Spell Focus: Mind Flay

Our filler spell for a long time, Mind Flay is one of the clunkiest spells in terms of game mechanics ever invented. It is a shame that it has such utility for us (keeping Shadow Word: Pain on the target) that it cannot really be done without. So what makes this spell nice to have, and what makes it an ass to use?

The Spell

Mind Flay is a channeled spell without cooldown, which ticks once every second. It has a comparitively short range, but has the added benefit of reducing the movement speed of the target by 50%. Of course, being channeled, this also means you cannot move while maintaining this spell and its speed debuff.

• 57,2% coefficient, meaning that 100 spellpower will increase the damage dealt by this spell by 57,2
• 3-second channel, no cooldown
• Procs Shadoweaving with each tick

Talents

Several talents give a bonus to the use of Mind Flay, most prominently:

• Mind Flay (Requires 10 points in Shadow): Gives you the use of Mind Flay, nuff said
• Shadow Reach (Requires 15 points in Shadow): Increases the range of Mind FLay by 10% per point (max 20%)
• Focused Mind (Requires 20 points in Shadow): Decreases the mana cost for Mind Flay by 5% per point (max 15%)
• Mind Melt (Requires 25 points in Shadow): Increases the critical strike chance of Mind Flay by 2% per point (max 4%)
• Shadow Power (Requires 30 points in Shadow): Increases the critical strike damage bonus on Mind Flay by 20% per point (max 100%) – this means that Mind Flay deals double damage on a crit instead of +50%
• Misery (Requires 35 points in Shadow): Casting Mind Flay on the target gives a +1% chance per point for spells to hit it (max 3%) and increases the benefit of spellpower on Mind Flay by 5% per point (max 15%) – this means that the coefficient of Mind Flay is effectively raised to 72%
• Pain and Suffering (Requires 40 points in Shadow): Casting Mind Flay has a 33%/66%/100% chance to refresh the duration of Shadow Word: Pain
• Twisted Faith (Requires 45 points in Shadow): The damage from Mind Flay is increased by 2% per level (max 10%) if the target has Shadow Word: Pain on it

General Use

DoTs on the target? Mind Blast on Cooldown? Flay away. With sufficient amounts of Haste (around 400 or so I believe, will check for the maths later) you will be able to squeeze 2 Mind Flays in between a Mind Blast cooldown, which makes for a very smooth DPS cycle.

Pay attention that the 3 ticks of Mind Flay seem to be inevenly distributed; a previous bug with the spell was that the 2nd tick was almost at the end, and the 3rd tick after the spell had ended channeling. It still seems today that the ticks are not evenly at every second (or part thereof, due to Haste), which is why “clipping Mind Flays” (only allowing MF to tick once or twice to even out our spell casting) is a tough art to master.

Note that when using Mind Flay to refresh Shadow Word: Pain, that this will have to be done before SW:P has reached its last second or so of duration; often the Mind Flay will hit, but no longer refresh SW:P. This results in a loss of DPS because you have to recast it, and it starts ticking after 3 seconds from then. This may or may not be related to the bug where the ticks of MF are not evenly distributed.

Also, when MF refreshes SW:P, non-numerical (so %-based) improvements to SW:P will remain active for as long as you can keep it up. As an example:

• SW:P is on the target, with 1000 spellpower, a +3% crit bonus and a special +50% damage bonus due to the encounter (Like Vezax’ black spots)
• Before SW:P is refreshed, your spellpower increases to 1200
• SW:P increases in power because of the 200 extra spellpower at the next tick
• When you refresh SW:P, the 3% crit bonus and the +50% damage bonus are retained
• You lose the 200 spellpower, and the next tick this causes SW:P to deal less damage
• The 3% crit and the 50% damage bonuses are still there
• You let SW:P drop off, and recast it on the target
• The 3% crit and 50% damage bonuses are gone, because you no longer have them active

Because of this, it is possible to gain a huge damage bonus on SW:P (Hodir’s buffs, Vezax Black Spots, Twin Valkyr’s buff) as long as you keep SW:P refreshed through Mind Flay. This does not work on flat numerical increases (such as +200 crit rating or +200 spellpower), only on percentage-based buffs.

