rooppa

hmm.

In pally heavy raids, using Blessing of Might on a priest / shadow priest.

As this would increase the priests attack power, it should therefore, in theory, increase the attack power of the shadowfiend and increase the mana returned.

If there is any change at all, then it would be worthwhile a shadowpriest getting BoM if they already have the max amount of pally buff's to start with. I may be wrong in this, but i believe that there is only really 4 buff's a shadow priest would benefit from in a "typical" raid situation from a pally. These would be:

blessing of light
blessing of wisdom
blessing of salvation
blessing of kings

Now with some heavy Pally raid's, it may be prudent knowing that if a shadowfiend gained AP from this blessing, that the shadow priest will return more mana. It may not exactly set the world alight with the amount of mana returned. But meh, any "little extra" would be beneficial.

Personaly we are running around 5-6 pally's in some raids, this is due to 1-2 pally tanks and 4 regular pally healers. So for some guild's having more than 4 pally blessing's per player, it is more than realistic that a spare BoM could be placed on the Shadow priest. It may be useful to direct them to this thread if they question your logic in buffing them with BoM. If not, some strange reactions may occur and they may also "click off" the buff thinking it was a mistake.

*I do not play a pally nor a priest, so please excuse if i have missed off some rather important pally buff that a priest would benefit from other than the 4 listed more than possible extra mana from BoM.

 

constantius

I didn't think anyone still ran 6-pally raids. Back in the Naxx days, we regularly had 6-7 paladins in the raid. One even spec'd into BoSanc, just because he was bored and figured we might as well buff everyone with every possible buff.

If you had 5 paladins, I see no reason why you couldn't get BoM, esp if it does indeed affect SF mechanics. I might play around with it sometime today, and if I get some results, I'll let you all know.

 

Kimori

For those that are doing the testing, another suggestion would be putting blessing of might on the fiend. If it works well, in a raid environment with good communication you could possibly have a paladin blessing fiends as they come out via a macro.

 

Reverie

With relation to increasing Shadowfiend damage output over its lifespan, would crit increases be beneficial?

** Suppose this group makeup:
1) A Shadow Priest : The usual mana regen to everyone, shadow weaving to the raid, etc.
2) BM Hunter #1 : Ferocious Inspiration #1
3) BM Hunter #2 : Ferocious Inspiration #2
4) Feral Druid : Leader of the Pack / Improved.
5) Enhancement Shaman : Unleashed Rage / Improved GoA and SoE.

Would the shadowfiend gain a significant amount of crit from having GoA and LotP up around it? Is it even possible to attempt figure out the agility:crit ratio for the shadowfiend?

I'm wondering if it might be possible to get a shadowfiend with around a 20% or higher crit rate, effectively adding on average 2 extra hits worth of mana regeneration to the priest over its 10 hits, potentially more w/ 2 pcs. of T4? (My guild is on Kara, starting Gruul's, with SSC hopefully coming up soon.)

The shadowfiend would also be getting a rather large AP boost from SoE and Unleashed rage, as well as 6% increased damage on top of it from double FI procs, which given BM hunter pet crit rates/attack speed, should proc almost instantly the moment the fiend is summoned, if not, just after the first hit.

Additionally, with this group makeup, it's not that much different from the commonly suggested 3 BM Hunters, S.Priest, Shaman/Druid, so the practicality of the group still exists without it just being gimmicky to increase shadowfiend damage.

Any ideas/speculations?

 

Starfire

Update.

1.) I missed off my shaman class leader by calling her big brother, so, I did not get a chance to test strength of earth.

2.) I did not take into consideration the shadowfiend scaling with the AP buff from both me and the fiend. I must admit, I thought it would be useless since I always figured scaling was done on the cast, not afterwords.

However, as to point 2, I think when I get home I have a method of testing it. (Going to swap weapon/activate +damage trinket after cast and before cast to see any differences).

 

Starfire

On a side note, I was in a group similar to this yesterday. As a holy priest, was only trash and luck of the draw.

BM hunter
BM hunter
Feral Druid
TS hunter
Me

Shadowfiend was returning about 600-800 damage per a hit. I did not pay attention to see if ISB was up. Crit returned like 1400-1800 mana. This was for Kael'thas trash, probably tested it a good 4-5 times, but these aren't very formal and I was just eyeballing it.

 

Bendyr

Can anyone help me fix this macro so that the Shadowfiend will attack my mouseover target? I'm trying to set something up with a click casting mod.

 

• Althor

After noticing something strange from WWS logs of some Vashj attempts I performed some quick tests with a Shaman (Enhancement Shaman in this case).

Results were:
* It seems that the Shadowfiends gains 2AP per +1str and 14AP per +1dps and benefits from the +10% AP buff when the Shaman crit.
* Heroism, if activated after the Shadowfiend is summoned, increases the attack speed of the Shadowfiend and as such means more attacks until it dies.
* The biggest single boost, and this is quite likely a bug, was from Wrath of Air totem.

Here's how Wrath of Air totem was tested:
1) I would pull a mob with a single wand hit (I was in around +1230 dmg)
2) I would cast Shadowfiend.
3) Watched the Shadowfiend get a few hits in. Average hit was around 185-205.
4) Shaman dropped the normal Wrath of Air totem (+101 dmg/heal)
5) Suddenly the Shadowfiend was hitting for around 285-305 every hit.
6) Shaman recalled his WoA totem.
7) Shadowfiend back to hitting for around 185-205.

Repeated his experiment a few times.

