Infraction for Curan: 1. All posters are to make an effort to communicate clearly.

constantius · 07/09/09, 3:36 PM

Post: Shadowpriest basics:
User: Curan
Infraction: 1. All posters are to make an effort to communicate clearly.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Your post made my eyes bleed. I appreciate that you were trying to do some serious analysis, and I respect your approach, but as mentioned below, you used completely wrong data in your setup. Try modifying your results based on the feedback below, and when you post again, be more concise and clear.

Original Post:

Hallo there.
I have been playing around with shadow pve dps speccs in the last few days. So I came here to get input and help on my choices.

After reading the very first post I realised there was some discussion on the Topic of Improved Spirit Tap. One of the "hot spots" of my own thoughts.

To "simulate" and test and as a reference to my following points I used Rawr (Rawr - Home) to create a maximum supported and optimal geared shadow priest.
Please notice I realise this is not the best gear choice, but keep in mind I lack time and experience to adjust this. I just wanted a fast simulation dummy to get some numbers done here.
Some inforation on the Shadow dummy I am using for my thoughts:
-As far as I am informed rawr does not "understand" setboni, so my shadow dummy does not take setboni into consideration in the model.
-I tested my data on 10 minutes and 5 minutes fights.
-The dummy is fully raidbuffed with every raidbuff avaiable expect for profession buffs (like ring enchants)
-Rawr comes out with those datas for me:
24 219 Health
23 143 Mana
1571 Stamina
1304 Intellect
674 Spirit
3074 Spellpower
39,66% Crit
13,98% Hit (before talents)
25,03% Haste
-I used the following Spell Priority List for the simulation: Shadow Word: Pain > Vampiric Touch > Vampiric Emprace > Decouring Plague > Mind Blast > Mind Flay
-I used the Major Glpyhs: Glyph of Mind Flay, Glyph of Shadow, Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

I kind of am under the impression that the "(imp) Spirit Tap-question" breaks down to two seperate approaches considering the value of the talent in raid environment.
The first one is the Talent as means of mana regeneration. This negates 3/3 base talent Spirit Tap in all fights where no Adds are to be found, where you could score a killing blow. And in those fight it is only partially viable, as you may not be able to score the killing blow, and the frequency of the adds spawning as well as the kill or non kill factor it self plays a role here.
It should also be mentioned that if you do not have mana problems to begin with, the first three points as a means of mana regeneration are completly useless.
Improved Spirit Tap gets triggered by Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes. In typical PvE rotations you will generelly see little to now Shadow Word: Death. So considering a fully talented Mind Blast (5/5 Improved Mind Blast) that would be used on every possible CD that would translate to 55 Mind Blasts in a five minute fight (rounded up) and 110 Mind Blast in a ten minutes fight (rounded up).
Improved Spirit Tap would have an uptime of 192 seconds in a five minutes fight (~24 ciritcal Hits x 8 Seconds), and an uptime of 384 second in a ten minutes fight (~48 ciritcal Hits x 8 Seconds) using my shadow dummy here as a simulationtool with a 44% chance for a critical strice on Mind Blast.
So this would give you a 192 to 384 seconds (depending on the duration of the fight) of an additional total Spirit of 10% and 33% rate of Mana regeneration.
So this would translate to Manaregeneration depending on your spirit. For my dummy this would be ~67 (rounded down) spirit for 192 seconds in a five minutes fight or 384 in a ten minutes fight.
So this would be a static gain of +42,88 spirit in the dummy case, if Mind Blast would have really been used on every possible CD.

The second one is Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap as means of DPS Talent.
Of course higher mana regeneration may add up to higher DPS, but even considering having no mana problems at all, spirit is modified as direct damage through the following talents/abilites/glyps:

Twisted Faith Rank 5
Increases your spell power by 10% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain.

Glyph of Shadow
Major Glyph
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 20
Use: While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec.

So going to my shadow dummy again and using the numbers from earlier this would be 4,288 spellpower from Twisted Faith and and additional 4,288 spellpower whenever one crits for a 10 seconds duration.
So for my Dummy, even considering the buff of the Glyph of Shadow is always acitve, this would be around 9 spellpower.
Now Spirit Tap would double the spirit when you strike a killing blow with 3/3 Spirit Tap. But it is also a factor of when would I be able to get a Killing blow, so could I use the buff? In example killing the last dwarf of three spawning dwarf on the Razorscale fight with nothing else to cast on the talent would have no benefit at all.

So much for my, without a doubt completely flawed, thoughts on the topic.
But here is the interesting thing.
On my dummy that I use in Rawr I stand around 7681 DPS-Sustained. with 0/3 Spirit Tap and 0/2 Improved Spirit Tap. Speccing 3/3 Spirit Tap does nothing to my DPS, but speccing 2/2 Improved Spirit Tap lets my DPS go up to 7985 sustained in a ten minutes fight. 304 DPS-Sustained difference.
In a five Minutes fight the difference between no point and both talents specced is 7977 DPS-Sustained to 8102. A difference of 125 DPS.
And this does confuse me quite a bit looking at my own thoughts and calculations.

From the postings here originally I had the impression that the TLDR of Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap is that it does increase DPS, but on such a small basis for such a hughe cost (5 talent points) that it can/should be left out for other things like threat reduaction (Shadow Affinity), survivability (Improved Vampiric Embrace, Improved Power Word: Shield) or even utility (Improved Psychic Scream + Silence, Psychic Horror).
Now if only those Rawr Datas would not mess up my picture. Does the Mana regeneration aspect get valued too high here? Or is the mana regeneration effect that good?

I would really be looking forward for clear enlighenement on my mistakes.