I figured I'd also tell you about how you should be casting in an instance/raid.
You have a talent called "Shadow Weaving" where each spell you cast on your target applies one stack of shadow weaving. Each stack gives you 2% increased shadow damage. Basically, you want to have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving before you ever cast your SW
(basically because Mind Flay, when it restacks your SW
DOT does not reapply the changes in Shadow Weaving.. who knows why.) If that doesn't make sense the easiest thing to remember is that you don't want to cast SW
until you have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving on yourself.
Once you have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving there is a general rule of thumb spriests use to tell us what to cast. We do not have a casting order per se, but a rating system which means we want to cast certain spells depending on how powerful they are when the cooldown is up.
The ranking is: (I leave SW
out of this because you should never have to cast it more than once per fight.. but if it ever gets off your target reapply it as long as you have full stacks of shadow weaving).
1. Vampiric Touch
2. Devouring Plague
3. Mind Blast
4. Mind Flay
5. SW: D (Shadow Word: Death is not an incredibly useful spell for us at this time.. but it is generally accepted that we use it when all our other cooldowns are spent and we need to fill the time before another one comes up).
If you follow that sequence of casting, as in cast the more important ones first you will be doing good DPS in an instance. Remember to use Shadow Fiend and Dispersion if you get low on mana. I normally cast Shadow Fiend first because it regens more mana and I do not have to stop casting while it is out.
Another important thing to remember is that you want to make sure to not clip your mind flay.. that used to be important to do in BC, but now that Mind Flay can crit you always want to let it do all 3 ticks. Also, do not reapply your DOTs (VT and DP) until the last tick goes off. I have seen many people, including myself for a long time, who would cast VT and would reapply is when there were 3 seconds left on the timer of the spell. That is a huge waste of time. Because the DOTs tick every 3 seconds if you reapply your DOTs before the spell is consumed you are cutting off 6 seconds of damage (because the first tick after you reapply the spell doesn't happen for 3 seconds.) So make sure to wait till your last tick goes off, and then reapply your DOT quickly.
LVL 80 Stat Ranking:
1. Spell Hit (up until the cap which is 290, after 290 spell hit you gain no additional benefit from the stat).
2. Spellpower
3. Spell crit
4. Spell haste
There has been a lot of argument about crit vs. haste. I still believe that crit is more powerful since mind flay and all our DOTs can now tick, but I have not done the math at this point to figure out whether haste or crit is better. As of patch 3.0.9 crit was the superior stat, but from some changes to the shadow tree I am not 100% on that, although I still prefer crit at this point.
If you have any other question feel free to PM me or ask in game. I love shadow priest theorycrafting and can teach you how to be nearly the top DPS in many groups.