Caveat: This also goes for debuffs that reduce your damage done by 50% or your crit by 20% and the like…

The favored glyph for Shades, Glyph of Mind Flay, increases the range of Mind Flay by 10 yards, placing it on par with other spellcasters’ nukes. Previously it reduced the snare component of Mind Flay, but no longer.

Unmitigatable Mitigation – the silent DPS killer

You may have noticed at times that some caster DPS will be jumping up and down the charts at times; sometimes they have high DPS but lower damage done, sometimes reversed, sometimes they will see their DPS vary by as much as 500 under pretty much identical circumstances. Many times this is bad luck (no crits), brainfarts (wrong buttons, clipping DoTs) or moving a lot in a fight. Partial Resistance pops up, and while it’s effects are seemingly low, over the course of long fights this adds up to quite an impressive number.

Disclaimer

This is not an excuse for low DPS, consider it more like a short explanation of this mitigation, and why you always seem to lose some DPS under identical conditions. It also helps to explain a bit why we have to consider this now instead of before, and why it affects some people more than others. It is also a bit of a personal soap box, trying to figure out if others have similar experiences.

Prologue

Before, we did not see this in our spells, but more often when checking your WWS parses or World of Log entries for your damage done you’ll find a sneaky little number called “resisted” pop up. This number can vary between 2% and 8%, and is the amount of damage that has been mitigated on the boss.

What is mitigation/Partial Resist?

Bosses have three defenses against the spells we cast on them. These defenses are in place to make sure that only on-par casters will be able to attack them properly, and to reduce some damage done to them while still allowing our full damage to count in PvP. In other words, they are anti-lowbie defenses and ensure that our PvE damage is not nerfed due to our PvP damage potential.

• Miss: Any spell cast on a boss-level mob has a base 17% chance to miss when cast by a level 80 character. This is because the boss is 3 levels higher than us, and this defense scales greatly with level. Misses can be completely negated by having any combination of talents, hit from gear and having a Draenei around equalling or exceeding this 17% number.
• Magic Resistance: Some bosses have an innate resistance to certain schools of spells, the equivalent of a raid member having an Aura of Fire Protection or a Prayer of Shadow Protection, for instance. This reduces the damage of that school partially, and could be (theoretically) negated by stacking Spell Penetration. In practice, this is not done and it is also too rare to find bosses of this nature to bother with it.
• Partial Resist: Another level-based resistance on bosses, this reduces all spell damage done to the boss by a certain percentage. An explanation is given here, in this Elitist Jerks thread – it is dated, but gives a good basic idea. Another example is this thread, which is what explains differences in WWS logs.

How much is mitigated

Every spell thus has a 6% chance of having is base damage reduced by some amount; this is always a multiple of 25%. Consulting the table on this Wowwiki page, we can deduce that damage is either mitigated by 25% or 50%. Which of the two you get seems a random chance again, part of the debate on whether the system makes 1 or 2 calculations every time you casta  spell at a target, but that is deep theorycrafting stuff.

What does this all mean?

It means that nominally about 2-4% of your spell damage is mitigated because of the innate spell resistance of boss-level mobs. This cannot be mitigated in any way, it’s always there, 2% per level the boss is higher than you. But for some classes it seems to be different than for others; when browsing through logs I found that often Mages were closer to 2%-2.5%, Moonkins at 3.5%-4%, and us Shadowpriests were most often at 4% or higher. One unlucky Shaman actually almost reached 5% total damage mitigated.

I first thought it was dependent on Crit%, because as stated in the last thread I linked, the resisted amount is calculated of your base damage, multiplied if you have a crit, but without taking any debuffs on the boss or flat damage bonuses on you into account.

