enough, Should I be clipping my Mind Flay to hit MB when it comes off CD? Should I do the same with every other spell too?

Looking at that WWS, shadow priests should be beating every warlock except the one doing 6k damage. A reasonably geared priest seems to peak at 5.2k to 5.5k DPS, depending on how crit lucky they are. Now that said...

1) You have a few gear pieces that terrible

While you have a lot of epic gear, that's not the same as having a lot of GOOD gear. For example, you don't have a helm with a metagem socket for [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]. Upgrading your weapon would give you a solid 100 additional spell damage.

2) Your gear suffers from the need to be hit capped.

While you're hit capped (0.5% over cap with a Draenei), you use some non-epic pieces to do it, like the trinket. I'm not saying that's the wrong gearing choice-- it's correct. But when you can get hit rating without giving up so many other stats, you'll see an increase in damage.

3) You have way too much gear with spirit on it.

I don't think this gets stressed enough for shadow priests, so let me say this loud and clear:

Spirit is terrible for shadow priests.

Just because we have a 5 point talent that gives us 10% of spirit as spell damage does not make spirit good. To put things in context, 19 spell damage and 16 spirit cost the same amount of itemization points. 16 spirit will give 1.76 spell damage (with blessing of kings), making spell damage 10.8 times as effective as spirit. Now think about the case of rogues and strength. Rogues gain 1.1 attack power per strength (due to blessing of kings), and 2 attack power costs the same itemization points as 1 attack power. This means attack power is 1.8 times as effective as spirit for rogues.

In other words, Strength is 10.8 / 1.8 = 6 times better for Rogues than Spirit is for Shadow Priests.

Now ask a rogue how much strength they have on their gear.

4) You aren't casting Shadow Word: Death.

This is just a straight up damage increase. Don't worry about the self damage. You should have Vampiric Embrace up for tank healing anyway, and that will provide more than enough self healing. On that note, you should move the 2 points from Shadow Affinity to Improved Vampiric Embrace, not that this will affect your damage.

5) You are sluggish with your Vampiric Touch refreshes

You only got 51 ticks (153 seconds) in a 3 minute fight (180 seconds). You lost 27 seconds of Vampiric Touch damage with perfect play, or more practically 18 seconds.

I'm interested to hear some thoughts about conflicts in the spriest priority... those being situations when a dot needs to be refreshed at the exact same time MB comes off CD.

The reason I ask is that I generally average a MB between 7.5 to 8 seconds (for a typical stand and deliver dps encounter eg. Patchwerk)... I can pretty much attribute this to the fact that I am having to refresh VT or DP in place of casting MB quite regularly and on the odd occasion I need to refresh both VT & DP before I cast my next MB. Obiviously this delays my MB cast by 1 to 2 GCDs.

When looking at some spriests attaining 5.5K dps on patch I notice their average MB cast time is very close to 7 seconds, somewhere in the vicinity of 7.1 to 7.3... i'm wondering how they are attaining this number while keeping their dot uptime close to 95%? is there some way to limit or reduce the number of conflicts in a given time?

Lastly I am noticing that some of these spriests are registering a MF tick every 1.1 to 1.2 seconds... while I am typically registering a MF tick every 1.5 seconds. I understand that some of the reasoning is due to extremely short encoutner durations where BL/Heroism is up for a considerable portion of time but i'm not convinced this is the only reason. I have seen some similar length encounters to what i'm involved in and their MF tick rate is considerably higher than myself. I have tested whether I am clipping MFs and I don't believe I am.

Unfortunetly I dont have a recent WWS log, but here is something semi recent WWS

Here is a link to my armory (I should have my raid gear on) Worshaka (I understand my haste is a little high, that will be rectified if I can win the gown of the spellweaver)

Feedback will be muchly appreciated.

Here's a recent wws parse of mine, WWS, I calculated it out, and it appears that I'm sitting at exactly 7 seconds between mindblasts, which actually isnt too bad, and a mindflay tick every 1.3 seconds.

I tend to prioritize mind blast over dots, but I'm honestly not sure if this is the correct route. It may not actually matter all that much in the long run, considering my dot uptime was 91/95/95.

What's the current math on this? In fact IIRC the last simulation that dedmon did, SWD wasn't even included in the rotation. I was under the impression that it was maybe a 0.5% DPS increase for a best case scenario, and my philosophy has been to almost completely drop it, allowing me to focus on other things, such as maximizing MB cooldowns, etc.

The exception of course is I still use it at the very end of a fight if I feel I can't get anything else in, and I'll use it if I'm on the move from point A to point B, although there aren't many fights like that currently.

The other thing is a lot of fights currently don't have raid damage, or it's very negligible. (OTOH on fights like Sarth+3 or Maly, I don't really want to be using SWD for several portions of the fight) Not using SWD means you can completely skip VE, which can save you several GCDs. The prime example of this is at Patchwerk, where I save 3 GCDs by not having to cast VE. You have to account for that as well.

