Shadow priest DPS

Today I was looking for any ways to maximize my shadow priest DPS. I found a wonderful forum post by griemak at www.shadowpriest.com. I think these things are extremely important for any shadow priest who has decided to become the best damage dealer ever. I allowed myself to simplify this guide a bit.

Shadow Priest DPS Guide

List of abbreviations:

VT – Vampiric Touch
DP – Devouring Plague
MB – Mind Blast
MF – Mind Flay
SW:P – Shadow Word: Pain
SW:D – Shadow Word: Death
MB – Mind Blast

First things to know:

1) Download a DOT timer addon to see the expiration time of your DOTs. It should be able to show tenths of a second.
2) Download a cast bar that shows estimated latency within the cast. I use Quartz.
4) Download an addond that reminds you to cast Inner Fire every time it expires.
3) Remember, as soon as one cast finishes you should land another one on your target. NEVER, EVER, EVER clip your VT and DP. This lowers DPS substantially.
4) At the same time try to reduce your downtime to zero.

There is a so called “opener” and a “rotation sequence”.

Your opener should be as follows: VT-DP-MB-MF-SW:P-SW:D-MB

Cast it only once, at the beginning of the fight.

Then do the following:

1. Refresh VT when approximately 1-1.3 seconds are remaining till it expires.
2. Refresh DP after it expires, not before.
3. If MB is ready – cast MB, if not cast MF.

So your rotation sequence should look like: VT-DP-MB-MF-SW:P

Use your Shadowfiend on cooldown, i.e. as soon as it’s ready, don’t wait.

Use a Wild Magic with Bloodlust or Heroism buffs.

Use Dispersion if you have to reduce your DPS because of some obstacles, like changing your fight position. I also save it till I’ve almost out of mana and as an "oh shit" button.

Though Inner Fire is often underestimated, it will raise your shadow priest DPS significantly.

Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Fish Feast, Shoveltusk, or it's fish equivalent should be up at all times.

Buffs you want:

Shaman

30% Inc. Cast Speed
Bloodlust/Heroism

5% Inc. Haste
Wrath of Air Totem

5% Inc. Crit
Elemental Oath

Inc. Spell Power
280 - Totem of Wrath
144 - Flametongue Totem

Paladin

3% Inc. Damage
Sanctified Retribution

3% Inc. Haste
Swift Retribution

Hunter

3% Inc. Damage
Ferocious Inspiration - BM Hunter

Druid

3% Inc. Haste
Improved Moonkin

5% Inc. Crit
Moonkin Aura

Warlock

Inc. Spell Power
10% - Demonic Pact



I hope you liked this great manual on how to raise your overall

shadow priest DPS

You may also want to check some other interesting posts of this blog, like How to get your girlfriend to play WoW or in How to level up fast in WOW

Feel free to leave your comments.

Shadow priest DPS guide

WoW Priest Guide for Ulduar

Here is a wonderful wow priest guide for raiding Ulduar, written by Poptisse, a member of great Ensidia guild on Magtheridon,EU.

WoW priest guide for Ulduar

A few of you might have read my Sunwell holy priest gear guide. I'm back this time with a wow priest guide for raiding Ulduar where I will include as much as I can of what might be useful.

First of all I want to make clear that I'm not trying to say what's right and what's wrong in this guide. I'm writing if from my own personal point of view of the game. I know from personal experience that all priests have very different opinons from each other when it comes to gems and certain pieces of gear specifically. If you have any questions you can PM me here on the site, post on the forums or post a comment.

So what tasks should a holy priest be assigned to?
I am 90% of the time put on raidhealing, apart from the exceptional boss now and then. Putting a holy priest on maintank healing is a waste of effective raid healing unless you have no other choice. A Shaman or a Paladin is better for that task.
There's basically 2 different kind of specs that I could consider using myself, it really depends on what fight, your playstyle and what your gear is like.

-This spec here has Mental Agility. This is the spec I usually raid with due to the fact that I use renew, POM and COH a lot, so the 10% less mana is very useful.

-This spec here here however, does not have mental agility. Instead it has Test of Faith and Healing Prayers, a nice spec for a short fight that requires high HPS.

