Shadow Priest Guide

[Thornwald]

Her ne kadar şuan Shadow Priest olmasamda kendi çapımda bi çalışma yaptım.İngilizce bakımından biraz ağır olabilir ama genel olarak anlaşılacağını düşünüyorum.Eğer soru olursa seve seve cevaplarım.Yakında Mage ile ilgili bir guide da gelicek eğer bu çalışmamı beğenirseniz. :)

-----------------------------------------------------

In this thread I will explain everything about Shadow priests, from mechanism to spell rotation, how to gem, how to spec and how to dps effectively.

-Chapters-
I - Shadow Priest in General.
* What is Binary;
** A Shadow Priest's raid role.

II - Spell damage, spell hit and spell critical.
* Spell hit;
** Spell critical;
*** Spell damage.

III - Mechanics of a Shadow Priest.
*Vampiric Embrace;
**Vampiric Touch.

IV - How to Gem.

V - How to Spec accordingly.

VI - Spell Rotation and dealing damage effectively.

--------------------------------------------------------
Chapter I: Shadow Priest in general.

A Shadow Priest is a class that deals nothing but shadow damage in raids as you already know, which makes you a Binary damage dealing spell caster.

* What is Binary?
"Binary" is something Theorycrafters ended up naming for the magic schools of Shadow and Frost. You cannot partially resist in PvE using these 2 schools of magic, or at least, rarely ever. You can only or most likely resist a complete spell cast. This can be countered by capping your spell hit rating / percentage. (See next chapter for more information)

** What is exactly a Shadow Priest's role?
A shadow priest's role in short and general is to assist his raid at dealing damage to a target mob / or boss and regenerating mana and health for his party. As well as giving a 10% shadow damage increase debuff on his target for his raid, and also adding a 5% spell damage increase to all the casters in raid.

A shadow priest is NOT a pure damage dealing class, I am very sad to inform you so, but that's how things are and you'll have to deal with it, or reroll if you don't like it. If you think otherwise, go hang yourself to a streetlight.


Chapter II: Spell damage, spell hit and spell critical.

* Spell hit:
For a Shadow Priest, the hit cap is similar to every other caster at level 70. The hit cap is 202 hit rating, or 16%.

Spell hit cap is what a "wise" shadow priest would aim for first, unlike for other caster classes. Why you may ask, it's due to you being a very high mana consuming class, and the fact that you are N O T a purely damage dealing class, and that you are a hybrid, support dps class, which ends up being a mana battery in raids. You must be hit capped in order to satisfy your party and raid with the amount of mana and health needed in a boss fight in order to assist them efficiently in a kill.

If, you are not hit capped, your chance of resisting will be higher, hence, you will deal for one, less damage, two, regen less health and mana to your party, three, be practically useless and replaced.

Hence your hit rating should vary depending on your gear and over how many points in the Shadow Focus talent you have selected to use.

Here are the following calculations in order to cap your spell hit rating in exact numbers depending on your gear and talent choice.

* 76 hit rating is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus; (76 rating is equal to 6%)
* 101 hit rating if you wish to go 4/5 Shadow Focus; (101 rating is equal to 8%)
* 126 hit rating if you wish to go 3/5 Shadow Focus; (126 rating is equal to 10%)
* 152 hit rating if you wish to go 2/5 Shadow Focus; (152 rating is equal to 12%)
* 177 hit rating you wish to go 1/5 Shadow Focus; (177 rating is equal to 14%)
* 202 hit rating if you wish to go 0/5 Shadow Focus. (202 rating is equal to 16%)

1% hit with spells is in other words exactly 12.6 hit rating at level 70.

** Spell critical:
At level 70, 1 spell damage is worth the following crit rating at lower gear levels:

800 +dmg 6.77
1100 +dmg 6.25

Knowing as a caster who doesn't have a talent to increase his spell critical damage dealt, you will only deal 50% extra damage from spell critical strikes. Stacking crit gems is not a very smart move.

BUT, it is viable that you sacrifice 1 spell damage in order to gain 6~ spell crit rating if you already have passed 1100 shadow / spell damage. Why? Because critting would make you regen more mana, more health, and obviously deal more damage.

Do keep in mind tho, Spell damage is always a priority over crit.

The Shadow Power Talent will increase your spell critical rating for Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death by an additional 3% per talent point, which maximizes your DPS. So it is absolutely viable to have that talent in order to maximizing DPS, as well as mana and health regeneration.

*** Spell Damage:
The second aim of a Shadow Priest is maximizing his spell damage. It would sound as equal to capping your hit. A Shadow Priest's #1 interest is gaining the maximum of spell damage (OR Shadow Damage - Since you deal nothing but Shadow Damage anyway) in order to maximize the healing and mana regeneration for your party and maximizing your DPS.

