Mosely!

I am devo bitch for tank group so I never get a spriest and rarely a shaman and I only pot on Bloodboil, Mother and Illidan and I do just fine healing. There are really no fights in any other 25 man that warrant a mana potion if you have 100 mp5 unbuffed. However, I feel for mages, they have to chain mana pot just to keep up to 80% of the damage rogues are putting out.

 

• giansm

We have recently killed Vashj and are about to start working on Solarian, and we usually run with 7 healers and 1 shadow priest (who goes to a healer group in general, unless the fight has a heavy AOE component). As a resto druid usually assigned to raid healing, in most of SSC and on Void Reaver/Al'ar if I have a shadow priest I usually use one pots per boss. Without a shadow priest, usually two or maybe three. I rarely use my innervate on myself, preferring to try to save it for other people. If I do use it on myself I usually don't need to pot at all. I am almost always flasked in SSC/TK since our guild only has a few people with the necessary reputations to use marks of illidari.

As Kallisti mentioned Vashj is the exception so far. I stand in the middle and heal forked lightning, cleanse poison, and keep hots on the naga tank. Our one kill of Vashj so far was done with six healers and no shadow priests (or any priests at all -- no fortitude or spirit buffs), and that was pretty intense: I needed to chain drink pots as well as innervate myself. That particular fight as well as all our Vashj attempts have been the only times I felt like I really needed to chain pot every cooldown.

 

• croswen

I see lot of healers posting here. Their itemization gives them Mp5 and spirit.

So let me give a different point of view, as a Mage, with an SPriest, I need to chain chug for Progression (which is fine) and a lot of the Farmed Content(Shade and up). Raids in which there is no SPriest available, hurts a lot.

Given that, I chain chug SMP, pop my Mana gems and [Demonic Rune], and that I blow evocation as soon as it makes sense and that I still have mana problems, I do not consider the problem to be effectively resolved. I am currently miffed that even on content that has been on farm for at least 3-4 months that I still need to chain chug in order to do my job.

My guild's is working on Mag now so I can see that the problem is not going to get that much better.

 

Maledict

The problem gets worse. And if you want to spec Arcane, invest in some gold farming companies now, because even on trash content if you want to be viable you need to be chain chugging super mana potions constantly. The ability to convert mana into damage at a varying rate is fantastic, but it comes at a heavy price.

 

• croswen

I have no interest in specing Arc. I do have/know some guildies who are thinking about it. I will let them know.

Now that we are getting to SSC/TK I can use the instance only mana pots. Sometimes, this is cheaper then SMP.

Do we know if Blizzard is thinking about fixing the mana regen soon? Because, I have a freely given 1-2 stacks of Flame Caps that I can not use on Progression content.. no matter how much I do want them to.

 

andastra

I'm stingy with consumables so I've only used one flame cap so far and that's on Vashj. A lot of the fights where you would want to use them in SSC/TK are pretty long so you can use your mana gems then use your flame cap around <20%.

I'm not sure what you're doing but I find myself using only 2 super mana potions or equivalent tops in any encounter so far. In many encounters, I don't even use one. In fact, I've rarely used the mana salves until I realized, "hey, I have over 10 armaments still from guild bank distributions and we're already working on Kael". I might as well use more just for damage meter epeen purposes.

 

Nurru

Thank your Shadow Priest. You may not be potting but they're likely using a super mana every cooldown just to sustain dps.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• croswen

Well this is what I do in order to have enough mana to chain cast.

• I chain chug SMPs.

• After using 2-3 mana Gems I start using [Demonic Rune]s, which gives the raid healers fits because I have the lowest HP in the raid.

• I have a spirit staff and a spirit wand that I swap in for evocation. I will admit I need to find a level 70 staff of spirit but it is very rarely on the AH.

• I use Mage armor for fights in which I need mana (Minus Gruul but that is because I now have the Ori'la Mana Pots so it isn't as if I am using gold.)

• I have stopped using [Quagmirran's Eye] and picked up [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] in order to slow my Mana burn rate.

• When we have a Pally, I ask for BoW for all boss fights, minus Gruul (Pulled agro on our first kill at growth #9ish)

• I can ask for an Innverate but I am probably not going to get it ;-) When we have a druid(s) in the raid, he tends to be Feral and Tanking. In addition, the Raid Leader tends to want to give the innverate to a healer.

• I get an SPriest.

• When I have spare SMP's I offer them to a SPriest

If I am missing any more tricks let me know, I would love to hear them.