These are two very viable specs for a Holy Priest, although the first spec is best overall (you really want mental agility).
I'm not really going to go into depth on why I picked certain talents, but the revamped Serendipity is a must because the hasted Prayer of Healing is insanely good.
If we look back in time you can easily see that the best stats for a priest have changed a lot. In TBC spirit and haste were the kings, especially with the 5 second rule regen. But since the 3.1 spirit nerf I can't see spirit being prioritised at all. I get what is on my items, but on sockets and enchants it is last priority.

For manaregen I would strongly suggest intellect over spirit, at ANY time. As long as you have replenishment in your group that is (which you should, even in 10 man). Intellect is by far the strongest mp5 you can obtain at the moment, it beats spirit by far. You can't afford standing for 30 seconds regaining mana anymore. That will most likely kill your entire raid, at least in Ulduar.

Spellpower is not hugely important for a holy priest even though your spells do scale well from it. You gain a lot from inner fire to start with. You get a lot of spell power from pieces of gear and your enchants. Due to this I'm focused a lot more on regen instead when it comes to the parts I can choose. To be able to last longer and spam heal is more important then every heal healing for a little bit more, most of the time that's overhealing anyway.

Haste is also an important stat, but not game breaking. It's really useful when casting a lot of Prayer Of Healing's, but also to lower your global cooldown for your instant cast spells. I'd say around 450-500 is good enough for Ulduar 25 man.

When I entered Ulduar, my gear was basically focused around the fact that I wanted to last through longer fights. I was around 21k mana unbuffed, 500 haste and 2350~ spellpower with inner fire. Completely buffed that was around 26k mana, 500 haste, 2450 spellpower (not including totems) and 22k health. I never had any big mana issues, although I used shadowfiend more then I ever did in Naxxramas. Of course for the longer fights I always popped a mana potion. I have to say that since WoTLK, rejuvenation potions are superior to mana potions. This is because you can pop them if you ever need a healthpot and you get mana at the same time. Instead of using a manapot OR a healthpot.

For the set bonuses, the t7.5 2-set bonus is extremely good. You want to keep it as long as you possibly can. For the Ulduar tier 8 sets the bonuses aren't really that amazing. The seperate parts are good, but don't focus too much on the bonuses.

Trinkets is really a personal choice. For myself I use the Jewelcrafting Intellect trinket - Figurine Sapphire Owl with dual 16 int gems in it.
My second trinket is dependent on what fight it is. Sometimes I use the Egg of Mortal Essence for when there is a lot of raid healing and the Forethought Talisman for the more single target fights. If you can afford it I would recommend Je'Tze's Bell also for additional mana regen.

Remember that it is and will always be about balance. You don't want 1500 spellpower and 35k mana. Neither do you want 3000 spellpower and 15k mana. Balance it so that you know that you can heal through a whole fight, rather then going out of mana halfway through. In that situation the extra spellpower won't help you at all.
There's a whole universe of different food, elixirs and flasks you can use today. On PTR I used flasks basically all the time only to see how it worked out, but came to the conclusion that elixirs are my personal choice.

For the Ulduar progress I had stacked up on:
Guru's Elixir (20 all stats)
Elixir Of Mighty Thoughts (45 int)
Spellpower Elixir (58 spellpower)
Pure Mojo flasks, which I never used
Frost Wyrm Flasks, never used those either
Stoneblood Flasks, you never know when you need extra HP.

Wellfeds:
40 Haste / 40 stamina
46 Spellpower / 40 stamina
40 Spirit / 40 stamina

In the end I always ended up with SP or Guru's Elixir and Mighty Thoughts + 40 haste food.
I found that combo to be the most balanced choice for me.

Using elixirs might be expensive during progress if you wipe a lot since they dont persists through death. If you plan on using a flask, the Frost Wyrm one is way better then the Pure Mojo since the tiny amount of MP5 is not worth it.
-Gems:
There are several different gems that you can consider being viable, although I would never use them myself.