The Totem was only dropped after I summoned the Shadowfiend so chances are the Shadowfiend wasn't getting any bonus from the extra +dmg from WoA that was applied to me. It was just getting it directly from the WoA totem.

And it was getting *100% PER HIT*.

That's a huge difference.

On a non-debuffed target that's still worth around another 2.5k mana

 

Hiba

This looks actually be changed: shadow fiend gets the Bloodlust effect even if you cast it after you have gotten the Bloodlust.

The +healing giving 33% +damage/healing in next patch will be a significant boost for holy priests when regarding the amount of mana a shadow fiend will return.

Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.

 

• Althor

I didn't get to test Bloodlust/Heroism being pre-cast, though it definitely work post-cast.

The 33% conversion ratio will help yes, though going my Shadowfiend was going from around 100 per hit with +0 dmg/heal to around 200 a hit with around +1230 dmg, so let's say a healer had +2000 healing that'd be +660 dmg or about half of what I had (unbuffed). So it'll be hitting for roughly 50 more per hit. So say an extra 1.6k mana with CoS, Shadoweaving and Misery up. Still less of a boost if you're just put into a Shaman's group with WoA totem, but nothing stopping you from having both. ;P

I was in an Elemental Shaman's group on Phase 2 Vashj, just happily killing Enchanted Elementals myself. The mobs had 2 stacks of Shadoweaving and Misery and I had some hits of around 346 on the mobs from my Shadowfiend. There was a 692 crit which gave me back 1730 mana from a single hit. If I didn't have the Wrath of Air totem that crit would have only given me 1225 mana, so a 505 mana difference.

 

PewPew

the shadowfiend will also get a bonus from the extra dmg you get from WoA, even if its dropped after the summoning. Its easy to test with an on use trinket like the heroic badges spelldmg trinket. Summon the shadowfiend, let it hit the mob, activate the trinket and u'll see how the fiend's dmg increases.

So in your experiment the shadowfiend will gain some amount of +dmg directly from WoA, and (probably a smaller amount, the exactly ratio needs get tested I think), some from the +dmg applied to you.

 

caskeper

Brilliant code. Worked just fine. And shadowfiend infact DID gain +dmg from my trinket use AFTER I had used him.
Here's my Sfiend stats before and after trinket use (Icon of the Silver Crescent +155 dmg):

Before: 153 str, 109 agility, 374 stamina (green, didn't get to mouseover and see how much it got extra), 222 int (same as stam), 988 (same as stam), damage: 182-206, spell bonus 0, armor 5901 (same as stam).
No resistances shown.

After: Power increased to 1076. and damage was 192-216 Nothing else changed.


That was test #1. Now I'll try with spell dmg.

Test #2

Using trinket before cast & with self-buffs (inner fire & 2/2 imp fort)

Damage: 192-216
Power: 1076 - It scales with active spell dmg, not dmg upon cast apparently.
stam 405, armor 6454.

Somewhat busy, so can't really conduct any more advanced tests. But it's a start.


Edit: Forgot to add dmg.

 

Nurru

I'll check Bloodlust when I get home if no one else has by then. It would be odd for it to gain the buff though, unless it explicitly mirrors your gains.

Alts: Paladin Mage
< XI|> manly thought the belly button was the little man in the boat

 

tedv

Last night I had a shadowfiend out right before bloodlust was used and I got over 10k mana back. From a quick tally of SCT, it looked like at least 12000 mana, maybe 14k. This included one crit for over 2k mana (most of my crits are a little over 1k and hits between 500 and 600).

It's possible the shadowfiend is double dipping the haste. As in, it gets your haste from the bloodlust buff, and if it was out when bloodlust was cast, it gets that buff too.

 

kank

Power Infusion doesn't seem to have any effect on the Shadowfiend's damage when cast on myself, however if I PI the fiend, he hits 20% harder.

test 1:
371.2 mana/atk w/o PI
445 mana/atk w/ PI

=19.8% increase

test 2: no PI used

test 3: 18.4% increase

Larger sample with data from all 3: ~25% mana/atk increase

His AP doesn't go up with PI, but his damage does, mine went from 132-156 (+489 spell dmg) to 158-187. That's also ~20% increase.

No real need to post the data here, as it would make the post annoyingly long.

 

kank

I don't know if this will be useful but, I got wrapped up in it so here it is. 289 is my base pet ap when i'm naked. 0.565 is my best approximation at the damage to ap coefficient.

pet_ap=shadow_dmg*.565+289

roughly
ex. with 489 spell damage, that equation says my pet should have 565.3 ap, my in game screenshot says he's at 564.



Another weird thing is when i get two hits in a row in my combat log, then two Mana Leech gains. In one test, I hit twice, then the shadow fiend died, then i got a mana leech from the first hit, and none from the second hit. Latency problem?

Other than that, i yielded 272mana/atk @ 15 spell damage; 400mana/atk @ 639 spell damage; and at 489 spell damage i yielded 364,339,and 371mana/atk. All of these were against level 70's with 0 SR.

A shadow protection +70 SR yielded some pretty decent mitigation with resists, averaging around 35 dmg resisted per hit. That's 87.5 mana per swing and assuming he gets a full 10 swings off, you're blocking 875 of his mana gain, when you spent 729 mana to cast shadow prot. assuming your enemy purges both of your shadow prots before he uses his fiend. A PW:S will do the same thing, absorbing the pets damage and completely negating his mana gain.


Cloak of shadows doesn't mitigate the fiend's damage, as his damage is shadow melee and cloak reduces spell hit chance. (tested)