mind blast trials GO

Two minutes. Rotation I've been using for the past year. GO!

Trial 1: 3865
Trial 2: 3970
Trial 3: 3859 (A warlock from my guild happened by the UC dummies during this test!)
Trial 4: 4127

Two minutes. Mind blast only right after re-casting VT. GO!

Trial 1: 3953
Trial 2: 3841
Trial 3: DAMNIT I casted mind blast when I shouldn't have.
Ttial 3 (redo): 3991
Trial 4: 4020


(My right middle-finger, the one that always rests on the mind blast button was twitching the whole time.)

Average of normals: 3955
Average of less-mindblasts: 3951


Less mind blast is 4 less dps.

Well, if nothing else it isn't a DPS loss. It's not much of a gain either. I wonder if gear changes would change that. Like, if I had the t9 4 piece bonus with the extra MF crit, maybe less-MB would work better, since I'd be casting more MFs.

But all the freaking regular t9 I can get with badges have less stats than the t8 I already have D:<

And it might go even better with the t10 4 piece bonus. (MAN i cannot wait to get the badges for a piece of t10.)

But in the meantime, since with my current gear there seems to be pretty much no difference, I'm just going to stick with the rotation I'm more comfortable with. And maybe switch to less-MB if the particular encounter would call for it. Though I'm not sure when I'd have time to channel for 2.6 seconds but not cast for 1.3 seconds.

Less mind blast?

So, I'm currently running a bunch of heroics with our feral druid, who used to be a disc priest with a off-spec of shadow. He's one of the kinds of dudes who knows everything about every class and spec, and so we were talking a bit about the shadow changes. He said that he had been trying out shadow DPS on the PTR with a copy of his priest, and with a pre-made character.

He asked if I had dropped mind blasts other than ones after casting VT. I was like "Wut? no I'm not dropping mind blast." Cause I read that you need like five billion haste to drop Mind blast. (I also tried it out for myself a few times. Granted this was like 2 major patches ago, but I'm just saying it's not like it's something I just read and just believed without testing it for myself.)

But he said that he tried it out where he only casted MB after recasting VT just to proc replenishment, and it resulted in a ~400 dps increase on both characters he tried. He also specced out of improved MB and put the 5 points elsewhere. He said on his priest copy he only had like 400 haste too. I'm at 488 right now. HMMMM

If nothing else, it's worth a try on the test dummies. Remind me to try it out after work tomorrow.

If it DOES turn out to be effective, it's going to take a while to re-train myself to not use MB every time it's off cooldown. I've been raiding with my current 'rotation' (and this word is used loosely) for a year.

EDIT:
Here's the thread on Shadowpriest.com about why you should use mind blast: http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=24328

That trinket. What.

Okay, so maybe I'm doing it wrong?

I've run 4 trials on the test dummies.
Two of them with my normal trinkets (Sundial of the Exiled, and Abyssal Rune,) One with the Nevermelting Ice Crystal where I did not pop the Use, and one with that trinket where I DID pop the use right before casting SW:P so that the crit buff would be applied to SW:P.

And I'm thinking that the ice crystal might not be worth switching to.





TRIAL_#.................1.......2

Two of my usual trinkets:


DPS @ 2 minutes.........4083.....3900
% of dmg from SW:P......12%......12.7%
% of SW:P crits.........30.8%....23%.3%


# of MBs................16......16
# of MFs................67......69



The new trinket (instead of sundial of the exiled,) not Using


DPS @ 2 minutes.........3946
% of dmg from SW:P......12.2%
% of SW:P crits.........23.3%


# of MBs................16
# of MFs................66


The new trinket (instead of sundial of the exiled,) using as soon as 10/10 buffs are up and re-casting (or casting for the first time) SW:P.

DPS @ 2 minutes.........4008
% of dmg from SW:P......13.1%
% of SW:P crits ........36.6%


# of MBs................16
# of MFs................66




Included the amount of mind blasts and flays to show that I'm (for the most part) being consistent with my DPSing methods.


I'm just not seeing the increase in the amount of damage that SW:P does that I'd like. If I have a choice between the types of trinkets, I much rather prefer to use the ones I've been using, since they're proc ones rather that ones I have to press a button to use.

But it's only a few trials so far. I'll run some more and see what I come up with. I just can't sit and do like a million at once.
And yeah, I know this is what those simulator programs are for, but they can't factor in the way that I personally play. So I always like to blend in my own play style/test dummy trials along with the theorycrafting.

Shadow Priest Trinkets from 3.3

So I just got this trinket, Nevermelting Ice Crystals



I've seen it drop like twice before and figured it would be pretty nice, but then I got to looking at trinkets that came out in 3.3 and got to thinking about the effects that that Use would have with SW:P and how it works with the mind flay refresh mechanic.

And then looking at the comments on Wowhead, my vague ponderings were presented in a beautiful manner:

"This is insane for DoT classes, especially Shadow Priests, for the following reason. Pain & Suffering, when it refreshes SW: P, only resets the damage it does based off your spellpower value. In other words, if you have a trinket proc for an extra +590 spellpower, that will be applied to SW: P the next time you Mind Flay; and, when that proc fades, the next time after that you cast Mind Flay, the extra spellpower will be removed from SW: P's damage.

