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08/26/07, 7:02 AM
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#16
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Von Kaiser
Troll Priest
Magtheridon (EU)
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Quite often I loose a few seconds (too much) with targeting and releasing my shadowfiend. I usually have a friendly target as target. Does anyone have a nice macro so it attacks the target of your friendly target?
I'm also wondering; would equiping a damage staff just before releasing your shadowfiend be negligible or maybe worth it? Was thinking of using it in a macro as well. I would be using [Crystalheart Pulse-Staff] and [Terokk's Shadowstaff], both properly enchanted ofc. You loose a few seconds switching weapons. Not sure if it can all be done in the same macro without too much delay.
Help/feedback much appriciated!
Last edited by Xiv : 08/26/07 at 9:32 AM.
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08/26/07, 8:02 AM
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#17
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Glass Joe
Human Priest
Stormscale (EU)
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2 addons that might help you with statistics & analasys
FuBar_VampwatchFu
Vampwatch for FuBar, provides stats for Vampiric Embrace, Vampiric Touch and Shadowfiend.
(Jayrox)
Shadowfiend
This Addon allows you to see the total damage done by your Shadowfiend, and the total amount of mana returned (also counts the hits and miss)
I use the later...
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08/26/07, 1:47 PM
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#18
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Bald Bull
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My experience is as a pet class, but not a shadow priest. I think it would be safe to use normal pet mechanics for back-of-the-envelope calculations until proven to work differently.
First, do you have a pet pane available when shadowfiend is out? This is an additional tab under your character/rep/skill window, default hotkey shift-P. It lists fun things like base stats, AP, default DPS, resistances, etc. It's actually a toss-up whether you might have one; warlocks don't have one for enslaved demons, and I have no idea about frost mages. If you do, screenshot it.
While the spell damage -> pet AP function is well known for warlock pets, and constant across pets, each pet tends to have its own AP -> dps calculation, much to my chagrin. The voidwalker is like 28:1, half the dps increase of a PC, whereas the sexybus is more like 10:1. Basically this means you would be better off sampling pet damage at different +dmg levels rather than trying to calculate, unless you have a) mouseover of your spell damage of dmg->AP and b) pet pane mouseover of pet's AP listing AP->dps.
If it is a shadow-based melee attack, I would assume it follows elemental rules, which says that dodge parry miss crit glance and resist apply, block and ac do not. If it's being mitigated by AC, then it's very specially coded, and I must wonder if that means it bypasses normal resists (ie, it's mitigated as if physical, and the only effect the Shadow has is multiplicative effects like CoS/SW).
Pets tend to have normal mob combat resolution tables, that is 5% miss/crit/block/dodge/parry against even-level mobs, slightly modified by base stats, and with normal player mechanics for glancing blows. AFAIK they do not gain spell crit or hit on their melee attacks. They gain a small amount of spell crit from int gained from the owner's int, but the shadowfiend's appears to be a melee attack so I doubt it will have any effect. Pets do usually obtain a portion of their owner's AC, although on cloth classes this tends to be minimal compared to their base AC. Even my imp has something like 2k base, and only gets about 400 (35%?).
There used to be a mod to get you a pet pane window even on an enslaved demon, but I have no idea if it was pulling real stats or if it was entirely hueristic. Also, I think it got broked even before 2.0 so there's no guarantee that the information is still available. However, it does give hope that such information as pet stats might be obtainable via a UI mod, even on non-standard pets. If you don't have a pet pane you might consider writing a UI mod that could attempt to recreate one.
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08/26/07, 5:57 PM
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#19
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Von Kaiser
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No pet pane.
Does anyone know why the Shadowfriend has mana, by the way?
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Come on, die young.
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08/26/07, 6:41 PM
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#20
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Piston Honda
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I've noticed when playing my Shadow Priest that if my shadowfiend has a strength of earth totem and catches a battle Shout after he's summoned he hits significantly harder. I had both and trueshot aura once and he was critting for almost 700.
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08/27/07, 12:23 AM
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#21
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Honorary Toastr
Night Elf Priest
Dragonblight
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Okay. So, while reading this raid during downtime, I decided to have an impromptu test.
I had the shaman in my group drop SoE and with the usual wrath of air. I was getting an additiona 100-200 more mana than I normally got. And with a crititical hit + having Improved Shadowbolt Debuff my shadowfiend actually returned 1800 mana on a single hit!
Going to run somewhat more formal test with battleshout now. Granted, this will take some time because of the 5 minute cooldown.
Edit:
Just an update. Tested about 6 shadowfiends with a warrior battleshouting. I did all tests with the same gear, I think the only relevent stat worth mention is I had 192 spell damage via spirit.
