Shadow Priest Snapshotting Guide - WOTLK Classic

hello everybody and welcome to another pants Shadow priest guide today we're talking about snapshotting I'll describe what snapshotting is why we do it when it's worth doing and how you can use it to improve your play If you like this content please consider liking and subscribing as that will allow me to keep making content similar to this there are a few pieces to this video so feel free to hop around using the timestamps in the description below without further Ado let's hop into snapshotting what is snapshotting snapshotting refers to any Buffs on your character that you're applying to your spells these spells will deal damage for a longer period of time than the buff Less on your character this means that even when the buff Fades from our character it will still be applied to the spell that we just casted note that I'm emphasizing Buffs that are on your character any debuffs on the target are immediately applied to any spells that you have on that Target so these would include mimarron in Phase 3 when the head gets pulled down and starts taking 50 increased damage any dots you have on mimarron before the head gets pulled down will automatically start dealing 50 percent more damage as the head is brought to the ground this also includes the singed debuff on hodier that causes him to take 50 more magic damage you don't need to recast your dots to take advantage of this buff as any dots on hodir will automatically have their damage increased when we refer to snapshotting we're primarily talking about our damage over time spills AKA dots but you can also snapshot Buffs onto mind flight and mind Seer and I'll talk about those at the end of the video first up let's talk about shadowward pain when Snapchatting and Shadow priests are talked about together it's almost entirely about Shadow or pain this is due to the pain and suffering Talent which allows MindPlay to refresh the duration of Shadow or pain this means that one cast of shadowward pain can last on a single Target for an entire fight so the First cast is extremely important as we want as many Buffs applied as possible so they can remain on the target until it dies now what types of Buffs can be snapshotted onto Shadowood pain because not all of them can be there are two primary kinds of Buffs first is critical chance modifiers and second is percent damage modifiers a critical chance modifier is something like the crit bonus on a potion of wild magic this is the reason that shadow pre-potion with potion of wild magic the critical chance of the potion remains on the Shadow or pain even after the buff Fades away and lasts for the entire fight similarly percent damage Buffs also remain this type of buff is something you would find from the Rogue spell tricks of the trade as well as a shadow priest Talent Shadow weaving that gives 10 Shadow damage of 5 stacks this is why in the opening rotation for shadow priest we wait until we have five stacks of Shadow weaving to cast Shadow or pain because we want that percent damage modifier to remain on Shadow or pain for the entire fight if you cast Shadow or pain when you only have four stacks of Shadow weaving then even after you get your fifth stack if you refresh Shadow or pain with mind flight it'll act as if it has four stacks of a buff which means you're missing out on two percent damage for the entire fight I have a video on the shadow priest rotation so if you want to learn more about that in detail then go check out that video so those are the only kinds of Buffs that can snapshot onto Shadow or pain the values for any other buff will be refreshed every time that mind play is used to refresh Shadow or pain while only the original values of the snapshotted Buffs will be used so what if you get a strong percent damage buff in the middle of a fight like Thaddeus since that is a percent damage increase you have to recast shadowward pain in order to get the effect of the buff refreshing with MindPlay will not give you the effect of the damage increase until you recast shadowward pain after you recast it then every time you refresh with mind play that buff will stay on Thaddeus forever now that we talked about what Buffs do snapshot what Buffs don't snapshot with Shadow or pain Bell power will update every time you deal damage with mind play as well as any Buffs that don't affect critical chance and aren't percent damage Buffs such as the lightning buff on hodir this buff increases the damage of critical Stripes not the percent chance of critical strikes since these Buffs don't snapshot they get checked for by the game every time you cast mindflight if they are on your character when you cast mind play then it's going to be applied to shadowward pain but the second that it falls off and you then refresh Shadow or pain with MindPlay those Buffs will be gone from Shadow or paint this also means that it's impossible to snapshot a spell power trinket for example if you have dying curse and it procs and you get that juicy 765 spell power it's only going to last for the duration of the buff as once you cast mind play after that that damage is going to be removed from Shadow or pain now that we've laid out what kind of Buffs can be snapshotted let's look at an example of snapshotting on a Target dummy on the left dummy I'm going to cast shadowward pain with zero stacks of Shadow weaving and on the right target I'm going to cast shadowy pain with 5 stacks of Shadow weaving then I'm going to refresh both while having five stacks of Shadow weaving note that the damage on the left dummy does not increase after being refreshed it doesn't change from zero stacks of Shadow weaving to five that's because I snapshotted that shadowward pane with the zero stacks of Shadow weaving so even though I refreshed while having five Stacks it doesn't apply to the Target I need to recast Shadow or pain in order to get the five stacks of Shadow weaving onto the left dummy similarly the right dummy does not lose damage even though I refresh Shadow or pain after my shadow weaving Stacks have fallen off so when it comes to snapshotting Shadow weaving is the main buff that we're going to want to track if you have a rogue you can try to get tricks of the trade on the pull so you can apply it to your first Shadow or pain although that is better used on Affliction warlocks with corruption now that we've seen the difference in casting Shadow or pain with and without five stacks of Shadow weaving is it always worth waiting for five stacks of Shadow weaving to cast Shadow or pain so the answer is it depends on any encounter that lasts over a minute where you can continually attack the boss because there's no intermission it is absolutely worth snapshotting at five stacks of Shadow weaving you want to get as much damage as possible into your Shadow or pain because it's going to last for a long enough time that the increased damage on each tick outweigh trying to get an extra tick of Shadow or pain the reason that you would not want to snapshot Shadowood pain is that you can cast it earlier in rotation this will allow you to get an extra tick or two of Shadow or pain and on really short fights that extra tick is going to outweigh the