I socket this way:
Red: 9 sp 8 int
Blue: Prismatic 27 int (8 int 3mp5 works aswell if you're not a JWC)
Yellow: 16 int

There's other options though:
Red: 16 sp / 9sp 8 spirit / 9 sp 3 mp5 / 9 sp 8 haste
Blue: 9 sp 8 spirit / 9 sp 3 MP5 / 16 spirit / 8 int 12 stam / 8 int 8 spirit / 8 spirit 8 haste
Yellow: 16 haste / 16 crit / 8 int 8 spirit / 8 spirit 8 haste

It all comes down to your own personal taste. If you have problems with manaregen I would always suggest int before spirit and mp5 however.

For metagems there are a few different ones to pick from as well, some being better then others.
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is overall the best meta for a healer. It gives you 21 int and chance to restore mana (600) on spellcast (45 sec internal cd). It's the only one I'm going to mention since it's far ahead of all the others.

-Enchants:
This is a little bit easier, there's not much to pick from.

Head enchant = 30 spellpower 8 mp5. Wyrmrest Accord (revered)
Shoulder enchant = 24 sp 6 mp5 (sons of hodir exalted)
Chest = 10 stats
Cloak = I'm a tailor so I use the Darkglow Embroidery and I guess even since the buff to Lightweave Embroidery that's viable as well. It gives 250 spellpower for 15 seconds and does not seem to have a internal cooldown at the moment.
If you're not a tailor I suggest 23 haste.
Bracers: 30 Spellpower
Gloves: 28 Spellpower
Legs: 50 Spellpower 20 spirit (Brilliant Spellthread) The Sapphire Spellthread with 50 sp and 30 stam is a good choice aswell if you have low HP or are doing a high raid damage boss.
Boots: Tuskar's Vitality (15 stam + run speed)

There's other options for some of the slots but I wouldn't suggest them at Ulduar raiding level.

Every wow priest going to Ulduar needs certain glyphs. I included them into this guide.

-Glyphs:

Minor:
Glyph Of Shadowfiend: A must. It will restore mana to you even if you fiend dies early and we all know how bad the survivability of our fiend already is.
Glyph Of Fortitude: It's really good if you have to buff in combat for example.
Glyph Of Levitate: You never know when you have to use it, there is no more "Missing reagent: Light Feather"

Major:
Glyph of Guardian Spirit: Really good glyph, I went through wotlk until 3.1 without Guardian Spirit because 3 mins CD was too much for something that might not even be consumed. With this glyph the talent becomes way more viable.
Glyph of Circle of Healing: A must for all CoH specced priests, no discussion about it.
Glyph of Flash Heal: Good glyph that I suggest all priests to have.
Glyph of PoH: Awesome for HPS fights.
Glyph of Renew: I've been using this a lot myself, usually in 25-man renew doesnt get all their ticks anyway, so might aswell increase the healing on the ticks they do get.
-Preheal and predict dmg:
As most of you probably know by now, there is no real rotation for a healer. You have to make quick decisions and a situation can change in a millisecond. A really good healer can predict incoming damage and from that start healing before the damage actually hits.

Take an example, Mimiron p2. You know that he will do Heat Wave, you know that people will take damage. How do you help yourself and other healers keep people topped before they take dmg?
What I usually do is that I keep renews rolling and PoM on cd all the time so it starts bouncing as soon as the dmg hits.

A nice rotation for quick raid healing however is to CoH -> PoM -> Flash Heal preferably on surge of light proc (atleast 1 stack of serendipity is nice) -> PoH.
Its a lot different from fight to fight though. You might have to move a lot which prevents you from casting PoH and you might want to use renew instead.

A holy priest does not have a lot of cooldowns to keep track of. Inner focus, Shadowfiend, Guardian Spirit (counting long cooldowns) are our main concerns. For the shadowfiend, I suggest using it at 60%~ mana, maybe even up to 70% depending on the length of the fight. It has a 5 min cooldown, but in most cases if you use it early you can actually use it again.
Make sure you don't cast your fiend for example when Ignis is casting flame jets. What will happen? Your fiend will die. You want to gain as much as you can from it, so cast it when you know there isn't going to be any AoE damage for at least a few seconds. A dead fiend is a wasted fiend.