1 point of spell damage is equal to 1 DPS in raid. But as you might already know or noticed, by looking at your gear and items you might have wondered why there are the words "By up to" on your spell damage bonus gear.
That is due to having a base and end damage to your spell.

- IE:
Mind Blast(Rank 11): Blasts the target for 708 to 748 Shadow damage.

The number "708" listed in the tooltip is the base damage of your spell.
The number "748" listed in the tooltip is the end damage of your spell.

And as you might already know as well, no spell that is under 3 seconds (of origin) cast time will benefit from full damage obtained from gear.

So since your Mind Blast is a 1.5 second cast, it will only benefit of 1/3 damage of your gear, and not fully.
All in all, no spell at all for a Shadow Priest is considered a 3 seconds cast spell so none will benefit fully from your original spell damage obtained from gear, which is more of a reason to increase your spell damage or shadow damage and maximize it.


Chapter III: Mechanics of a Shadow Priest.

* Vampiric Embrace;
Here is the basic formula of how healing threat works:

Threat = (Healing Done / {Divided by} Number of Mobs)

So therefore on a fight like Magtheridon where you heal approximately 10k threat each Shadow Bolt the formula will look like this:

Threat = (10k / (6 Infernals + 3 Channelers + Magtheridon))

Which works out to be 1k threat on each of the mobs in the room. As you know Fade is ~2k threat drop so you can happily heal up to 25k (assuming Salvation) before ever actually becoming threat positive when Magtheridon spawns.

Similary on Morogrim Tidewalker when there are up to 12 Murlocs your threat from the Earthquake heals is spread evenly among them all allowing Fade to easily cover any threat you generate.

** Vampiric Touch:
I honestly do not know the threat on this ability, nor that I care to know since as a Shadow Priest you are O B L I G E D to use this ability no matter what, it is mandatory to keep this Damage Over Time ability in order to be viable as a raid member and damage dealer.


Chapter IV: How to Gem
As a Shadow Priest, I have already explained that maximizing your damage is your priority after being hit capped.
But I did not really explain that your hit should be only coming from your gear, and not from gems.
Therefor you will gear up for hit and damage, and socketing your gear with ONLY and ONLY Spell damage gems.

You have a choice of the following gems:
Ember Skyfire Diamond (As a Meta Gem)
Runed Crimson Spinel
Runed Living Ruby
Runed Ornate Ruby

Once you have acquired 4 out of 8 pieces of your Absolution Regalia (Aka Tier 6) you should be around 1400 spell / shadow damage, this is where you'll start thinking about haste. And not before.

Then you'll be able to socket pieces that require YELLOW or RED gems with the following:
Reckless Pyrestone
Quick Lionseye

Chapter V: How to Spec accordingly
Here's the link to my Priest's Build, but beware, you must not Spec like I did, unless you have the same stats as me.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMhzhZZVGhtMxohtEo

Remember, that your priority is to cap your hit, so don't worry about losing 1 point from Shadow Weaving Talent or Improved Mind Blast Talent or even Shadow Power Talent in order to cap your hit accordingly to your gear.

Make sure you do not spec at all into Improved Vampiric Embrace if you wish to stay alive and not wipe your raid due to the massive threat you will build on loose targets or bosses with deminishing threat on tanks, or even on fights where threats resets.


Chapter VI: Spell Rotation and dealing damage effectively.
Your normal spell rotation on a target or boss should be the following:
1- Vampiric Embrace;
2- Trinket + Vampiric Touch;
3- Shadow Word: Pain;
4- Mind Blast;
5- Shadow Word: Death;
6- Mind Flay
7- Mind Blast;
8- Mind Flay;
9- Vampiric Touch;
10- Mind Blast
(Insert SW:p at last tick which should be around here or by next spell cast)
(Renew VE whenever it fades, don't do it constantly and losing a global cooldown for nothing)
(Make sure to renew your VT 1 tick before it fades in order to keep your dot uptime for dps and mana regeneration for your party and yourself.)
(You also may wish to choose SW:d before Mind Blast, so you can heal yourself through Vampiric Embrace after the blast from consuming health from SW:d in order to keep your healers happy and less naggy about you spamming SW:d Constantly in a boss fight that requires heavy healing)

------------------------------------------
Thank you for putting in the time into reading this thread, hope it was the slightest benefit for you to improve your dps and raid viability.

Regards.

[Gangren]

Alıntı değil mi şimdi bu?

[Thornwald]

Hayır ama çok değerli başka bi Shadow Priest dostumdan yardım aldığımı inkar edemem.Theorycrafting'in içine sayılar girince biraz bulanıyo kafam,o yüzden yardıma ihtiyac duydum

Edit:Typo

[Gangren]

Sen mi yazdın yani sıfırdan başlayıp?

