We recently had some discussions in guildchat about the best classes to take advantage of shadowpriest mana regeneration.
We raid with 2 or 3 mages, 2 or 3 warlocks, and a maximum of 1 hunter on most nights. If we have two shadowpriests we end up making a group of 2 mages, 1 resto shaman, 1 shadowpriest, and 1 destruction warlock, and a second group with shadowpriest, the mage, the last two warlocks and a healer who has a particularly mana intensive job.
Our warlocks are usually at the top of the damage charts by a fair margin, expecially on fights that include AoE, and all our raiding warlocks are spec'd destruction. On nights when we only have one shadowpriest in the raid, tipically I make sure all mages are grouped with me - but warlocks are usually extremly unhappy and claim that mages can just downrank spells and use mana potions more, and that a shadowpriest would add a lot more damage when grouped with the warlocks, given that our warlocks are tipically well ahead of most of all of our mages except one.
I am firmly in the camp of mages getting a much greater benefit, and even basic theorycraft supports my point, but I wanted to hear different opinions. Are there ever any situations where warlocks should be placed in a shadowpriest group while mages are without one? How big of a DPS loss is having to lifetap for destruction warlocks? Should destruction warlocks be using mana potions on non-farm content, or is it better to save the cooldown for healing potions?
Wow Web Stats are some recent parses from some WWS of our raids.
That being said, as being the only real spriest for my guild, I mostly end up with mages. Locks can still sustain good dps with LT, and some pots. Not willing to pot is like not committing to raid effort in my opinion, so sometimes mages get lucky and sometimes an important lock. Depends on their role on the fight. Mages need to sheep on Lurker: so they get a spriest, Locks need to banish at some other: they get a spriest.
In my opinion :
hunters > mages > warlocks > * > healers.
That's general rule, there are some fights where your healer really needs more mana than they can regen themselves so they need a SP. I remember I gave SP to healers while learning morogrim for example.
But how can you defend putting underpreforming mages in a shadowpriest group over warlocks that constantly top damage meters? I dont get the logic.
Even if mages theoretically benefit more from a shadowpriest, why take away 15% dps from your top damage dealers to give group buffs to someone who don't preform?
In our guild for some reason our raidleader tank and certain officers (won't mention names but just people that don't understand simple concepts) refuse to give mages SP on most fights if we only have 1 and instead give it to our priests, those nice 300 mp/5 priests.
The same people that can't figure out that more mana to mages/locks = boss dies faster = less healing necessary.
Even if mages theoretically benefit more from a shadowpriest, why take away 15% dps from your top damage dealers to give group buffs to someone who don't preform?
Sorry i have to ask this, but i find it utterly unbelievable you loose ~15% dps because you use a global cooldown to lifetap.
The only 15% i could figure out is summed up Shadow Weaving and Misery... and those are target debuffs, therefor not limited to the SPs group.
But how can you defend putting underpreforming mages in a shadowpriest group over warlocks that constantly top damage meters? I dont get the logic.
Even if mages theoretically benefit more from a shadowpriest, why take away 15% dps from your top damage dealers to give group buffs to someone who don't preform?
You don't oO? Shadowweaving and misery isn't group-locked it's a targetdebuff for whole raid. Seeing as destrolocks in my raid generate more mana from Lifetap on a boss than I do chaincasting mana pots + mana gems + evocation I'd never support giving a SP to locks over mages.
Hunters, Mages, Destro-Locs & Ele Shamans I'ld have as prio.
Theres quite a few fights (atleast in MH/BT) where its more of an advantage to give atleast some of the healers a SP to allow them to go full out easier (we run with 2-3 however so..)
And Destro-Locs burn mana faster than Mages especially once haste items become more involved in their gear (no spell rotation, just SB).
Affliction-Locs I ignore from SP groups regardless.
Given just 1 SP I would say Mages + Hunter potentially over a Destro-Loc however.
Looking at your parses and your mage's armory profiles some advice for them:
Mandos is using Scorch way too often. He should spam a lot more Fireballs and (depending on his mana) Fireblast. Improved Scorch is pretty worthless on anything that you can't nuke really steadily (i.e. adds on Lurker will get killed way too fast; Lurker will despawn and the debuff will run out). He should definitely switch the Lightning Capacitor with a more fitting trinket. An [Icon of the Silver Crescent] for example.
Vajel's equip and spec don't fit. If he really wants to go Arcane he should get a [Mystical Skyfire Diamond] at least and stop casting Arcane Blast without the T5-setbonus.
