The funny thing is Mind Flay in serious PvP isn't even a big deal. Spriests get trained pretty hard so you aren't going to be able to channel that for long, even if you have complete pushback protection. In a BG, sure it would be strong, but so is the Sunwell mage chucking fireballs unimpeded.
But that aside, anyone else excited about the potion sickness debuff? Looks like the 2 spriests per raid standard might continue in wotlk
Assuming it's implemented, I would assume we'll keep our spots in raids. It depends on whether or not the reports saying it's impossible to runt out of mana are true. If we're a spec that has absolutely no problem with mana, then I'll leap for joy. :P But since Improved Spirit Tap will now be giving us 50% mana regeneration while casting, I have little reason to doubt those reports.
And on the brighter side for PVP, Dispersion's CD just got reduced to 3 minutes in the latest Beta build! I'm taking that talent point for sure if that continues.
Assuming it's implemented, I would assume we'll keep our spots in raids. It depends on whether or not the reports saying it's impossible to runt out of mana are true. If we're a spec that has absolutely no problem with mana, then I'll leap for joy. :P But since Improved Spirit Tap will now be giving us 50% mana regeneration while casting, I have little reason to doubt those reports.
And on the brighter side for PVP, Dispersion's CD just got reduced to 3 minutes in the latest Beta build! I'm taking that talent point for sure if that continues.
I'm of a similar mind on the subject of mana. Only having to cast SW:P once (or a few times) per boss fight is an enormous mana saver. Of course, now it's much more likely to fall off during periods of down time (think Supremus, or other such bosses) being 18 seconds instead of the talented, set bonus-affected 27 seconds I'm used to.
It's semi-fruitless to TC about expansion abilities in the current raid game, but I'd like to do so just for comparison purposes. Even at current levels, I have to cast SW:P roughly 10 or 11 times in a 5-minute boss fight. That's currently 5750 mana if we use 10. Over that same period of time, VT will give me back roughly 16500 mana. With the new VT, I'd have returned 6600 mana to myself under the (poor) assumption that my DPS remains the same. Assuming I refresh SW:P with Mind Flay and don't let it expire, I'm at a 4150 mana deficit over the old VT, which I think will easily be made up by Imp. Spirit Tap, although I haven't got any good spirit numbers to substantiate this.
For my relatively short time leveling on my SP in beta, I can confirm that mana is not an issue in terms of going through mobs. I originally kept meditation and inner focus for fear of mana, but I speced into full Twisted Faith, and only 5 points in Disc for Twin Disciplines and haven't had mana problems while grinding. I haven't been playing my SP much, as I am fascinated with my DK and still trying to raid on live.
I've had a similiar experience playing my priest, which with the advantage of a lot of Sunwell gear gives me a decent starting point on spirit. I started off as 0/0/61 shadow, and fiend+dispersion has been enough to cover any gaps in mana.
I've had the same experience when leveling my shadowpriest too. Even though the t6ish gear I have only has 229 spirit I've not had problems with running out of mana when killing stuff for quests, even without Meditation. Though I prefer using [Earring of Soulful Meditation] together with Spirit Tap than relying on the Shadowfiend. (Is it just me or does the new Divine Plea make the Shadowfiend look even more like a joke than it already does?)
On a related note the buff from Improved Spirit Tap is overwritten by the buff from Spirit Tap, so you can't combine them.
My assumption would be that with healers moving over entirely onto Spellpower that the Shadowfiend would see another boost similar to the one noticed when +healing started granting a small amount of +damage as well.
I've had the same experience when leveling my shadowpriest too. Even though the t6ish gear I have only has 229 spirit I've not had problems with running out of mana when killing stuff for quests, even without Meditation. Though I prefer using [Earring of Soulful Meditation] together with Spirit Tap than relying on the Shadowfiend. (Is it just me or does the new Divine Plea make the Shadowfiend look even more like a joke than it already does?)
On a related note the buff from Improved Spirit Tap is overwritten by the buff from Spirit Tap, so you can't combine them.