This, however, does not apply to any other damage-boosting stat. I.e., it does not apply to crit. If you were to use this trinket and then hard-refresh SW: P -- in other words, manually press the Shadow Word: Pain button again, rather than refreshing it through Mind Flay -- it would gain the 920 Crit Rating thanks to the buff, and that would remain for as long as that particular SW: P were kept on the target. If it is possible to keep that SW: P up for the remainder of the fight, it would maintain an inflated crit rate. At 45.91 Crit Rating required for 1% of Crit at level 80, that would equal a massive 20.04% continuous Crit chance boost on SW: P.

Naturally, if you also time the activation of this trinket with a situation in which the first button you cast is the refreshing of another DoT -- VT, for instance --then it is made impossible for the 920 crit rating to diminish before you have gotten that DoT up on the target again. Thus, another DoT besides SW: P benefiting from 20% increase in crit rate -- though, obviously, for a lesser time period."

I was going to just queue up for the specific dungeon (Pit of Saron) that the trinket drops in, but figured it would take way too long, and that with it being a new one, it would show up in the random dungeon list eventually.

Lucky for me, the first dungeon that popped was Pit of Saron.
Lucky for me, the group had already cleared all of the crap except for the gauntlet and the last boss which drops that trinket.
Lucky for me, the trinket dropped.
Lucky for me, I won the roll.

I swear to god this was the luckiest I have EVER been in WoW EVER.

Anyway, I'm sitting in Undercity as I type this, about ready to test it out on the target dummies. Shall report back with pie charts and possibly apple pie.

---

EDIT:

AHAHAHA! And speaking of bad ass Shadow Priest trinkets, the other spriest in the guild just got Muradin's Spyglass.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 131 (2.85% @ L80).
Equip: Each time you deal spell damage to an opponent, you gain 18 spell power for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times.

---

EDIT 2:
Okay, I've run two trials with the trinket equipped instead of my Sundial of the Exiled. In one, I just DPSed as normal. And in the other I popped the Use on the trinket when my ShadowGreenLight was at maximum (which is 10/10 while soloing.)

First, without the use (I've got sw:p highlighted to show the crit %):



And with the use:



It's pretty darn clear to see that the trinket carried the crit boost through the whole fight, but I really didn't notice much of a dps difference. Both times I was at around 4k when I ran out of mana and couldn't continue. And SW:P on the trinket use test only did about 2% more damage overall.
If I do this again, (which I'm sure I will. I pretty much live at the UC test dummies.) I'll go on a timer rather than "Eh, I'll just stop when my mana bar feels like it."
I need to test it moar when it's not 11 at night and I have to wake up at 5:30 for work the next day.

---

Speaking of trinkets, I would like to take this moment to drool over one that has not yet been available on live servers. Dislodged Foreign Object. It drops from Rotface 25, which will be out, like... I forget when the next batch of bosses comes out.

But here's what it does:

Equip: Improves haste rating by 155 (4.73% @ L80).
Equip: Your harmful spells have a chance to increase your spell power by 105 and an additional 105 every 2 sec for 20 sec.

GYUUUUUU~

SAVING ALL MY DKP FOR THAT SONUVABITCH.

WUT

So, 3.3 is here.
The moment of truth.










...wut?
Ok okay, that was a wipe attempt.
Lets look at the meter from when we actually downed the boss.










WUT.

Well, to be fair, this was Lady Deathwhisper or whatever her name is, and melee wasn't consistantly DPSing like us casters were, cause they were off doing their things on the side of the room. Even still, I beat all the mages. I BEAT ALL THE MAGES.

SHADOW PRIEST BEAT MAGE IN DPS.

*girly squee*

I didn't have to scroll down in Recount to just above the tanks to see what my DPS was. GOD that lack of needing to scroll is such a nice feeling.

oh hay thar blog

Yeah, I have lacked in updating.

3.3 is practically here, and that means both shadow priest buffs, and me creaming myself over said buffs.

So here's the poop on our buffs. The list looks short, but the effects will be HUGE.

Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.

In the long run, this probably won't cause a whole lot more damage in PvE. ImpDP usually ends up being only like 3% of my total damage in a raid boss fight. This seems more like a PvP buff. Shadowpriests are tricky in PvP because our dots can get dispelled and blah blah you know this already. With imp DP doing more frontload damage, it's more non-dispellable, non-periodic damage we can do to an enemy player.
I also see this being a lot more helpful for quick burns- such as switching to an overcharged add on Emalon in VoA, or taking down those floaty frosty orbs on Anub'arak in ToC.

Mind Flay: The range of this ability has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
This means you don't have to use "Glyph of OH GOD I HAVE TO GET CLOSER TO THE BOSS THAN ALL OTHER CASTERS OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME MR. BOSS" So what happens to that glyph? I'll cover that a bit further on in this post. (God I wish I had this back in the BC days. I died so many times on Prince, trying to tip-toe close enough to mind flay)

Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.

Here is where you victory. HASTE. DOESN'T. SUCK. ANYMORE! This has been one of the many scaling problems that really made us the bottom of the DPS barrel. This is what will make us competitive DPS again. One of the only issues that I can see with this is that VT and DP will need to be cast more often. (But there's a glyph change that could help with that. More in the glyph section below.)

Vampiric Embrace: This talent now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff and only generates healing for single-target shadow damage spells.

