Was I clear enough? With hindsight, probably not. I deliberately tried to keep an open mind about something I had no first-hand experience of. I didn't know how just how bad it was or how much of a compromise the spec would be. I just wanted to throw it out there as an option. Maybe I was a bit too ambivalent in my approach, but I could just have easily ruled it out with a haughty laugh and then been deluged by people who had done the number crunching and found it to be an excellent spec. Such is the life of a blogger :P
So I am indebted to Leigh for trying this spec out and reporting back. I hope he doesn't mind me quoting from his comment (you should go read the whole thing):
"On boss fights I found my DPS was down by about 300 or so on average, more on certain fights then others. Mana management was a big issue. I felt I couldn't go all out and nuke. Even with spirit tap proccing fairly regular it just wasn't enough..."
From the sounds of it, nobody with any talent or knowledge in shadowy ways thinks an IDS shadow build is a good idea, so don't do it. If you can't at least field a shaman with flametongue totem, go home. For the love of god, stop in discipline at meditation.
8 comments:
As I was in a rush posting it last night I failed to mention that in one fight I died from a stray add. I was combat ressed, then had to use hymn of hope and then inner focus to get back into shadow form. I got about 30 seconds worth of DPS before i had to wand and in between renew a DOT or two before shadow fiend came off of CD. In a dispersion spec i would have been on enough mana to see me through the shadowfiend CD and keep a solid nuke up.
I respecced last night after the run to a more standard 14/0/57 and with the same 10 people i went to wintergrasp to take the 10 man boss down. I done 2.6K DPS on the boss and pushed the affliction warlock that outgeared and owned me on the majority of the Naxx bosses back into 2nd place. Case and point proven sadly :)
Well, maybe I was a bit too harsh on my comment but I still think (I)DS for shadowpriest is not a good thing, especially in 10-mans. In 25-mans you probably won't get much either if your locks are any good (affliction is way better than other specs) and you surely have at least one shaman.
Why? Simple. You will have much bigger mana issues in 10-man than in 25-man thanks to fewer buffs. Sure, spirit is nice for regen but it's pathetic compared to dispersion. Dispersion will return you almost as much mana as fiend and both give multiple times more mana than you could get with spirit tap constantly on you even when you have insane amounts of spirit and intellect. Also, both mana regens scale with int much better than passive regen does with spirit.
With 15k manapool dispersion gives you ~15*0.36=5,4k mana or ~150mp5. In real world it's much higher because you can use dispersion around 1-2 minutes into the fight and not just when you are OOM.
Also, in 10-mans you are one of the 5 DPS'ers. If you loose roughly 5% of your personal DPS* the whole raid looses ~1%, possibly more considering that SP's seem to be one of the highest DPS classes. That might not sound like too much but it is actually quite significant, especially considering you will actually have more mana problems without dispersion. Yes, IDS will give all casters extra spelldamage but what is +80 ontop of 1.6k+ (SP's should be way higher with IF)? About 0.5% increase in spellpower, much smaller increase in overall DPS. In 5-mans the difference is even greater.
*) actually I would say the loss is even greater. It's straight 4% loss to flay and MB, some extra from spirit->spellpower conversion. Biggest loss is 4/5 in MB, that alone can be ~1% overall damage loss. Not having 2/2 shadow reach is very bad in lots of movement fights. Anything with any aoe and no imp. shadowform will punish you hard. With a pally using concentration aura you would be immune to pushback, not having two points in that talent will be bad for your DPS.
It's certainly a spec you could get away with in 5 man instances (MS will still make you look pro!) and certainly in the early parts of Naxx it will hold up and produce respectable numbers. As i said earlier on a full nuke fight it will fall flat on it's face!!
The extra spell damage it gives you is nice, I was around 1900 spell power with inner fire and spirit buff,well over 2k raid buffed. It's a nice buff to have but let the disc/holy priest take it and don't gimp your personal DPS as well as the raids ability to top an enrage timer.
Slightly OT comment but ...
I was secretly dreading the new banner as I was quite fond of the old one. However, I must say I really like the new one.
Thanks Alicyn!
It's not brilliant,but then I don't really know what I'm doing with this template (or any template for that matter lol.) It's something to fill the space while I think what else to do anyway.
awww .. I hope what I said didn't come off harsh!! I really really like your blog, because you make me feel like I haven't lost ALL touch with the shadow priest side of the world. Being Holy/Disp it's easy to do. And ali beat me too it lol but I love your new banner. I really miss soaring on a mount in pure shadow. There's something just beautiful about it.
If you dont try you will never find out i suppose, and for the topic i like your blog too as i used to be shadow bot am ofc Discipline now so its good to read whats still happening on the dark side.
I agree with Alicyn, the new banner looks great! Your new layout is coming together very well!
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