Divine Plea is not as effective as Shadowfiend, in my opinion. As a shadowpriest, I've learned to time my shadowfiend to get the maximum benefit out of it (ie: trinket beforehand since I have two on-use trinkets, use it just after a boss AoE has hit, etc). As such, I've often had my shadowfiend restore 50-100% (yes, one hundred percent) of my mana bar. Add Dispersion into that mix, and spriests have very solid active mana regen options.
Also, while questing and grinding, you can cast your shadowfiend (with a /petattack macro) on a different mob that you haven't aggroed yet, while you DPS down a separate mob or two. Generally the shadowfiend has enough avoidance to live the entire 15 seconds of its duration tanking the mob, while you get mana back and kill 2 other mobs. Using this method, along with Spirit Tap, I've never run OOM while questing or doing dailies.
Mindflay is a unique snow flake in the world of wow spells. It is, functionally, a dot that must be channeled to keep up by the caster. It may seem, visually, to be similar to Arcane Missles, but it isnt at all, under the hood. For that reason hopes of MF being crittable in the not-to-distant future are a waste of energy: it aint happening. To further complicate things for poor run down Mind Flay is that its tied to the 50% movement snare. A significant feature in at least some forms of PvP yet completely usless in nearly all forms of PvE raiding.
It seems unlikely that MF will ever be the spammable bread and butter nuke that we want (need?) because of the snare effect. It is our burden. It is our curse.
Hey hey hey heyyyy ooooooooohh whooooaaaa hey hey hey hey ooooooooohhh whoooaaaaaaa Dont you forget about me.
Inscription offers a rather obvious solution to this problem of snare and scaling.
Take Mind Flay's snare off, put its range to 36 yards, and give it regular scaling. Then introduce a Major Glyph for PVP that causes Mind Flay to have a 50% snare effect but at the cost of reduced damage...say...40%. It completely removes that from the spell and gives the player a choice in the matter while avoiding screwing us over in PVE. Balance issue solved.
I would say email this to Blizzard, but for all we now they may have the reverse solution in the works with a Major Glyph already. I speak of a possible Major Glyph that removes Mind Flays snaring effect but increases Mind Flay damage by 40%. It's not far-fetched at all with what we've seen with Druid Glyphs. I honestly can't wait to see what the Priest Glyphs will be like.
See this for further evidence: Glyph of Insect Swarm - Increases the damage of your Insect Swarm ability by 30% but it no longer affects your victim's chance to hit.
I withheld judgment on these talents when they were alpha leaks, but now that it's beta stuff I'm going to express my reservation.
I expected VT and Shadow Focus nerfs, but I expected them to go hand-in-hand with crit scaling, and these talents don't deliver that. Without it, we'll get a repeat of TBC: inflated damage at low gear levels where spellpower is the stat of choice, but poor scaling once everyone has enough spellpower (or attack power) that crit and haste become important.
Imp Spirit Tap may make us want some amount of spellcrit for regen, but this has (almost) nothing to do with improving how our damage scales with multiplying stats, especially spellcrit. It's an attempt to make us want similar gear to other casters, and that's fine, but once we're wearing that gear, the issue of how our damage benefits from it remains. At this point it's clear Blizzard doesn't like heavy-handed solutions like "make dots crit", but any of these should work just as well:
- When you crit, your next Mind Flay does double damage
- When you crit, your next Mind Flay casts in half time
- When you crit, you do X% more damage for Y seconds
- When you cirt, you gain X% spell haste for Y seconds
This isn't radical at all; lots of classes have similar "when you crit ..." things. There are lots of possibilities, and I'm not picky. I'm disappointed though, to see no real attempt to solve this problem, only the token change to Shadow Power.
What about how improved Spirit Tap Synergizes with Twisted Faith?
Twisted Faith boosts shadow damage by 30% of your spirit, and when you crit you have 50% more spirit for 8 seconds, increasing your bonus spell damage from spirit for a bit after every time you crit.
The bonus spell damage from spirit should also help shadow priests scale a bit better with stats.
So, there's an odd spell damage/mana regen scaling from crit, and extra spell damage scaling from spirit.
Of course, a lot of it depends on how the gear ends up being designed. But WotLK looks like they're trying to make spirit a LOT more important than it is now. How much spirit are shadow priests in beta reporting compared to what shadow priests have now?