While not absolutely necessary in my eyes, this is very nice addition. I can see it being a bit frustrating in PvP-- after dying, I already start running after being spirit rezzed, cast Fort, spirit, inner fire while running, mount up ASAP, and shift into shadow form while riding off. Adding VE to the list of buffs that I should cast will be annoying at most. But I'm sure I'll like it a lot more once I can just dot up every alliance in sight and watch the ticks heal me up.
In PvE this will be, simply put, awesome. I'm a selfish bastard most of the time. I don't put up VE unless I need to move and all my insta-casts are on CD or the DoT is already on the boss. It's just a GCD that could be better spent by an offensive spell. And it just plain ol' throws off my rotation. Everything, for me right now, just clicks into place. Having to put VE in the mix, it's obnoxious. So having it as a buff that I put on myself before the fight even begins? No more selfish bastard Tsululu.


Okay, now for glyphs:

Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph now increases the damage done by Mind Flay by 10% when the target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.


This used to just extend the range of Mind Flay. (AKA "Glyph of OH GOD I HAVE TO GET CLOSER TO THE BOSS THAN ALL OTHER CASTERS OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME MR. BOSS") With the change to base Mind Flay, there's no reason for this glyph to do that anymore.
But this glyph now does what Glyph of SW:P used to do. So what's that glyph up to in 3.3?

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain: The periodic damage ticks of Shadow Word: Pain now restore 1% of the priest's base mana with this glyph.

MANA! Not that spriests really EVER have mana problems. Between our replenishment, imp spirit tap, shadow fiend and dispersion (I complain about it, but it really is nice to have and I'd miss it if they took it away. Doesn't mean that it should be the 51 point talent though :p ) we've got a lot of moves to help with mana. Not to mention mind flay being one of the most mana efficient attacks in the game.
But with the changes to haste in relation to VT and DP, we'll be casting those spells a lot more than we used to. And DP is a pretty mana intensive spell (25% of base mana!)
I am hoping that this change to SW:P will be able to keep up with our increased mana usage.

Glyph of Shadow: While in Shadowform, this glyph causes non-periodic spell critical strikes to increase spell power by 30%, up from 10%, of the priest's total spirit for 10 seconds.

This glyph is pretty much the same, just even more useful than before. Not much to say, just 20% more spellpower from spirit than we used to get.


Overall, I'm really excited for these changes. I have been bitching for months. I have been getting wait listed for raids for months. And I have been patient, and I have been devoted to my class and spec. I will not play a mage for easy 8k dps. I will not respec and heal your asses. I am staying a shadow priest, and I will stick to it through the nerfs and buffs, because I freaking love playing it. With 3.3, I will STILL be playing what I love, and I hope that all my hard work and dedication to the class and my character will FINALLY be evident in the DPS charts.

GC sez...

On a very nicely worded post addressing the issues of Shadow in PvE, GC responded with the following:
"I am not able to comment on the questions proposed in your thread at this time, but I did want to address one point. "

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19595102428&sid=1&pageNo=7

The optimist in me says "OOH this means there are changes for 3.3 planned and they don't want to reveal them yet!"

But the pessimist in me says "This means they ain't doin SHIT for us, and they don't wanna say anything to prevent getting the backlash from it."

Shadow Priest DPS too low

A thread on the forums that's hitting a bit close to home:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18601081821&sid=1

Particularly this post... Everything he says is EXACTLY where I am, and how I feel:
I never thought I'd be adding my voice to a laundry list of complaints about shadow priests... for a long time, my mantra was "I'm a hybrid class, I offer good raid utility, so I don't have to be at the top of the charts..." but for the last several months, I've watched my DPS plummet, relative to the other members of my guild. Comparatively speaking, my dps is getting worse and worse as my gear gets better and better, and where in Naxx I was sitting comfortably on the dps meters, just below the mages and rogues and more or less even with the other hybrids, I now find myself floundering on the charts, and every time I click on a WWS link, I pray that I did more dps than the tanks (because sometimes I don't).

I don't know how to explain it. I didn't suddenly forget how to play a spriest when Ulduar came out--I work hard to keep my dots ticking and Mind Blast on cooldown at all times, and I know my gear is gemmed and enchanted correctly for the most part (I have an orange gem in my pants that I need to switch for a red, and yes, there are three purple gems when I only need two, but in all three cases the socket bonus is spellpower).

I realize that the fights are more difficult than Lolnaxx, and some of the encounters are not caster friendly, and it also doesn't help that, particularly in our ten-man runs, I am often the only caster dps, which means I am missing out on some raid buffs, but this alone doesn't account for the rapid decline in comparative dps I've been experiencing.

Obviously, we are scaling very poorly with gear at the moment. Part of this is the large amount of haste on everything, since haste has always been more questionable for us than for any other class. As another poster mentioned, having haste translate some way into our dots would be a nice boost and a good place to start.

Spirit is another issue that needs to be looked at. We have to spend five talent points in Twisted Faith to get a measly 10% of our spirit as spellpower, while Holy priests get 25% of their spirit as spellpower for the same investment. At the very least, we need Twisted Faith to be brought up to 25%--I've always thought of speccing Shadow as "going to the Dark Side" for a priest, and the draw of the Dark Side is supposed to be more power, not less :-D At this point, even a 50% spirit to spellpower conversion would not be unreasonable--hell, even warlocks get 30% of spirit as spellpower, and they don't even have to spend any talent points to get it.

