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Please Help My Shadow DPS
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Post by
851940
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
BrigKline
You've tightened up a few of my quibbles between today and yesterday; mostly being over hit cap, and the rebalance of your Haste and Mastery will help tons.
Your gear is mostly solid, the haste chant on gloves is understandable considering your proximity to the haste plateau. You've got good activity, and good DoT uptime so it can be hard to see exactly where things can go wrong. And honestly all this gets a bit meta, but c'est la vie.
I did notice that your average DoT ticks were a bit lower than the other shadow priest. This could imply a lot of things, but I'd lean towards a larger issues pertaining to increasing average DoT ticks. Proffesions: It IS a smaller part of the picture but the other priest had Tailoring, which means Lightweave embroidery. Before you ask, yes your LW chant is equal to Lightweave, but as Shadow, we can artificially extend the buffs effects which brings me to my other point. Power Torrent factors hugely into this, which is your primary concern. WoL makes it difficult to ascertain, but are you refreshing VT/DP on Power Torrent procs? And possibly again as PT expires to extend the debuff.
On MB usage, you mentioned you would use it at 3 orbs. Now, you had 26 total mind Blasts, which if cast on CD would be about 2:36 of the encounter. This left nearly 2 minutes of 'dead' time on Mind Blast, resulting in a missed potential of 19 additional Mind Blasts. Orbs are great, but holding for orbs REALLY bleeds the effective casting of the spell since the only other option is Mind Flay filler and every second you delay you are losing more dps. Jiggling on every free GCD to get more apparitions does make a large difference when your 4 pc is taken into consideration. And if the worst happens and you lose ES? As long as you don't need to refresh a DoT, you are fine, and even then refresh before ES expires.
You also mentioned the Mind Spike rotation, but the way you phrased it led me to believe you used it on the opener only, but your data suggested you did 3 Spike rotations during the encounter, which is great. My quibble with this is with the citical damage on Mind Blast, it seems to indicate that you might be popping MB before your Shadow Orbs come up. It's an easy mistake to make, and I know a lot of shadow priests use a mind melt cancel macro to avoid turning a 200K MB crit into a much weaker hit.
I'll try and record some logs tomorrow maybe give you a better picture of what I mean. And of course any follow up/in depth questions, I'm always happy to discuss.
EDIT: The Mind Blast numbers aren't exact because I didn't figure for cast time(derp). Numbers are approximated, but my point remains valid.
Post by
851940
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
DraconisAerius
cancel aura does exactly what it says it does. It cancels a buff that you have on. You put it into a macro so that by pressing that button once, it turns that buff on, and pressing it again it turns that buff off.
Of course refeshing them durning PT boosts your dps. It's 500 Int!
Post by
BrigKline
Honestly, I never had trouble simply waiting a moment for Orbs, but as Aerius said it's a macro that removes the Mind Melt buff, usually used in a standalone cast sequence macro specifically for MS/fiend rotations. Which macro you use is highly dependent on your personal rotation, so I'd look it up on EJ or Shadowpriest.com for a specific macro that works for you if you wanted to go that route.
However, I was going over more of your logs, and I was far more concerned with your numbers on Yor and Zonn. You should be able to top 40K on Yor (depending of course on the number of black phases. Black/yellow+lust is a huge number booster) and 45 on Zonn. Your personal numbers were, I'm sorry to say, significantly below what you are capable of.
For Zonn, you want to be multidoting your heart out. Use your MS/fiend rotation on the initial orb spawns, and as soon as the claw spawns, throw VT on every target in range. If your group stacks on the claw you should have VT ticking on 4-5 targets at once. Make sure you keep SW:P up on high health targets to keep orbs proccing from your apparitions, this way, you can dump 3 orb mind blasts as you move from eye to eye while easily keeping ES up. Never forget to keep Zonn DOTed as well, it's easy to forget with all the craziness with the eyes/tentacles. Properly done, VT should be your #2 spell right behind Mind Blast for Zonn.
As for Yor, there is a bit more fluctuation depending on what combos your group ends up doing. Generally, we have 2 problems with Yor: mana on blue, and weak burst on the slimes. Since our MS/fiend rotation is used at specific intervals, blue can be a pain. I Arcane Torrent, and tap SW:D if I get a blue phase without Fiend/AA up, but you have to be quick since you need to tap SW:D before you go oom from the orb. I only mention this cause of the potential loss of effective casting. Considering slimes, position yourself 40 yards from Yor, and keep him DOTed, switching to the slime with a single MSx3, MB, MSx2 (this is mostly to make your next MB on Yor instant), SW:Dx2 rotation should be plenty once it rolls into range. Slimes are in that weird health range where they aren't worth DOTing yet have too much health to warrant a MSx3/MB viability. Other than that, I noticed your average MS ticks were a bit low, so watch your ES buff on black phases. Keeping Pain on Yor so you can quickly refresh ES with MB. Especially true if you have a yellow/black combo.
My Zonn parse
My Yor parse
Post by
Stabya23
Can someone link a good guide for Shadow DPS that includes this Mind Spike Rotation?
I wouldnt ask if I already did not go to elitist jerks first. That and another guide make no mention of it.
I gather it has something to do with Dark Archangel or Shadowfiend
My question is basically...
When you you abandon the standard rotation of 3 dots and blast between flays and go to this Mind Spike Rotation?
Assume I have the 4pc set
Thanks
Post by
BrigKline
Can someone link a good guide for Shadow DPS that includes this Mind Spike Rotation?
I wouldnt ask if I already did not go to elitist jerks first. That and another guide make no mention of it.
I gather it has something to do with Dark Archangel or Shadowfiend
My question is basically...
When you you abandon the standard rotation of 3 dots and blast between flays and go to this Mind Spike Rotation?
Assume I have the 4pc set
Thanks
Mind Spike rotations are only done if:
1. You have BOTH shadowfiend and Archangel used simultaneously
2. You have the 4 pc bonus from T13
3. You have enough time to cast for the full duration
A typical Spike rotation is as follows:
MFx4>Fiend/Archangel>Mind Blast>MSx4/5(depending on your haste)>MB>MSx2>VT>DP>SW:P
Then resume normal rotations.
It doesn't always work since Fiend and Archangel can get out of synch, and you lose dps holding onto your CD's for more than a handful of seconds. For this reason, you REALLY need to push as many mind flay ticks as possible to get Fiend off CD near or on the same time as Archangel. Some fights allow this like Ultrax and Spine, others like Zonn and Yor (depending on the phases, Spike works on as long as there isn't black up) have too many movement or AoE requirements to allow for a spike rotation. Spike rotations are also weak in terms of haste scaling, bring a heavy mastery set to any fight you intend to use it extensively (still mind your haste plateaus of course).
Used properly and executed well you can potentially burst as hard as an arcane mage, and see a fairly substantial rise in numbers.
EDIT: I wrote MFx5 thinking of Eva stacks, only go to 4 like I edited above
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