All excellent things to test if/when this goes live! Because all I have to go on is what I see currently on live and what I see on test.

Theory crafting is awesome but it'll get you only so far. Sometimes you just have to put it into practice.

I'd like to see all this plugged into shadowpriest.com's simulator.

As far as haste rating stacking goes, the only thing that lets you do is burn mana quicker than before (both in terms of speeding up casting and allowing more gem procs) - but I dont think anything other than ashtongue would be worth it.

I'm not too sure about the numbers but if its possible (with JoW bear in mind) to gain an even remotely close DPM to fireball spamming, then by all means burn your mana and switch to a spirit wand+weapon and start spamming AM3 (which btw, as shown earlier in this thread can do pretty reasonable DPS on its own, as well as actually having the potential to gain you mana)
And yes, its important that you do AM3 instead of wanding if JoW is up. The DPS from wanding is just too low, even with the mana that you get back (unless someone can show that the mana you get back is worth it compared to the damage you do. All you would have to do is find the MP5 you get back, convert that into damage using the DPM from your DPS cycle and compare that to the damage you get from just spamming AM3)

I think someone is going to have to stick all these numbers into a simulator to find the benefit from stacking spell haste (more time spamming AM3 and gaining mana, dumps mana faster, more TLC procs during AM3 spam) vs spelldamage (better DPM in full rank AM spam, dumps mana slower).

Maybe i'm saying the same thing too much, but Manly got 1800 DPS without any real buffs, and didn't try to sustain it with gems, pots or evo. With JoW you could sustain it for much longer, even more with SP, shaman, etc. Remember that if you don't sustain it thats not a problem either as long as the DPM is good, because all youre doing is increasing your DPS at the cost of the time spent doing that DPS, which overall ends up in exactly the same damage except you have more "free time" to spam am3.

I coded up the 10sec duration..... but assumed that in no possible way would Blizzard leave the 10sec duration and not fix the channel bug. I also assumed that since the AM cast cannot be resisted..... it cannot "hit" either, so AM would only get 5 proc chances.

Instead of spamming the forum with data, I'm working on a wiki article:

SimulationCraft/Abusing Arcane Missles - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

Just explanations and a list of the sims I plan on doing. If you'd like to see something done there, squirt me a mail..... or just edit the wiki to include things you want to see. I'll run the experiments tonight.

I enjoyed the read . Thanks heaps, I was really hoping someone would write up a nice easy-to-read guide like that which can be easily passed on to others.

Ok well. If this sticks through, I'll definately consider deep fire and AM spamming on focus proc. Not sure how good deep fire AM spam DPS is, but a mana dump would be much welcome.

The issue is exactly that. Haste gear is the only DPS increasing stat that doesn't also increase DPM. All other stats increase DPM as well, so by comparison haste gear is worse for DPM. I think that was his point.

Has anyone tried the blue dragon card for procs per missile?

I want to find some way to hack this mechanic into a sustainable model so badly. Maybe ZA will have some nice mana regen trinkets of some sort...

As things stand now on test, the cast itself counts as a 'hit'. So it's 6 proc chances per cast instead of 5.

Thanks for throwing that page up. It will be very interesting to see where it goes.

I'm not sure if it really is a buff, though, most shadow priests have mana issues, and the very *existence* of mana issues now mean that a lot of hasted Mind Flays aren't going to help you.

Haste doesn't make shadow priests more efficient, they'll still be burning the same amount of mana to restore X mana to you, it'll just be faster, so if they have mana issues now, they'll have even worse mana issues spamming 1.5s cast Mind Flays.

Still, it's true their overall dps will be higher, I'm just not convinced that their *mana return* will end up higher overall in a fight.

It does stick SP in the same position as mages though. The more ways of generating mana you have, the more rediculous your DPS will be. It means that SP has the potential to "mana dump" or burn as much mana as he wants very quickly.

Imagine groups of 3 SP and 2 AM mages, all equipped with MSD. Probably a complete waste of shadowpriests, but the damage and synergy in the group would be horrifcly sickening.

Arcane can be as good as any other spec with the proper gear and some practice. Do not except to get the same damage output as you were getting when you were fire from the first day of specing arcane. The mana problem can be easily fixed having a shadow priest around, the only minus left is the low rage.

I think it will be extremely powerful for shadow priests. With two pieces of T5, I rarely have to use mana potions and many fights I'm threat capped even without using Shadow Word Death. This just lets me use fewer mind blasts in my rotation, shifting them to extra mind flays. A hasted flay has the same DPS as mind blast for one third the mana (after accounting for vampiric touch returns).

The other possibility it opens up is using lower ranked mind flays. I lose 600 DPS by using rank 1 mind flay, but the net cost (8 mana for 750 damage) is indefinitely sustainable with a little mana regen, even with an eternal focus proc. If you have both DoTs ticking and cast rank 1 flay with the focus buff up, you're still doing 1000 DPS (250 m/5) for basically no mana.

The only minor downside people haven't considered is that sometimes you really need to refresh vampiric touch right now, and casting it will consume the focus. It sucks losing the other 7 seconds of focus, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

If you are just doing AM spam, then yes, there will obviously be mana issues. No reason why you can't be a little more sophisticated than that though.

For instance:

AM (Rank 3), AB could be your base spell rotation. Any time a CC or focus proc is active, you should cast a full rank AM.

Rank 3 AM with JOW is mana-free damage while still triggering all your procs and AB will help your effeciency while giving you some FSR ticks. A proc will be active the majority (65%?) of the time so obviously full rank AM will still be your primary nuke.

Your sustainability here will obviously be very streaky depending on your procs, but it should be significantly longer than simple AM spam. You should never be wanding, ever.

