Shadow Priest 8.3

[Valks 2,375]

This thread is for comments about our Shadow Priest guide.

[Guest recca01982]

Reading over this guide because,... well,... I suck at Shadow Priest.

Came across this issue.  

 

When in  Voidform

1. Cast  Void Bolt whenever available.
2. Cast  Mind Blast whenever available and when  Void Bolt is on cooldown.
3. Cast  Mindbender whenever available.    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Talent isn't chosen in the build. Lingering Insanity is chosen insteady
4. Cast  Shadowfiend whenever available.
5. Cast  Mind Flay when there is nothing else to cast.

[jrnewhouse 0]

Mangaza's Madness has been changed to grant an extra charge of Shadow Word: Void instead of Mind Blast.  As such, the advice in the guide regarding always choosing the talent Fortress of the Mind when equipping it is now incorrect.  How does this affect it's current rating as the best legendary for Shadow Priests?

[Isentropy 2]

20 hours ago, Guest recca01982 said:

Reading over this guide because,... well,... I suck at Shadow Priest.

Came across this issue.  

 

When in  Voidform

1. Cast  Void Bolt whenever available.
2. Cast  Mind Blast whenever available and when  Void Bolt is on cooldown.
3. Cast  Mindbender whenever available.    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Talent isn't chosen in the build. Lingering Insanity is chosen insteady
4. Cast  Shadowfiend whenever available.
5. Cast  Mind Flay when there is nothing else to cast.

Hi, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Upon further contemplation, I've decided to adjust the talent advice and fixed the rotation accordingly.

 

19 hours ago, jrnewhouse said:

Mangaza's Madness has been changed to grant an extra charge of Shadow Word: Void instead of Mind Blast.  As such, the advice in the guide regarding always choosing the talent Fortress of the Mind when equipping it is now incorrect.  How does this affect it's current rating as the best legendary for Shadow Priests?

 

Hey, that advice is not incorrect. Mangaza's Madness adds an additional charge to Shadow Word: Void, but this isn't very valuable in the grand scheme of things because the main value from adding charges is in removing the Void Bolt munching that occurs very often without using Mangaza's Madness/Shadow Word: Void. The third charge you'd gain from using Mangaza's Madness and Shadow Word: Void at the same time doesn't add onto this if you will, it just means that you could save up one additional charge for some extra burst as an example - for overall damage though, it doesn't really matter. As such, Fortress of the Mind is still the recommended talent to take if you are wearing Mangaza's Madness (the gear section briefly goes over when you want to use what legendary).

To add to what I just said, any time you are not using Mangaza's Madness, you will want to pick Shadow Word: Void instead. 

[Guest Mermers]

I don't understand this rotation. I don't have shadowfiend. Am I missing something? I don't even have Mindflay

[Isentropy 2]

On 7/31/2018 at 7:43 PM, Guest Mermers said:

I don't understand this rotation. I don't have shadowfiend. Am I missing something? I don't even have Mindflay

 

Hi Mermers, I'm happy to help with anything about the rotation you may not quite understand; could you specify for me what you need more explanation on?

In regards to Shadowfiend: are you using the talent Mindbender? Mindbender replaces Shadowfiend completely so if you don't have Shadowfiend at all then my first guess is that is what's happening. What's also a possibility is that you're not level 40 yet, which is the level you learn Shadowfiend at.

In regards to Mind Flay: I'm not entirely sure what's up with that. As soon as you spec into Shadow at level 10, you learn Mind Flay so it should be in your spellbook somewhere.

[Guest gredegos]

great guide.

[Rafim 0]

I just wanna point out, that you have Dark Ascension Azerite Armor build instead of the Legace of the Void. 

[Isentropy 2]

2 hours ago, Rafim said:

I just wanna point out, that you have Dark Ascension Azerite Armor build instead of the Legace of the Void. 

Yeah, I noticed this as well when I was already lying in bed last night. We made the same mistake in the Warcraftpriests post too ?

 

Regardless, thank you for pointing it out, it is much appreciated! The fix should be up sometime later today.

 

[Guest Treesaucelover]

On 7/16/2018 at 5:52 AM, Blainie said:

This thread is for comments about our Shadow Priest guide for the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch.