An example:

You deal 1000 damage; 25% of this is resisted = 750 damage done
You deal 1000 damage; 50% of this is resisted = 500 damage done
You crit for 2000 damage; 12.5% of this (25% base damage) is rested = 1750 damage done
You crit for 2000 damage; 25% of this (50% base damage) is rested = 1500 damage done

The same number with a flat 10% damage boost on you would be:

You deal 1000 damage; 25% of this is resisted = 750 damage done +10% = 825 damage done
You deal 1000 damage; 50% of this is resisted = 500 damage done +10% = 550 damage done
You crit for 2000 damage; 12.5% of this (25% base damage) is resisted = 1750 damage done +10% = 1900 damage done
You crit for 2000 damage; 25% of this (50% base damage) is resisted = 1000 damage done +10% = 1100 damage done

In other words, this seems to reveal the following basic patterns:

• Resistance is measured against base damage
• Resisted amount can be 0%, 25%, 50%, randomly determined
• Crits are reduced less than base hits
• Flat damage modifiers seem not to be mitigated

Conclusion

The reason we never saw this before, is because we never relied on Crit before; we simply did our damage, took the mitigated amount for granted and moved on. With our increase in Crits, our DPS also became more subject to randomness – not just from the Crit itself, but also whether we’d have a 25% or 50% mitigation hit 6% of the time. This effect is very strong in Mages, whose generally obscene Crit% helps to alleviate a lot of the partial resists on bosses. It can also help you to figure out whether some of the damage lost is perhaps due to this greater reliance on random chance.

This means for me, that I will focus more on Crit than before – Haste increases the number of chances for a critical hit in any timespan, but does not have any effect on the partial resists. Crit gives you a higher chance to crit, but indirectly also lowers the amount of damage you lose to partial resists. It also reveals the importance of this like Curse of Elements or Ebon Plague, which give a flat damage% modifier, which is not mitigated.

Because of its enormous reliance on chance, normal divisions and levels of deviation, the maths have to be horrendous (and I am not too good at those) – it could be I am barking at the moon with this, but then future WoL or WWS parses might reveal a pattern.

You crit for 2000 damage; 12.5% of this (25% base damage) is rested = 1750 damage done

Spell Focus: Vampiric Embrace

Vampiric Embrace in its current form is a slight trickle-heal for party members based on your damage done. While this premise is awesome, and it is quite handy, recent nerfs to its usefulness have made this spell a bit of a gimmick instead of a raid utility tool; and who could blame Blizzard? After all, at the higher levels of gear we would be healing as much as another healing priest!

The Spell

One of the spells best use to open up on a boss with while positioning, this spell does nothing for our DPS but can actually keep us alive pretty well. When our raid was testing our raid DPS on a boss dummy, VE allowed me to use a full Shadow Word: Death rotiation without dying. That’s class!

• 15% of the shadow damage done by you is converted into healing for you
• 3% of the shadow damage done by you is converted into healing for your group members
• Does not proc Shadow Weaving
• No cooldown, 5 minute duration

Talents

Vampiric Embrace itself is a talent, and only its improved version affects it meaningfully.

• Shadow Focus (requires 5 points in Shadow): Increases your chance to hit with Shadow spells by 1% per point (max +3%).
• Vampiric Embrace (requires 20 points in Shadow): Allows you to use VE as a spell.
• Shadow Reach (requires 15 points in Shadow): Increases the range of your offensive Shadow spells by 10% per point. (Max 20%)
• Improved Vampiric Embrace (requires 20 points in Shadow): Increases the healing gained from VE by 33%/66%.
• Mental Agility (requires 15 points in Discipline): Reduces the mana cost of your instant-cast spells by 2% per point. (Max 10%).

As an explanation, sometimes it is misread: This means that 15% for you and 3% for party is turned into 25% for you and 5% for your party. Some people are very happy when they think they can start healing themselves for 81% of their damage done, but the tooltip is simply a bit awkwardly written.

General Use

On Hard Modes in Ulduar and Colliseum, you will find that every little bit of healing helps. There’s a lot of AoE and raid-damage effects, and you still want to cover up for your occasional abuse of SW:D. It could lift a bit of load from your healers to put you in the tank group and have your tanks’ health filling up, but it’s not much.

This is one of my two gripes with how the spell is organized. First off, it’s such a small heal it’s normally not even taken into account. At about 5000 DPS, you will heal yourself for 1250 HP/s (which is awesome) and your party members for 250 HP/s. This means a combine 1000 HP/s for four additional group members total. This seems great, and adds truckloads to our survivability, but tanks laugh at such small numbers.

The second is that it is only within a party. Had it been raid-wide (as was once put forward as a possibility but never implemented), we heal that 250 HP/s across the raid, which helps a lot more in raid healing. This would give us a total of 6000 HP/s across the raid, which seems a lot, but it is divided among 24 people.