damage that you would get from increasing the damage of each tick through Shadow weaving so on short fights that aren't going to last a minute or if you're running through a dungeon and you're fighting some small mobs that aren't going to live very long you don't want to worry about getting five stacks of Shadow weaving in these types of encounters you just want to put up your dots as soon as you can and then start mind steering or single targeting an enemy down it's better to cash out of our pain early to get an extra tick than to worry about the shadow weaving Stacks in these circumstances as you pay attention to the lengths of fights more you'll really start to understand when it is worth it to snapshot shattered pain ultimately Shadow or pain does not deal a lot of damage though so if you don't snapshot correctly it's not going to hurt your parse that much it's definitely something that Top Shot appears to maximizing but if you're just starting out then don't stress about it you're not going to lose too much damage if you don't snapshot correctly if anything it's worse to cast Shadow or pain multiple times throughout the fight than it is to snapshot it incorrectly this is because you're wasting time on that cast when you could be casting another spell that's going to deal a lot more damage than that extra two four or six percent that you're going to be getting from your outward pain next up let's talk about vampiric touch and devouring plague these spells behave in the exact same way so I'm going to talk about them together when you cast either these spells every buff on your character lasts for the entire duration of the dot even if the buff expires before the dot is finished dealing damage unlike Shadow or pain these dots do not last forever and they must be casted again in order to take advantage of any new Buffs on your character for the most part you'll just cast these spells to maintain their uptime on your targets and you're not going to worry about the Buffs on your character there is one exception to that and that's what's devouring plague in our opener on a boss encounter devouring plague will be our second cast and this will generally be cast before bloodlust once bloodless has been casted for your raid we want to recast devouring plague to take advantage of the haste buff due to how long devouring flake lasts it's more DPS to recast it with lust than to wait for the initial debuff to fall off the target to reapply it you do not recast your impure touch in the circumstance only devouring plague if you're doing a fight where bloodlust isn't cast until later in the fight then don't worry about recasting it in your opener as it's only ever done with bloodlust now I'm going to experiment with vampire touch on a Target dummy just to show how Buffs work and that the bus will last on vampire touch even after they fall off your character devouring plague behaves the same way so you can apply this to devouring plague as well on the first Target I'm going to cast a regular vampire touch I then activate a spell power trinket and cast vampiric touch on the second target I cancel this buff from the trinket and you can see that the damage is still higher on the second target this is because the dot that I casted there maintains the buff for its entire duration even though the buff is no longer on my character this is the same way all dots behave when hard casted but shadowward pain behaves differently because it gets refreshed through pain and suffering if I were to cast Another vampiric Touch onto this target it would overwrite the current spell and start dealing less damage than it was dealing before because I no longer have the buff of my character and that's really it for a vampiric touch and devouring plague this is really just a demonstration so that you could understand how Buffs affect these spells this brings us to our final point with mind play and mindseer mind flame Minds here behave very similarly to vampiric touch and devouring plague as soon as you start the channel it'll take into account the Buffs that are on your character if those Buffs fall off while you're casting your cast will maintain the same damage and haste and crit that it had when you first casted it so any Buffs that were on your character when you first started channeling a mind play or mindseer are maintained throughout the entire duration of the channel this doesn't have many practical uses for MindPlay considering how short the cast is but can increase your damage with mindsear by a lot if done correctly I'm going to show some examples from previous raids that I've done where I try to snapshot Buffs where I just are falling off onto my mind's here to maximize my AOE damage in order to effectively take advantage of this you're going to want to have a cast bar that shows you ticks of channeled spells this can be done with quartz gnosis or weak auras the reason is is because you're going to want to cancel a cast in the middle of it right after a tick occurs so that you can start casting Minds here again just as your buff is about to fall off this is really important with powerful trinket procs because they don't last that long so if you can get basically a full cast of mine Seer that is benefiting from one of your trinkets even you know when the trinket had one second left in its duration it's going to greatly increase the amount of damage you do with that mind sear in this clip I've activated the on-use effect of the trinket scales of face this gives you a nice haste buff I'm casting Minds here and you can see as the buff has one second left I recast Minds here what this allows me to do is benefit from the hay for that entire cast you can see the cast time remains at three and a half seconds and then new cast time for the next channel is 3.9 seconds 0.4 seconds might not sound like a lot but when you're racing to do damage against everybody in your raid it can add up especially if you pair it with a strong trinket proc such as player of the heavens or dying curse again there's not too many practical applications especially in boss fights for this but it's worth knowing about in case the opportunity ever arises to take advantage of this and that's all I have for you today on snapshotting if you're just starting to snapshot your dots then I highly suggest practicing on a Target dummy like I did in the video remember it's going to hurt your DPS more if you recast Shadowood pain over and over again trying to Snapchat correctly then if you mess up your first snapshot and only cast shadowward pain once if you like this content then let me know in the comments below and tell me what kind of video you'd like to see next feel free to reach out on Discord or check out my twitch if you have any Shadow priest questions that's all from me and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Pants Gaming

Views: 28,146

Keywords: shadow priest rotation wotlk, shadow priest wotlk guide, wotlk, wotlk classic, wow wotlk, shadow priest, wrath of the lich king, world of warcraft, wow wotlk classic, wrath, pve, spriest, shadow, rank 1, dps, wow classic wotlk, wrath of the lich king classic, guide, priest

Id: 61SRCHbCeuY

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023