[Thornwald]

Evet.Beginner hedesi bu zaten,fazla karışık birşey yok..İngilizce ise İngilizce Öğretmenliği okuduğum için ağır biraz,eğer copycat şüpheleri uyandırıyosa..

[Gangren]

Copycat aklıma gelmedi değil açıkçası.

Ancak madem kendinin olduğunu iddia ediyorsun, ekliyelim sticky'de yer alan guide bölümüne :)

[Thornwald]

Bilmiyorum nasıl kanıtlayabilirim açıkçası ama yapabileceğim birşey yok sanırım.Eğer beğenilirse türkçe bi Mage guide yazarak bi nebze ikna edebilirim sanırsam :)

[Gangren]

Ekledim.

[Fin]

Once you have acquired 4 out of 8 pieces of your Absolution Regalia (Aka Tier 6) you should be around 1400 spell / shadow damage, this is where you'll start thinking about haste. And not before
olmuyor 1400 malesef 12xx civarı bişi olur
spell haste ile beraber baya değişti o dot rotasyonu araya bi tane daha mf ekleyebiliyorum cok saçma sapan oldu cycle ama cok tatlı oluyor dps =p

[Mighty_THoR]

şuraya bakya köpek gibi gece gündüz uğraş bt key alacam diye sonra otur t6 toplayacam diye ömrünü çürüt sonra blizzard gelsin bir patchle bt yide t6 ya ayağa düşürsün sonra guidelarda bakaldan alır gibi 4 parça t6 topla densin ah blizzard ah

[Thornwald]

12xx damage'li bir SP,ya gem kullanımında bir hata yapıyodur yada henüz tam olarak gear'ı oturmamıştır.Kendi Mage'imden örnek vermek gerekirse,şuan hiç bir buffsız 1300'e dayanmış durumdayım ki daha fazla olabilirdi eğer istediklerimi alabilseydim.SP'nin çok daha yükseğe ulaşmaması için hiç bir sebeb göremiyorum açıkçası

[Fin]

6/8 t6 var 1305 shadow dmgim var aynı oyunu oynamıyoruz o zmn.
bide spell haste ? hiç adı bile geçmemiş

[Thornwald]

Evet,dediğim gibi "beginner hedesi" bu..Ayrıca 1400 "civarına" ulaşmadan haste kullanmanın akıllıca olmadağını düşünüyorum.Açıkçası da şuan SP olmadığım için yeni gelen Sunwell itemlarıyla SP için haste'in nasıl çalıştığını "tam olarak" bilemiyorum.Ancak şu kadarını söleyebilirim.1300'den sonra 1 haste rating=1.3 spell damage demektir.Bu sadece SP'ler için geçerli ve sadece Theorycrafting'dir.Diğer class'lar için daha değişken.

[Innuendo]

casterlar icin haste artik GCD i da 0.5 saniye dusuruyo.

[Catzee]

Spell rotation'ın yanlış.

[Dunedain]

Yanlış demesende , doğrusu nedir onu yazıp olumlu eleştiri yapmış olsan ?

[Catzee]

Embrace ile başlanılmaz bir kere, belli bir rotation'da yoktur zaten, target'a göre değişir. Ama kendi yaptığım şeyleri söyleyeyim. Atıyorum 250k hp'li bir moba dalıyorsam, min. sürede ölmesi için dmg deal ile başlarım ki ben genelde swp ile başlıyorum. Ama dediğim gibi belli bir rotation yok. Boss'larda da vampric touch ile başlamak mantıklı geliyor bana; daha önceden debuff'ı bırakıyorsun boss'a 1, fight'ın başında mana gain'e başlıyorsun 2, embrace ile başlarsan diğer opsiyona göre daha fazla aggro yapmaya başlarsın 3.

Olumsuz eleştiri yapmak istemedim, sadece bilindiğini varsaydım, bir de üşendim.

Thornwald said:

As you know Fade is ~2k threat drop

Buraya bir "temporary" iyi gider.

[capul]

Adam emek vermiş işte üzmeyin garibi!

Birkaç ufak hata dışında da güzel ingilizce...ama öyle ağır filan da deil...

[deadwoll]

Ben boss fightlarda önce swp atıp o ticklemeden vampiric touch'u atıyordum, böylece hem swpyle vampiric touch'un atılma aralıkları azalıyor kontrolü kolaylaşıyor hem de swp ilk dmg'i erken veriyor. MB ve sw: Death'i de eğer mana ve hp sıkıntım olmayacaksa kaçırmadan kullanmaya çalışıyorum. Özel bir rotasyonum yok onun dışında.