Hey everyone,
I’m trying to get better at interpreting the data from warcraftlogs and had a question about shadow priest single target. While this raid tier is undoubtedly geared towards multi-dot centered specializations, a few fights such as grong where the add dies quite fast (heavy single target) have me confused. I see shadow priests strongly represented at the top which contrasts directly with posts about sp single target being weak. Am I misunderstanding something or is sp single target sustained dps actually quite good?
Over extended time it tends to ramp up and edge to the top.
Single target is definitely decent.
I think most misunderstand single target damage and burst. Burst is what the class lacks. During those windows or times which require lust and cd’s at specific times shadow will always underperform. We catch up later in the fight.
Thank you for the reply. A lot of forum comments here make the statement that their single target is bad and that it is only multi dotting they are good at. Plenty of fights have a single target element so the sustain that catches up you are describing seems a lot more accurate.
Shadow’s single target is… strange.
The average dps is good over long periods of time, or even shorter periods of time it’s still decent now, but its not bursty. There’s no cooldowns to pop when world questing, there’s no compounding % damage buffs to get value out bloodlust. You hit your average dps and you basically just stay there.
As for shadow’s performance on grong specifically? The adds don’t die quickly. One does. The other add is whittled down gradually by anyone who can hit it efficiently, this means shadow priests are often getting to cleave for a very long time, and getting twist of fate uptime well over 60%. This, couple with bloodlust inherently being late on in the fight means shadow performs very well on Grong.
Shadow’s single target dps is pretty middle of the pack though. (Single target being Mekkatorque), though pulling data for that is difficult and skewed a lot by the robots. But there isn’t a single fight in Dazar Alor outside of mekka that doesn’t large amounts of add uptime.
Spot on.
Shadow is in a decent spot overall at the end of the day. There’s always something that could be better.
I wish power infusion would come back. It would probably cost us in some spell damage, but the on demand burst would be good. It’s impossible to even hold off on void form to use that as a “burst” for aoe or add burst because it would decrease dps too much.
I could very well be interpreting Warcraft logs incorrectly but if you take away the demo parses on mekkatorque because of the blatantly op trait, shadow priests show up as fifth best of all specs behind affliction, ele, marksman, possibly assassin. To me, hovering around the top five border on such a single target fight would suggest that it is a bit better than middle of the pack.
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For Mythic, shadow shows up around 8th-9th
Its another fight skewed by a very late bloodlust, and intentional holding of cooldowns on progress.
If you look at the dps numbers for the percentile. You have a few dps above 20k (Demo being a massive outlier at 22k), then the top specs all above 19k.
Middling be the 19k-18k range, where shadow does fall.
Both DK specs are significantly under expected because of their constant need to stop attacking the boss to position the adds with grip, which skews things once again. I’d say shadow is at the top of the mid pack specs, but the difference between that and the “good single target” specs is still quite large.
Don’t get me wrong. Shadow’s single target is fine for what the spec has historically been capable of, and what it’s capable of in other fight types.
Thanks again for the clarification. This makes a lot of sense, especially considering the mythic picture, which I realize I was not looking at!
wish they could replace surrender to madness with power infusion, as much as i love S2M it will never be meta again so why not remove it and give shadow some burst damage potential ?
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Power infusion is nowhere near balanced next to Lotv and Dark Ascension currently, and honestly Power Infusion isn’t a spell I ever really wanna see back in shadow. It didn’t really provide much of a dps increase for a 2 minute cd, and its a spell honestly I think belongs to disc.