Post by Sinespe
The section on PseudoPower has been completely re-written to be more informative and less dictatorial. It is designed to encourage people to run Simcraft themselves for their own gear levels to determine what stats they should be focusing on.
You should all go and read it!v1.3 will be followed up soon with v1.3.1, in which Tier 10 will be Simcrafted. BiS lists will not be available for some time, owing to gaps within the database which will need to be filled through ICC10/25H progression.
Post by Sinespe
The Archivum
I will put here things that are probably not very useful to very many people any more, because of one reason or another, but which nevertheless have had a lot of work put into making them researched and understandable. Italics indicate brief introductions as to why each article is here and who might still find it useful, along with any other information.~~~~
Tier 8, 4 Piece set bonusPatch 3.2 allowed everyone access to Conquest emblems from all heroics and raids up to Ulduar. Combined with Emalon's glove and leg drops, this enabled people to get four pieces of Tier 8.226 relatively easily. This research shows how to get the most out of the four-piece set bonus from the T8.226 set. People who wish to do Herald of the Titans will find this information particularly useful. With 3.3's Haste scaling, wherever possible, you should be refreshing your VT and DP while under Devious Mind, since that results in a sharp increase in effective up-time of the buff.Since 3.2 has come out, this will become more prevalent. Having used it myself for a good week or two, I have come up with the way to use it most effectively and screw with your rotations least. This can be done with any level of haste, but I include recommended values in my calculations for having massive impact (>200 DPS base DPS boost on a dummy sometimes).
WARNING: Lots of maths are enclosed beneath. The short version is this: When your cast bar starts telling you that Mind Flay will be cast in 2.5 seconds, you can start weaving in GCD-fillers between the consecutive Mind Flays (MB --> MF3 --> SW: D --> MF3). When it starts telling you 2.2 seconds, start trying to clip Mind Flays with Mind Flays to squeeze in MF3 MF2 MF3.
This is a curious set bonus. There is a way to swing it with maximum force: to bruteforce its uptime closer to 100%. Remember that all buffs are taken into consideration when you
start casting a spell. To give an example: your
Sundial proc has 0.5 seconds left on it. As long as you start casting Mind Flay before that 0.5 seconds expires, the whole of the spell will act as if it has an extra 590 spellpower on it. You effectively extend the duration of the buff by the length of the spell you cast.
The default uptime on this Haste proc is (assuming 0 haste for the Mind Blast cast) 4/7 * 100 = 57%. Casting two consecutive Mind Flays with anything less than 1640 Haste rating (50% haste -- 2-second mind flays) will cause the buff to drop off before your third spell. But note:
consecutive Mind Flays. The default way of spellcasting between Mind Blasts is to chain together two Mind Flays. To maximise this set bonus, you have to think outside the box a little bit. You need to fit two casts within about 3.8 seconds (to account for minor latency), so that your third spell -- the second Mind Flay -- will also be hasted. Assume a Mind Flay and a GCD-cast -- be it VT, DP or even SW: D -- that would be 4.5 seconds base casting time. ((4.5 / 3.8) - 1) * 32.79 * 100 = 605 Haste rating. 605 - the 240 you already get from the proc = 365 haste needed. That's pretty easy to reach, given how you should have >328 for your standard rotation anyway!
So why are these figures important? Why not just go MF3 --> MF3 --> SW: D? Well, let's look at the time saved. We'll take 365 base haste rating and assume 0.1 seconds of latency, and compare the charts.
MB --> MF3 --> MF3 --> SW: D
0.00.000: Mind Blast
0.01.349: Devious Mind gained
0.01.449: MF3
0.04.081: MF3
0.05.349: Devious Mind faded
0.06.713: SW: D
0.06.849: Mind Blast off cooldown
0.08.162: Mind Blast
MB --> MF3 --> SW: D --> MF3
0.00.000: Mind Blast
0.01.349: Devious Mind gained
0.01.449: MF3
0.04.081: SW: D
0.05.347: MF3
0.05.349: Devious Mind faded
0.06.849: Mind Blast off cooldown
0.07.982: Mind Blast
These numbers aren't great and there's a certain deal of precision lost when factoring in solid latency that never shifts. So, naturally, you'll want to aim for more than 365 haste, but hopefully it is clear that, wherever possible, you should squeeze in, at the very least, a GCD spell, because it causes Devious Mind to stay "up" for far longer than it should do.
This becomes more potent when you get up to higher levels of haste. Assuming 25% (Which is relatively easy, raid buffed), you get to the point where you can start clipping Mind Flays with other Mind Flays. The problem with the strategy before this point is that you only have a limited number of GCD-filler spells you can cast. You can't just cast DP or VT every time because you would be overwriting the DoT, and SW: D is on a 12-second cooldown.
MF2, however, acts like a GCD filler. As I say, let's assume 25% haste (So, around 17%, plus Moonkin Aura plus Wrath of Air totem = 25%). This translates into 820 Haste Rating without Devious Mind and 1060 with it.
MB --> MF3 --> MF2 --> MF3
0.00.000: Mind Blast
0.01.200: Devious Mind
0.01.300: MF3
0.03.367: MF2
0.04.978: MF3
0.05.200: Devious Mind Fades
0.06.700: Mind Blast comes off cooldown
0.07.345: Mind Blast
Suddenly we've reduced the waiting time between Mind Blast coming off cooldown and re-casting that spell to only 0.6 seconds. Obviously, using a GCD-filler is preferrable, because then you're only looking at a 0.3 second delay -- however, this could easily be off-set by the massive damage buff of two ticks of Mind Flay over one Shadow Word: Death spike.
~~~~
BiS ProfileUntil Icecrown Citadel is fully cleared, BiS profiles are buggy and incomplete. The text here will reside here for as long as the lists cannot be fully updated, but they will return to an appropriate place at an appropriate time.I have a Profile called "
BiS Gear Horde Shadowpriest", with my opinion as to the best possible gear attainable for current play. Even if you can't access that level of gear, it's pretty fun to look at the ridiculous numbers on the character sheet. Although I do cross-reference this with shadowpriest.com, the only source I use in initially building the set of gear is Wowhead's own database: the tools provided by this database allow me to build up such a set of gear that, when I look at shadowpriest.com, all I'm really doing is confirming and tweaking.
This profile is currently out-of-date owing to gaps within Wowhead's database. It nevertheless has been upgraded as far as possible for the time-being.A strict 10-man wishlist is now also available, and is up-to-date for all content up to and including Trial of the Grand Crusader, 10 player.
It assumes Tailoring/Enchanting because they are my own professions.