Working on Sin...

...dragosa.

Last night we had a two and a half hour wipefest, uh, learning fest, on Sindragosa. I like this; it's interesting, it's fun, and I was the top caster DPSer on every....single....attempt.

/preen.

It has taken a fair amount of work to get to where I am playing my Shadow Priest. I practiced on dummies, I checked my priority list, I abandoned Mind Blast (for a while, it's back in the line up), I've started spending DKP on side grades to lower my Hit to a more reasonable level.

But most of all, I've gotten better at anticipating which spell I should be casting at which time to maximize my DPS. Since all of my spells have different durations/cooldowns, and they aren't synced up with each other, I don't have a set rotation that works all the time. I do, however, have a rhythm that I get into as I click (yes, click) my buttons.

I am VERY happy that my DPS actually reflects my gear score now. I still have have some gear to swap out to get my Hit down, all of it side grades. My plan is to get the 264 T10 Shoulders, which have no Hit on them, and then start swapping out pieces with Hit on them for other pieces with Hit on them to fine tune my set up. I have 3 or 4 different rings that will help with this, as well as a couple of different items I can put in slots in order to get as close as I can get to just above the Hit cap. Hopefully, that will give me the maximum Spell Power and Haste that I can get.

Hopefully....

Anyways, we only got to phase 3 a couple of times, so most of our practice was in phase 1 (ground) and phase 2 (air). I got the {magic debuff} (can't be bothered to look up the correct name) a fair number of times, and I found out some interesting things as they relate to me specifically (your mileage may vary.)

There are two events that happen right around the time the debuff falls off (and you take damage from the stacks that you've accumulated): The pull in and the air phase.

I found that I could merrily cast away before the pull in and stack as many stacks as I wanted because she would pull us in with more than 5 seconds to go on the debuff. Since I had to run away from her and not cast, I used that time to let the stacks expire; sometimes this would happen just before the debuff wore off.

The same thing went for the air phase; we gather up at the bottom of the stairs for the start of the air phase, so I'd just let my stacks expire during that time.

Now, I did miss time the debuff a time or two, but by and large, I was able to continue DPSing despite having the debuff. And I think that is why I did so well last night, among other things previously mentioned. Oh and living. It's really hard to DPS when you're dead; I mean, it happens for a bit because of my DoTs, but...still.

One of the things that I did to help out (and ensure my survival) was that when I got Ice Tombed, before I froze, I cast Gift of the Naaru and a Renew on myself (/gasp. AND BROKE OUT OF SHADOWFORM?????!!!!1). Yes, and broke out of shadowform. A little tweak for next time: cast Renew first because I didn't always get that one off and it's more powerful than GotN.

Another tweak for next time is to make a targeting macro! I'll take my existing targeting macro from one of my other fights and switch it to:

/cleartarget
/tar Ice Tomb
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar Sin

That way, if an Ice Tomb is up, I'll be able to target it right away.

Sindragosa, your days are numbered...