WHATS UP SHADOW PUNKS

IT'S 3.3.3

SHADOW PRIESTS ARE RAPE MACHINES

CATACLYSM IS SOON

WUT WUT WUT

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.