Oh, and the "raid utility" argument just doesn't hold water anymore either. There's always a retribution paladin or a survival hunter to provide Replenishment, and Balance druids bring not only 3% hit, but also 3% haste, 5% critical strike chance, +13% magic damage against the boss, and the famous "battle rez," all while crushing us on the dps meters. Even Vampiric Embrace is little more than a joke, except perhaps for keeping yourself alive and giving the healers one less target to worry about. The healing it does for the party is laughable at best--the ret pally in my guild that's always at the top of the dps meter is also beating me on the healing meter :-p

I love playing a priest. I love being able to switch specs and step in to heal when one of our regulars is out. I love being challenged--I switched mains from a mage to this character because I wanted something more dynamic and challenging than just pressing two buttons over and over again. But, the way things are now, every day as a shadow priest is less and less fun and more and more frustrating. I sincerely hope that Blizzard hears our voices and does something to help us out.

Tier 9

http://www.wow.com/2009/07/22/mighty-battle-paladin-and-priest-tier-9-sets/#continued

DUDE.
I saw the Alliance priest Tier 9 a while back, but this is the first I'm seeing the Horde priest Tier 9. It does not match a Holy or Disc priest AT ALL.

BUT WHO CARES! I'M SHADOW AND THAT SET WILL LOOK PRETTY SWEET IN SHADOW FORM :D

ARRPEE

I am on an RP server.
I never RP.

Maybe I should.

So I'll start working out stories or whatever for my characters here.

o hai thar

So it's been like two months since I updated.

For a while, raids were going really well. Then people started getting occupied with summer stuff, and stopped coming. The people who were coming got upset that we didn't have enough to raid. We tried raiding with a few people who were only kinda ready (gear-wise) for Ulduar. We had some people talking smack about a few other guild mates, and ended up kicking them from the guild. Some of their friends left too. We lost about 5 DPSers.

Things have just been discouraging overall.

And we still haven't got Thorim down.

We switched to a DKP system, because a LOT of people were getting fussy that people who show up once in a blue moon have been winning gear over those who have been attending constantly.
This is a plus and everyone who is in the guild seems to like it. I think maybe one person quit because of this change. And they were someone who rarely showed up to raids anyway.It's kinda sad to lose them, but if they're gonna quit cause they can't get gear because they never put in the hard work on progression bosses, well then that's the very reason we instituted this DKP system.

But yeah. With these changes, we're kind of building the guild back up again.

Not like we've had problems like this before. Last summer when we were progressing through SSC, we had the same issues. And we survived, and ended up being the first (and only) Horde guild on the server to down Illidan before WotLK.

YEAHPVPIE

Oh man.
I got into a guild premade, and we went into Warsong Gulch... The match lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. It was the most awesome WSG I've ever been in. My DK tanky friend actually had his Fort buff WEAR OFF and I had to re-buff him with it. I got like 7k honor from it @_@

Then we did an Eye of the Storm... I got into a tussle with an elemental shaman at Draenei ruins. It was like that time our two tanks dualed back in the day outside of Mag's. The fight lasted like four minutes, no exaggeration. We just kept healing and damaging, and mana regening. Finally a troll mage came up as back-up for me and the shaman ran away... giving neither of us the kill.

You know what else is awesome? RENTING PVP GEAR. Use badges to get pvp gear, do your PVP stuff, and return it within two hours to get all the badges back. xD

shadowform

I know the icon for shadowform is supposed to be a, like, scary face with glowy green eyes... but to me, it always looked like a chick in shadowform wearing a neon green bikini top.

Good Golly Gosh, is Thorim a wacky fight.

Excellent.
Wednesday night, we head into Ulduar (with me along- yay!) and get down the first six bosses without much effort at all. I am pleased. I mean, for how much we have tarded out in the first couple weeks of this raid, I'm glad we finally are doing well.

Last night, we head in again. Get crazy cat lady (I can never remember her actual name) down in one shot, which I am REALLY pleased by, since that one Saturday two weeks ago we spent all of our raid time doing NOTHING but attempting to just get the pull right.

After that, we headed to Thorim. Golly Governor, is this fight a bitch. We tried it a few times last week after we first killed CCL late Thursday night, but due to crap attendance (AGAIN) we didn't go in on Friday or Saturday. So we got to Thorim at a decent hour this week.

So not only did I get to raid last night, but the other shadow priest in the guild (There's only two of us D: ) was finally finished with schoolwork and stuff so he was able to come along too.

Last night, the officers announced we have one new officer specifically for the healers, which is excellent because our GL is also our MT, three others are melee DPS (enh. shaman, rogue, DK,) two are tanks (paladin and DK,) and our last tank is on a bit of a WoW break since he and his wife just had their first baby (wow, we have a lot of officers. Is that normal?) Our second-in-command, and fiancee to our GL/MT, has a level 80 disc priest for PvP, but mains an enhancement shaman, and occasionally swaps specs and heals when needed. Now, I love her to death, but she can be a bit retarded at healing assignments. For example: putting holydins on raid heals, or just throwing me and the other spriest in with the group with other healers and then when DPS assignments come, forgetting to put us on anything cause we're in with the other holy and disc priests. And she seems to think that- even though she is a shaman healer for our raids- all healers can fade or PW:S themselves. So I am greatly pleased to see that our English professor by day resto shaman by night is now in charge of healers.

Anyway, the point of explaining all that was just to say that after all that, the other shadow priest and I declared ourselves co-presidents of all shadow priests in the guild.