Beska is looking good although I wouldn't switch the Spellfire Pants for T5. The setbonus is strong and he can afford losing some spellhit. Especially with a Draenei in his group.
Short Answer: Depends on the fight. Generally speaking, the longer the fight is, the more you should lean toward moving more healers to Shadowpriest groups.
As far as which DPSers gain the most benefit:
-Arcane Mages. If they're regenning enough mana to use Arcane Blast non-stop, the DPS is simply insane. Arcane mages can literally go from #10 on the meter to #1 by picking up a shadowpriest on many fights.
-Huntards. I don't know what spec should really get priority in the Spriest group if you have more than one, but extra mana = more special attacks for 'em, and can make a significant difference in their DPS.
-Boomkins/Elemental Shamans/Smite Priests, if you bring them. We don't bring any to 25 mans, but I've seen some Boomkins with 700 spell damage do some surprisingly good DPS in PUG Karazhan when they're in my group. If you are going to bring these offspecs and expect them to DPS, they should get #1 priority for the Shadowpriest group.
Do not buy into the "Warlocks should be in Shadowpriest group" nonsense. One of our Warlocks once theorycrafted that "Once our healers have enough gear, we can move Warlocks into the Shadowpriest group instead of them," causing our healers to burst into laughter, and ask where they can get some gear with an extra 300 mp5. Warlocks, particularly destruction spec, do see a DPS increase from a Shadowpriest, but less of a DPS increase than any other caster.
If you really want to min/max your raid, there's no reason there shouldn't be a shadowpriest in all of your caster groups. We run with 3, so every caster has one (Melee DPS and Tank Groups don't need 'em). Any time we have a Spriest absent, the performance of everyone in the group without one tanks noticeably.
The short and dry answer, is to group the player who is running out of mana despite chugging pots with the Shadow Priest. Although, I think these things depend from player to player so much that you might want to simply experiment with different setups to see your results. You might just find that with a bigger mana pool your mages aren't as shy about spamming their high dps, mana ineffecient spells or on the other hand that they were never capped by mana but more by skill and talents.
Beska is looking good although I wouldn't switch the Spellfire Pants for T5. The setbonus is strong and he can afford losing some spellhit. Especially with a Draenei in his group.
In the past I had rarely (read: never) had a Draenei in my group, and I've always found the set bonus to be lackluster. I guess it's just something I've stuck with. It comes down to to opinion though and I prefer the T5.
While I understand Miko's point it's absurd that mages should be demanded to downrank as an effecient alternative over a shadow priest.
Edit: Mandos is a promising recruit and after not using scorch at all, I asked him to help me with the debuff every now and again and now it seems he is using it too much. Vajel I have lost hope for a very, very long time ago.
Sorry i have to ask this, but i find it utterly unbelievable you loose ~15% dps because you use a global cooldown to lifetap.
The only 15% i could figure out is summed up Shadow Weaving and Misery... and those are target debuffs, therefor not limited to the SPs group.
Someone said in the linked thread that in a 10 min+ fight destro locks lose 15% dps. Anyway, that's probably very wrong and wasn't my point.
I think the above posters have done a good job of pointing out the classes that benefit the most from an Spriest, all else equal. Here though, you are right that all else isn't equal.
A couple of points, in random order:
*First, and most importantly, I think you may be confusing two issues: Which classes benefits the most from regen (we were able to answer that fairly easily), and why certain players in your raid underperform. The former begs a strategic decision-making solution and the latter a behavioral-modification solution.
If your mages consistently under-perform, denying them a shadow priest is unlikely to help them. Rather, you should work aggressively with them on improving their time spent casting, spell selection, and use of stop casting. Not everyone worth having in a guild will play optimally, but they should all be eager to improve their play. Denying them a shadow priest can be a powerful stick to shape up, but even more likely, it can hinder their growth -- without a shadow priest, it is very hard for them to get better because they will often be having to use sub-optimal spell rotations and won't be used to dumping the extra mana when they do get an Spriest.
Moving shadow priests to destro lock groups is a second-best solution, akin to using soul stones on a raid member that stands in AoE and dies a lot. Sure it has the potential to help in the short run, but overall you'd be better off working with him or her on staying alive, and in the long run looking for a replacement if he or she cannot do so.
