Brief overview of Shadow Priest basics:

Combat Ratings - Level 80:

1% hit = 26.23 hit rating
1% haste = 32.79 haste rating
1% crit = 45.91 crit rating

Gemming -

Based on a Value 1 Scale. Also note that once Hit Cap is achieved its value becomes nil.

Spell Power…..........1.00
Hit….......................1.41
Haste…...................1.00
Critical….................0.88
Spirit…....................0.58
Intelligence…..........0.27

Red gem slots:
Runed Cardinal  - 23

Yellow gem slots:
Reckless Ametrine  - 21.8

Blue gem slots: (if used for Metagem or using at least 6sp socketbonus)

Purified Dreadstone  - 17.9 (needed to activate metagem)

Metagem:
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond

9000*0.35*(209%/200%-100%) = 11000*0.35*0.045 = 173.25 dps = 83.25 PP
10.2 PP penalty for using two blue gems instead of red gems -> 70 + 21*0.76 = 85.96
Math courtesy of Shadowpriest.com

Achieving Hit Cap -

Its a pretty simple feat to achieve.
Lets assume you take 3/3 Focus and 3/3 Misery which at this point, you should be or you probably need to rethink your spec choices.

289 hit is the cap with points between Shadow Focus and Misery

Hit cap is huge, make sure before you begin to raid that you have at least obtained the Hit cap, even if you are drastically lacking in other areas.

Glyphing -

Now depending on your play style you have the basic 2 Glyphs that you will always use. And then you have the 2 that can change depending on however you feel best fits you.

The Essentials:
Glyph of Mind Flay
Glyph of Shadow

The Variables:
Glyph of Dispersion
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

The variables can be used depending purely on your decision of how you like to deal with mana regen, i would recommend if your gear does not support infinite mana to go with the dispersion glyph. This also can help if you can’t seem to stay alive.

Enchants -

Weapon -
[Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower]
[Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower]
[Enchant Weapon - Black Magic]

Helm -
[Arcanum of Burning Mysteries]

Shoulders -
[Greater Inscription of the Storm]

Chest -
[Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]

Cloak -
[Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed]

Bracers -
[Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower]

Gloves -
[Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower]

Legs -
[Brilliant Spellthread]

Boots -
[Enchant Boots - Tuskarr’s Vitality]

Belt -
[Eternal Belt Buckle]

Rotations -

Now will I’ve been asked about my rotation / opener before i have never really gone in depth as to *why* i do what i do. To start with, a Shadow Priest is less about Rotation and more about weighing priority’s. That being said, below is the highest weighted abilities to lowest.

1. Shadow Word: Pain *ignore this after the first application assuming you have full shadow weaving and Tap*

2. Vampiric Touch - This is your highest dps dot, maintaining it takes priority, if you have the option of a Mind Blast or reapplying your Touch. Then you best be spamming the Vamp Touch.

3. Devouring Plague - This still is favored higher priority then 4/5

4. Mind Blast - Use it and abuse it

5. Mind Flay - Whether you 2 tick clip or no:channel macro, this is your spam button when 1-4 are applied.

As far as openers are concerned, i will give a brief overview of how and why i do what i do. Lets for this instance assume the boss is about to be pulled and your tank is giving a countdown.

Prepot. I do. You should too if you want the most out of your class. When the tank calls 2 on that countdown, slam a Speed Potion and get ready. After the pull is made, i personally like to fade to ensure I’m not a *typical* dps and pull before a tank can make a good lead on aggro. After that i will go step by step into my rotation.

MB > SW:D > MF > VT > DP > MB > SW:P

Now the key to why i perform this rotation is to basically ensure a 5 stack of weaving, give me 2 chances at tap and to ideally at least proc one of my trinkets icd. Allowing me to put up a high spell power Shadow: Word Pain. After that, the rotation goes to the normal above stated one.

I will be adding a BIS list and other such odds and ends as i have a chance, feel free to ask questions or post comments aswell.

Are awesome

Does 4 pc t10 completely eliminate MB from the rotation?  Even if it was a dps loss it still puts replenishment up.  /boggle

I’ve been opening with VT-DP-MB-MFx2 ticks-SWP do you open with MB SWD because you haste pot and care about getting shadow weaving for the first VT and DP?

Learn me master!

At no point will you remove Mind Blast from your rotation almost purely on the basis of Replenishment. The rough numbers show that will maintaining a rotation it will increase your damage output by 376.12 while using 4 pc. Removing Mind Blast will in affect reduce that to 111.32

Math now included.

Blast vs Flay, T10 4pc

The T10 4pc sets the base Mind Flay channel time to 2.5 seconds instead of 3. Therefore, instead of getting 1.5 MF ticks per GCD, you will get 1.5*(3/2.5) =1.8 MF ticks.

At 3500 SP and 35% crit,
1*MB = 2107.70 + 101.826%*SP = 5672 damage
1.8*MF = 838.38 + 126.418%*SP = 5263 damage
MB advantage = 1269.32 - 24.592%*SP

At 3500 Spellpower and 35% crit, Mind Blast will deal on average 409 more damage than 1.8 ticks of Mindflay, for an 8% increase in damage. If you can get 5162 Spell Power or more, 1.8 Mind Flay ticks will hit harder than Mind Blast.