The Thorim fight- which was supposed to be the main focus of this entry- was delicious for me and my shadow buddy. We were assigned to AOE on the little guys, while the other DPSers there were on the big elites. After the first couple tries, in which healers were tarded and stood next to the whirlwinders, My shadow buddy started to mind control the Warbringer adds. These give an aura that increases casting speed, which ended up being just plain silly fast. Like, constant bloodlust. Between him doing that, and my mind sear completely smashing everything, the arena held off really well in about 80% of our attempts. There were, of course, occasional problems, where a healer died, or a tank's taunt missed or he screwed up. But for the most part, it was tunnel that was taking their sweet ol' time in getting to Thorim. There's only so much we can handle before healers run out of mana, raid damage starts to build up, and more and more adds come in.

What I'd like to see is us with another shadow priest T_T If shadow buddy can Mind Control a warbringer for the haste buff, and then I could mind control a evoker to put up heals and that super bubble of theirs, and the other priest can mind sear.
Well, we might not even need another shadow. It could be a holy to MC, since they'd be using the mob's heals, which I've heard are really strong.
And who am I kidding anyway, I was in top 3 DPS on every attempt (even the ones where shadow buddy was mind searing too,) they need me on mind sear xD Save my mind controls for Razuvious (I love that fight.)

Some posts about SPriests in Thorim's Arena:
http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=21336
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8864926726&sid=16



Also, that freakin PUG mage that stole my Gothik's Cowl at Naxx last week is a potential new recruit for our guild. Not sure how I feel about this.

headdesk

And now, two nights in a row where we don't have enough people to do 25 man.
This is getting retarded.

did i do something wrong?

why does the dk that bailed on us as soon as she got what she wanted from naxx but came back right before ulduar keep getting raid invites over me?

is it cause i'm shadow? is it cause i can only top out at 3.7k dps on some bosses? did i make the chick who does raid invites mad somehow? does she want me to stop rolling on gear that would better help mages and warlocks, who can pump out the really big numbers, so they can pump out even bigger numbers? i NEVER stand in the flame wall, i get away from people when i have the light bomb, and 9 times out of 10 when they call to wipe it, i'm still alive.

More info about pants

Got the Legwraps of the Defeated Dragon from Sapph last night. If I gem those, and wear those instead of my tier, the hit means I can replace my chestpiece with Digested Silken Robes that have been sitting around doing nothing. It's not much of a change in spell power, but its about 10 more crit. And if I can get the tier from Kel on Sunday, then I'll just wear those pants and the tier robe and be good on hit.

PISSED, though, that a PUG MAGE beat me out for Gothik's Cowl. I have seen that thing drop maybe TWICE. and he OUTROLLED ME. GOD DAMN IT. T_T There isn't much I want in this game right now more than a new helm.

tier 8 pants

I have determined that I can't use my t8.5 pants just yet T_T
I'm losing almost 300 dps with them on. I ran three seperate tests on the dummies last night before the raid, and the t7 pants are consistently giving me more dps.
Couldn't actually check how it was in raid, since we were on Auriaya and if we wiped on it, we wiped within 3 seconds of the pull. Such a sensitive pull! Much worse than Fathom Lord back in SSC, and that one was touchy as hell.

I think it's that I just don't have enough haste stacked up to make it worth it yet. Mostly cause I tended to chose crit gear over stuff with haste. The crit of my t7.5 pants seems to be more beneficial at this point. Maybe once I get more haste, or if I get another piece of tier that the set bonus would make up for it.

ok

In a MUCH better mood after slaughtering three lvl 80 paladins out in Venture Bay. A dwarf pally came along and attacked me while I was trying to take the flag, I killed him and he did not return. Started to do the daily, saw another one attacking NPCs. Killed him without any resistance. He came back with a friend. I brought my warrior friend.... but he was at 1k latency and couldn't do much of anything. I ended up taking out both paladins at once. One prot, one ret. It was awesome. They kept coming back and we killed them both maybe 4 times.

Then some other horde came around, so they stopped getting uppity at us. A few times they rezzed, then immediately got on their flying mounts and went up in the air. ...I flew up to where they were, Shadow Word: Pain'd em then levitated to the ground. For some reason, they didn't fly away or anything. And they certainly couldn't land to try to heal. So they just died up there when the dot ticked away at them. Oh I am horrible.

And the person who got the robes is my darling blonde belfy priest twin, so that's a plus side :3

feh.

I should have known this would happen.


We were low on ranged DPS last week. People just didn't show up Friday or Saturay, probably because they thought we'd just end up wiping. So we started recruiting, mostly to send a message like "HEY! Start showing up, cause we'll replace you if you don't."

And we ended up recruiting a new boomkin, which is great because our one boomkin changed to a DK, the other is off training for some secret government job, and the other is dealing with finishing high school and getting ready for college so she can't raid anymore.

But tonight, the new boomkin got an invite to raid, along with some of the people who were not present at all last week- the very people who are the reason that we had to start recruiting- and I did not.


...


and the fucking robes of the umbral brute dropped.
i didnt even get a chance to roll on them.

getting there....

Guild is slowly regaining competence at difficult boss fights. Got Razorscale down Wednesday night, and got Deconstructor tonight. Had some really good attempts at Ignis, but had to stop attempts on him because we just didn't have enough tanks for the adds.
So we moved on to Kologarn, but by then it was late, and people were already pretty spent from the other fights. But this fight seems like it will be much easier than the other ones we've done so far. We got two good tries in before we had to call it for the night.

I freakin' hope we can drop Kologarn tomorrow night. LOOK WHAT HE DROPS- Robes of the Umbral Brute!! Those are the most beautiful freakin robes. They look AWESOME. Not that you'd ever see the detail if I wore them. They'd look all purple and see-through just like every other dress I wear.