Hi there! I’m doing questing to level and dungeons (no beta as I wanted to see it fresh) and I’ve noticed that my dps is better for burst, single target, multi target and +3minutes encounters with a different rotation and talent set up. I also don’t see haste as a priority anymore as once I reach 10+ stacks during voidform I reach the gcd of 1 second. Character seen here https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/stormrage/Chales

Rotation is:

Dark Void

S Word Void x 2

(This gets me into void form territory)

Void Eruption/Immediately Void Bolt after

then priority kicks in:

Void Bolt

S-Word Void

S-Word Death

Dark Void

S-Word Pain

Vampiric Touch

This is without accounting for Azerite gear enhancers, of which so far the S-Word Pain damage increase is my favourite. 

I’ve been “real world” testing it like mad trying to prove myself wrong but I’m first on the meters  and pulling what I think are really decent dungeon numbers for my level (8k+ single and 12k mob depending on length). I do see switching to StM for raid gifts but still think this rotation+priority sequence will win out because of the quick void generation and continuity.

I’m looking for debate on this post with some testing against my data if possible.

As always thank you for your efforts in these guides and posts!!  

 

[Isentropy 2]

Hi Treesaucelover,

You mention a different talent set-up and different rotation, but both the talents you list and the rotation you mention boils down to the same that I mention in my guide. The priority for Shadow can be summarized as keeping your DoTs up, keeping Void Bolt and Mind Blast on cooldown, and then using any active talents you may have picked, in your case Dark Void and Shadow Word: Death; all in that order. There is no real deviation from this, as Shadow's rotation is entirely static without procs and relies entirely on what is simply mathematically better to press first. I don't specifically mention an opener rotation in my guide, which is because it simply does not matter that much. If you follow the priority as stated in the guide it ends up the same - casting Dark Void before Vampiric Touch and Mind Blast/Shadow Word: is not better, nor is it much worse.

The same mathematical reason goes for stats: while you can sometimes reasonably guess what stat a spec might particularly like, at the end of the day the most reliable way to determine what stat is best is through sims. Real world data is important too and it tends to corroborate what Simcraft says in this regard, so it is not like theorycrafters only look at what sims say and blindly follow them. Furthermore, in order to get to a global cooldown of 1 second you need 50% haste, which you will not be able to get at your current haste from gear at 10 Voidform stacks. The global cooldown was also lowered to 0.75 seconds (which you get to at 100% haste) and it does not really have a big impact on the value of haste for Shadow in the first place, though it is always advised to sim your own character to find out when more or less of a stat is desirable.

For dungeons, Shadow Crash is almost strictly better than Shadow Word: Death for the simple reason that Shadow Crash scales with additional targets way better than Shadow Word: Death does. Shadow Word: Death will not be behind much on a boss fight, but the loss in damage on trash will not outweigh any gain that Shadow Word: Death could theoretically give you on a boss fight. This does not mean that Shadow Word: Death is a bad talent, it's just more situational in its use.

Thanks for the comment!

[Guest Neptys]

Hi,

New shadow priest player here. I read the whole guide to know what to do but there is a question i didn't see answered in the guide. Admitting i have a mind blast or a void bolt coming up while my mind flay is firing, should i interrupt mind flay cast in favor of those two, or should i wait for mind flay to finish before casting those two?

 

Thanxs for the guide!

Neptys

[Guest NNN]

Hi, I do not see the trait 'Depth of the Shadows' listed in your composite rankings, was it possibly renamed since they were made or is it missing?

[Isentropy 2]

On 8/25/2018 at 2:56 AM, Guest Neptys said:

Hi,

New shadow priest player here. I read the whole guide to know what to do but there is a question i didn't see answered in the guide. Admitting i have a mind blast or a void bolt coming up while my mind flay is firing, should i interrupt mind flay cast in favor of those two, or should i wait for mind flay to finish before casting those two?

 

Thanxs for the guide!

Neptys

Hey Neptys, Mind Flay is the last spell on our priority list and as such, it is always worth cancelling over other spells more important than it; in your example, if Void Bolt/Mind Blast come off cooldown as you’re channeling Mind Flay then you definitely want to cancel it early. There is no need to completely finish a channel of Mind Flay as it deals its damage in 4 ticks over the course of its duration. Mind Flay lasts 2 globals total (exact time in seconds depends on your haste) and it does 2 ticks of damage per global, so cancelling it after a global is not a loss at all.

This can be tough to convey properly in a priority list, and as this is a question that pops up more often I’ll add a section about it to the FAQ. Thanks for your comment!

