Heroic Spine of Deathwing

The one thing I really enjoy about shadowpriest.com's public forum is sheer number of new forum threads opened inquiring about haste caps and plateaus.  They have said "no, there are no plateaus" while counterparts say "there are small points in time when other stats overtake haste."

I'm here to tell  you that while that may be the way it works out in simcraft, it certainly does not play out that way in Dragon Soul.  My advice to all shadow priests reading this is to evaluate your own playstyle and make decisions on your stats based upon your strengths, weaknesses, and the encounter for which you are preparing.

In my case, Heroic Spine of Deathwing awaits my attention.  For this particular fight I am stacking as much mastery as possible with the gear I have at my disposal.  Roughly I am toying around in the area of 20-21 mastery, ~20% crit, and around 20% haste... hit capped.  Let's face it, from a dps perspective this fight is entirely about controlling your aoe-hungry self and, instead of unleashing that raw mind searing potential, you prepare for a single-target, bursty rotation on that resilient burning tendon is active.  You want to plan your rotation around a 23 second window (the total exposed time of the burning tendon you must vanquish.)  For me, this involves pre-dotting various corrupted bloods with Shadow Word: Pain as they will proc shadow apparitions that will instantly give you 3 orbs while you are in rotation (as if the shadow fiend wasn't enough.)

Rotation (with SW:Ps ticking on bloods): Mind flay 2x, Bottled Wishes Trinket, Shadowfiend, Wings, Mind Blast, Mind Spike x3, Mind Blast, Mind Spike x4, Mind Blast (continue, making sure your mind blast is always used with 3 orbs).  In 23 seconds on a training dummy without buffs this consistently landed me around 1 mill damage done.  In a 25m raid setting with buffs (and di) this is anywhere from 1.2 to 1.5 million damage with my current setup.

The challenge with this lies in mind flaying enough to have your shadowfiend ready for the next tendon.  Ugh.  This fight is really awesome at making everyone have a lot to do, and yet not have a single shred of fun while doing it.

Welcome, Acolytes, to the church of Chesticles

So I'm bored and over-caffeinated this morning and making my very first post on here.  I suppose I'll tell a little about who I am and why I do what I do.

I am a 28 year old male who plays a female Draenei shadow priest in World of Warcraft.  I read and participate in various theorycraft in both EJ (www.elitistjerks.com) and shadowpriest.com.  While there is a lot of good discussion in both forums, they are rarely up-to-date with the cutting edge rotations and priorities, so I'll post my own thoughts as they arise through my own experience with simming vs. first-hand raiding. First things first, my user interface:
 

Let me just say that I am entirely addicted to WoW and everything it represents to me: team play, adrenaline rushes, community, and prestige.  The bonds that form through the struggle of downing a difficult encounter are priceless, and the commonalities we discover in those we spend so much time with only serve to reinforce those bonds.

I began my shadow priest roughly three years ago while being kited by a mind flaying priest whilst traveling alone on my death knight.  I hated priests.  I had to be one.  Leveling a priest, as warned, was a daunting and ball-busting task that required not only patience, but a whole new level of perseverance to actually grind out difficult quests.

Since hitting max-level my life was raiding.  Dungeons?  Only if necessary.  I strongly prefer the big internet monsters.  It's very pleasing to play David vs. Goliath, especially when David is wielding a bright glowing staff housing dragon essence ready to be unleashed on his gigantic foe.  In January, 2010 I transferred to US-Baelgun and began raiding with my current guild, Crisp.  It was professional, to say the least.  We had tight competition and a very clear goal to be the best on our server.  It remained that simply until the launch of Cataclysm, when we realized that, as a tight-knit force, we were damned good at this game.  We decided to aim higher, be bigger, be Crisp.  Cataclysm brought new faces and a whole new skill set to our growing top-US-bound guild.  Names like Massakur, Kitycarebear, and Grayblade joined our ranks in tier 11 to make us the clear favorite for server dominance.

Upon the shrinking and eventual collapse of both our rivals, Bane and Rage (and their merger, Bage), we were forced to set our sights on competition outside of our realm.  We looked toward the top 100 US 25m guilds and said very loudly, "Here we come, bitches."

Shortly thereafter we said "here we are."  And here I am, reporting on my personal and guild conquests and challenges as we continue to flush Dragon Soul heroics down the toilet that is tier 13.