Oh! I almost forgot to say something! I GOT MY TIER 8.5 PANTS OFFA THE NEW VoA BOSS :D Our other guild shadow priest wasn't there, so they pretty much got defaulted to me. Not that it would have mattered, I rolled a freakin 94. I NEVER roll that good on ANYTHING that counts. Hope I can pull a roll like that out again if/when those robes drop from Kolgarn.

Updates from Ulduar

FINALLY got Razorscale down. And we got through the Deconstructor's stupid lame-o trash.

About to take our first attempt on Deconstructor.


and 1.5 hrs later- got him down to around 15% three times. we'd best get him down tomorrow.

ugh

Our guild is tarding out in Ulduar.
We tried to go in Tuesday night, but no one had their addons they were used to, and 80% of the raid had latency up around 2k.

We came back Wednesday night, tore through the siege engine part and got Flame Leviathan down. This seemed to give us a false sense of security. Because when we went onto the Deconstructor, we failed horribly. People didn't attack the adds during the adds phase, they didn't run out of the group when they got gravity or light bomb.... we wiped maybe 10 times. We gave up and tried Razorscale instead.
Razorscale was just stupid. People standing in the flames was the hugest problem. We'd be 30 seconds into the fight and 5 people would be dead. I couldn't even DPS cause I throwing bubbles up on people to try to give them more time to move out of the fire. We gave up for the night, figuring we'd do better the next night when we were fresh to the fight and didn't already have nearly a dozen wipes fresh in our minds.

Thursday night, I was a bit pissy. I left anime club early so that I could help out on raiding. Only to find out that I didn't get invited. Who got a DPS spot instead? A DK that had gotten the Armageddon out of Naxx a few months back, started having "internet problems" that miraculously cleared up a week before Ulduar came out. SHE got invited along rather than me or either of our two DPS warriors, when the officers have been saying since news of 3.1 and Ulduar came out that invites to Ulduar will be based upon attendance to Maly, Naxx and Sarth.
But my disappointment didn't last long when I saw that they were trying that new boss in VoA.... for like an hour and a half. It was nearly 9:30 and they were STILL in VoA. It was a typical thing of ours, to go hit up VoA before Naxx and get the quick badges, and some gear for someone. BUT THEY WERE IN THERE FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF.
I eventually get a whisper from our guild second-in-command, asking if I wanna come to the raid. I hesitantly say yes. I get to VoA, and we try that new boss in there. We wipe after less than a minute. WTF is goign on?! Why are we sucking so bad?
At that point, we were about to lose Wintergrasp, so we leave and go to Ulduar. Same problems that night as the previous night. We kept losing the SAME people over and over. Like, really? is it THAT HARD to notice your character is in the fire? And DON'T tell me your computer can't handle having the graphics up enough to see the fire. If MY computer can handle it, ANY computer can. And my computer is held together with STRING AND ELECTRICAL TAPE.


Friday and Saturday? Didn't have enough DPS. Had to cancel raid.

RAAAAAGE

Good lord, I hope this week is better.

ULDUAR!

First impressions of Ulduar. Too tired to make actual thoughts go.

Well, this is laggy. We'll come back Wednesday night to do it.
Helloooo Ulduar!
This is kinda cool, we're in TANKS!
Yeah, first boss down! That was pretty easy. Maybe this won't be too bad.
Ouch!
OH GOD.
MY SPLEEN
WHERE'S MY DPS? Oh, right, I can't do any cause I'M DEAD
GET AWAY FROM ME YOU HAVE THE LIGHT BOMB
CRAP GET THE ADS!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ok, see you again tomorrow night, Ulduar.

two quick 3.1 thoughts.

First off- TIER 8.

2 piece, good.
4 piece, wtf.

Improved Mind Blast

For some reason, MMO-champion has Improved Mind Blast listed as creating Nightscape Shoulders.



If I got a level 37 green in my inventory every time I casted Mind Blast, I would be a grumpy spriest. >:[

3.1 IS MAKING ME A GIDDY SCHOOL GIRL

• Shadowform now gives the the periodic damage from your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage.
• Mind Melt now also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain spells by 3/6%.

Okay, ain't no one that can call this a nerf now. This sounds awesome.
Gonna try the PTR momentarily.

PvP Changes for 3.1

Saw these changes up on MMO-Champion:

• Psychic Horror (New Skill) - You terrify the target, causing them to tremble in horror for 3 sec and drop all weapons for 10 sec. (16% of base mana, 30 yd range, Instant cast, 1 min cooldown)
• Vampiric Touch now cause 680 damage (at Rank 5) if the effect is dispelled.
• Shadow Affinity now gives the priest 5% of his base mana when his Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch spells are dispelled.

Definitely improvements, and definitely geared towards PvP.

Psychic Horror to be a skill in and of itself means that we now have two fear effects, and the weapon drop- that is pretty significant against them warriors and DKs that always seem to tear my face off in two seconds flat.

One of the problems with shadow in PvP is that we rely on our DoTs ticking. We have little to no front end damage. And if our DoTs are dispelled, then we have nothing. So allowing the spells to do damage, and restore the mana we spent on the spell, upon dispelling- that's quite nice.


I won't be posting too much about shadow PvP in general, because I really do not PvP. And once dual specs come out, I will have a disc/holy build as my secondary spec for PvP and general healing (since our guild seems to be losing healers for various reasons.)

ugh.