[Isentropy 2]

12 hours ago, Guest NNN said:

Hi, I do not see the trait 'Depth of the Shadows' listed in your composite rankings, was it possibly renamed since they were made or is it missing?

Hey, Depth of the Shadows is technically a trait you can pick as Shadow, but as it does nothing for our damage and only affects the healing of Shadow Mend, it does not appear in any of the trait rankings. Only traits that affect DPS output are ranked. I could add it to the list of all the traits for the sake of completion, but in reality you should never take this trait as Shadow over other choices anyway; if Depth of the Shadows appears on your Azerite gear you will get the pick between one Shadow specific trait (as it is a trait shared between Shadow and Discipline) and a generic trait as well.

[Guest D-Preist]

I have been playing a Spriest for a while now and have the dps down. But I don't know when its optimal to pop VE. I time it right before I either use Voidform or when I hit about 10 stacks in voidform to try to push the most damage out of it but I feel like it does little to nothing on the meters even if I take San'layn. Any tips or tricks?

[Guest Skullkid]

Hi, 

The uldir guide recommends to take auspicious spirits with the right amount of crit. About how much crit % do you think is required for auspicious spirits? And what are good targets in general for haste and crit.

 

Also thanks for explaining that the gcd decreases with haste, didn’t realize that. 

[Isentropy 2]

On 9/5/2018 at 6:18 AM, Guest D-Preist said:

I have been playing a Spriest for a while now and have the dps down. But I don't know when its optimal to pop VE. I time it right before I either use Voidform or when I hit about 10 stacks in voidform to try to push the most damage out of it but I feel like it does little to nothing on the meters even if I take San'layn. Any tips or tricks?

The best time to use Vampiric Embrace is when you are in Voidform and when you have lots of DoTs out on targets, as the damage of your DoTs also contributes to Vampiric Embrace healing. There is no real other trick to it - rule of thumb is definitely to only use it while inside Voidform, but the amount of stacks you use it at does not really matter (except if you use it a second before you drop out of Voidform, then that's not so ideal ?).

Vampiric Embrace is mostly useful utility when you're playing solo or when you're playing in a group of up to 5 people. If you use it in a raid, it can be a bit mediocre sometimes. In dungeons as an example, you can get some amazing healing from it if you use it at the right time, especially if you pair it with San'layn.

 

11 hours ago, Guest Skullkid said:

Hi, 

The uldir guide recommends to take auspicious spirits with the right amount of crit. About how much crit % do you think is required for auspicious spirits? And what are good targets in general for haste and crit.

 

Also thanks for explaining that the gcd decreases with haste, didn’t realize that. 

 

On single-target, Auspicious Spirits tends to pull ahead in sims when you are at around 18% crit or higher, but the difference is minimal enough on that whole row for both Shadow Crash and Shadow Word: Death to stay close. You can also see this if you look at logs for Shadow in Uldir - the talent variety is pretty crazy. We'll have to wait and see if that settles down and we can give more definitive answers. 

As for haste and crit numbers, you just want as much of both as possible, ideally keeping both of them fairly equal in rating. Mastery and versatility are both so behind that you do not really reach a point where you go: ok, enough haste and crit.

[Guest Slimeseason]

Been simming myself on raidbots now and am flummoxed over what robe to use. The robe that I've been using up to this point is the Reborn Serpent one, with Thunderous Blast and flat mastery traits (340). I thought this was BiS for shadow, but my sims are telling me that another pair I have, which has the traits Dagger in the Back and Heed My Call, offers more dps. I was just wondering if i was looking at this wrong or something or if Heed My Call is just that much stronger than the passive mastery trait that it pulls the whole robe ahead of the Reborn Serpent robe.

[Isentropy 2]

On 9/16/2018 at 8:28 AM, Guest Slimeseason said:

Been simming myself on raidbots now and am flummoxed over what robe to use. The robe that I've been using up to this point is the Reborn Serpent one, with Thunderous Blast and flat mastery traits (340). I thought this was BiS for shadow, but my sims are telling me that another pair I have, which has the traits Dagger in the Back and Heed My Call, offers more dps. I was just wondering if i was looking at this wrong or something or if Heed My Call is just that much stronger than the passive mastery trait that it pulls the whole robe ahead of the Reborn Serpent robe.

