[Liquidska]

I am posting on behalf of a friend of mine. I am looking for some one that has a degree of knowledge about shadow priests, or has a good blog that can help me understand why my friends DPS is so low.

He is intersted in raiding with us, but he is barely pulling 1.5k in most heroics and rarely breaking 2k in the few raids we can afford to bring him to. I am not sure if this related to the faster pulls of heroics and he is not able to get his DoTs up (in which case this is pointless) or if this is something more on his side. (Of him not casting the right abilites). I would love to see him in raids more often, but when he is putting out these kinda numbers we just can't afford it.

I only have a passing knowledge of Shadow Priests but I can tell that he is about over Hit cap with his current spec. I have down a little research though EJ about Spriest and his spec looks fairly close to the norm as far as I Can tell.Obviously his gear is nothing stellar, which trickles down to his enchants and gems being less then stellar as well. Yet I am just curious if there is anything big that he is missing or something to obvious that we have all over looked it.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Really any help could be great. Thanks!

[Matthras]

Elitist Jerks doesn't really have much info on SPriests last time I checked. You're better off checking shadowpriest.com for the nitty gritty details.

Gemming and Enchanting needs a rework.
The Meta only needs two blue gems, which should be filled by using SP/Spirit gems. Every other slot should have a +23sp gem. It's not worth gemming for socket bonuses unless it's a spellpower bonus. Gemming for hit is okay if you're under the cap, but hit should mostly come from gear and patched up using hybrid gems.
Shoulders obviously needs a better enchant. If he wants to raid he needs to do his Sons of Hodir Dailies and grab those shoulder enchants. Chest should be +10 to stats.

I also note that his haste is a little low. Ideally you'll want it at a point where you can fit two Mind Flays per Mind Blast cooldown (so something around 400-500 ish).

That aside, it's all about the opening rotation (depending on your haste, you'll have to experiment) and priorities. Is he letting dots finish ticking before reapplying (VT and DP)? Is he clipping (cutting short) Mind Flays? Is he getting 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving before applying Shadow Word: Pain?
Also, what mods is he using? It may be useful to have a mod or two to track DoTs (there's DoTimer, but there are others as well).

Chances are it's more his rotation/priority system than the stuff you can see, which makes it even all the more difficult to figure out.

[Glittersmith]

His gear is far from supergood but he should definitely pull atleast 4k in raids with it given that a fair amount of caster buffs is in the raid.

So there probably something wrong with his rotation, clipping dots, wasting gcds waiting etc. You have any sort of combatlog parse from a raid with him in it?

[Edgar]

He seems to have quite some Holy gear. A few mp5 pieces and he gems for socket bonuses that are utterly useless and should have 23sp gems.

Spec wise, take out the 2 points of Imp. Vampirc Embrace and 1 point off Veiled Shadows to pick up and max out Imp. Devouring Plague. Should mana become an issue because of the longer Fiend CD he can replace Glyph of Shadow with the Dispersion Glyph.

His gear is not that bad and if he has trouble breaking 2k it is clearly a rotation issue. He has 400SP more than my recently-hit-80 priest and I pull 2k.

VT, MB, DP, MF, SW:P for the opener so he'll have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving. From there on it's a priority system of keeping up all the dots and having Mind Blast on cooldown.

VT > MB > DP > MF. Don't let SW:P fall under 5-6 seconds because MF may mess you up and not refresh SW:P at that point, had it happen in raids unfortunately.

Tell him to read some guides and practice his rotation at the dummies.

[Matthras]

I'd rather take the three points from Focused Mind to max out Improved Devouring Plague. 15% mana cost reduction isn't much when you have raid buffs jumping up your INT and hence getting better mana returns from Replenishment, and even a higher return from Shadowfriend/Dispersion.

To be honest I've never had mana problems as long as I alternated using Shadowfiend and Dispersion. YMMV

And as Edgar suggests, practice on the dummies. I personally find SPriests one of the harder DPS classes to manage.

[orcstar]

I've found the addon: EventHorizon : WoWInterface Downloads : Casting Bars and Cooldowns
to be very usefull for managing shadowpriest spells.

Here's a youtube on how to use it: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6b49x87uGk"]YouTube - Event Horizon WoW Addon[/ame]

[Liquidska]

I totally <3 you guys. Pure gold. I will get him to vist those sites and watch the video, but from what you all said it really does sound like it is more on his side. The DoT timer addon probably sounds like the best bet, I haven't done any combat logs with him but curious as to what his up time is on his dots.

I talked to him about what his rotation or priority system is and he said something fairly simmiliar to what you all are saying, so I am thinking that he knows what he should be doing just having trobule putting it in to actual practice.