Does the healing from dispersion count as a HoT? That is, does Degeneration from death knights corrupt it? Leaving you with the 90% damage reduction, no heal, and not being able to do anything until it wears off. (Or click it off, depending on whether they let you do so).
I think it would be a similar heal as the Feral druid rage to health ability. Not sure how that is classified but I would be surprised (and a little miffed) if that heal can be corrupted, dispelled, etc.
I can check the DK's Degeneration vs Dispersion easy enough. I will try and find a rogue/warrior to test the wound poison/MS. Will post when I get results.
On the topic of Dispersion, rumor during the Alpha was that Dispersion was a physical effect, and thus couldn't be dispelled or mass dispelled. I'd love to hear a confirmation on this from someone in the beta.
What about how improved Spirit Tap Synergizes with Twisted Faith?
It's trivial, but it's the reason I put the "(almost)" in there. Crit is a multiplying stat. The Twisted Faith synergy only multiplies the spellpower from that 30% of your Spirit. It doesn't multiply the rest of your spellpower, or the base damage of the spell -- which crit for normal classes does -- at all. So it's there, but it's small.
I also considered the view that crit is partly a regen stat now, and spirit partly a DPS stat. But crit is so bad at being a damage stat that Dark Spirit would have to give huge amounts of spellpower to make up for it, at least twice what it does now, and even then it wouldn't have the multiplying effect that crit is supposed to.
Some of it is tangential, but it does snow that Blizzard has no plan for making crit and haste perfectly useful to all types of caster. So reasoning of the form, "Crit has to be useful somehow," and then looking for where it "must" be useful, doesn't go through. They never said it would be fully useful to everyone, and barring radical changes of mind, it won't be. (This also means we shouldn't hope for miracles from Inscription.)
I really think that Inscription is the vehicle that could boost MF in ways that they wont change it such as an increase in damage but a removal of the slow, thus limiting its "omg op" in pvp situations (though, honestly, MF sucks in arenas which is the only pvp that most people care about anymore). The druid glyph that buffs insect swarms damage but removed the -2% chance to hit shows promise for us.
With the new talents, how much dps do we think SPs would gain? I remember the number 43% increase being thrown around. That is... quite a bit.
I really think that Inscription is the vehicle that could boost MF in ways that they wont change it such as an increase in damage but a removal of the slow, thus limiting its "omg op" in pvp situations (though, honestly, MF sucks in arenas which is the only pvp that most people care about anymore). The druid glyph that buffs insect swarms damage but removed the -2% chance to hit shows promise for us.
I have a hunch they will do this. The Insect Swarm Glyph proves that they can; Blizzard knows about the Mind Flay Scaling Complaint, since they've defended the poor scaling in the past. Inscription offers Blizzard an incredible amount of flexibility in addressing player complaints. Don't like the Insect Swarm -2% hit feature? Take it away with a Glyph and get more damage! Don't like Moonfire Spam? Want it to be more like a DoT? Here ya go!
If they were to do something similar, like remove the snare with a Glyph while increasing its damage by, say, 40%, how much would that increase Mind Flay's effectiveness compared to our other DPS spells?
I have a hunch they will do this. The Insect Swarm Glyph proves that they can; Blizzard knows about the Mind Flay Scaling Complaint, since they've defended the poor scaling in the past. Inscription offers Blizzard an incredible amount of flexibility in addressing player complaints. Don't like the Insect Swarm -2% hit feature? Take it away with a Glyph and get more damage! Don't like Moonfire Spam? Want it to be more like a DoT? Here ya go!
If they were to do something similar, like remove the snare with a Glyph while increasing its damage by, say, 40%, how much would that increase Mind Flay's effectiveness compared to our other DPS spells?
40% is an enormous buff but lets take a look at what kind of a boost that would give:
Using a EJ parse and looking at Snowy's fairly impressive damage +40% damage to MindFlay will net Snowy an extra 70,126 damage (MF Damage * 1.40 = Buffed_MF Damage; find the difference from new to old and you get the gain). Add the new damage to the total 525,681 + 70,126 and his new total damage would be 595,807 damage delt after +40% MF buff.
