Shadow Priest Damage Coefficients
This guide breaks down how each spell scales with gear and talents, providing detailed tables and calculations to help players optimize their performance.
Table of Damage Coefficients
| Spell | Untalented | Talented | DPS increase per +dmg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mind Flay | 57% | 83% | 0.276 |
| Shadow Word: Pain* | 110% | 214% | 0.089 |
| Mind Blast | 43% | 63% | 0.419 |
| Shadow Word: Death | 43% | 63% | 0.419 |
| Vampiric Touch | 100% | 146% | 0.097 |
* A improved Shadow Word: Pain will not only get all the usual bonuses a shadow damage spell gets, but also nets a large extra bonus for being a longer than average DoT (due to the normalized DoT duration). A SW:P with just increased duration and no extra talents gets 160% effect from gear. A SW:P with no increased duration but all the other talents would receive 184% of the effects on gear (though why anyone would go that way is a mystery).
The Math
Base
- Mind Flay = 57%. Channel Time / Normalized Channel Time * Snare Penalty = 3 / 5 * 95% = 57%
- Shadow Word: Pain (unimproved) = DoT Length / Normalized DoT Duration = 18/15 = 120%, but receives a 10% penalty to 110%
- Shadow Word: Pain (improved) = Use the unimproved coefficient per tick and adapt to 2 more ticks (1.1 / 6) * 8 = 146%
- Mind Blast = Cast Time / Normalized Cast Time = 1.5 / 3.5 = 43%
- Shadow Word: Death = 1.5s / 3.5s = 43%
- Vampiric Touch = DoT Length / Normalized DoT Duration = 100%
Talents
Untalented is without talents in the Shadow tree.
Talented is with all the bonuses of the Shadow tree factored in:
- 10% from Darkness
- 5% from Misery
- 15% from Shadowform
- 10% from Shadow Vulnerability
These bonuses combine multiplicatively, resulting in: 110% * 105% * 115% * 110% = 146%
This guide originally comes from the Shadowpriest.com Wiki, which we own.
Author
If I'm not working or spending time with the family I'm probably gaming. Some of my favorite recent games I've played are Far Cry 5, World of Warcraft Classic, and 7 Days to Die.
Hey Im sure this is an old feed, but I’m wondering if Misery can stack with multiple shadow priests, or is the bonus only able to be applied once?
No, it can’t. So the utility of a 2nd shadow priest in raid drops off a cliff.
This is useful. However, are the DPS increase per +damage correct for the DoTs (pain/VT)? They show as lower than the others even though they are receiving higher damage coefficients. Is there an extra 0 there? For example, not .089 DPS increase per +damage but +.89?
The dmg increase should be correct. The dps increase for dots is lower because the increase is meassured per second. Since Dots have a duration of effect you have to divide by the duration to see the damage increase per second.
Hey I know this is 5 months too late but no they are not correct, they are measuring the damage of the spell as if its a 23 second cast, when it is in fact a 1.5 second cast and the dps should be calculated accordingly
If my spell takes 60 seconds to cast, and does 60 damage, it does 1 damage per second.
If my spell takes 30 seconds to cast, and it deals damage over a 30 second debuff, and it does 60 damage, then my spell does 1 damage per second.
Hope that helps.