Maxvla

How long is your average fight length in AQ40? One of the reasons I'm high on the Tiara is the regen. I would guess average fight length is more towards the 180 sec range, or perhaps longer, compared to 120-150 in bwl. Setting fight length to 180, you have to limit mindblast to make the distance, even with full consumables. In this situation Tiara is the best helm short of naxx (preceptor's), even not using the hit.

You are right and I know they are better. I'm suppose I'm being too pessimistic about my chance to actually get them. I should work from a true bis, rather than my filtered version. I just don't think I will ever get them because the boss they come from, the small upgrade they provide (drop 6 dmg to pick up a hit, worth around 16 dmg, net gain of 10) vs the crazy value they have for mages and locks, which have nothing close. Knowing how poorly shadow scales, it makes me hesitant to take an item like this when the upside for mage/lock is so much more. Compared to Tiara which is essentially rot on the first drop. Mishundare is better for lock, etc. I also don't know how long we'll be killing c'thun before naxx opens. I'm on Darrowshire so we will probably be slightly accelerated from anathema. Even the c'thun cloak I'm doubtful on, but hopeful. And yes, T2.5 is really good overall for encounters where your health matters. I intend to pick up helm and chest at least.

Leggings of the Black Blizzard are indeed BiS for AQ (assuming no Kazzak), however Bloodvine are better if you can make use of the hit. Along with the Bloodvine Vest, these are the 2 last items you want to change out. The ZG hit neck is quite poor, not even better than Choker of Enlightenment from Lucifron, and Jeklik's Opaline Talisman is better than both. Don't obsess over hit capping. Hit is very strong for shadow, but it is not worth wearing on an item with no spell power. You would do more damage (on average) with Jeklik neck and 98% hit, than Soul Corruptor's neck and the resulting 99% hit (1% miss always present). Hit items you want for BWL/ZG BiS: Neltharion's Tear, Bracers of Arcane Accuracy, Bloodvine chest and legs (6% total) Hit items you want for AQ BiS: Neltharion's Tear, Ring of the Fallen God, Cloak of the Devoured, Rockfury Bracers, Tiara of the Oracle. (6% total) I would personally pass on Black Blizzard in my guild raids until nobody that would immediately equip them was present. In a pug, however, you should always roll need, as they are absolutely BiS... eventually. The staff can be a good item if you haven't gotten a Nef mace, or your guild isn't clearing Twin Emps to get a quest staff. It is about 8% better than Anathema if you can use the hit, but about 10% worse if you can't. Chances are, if you are pugging 20 mans, you won't have access to a Nelth's tear, so it's a good pick up.

The problem with crit is it is worth nothing on long fights since you don't use mind blast, or use it very little. If both helms are equal in their respective ideal situations, the one that is most effective in the worst case should be the one to wear. Anyway, you mentioned people were getting T2.5, so I'm guessing you are on anathema and in AQ, so the debate is moot, get T2.5 helm and you don't have to worry. Adjust your gear so that the hit is useful and there is nothing short of naxx that can touch the value of T2.5. A shadow priest should have little trouble being at the head of the line for the helm token. Every other class' T2.5 helm is less valuable.

You say it could be marginally better. I explain why you would never want to use one. That is the difference.

No, it confirms the opposite, that mishundare isn't something a priest should go for. If it is at best even with Hexxer's Cover, then it should always go to a mage or warlock, for whom it is a large upgrade over T2 or Hexxer's Cover. Unless you are getting mishundare helms every kill, there will probably always be a mage or lock in need of one before you can get a Hexxer's Cover. In full bis full consumables, crit is worth about 2.7 spell damage, making mishundare worth approximately 41 dmg (Inc the crit from the extra int). But you would not be using mishundare in a naxx geared setup, so that comparison is moot. In bwl bis, crit is worth about 2.4, so you are now certainly below the 41 dmg of Hexxer's Cover. In AQ, the tier helm is godly, so even then, you would not use mishundare.

No worries about editing. You can only view/copy it.

Here is the spreadsheet. Deathlace did the core work and layout. I populated most of the gear and added missing enchants/buffs. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F1IVqSt1MEJ9yjZ9rn1aKGIWNkJiA_CNmn6fLUpakb4/edit?usp=sharing You can make a copy for yourself, and freely adjust the inputs. It is not perfect, but I haven't found any conflicts with expectations of gear performance (except where noted examples could occur). The spreadsheet, of course, exists in a vacuum where there is no ping/input lag/etc. Achieving 90-95% of what it shows should be possible on a Patchwerk/Ebonroc style fight.

It is a spreadsheet made by another, that I have expanded. I need to do some housekeeping on it before posting, but I will try to do so tonight. While starting said clean up I noticed that improved Mind Blast was said to not be effective in the calculations, so what I said before would be higher dps, but run OOM even faster. I'd revise the 90 sec down to perhaps 60-75 sec if running 5/5 imp mindblast. Also, while messing about, I noticed a naked unbuffed, priest, with boss debuffs active (weaving/curse), 1% crit is worth about 1.3 damage. So you can see it scales extremely poorly 1.3 to 2.44 (naked vs ~800 dmg).

