The Tale of the Damage Meter

Yesterday, I did a bunch of Heroics as Shadow spec. Since it was a raid night for Robin and Jay, I only ran two instances with them; the rest, I turned to the LFG and was not disappointed.

Now, the queue time for a DPS is longer than I'm used to when lining up as a Healer - around 7-8 minutes, which was ok as I had errands to do.

First up, here's proof that I can sustain damage above the tank! And not only that, I can crank out some decent DPS. Note: This was only one pull...Now that pull was with Jay, so I didn't have any worries about pulling aggro. This next screenie is of another single pull with a PuG.
Still rockin' over 4500 DPS, not bad, not bad. But, can I sustain that? Well...no. This next damage meter is from Halls of Reflection. I was picked up after the first two bosses were down, and the party was on the Lich King run. We successfully completed the gauntlet, and my dps looked like this:Ok, I really can settle for just under 4K DPS...lol! Of course, there is almost all AoE on that gauntlet, so I pretty much spammed Mind Sear. And, lastly, what does a full clear look like? This is the final result from a PuG UP:

Second. And at 2629 DPS. That's more realistic, I reckon.

I attribute some of my loss of DPS to not being really up on a spell rotation for single targets. Ya, ya, ya, Jay rattled one off, but do you think I retained any of it? Bah, pish posh!

I also need to get better at switching targets. I'm starting to remember what I did as a hunter, and that is to watch the current target's health and switch when it gets low so I can maintain my output. One thing I have learned is to try to pick a target that is going to live the longest, thereby minimizing the DPS loss suffered when trying to click the next mob.

And, of course, I'm still learning what all these spells do. Last night, I figured out that Vampiric Embrace was changed somewhere along the line to be a 30 minute buff on myself to generate healing. [cue old man's voice] In MY day, VE was something you threw on the mob! You didn't put that crap on yourself! Kids these days! GET OFF MY LAWN!!! [/off old man's voice]

So, now I have two self buffs I need to keep track of: Vampiric Embrace and Inner Fire. Ok, got it.

I'll be doing some research on how my spells interact together; I already know that I've picked up a talent that increases the damage from my Mind Flay if Shadow Word: Pain is on the target and also I have the talent that has a chance to refresh SW: P with each Mind Flay.

Oh, I also discovered that, according to the tooltip, Vampiric Touch only regens mana from Mind Blasts. It also does some shadow damage, but the mana regen part has changed since I last played as shadow. Feel free to correct me or clarify this in the comments.

And, Jay, feel free to jot down that rotation in the comments as well so I can be lazy and not research it.

Embrace the Shadow...