Priest DPS flowchart

by Mike Schramm Mar 3rd 2008 at 5:00PM

Any DPS guide that has flowcharts is a winner. So it is with this Priest DPS guide from DwarfPriest.com -- not only does it include some good insight on the spells both Shadow and Holy Priests have available to them for laying down the damage, but it also includes this great flowchart, which will tell you exactly how to min-max your DPS lickety-split.

The basic outline is keep VT up and pour on the shadow damage, but with all the cooldowns in Shadow Priests' spells, it becomes more of a "casting priority" thing, hence the flowchart. There are also some interesting notes about DoTs (which are integral to both facemelters and 'locks) -- the last tick of a DoT falls right on the end of it, so it's always better to wait for a DoT to time out before reapplying, otherwise you lose some of the damage you paid good mana for. Excellent and in-depth guide (and the Holy Priest DPS section inspired a few laughs, too).

Thanks, ErsatzPotato!

Tags: casting, dot, dps, face-melting, flowchart, holy-priest, shadow-priest, vampiric-touch

Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, How-tos, Odds and ends, Humor

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gigantor1960 Mar 3rd 2008 5:30PM

As a former face melter that is healing but can't wait to go back it verifies a lot of testing I did at Dr. Boom in Netherstorm. Dwarf Priest is a great resource!

Azureblood Mar 3rd 2008 5:43PM

looks really cool.

i think some people should look these stuff up lol...

xarnx Mar 3rd 2008 6:08PM

I've been raiding on my shadow priest for a while now (6/10 on tier 5 bosses) and there are a number of things this doesn't take into account.

First - I take issue with their discussion of dots. Yes, technically you can lose damage off the last tick of the dot. So in a perfect world you should put it back up about .0000001 second after that last tick. However, due to the number of spells you're keeping up, if you wait for a dot to expire before putting it back up, you stand a good chance of having no dot up for at least a second, possibly more. So always be proactive - i try to keep both my dots active, even if it i means recasting before the last tick. The boo-hoo about losing damage for your mana is a lame argument, since losing one tick is only wasting about 30 mana, and when you have 10,000 and are regenning 200-250 mp5 due to vampiric touch, 30 mana every 25 seconds just doesn't mean that much.

A second point to consider on the DOT front is that any shadow priest worth his salt has misery on his target at all times. This causes the target to take 5% extra spell damage across the board, but is only active while you have a DOT up on the target. If you let it lapse, even for a split second, you're reducing spell damage to the mob by 5% across the board for that time. So keep both of your DOTs up, if only to give the locks and mages in your group a boost on the dps meter.

Third, in my rotation I always prioritize spells with a casting time over instant casts. This allows you to take advantage of the lag built into casting. If you cast mind blast (1.5 second cast) followed by shadow word: death, you can hit SW:D up to a half second before MB is done casting. This starts the global cooldown for SW:D early, and so you can get to your next spell earlier. If you cast the instant first, you can't queue up the next spell until the global cooldown is finished (you get a spell not ready error), so you wind up having to wait the full 3 seconds. After the initial volley of
VT (1.5 s) -> SW:P (instant) -> MB (1.5 s) -> SWD (instant)
you usually wind up in a pattern where you have a channelled spell followed by a 1.5 and then an instant (in order to keep everything on cooldown) and then back to channeled spell. Since the channeled spell won't start until the second spell/GCD is finished, at the channeled spell lasts 3 or 4 seconds, you gain nothing by queuing it up early after the 1.5 second cast.

This is what I've noticed at least - I get more dps than any of the rest of my guild's shadow priests, and they have better gear, so this is what I'm attributing it to.

I guess the basic rules I have for shadowpriesting are:
1) keep both DOTs up, even if you have to recast them before their last tick (and if you're going to be anal about it, then align your recast of each of them to come right after a tick, any tick but the last)
2) keep both direct damage spells on cooldown (SW:D and MB)
3) when doing #1 and #2 try to stack spells so that you have a 1.5 s cast followed by an instant cast (so MB->SW:D or MB->SW:P or VT->SW:D or VT->SW:P)
4) if you're left with DOTs up and everything's on cooldown, use your channeled DOT (mind flay)

apoxic Mar 3rd 2008 8:35PM

I think you're the only shadow priest in the world who refreshes his dots before they expire. Or at least the first one I've ever heard of anyway. I guess you think 2-set bonus on T6 sucks as well since it makes your SW:P last for another tick?

Refreshing your SW:P right after the last tick, or right after the second last tick doesn't make a difference DPS-wise, it just makes you waste mana. Refreshing your SW:P say, 1.5 sec after the second last tick just made you increase the dot-tick gap from 3 seconds to 4.5sec wasting both mana and damage, good job!

jopo Mar 3rd 2008 6:14PM

Should check the math on 5% shadow damage given as mana math is like out of this world there

in the example 800DPS (damage per second) gives 40 mana per second
they tell ok it is MP5 so we multiply the 40 mana to 5 which equals 200. ofc there is no DP5 which means damage per 5 secons like mana per five so if you wanna turn something in "per 5" u should just multiply all "per second" to 5 so u get "per five"
which means to get 200 mana per five u need 800damage pes second * 5 = 4000 damage per five which when u divide to 200 mana per five u still get 5%

can give many examples whit miles per hours, girls per bed and so on but im sure that everyone who believes the straights line is really a big circle (infinite radius) will agree whit me:)

xarnx Mar 3rd 2008 7:37PM

Point taken... kind of. The way I had meant it is one tick of damage is basically take the cost of your DOT (575) divided by the number of ticks (8) to get 72 mana every 24 seconds. So that's the cost of one tick on shadow word: death.

A small price to pay for keeping your dots and all their debuffs up on a raid boss.

Grais Mar 3rd 2008 7:29PM

I have a priest, so I'm not just laughing at the class for the heck of it, but I just can't contain myself b/c of the simplicity of this chart... Face melting really is this mind-numbing-ly easy.

Maybe if there were flowcharts for other specs/classes, my laughing would cease...

Felwrathe Mar 3rd 2008 7:55PM

Flowcharts! Yessss.

Strangely enough I just rolled a priest alt yesterday. I hear they're a rare commodity these days.

Lars Mar 3rd 2008 7:57PM

It seemed like the guy had really done his homework... until I got to the Holy Priest section. What an idiot. The Holy Priest section had no info, just stabs at anyone who does something different.

Want to be good at healing AND do damage? Holy Priest is where it's at. Some people prefer to re-spec every time they go on a dungeon run. Holy priests can deal some really good damage. Sure there's only a few spells that do the damage, but there's only a few damaging spells for Shadow too. My Holy Priest can out damage a lot of folks because damage is pretty high and mana cost is low, plus all the free instant smites I get constantly. Also, my free heals trigger a lot to so it's all-in-all pretty viable.