According to my spreadsheet, with bis BWL gear equipped, 5/5 imp MB, and setting fight length to 90 sec, 1% crit is worth 2.44 spell damage. Using maximum mana consumables you would be oom shortly after the boss dies (100 sec), meaning you'd be waiting for consumable cooldowns for around 30 sec if the fight went longer. Your encounter DPS would drop by approximately 120-150 (about 15% loss) if you get into this situation of regularly waiting for mana cooldowns. 5/5 Imp MB is not worth taking when your average fight length is over 90 sec. 0/5 is the better choice for AQ/Naxx.

25% (5% per point)

That is not true. Nightfall procs on seal of righteousness and lifestealing, so every swing is three chances to proc. Libram of rapidity for haste, hand of justice for extra attacks. Paladin uptime is good. I'd still rather not have one in my raid though, unless the guild were light on healing paladins.

DPS warriors are a bit slow to start, but are perfectly viable from the beginning. PVP gear helps bolster 5 man drops, and of course the crafted and world drops (like Lionheart and /Cloudkeeper/Edgemasters) are a shortcut to doing good dps early. You'll soon out dps mages on most fights except those with mass AOE.

A friend of mine looked at the open source code and explained to me that it was a 2 roll system. Adding to my 2 roll information above, it seems the bonus effects from ignite rolling and improved shadow bolt could still be a net gain, but for frost, hit would be superior. For shadow/smite priest, crit scales very poorly and hit will always be better. I'm not familiar with balance or elemental in vanilla so I can't say for those specs. In summary, I would suggest that if your spell has no improved crit modifier, you should always favor hit. If your spell has only an improved crit modifier, but nothing else, hit will probably be best. If your spell has an improved crit modifier AND bonus effects, crit will probably be better. In the end, though, you need to consider how a piece of gear is itemized. Even a fire mage or warlock would want a neltharion's tear, for example, just because of the sheer DPS value. If two items are exactly the same except trading hit and crit at 1:1 ratio, then consult your spell modifiers to make your decision.

I would like to know the answer to this as well, since it shifts priority for best dps. I believe it was a 1 roll system in original vanilla for spells, only melee attacks had 2 roll. How 1 roll compares to 2 roll - Mage/Lock with following stats - 10% crit 10% miss (7% hit on gear) 1 roll = the server rolls a number 1-100. 1-10 is crit, 11-90 is hit, 91-100 is miss. In most cases adding crit is superior to hit (on average). Warlocks (imp shadow bolt) and fire mages (ignite rolling). For Frost mage, there is little difference. 2 roll = the server rolls a number 1-100. 1-10 is miss, 11-90 is hit, then from that result it rolls again for hit or crit, 10% of 90 is 9%, so your effective crit chance is lower than your stats indicate. In all cases adding hit is superior to crit (on average).

Progression threads aren't really a thing anymore. Feel free to start one up and maintain it if you want, though.

@Staden Was hoping for a fix for Ragnaros' Wrath of Ragnaros spell being resistible as it should be. The devs got confused by a patch note in 1.5 and made the wrong spell not resistible. It should be Lava Splash that is not resistible, not Wrath of Ragnaros. https://github.com/elysium-project/server/issues/348 Can you take a look, please? Thank you.

You can just look at logs on realmplayers (currently down) or legacy logs for the guild you are interested in.

@Undertanker That multi-role thing sounds like a lot of fun, but most of the time you are just doing mediocre dps. Also bag space, wow.

The main problem with enhancement in vanilla is glancing blows. Caster classes have a much greater penalty on glancing blows than melee classes, and unlike paladins, shamans are considered a caster class. One swing you could white hit for 500, the next you could glance for 75. Weapon skill can reduce the glancing damage penalty, but that is difficult to get as a shaman except with axes (Orc w/ edgemasters). Other weapon types, even higher dps/stats would be a large downgrade from an axe.

Am I supposed to be impressed? Onolm did 248 dps, Knuterik did 286 dps on a fight with almost zero movement. Not a very high bar to hold threat over. Good dps in other guilds are doing 500+ not even close to bis.

It's pretty easy to get a lot of world boss kills when you are a mega guild of 3 40 man rosters. Always enough online to do something on a moment's notice and half a dozen people camped there 24/7. A mega guild is a bad environment to play in, though, so I'll take less world boss kills, if that's what it means. I'm not sure you can actually call that domination when you just throw bodies at the situation. I haven't seen any proof of this 'far far better dps'. Last I saw on realmplayers most of the fastest boss kills were Hope. Their DPS carries their raids, which is good, cause their healing is abysmal. edit - the only horde guild consistently posting decent kill times seems to be CM, at least according to Legacy Logs (which can be wildly inaccurate. 2 min nef kill anyone?)

Server first doesn't matter. Some guilds don't even raid on Wednesday (reset day) so they will, by default, not get server firsts

It is doable. We kill Garr before any of his adds.