*Some mid-fight group switching can maximize the benefit of a Spriest. For example, to the best of my knowledge, a hunter using fel mana pots doesn't need a 1k dps shadow priest full time (example, a BM hunter without efficiency will burn about 289 mp5 using a 1.9 speec post-haste weapon and an auto-steady rotation -- with Wisdom this is 240, with fel manas this is 107 mp5, with mana oil+maj mageblood this is 77 mp5, with dark runes 27 mp5). So you can split him 50/50 (for example) with another class, swapping groups mid-fight. While the hunter may occassionally need to switch to viper if the boss dies more slowly than anticipated, that is a strategic gambit that will benefit you more times than it will hurt you.
*Regen and mana expenditure really varies wildly fight by fight. A fight with a lot of movement, your destro locks literally suffer zero dps loss from lifetapping while moving. In a fight with downtime, your hunters suffer literally zero dps loss from FD+drinking (SSC examples include lurker after the adds are dead, leo when dps is called on a whirlwind and during the human form emote, I've never played a hunter past SSC/TK). Others have already discussed when your healers' mana may be especially taxed due to encounter design.
*You always need to consider marginal DPM. So for example, for a survival hunter, he should be able to sustain himself indefinitely with an auto-steady rotation using fel mana +BoW before even considering regen consumables, so the loss is some arcane/multi/KC in his rotation. This will be significant, but a lower value than simply taking hawk + his average dpm. For a BM hunter the loss is kill command, which is one of the lower dpm attacks used in raids.
In the case of a mage, you will gain extra AB spam time for an arcane mage (rather low marginal DPM, insanely so without 2pc T5), or even better you will allow him to move to an AM spam build, which is very effective in the current patch.
In a destro warlock's case, the cost is the GCD from lifetapping during a standstill portion of the fight.
In an elemental shaman's case, the marginal dpm can be quite high (no need to downrank LBs for example or quite low (use LB spam instead of CL periodically) depending on his pre-shadow priest regen.
*How other classes buff the priest also matters. An elemental shaman for example provides regen plus wrath of air plus the admittedly marginal totem of wrath. This ups your shadow priest's group mp5 (in addition to his dps) directly by adding spell dmg and crit and indirectly by allowing him to use more aggressive MB/SWD rotations. Similarly a BM hunter means 3% more mp5 generated for the group. Mages and warlocks provide no benefit at all to the priest.
*The presence of other regen options is equally important. If you can train your paladin's to keep JoW up, some classes will see their mana problems wane, most notably hunters.
I suppose related to all of this, if you are finding every class needs a shadow priest to function acceptably, this probably reveals that they are not doing enough to maximize their own mana regen through pots/mageblood/mana oil/gems/dark runes/spirit weapon for evocation etc. Fix that and you will have significantly more flexibility in how you use your Spriest.
Our first spriest almost always goes in the mage group -- typically it's either 3x mage/spriest/ele shammy, or 2x mage/lock/spriest/ele shammy. The second one, which is me, goes in a healer group which is usually 2x pally/resto shaman/holy priest/me. When we had a 3rd one, they would end up with the hunters.
The suggestion that mages downrank spells is pretty silly. As others have stated, they just need to improve their performance and I would suggest addressing that issue first.
OK you didn't ask for all of this, but as you were asking whether you should give the SP to mages if they are not performing at the top of the pack or not, so I decided to take a look at your mages.
1) Vajel could tweak his gear and see a performance boost. The AM spam arcane spec is designed around proc's, especially the MSD. If he has a T4 helm in his bank he should absolutely get it out and regem. If not, you might want to seriously consider how to get him a meta-gem slot. Or he could go back to the classic AB rotation. From what I can tell (and I am behind you on the loot curve, but an avid reader of the arcane spec thread on this forum) before 2 piece T5 you should AM spam with MSD, with 2 piece T5, do an AB rotation, when you start getting haste gear/T6 move to AM spam again (with MSD). Without MSD you should really be considering deep fire.
That being said -- if Vajel is going to stay arcane you absolutely need to give him a SP or get JoW up 100%. AM spam without raid support/buffs lasts about ~1-1.5 minutes at your gear lvl. I did manage to do an 8 minute Gruul fight without an SP but with JoW up 70% of the time, chain potting SMP, mana gems, evocation - the whole ball of wax.
The other thing to think about before putting the locks in the SP groups is where they are vs the threat ceiling. In our raids our best locks are riding that line fairly carefully, and without giving them more threat to play with, they can't up their damage much even with more mana -- they can just pot less. And taking the SP away from the mages would make that that much harder for them to perform credibly.
