Shadow Priest WotLK openers - which ones are the best?

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April 23, 2015
DarkenedHue

Shadow Priest WotLK openers - which ones are the best?

I figure there are two best kinds of openers, depending on if lust goes out in the first 2-3 seconds or not.

If no bloodlust on pull:
1) Pre-Inner Focus + Vamp Touch
2) Devouring Plague
3) 3x ticks of Mind Flay
4) SW:P

If bloodlust happens very shortly into the pull:
1) Shadowfiend*
2) 3x ticks of Mind Flay
3) Inner Focus + Vamp Touch
4) Devouring Plague

*The exception is if my Shadowfiend is going to die very quickly.

The opener without lust is pretty standard and the one widely thought of as the best general opener. The one with Bloodlust, however, includes the use of a Shadowfiend + Mind flay before your first round of dots go out, as this ensures that your DP and VT go off only when they're buffed with the 30% haste from bloodlust. This causes a pretty notable increase in burst. Otherwise, you end up having to wait 10 seconds to refresh a non-buffed VT, and 16 seconds to refresh a non-buffed DP.
April 23, 2015
michaelfloyd3

I typically use the 1st pull you have listed, but I'm not completely sure if its best.
April 25, 2015
Maniacofpeace

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelfloyd3

I typically use the 1st pull you have listed, but I'm not completely sure if its best.

Honestly the difference isn't huge at all. The main idea is just to wait for 5x shadow weaving stacks before your shadow word: pain goes up, so you don't waste a gcd on having to refresh it. Imo, any opener that does that is just fine.
April 27, 2015
angrylol

Inner focus +SW:P people.
April 27, 2015
Maniacofpeace

Quote:

Originally Posted by angrylol

Inner focus +SW:P people.

You sure that's working again? Last I tested (a month ago) it wasn't.
May 4, 2015
Lisse

Imo the best rotation atm is Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain+Inner focus, Vamp Touch and then spam Mind Flay. General rule is to NOT clip your dots. As far as I have been testing, swp seems to be reactive spell, which means that u shouldn't wait for 5 stacks of shadow weaving or to recast it on trinket procs. When a trinket/ring/cape or whatever sp proc occurs, swp increases its dmg for the duration of that proc. On the other hand, swp+inner focus seems to give alot more crits, again as far as I have been testing this. Another thing is if you CAN cast VT before the boss pull( so the actual cast time from the moment of pulling will be like 0.2-0.4 sec.) it is better than dp+swp. If you dont know when the tank's gonna pull the boss, DP+SWP seems alot better, because u wont lose 1sec casting time without doing ANY damage. That's from a PvE point of view. For PvP it's better to start with VT+Mind blast, then DP+SWP and spam mind flays.
May 4, 2015
DarkenedHue

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisse

Imo the best rotation atm is Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain+Inner focus, Vamp Touch and then spam Mind Flay. General rule is to NOT clip your dots. As far as I have been testing, swp seems to be reactive spell, which means that u shouldn't wait for 5 stacks of shadow weaving or to recast it on trinket procs. When a trinket/ring/cape or whatever sp proc occurs, swp increases its dmg for the duration of that proc. On the other hand, swp+inner focus seems to give alot more crits, again as far as I have been testing this. Another thing is if you CAN cast VT before the boss pull( so the actual cast time from the moment of pulling will be like 0.2-0.4 sec.) it is better than dp+swp. If you dont know when the tank's gonna pull the boss, DP+SWP seems alot better, because u wont lose 1sec casting time without doing ANY damage. That's from a PvE point of view. For PvP it's better to start with VT+Mind blast, then DP+SWP and spam mind flays.

I think you should test SWP's interaction with shadow-weaving again. You're right that it works reactively with trinket procs, but most people report that it seems to correctly snapshot shadow-weave stacks. This is easy to test. Take your trinkets, cape (if you have tailoring), and ICC ring off, get 5 stacks of Shadow weaving and cast SWP, and take note of the damage each tick does. Then, right click your shadow weaving stacks off and observe that the damage of SWP doesn't change at all.

Inner Focus also doesn't stick with SWP, so for now its best use is with Vampiric Touch (or Mind Sear for aoe).
May 4, 2015
Lisse

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkenedHue

I think you should test SWP's interaction with shadow-weaving again. You're right that it works reactively with trinket procs, but most people report that it seems to correctly snapshot shadow-weave stacks. This is easy to test. Take your trinkets, cape (if you have tailoring), and ICC ring off, get 5 stacks of Shadow weaving and cast SWP, and take note of the damage each tick does. Then, right click your shadow weaving stacks off and observe that the damage of SWP doesn't change at all.

Inner Focus also doesn't stick with SWP, so for now its best use is with Vampiric Touch (or Mind Sear for aoe).

Yep, you are right. After re-testing it, it really seems that it doesn't increase its dmg reactively with shadow weaving. Another thing I have noticed is DP and VT NOT hitting from the first time on DBS and Rotface. I am hit capped (304, a little bit more) and it still seems that these spells are just not getting "attached" on the boss. They don't miss the boss, they just don't hit it. I usually have to cast them like 3-4-5 times to get them on. Anyone experiencing this?
May 5, 2015
Zzyzix

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisse

Yep, you are right. After re-testing it, it really seems that it doesn't increase its dmg reactively with shadow weaving. Another thing I have noticed is DP and VT NOT hitting from the first time on DBS and Rotface. I am hit capped (304, a little bit more) and it still seems that these spells are just not getting "attached" on the boss. They don't miss the boss, they just don't hit it. I usually have to cast them like 3-4-5 times to get them on. Anyone experiencing this?

For DBS that has been a known issue since forever. From my experience, once the boss reaches certain number of debuffs, any new ones that you attempt to apply to him don't show up. As far as Rotface goes, that might be a new one, I've personally never had or saw anyone else have any problems with it.
May 6, 2015
Maniacofpeace

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisse

Yep, you are right. After re-testing it, it really seems that it doesn't increase its dmg reactively with shadow weaving. Another thing I have noticed is DP and VT NOT hitting from the first time on DBS and Rotface. I am hit capped (304, a little bit more) and it still seems that these spells are just not getting "attached" on the boss. They don't miss the boss, they just don't hit it. I usually have to cast them like 3-4-5 times to get them on. Anyone experiencing this?

That used to happen on my shadow priest all the times. Before, I always used power auras to track my dots. What happened was that when other shadow priests in the raid, even despite power auras being correctly configured to monitor only my dots, it would often mess up a lot and not even show the dot on the target. I changed my main dot-tracking addon to NTK and it's served me well since.
May 9, 2015
CanadianPriest

I have not tested this recently since the moltdown.

My old opener:

VT > DP > 3 tick MF > SWP > 3 tick MF
(trinkets + back + ring should proc)
inner focus MB > SF.

Continue rotation. If you want to know what kind of damage I've done with this then I'd rather post inbox it.
May 11, 2015
Maniacofpeace

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanadianPriest

I have not tested this recently since the moltdown.

My old opener:

VT > DP > 3 tick MF > SWP > 3 tick MF
(trinkets + back + ring should proc)
inner focus MB > SF.

Continue rotation. If you want to know what kind of damage I've done with this then I'd rather post inbox it.

Unless it doesn't work correctly, both Vampiric Touch and Mind Flay are FAR better choices of spells to use Inner Focus with.
May 22, 2015
CanadianPriest

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maniacofpeace

Unless it doesn't work correctly, both Vampiric Touch and Mind Flay are FAR better choices of spells to use Inner Focus with.

From what I remember pre-moltdown, SWP, VT and MF never took benefit from Inner Focus.
June 4, 2015
DarkenedHue

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanadianPriest

From what I remember pre-moltdown, SWP, VT and MF never took benefit from Inner Focus.

Oh wow, this is new information to me that upon testing, seems to be true. With the exception of MF and Mind Sear, that is (which for me still appear to correctly benefit from Inner Focus like they should).

It does indeed seem like VT doesn't benefit from Inner Focus whatsoever. And I already knew SWP never did. This will probably change the opener slightly to put Inner Focus before MF but overall I think it's still a talent worth having considering there's not much other use for that 1 point. Inner Focus + Mind Sear still remains deadly on Halion 25hc, so there's also that.