One other unrelated point to your post I wanted to touch upon -- be careful when using Patchwerk parses, even if you're comparing yourself over time. Remember that DPS is sensitive to fight length. I had a 5341 DPS parse on Patchwerk tonight, but it was also our fastest Patchwerk kill to date I believe, at only 2:15. Obviously I'm leveraging Bloodlust more as opposed to a 2:30 length fight.

From one of my semi-old WWS parses, I'm seeing that Shadow Word: Death gives a 554 DPS increase over the window of time in which you would otherwise cast Mind Flay. Since you average 4 Deaths a minute (6 cast seconds, or 10% of your cast time), this should be a 55 DPS increase, or just over 1%. However, if you don't cast Vampiric Embrace at all and don't cast Death either, you gain an extra 1.5 seconds of Mind Flay each minute. From my WWS, this appears to be an extra 68 DPS, meaning you basically break even.

However, if you can break even and provide some substantial healing, I think that's a net win for the raid. Even on Patchwerk, we just a shadow priest in the tank group and there's very little overhealing from Embrace. It's also worth noting that there are a number of fights where you really want Vampiric Embrace up for raid healing, but the extra knockback from Shadow Word: Death doesn't put you in any danger. A good example of this would be Thaddius, Sapphiron, or even Grobbulus. And next patch when Vampiric Embrace gets a longer duration, it will still be a net win.

That said, it's worth noting that Shadow Word: Death is not the piece of amazing it was in TBC. I interrupt my Mind Flays to cast Vampiric Touch and Mind Blast, but not Shadow Word: Death or Devouring Plague. You should never cast Death so much that you run out of mana, and it's the first spell you drop if mana is low. Note that in the priority queue, it still ranks above Devouring Plague (but below everything else).

The comparisons I did was relative to the other shadow priest in the same raid. His average damage on each kind of spell cast was slightly higher except Shadow Word: Pain which was 15% worse. I try to focus on maximizing casts over the fight duration and not the actual DPS done.

Delay your Mind Blasts to cast Vampiric Touch but don't delay Mind Blast for Devouring Plague.

Is there any particular reason you don't follow shadowpriest.com BRGA?
Best geared shadow priests currently push out 5.6-5.8k DPS

I have indeed seen that page before. Maybe I'm being dense, but is there a specific place you think I can adjust something?

In first place I'd swap all tier pieces except gloves for top (considering spellhit gear - Best Raiding Gear Available (WotLK)) counterparts ([Hood of Rationality], [Gown of the Spell-Weaver], [Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster], [Mantle of Dissemination]).
Tier7 bonuses are really useless.

Looking forward to Ulduar I'd also change one of professions to Tailoring (Lightweave Embroidery is presumably getting huge boost - 250sp for 15s, internal CD unknown yet; if ICD is standard 45s, then enchant is roughly equals 250*15/45 ~ 83 sp) or JC (Dragon eyes rock)

Thanks for the input. I'm only using the tier pieces now because I don't have any valid upgrades yet. And yes, I am debating dumping enchanting for the embroidery once 3.1 hits.

Hey guys, I've been struggling to break 5k dps and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I've spent time on shadowpriest.com, run simcraft simulations, min/maxed my gear (but not professions, guess im not cool anymore), and even downloaded the facemelter addon which did nothing but tell me how to do everything I was already doing. I'm stuck at around 4800 dps, and even with my gear I can't see how I shouldn't be at 5k consistently- the only reason I broke 5k this week was 62% mind blast crits =\.

Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

This week's WWS: Wow Web Stats

Couple notes: I MC razuvious and since we did immortal this week (AND WON YAY), I MCd adds on faerlina, so ignore both those parses. This also means I played more conservatively than I normally do- go figure. The best fight to examine is probably Kel'thazud- Our other shadowpriest, candymahn, I beat soundly in dps on almost every fight, but for some reason on KT, even only counting boss damage, she usually turns the tables on me, and so I believe whatever problems I'm having are amplified in that fight. Given that its a long fight, I suspect the culprit is that while I take advantage of bloodlust better than she does, the fact that I get confused when I finish flay casts with .3-.6 seconds left on mind blast is probably the main reason. What I've started doing is clipping 2 flays in a row for (ideally) 4 ticks in 4 seconds, then a mind blast (vs 3 ticks then 1 in 4.2 seconds or 3 then 2 in 5, then mind blast). Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, but owell.

The main problem I corrected this week was that I was still in TBC no-haste mode (I quit raiding after kalecgos), so I never got used to haste, and as a result I'm bad and have apparently been clipping every vampiric touch I cast, or at least enough of them to piss me off.