As you can see, at any realistic gear level Mind Blast is still stronger than Mind Flay in terms of pure DPET. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t done the math.

Courtesy of Piousflea and Shadowpriest.com

As far as my opening rotation goes, i prefer the MB -> SW:D -> MF because i get full use of shadow weaving and i wont have to reapply dots so early. The key reasoning i want to apply my full spell power dots is because the speed potion i prepot gives me the added benefit of not only being hasted but ticking for more.

The short version is that my opening rotation gives the most dps under the assumption that you prepot during an encounter.

I believe I read that 15 spirit to chest is now better than 10 stats with the new shadow glyph, seems like it would be to me.

Also do you have a good forum for dot mechanics?  I’m being told and things I read make it seem like the spellpower of your dots is effected by what you currently have, so I’m not sure waiting to put dots up for trinket procs is necessary.  I know the crit rate stays throughout even when sw:p is refreshed from mind flay, but haven’t seen anything concrete on haste/spellpower

Difference between Spirit and 10 Stats

-These being the stats that matter-
10 Int
10 Spirit
10 Sta

vs.

15 Spirit

Math assuming raid buffed.

10*.30 = 3 Spell Power
1.24 + 11(Int+Kings)/80 = .153 Crit

15*.30 = 4.5 Spell Power

So the tradeoff would be a net loss of 1.5 spell power which equates to 1 since Wow Rounds down with static numbers (Dont ask me why). So you are sacrificing 1 spell power for .15% crit and 10 stamina ( 11 w/ kings) So basically the short version.

3 Spell power / .153% crit / 110 hp vs. 4 Spell Power

At this point i feel like most do that the crit/survivability and small lose of spell power outweighs 15 spirit.

As far as DOT scaling with Potential Spell Power, It has been that way for sometime, Some have argued different via the EJ forums and been proven wrong via the fact that *applied* dots do scale with boss debuffs (Ebon / Curses / Self Debuffs ) but not with personal spell power gain. (Trinkets / Lock buffs). Ill browse the EJ forums in a little to find the threads more accurately relating to wws reports. But i recommend trying it out on a target dummy to see for yourself.

Astralis and I found a good thread on shadowpriest.com last night that goes into pretty in-depth discussion of the mechanics of sw:p/pain and suffering/dot stats in general, I’ll post a link when I find it again when I’m not at work.

Thanks for the posts here though Serate, nice to have that information handy and good responses to my noob questions.

Another thing I was thinking about was black magic vs spellpower on weapon.  Shadowpriest.com ranks black magic slightly higher, but would that value diminish if you already had 800 haste?  Curious as to what you think.

The rough soft where you start a plateau on dots is 600 haste and anything after 800 you start going down a bit.

I had the math for this somewhere on my comp, it basically has to do with the haste equaling out to cancel out a entire dot tick and the likely hood of you getting a second dot tick removed never occurring.

Also, forgot to mention, i had previous tried black magic out and was running proc watch to try and get a better measurement for uptime vs. worth. One thing i noticed was the rarity of procs on dot damage, not that it really matters, but it might eventually come into the math if it does only proc on Mind Blast. IE 250/45*60+(v*y) vs. 63/60 . Where V is Cooldown of Mindblast and Y is the number of times it takes to proc.

I noticed when you calculated 15 spirit vs 10 stats you used .3 as the spellpower multiplier, but shouldn’t it be .5?  Assuming 20 percent from the talent and then 30 percent spirit to spellpower from the shadow glyph?  Could be completely wrong here just not sure, math was never my strong suit bro

The difference would still remain the same with 15 spirit being 1 spell power more then 10 stats *because of the rounded value of spell power*.

I guess it all comes down to preference though.

Myrafel - 23 January 2010 10:55 PM

Does 4 pc t10 completely eliminate MB from the rotation?  Even if it was a dps loss it still puts replenishment up.  /boggle

I’ve been opening with VT-DP-MB-MFx2 ticks-SWP do you open with MB SWD because you haste pot and care about getting shadow weaving for the first VT and DP?

Learn me master!

You should never remove mind blast from your rotation due to that by using VT you will enable the passive “replinishment” ability and feed the raid mana back.

jsnively - 24 March 2010 01:12 PM

Myrafel - 23 January 2010 10:55 PM

Does 4 pc t10 completely eliminate MB from the rotation?  Even if it was a dps loss it still puts replenishment up.  /boggle

I’ve been opening with VT-DP-MB-MFx2 ticks-SWP do you open with MB SWD because you haste pot and care about getting shadow weaving for the first VT and DP?

Learn me master!

You should never remove mind blast from your rotation due to that by using VT you will enable the passive “replinishment” ability and feed the raid mana back.

I have found while in a raid environment i do drop Mind Blast out of my rotation when i have my DFO trinket up, cause that puts me just shy of 6k spell power. I wouldn’t recommend this though if you are the only source of replen in the raid :) it is however a dps boost.

6k? wow that is amazing. Unfortunately I have only seen 5k personally but I was reading that by removing MB out of the rotation it is debateable.

As it sits, I currently only have been mainly raiding in 10 man content and pugging into the 25 stuff. Since I’m not secure on knowing if the others players in the pugs are up to speed, I’m not willing to leave replin to someone else to proc.

Considering the LR strategy and race changing to troll…..or am i?