It could be that your guilds SPriests are better at generating mana.My guild's SPriests are getting better but they do need work on their spell rotations and they need to gear up. Here is our last Gruul kill WWS Please note that is is an Anonymousized version of the fight. My GM Requested this change. I am the top mage on for the Gruul Kill version of the fight.

In this fight, the SPriest I had was giving me ~87 MP5 from what I read on these forums SPriests should be giving 100-120 Mp5.

At this point in time they can not support a 4 Fireball/1 Scorch pattern for a 7 min long fight. I was scrapping the bottom of the barrel near the end. I think I had enough for a few fireballs before I was OOM and Out of tricks. If I had used a Flame cap, I would have been OOM sooner & I would have done less damage to the boss.

"Lucky" I was SSed so when I got killed by a shatter, I just rezed and now had mana to keep DPSing until Gruul was dead. It was a serious possibility, that we would have wiped, because at the same time I died, the MT died and we were just burning him down.

 

tedv

You netted 97 m/5 from the shadow priest, but that's still bad. Your shadow priest, Quintos, wasn't using vampiric embrace and he only had vampiric touch up for 61% of the fight. That means that only 5% of 61% of his 500 DPS got converted to mana. He should really have touch uptime around 85% on Gruul, which means you'd get 40% more mana from him. His DoT uptime is terrible too. And he needs to replace all of his gems with runed living rubies, especially that 3 crit / 4 penetration gem, plus get some spell damage enchant. Those changes would push him up to 650 DPS at least, which would give a 30% increase on mana.

In other words, using nothing but gold and a change in play style, he could be giving out 175 m/5. Generally 200 to 250 m/5 is what you expect of established raiding shadow priests, not 100 to 120.

 

Rockstar

87mp5 from your shadowpriest is infact incredibly low on Gruul, I have no idea how he's sustaining his damage over the course of the fight with his own regeneration so lacklustre (via VT).

Perhaps you can point him to shadowpriest.com or any of the spriest threads on these boards to help him improve? Addons like dot-timers, aswell as using /stopcasting with his primary spell should help push him upto the level you're looking for.

edit: I missed the wws link, and I can only agree with the above poster. VT uptime is absolutely critical, you must keep your dots up constantly on Gruul to get any meaningful dps.

 

Nurru

Tedv, where in WWS are you seeing what % of the fight a dot was up for? That's interesting information but I don't see it around. Unless you're counting the number of ticks and doing math from that.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

snape

Note: There is a 1H + OH combo that is just as good as the highest ILVL "of Spirit" staff (which is Voodoo Hex-Staff of Spirit (+56)). That combo is Phantom Dagger of Spirit (+24) with Draenei Crystal Rod of Spirit (+32). The Draenei Crystal Rod is a very common "uncommon" drop in my experience. In leveling 2 characters to 70, I've had 4 drop of that specific random enchantment...I've never seen the Voodoo Hex-Staff.

I have that 1H + OH for Evocation.

 

• croswen

Doh! I can't do math today it seems.

We were hitting the debuff limit so the SPriests where asked to not use the debuff that gives HP back.

Thank you for the feedback I will send the info to Quintos (and I will look to see if any of our other Spriests have the same type of problems.)

*nods* Okay.

As for asking our SPriests to go to any other forums? Ahaha Sorry just that we have enough problems getting guildies to read OUR Forums, which has important stuff like DKP rules and raid times and other random guild stuff. :-/

I guess my issue is why is it that most Mana using classes are so tied to SPriests, such that, I have to wonder, if it is worth raiding without one. This is why I think Mana Reg is very very broken right now.

 

Nurru

For a fight like Gruul I consider it imperative that the Shadow Priests be allowed to use VE. Otherwise unless we're getting a lot of healer attention we cannot use Death as we like. In that case our dps drops a good chunk.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• croswen

*nods* The problem was 3 SPriests, 2 Afflication Locks, 2 Fire mages, 1 ice Mage and at least 1 DPS warrior. It was decided at the time for the locks to drop one of their Dots and for SPriests to stop casting the Healing debuff.

On hind sight, it may have been a bad idea because I think some of Priests were bubbling for a shatter & it would have prevented a more then a few deaths. Maybe not the MT but possibly people who got nailed by shatter.