Of course, if you do need to burn more mana or want to use cooldowns more effeciently, you can use Rank 8-10 instead of Rank 3 so you do not incur any spell damage penalties.

But why switch to only AM spam variations? AM spam does not forces you in any way to deviate from your normal rotation.

AM spam is better DPS and DPM than 1.5s AB spam, but thats about it.
I never said anything further than that. Its a very very good candidate replacement to AB spam, but that does not make it the end-all-be-all spell (unless we get a mana regen proc somehow with no internal cooldown) in the same way that AB spam never was viable.

Personally, I plan on either :
-> 3x AB, AM, scorch with a classic 48/13/0 variant and 'finish' fights with AM spam.
or
-> 3x AB, 2x fireball (with 3x AB, fireball, 2x scorch weaved in) and finish with AM spam using the build below: (warning: the build is very odd at first sight)
'high-end 43/18/0' WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

Please note that the build above seems unwise at first, but understand that the build assumes high-end gear, so quite possibly 12%+ hit rate from gear alone, even when you don't wear any specific hit gear pieces.


You may try and do:
-> AB, AM (rank 3), AM (rank 3)
-> on focus proc, AM (rank 3)
-> on clearcast, full rank AM

but to be honest I doubt you will get great results, unless you do have JOW, which personally I prefer assuming it won't be up. You might get 700 dps (figurative number) from such a high DPM rotation, but 700 DPS is not something you want to do ever. If you can prove in some way that such rotation is indeed optimal, grats. But I highly doubt anyone will be able to, particularly without JOW.

And if you have JOW up, then really why would you do AM rank 3 anyway?

Shadow priests use mind flay mainly as a cooldown bridge. While they're waiting for other spells to become active. It's actually very mana efficient with the right talents. But isn't their best dps spell. With focus, it would be a very good spell in terms of dps as well as dpm.



1800 dps was without raid buffs/debuffs. With, it would be probably closer to 2200-2300 dps which would make a burn/wand/burn scenario feasible if that's something that would be required.



At this point, I honestly see no reason to do anything but spam AM. The whole point is procs, right? Well if you're casting anything other than AM, you're hurting your procs per minute. Which is probably not worth whatever minor paper efficiency gains you achieve.

Believe it or not, my first attempt at a proc spec was a fireball/AM build. Rotating fireball as a bolt spell with AM to make maximum possible use out of clearcasting with arcane potency. Even before these potential changes to the way AM procs items, I found it to not be ideal due to gearing concerns with hit. I am in no danger of being forced to get over 10% hit due to gearing constraints. And won't be if I choose to pick up 4/5 tier 6, either.

So, yeah it's easy to get 12% hit from gear in BT/Hyjal. But it's just as easy to not. It's an active choice and not something you just 'accidentally' achieve unless you pick up whatever happens to drop with no real concern for it's stats.

I am confident that dedmonwakeen's simulation reports will back me up on this when he's done creating the scenarios.

because the DPM is not manageable without JOW ? And that I'm not even sure about it with JOW, it would still be situational, when taking into account movement fights.

C'mon this conversation is borderline ridiculous. If mana was never a concern, we would all be AB-spamming since the dawn of time. How often exactly have you seen that happen? Your answer should be close to zero. AM spamming is only viable as long as you can support the atrocious DPM. This is exactly why I always mentioned that you still have to plan to use your good old AB rotations, because they have a more manageable DPM.

And we're back to running in circle, always repeating the same things over and over. Let's hope the TTT opens up soon.

on test, I was burning 12k mana under 40 seconds without too much trouble, with and without ashtongue. The problem with MSD is simply that it is too good, and as soon as you get 1 focus procs, most of the time you could 'roll it' until you go oom more than 60%+ of the time.

Its dead obvious that the only solution is drop ashtongue and go for max DPM (ie: drop all spell haste and go for max dmg/crit), so that your DPS is somewhat sustenable under rolling MSD procs. I know AM spam is viable in 2.1. But the thing is, when you AM spam in 2.2, what happens is usually you AM until you get a single focus proc, then it goes the distance until you run fully OOM. 2.5s AM spam is no joke. That's what were talking about here in practical terms. All you need is 1 proc. You won't get any FSR mana ticks.

And JOW only exists sometimes, and it sure as hell doesn't exist on bosses with adds, not to speak of the trash that inevitably comes before it.

That's exactly what I was thinking. [Pendant of the Violet Eye] seems perfect for this, since you can stack 6 spell casts every 2.5 seconds. Thats 48 if you have no lag, but more like 45 in practice. That's 945 m/5 for 20 seconds per activation, plus a the equivalent of another 10 seconds at 945 during the ramp up. So 5670 mana per activation (once every 2 minutes), or the overall equivalent of 236 m/5. That's not too shabby.

[The Lightning Capacitor] is the obvious other choice.

They've had a while to change it, and god knows Blizz peeps read this forum. I would think that if they were going to change the channeling consumption than they would have done it when they made the buff last 10 seconds. Its always possible they are as interested as we are in terms of how this effects caster mechanics and would like to see how it plays out in actual end game scenarios. They can always nerf it later.

Its really not that OP when you look at how totally unsustainable AM spam is under these type of conditions. I would also think that an SP chain casting channeled spells would be quite dangerous in terms of agro generation. Though its burst possiblities are rather incredible I do think there is some level of balance.

Enlightenment (the buff from the Pendant) has a maximum stack size of 20.

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Enlightenment

How very sad. Still, you can stack that high in 10 seconds, so you have around 35 seconds at 420 m/5, or 2940 mana returned. About as good as another super mana potion.

The real question is, is 3000 mana / 2min better than +80 dmg for 2 min ?