Numberz:
SWP uptime: 94%
VT uptime: 90.7%
DP uptime: 90.7%
Mind blast count: 21/21 (21.05/21.7, according to maths, go me?)

Priority used: SWP* > VT > DP > MB > flay. I read somewhere in here that DP should be lower, should I be using SWP*>VT>MB>DP>flay?

Questions: My VT and DP uptime seem horrendous. Am I bad or is that % well within the noise of being in the middle of, say, being halfway through a mind blast when VT hits 1.2 seconds left? Assume I'm a perfectionist- I like to push myself to the theoretical limit, makes things more interesting . My mind blasts seem ok, but that might be because I still haven't figured out how to handle the dreaded .4 seconds-till-mb-cooldown after mind flay that pops up a dozen times a fight, so usually i just wait. Should I recast a mind flay and clip it after the GCD, 2nd tick, or keep waiting? In situations similar to these, is the best thing just to keep casting mind flay and clipping it off early?

Lastly: Are there any other questions that I need to answer to help you guys out? I'd really like to not be bad anymore =(

EDIT: my gear is simply the best I've found so far. I have a list of "best of best in slot" gear that I use to guide my gear choices, where the gear ranking I used is basically [Value of item with hit rating]/[Value of best in slot item - non-HR value of hit rating item], and the item values are the ones found on s.priest.com. Using my own values for simcraft gave me basically the same scaling values they used, so I just went with theirs. Basically, this tells me how much I lose to gain the hit rating, vs getting the best in slot pieces. What I've come up with is the following hit rating items:

Neck-have
Chest
Trinket-have
Offhand
Legs-have

(Assuming I didn't forget anything), this incidentally comes out to exactly 290 hit rating by sheer coincidence (and the fact that I took item #6 over item #5 to achieve this, but shush). This is also why I have 333 hit rating in my gear- the 71 Hit rating trinket is better even hit capped than extract of necromantic power (my only other trinket), which kind of cornered me into having absurd hit. Once I get the maly10 chest it'll be even higher. Sue me.

here's an idea for a small boost

our hit cap is 290.
till hit cap, hit rating is the top stat for us, so using [Snapper Extreme] or [Recipe: Worg Tartare] will allow u to use BiS items cause u will need 250 hit. I think that with the current value of stats this is the most usefull food buff.

Using the 1.16 PP value from the shadowpriest.com gear list.

- 40 hit rating (Snapper Extreme) = 46.4 PP
- 46 spell power (Fish Feast) = 46 PP

So the difference seems rather small to me. Feast would be better use of the fishing effort in 3.1

I wouldn't use food to compensate for the lack of hit on my gear. I'd be better off knowing that there's enough hit based off what I'm wearing so that spellpower food would be an option.

Your call.

Is really Shadow Word: Death worthied if you got a lot of haste rating?
I mean, in TBC you had to take always in cd mb and swd but well now, if you can cast a mind flay in 2.4 seconds it means that you tick every 0.8 when with swd you would have the gcd to take into account...

I just wonder: there are two cases:
1. With heroism you would cast mf in 1.8/2.0 seconds (with my current gear I mean) while swd would still trick the gcd...it's better to cast or not swd in heroism then?
2. Without heroism does it make sense to use it now? There are many guides saying that swd now is better not to be used, other that say would be better to use as well the spell.

For a fight like patchwerk, I personally improoved my dps when I stopped using Shadow Word Death:
I usually used to do 4800-4900 and now I do with the same gear 5150-5350 dps, although a SP shall make 5.600-5.800.

Someone knows what's better to do?

Most of the problem is gear... as you pointed out you are above the hit cap (considerably) and thus you are wasting itemisation on what could be sp/crit/haste. In particular your Chest, Wrist, Waist and Cloak probably don't cut it if you're aiming for 5K dps and it might be an idea to utilise a different OH at the moment considering you're over the hit cap. Just to illustrate what i'm talking about, the top spriest parses i've seen have VT ticking around 3.8K and I believe your VT ticks for patchwerk were just above 3.1k.

The other part of the problem is your casting pattern. You managed a MB cast every 7.76 seconds, the very best spriest parses have that around 7.2 seconds and even lower, basically you missed out on 2 MB casts for the entire encounter (it doesnt sound like much but all these little improvements add up). I actually think your dot uptime wasn't too bad but I wonder if your SW:P was cast after the imp scorch buff was applied?

Lastly is to do with buffs... it seems to be you didn't have 5% spell crit which is a pretty major one. That explains some of why your dot ticks were low. I also dont see you as having a flask or food buff or shaman totems...

You pretty much neeed all buffs, top line gear and a close to perfect casting pattern to break 5K dps.

Just want to touch on what Ledha said about heroism. What have you guys found is the best rotation? Wild magic pot--reapply dots, priority again? Also, should i be applying swp on every trinket pop (say sundial)?