I tried making a wordpress blog instead, since I felt the options here on blogspot were, I dunno, limited. That site is like trying to wrestle your way out of a mile long sheet of bubble wrap. I'm sticking here with blogspot.

PTR!

So I finally got on the PTR, and I'm messing around with some stuff.

My SP is currently 1941 (with inner fire up,) and crit is 20.5%

I'd like to put up some completely unbuffed numbers, but finding a target dummy with out a warlock putting up curse of elements or something like that is pretty impossible right now.

My DPS on a training dummies is around 2.5k. That's about the average of all the attempts I made. Sometimes there were debuffs on it from other people fighting it, sometimes there weren't. So I did about 5 attempts and took the average.

Here's what my spells are hitting for on the PTR: (all numbers are rounded

....................hit...crit..DoT Tick..DoT crit
Shadow Word: Pain................1000......1500...
Vampiric Touch...................1300......2000...
Devouring Plague....900...1400....800......****...
Mind Flay........................1300......2500...
Mind Blast.........2400...5400....................


*****I can't seem to make it crit at all. DP WHY WON'T YOU CRIT.



Here's what my spells are hitting for on live: (all numbers are rounded)

....................hit...crit..DoT Tick..DoT crit
Shadow Word: Pain................1450.......n/a...
Vampiric Touch...................1400.......n/a...
Devouring Plague..................800.......n/a...
Mind Flay........................1000......2000...
Mind Blast.........2000...4000....................


You know, looking at these numbers... in order for it to be an accurate test, I need to get on a dummy on the PTR where warlocks aren't putting up curse of elements. I swear, they put it on EVERY SINGLE dummy. even the level 60 ones they aren't fighting. Just to throw me off, I bet D:

(Changed to a weird courier thing instead of an actual table, because it was making HUUUUGE gaps in my post)

more 3.1 spriest info

From this bluuuue post:

I think Shadow priests will be in a good place. For PvP they got a much-needed tweak to Psychic Horror, but I won't spoil it here.

For PvE, I think the changes will help their scaling in the long run. I suggested in another thread that we might need to make their Shadow spells crit at 200% in order for the Shadowform change to actually be a buff. But we are fully committed to having the dots crit. The game just works better that way.

The Shadow Ulduar 4 piece set bonus is pretty sweet too.


4 piece set bonus!? OH BOY I hope it makes greater heal have an additional 10% chance to crit! Cause seriously, that would be as useful as the Naxx 4 piece set bonus.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound grumpy. I really am liking what I'm reading so far.
Psychic horror... I suck at PvP, this has been established, and maybe it's because I never spec for it. I've never had psychic horror. But for the sake of my fellow shadow priests, I really hope that we become more than a wet paper bag in PvP.

As for the shadowform changes- I am not big on math. I used to be wonderful with numbers and math and equations... anymore, I could care less. So I'm not going to sit here and calculate out the difference between the constant addition to DoT damage based on crit percentage, or the ability to just flat out crit. Instead, I'm gonna just try it out. Once I get my character copied to the PTR, I'll spend 5 minutes with my normal rotation on a target dummy on the live servers, then the same thing on the PTR. And just look at the numbers myself. I'm math saavvy enough to be able to look at two numbers and know which one is bigger than the other.

I'm not gonna QQ too much until I see how things work in practice.

Pain and Suffering

Is it just me, or does the new icon for the Pain and Suffering talent look kind of like a cubicle?



Is Blizz trying to say something here?

3.1 WHAT

From MMOChampion:

• Dispersion (Tier 11) now clears all snare and movement impairing effects when cast, and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
• Shadowform (Tier 7) now gives your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit.
• Darkness moved from Tier 6 to Tier 1.
• Silence (Tier 5) range increased to 30 yards. (Previously was 20 yards)
• Vampiric Embrace (Tier 5) now lasts 5 mins. (Previously lasted 1 min)
• Spirit Tap (Tier 1) now increases mana regeneration while casting by 87%. (Previously 50%)
• Improved Spirit Tap (Tier 1) increases mana regeneration while casting by 17/33%. (Previously 10/20%)
• *New Talent* Improved Devouring Plague, Tier 6, 3 point talent - Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.

SW:P, DP, and VT can crit.
I am still not sure if this is a nerf or a buff. At first glance, it seems very very buffy- spell that ticks can now crit?! FAAABULOUS

But then.... The old shadow form used to read "Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch abilities deal increased percentage damage equal to your spell critical strike chance." New 3.1 SF does not have this.

Now, if Shadow Power increased the crit bonus of those three spells in addition to Mind Blast, Mind Flay and SW:D, I think we'd have a real winner.

So I'll have to see which is better, the 25%ish increase in damage from those DoTs, or those DoTs critting 25% of the time.

The change to DP is pretty cool all around I think. It's especially pretty good for PvP where we have little to no front end damage and instead have to rely on the DoTs ticking away, and usually by the time they've ticked enough to do serious damage we have ret pallys and DKs teabagging our lifeless un-shadowy corpses. Not saying that the front-end damage addition to DP is going to prevent said teabagging, but it is a very nice addition, and should be wonderful for DPS in raids as well.

