1. #1
    Fluffy Kitten Yvaelle's Avatar
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    [Shadow] Spine DoTs vs Spiking Tendons

    Ok so this topic is specifically about a strange situation we got into this week, and I want your guys opinion on this. This topic is Not about whether spiking during Fiend+Archangel is better than dots, it is better - not up for debate.

    My group gets the first tendon on each plate down to about 25-35% right now without bloodlust - but with 2 minute cooldowns.

    I'm in a weird position though, often times we're entering tendon phases before we have all our cooldowns back, I'll often get AA back in time, but I can't get Fiend back in 90 seconds (I mean, I could reduce my mastery at this point to increase my crit, but that just sounds so counter-intuitive). Without Shadowfiend (but with AA) and with the 21-22 mastery I have an MS rotation only does about 40% of the DPS it does compared to AA+Fiend MS rotation (less actually, because Fiend is about 5k dps itself even without raid buffs).

    Two questions:

    1) I'm pretty sure that if I don't have Fiend up in time for a tendon, I should dot it - but has anyone done more research on this before I begin tonight?

    2) We are pretty sure we can get through a tendon in a single burn phase if we bloodlust and potion, but I'm not sure here whether to dot or spike - if I GCD cap dots will scale better with lust, and I may or may not have fiend during this too (we would be doing this on the third tendon to eliminate the hardest part of the fight).

    3) Edit: third question actually, think SW: P is worth the GCD over such a short burn? my guess is it is, but maybe just barely.
    Last edited by Yvaelle; 2012-03-02 at 06:44 PM.
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  2. #2
    Have you tried only using SW:P + MF between Tendon phases to get your Fiend back up?

  3. #3
    Your haste seem's fairley low, to even use a ms/mb rotation on tendons. Dont get me wrong im sure u do very good dps with dot's up etc. But when it comes down to a ms/mb rotation + aa/fiend you're not fully extending the potential on it. But i would recommand the MS on the tendon's more burst on tendon's over a GCD + DoT's

    ---------- Post added 2012-03-02 at 02:42 PM ----------

    Also you should have your fiend up for all plate's, Throw some flay's around on downtime between building corruptions on alamag.

  4. #4
    As DeniedNZ said, you should have your friend up for every plate...are you stopping refreshing dots and just spamming MF (which refreshes SW:P) if necessary? I have to do that as Demonology sometimes to make sure my Meta comes back.
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  5. #5
    For me I just spam MF and literally nothing else. It's basically a race. Fiend CD vs Amalg health.

  6. #6
    Fluffy Kitten Yvaelle's Avatar
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    If we were killing amalgamations in 2 minutes (or hell, even 100 seconds), getting sfiend back even a regular dot rotation would happen every time - my issue is that my group burns through amalgamations in sometimes under 90 seconds -which means I don't even get AA back 100% of the time, fiend is longer still for everybody unless you stack crit to the exclusion of haste and mastery.

    My haste is low because mastery > haste for AA+Sfiend on spine burst, I'm reforged completely out of haste to maximize mastery at the moment, and my tendon burst is on average equal to either our arcane mage or our sub rogue (we each do somewhere around 1.1-1.3 million damage per burn phase, when we have cooldowns). Also I swap to Bottled Wishes during Spine so both my haste and mastery are higher than advertised.

    Nobody else's group is entering new burn phases in under 90 seconds? I doubt I'm the only one having this problem. our healers are usually struggling for mana every Spine so they aren't very sympathetic to getting cooldowns back between tendons :/
    Last edited by Yvaelle; 2012-03-03 at 11:13 AM.
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  7. #7
    Deleted
    I've been dotting amalgamation MS on corruptions and then 3 MS and then dot tendons.

  8. #8
    Fluffy Kitten Yvaelle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by elfindoia View Post
    then 3 MS and then dot tendons.
    O.O Care to explain that further?
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  9. #9
    Stood in the Fire Promethieus's Avatar
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    I have the same problem as you, StillOverKill. My fiend is very rarely up for the second half of a tendon. It's always up for the first half of each tendon (which is good because we use lust on the first half of the last tendon). When my fiend isn't up I just mind spike spam the way I normally would without it. This isn't really a problem for me, though, because the tendon damage is so high for us it dies anyways.

  10. #10
    If you are getting the tendons 25-35% first lift, I don't think that it will stay alive long enough for dots to outvalue spiking without sf

  11. #11
    Stood in the Fire Veiled's Avatar
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    I had a problem with my fiend being up for tendon. My problem was that I was trying to do a regular rotation on adds and, at lower gear levels, you can't do that.

    SW;P and mindflay the amalg/bloods only. You should constantly cast mind flat between tendons. If stop DPS is called when the amalg gets low, switch to a blood and mind flay away. My field is coming up about 10-15 seconds early now.

    If this doesn't work for you, I still wouldn't dot. Just MS spam like normal.

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  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Veiled View Post
    mind flat
    Mind Flat! Lol.....

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Veiled View Post
    I had a problem with my fiend being up for tendon. My problem was that I was trying to do a regular rotation on adds and, at lower gear levels, you can't do that.

    SW;P and mindflay the amalg/bloods only. You should constantly cast mind flat between tendons. If stop DPS is called when the amalg gets low, switch to a blood and mind flay away. My field is coming up about 10-15 seconds early now.

    If this doesn't work for you, I still wouldn't dot. Just MS spam like normal.
    I'm actually having the opposite problem . Our amalgamation damage matters more than our tendon damage right now.
    Honestly, if you're getting the tendon to 30% in one lift then just aim to push the amalgamation harder for a faster fight all round.

    As for what to do to a tendon without fiend up... honestly not sure. If I'd get a full duration out of VT on it, then I'll use dots. If I think it will be faster... spike. Really depends on my mood though, no maths

  14. #14
    If you get your tendons to such a low health on the first try, and you actually never have your fiend up for the second one, start with dotting them on the first and MS/MB spam the second cycle? Just an idea, I actually have no idea if it would work out for the better. Also, crit is great for spine hc as well!

  15. #15
    The Patient
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    Crazy though... if you get the tendon to 25-30% on the first go around, it doesn't really matter what you do the second time. You could just dance around. But really just put SW:P on a bunch of adds and mind blast/SW and mind spike over and over.

    Point being, don't even bother trying to get your shadowfiend up for the second tendon. You are helping the raid most by contributing full damage to the amalgamation and/or healing debuffs off of people.
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  16. #16
    Make sure you are doing MS / MB correctly when you have shadowfiend up. Make a macro like this for mind blast:

    /cancelaura Mind Melt
    /cast Mind Blast

    Then be careful not too spam mind blast after mind spike. Make sure you're not "queuing it up", this takes some practice.

    Why do this? Well, your Mind Spikes are eating up all your shadow orbs, and making your mind blast instant. If you do this normally, your mind blast will *never* get a 3orb hit from your sfiend, and will always hit with 0orb.

    By using this macro, you improve two things. One, you will cast your mind blast, allowing your sfiend to *likely* get a hit in to give you a 3orb MB with 100% crit chance (yay). The other thing you improve is the delay between your mind blast and the next mind spike. Without this macro, mind blast --> mindspike will take ~1.5-2.5 seconds depending on haste (MB GCD + MS cast). During this time, it is possible, and likely that your shadow fiend will melee twice, wasting a 3orb hit.

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