And I probably mentioned this earlier but keeping JoW up would help the mana issues for many of your dps. I don't know if you have a prot or ret pally who can be tasked with it, but it has really paid off for us. Our raid leader was dubious of a ret pally, but he has been pulling his weight for sure.
The short and dry answer, is to group the player who is running out of mana despite chugging pots with the Shadow Priest. Although, I think these things depend from player to player so much that you might want to simply experiment with different setups to see your results. You might just find that with a bigger mana pool your mages aren't as shy about spamming their high dps, mana ineffecient spells or on the other hand that they were never capped by mana but more by skill and talents.
I tried explaining that concept once when running out on fights chaincasting pots, gems, evocating, fights like Leotheras or Vashj etc. The answer I was given in most cases was "Do less dps instead and hold back mana". Some people in my guild is under the retarded impression that "preserving mana" is an intelligent choice, like using 8k mana in the first 2 minutes then wanding up some mana regen does less damage than spending those 8k in 4 minutes instead.
I tried explaining that concept once when running out on fights chaincasting pots, gems, evocating, fights like Leotheras or Vashj etc. The answer I was given in most cases was "Do less dps instead and hold back mana". Some people in my guild is under the retarded impression that "preserving mana" is an intelligent choice, like using 8k mana in the first 2 minutes then wanding up some mana regen does less damage than spending those 8k in 4 minutes instead.
You know, it's not that strange that they think so (or at least, there are reasons for it - whether your guildies have these reasons or get their opinions from other places I do not know).
There are definitely ways for Mages to do high damage which are mana-ineffecient - AB spam without T5 set bonus for instance.
Remember that DPM and DPS must both be considered to figure out sustained damage on a particular fight. Having a SP nets you more mana, allowing you to choose DPS over DPM. Having JoW up gives you even more mana (and is actually one of the few mana-regenerating ways that scale with haste).
Thus, you need to explain to them why you are using a certain spell sequence which puts you OOM at 2 minutes versus the one that makes you go OOM in 4 minutes.
If your DPS1 * 2 * 60 + wand dps * regen time > DPS2 * 4 * 60 + wand dps * regen time then surely they will understand that - but do note that the time spent regenerating mana needs to be factored in when calculating the damage of each cycle, with the caveat that you need to stop counting after the boss is dead.
The goal is after all to deal as much damage as possible before the boss is dead, not to deal the highest DPS nor the most DPM.
EDIT:
My math skills suck, which is kind of bad for a professional developer, but my main point is that you need to show why your particular "two-minute-Mage" cycle is better than the "four-minute-Mage" - most other classes have a hard time to go OOM as fast as a Mage can and may therefore be quite a bit biased versus such a short "duration".
In our guild we always put the Mages in a Shadow Priest group, and that Shadow Priest almost always has a Shaman in it as well for Mana Tide and Heroism for optimal DPS. We usually have 2 Shadow Priests in the raid.
In my opinion a Mage should always be with a Shadow Priest, they're in a bit of a broken state for PvE nowadays, and with that I mean their DPS is sub-par compared to Hunters, Rogues, Warlocks and Shadow Priests. But if you don't put a Mage with a Shadow Priest, they'll probably run OOM long before a 10 minute fight is over, reducing the Mage's DPS to 0 for quite some time.
So next in line we put healers with Shadow Priests if they need the extra mana regeneration, which is almost always.
Number 3 would be the BM Hunters and a very close number 4, the Warlocks.
I'm a Warlock myself, 43/0/18 Affliction/Destruction spec and even though I do have unlimited mana, a Shadow Priest will give a Warlock a very big DPS increase. The question is ofcourse whether the DPS increase BM hunters get from it is greater than the DPS increase Warlocks get.
Why do Warlocks get a huge DPS increase from Shadow Priests and Shamans? Simple, let's say we have a 10 minute fight, a Warlock will spend like 45 seconds - 60 seconds lifetapping. If the Warlock gets mana from the Shadow Priest and Shaman (Mana tide), that Life Tap time will be reduced to like 20 seconds. Which is an increase of like 40 seconds of extra time to deal damage!
But I think it's true that Warlocks don't NEED it, it just boosts their DPS a lot. A Mage can not deal damage without a Shadow Priest, because he'll go OOM. A BM Hunters can not deal (a lot of) damage without a Shadow Priest because their Pet will die and they'll go OOM of spamming Mend Pet.
