Mana regen has been continuous rather than ticking every 2 seconds or 5 seconds since 3.0

I know its been asked a couple times, but I'm not sure the math is right.


At what amount of int is 2% int more effective mana than the 600 mana proc on IED over a 5 minute fight in which you would get 1 shadow fiend, 1 mana tide, and at least 1 hymn of hope? I was crunching the numbers last night, and the amount of int needed doesn't seem that out of reach. My math came out around 2800, but I was half asleep doing it. The number I saw in another thread said 5150, but it looked like it wasn't taking everything into account. Regardless of if the amount needed is attainable, I'm curious as to how much it would take.

I would think about the problem like this. 600 mana every 45 seconds is 67 mp5. How how much int is one point of mp5 worth? It depends on whether you are holy or discipline, but I believe it's on the order of 1 mp5 = 2 int (which says the two stats are roughly equal from a gemming perspective). So 2% int is better than 2% intellect is 2*67, or 133 int. This works out to a buffed intellect of 6666. Not remotely obtainable. Even if you think mp5 is terrible for priests and say that 1 mp5 = 1 int, then 2% int isn't better until you have 3333 intellect buffed. If you are considering any other metagem, consider [Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond] if you don't have mana problems.

Well yes of course, but I wasn't sure if replenishment applied to each mana tick and is averaged out or was applied discretely. I assumed an average in my math.

RootBreaker gave you the right answer for Wow. Now, I'd like to complement it from the mathematical point of view.

If you're interested in the mean gain, you anyhow don't care. You can consider the fluid regen approximation, it leads to the same expectation...
Some Greatness procs will happens "just before" a tick, and will lead to a greater resplenishment gain than expected, some will happen just after a tick and will give a lower gain, but in the average, that will be equivalent to 3 ticks.
This would be quite true on any singular fact, because Greatness has about enough procs during the fight to come to the expectation. This will be definitely true for the "mean fight", where you take the mean gain for different fights.

Now, a final word : Greatness card have a 15s proc. A "5s" tick (which is not the case for mana regen, but for the sake of information) will almost surely lead to 3 ticks during the procs. It's just easy to compute. Let's call t=0 the starting time of the proc, and t0 the first tick after the t=0.
We then have 0 <= t0 < 5s, by definition. This means that t0, t0+5 and t0+10 are all within the 0s - 15s time interval, and are valid ticks. Now, t0-5 can't be greater or equal than 0, and the only possibility to have t0+15 not strictly greater than 15 is to have t0 = 0. So we get a least 3 ticks in every situation, and we get four with a vanishing probability (at least, in continuous time, and when lag is not considered).

Quick question: do lightwell ticks crit at all?

Hi!

Can someone tell me if [Tears of the Vanquished] is better than one of these [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] [Soul of the Dead] ?

I have Dragon Soul and Soul of the Dead but don't know if the new trinket is better than one of them.

OK this is my first post having finally leveled a priest to 80 and the thought just occured to me, does Power Word: Shield inhibit rage production for warriors?
If so, should I be using PoM more for tanks or even at all and just keep PWS on the DPS?

PW:S used to prevent a warrior from gaining rage, but it no longer does, so it is perfectly acceptable to shield them.
As a disc priest I generally always keep my tank shielded, and bounce my POM's off of him.

These two spells are very different mechanics though. One does not replace nor fill the niche of the other.

Ironically, a Paladin tank (especially in a 5 man) might be more annoyed. I have very good gear, so take this with a grain of salt. But yesterday Paladin tank only took a mere 3k damage total from the final boss in Heroic VH, largely because of pre-emptive Divine Aegis and Power Word: Shield.

I wouldn't say the two spells are "very different". Certainly they are different, but in the role being described they're more similar than different. They're both functioning as pre-emptive "heals." That said, there is no reason to keep PWS on DPS without reason. -- I am assuming you're talking about 5-mans, becuase in 25-mans youre tanks are normally going to be hit so hard rage generation doesn't matter (caster bosses are the exception).

Crit Vs Haste

I had always built my Shadow priest leaning more towards haste than crit...this was what RAWR was telling me to do and I relied heavily on this tool to evaluate upgrades.

Recently I discovered that crit is valued more than haste, and I should not really use RAWR for shadow priests.

I have 18.28% crit and 13.14% haste unbuffed...my guild is halfway through ulduar.

Should I start stacking crit over haste now as much as possible? Is there an optimal crit chance I should be shooting for?

(example you should stack crit until X% and then go for haste)

Thanks.

I just ran two 100-tick tests of Shadow Word:Pain on the training dummies, one without Inner Focus, and one with. Based on the character sheet plus talents, I should crit 24.42% with SW:P. Without Inner Focus, I crit 24/100, and with it I crit 23/100. From this, I conclude that either: IF does not mod SW:P's crit, or refreshing SW:P via Pain and Suffering terminates the effect, either way, SW:P is not the obvious best target for IF.