I'm interested to see if that intial damage with DP will be able to crit.... probably, since DP is crittable now. If so, DP is definately back to being combined with Inner Focus. I started using Inner Focus then DP to help conserve mana back at the start of raiding in WotLK. But as my mana regen and INT increased with better gear and I started not having mana issues, I started to use inner focus with Mind Blast, just to get the crit bonus. So now if I can use the 100% mana reduction and make the crit useful on DP, that will be very very nice- and I'll have to not resort to using pots, arcane torrent, or dispersion in the middle of a fight anymore.

Those are my thoughts as of now, and they'll surely change once I come to a few more realizations about the updates- and they'll definately change once 3.1 goes live and I'm playing it.


This will probably be my new build.

My gear wishlist

Head:
Hood of Rationality

Chest:
Gown of the Spell-Weaver or Robes of Mutation

Neck:
Cosmic Lights

Wrist:
Bands of Impurity

Trinket:
Illustration of the Dragon Soul

Weapon:
Torch of Holy Fire or Hammer of the Astral Plane

Offhand:
Accursed spine

Oh thank god.

Good news everyone.

The ice stone has melted.

I know you were all worried about it, but it's melted now so we can all relax.

Topics I want to cover

• The new and improved (as of WotLK, and as of 3.0.9) Inner Fire!
• Threat reduction via shadow affinity, and shadow form
• Shadow form in general
• Love is in the Air!
• WHAT? I have to worry about crit now too?!
• "Mana battery" no more?
• Mana regen- dispersion, arcane torrent (I DO LIKE BEING A BELF SOMETIMES,) shadowfiend, etc.
• Spirit
• Glyphs
• Lore
• i suck at pvp
  

Shadow Focus and Misery

This may be a bit of a "duh," but spell hit is one of the first stats you should stack at 80. It doesn't matter how hard your spells can hit or how often they crit if they're missing half the time.

Shadow priests get two talents that increase hit:
Misery at rank 3, which increases your chance to hit with spells by 3%, and
Shadow Focus at rank 3, which is another 3%.

Here are the numbers for how much hit you'll need:

• 289.55 hit is the cap with 6 points between Shadow Focus and Misery
• 314.78 hit before you can go to 5 points
  
• 341.02 hit before you can go to 4 points
  
• 367.25 hit before you can go to 3 points
• 393.48 hit before you can go to 2 points
  
• 419.71 hit before you can go to 1 point
  
• 445.94 hit before you can go to 0 points
  

(taken from Shadowpriest.com)

Back in Burning Crusade, it was okay to add more hit on your gear then take points out of Shadow Focus to put into other talents. Now that we're in WotLK, it's just dumbtarded to take points out of either of these skills.

Shadow Focus, in addition to the hit, reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by 6%. I guess if you've got nearly 400 hit, and like a bazillion mana that you can afford to throw around, feel free to drop Shadow Focus and pick up, I dunno, like Improved Psychic Scream and Silence.

Misery... don't throw this out. Even if you do have the 446 hit (which I don't know WHY you would stack that much hit.) Misery is a debuff that goes on the mob that you're fighting, which not only helps you, but every other caster in the raid. But here's the really great part about Misery: it increases the damage of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by an amount equal to 15% of your spell power. And what, you hate when your spells hit for a buttload or something?

Because of the wonderful bonuses that come along with the hit of Shadow Focus and Misery, there is really NO point to go for more than the 290 hit cap in order to put points anywhere else.

My guess is that shadow priests in BC were complaining about how Shadow Focus (which used to be,.. what was it, 8%? and that was our hit talent) was kind of useless compared to other talents that we could take to up our DPS, and other casters were complaining that SPriests got SO much free hit just out of talents.
I honestly had no problem with the way it was in BC, it made getting hit capped easier than hearthing. I was OVER hit capped without even trying, which meant I was free to stack as much spell power as humanly possible.
Now, in WotLK, I'm still a few points short of the hit cap, and I'm having a bit of trouble managing to get the hit without sacrificing too much crit or spell power.

Though, I am hitting like a semi-truck now, compared to the motorbike that I was back in BC. So out of BC hit talents vs. WotLK hit talents, I'd take WotLK any day.

Intro

Hello. In real life, I am a fifth year college student, studying communications media. I am currently lacking in the imagination needed to produce a better introduction.

In World of Warcraft, I play a blood elf shadow priest that goes by the name of Tsululu (The "Tsu" in Tsululu is like the "Tsu" in tsunami. So it's best pronounced as if the T wasn't there at all. )

I often times wish that I had picked a troll instead of a blood elf. Though I certainly would miss my arcane torrent if I were a troll. But a troll would be so much more badass.

The server I play on is Farstriders, an RP server with little to no RP ever taking place. Alliance outnumbers Horde about 3 to 1, and their guilds are always higher ranked than ours. This server is absurdly slow at raid progression. Seriously. No one on it killed Illidan until about a month before WotLK came out. And I'm pretty sure that to this day, no one has killed Kil'jaeden on Farstriders. At the end of Burning Crusade, this server was ranked last out of all US servers.

The guild that I am in, Ex Obscurum, is the top ranked Horde guild on this dinky server. We are one of two guilds that has killed 25-man Malygos, and the only Horde guild that has done so.
We started out in February 2008 as a sort of casual raiding guild, to just do Karazhan, ZA, and other such raiding. But thanks to some dedication on part of guild members, (and Blizz nerfing all the health of the raid bosses at the end of BC) we became the only Horde guild on the server to kill Illidan.

THIS

This is my World of Warcraft-y blog. More specifically, this is my shadow priest-centric World of Warcraft-y blog.

That will be all for now.