But if the Warlocks outdamage the BM Hunters and Mages who are in a DPS group, when the Warlocks are not, don't forget how amazing those Warlocks are to pull that off. Try putting Warlocks in Shadow Priest + Shaman groups and watch the damage meters.
In the end the question isn't how much a shadow priest can boost a warlocks dps but how much less dps the (arcane)mage does without a shadow priest. It's guaranteed that your overall raid dps will be lower if warlocks get shadow priest over mages.
If a mage goes oom he does ~200 dps with a wand. A warlock can not go oom.
You know, it's not that strange that they think so (or at least, there are reasons for it - whether your guildies have these reasons or get their opinions from other places I do not know).
There are definitely ways for Mages to do high damage which are mana-ineffecient - AB spam without T5 set bonus for instance.
Their opinions stem from a "we are officers" position and "we want" position and usually just turn the argument around on me. The reason they say "Do less dps" is because I am one of the two "numbercrunchers" aka theorycrafters aka "people that actually care that a raid does 12k dps instead of 11k dps on a fight" people and they think that the only thing in the world that matters to me is DPS. So they think i'm wasting mana and I go OOM on fights chainpotting/gemming/evocing only using 1xscorch7xfireball rotation.
Remember that DPM and DPS must both be considered to figure out sustained damage on a particular fight. Having a SP nets you more mana, allowing you to choose DPS over DPM. Having JoW up gives you even more mana (and is actually one of the few mana-regenerating ways that scale with haste).
Oh absolutely but in most cases mana is mana and damage is damage no matter how much you twist it around. If you have a certain amount of mana, there is only so many ways you can turn that mana into damage and dps and in many fights DPS > DPM due to enrage timers etc. If time is not of the essence you can always turn mana into more damage than if time is of the essence but most fights time has been an issue. We are currently learning KT and if mages weren't given a SP here we might as well not take any mages.
Thus, you need to explain to them why you are using a certain spell sequence which puts you OOM at 2 minutes versus the one that makes you go OOM in 4 minutes.
If your DPS1 * 2 * 60 + wand dps * regen time > DPS2 * 4 * 60 + wand dps * regen time then surely they will understand that - but do note that the time spent regenerating mana needs to be factored in when calculating the damage of each cycle, with the caveat that you need to stop counting after the boss is dead.
Yea I totally agree but in a straight out 10/48/3 build firemage chainpotting, gemming and evocating and trying to do optimal DPS and DPM you can't really do much wrong with 1xscorch 7xfireball and not using any fireblasts at all.
The goal is after all to deal as much damage as possible before the boss is dead, not to deal the highest DPS nor the most DPM.
Exactly! And a SP can increase that damage for a mage with a very large amount, 12k extra mana is quite a lot of damage.
EDIT:
My math skills suck, which is kind of bad for a professional developer, but my main point is that you need to show why your particular "two-minute-Mage" cycle is better than the "four-minute-Mage" - most other classes have a hard time to go OOM as fast as a Mage can and may therefore be quite a bit biased versus such a short "duration".
Yes but most people should logically understand the concept that in a fight doing 200k in 4 minutes is better than doing 200k dmg in 6 minutes.
This is easily shown in the speed clear SSC video where they do SSC in around 2 hours. The higher the raid DPS is the higher DPS rotations you can use because you don't have to preserve mana and the lighter the healing is. The synergy of mana -> dps is a lot higher than mana -> healing in most cases.
Oh edit: I did find one nice argument lately =) I started posting the "Gains" portion of Assessment for the people that claim they need shadowpriest and then seeing how few pots they bothered taking then comparing that to mage-usage :P
In my opinion :
hunters > mages > warlocks > * > healers.
That's general rule, there are some fights where your healer really needs more mana than they can regen themselves so they need a SP. I remember I gave SP to healers while learning morogrim for example.
Hunters are the last that need SP. Mana isnt a prob unless hunter is MM. If they need it for pet rather put SP in melee group.
In my opinion a Mage should always be with a Shadow Priest, they're in a bit of a broken state for PvE nowadays, and with that I mean their DPS is sub-par compared to Hunters, Rogues, Warlocks and Shadow Priests.
I dunno, our mages seem to have just tried some new arcane missile spec, and with a MSD meta gem and the lightning capacitor their dps is getting pretty silly. They are really just waiting for the nerf.
10/04/07, 8:42 AM
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