A Preliminary Discussion of Shadow Priest Talents in WotLK - Page 68

Mokhtar · 11/11/08, 1:39 PM

ShadowGreenLight is available from WoWInterface / Wowace / Curse :
- Scan raid for talent information
- At beginning of fight, compute maximum theoretical upgrade available in raid according to talents
- During fight scan target debuffs and player buffs to update a small display from red (do not cast SW:P) to green (all upgrade buffs / debuffs are on)
- Move the display with right button (yes I know it's ugly, my lua-fu is not where it should be)

Suggestions welcome (other than : it's ugly :p)

• Snowy · 11/11/08, 1:52 PM

We tend to get back to Dispersion every few pages. One of the things about the talent is it tries to cater to both PvP and PvE. PvE I'd argue it's perfectly fine, 51 pointers don't have to be class defining. We pretty much *have* to put at least 50 points into shadow, so the debate should be is Dispersion worth it over 1 point somewhere else? The answer to that is definitely a yes.

As Mako pointed out, you'll almost always benefit 100% from the mana regen even if you blow it for the 90% damage reduction, so that's good. I've yet to met the person who always plays perfectly, so it can save your ass in a lot of situations, whether it's by your fault or by someone else.

For PvP I'll continue to argue that it needs the 6% health per second restored to it -- and the only reason they took that off was to add the funky damage increasing component to it, which is gone now.

Basnub · 11/11/08, 6:01 PM

Originally Posted by Ptoleman

Presumably Dispersion locks you out of about 50% of your DPS if you look at the *very* general breakdown of Shadow Priest DPS. It's roughly 30% MF and 20% MB, with the rest being DoTs.

I disagree - you aren't actually locked out of mind blast if you use dispersion while mind blast is on cooldown.

If you're using dispersion for the mana, the ideal time to use it on a fight like brutallus with generally no movement is directly after a mind blast and while your dots have at least ~7.5 seconds on their timers, ~9 for VT. Since the talent becomes available for maximum mana return at below 64% mana, there will be plenty of good opportunities to use it and only delay a mind blast 0.5s and lose 5 ticks of mind flay, not accounting for haste.

Using this WWS parse of Rage, mind flay was 1,090 out of 3206 total dps over the duration of the fight, so if I had the perfect dispersion (using it directly after a mind blast below 60% mana at the same time you have to move out of a death and decay and all dots have plenty of time left), I'm still doing 2116 dps (~66%, not accounting for the 0.5 delay on blast) while gaining 4300 mana.

So, as far as continuing damage is concerned- dispersion is far superior to evocation, although, on a 12k mana pool evocation will return 7200 mana (900 per second) in 8 seconds whereas dispersion returns only 4300 on the same pool (716 per second) in 6.

However, we can't choose between dispersion and evocation, and I really like the damage reduction with the ability to move / use trinkets & items, so I personally hope we keep dispersion

Gondlem · 11/11/08, 7:55 PM

In all the comparisons between Boomkins and Spriests, keep in mind that Balance got a bit of a nerf in 3.0.3 and we got buffed. It's not been my experience since that patch that Boomkins do "far higher" DPS at 70. We're around the 3k range now in Sunwell gear on a friendly fight, give or take a few hundred either way, and that's about where Balance is too. They do have a little more utility IMO, given that E&M is almost a requirement now since warlocks need their curse for DPS, but I don't think it's a major problem.