When I looked at the Recount data on Mind Blast and Mind Flay, I noticed a pattern in the ratio of damage from each.
For a casting rotation: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay. Then, Mind Flay while MB is on cool-down (5.5 seconds). Mind Flay and Mind Blast seem to do almost the exact same amount of damage, each, which is 25-28%.
I would like to know, does this ratio sound familiar? If so, then are they supposed to do the same amount of damage?
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That's pretty much the ratio I get. But others will probably get different, because a) not everyone's MB is on a 5.5 or even 6 second cooldown, and b) not everyone uses MB every time it is up. But yes, they do do about the same amount of damage and scale about equally, but MF is more mana effective.
That makes Mind Blast seem gimped in comparison. I should leave that out of the rotation sometime, to see if there's a difference.
Potentially, I could do more damage without it, now that Mind Flay can critical hit, and I have Glyph of Shadow.
I think it's time Mind Blast got a make-over.
Potentially, I could do more damage without it, now that Mind Flay can critical hit, and I have Glyph of Shadow.
I think it's time Mind Blast got a make-over.
IIRC, Mindblast back in the vanilla WoW beta was instant-cast with no cooldown.
THAT was amazing.
THAT was amazing.
Haven't run the numbers or tested it myself lately, but MB being cast as soon as it's off CD still seems to be the way to go for highest dps priority setup. Hit a target dummy and nuke until you're oom with the current best priority system. Repeat this twenty times and save the data you get. Then do the same without MB and save that data. It ought to tell you two things: Which is the highest dps priority system, and which is the highest mana efficiency system. From that, you'll also see which spell priority provides the most oomph per mana.
The complications come when you consider Replenishment. It won't show directly on any damage meter, but the replenishment buff on a raidgroup will mean more mana for the healers/damage dealers and thus increase both survivability and damage dealt overall. No matter how it'd affect my personal dps, I'd never drop MB from a priority system until I knew with 100% certainty that the raidgroup had at least 150% of the mana needed to finish a fight (regen included in calculation, and allowing for screwups that chew serious mana for both healers and damage dealers).
The complications come when you consider Replenishment. It won't show directly on any damage meter, but the replenishment buff on a raidgroup will mean more mana for the healers/damage dealers and thus increase both survivability and damage dealt overall. No matter how it'd affect my personal dps, I'd never drop MB from a priority system until I knew with 100% certainty that the raidgroup had at least 150% of the mana needed to finish a fight (regen included in calculation, and allowing for screwups that chew serious mana for both healers and damage dealers).
Quote:
Haven't run the numbers or tested it myself lately, but MB being cast as soon as it's off CD still seems to be the way to go for highest dps priority setup. Hit a target dummy and nuke until you're oom with the current best priority system.
What I will do, is test both spells individually, then test them together. What I can NOT do, is use everything except MB at once, because the DOT keep ticking when I back away from the dummy, and that yields a lower DPS than what I should be doing, and also messes-up Recount's data.
I already know my current rotation is the highest DPS, but I have not done it that way yet, just to see if I can get away without Mind Blast.
If they give us a better coefficient on MB than 49%, I am sure it will not look so gimped. I wouldnt suggest that its base damage do more just yet, but we definitely could use a look at how it benefits from spell power so that it does more damage than MF.
Edited, Feb 28th 2009 5:58pm by sederix
That would lead to skewed numbers. Just pause data collection in Recount when you run OoM and you'll be fine. The reason you should be nuking with everything is because Shadowpriest dps is a complex matter that goes beyond rotation. You'll find that crits, stacking buff/debuffs, replenishment and so on will matter during a test cycle.
Just doing MF or MB won't provide any real conclusive results.
Just doing MF or MB won't provide any real conclusive results.
on sheer dps mind blast still beats mind flay, check shadowpriest.com theorycrafting section for more details
And since Shadowpriest.com theorycrafters are on the same level of skill as EJ, believe it.
This seems somewhat obvious to me, but... a rotation with mind blast in it would do higher dps than one where you are mind flaying where you would have been mind blasting, because mind blast does roughly the same damage with a shorter cast time. Or so it seems at first glance.
Purely anecdotal, but (over time) Mind Blast and Mind Flay tend to be the same percentage of my total damage. About 28% each, over the course of several heroic runs last night. What that doesn't tell you is that I had to cast over twice as many Mind Flays to get the same amount of damage (257 to 97, so almost 2.5x). This was with multiple 3k MF crit ticks and about 1/3 of the MB's critting for 5.5k+ for each crit.
On a different note ... the Portal Guardians in H VH don't tend to like you very much if you open (after putting a VT/CT/SW:P up) with a 6.5k MB crit and a 5.8k SW:D crit back to back. I couldn't hit my Fade fast enough. :D
On a different note ... the Portal Guardians in H VH don't tend to like you very much if you open (after putting a VT/CT/SW:P up) with a 6.5k MB crit and a 5.8k SW:D crit back to back. I couldn't hit my Fade fast enough. :D
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