 

andastra

My guild usually runs with four mages and one spriest so one unlucky mage will be without an spriest. I have all of +15 spirit on my gear (chest enchant) for a few weeks now and I find that changing molten armor to mage armor, using a mana pot or two and changing my rotation a bit can make up for the lack of an spriest without too high a dps hit. I also don't have an evocation swap. For a fight like Vashj, I've done the entire fight without an spriest and using only 1-2 cenarion mana salves. I'm still easily top 3 or so in damage, even though I do spend a lot of time in stage 1 just wanding.

 

Nurru

Misery +1
Shadow Word Pain +3
Shadow Vulnerability +1
Vampiric Touch +3
Curses +2
Corruption +2
Siphon Life +2
Immolate +2 (doubt they're using it)
Unstable Affliction +2
Shadow Embrace +2
Winter's Chill +1
Fireball +2
Improved Scorch +1
Blood Frenzy +1
Deep Wounds +1
Thunderclap +1

I may have missed a few but I'm only counting roughly 27 debuffs. That was a bad call on the part of your raid leader. Even with things like Faerie Fire thrown in you have plenty of breathing room.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Nurru

Depending on your task Vashj can have a lot of downtime. But I'm curious what your damage is like if you're not consuming much mana. Can you post some WWS parses?

Also, why do you wand in phase 1? Shouldn't you be trying to do as much damage as possible to get to phase 2?

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• croswen

err Don't forget

Demolizaing shout.
the Hunter Sting with the - to hit
Ignite

and there must have been a few other debuffs that we are forgetting because on the attempt before the kill my scorch debuff was going away.

 

Kagekami

27 debuffs.

Ignites +2 (for comparisons sake.)
Scorpid Sting +1
Ruptures (rogues should use this) +2
Demo shout +1 (yes please)

Curse of Shadow +1
Curse of Elements +1
Malediction +1

That's 36 debuffs.

Did you have an enhance shammy?

If so, occasional stormstrike pushing up tp 37, maybe even flameshock 38.

Feral Fairy fire makes it 39.

Did I miss anything?

 

songster

Raid Debuffs

Between you, you're missing at least:

Sunder Armor
Mortal Strike
Rip
Mangle
Mind Flay (x3 from your 3 s'priests)
Imp Shadowbolt
Deadly Poison (rogues should use that too)
Imp Hunter's Mark
Scorpid Poison (xn, depending on whether you hunters use a scorpid pet)

However, I suggest the derail gets taken over to the appropriate thread.

 

andastra

Andastra - WWS

Phase 1 is when you're getting her from 100%-->70%. I figure I can regen 3k mana between when she puts up her shield and before the first naga spawns in phase 2. So I usually wand and make sure I'm only 3k mana below full when phase 1 ends. In phase 2, I'm on dps duty, so I'm always either nuking a strider or a naga. I had no shadow priest for this fight.

I actually did a retard trifecta that fight. I got moved into the group pretty late. I noticed my hp was low but couldn't figure out what I was missing. Figured out after the pull I was missing fort. I was also told by another mage that I was missing int. I usually take my consumables (used oil + adept's this fight) just before the first naga spawn in phase 2. I forgot about it this run until midway through phase 2. I think I used mage armor on this fight, which I do outside of a shadow priest group.

 

dormor

A holy pally and I (holy priest) were discussing using 2 elixirs (draenic wisdom and healing power) versus a flask.

I thought that Draenic Wisdom with 30 int and 30 spirit is preferable to 25mp5 by itself. He said that this is because I am a priest. I would like someone who knows the math/formulas better than I do to tell me what s/he thinks.

 

Mideci

I can't imagine how a shadow priest in typical gear has any choice other than repeated potting on long encounters. In that regard, I completely with Nurru above.

The fact is that we (s priests, yes I have one) are trying to max dps all the time because of the mana return it provides to 4 other people. To do that, we need to keep up 2 DoTs, use our high-mana-cost spells (MB and SW) and flay efficiently in between.

Even Karazhan requires potting in full FSW/Spellstrike with the other slots epic-ed out. Certainly on Shade and Prince and Illhoof.

 

Zraknul

The big thing to note: Paladins get mana at 1 mp5 from 6 spirit, while priests get it from 4 spirit; 5 mp5 vs 7.5 mp5. Priests also have mana regen while casting based on spirit talents that paladins don't. Spirit is a very weak stat for paladins.

The mana saved by the crit really doesn't factor in from that small a boost (~.5% crit, so 1 crit every 200 heals) and 62 healing while nice isn't that huge either. About 2 minutes of fight time would be generous for where the flask out shines the wisdom elixir for a paladin, definitely under 3 minutes for the combined 2 elixirs imo.