Alright, so I finally got around to testing my build with 3/3 Focused Mind instead of 3/3 Meditation on a similar fight (another night with the Lich King). Previously this week I had already done other raids, including a bit of ToC25 and an impromptu Sunwell raid (which, being a slash-and-burn at our level was a good test at powerpulling with this build).
Current situation
I have not changed gear compared to that which I used in the previous post. I only switched 3 points around in my talent build.
The fight as it is for me
We’re making progress, that’s for sure. It took me some time to get properly used to the build, as could be expected. Without steady regen from Meditation, you have to surpress the urge to panic as your mana goes down, down, down but not up. Clever use of Shadowfiend and Dispersion becomes a must, as these are the forms of mana regeneration you can properly control.
Test 2: Lich King, 5/4/2010
Talent: 0/3 Meditation, 3/3 Focused Mind
Once again, I checked for myself the mana regeneration I had received according to the World of Logs report: \
Total | MP5 | Rank | |
Mana Leech | 313611 | 369 | 1 |
Replenishment | 195623 | 230 | 2 |
Dispersion | 140583 | 165 | 3 |
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain | 52770 | 62 | 4 |
Judgement of Wisdom | 25103 | 30 | 5 |
Hymn of Hope | 9191 | 11 | 8 |
Revitalize | 11582 | 14 | 7 |
Rapture | 16953 | 20 | 6 |
Meditation | 0 | 0 | 0 |
During the Lich King fights (and the Val’kyr cleaning) I had cast 58 Mind Sears, 161 Mind Blasts and 1250 Mind Flays. All in all, the savings I had on these spells during the evening was 149 MP/5. It was substantially lower due to a lesser amount of Mind Sears I had cast. In my opinion this was due to me focusing on the fight so much that I did not occasionally used Mind Sear to put some damage on the Drudge Ghouls (as I had done last time).
What was interesting to see is that if I total all mana gained throughout my active time, from this report and the last, the amounts are almost identical. Sure there are fluctuations based on chance, but on the whole I gained remarkably similar amounts of mana during my “active time”.
Conclusion
Once I had gotten used to the new talents, and the fact that I was not getting extra mana from Meditation, it was actually not much different from normal. This is explained by the results of this test, which show that the mana I gained from discounts on Mind Blast, Mind Sear and Mind Flay was about equal to the mana gained from Meditation. Had I used more Mind Sears (such as during Trash fights) I would have gained greater benefit.
The basic conclusion is that at my level of gear (4-piece T10, 25% haste and about 400 Spirit raid-buffed, amounting to 140 MP/5) it is equivalent to take 3/3 Meditation or 3/3 Focused Mind. It also “feels” about the same, it’s as if it makes little difference. You just have to adapt your playstyle to it.
I will continue testing, and will post more results from a longer period of time and from more varied fights, to narrow down the results. This way it might be possible to define exactly at what level of (low) Spirit and (high) Haste the Focused Mind talent overtakes Meditation.
Edit: link to Hots&Dots added, as promised! ^_^
Total | MP5 | Rank | |
Mana Leech | 313611 | 369 | 1 |
Replenishment | 195623 | 230 | 2 |
Dispersion | 140583 | 165 | 3 |
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain | 52770 | 62 | 4 |
Judgement of Wisdom | 25103 | 30 | 5 |
Hymn of Hope | 9191 | 11 | 8 |
Revitalize | 11582 | 14 | 7 |
Rapture | 16953 | 20 | 6 |
Meditation | 0 | 0 | 0 |