Javaed posted on August 28, 2009
Continuing my 101 Series, I’m going to spend a bit of time discussing the Shadow Priest Spell “Rotation”. Those of you with a bit of experience under your belt can probably skip this post, as this first section is going to be pretty basic.
The Basics of the “Rotation”
The first thing to understand is that we don’t actually have a rotation. You can’t just cast Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay x3 as a pattern and expect to do decent DPS. Instead we have a Priority Queue system, which is a little more complicated. Each of our spells is ranked, and if you are in a situation where two or more of these spells are available to cast, you should cast the spell with the highest priority. The one exception is during our opening rotation, when we build up 5 stacks of the self-buff, Shadow Weaving. The Priority Queue doesn’t go into effect until after you have Shadow Weaving x5.
The Priority Queue
1) Shadow Word: Pain – Cast this spell first. Once the spell is up, under optimum conditions you will never recast it, as Mind Flay will continue to refresh the debuff. Get this spell back up quickly if it does fall off, as it increases the strength of Mind Flay and Mind Blast.
2) Vampiric Touch – You’ll be casting this spell every 15 seconds. Try to time it to land just after it falls off a target, to avoid “clipping” the last tick of the spell.
3) Mind Blast – Cast this spell as close as possible to every 5.5 seconds. Casting it before VT is applied to a target will delay refreshing your Replenishment buff, possibly causing it to fall off of your raid members.
4) Devouring Plague – Cast it every 24 seconds, and as with VT, time your reapplication to avoid DoT clipping. This is a little easier to accomplish, since the spell is instant cast.
5) Mind Flay – This is your filler spell, you use it between Mind Blast casts, and when none of your DoTs need to be reapplied. Note that this spell ticks in intervals. You should cancel the spell early (clipping a Mind Flay Tick) in order to cast a spell of a higher Priority on time.
Exceptions
Well, that’s the basic Priority Queue to follow, and if you’re a brand new Shadow Priest, practice mastering those five spells on a target dummy for a while. Spending 15 – 20 minutes attacking one can be a big help. Once you have the basics down, you can start looking into a few of the exceptions:
1) Shadow Word: Death – This spell is a little interesting. In order to get any DPS increase from the spell, you have to wait for particular openings to appear in your “rotation”. What you’re looking for is a period of time where you have about 1 Global CD before casting a spell of higher priority than Mind Flay, but not enough time to get two full Mind Flay ticks. At 0 Haste, that’s a period of time between 1 second and 1.5 seconds. If you have 2 seconds, you’ll get more DPS by casting 2 ticks of Mind Flay and then clipping it to begin your next spell cast. If you have .5 seconds, you’re better off just waiting until your high priority spell is ready to cast.
2) Tier Set Bonuses – Occasionally a Tier Set Bonus is powerful enough that we have to rearrange our spells on the Priority Queue. The Tier 8, 2-Piece bonus is a good example. This bonus increases the damage done by Devouring Plague by 15%, which is a very nice boost. At T8 levels of gear, this results in DP being a more significant DPS increase than MB, giving it a higher rank on the queue.