I’m testing out a new idea for the MMO Melting Pot guides today – short videos designed to teach rotations for each class.
This one’s a guide for Shadow Priests, but I’d be interested to hear your opinions on the format regardless of the class it’s teaching.
Is it clear? Did you understand it? And most importantly, when a new patch hits would you find a quick guide like this useful?
Please do comment – it’s really helpful to know what you think!
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the video is very helpful. Particularly the icon images. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve logged in to an alt (having the dreaded task of relearning how to play it once again), and it takes me half an hour just to find out what all the abilities are and what they look like from the icons. It’s one thing to “know” what to do, it’s another thing to be able to “see” it easily on your screen.
My only suggestion is that it would be great to see a quick clip of the class in action — perhaps with freeze frames indicating “see, here’s that buff/debuff we talked about” or “see, we know how 3 counts of x, time to use y!”
That was supposed to say “we now have 3 counts of x…” Sorry for the typo!
Well, I appreciate the effort, but there’s a few problems with it.
1. You mixed up the Shadow Word: Death and Shadow Word: Pain icons.
2. You have the wrong Mind Flay icon
3. You have the wrong priority
A. Devouring Plague at 3 orbs (SEE F BELOW)
B. Mind Blast
C. Shadow Word: Death
D. Shadow Word: Pain
E. Vampiric Touch
F. Devouring Plague at 3 orbs (this is here because you want to use Devouring Plague instead of Mind Flay, but you should never use Mind Blast/Shadow Word Death at 3 orbs, so if you mess up you should dump orbs before continuing)
G. Mind Flay
4. You should never use Dispersion unless you’re about to take damage, Vampiric Touch and Shadowfiend/Mindbender should provide enough mana in most cases. Dispersion is an absolute last resort for mana.
5. You actually need like 8+ mobs for Mind Sear to be worth using. Versus 3 mobs you’ll do more damage just spamming Mind Flay than Mind Sear. You should be multidotting (with a focus on SW:P over VT) and using Mind Blast on cooldown for anything less than 8+ targets.
Interesting – what you’re saying here conflicts with the theorycraft I’ve read (although I’m not saying you’re wrong). Can you give any more information or links for the rotation you’re proposing? This is really helpful – thanks.
Icons – whoops, I’ll correct that when I have a sec. This is definitely a prototype video!
Icons should be correct now.
First, I’d really like to see what theorycraft you’ve been reading, because everything I’ve read (even outside of my own testing) says otherwise, such as http://www.howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1701 and http://manaflask.com/en/guide/735
A google searched termed up some site called Noxxic which had wrong information and even was claiming you could use SW:D on targets under 25% (it’s 20% now), so please don’t tell me you were counting on that site… (and I sent them a message informing them of some of the problems on their site)
Re: Dispersion…
Hopefully that’s obvious why you don’t want to use it on cooldown?
Re: Mind Sear…
Go to a target dummy. Mind Flay, for me, deals 7922 damage every 0.76 seconds, that’s 10423 DPS by spamming Mind Flay on one target. Mind Sear does 2895 damage every 0.76 seconds for 3928 DPS on one target. Meaning Mind Searing three mobs would only give 17% more DPS than doing nothing but spamming Mind Flay. Unbuffed, I have a 22.5% mastery proc rate and a 20% crit rate, so Mind Flay would be 15322 DPS and Mind Sear 5774 DPS.
Playing around on a target dummy for 5 minutes, I was able to pull 33.8k with only Inner Fire, no other buffs. This is also without being able to Shadow Word: Death and without Twist of Fate, aka my above 20% DPS. If I can do 33.8k on a target above 20% but Mind Sear only does 5774 DPS per target, I need a minimum of six targets to surpass single target damage.
On top of that, Mind Sear on 8 targets deals 46.2k DPS, or 54k in 1.17 seconds (which is my Mind Blast cast time). Three Mind Blasts and a 3 orb Devouring Plague deal 104400 + 127418 = 232k over 4.68 seconds, or 49.6k DPS. In other words, even on 8 targets it is still worth casting Mind Blast at a minimum instead of simply spamming Mind Sear.
I could go on but hopefully that clarifies a bit.
Re: DoTs as second lowest priority…
If you don’t believe those sites I linked and don’t trust me, I can break down the numbers again, but I’d really prefer not to do so. Bottom line is they’re the lowest priority besides Mind Flay.
Thank you – that’s very helpful.
I’ll reply more fully on Monday, as it’s nearly midnight my time right now, but just wanted to say thanks for breaking that down in such detail.
“Whoops, meant it took 8 targets to finally make it worth simply spamming Mind Sear, that 7 or less means you should still at least Mind Blast, and definitely multi-dot/Mind Blast on three to five mobs.”
Whoops again, I thought I read my numbers wrong, but I was originally correct. 49.6k DPS > 46.2k DPS, accidentally compared Mind Sear Damage over 1.17 seconds to Mind Blast/Devouring Plague DPS over 1 second.
“I’ll reply more fully on Monday, as it’s nearly midnight my time right now, but just wanted to say thanks for breaking that down in such detail.”
Not a problem. It’s definitely very weird and different from prior to 5.0.4 where DoTs were generally the highest priority and Mind Sear was much stronger.
Whoops, meant it took 8 targets to finally make it worth simply spamming Mind Sear, that 7 or less means you should still at least Mind Blast, and definitely multi-dot/Mind Blast on three to five mobs.
0:30, is not it icon of SW:Death? And SW:Pain at 1:02. 1:09 – is it really MF? It is clear, I understood it. But will probably use guides mosly to optimise characters when it’ll be needed for raiding, and probably will figure something myself for levelling.
Kerlon,
0:30 is SW:D, yes. But if you listen, he calls it SW:P and it is referencing DoTs.
Likewise, SW:P is 1:02, but he says SW:D. And it’s meant to be SW:D, so the icon is wrong.
1:09 is not the Mind Flay icon.
And it might have been clear, but it was wrong on the actual advice. DoTs are now a lower priority than Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death with the changes, and Shadow Priests need to adjust to that fact.
The problem I see with videos is that they are going to be much harder to change. If the theorycraft changes, or you notice a mistake, it’s easy to just update your text guide. But you might have to reshoot the entire video.
Actually, reshooting isn’t a huge problem. It only took me a couple of minutes to fix the video after I realised the icons were wrong, for example. Most of what I’m doing here is motion graphics, and if you’ve been doing video as long as I have (and have the pro tools to boot), it’s a pretty flexible and easy-to-update medium.
Unfortunately, the fact that YouTube won’t allow me to update the source footage of a video I’ve uploaded IS a huge problem. If I want to make a change to my video, I have to upload it as an entirely new file – and lose all the comments, likes, views, etc from the old file. That’s one of the things I’ve learned from doing this video – and something we’re going to have to find a way around before we do more of these.
Can you host it on here, and just put a link on youtube?
Cool vid and info btw, cant wait to see the mage one.