-Addons:
Configuring your UI for optimal healing is also an easy shortcut to becoming a better healer.
Centering Raidframes/Unitframes/actionbars will make it way easier too keep an eye on everything on the same time. Avoid of having unitframe in top left corner, grid in bottom right, and bossmods in bottom left. You see the problem. The less you have to scout around your screen, the better it is.

Grid is really good raidframe, combine with grid quickhealth (updates healthbars way faster using combatlogs).
Pitbull is my personal favourite unitframes, mainly because you can set them up in basically ANY way you want. Ag_Unitframes and pearl have their limits.
Forte Xorcist for keeping track of renews.
OmniCC for cooldownmonitor on your actionbars.

It's also very good to have an addon that keeps track on your Surge Of Light / Serendipity / Trinkets etc. Personally I use SatrinasBuff Frames with one filter: d<60&my
This displays all my own proccs that are less then 60 seconds long in a seperate frame close to my unitframe.

-Keybinds:
Use them and use them for everything. Bind your most used spells to your favorite keybinds (try them out, see what you prefer). Don't forget that you can also modify them with shift, ctrl and alt.
Clicking to heal is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Nobody can be a good, fast reacting healer that way.

-Macros:
Another thing that I use myself is OnMouseOver macros for all my heals.
I got the impression that it saves me a few milliseconds by not clicking to swap target, seeing as I'm often using instant casts.

OnMouseOver macro I'd say is however a MUST for Abolish/Dispel magic.

#showtooltip Circle of Healing(rank 7)
/cast [mod,target=player]
[target=mouseover,help,nodead]
[help,nodead]
[nogroup,target=player]
[target=targettarget,help,nodead]Circle of healing(rank 7)

Thats how my macros look, I just change the spellname. From what I've heard Clique works somewhat the same way, but I've never really tried using that addon myself.
I love playing priest more then anything else. I've been playing it from day 1 and I will continue until I stop. It's a fun class due to its many ways of healing and the many different abilities we have. I also love raidhealing, esp fights where I push my hps to the max and right now priests are extremely strong at that.
I find healing interesting in many ways though, I also have a holy paladin and a resto druid, I guess its the responsibility and the fact that it's never the same game.

Hope you find some useful information in this guide for a wow priest. Remember, we're all different so no blaming and shaming. It's written from my own PoV and even though it might not be what you prefer, many of these things are down to personal preference.

Feel free to ask questions on our forum or send me a PM through the website. I very rarely reply in-game.

Enjoy Ulduar!

WoW priest guide for Ulduar

WoW priest guide for Ulduar

World of Warcraft: WoW Human Priest

Two days ago I decided to become a wow human priest.

I used to be a rogue at Khadgar, EU and had honour to be a part of famous Synergy guild.
There I practised my rogue skills and stabbed my Horde foes from behind.
I've played for 2 years and then I quit, although I still have my account.

So two days ago I decided to start a wow human priest toon.
His name is Maleek and he is 14lv at the moment. I like to help people and I think it's great to be helpful. For example I always use Power Word: Fortitude on people who are just passing by.
Who knows, maybe in a second they will face with Horde or whatever...

What concerns grinding and leveling I prefer keeping Power Word: Fortitude and Inner Fire all the time.

When attacking mobs I use Smite and Mind Blast.

Moreover, priest are always in demand, when there is a party or a raid. This was another reason why I chose this class.

Well, I'll continue to level up and inform you of my personal experience as a World of Warcraft priest later.

See ya!

PS I wrote this post about my wow human priest toon long ago. After that I have leveled it up till 80, explored Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King and took part in a number of battles. We cleared up Karazhan using Skype, floor by floor, boss by boss. Then we went to SSC. I have been constantly improving my play style; read priest guides, updated addons, improved my shadow priest dps... I've become our number one raid healer and the highest reward for my efforts was when one day one of our guild members told me that a friend of his was watching one of our raids and couldn't understand, how I managed to heal so fast and so effectively...
We have had a lot of adventures since then. But that is another story, waiting for its hour to be told. )))

PS You can learn how to level up faster in WOW or how to get your girlfriend to play WOW.