My question is, for a shadow priest on a single-target fight, what would be the best "target" for Inner Focus? (assuming pre-ToC raid gear)

Does anyone know if, after 3.2, there is a point where [Ember Skyflare Diamond] is better than [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] regen wise. I'm almost at 31k mana with over 1800 int raidbuffed.

The regen from [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] comes out to over 60 MP5.

Accounting only for regen from Replenishment, you would need around 20k Int for that to equal out.
Adding in spirit based regen (assuming 50% while casting and 1.2k Spirit) you would still need 19990 Int for the [Ember Skyflare Diamond] to equal out.

[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] is always better for regen in the current expansion.

Most spriests I know who spec Inner Focus use it almost exclusively for Divine Hymn. If you're trying to maximize it's effectiveness as a DPS talent, Mind Sear would be the best candidate assuming it's a time you'd be casing Mind Sear anyway. After that, there's probably no significant DPS difference between using it on Mind Blast or Mind Flay. If you're just trying to save mana and don't care about the crit portion, Devouring Plague is your most expensive spell, and therefore the most obvious target. Taking both into account, Mind Blast is both somewhat expensive and benefits from crit chance.

Does Twin Disciplines affect the instant-cast Flash Heals procc'ed from Surge of Light, or is the benefit restricted to base (re:instant) cast time?

In my experience, you want just enough Haste so that either: two Mind Flays = your Mind Blast cooldown, or two Mind Flays + 1 Global Cooldown (for an instant cast, or Vampiric Touch) = your Mind Blast cooldown. Anything more than the second option tends to mean that you're using poorly-itemized gear to stack Haste so much, anything less than the first means you're having to clip Mind Flays or delay your Mind Blasts.

Regarding Mind Blast, IF and Spirit Tap:

Any Shadow Priest with 2/2 Veiled Shadows and Dispersion should have no problem with mana. Dispersion's cooldown has recently been reduced to 2 minutes, and is a minimal DPS loss due to the ability to use it during forced downtime (Jormungar switches in Northrend Beasts encounter, for example,) and Shadowfiend is a DPS gain. If you use both properly, mana will be tight, but never gone. Note that Dispersion and Shadowfiend scale their restoration to maximum mana, thus high Intellect will increase these effects.

Personally, I dropped dispersion about a month ago, and the first time I missed it was 30 minutes ago, in the arena fight, but even then it was more for the reduce dmg than the mana regen.

With IF I tend to have more than enough mana to keep up for long fights.

Lets take a step back and analyze the situation. You have 57 points in shadow, including 3/3 Focused Mind, and no dispersion. You have Inner focus. The best case situation for Inner Focus (on Devouring Plague) will save on the order of 900 mana per use. That's 1800 for most fights. Just two seconds of Dispersion will give you 2000 mana back. Are you saying you can't ever find 2 seconds of downtime in any fight? I assure you that Dispersion is a required talent should you try most of the Ulduar 25 hard modes (without using post Ulduar gear, at least). In particular, Yogg Saron with 1 keeper is brutal on your mana bar. I just don't see this as a realistic raiding spec for anything but easy modes.

Well maybe, but it is more than enough for regular modes and 10m hard modes.

I'm not saying it's optimal, but I am saying that for me, it is completely useless. And when I mean completely, I mean that I just do not miss it, there is not a single time so far where I said to myself "damn, I wish I had dispersion right now, I'm OOM".

And I don't use it on DP, I use it with MB which slightly increases my dps but also procs spirit tap.

With Mind Blast, you get 25% extra crit on one Mind Blast every 3 minutes. That works out to 1 additional crit every 12 minutes. If your mind blast hits for 5k without a crit, that talent gives you average 5000 / 720 DPS = 6.94 DPS.

You also get an additional 8 seconds of improved spirit tap time every 12 minutes. Improved Spirit Tap gives you 10% extra spirit which turns an additional 2% of your original spirit into spell power. With 700 spirit, you've gained 14 spell power for a total of about 7 extra DPS during the duration of the buff. The buff's uptime will be 8 / 720 = 1.1% for a gain of 0.77 DPS. After including the DPS from 25% crit, you've gained a whopping 7.02 DPS. Assuming you even have 5/5 Spirit Tap.

This is not a compelling argument to drop dispersion. You could just as well not spend that last talent point and you wouldn't notice it's missing. That doesn't mean doing so is optimal.

Well, what do you want me to say?

I do not need dispersion, I never used it when I had it. Should I just put a point into it just because my other option is barely 7.02 dps?

Why would I put a point into something I don't use, just because the argument against IF is that it is just a very minor dps increase. I see you did not bother checking the slight mana regen the proc will give, or the mana saved each 3 minutes, since the first argument for dispersion was the mana regen, but w/e.

I'd rather have 7 more dps and a little bit of mana regen than a talent I just never, ever use. If you wanna take it, go ahead, but please don't argue about it with those that absolutely make no use of it.