Help with Shadow rotation

Classes Priest
1

Hello I need help with my Shadow rotation, I’m very unhappy with my dps and I’m clearly doing something Wrong. My parses while decent overall, are trash for my Ilvl. I’m struggling to get 85k dps on single target, and even less if I get targeted by a lot of raid mechanics and with our guild going into Mythic I want to make sure I’m doing my best to up my dps.

I’ve tried both the wowhead and icyveins rotation guides which are basically identical so clearly there is something I’m not understanding from the way they are laid out.

I’m hoping seeing someone else write it out in a different format will make things clearer for me.

could you please list out the spell priority list for:
(not listed in priority order I use, just what came to mind)

devouring plague (while in void form)
devouring plague (outside void form)
void bolt
mind blast (shadowy insight)
mind blast (hard cast)
vampiric touch
shadow crash
mind games
mind flay/spike insanity
void torrent
halo
shadow word: death
shadowfiend

are there any abilities I should interrupt mind flay insanity or void torrent to cast asap?

also which trinkets are best for shadow, I have:
ominous chromatic essence 437
vessel of searing shadow 437
neltharion’s call to suffering 44 (really don’t like this trinket)
rotcrusted voodoo doll 437
igneous flowstone 437

2

I’ve been messing around with my Spriest and from what I can tell it goes like this:

  • Pop CD’s like PI and Fiend
  • Void Eruption
  • Void Bolt (whenever the cooldown comes up)
  • Void Torrent
  • Mind Blast on cooldown too
  • Devouring Plague
  • Mind Games
  • Mind Spike/flay as filler
  • Repeat

Like I said, it isn’t my main at all but I started to notice that the empowered Mind Spikes/flays aren’t really a priority and you might overlap the charges. Mind Blast is better because it always triggers your apparitions. Halo I don’t think should be used in ST unless you have nothing else to press which rarely ever happens. But anyone can chime in and tell me I’m completely off because it isn’t my main lol.

1 Like
3

o/ I wrote the wowhead guide

I can help you out but it would probably make more sense to do it through discord than try to explain things on the forums if that’s ok with you. You can either find me in the priest discord as the friendly polar bear moderator or add my discord tag.

ellipsis_icebear

EDIT: Some basics to grasp

Opener without procs is

VT, Fiend, MB, MB, Erupt, PI, Bolt, Blast, Blast, DP, Bolt, Torrent

If you get procs, the goal of the opening rotation is to spend blast charges, enter voidform, and cast Void Torrent with Devouring plague active, mind blast on cd, and void bolt on cd as soon as possible. If procs let you do that earlier than the opener says you should do so.

The single biggest thing you can do to improve your dps once you have the opener is to Void Bolt consistently on cooldown. Void bolt has a CD of 4 gcds so the cadence / rhythm of voidform should be Bolt, Spell, Spell, Spell, Bolt, Spell, Spell, Spell.

Void Torrent should never be interrupted.

Mind Flay is typically not played over Mind Spike, so my understanding of Mind Flay’s exact usage are a little outdated. if I remember correctly you should interrupt it for Void Bolt, and make sure you don’t start a Mind Flay: Insanity at such a time that you will have 2 Mind Blasts available when it ends.

Ominous for sure, and honestly with what’s listed here Neltharion’s call to suffering is the better one for AoE and Vessel might be stronger (If not at least more consistent) for ST.

You should get Spoils of Neltharus as an upmost priority and run it alongside essence in all content.

1 Like
4

You’re not alone I feel like I just wrote this myself :joy:

Maybe I need to sober up.

Hicc *

5

Everything above should absolutely help :stuck_out_tongue:

6

A bunch of random comments in response to the posts above:

  1. I used the guide Hpellipsis talked about upthread, and after adjusting my build and creating some weak-auras, I got my dps up by about 20% through better play and one talent swap alone. Thank you very much for writing that!
  2. I don’t understand why guides say to spread out DP to multiple targets, since the damage left over from an existing one gets added to the new one. Maybe there’s a mechanic I’m missing somewhere?
  3. I hope conversation stays here instead of discord. It’s easy and public to post here, and to link other people to here. Since Elitist Jerks died many years ago, it’s a shame, in my opinion, that there’s no central hub for the best theorycrafting discussions anymore (that I know of). Instead it seems like everything is shattered into a bazillion discords.
  4. I am not a good player. Creating “hey dummy, cast this” Weak Auras was an important component for me to achieve the dps increases in the 45 min or so of practicing last night. Hopefully you won’t need them, but it looks like I have enough “karma” or whatever to post a link, so I could perhaps show what they look like if that would be helpful.

In summary:

  • Hpellipsis’s guide was indeed handy. I liked both the IcyVeins and WoWHead guides that I read.
  • Make sure that you don’t just know the info, but can execute on it. If you need a crutch like building some WeakAura’s, it can help.
7

Guides shouldn’t be saying to spread devouring plague around unless you’re also talented into distorted reality, which you also shouldn’t be doing.

The reason would be to get increased value from the phantasmal pathogen talent which makes ghosts do 150% more damage to targets that have DP on them. As well as more value from mastery on those other targets from things like your DoTs, Ghosts, and Nzoth stacks if you’re talented into it.

If this was in reference to my comment, I meant more like a screenshare + demonstration than just moving a text conversation to another medium. I do free coaching through the LWIW programme and I’m also happy to spend time with people as a one off to sort out their issues with the spec if they’re comfortable.

1 Like
8

Thank you so much - that’s really helpful to understand the DP reasoning, and that’s very kind of you to do the coaching. Hope you have a great day!

9

Oh, and actually a question about the phantasmal pathogen situation - do apparitions get the extra damage based on whether or not DP is active at the time of the cast that created them, or at the time they hit the target?

Example - DP is on the target and an apparition is on the way. Will that apparition definitely get the extra damage, or will they not get the extra damage if DP falls off before the apparition hits the target?

10

Bliz change how this interaction works every time they rework shadow so I may be wrong but I think it has to be active when the ghost hits the target.

The exception to this, if the tooltip is to be believed, is Shadow’s current 4set but I have never actually checked and the tooltip could very easily be wrong.

1 Like
11

This looks right to me. It was harder to test than I thought it would be, but I took off trinkets and then tried MB as DP was right about to expire, and conversely tested MB right before casting DP (so DP would be active on the target when the apparition hit).

It matched up with your understanding - if DP is active on the target at the time that the apparition hits, the apparition gets the benefit of the +150% damage.

12

Good to know I’m not going (any more) insane :stuck_out_tongue:

13

I mean, I appreciate the sentiment somewhat, but for all you’ve done for the community, I think you deserve 100 (or 150) insanity :wink: