Shadow Priest Cataclysm EVERYTHING Guide | Rotation, Stats, Gear and More!

what's up everybody Welcome to pants's guy to Shadow priest in cataclysm where the shadow orbs are made up and the break points don't matter that's right break points don't matter but I'll talk about that later in the video feel free to check out the timestamps below for your desired section and let's get into it all right first things first let's talk about talents now there really only is one Talent setup for PVE Shadow priest and that's what you see on your screen now there are a few points that you can move around but they really don't matter too much in the grand scheme of things in the very beginning in tier 11 when our Mana is pretty bad I would recommend putting three out of three points into mental agility but outside of that just put two points into mental agility and bring that final Point into inner sanctum which reduces all spell damage You Take by an extra 2% it's pretty minor but when you don't need the Mana in later phases this is what you're going to want to use now when it comes to glyphs there's also really only one setup we want to use our Prime glyphs are going to be Glyph of shadower death Glyph of shadower pain and Glyph of Mind Flay major glyphs would be Glyph of spirit tap Glyph of inner fire Glyph of fade and minor glyphs are Glyph of shadine Glyph of fortitude Glyph of levitate now there are other glyphs you want to make sure you have but you won't be using them on a regular basis this is really just going to be Glyph of fear Ward and Glyph of Mass dispel but otherwise with all the other glyphs you are good to go now let's talk about stat weights since we have reforging and cataclysm this makes reaching our hit cat cap a lot easier which is going to simplify this process anyway our best stat is going to be intellect intellect is just so good since it now gives spell power that it is the best stat for us after that for our secondary stats we want to be hit capped so making sure we have 1742 hit I believe and remember that for shadow priest Spirit now also counts as hit so it's 1742 as a combination of hit or Spirit followed by haste Mastery and crit we just want to get as much haste as possible and then of course followed by Mastery and crit is still good it's just not as good as the other two stats if you use the add-on reforge light to automatically reforge your gear and use the shatter priest preset it will use this stat order in order to reforge your gear but the thing about stat weights is that they constantly change and evolve with every new piece of gear you get which means every time you reforge you are going to have a new stat weights now I'm not saying you should reforge check your stat weights reforge check your stat weights but just make sure that you're double-checking any reforges that get done to make sure that you have the most optimal setup and the way you check for the most optimal setup is by simming if you're not familiar with the SIM I highly recommend you start using it there are so many questions that people ask that can be easily answered by using the Sim in terms of what gem should I use what enchant should I use what's the best off piece for this tier set like there are so many answers that are readily available to you if you just use the Sim you can join my Discord or the shatter PRI Discord if you have any questions specifically on how to use the Sim but I would highly recommend that you just dive in and just play around and see what you find on your own now when it comes to your phase B you can use the preset on the Sim to already find it preloaded you just click the button here load the gear and you can see how it Sims if you ever have questions go to the shadow PR's Discord there are tons of smart people there who are intimately familiar with the SIM and can tell you what the app absolute this is but this is always a really really good starting point now let's talk about gems enchants and consumables the enchants and consumables you see on the screen are pretty much always going to be the best option now especially at the beginning of the expansion these are going to be really expensive because melstrom crystals are hard to get as the expansion goes on as this tier goes on and more people are disenchanting their epics those prices will come down and it will be a lot easier to get these enchants there are alternatives you can use but know that you're going to be sacrif iing DPS in order to save gold so you need to figure out what that balance is if you have questions about which enchants are worse Sim it other people can answer it for you but you should really really learn how to sim it okay now let's talk about gems and how your socket bonuses are going to work for the most part if a socket bonus gives you intellect you're going to want to gem for that color now when it comes to socket bonuses that have secondary stats so that would be Spirit master haste or crit you probably want to simit see whether you want to put in a gem to match that socket or if you just want to put in an intellect gem now this can get a little bit tricky because for instance if a socket bonus gives you plus 10 spirit and you gem for it if you already hit capped then that spirit is worthless which means you would need to reforge to realize the true value of that socket bonus so you could replace the gem go to reforge light um and reforge your gears for the appropriate stats but that can be a little bit tedious at least in tier 11 I think I would just recommend if the socka bonus gives plus intellect then socket for it if the socket bonus doesn't give plus intellect then just use red gems in the sockets now on the screen are the gems that you want to use if it's a red socket then you want to use a brilliant Inferno Ruby if it's blue you want to use a purified demon eye and if it's yellow you want to use a reckless Ember topaz and your metag gem is going to be a chotic Shadow Spirit diamond and for this meta gem to be activated you need at least three red gems and guess what all three of the gems I just listed count as red because the Reckless Ember topaz is orange so that's red and yellow purified Demon's eye is purple so that's red and blue and Brilliant Inferno Ruby is obviously red when in doubt about aaka bonus just Sim it the Sim again is the best tool you can use to find different comparisons on gear I know I probably sound like a broken record telling you to simit but I promise that once you learn how to use the Sim it will make your life so much easier okay now let's talk about professions when it comes to professions engineering and tailoring are going to be your best from a pure damage perspective Engineering also provides you with rocket belt which is a really nice quality of life especially if you're not playing a class with a movement speed racial this is going to be really nice to move although it can fail which is going to be really really annoying when it does happen but from a pure DPS perspective the these are the professions that you want note that all professions are really good so you're not losing a ton of damage by picking something else but you're not going to be fully optimal either now one thing to note is that Jewel crafting is stronger now than it will be in the future that's because right now we only have rare gems to socket our Gear with but in the next patch in Firelands we will get epic gems which means the difference between the gems that people can use in their gear versus the jewel crafting gems only get smaller because the jewel crafting gems do not get stronger in future patches so dual crafting will be stronger now than it is in the future though obviously it is still worse than tailoring and Engineering okay now let's talk about the rotation Shadow orbs and haste breakpoints Shadow orbs are a new part of Shadow priest in cataclysm and honestly they really suck at least in my opinion that's because they have an 18% chance to be generated from your Shadow pain and mind Flay damage and you need them to be generated in order to start your rotation in order to really do do damage from it now why are Shadow orbs important that's because when you have a shadow orb on your character whether it's one two or three doesn't matter as long as you have at least one if you cast mind blast or mind Spike you will get a buff on your character called empowered Shadows this is your Mastery essentially this is going to increase the damage of your damage over time spells by a large amount I think right now I have around 30% from my Mastery in pre- raid gear so what this means is until I can get a shadow orb and cast mind Blaster mind Spike I'm missing out on 30% periodic spell damage that really sucks so our number one priority is going to be get a shadow orb now hopefully it doesn't take too long but RNG can really screw you over so if you don't get a shadow orb your rotation looks like this mine Spike on the preo into Shadow fiend into Shadow or pain into two fully channeled mind fls into vampiric touch followed by devouring plague and then back to mindf trying to spam for a shadow orb if you do get a shadow orb on one of your first two mind flates then you want to cast mind blast immediately and then apply vampiric touch and devouring plague and follow the normal priority this is the same thing that happens if you have a shadow orb going into the start of a fight your pre-cast is going to be mind Spike and then you just apply your dots as you normally would your normal cast priority is going to be maintain your dots on the target followed by mind blast followed by Shadow fend followed by Shadow or death if the target is under 25% HP followed by mindf as your filler note that if you cast mind Spike and immediately follow it with a shadow word pain your mind Spike will get rid of your Shadow word pain since it removes dots due to some weird thing with spell travel time your mind spike is going to land after your Shadow or pain which means you don't want to have those two spells cast in succession now when you get into your actual rotation after you cast a mind blast with a shadow orb and you have the empowered Shadows buff you will then be able to cast mind blast twice before that falls off so you want to cast mind blast on cool down after you just casted a mind blast that refresh your empowered Shadows buff so even if you don't get a shadow orb immediately you still want to cast that first mind blast on cool down but then you would want to wait for that second mind blast to make sure that you have a shadow orb available so that you can refresh your empowered Shadows buff as long as you refresh empowered Shadows before you have to refresh your dots then this is perfectly fine if you want to be really really safe then you can always wait for a shadow or before casting mind blast but that is going to lower your DPS overall now let's talk about Archangel so when you use Archangel it's going to do two things it's going to restore some of your mana and it's going to increase the damage of your single Target spells so that's mind Flay mind blast and Shadow word death now after you cast your first mind blast with a shadow orb you then want to wait for your next mind blast to come off coold down once that happens is when you will use Archangel in your opener our goal is to get three C of Mind blasts within our Archangel window so you wait for that second mind blast in your opener and you pop Archangel just before casting it now one final thing to talk about for our rotation is snapshotting dots now snapshotting means that when you cast vampiric touch or devouring plague whatever Buffs are on your character are going to be the Buffs that are applied to the dot when you cast it which means if you cast a DOT without the empowered Shadows buff so you're missing probably around 30% dot damage if not more then when you do get empowered Shadows none of your dots will actually have that applied until you recast them except for shadow word pain which gets all of its stats updated through mindflight refresh now this means in the bad luck opener your dots are going to be applied to the Target without the empowered Shadows buff but unfortunately math is still being done to try to figure out if we want to recast or dots when we get empowered Shadows or if we cast it before blood lust goes out and then do we want to recast our dots with bloodlust I'm sorry I can't give you an answer because the smart people over at the shadow priest Discord are still working on this because it's a complicated answer the one time I can tell you that you definitely want to reapply dots is when you get a giga buff on your character so this would be the buff that you get from heroic nefarian after you get mind controlled that's 150% damage increase on your character and that's going to be massive for reapplying your dots otherwise sit tight hopefully have an answer for you soon and I will put it as a pinned comment once we do all right now let's take a look at this rotation in a real fight this is from my point of view and you can see all of my casts on the right side of the screen and if the video is too fast for you then don't forget that YouTube allows you to slow the video down let's hop into it now when it comes to AOE and this is mostly for dungeons but does have some use in raids as well note that M your benefits from the empowered Shadows buff as well so anytime you're going from pack to pack in a dungeon you want to make sure you have a shadow orb at the ready so that you mind blast into mineer or if you're doing a fight like malc where you're going to need to AOE a bunch of ads that you're saving a shadow orb for just before Those ads spawn or just before they're all grouped up so that you can mind blast and then AOE them all down with a really Juiced up mind here okay now let's talk about haste break points these are really important but also not important at all and let me explain why the way haste works with dots specific specifically in cataclysm is that the duration of your dot is no longer continually reduced by the amount of haste you have instead it remains relatively close to its base duration no matter how much haste you have but the rate at which the ticks happen the periodic damage happen is increased with every piece of haste you have and what this means is once you get enough haste you will eventually be adding additional ticks into that base duration of your Dot now why does this matter but also why does it not matter it matters because from a pure just single cast perspective the more haste you have the more damage a single cast will do because not only will your ticks happen faster but you will get more ticks in a single cast of vampiric touch that's really good and it's really nice to have more damage per a single cast but why doesn't it matter and what I want to stress when I say it doesn't matter is that people think that oh you reached a haste break point now we stop gearing haste that's not true at all haste is important for a multitude of reasons it also reduces the cast time of your spells which is really important for mindf because the faster your mindf ticks the higher your Shadow orb generation is going to be and it means our dots just tick faster so even if you're not getting an extra tick by adding more haste it's still making your dots deal damage faster which is always going to be important because dots are a large portion of our damage so the general rule is you pretty much want all of the haste you can get and remember just Sim your gear there might be points when Mastery or crit goes above haste so just make sure that you understand how your stat weights can change as you get more gear and that it's a general rule of thumb that haste is King but it might not always be now the one final thing to talk about the rotation and haste break points is pandemic timing what pandemic timing means is that no longer do you have to wait for a DOT to fall off before you reapply it pandemic timing means that before your final tick occurs you have this small window where you can refresh a DOT and that final tick is going to get added onto your next cast so you wouldn't override it completely now the window for this gets increasingly smaller as you get more haste because it's only that final tick of damage so I guess to visualize this for you if your vampiric touch is ticking every 2 seconds then the final 2 seconds is your pandemic window that's going to be the time between your second to last tick and your final tick because the dot is going to fall off the target after that final tick which means you have two seconds in between the second to last tick and the final tick where you can refresh vampiric touch and that final tick will just get added on to the next cast so you'll have an extra tick of damage in that cast because it's adding in the tick from the previous cast now this is the primary reason why the break points don't really matter that much because if you're timing your dots approp appropriately then you're not really missing out on any damage other than the increased tick period that comes with haste it doesn't matter that you're close to a haste break point that as long as you continually chain your dots together it's basically like you have one very long continuous dot that never breaking in its damage pattern now this is going to be really hard as fights get more complex and more mechanics are introduced but on a pure single Target fight the haste break points almost have no relevance what whatsoever if you're just standing still and dpsing the boss now again this is something that is a lot easier in theory than in practice but if you continually work to improve the timing of your dots then you will just get better and better at doing this okay now let's talk about some add-ons that make this class A lot easier to play number one you need a name plate add-on I love using plater I've used this for years I've used it in retail I've used it in classic I've used it in season at Discovery I think having your name plate for me as my primary form of tracking dots on my targets is the best way to go other people like having their dots be displayed by a weak Ora um I primarily love using my name plates I just think it makes it really easy to see especially with the 40 yards range of the name plates that we have in cataclysm classic um this is my primary method of tracking dots especially on multiple targets um obviously weak oras is going to be huge whether you're using it to have a little Shadow priest user interface like I have on my screen here or if you're using it for um boss timers and trackers there's just so many things that you can do with week war is that if you're not using it you're really hampering your ability to play the game a cast bar is also going to be important I use the add-on quartz for mine but there are some really great weak oras that are actually a cast bar as well the dragon K cast bar that I've Linked In the video description is really good because it's going to show your mind play ticks and it's going to show you your latency on your cast now if you use the fake Q weak AA made by heavy side this is going to be really really helpful because Dragon K's weak AA cast bar will give you a window where you can recast your mind FL and heavy sides fake Q week Ora will then essentially freeze your game even though it's barely noticeable at this point but it will freeze your game so that your next mindf flake cast goes off after your next tick of mindf occurs so I would recommend using these two weak AAS together if you're going to do so and finally let's talk about races if you're Alliance you want to be a wargan or a drani ey wargan is just going to be best especially with dark flight and then drani gives the next best bonus after that with 1% hit after that it would be human followed by dwarf followed by gnome if you're horde you want to be troll or Goblin but troll is going to be better more consistently from a pure damage perspective berserking is just such a strong racial that it's impossible to ignore how good it is rocket jump from Goblin is also really good it doesn't increase your DPS but it allows you to move a lot faster than you otherwise would on a minute and a half cool down so if your primary focus is progression rating then I would recommend Goblin over troll but if you care about parsing in the middle of a tier and trying to get those 99s and hundreds then you definitely want to go troll if you're not picking one of those two then it doesn't really matter just pick whatever class you want whether that's Toren Undead or blood elf and that's it for this guide so I hope you found this helpful if you did please give a like And subscribe as I really appreciate it and it helps me out a lot anyway my name is pants face and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Pants Gaming

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Keywords: wow cata shadow priest, wow cata guide, sarthe, scottyjaye, wow cata dps rankings, asmongold wow cata, spriest cata guide, wow priest guide, wow cata priest guide, blackwing descent, throne of the four winds, bastion of twilight, mage cata guide, warlock cata guide, shaman cata guide, warrior cata guide, death knight cata guide, paladin cata guide, rogue cata guide, deathwing, sinestra guide, al akir guide, nefarion cata guide, shadow priest pve cata, spriest pve guide

Id: j245PhnnHrw

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024