We ran regular Shadow Labs last night, as it was the daily and our guild's Hunter is lusting after the [Sonic Spear]. That, and I like Shadow Labs. It and Slave Pens are probably my two favorite 5-mans.
So there we were: a Heroic-geared Paladin healer, SPriest, and Mage, a Kara-geared Hunter, and ... a pre-Kara Warrior tank. Oh, and post-patch server lag that froze several people any time a mob was looted or a trade window was opened.
Long story short, I had to downgear for the first time last night. I ran almost the entire dungeon in my PvP gear (such as it is), which drops me down almost 80 spell damage. Even with that and me doing not much other than DOT and /dance, no MB except for bosses and counting to three between MFs, I still managed to get aggro a few times, even with Pallie Salv. I ended up hiding Omen and just winging it as I got tired of it screaming at me.
It was fun and all, and bosses went down fast and hard, but still quite a bit more work than I had anticipated.
...
On the flip side, I embezzled a bit from the guild bank and gemmed up the [Spellstrike Hood] I had made last night. I still have a bit of regemming to do to supplant all of the old +SpellHit gems I used to need, but I am pretty much done with my crafted gear for now. From here on out it is Badge and Tier loot.
I'm sitting at +926, but I think I can hit +950 on my current gear if I fix my gems and enchants. Not bad for a guy that just hit 70 two months ago, I think.
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9 comments:
This is no shadowpriest.com but I hope you don't mind some advice :)
I sure hope those crit/damage/stamina gems weren't the one you put in there and you are working to replace every single non-pure spelldamage gem with at least +9 one. Screw socket bonuses, most of them are useless. You have enough spellhit from SS+BoB alone to not need any spellhit. Also you are nowhere near the gear level where haste would make sense, you are only making yourself go OOM faster by gemming for it at the moment.
As for enchants, get the max one on your pants. You will likely keep them for months. Also your mainhand is pretty good and surely is worth to put at least +40 spelldamage to it.
The vast majority of those gems were put in back before I was running dailies and Heroics and were what I could afford and get off the AH. (Especially the gems in my FSW, for which I followed the socket colors so I could get the +spellhit bonus.)
You should have seen the state of my gems a week ago. Icky. It's definitely a work in progress. ;-)
Now that I have SS and BoB, I am ever so slowly replacing the old stuff with +12 reds as I can afford it. But 300g per red is a bit steep, even with dailies, so it is taking a while. Enchants are in the same boat -- I just haven't had the gold for the mats yet.
And yeah, my crit is out of control. 14%? I'm just asking for aggro with that. It wasn't intentional -- it's just what was on the AH when I needed a gem of that color.
If I were you I'd probably start with +9 gems in SS/FSW/BoB and upgrade as badges come. Replacing some 5 damage gem with 9 gives you +4 spelldamage for roughly 50-70g, not at all bad trade.
Of course I would also make a huge table with possible badge/craftable upgrades and see what gives me the most bang per buck/badge :)
Spreadsheets and data mining! Oh, yay!
(This is beginning to sound like work.)
But, alas, you are right. I do need to do that.
Napkin math tells me this would be the difference if I went all +9 red:
Spell Damage: +44 yields 966
Spell Hit: -9 yields 75
Spell Crit: -9 (yay!)
Spell Haste: -16 (don't care)
Stamina: -48 (roughly -10%, ouch)
That Stamina loss is killer. That's the only thing making me stop and think about it. It's going to nerf my survivability quite a bit. I run with some good healers, but the majority of my groups are still PUGs where I can't necessarily trust the healer.
Hmm.
But ... with +40 on my knife that puts me over the ZA minimum of 1000. It's certainly tempting.
That's 12x +9 gems, at 70g, or just about 850g. A short week of dailies. It's doable.
On the upside, at least I am not crazy enough to think that 12x +12 gems are within reach in the immediate future.
12 * 15 = 180 badges? Not any time soon.
12 * 300g = 3600g? Ha!
Bloody hell.
I can do the +40 spell dmg to weapon for u... : )
Slons
"Stamina: -48 (roughly -10%, ouch)"
That's not too bad, ~500hp drop. If you are afraid of not being healed just don't use SWD as much and blame the healer for your lack of dps/mana regen :)
Or just get a few stamina pieces for the fights that need it, there are not many of those though.
This is gonna sound kinda dorky, but you're kinda my hero. You seem to enjoy your priest so much .. and you always sound sort of optimistic. Between that and your sound information and advice .. you make me actually sort of like my poorly geared shadow priest, whose lately broken my heart as I can see no end in sight to the endless farming for primals. I've been cheating on her with a low level warlock. You make me wanna buckle down and get back to farming. Ie: Your rock. Thanks so much for everything. <3 your blog. And I completely forgive you for being undead, and thus a horde. Coughs.
Thanks! What a nice thing to say!
I do have so much fun with my Shadow Priest. They are so self-sufficient, and almost perfectly balanced. I can farm without excessive mana breaks, or quest without worrying if I have sufficient DPS to kill stuff, or pop out of Shadowform to heal when it is needed most.
(And don't get me started on how much I enjoy being a Troll SPreist. As if the improved regen wasn't enough, the racial Shadowguard is amazing.)
Oh, and being able to solo elites only 3 levels below you for most of the game? Awesome.
"I can see no end in sight to the endless farming for primals"
Yeah, that is true. As if FSW wasn't bad enough you then have to start over with the Belt of Blasting and again with the Spellstrike set (or Battlecast, if that's your thing).
But let me flip that on its ear and argue it another way: out of any other spec in the game, SPriests (and Locks) have what may be the most control over their gear progression, to an almost godlike OP level.
FSW + SS + BoB = 6 crafted epics that will last you through Tier 6. On their own, the rest of your gear could be crap, those 6 pieces will get you solidly entrenched in Tier 4 content. The trade-off is that you will be dead broke and running dailies until Tier 5 (at a minimum).
But you never have to run a single dungeon if you don't want to. No praying for loot drops. What other spec can claim that?
What's even more OP-awesome than that?
Given enough progression, we hit a point where between VT and VE we are guaranteed to never run out of Mana or Health, even without any external buffs. Yet again, we can be completely self-sufficient, rockin' out while everyone else around us falls apart.
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