WWS calculates dps a little more complex than I care to try and takle so ill just do quick and dirty dps calculations: Total Damage / Time of Fight(in seconds) = DPS
Without MF Buff:
525,681 / 337s = 1559.88 dps
With +40% MF Buff:
595,807 / 337s = 1757.97 dps
Basically a 40% increase to MF's damage will increase your dps by ~13% (Assuming I just did all this quick napkin math right). In reality it should increase your dps by a hair more than the above because as you do more damage the mob dies quicker which means BL and Trinkets inflate your dps more.
However, +40% seems like a bit more than blizzard is going to be willing to give us. Id expect something like +25%.
Basically a 40% increase to MF's damage will increase your dps by ~13% (Assuming I just did all this quick napkin math right). In reality it should increase your dps by a hair more than the above because as you do more damage the mob dies quicker which means BL and Trinkets inflate your dps more.
However, +40% seems like a bit more than blizzard is going to be willing to give us. Id expect something like +25%.
Well, the Insect Swarm Glyph was 30% for removing -2% hit. It's not that far-fetched, since Blizzard knows Mind Flay scales quite poorly. Of course, our scaling problems aren't limited to just Mind Flay, but it's the most glaring sore out of all our known issues.
We'll just have to wait and see, but I have hope for our scaling in Inscription. I don't expect some miracle that will solve all our scaling problems, but I don't think anyone can be blamed for expecting some aid from the new profession.
Could one of the Beta testers see how quickly they run out of mana without using vt? Just looking for anecdotal evidence or something like "with vt up I never have to drink but without using vt I drink every x minutes" or whatever. I'm curious how dependent this "never running out of mana" is on vt considering in arena you can't rely on vt returning you mana from all of your damage like you can in raids. Running out of mana is a huge problem in arenas right now even without having to deal with a priest or hunter. I'd assume dispersion will help with this a lot, but I'm curious how much the other new talents contribute. Being able to have the option of being on a burn team or an outlast team would be really good for SP viability.
Think back to vanilla wow. Shadow priests were pvp monsters. When TBC came around, we lost all pvp viability in exchange for being incredibly good support in pve. Blizzard is trying to return our ability to melt faces without overpowering us in pve.
Talking about "Increadibly good support" (I am from The Venture Co/EU), my former guild (I quit playing about 2 month ago), which is now 4/6 in Sunwell, used to have in raid:
1) 2 SPs + 1 holy at max
2) 3-5 shamies
3) 3+ warlocks
The only exception of "2SP rule" was once in BT on council. But maybe I shoudln't compare SP to warlocks, who, in my raids, outdps-ed both mages and rogues. But I can't help comparing us to locks, WOTLK is about to come and hey, they again got a huge list of changes and new stuff to do (in BC they had a lot of fun kiting mobs and tanking bosses). And not that they've ever stopped being good in PVP.
What I see is: we just don't get much attention, nobody cares. MF is soo old and soo lame, yet second expansion comes and this seems to still be our only spammable spell. The only reason not to give use 100%+ crit modifier (come on, on NOT spammable spells!) I see is, it would be "too good in PVP". So again, as we gear up, we'll start slacking dps wise. So again, purely because of PVP our MF will have so short range.
Well, keep in mind that when you compare "us" to warlocks, you need to account for all specs of priests, not just shadow. Technically we have smite and holy fire, both of which are spammable, crittable spells.
It's called Bloodlust, not Heroism. What kind of pansy name is Heroism, anyway?
<Bad> Dragonmaw US www.damnwesuck.com
12/13 [25] Heroic - Recruiting exceptional players.
Can anyone confirm if pain and suffering doesn't mess our ticks, and how does it work exactly please?
The most cool and sad thing at the same time is that we could prolly go heal or dps with the same gear (but different specs of course) given the changes on spellpower. More bag space yeah but talk about 12 people rolling against you on loots (i understand the final effect will be unchanged as there will be more loot in total and anyways loot with +hit will - i hope - be reserved to dps)
Let's talk about Disc tree for once. Grace indeed tells me that (one) disc priest will be welcome in raids. Which leads me to think... Uh one single spec for both PvP and PvE healing (with 4 points stricly for pvp, mana burn and martyrdom, obviously the disc priest isn't the big healer anyways) ? amazing.
07/29/08, 11:34 AM
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