Hey,

So if you look at the values of the traits in the guide, you'll see that Heed My Call is quite a bit better than Blood Siphon. It's very well possible that this causes the Heed My Call/Dagger in the Back combo to sim better. However, there's something to bear in mind here, namely that SimCraft (so Raidbots as well) assumes that Dagger in the Back always hits the back of the target. This significantly boosts the damage the trait does. We have the value of Dagger in the Back hitting the front of the target as well in the chart, and you can see that that makes it drop down quite a bit. In practice it's rather unlikely that all of your Dagger in the Back hits will hit the back of the target, unless you specifically play around it. This doesn't tend to be worth it.

In this case, assuming that both chests are equal item level, I would just roll with the Thunderous Blast/Blood Siphon chest.

[Guest Spam It Harder]

This has ALWAYS been my goto macro for channeling abilities 

#showtooltip
/cast [nochanneling:Mind Flay] Mind Flay

You can just spam it and never have to worry about cutting it short!
You can also remove the Mind Flay after nochanneling if you want.  This will make it so if you're channeling anything as opposed to only Mind Flay .  Hope everyone else finds it useful too!

Works great for any channeling ability!  Just replace Mind Flay with any channeled ability!

Example: 
#showtooltip
/cast [nochanneling:Mind Sear] Mind Sear

[Farmbuyer 1]

The spriest "Trait Rankings" section has a pair of charts, showing various values in orange, blue, and red.  But there's no explanation of what those colors are supposed to mean, other than "higher total is better".

 

[Isentropy 2]

On 10/14/2018 at 10:25 PM, Farmbuyer said:

The spriest "Trait Rankings" section has a pair of charts, showing various values in orange, blue, and red.  But there's no explanation of what those colors are supposed to mean, other than "higher total is better".

 

Hi,

As the name of the chart says, it shows stacking traits - each bar represents one stack of the trait and the DPS that gives you. The blue bar is the value of one of that trait, the red is the value of two of that trait, and the orange is the value of three of that trait. I suppose I can make this a bit clearer in the actual guide. Thanks for your comment and I hope that this is cleared up for now!

[Guest Entimidator]

A couple questions about Vampiric Embrace:  Does VE heal one ally (as the tooltip in game describes), or the entire party/raid (as you've stated in your guide)? 

Further, if it only heals one ally, is it completely random, or is there a method to the madness?

I read in a previous comment in this forum you stated VE is mediocre at best in a raid environment, which to me sounds like VE only heals one target.  In conclusion, would VE even be viable outside of world content?  Since you can't target and "cast" VE on an ally, you potentially throw away a GCD to pop VE in hopes you heal the person that needs the heal.

Thanks in advance,

[Isentropy 2]

18 hours ago, Guest Entimidator said:

A couple questions about Vampiric Embrace:  Does VE heal one ally (as the tooltip in game describes), or the entire party/raid (as you've stated in your guide)? 

Further, if it only heals one ally, is it completely random, or is there a method to the madness?

I read in a previous comment in this forum you stated VE is mediocre at best in a raid environment, which to me sounds like VE only heals one target.  In conclusion, would VE even be viable outside of world content?  Since you can't target and "cast" VE on an ally, you potentially throw away a GCD to pop VE in hopes you heal the person that needs the heal.

Thanks in advance,

Hi there, I don't think I specifically say that Vampiric Embrace heals the whole party or raid at the same time in my guide. I checked after reading your comment and couldn't find it, but I wouldn't rule out that I missed it. I'll copy and paste what I wrote in Spell Summary, as this may have been what caused your confusion, and then elaborate on what I mean by that.

 

Quote

Vampiric Embrace heals allies based on 85% of the single-target damage you do on a 2-minute cooldown. This is particularly useful in solo or up to 5-man content, but can also be useful for raids.

When I say that Vampiric Embrace heals allies, I don't mean that it heals the whole party or raid every tick - just that it heals your allies in general. It doesn't always heal the same person. I can see why this could be a bit confusing so I'll adjust the wording.

Vampiric Embrace heals one person per tick and the person it chooses to heal is entirely random. Unfortunately there is no way to make it do what you want, and yes this does diminish its usefulness for raiding. It can indeed feel pretty bad to spend a global on it when the return feels mediocre there. That being said, it's still a nice tool to have; the healing can situationally be useful in raids and you should definitely not overlook it by default. The opportunity cost in regards to DPS is rather minor, as you only lose the damage and Insanity of one Mind Flay global; a small impact on your overall damage. This is being slightly improved in 8.1 as Vampiric Embrace now grants you 6 Insanity when you use it, which is equal to the Insanity a global of Mind Flay would give you. 

Hope this helps!