World of Warcraft: WoW Human Priest

There are a lot of girls playing. Everybody must have heard about a girl playing a druid named Hafu who beat everybody in the Arena and made it to the top of the whole world gladiators' list in March, 2008.

How to get your girlfriend to play WoW

WELL, it's SIMPLE!

So you would like to know how to get your girlfriend to play WoW with you. That's great, because I know some tips that will help you.
So what should we do?

Ok, my friend. Fasten your seat belt, cause here are some best advice that I found in the Internet, on

how to get your girlfriend to play World of Warcraft

SO, HERE WE GO:

1. Don't force your girlfriend to play WoW - use other methods.

2. Don't be rude with her (never use curse words, hit the keyboard etc etc).

3. Play in the same party/guild. Use team work and cooperation. Ask your girlfriend to help you with the game. Help her.

4. Buy your girlfriend some cool looking gear or dresses. Send her something by the in-game mail.

5. Have her use a 10 day trial with no obligation to continue if she doesn't like it.

6. Offer your girlfriend to start an alliance toon. They're prettier. (A Blood Elf will be OK too however)

7.Make a compromise. Promise her to do something she wants you to do if she tries WOW.

8. Use dances and emotes and other aspects of social life to interest her.

9. If she likes chatting then compare playing WOW with it: “It’s just like chatting on Yahoo Messenger, only with a character in front of you.”

10. Be patient. We all were noobs. =)

And that's not all - here we have got a nice video which I found on YouTube in which a girl gives some useful tips on how to make your girl (or wife) become a gamer:

how to get your girlfriend to play WoW

If you have alreagy learned how to get your girl to play WOW with you then it's just awesome! I invite you to share your personal techniques in the comments.



PS and here you can find some useful tips and free guides on how to level up fast in WOW.

Be a dragon hunter! Enlist now!

A lot is known about dragons though nobody has ever seen them in real life. In World of Warcraft you can become a true dragon hunter due to a variety of dragon types in this game.

Dragons have always been mysterious creatures for people. In China dragon symbolized wisdom. People were so afraid of this creature that the sign with which they denoted a dragon was a simple square.

The quest Dragonkin Menace in Burning Steppes gives you a pretty good feeling of a real dragon hunter. To complete this quest you have to go and kill 30 dragons of different types. Some are tough and some are not.

If that is not enough, well, gather a raid and travel to Onyxia's Lair. It required 40 people in original WOW and now I think you'll need less.

Moreover, there is Blackrock Spire where you can find other dragons of different kinds and dragon bosses. Get your weapon ready. Get your potions ready.
Tell your family you love them.

Dragon hunters for life! =)

Blizard

Blizard is a great and genius company that produces great games. Its mmorpg World of Warcraft won the hearts and minds of 10 million players all over the world rapidly.

I myself spent about 3 years playing World of Warcraft and I don't regret. I got new friends, practiced my English and became a more culturally developed person myself. Also I learnt about the dangers of online mmorpgs. Nevertheless, I should thank Blizard for all of that.

You know what? If you really like World of Warcraft and other Blizard games you can apply for job at this company. Search Google for their official web site and apply for one of the jobs they propose. I heard of one of the gamers who wrote a big letter on 10 pages to them. In this letter he described World of Warcraft bugs which he had known. Finally they decided to invite him for work.

So why wait? If you really love this great Game - do not hesitate, go for it!
Here, at this site you will get useful advice on how to become more self-confident: Personal Effectiveness

Chinese gold farmers

What do you people think of Chinese gold farmers?
I think that these guys are really clever and pretty flexible.

First of all I have to say that I deeply respect this nation. Chinese nation has a very long history and a notable culture and traditions. The power of will and adaptability to circumstances of Chinese people are very great.

When you live in a country where there are a lot of people and you need to feed your family one thing you can do is to be creative like Chinese guys. Gold farming sweatshops is a wonderful idea! People get money for doing what they like to do - for playing World of Warcraft. The person who invented the idea of such a sweatshop is really a genius.

China is a very ancient and mystical country. I'm even going to start learning Chinese language and have already downloaded one audio course of Chinese language from the Internet.