Conclusion? Having battleshout up was about an extra 100 mana return per a hit, with a variation of roughly 20.
I am having some other priest friends/guildies do some tests and tomorrow I hope to corner a shaman and run some tests with Strength of Earth. Once I get more data, perhaps I'll be able to find an equation.
Hmm. I think, if I can find a true-shot aura hunter, I can use TS, BS and TS + BS to find an equation. (four points, better than just two).
Last edited by Starfire : 08/27/07 at 1:02 AM.
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08/27/07, 11:26 AM
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#22
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Glass Joe
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Originally Posted by Xiv
Quite often I loose a few seconds (too much) with targeting and releasing my shadowfiend. I usually have a friendly target as target. Does anyone have a nice macro so it attacks the target of your friendly target?
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Perhaps slightly OT for which i apologise but the below macro will do what you request ie attack your MT's target while you keep healing.
#showtooltip Shadowfiend
/cast [nopet,harm][nopet,target=targettarget,harm] Shadowfiend
/petattack [harm][target=targettarget,harm]
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08/27/07, 4:01 PM
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#23
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Piston Honda
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Originally Posted by Xiv
I'm also wondering; would equiping a damage staff just before releasing your shadowfiend be negligible or maybe worth it? Was thinking of using it in a macro as well. I would be using [Crystalheart Pulse-Staff] and [Terokk's Shadowstaff], both properly enchanted ofc. You loose a few seconds switching weapons. Not sure if it can all be done in the same macro without too much delay.
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Swapping a staff in combat causes a 1.5 global cooldown. However you can overlap this with the cooldown from spells. For example you should be able to do:
/cast Shadowfiend
/use Terokk's Shadowstaff
And the staff should equip after the fiend is launched, causing an overlapping cooldown. However, I do not know if the fiend's attack strength is scaled based on your spell damage when you cast it, or in real-time, so it may not be effective.
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08/27/07, 6:26 PM
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#24
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Piston Honda
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Originally Posted by Xiv
Quite often I loose a few seconds (too much) with targeting and releasing my shadowfiend. I usually have a friendly target as target. Does anyone have a nice macro so it attacks the target of your friendly target?
I'm also wondering; would equiping a damage staff just before releasing your shadowfiend be negligible or maybe worth it? Was thinking of using it in a macro as well. I would be using [Crystalheart Pulse-Staff] and [Terokk's Shadowstaff], both properly enchanted ofc. You loose a few seconds switching weapons. Not sure if it can all be done in the same macro without too much delay.
Help/feedback much appriciated!
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According to the numbers in this thread you can expect 338* extra mana given no crits or misses and the fiend spending the full duration alive and on target. Not exactly earth-shattering, but the opportunity cost there is also pretty low.
*i'm assuming you did not blow soulfrost on an offspec piece, add 16 if you did.
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08/27/07, 6:33 PM
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#25
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Piston Honda
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I think one of the reasons that group AP buffs are so beneficial is that they hit both the priest and the shadowfiend, so not only does he get them, but he gets some percentage (40%?) of the AP the priest gets. Similarly, if you were a hunter/warlock and someone did mark of the wild or fort, not only would the master and pet get the buff, but the pet would scale off the increased stats the buff provided, for extra benefit. This isn't to say that a priest would be running around wearing strength gear obviously, but they seem to share the same sort of scaling mechanisms of hunter and warlock pets.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the shadow fiend hits for relatively little damage, so raw AP provides a greater relative boost than crit, etc. If your shadowfiend had 700 extra AP from group buffs, that's 50 extra dps (or 750 extra mana) that is further multiplied by debuffs such as misery, shadow weaving, curse of shadows, and improved shadow bolt.
Edit: I was doing a slum Karazhan last night and someone's alt shadow priest killed themself with SWD during an enfeeble towards the end of P2. We got them back up with a battle res and they popped their shadowfiend right before I hit heroism. Good times.
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08/28/07, 11:01 AM
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#26
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Banned
Human Death Knight
Turalyon (EU)
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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.
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08/28/07, 11:27 AM
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#27
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Soda Popinski
Pandaren Priest
Windrunner
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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.
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08/28/07, 2:53 PM
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#28
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Glass Joe
Human Warlock
Tichondrius
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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.
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08/28/07, 2:56 PM
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#29
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Don Flamenco
Blood Elf Paladin
Twisting Nether
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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?
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08/28/07, 4:13 PM
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#30
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Honorary Toastr
Night Elf Priest
Dragonblight
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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).
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