Mana Management Test, part 2

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

Mana Management Test

In this post I will put down the results of my experimenting with my current spec, trying to validate the choice between using Meditation or Focused Mind as the talent to govern my mana efficiency. For this I will use two World of Logs reports for the same fight (Lich King) to allow for an easy comparison.

Current situation

In my current gear, I have the following unbuffed stats (so without Inner Fire or any other self-buffs, flasks or the like):

2987 Spellpower, 33% crit, 25% haste, 72 MP/5.

To keep the comparison easy, I also do not have any items which have a Haste proc, meaning that my Haste is a constant.

The fight as it is for me

The Lich King fight is the only fight where I can say that mana can be an issue. A mis-timed Shadowfiend, forgetting a Dispersion or similar human mistakes can mean that I end up without mana half-way into the fight. My goal to myself is making sure that at each transition phase I am at about 75% mana – that should allow me to pull through.

A lot of Shadowpriests have both Meditation and Focused Mind, and they will never have any real mana issues. But ever since my mana did not seem to run out, I slowly put less and less points in Focused Mind until I ended up in my current state. This was fine up to now – but with my low Spirit and relatively high Haste, combined with the mana issues on LK, mean I have to re-evaluate my choice.

So there will be two short pieces of math here (and you can repeat those for yourself, in your own gear situation) to help me decide which talent to take, and which one to ditch.

Test 1: Lich King, 29/3/2010
Talent: 3/3 Meditation, 0/3 Focused Mind

The first thing I did was look at my “active time”. This represents how long you’ve been actually doing anything. For me this was 3915,3 seconds (one hour and five minutes). That active time represents 783,06 “MP5 moments”. In other words, you can divide your active time by 5 to determine how many “ticks” of mana regain were in your active time.

I gained the following mana returns from abilities, calculated their MP5 value and the “ranking”:

	Total	MP5	Rank
Mana Leech	223565	286	1
Replenishment	179788	230	2
Dispersion	122093	156	3
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain	49494	63	5
Judgement of Wisdom	23417	30	6
Hymn of Hope	2701	3	8
Revitalize	12122	15	7
Rapture	565	1	9
Meditation	93967	120	4

Mana Leech is my Shadowfiend, by the way. As you can see, Meditation’s a big source of mana, but by no means the biggest. This shows why being smart when using your Shadowfiend is so important. Revitalize isn’t always there (it’s a RNG thing) and sometimes I also have a Mana Tide Totem nearby.

After that I checked how many spells I cast of each kind affected by Focused Mind, how much they would cost in mana without Focused Mind, and how much mana they would cost with 3/3 Focused Mind. Then I multiplied the number of casts I made for each spell with the difference between the two mana costs.

The last step here is then to divide the Mana Saved by the number of “MP5 moments”, in other words my “Active Time” divide by five.

(Number of casts)*(Mana Cost normal – Mana Cost FM) = Mana Saved.
(Mana Saved)/(Active Time/5) = Mana Saved per 5 Seconds

(Click on the picture for a readable version)

In other words, during this particular evening I would have effectively had 224 MP/5 in savings if I would have had 3/3 Focused Mind. When you subtract the 120 MP/5 I gained from Spirit while raid-buffed, it means a net gain of 104 MP/5.

Test 2: Lich King, ??/??/????
Talent: 0/3 Meditation, 3/3 Focused Mind

This test is next up, and will involve doing all of the above again, but this time without Meditation and taking 3/3 Focused Mind. Then I will be able to see if the theoretical gain mentioned above actually works.

<More to come!>

	Total	MP5	Rank
Mana Leech	223565	286	1
Replenishment	179788	230	2
Dispersion	122093	156	3
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain	49494	63	5
Judgement of Wisdom	23417	30	6
Hymn of Hope	2701	3	9
Revitalize	12122	15	7
Mana Tide Totem	0	0
Rapture	565	1	9
Meditation	93967	120	4