I personally would have preferred this spell to be either:

• A buff you place on a target; it will be healed for 25% of your Shadow damage, and you receive this healing as well.
• A debuff placed on the boss; it will heal the entire raid for 5% of your damage done.

Either way would give us more utility and make this ability less negligible.

But, fair’s fair, this is still an awesome self-healing spell for Shadowpriests; else we’d be popping out of Shadowform to heal constantly.

Tips and Tricks

When running in after the tank, make sure you cast this spell on the boss while moving to position; it causes no threat on its own, lasts 5 minutes, and saves a global cooldown later you can use for refreshing a dot. DPS saved and utility preserved.

When multi-dotting adds, put this spell on each add along with VT and SW:P. This together will get you a lot more healing than just the boss. And, considering an add’s lifespan, you only need it once. Good examples are Snobolds on Gormok the Impaler.

Hey! We get a buff!

The newest changes planned for patch 3.2 (and on the PTR) have been announced. I scanned them listlessly, until my eyes hit a buff planned for us little Shades. No! Could this be the bandaid to help us live in raids until Cataclysm? Judge for yourself, it might just make me reconsider the use of (Improved) Spirit Tap…

• Twisted Faith now increases your spell power by 4/6/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
• Improved Spirit Tap effect changed to : Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes have a 100% chance and your Mind Flay critical strikes have a 50% chance to increase your total Spirit by 10%. Mana regeneration effect remains unchanged.

It seems to resound a bit with the post placed on the Blizzard forum here, where Shadowpriest PvE concerns are laid out in a logical manner. Especially the part where other caster classes gain a greater benefit from Spirit than we do (We used to gain 30% from Spirit as Spellpower in the Wrath beta, but this was nerfed to 10%).

Only a short update post today, as work is killingly busy. I’m planning to complete my Spell Focus series soon!

The emperor’s new nuke

So Ghostcrawler promised us a pony last time, and this time he let slip that Shadowpriests would be getting a new nuke in Cataclysm. Everybody was really excited of course (as people are at Blizzcon any way) but regardless of all speculation, no one knows what this nuke’s going to be, and what it will mean for us. In fact, this could simply be yet another PvP equalizer. Let’s look at some facts.

What we already have

We already have quite an arsenal, and we also use quite a bit of it. Mind Blast is our cast-time, on cooldown nuke. Shadow Word: Death is our instant cast, on cooldown nuke (with backlash). Mind Flay is channeled, but has no particular cooldown.

The very definition we use of a nuke is a “good old standby”; it has no cooldown, is always available and does our “basic DPS”. It would be our equivalent of melee’s autoattacking. This means that this nuke will not be an instant cast, no cooldown spell that we could only cast on a certain condition (like: Instant cast, deals X damage, following within 10 seconds of a Shadow Word: Pain crit).

Our main nuke would have to be:

• Shadow damage (obviously)
• Have no cooldown (else it wouldn’t be a nuke)
• Non-conditional
• Could be instant cast or with a cast-time

What nukes do others have?

Mages generally have Frostfire Bolt as their main nuke these days, else fireball and frostbolt seem to be their standbys (mages have lots of nukes). Warlocks have Shadowbolt, Shamans have Lightning Bolt and Druids have Wrath and Starfire. None of these have a cooldown, and generally average cast times (1.5-2 seconds, with Starfire topping the list with 3.5 seconds).

This being as it is, and our own spells generally being instant cast (except for VT and Mind Blast), we can probably expect our new nuke to behave like Starfire, with a longer cast-time but generally good damage per mana.

Conclusion

The inclusion of a new nuke could have great ramifications for our playstyle. I estimate it will be a no-cooldown, long-casttime shadow spell, with potentially some changes in our talent trees to accomodate this spell and make it more beneficial than Mind Flay. Should this be true, I can see Mind Flay being used once every 10 seconds or so to keep Shadow Word: Pain up, and this nuke filling up the rest of our time where we normally would have cast Mind Flay.

I would not welcome a further increase in the difficulty of our rotations; we are at the same level as an Affliction Warlock or kitty Druid as it is, and this might mean less people playing the class (well) and a decrease in the faith people have in Shadowpriests in general. That said, if this spell does awesome DPS, I won’t be complaining.