Ahem, spirit tap anyone?

[Achtland]

So I'm a shadow priest with an average ilevel of 260. I recently respecced out of spirit tap for heroic valithria because of my raid comp. I needed silence for the mages. I was recently debating on whether or not I should respec back into spirit because I can see no difference in my dmg regardless of whether I have it or not. I'm still tapping out at the same dps/dmg I was tapping out before on raid bosses. I haven't dropped significantly as per my WoL since I changed. Perhaps someone can shed some light for me?

[Wuga]

It is a very small dps benefit - certainly less than 100, unless you have abnormally high amounts of spirit gear. As a ballpark estimate, suppose you have 800 spirit: the 10% bonus from spirit tap translates into 80 spirit or 16 spellpower, or around 40-50 dps assuming 100% uptime on the buff. In my experience the uptime on spirit tap is around 70-75%, so the actual dps gain is even lower.

That being said, there isn't really much else to take with the 5 points - assuming you have the 4p t10 bonus, you can skip the points in improved mind blast, so you should have plenty left over to take it. I think I have silence (and psychic horror) in my current spec in addition to spirit tap.

[Veyne]

Spirit tap, honest to god, isn't much of a DPS gain at all. It's generally specced into due to not having the need to spec into the utility talents such as Silence. However, however marginal it is, it still is a DPS gain, but with less emphasis on Spirit on gear at end game for Shadow Priests, Mages and Warlocks alike, you'll see less and less benefits from spirit-spellpower talents, especially one as small as from Spirit Tap.

We get 20% of our spirit as spellpower from Twisted Faith. Using a random number, say you have 1000 spirit on your gear. That means that you gain 200 spellpower. When Imp. Spirit Tap triggers, it increases your spirit by 10%. So 1000 spirit becomes 1100 spirit, gaining 220 spellpower. So all in all, with 1000 spirit, you're only gaining 20 spellpower from Improved Spirit Tap.

The only other factor is the Mana regeneration from Improved Spirit Tap. I don't know how it is in truly high end gear, by as a Shadow Priest, I typically don't run into mana problems. And when I do, I never run out of mana between dispersion cooldowns or shadow fiend uses.

---------- Post added 2010-08-07 at 06:06 AM ----------

That being said, there isn't really much else to take with the 5 points - assuming you have the 4p t10 bonus, you can skip the points in improved mind blast,

On the contrary, from what I've read, even with the four piece bonus it's still a DPS gain to use Mind Blast as close to being off cooldown as possible. I'm in the top raiding guild on my server, though I've been merely a casual, friend-rank since the release of ToC, but our shadow priests still tend to spec into improved mind blast and use it regularly. They're some pretty damn good shadow priests too.

[Azoth]

Well the Spirit Tap talent isn't designed to really boost your DPS. Sure it gives you a 10% boost to your spirit which in turn equates to some extra spell power via Twisted Faith. but the problems is that spirit is a crappy stat for shadow. Most of your gear prob has little to no spirit on it. Shadow priest Tier 10 gear has a total of 0 Spirit in it making the talent nearly useless. 20% of your spirit as spell power when you only have like 400-450 spirit raid buffed is a joke. It was Blizzard's fail ass way of "patching" shadow to get a few extra DPS while knowing that it was only a stop gap because they can never figure out a good way to get shadow to scale correctly through the life of an expansion. We start out strong and then usually flutter and fall behind at top end game raiding.

[XeliosX]

I usually play a healer but. . .
Improved Spirit Tap gives your critical strikes a chance to grant you 30% extra spirit right?
And Twisted Faith increases damage based on spirit. . . right?

Now, granted it's a 30% increase, and the increase in spellpower is based on a % of spirit, so the spellpower increase on Improved Spirit Tap ALONE [ie: the 30% buff, and not your total spirit] is gonna be even less than the 30% that you originally gained.

It's a very MINOR dps increase. Nothing substantial though.

On the flip side though. . . a minor dps increase versus the ability to silence things. . . . on one fight.

If you're signifigantly high in dps, ie: doing more than 8k consistently, then no, losing hte 30% extra spirit and ergo the extra sp based on spirit won't absolutely cripple you.
But if you're looking into min-maxin', you'll want the extra dps.
If I recall correctly, silence is a minute cooldown?
Counterspell is 23 seconds, while a Wind Shear / Kick / mind freeze is 5. I'm not even 100% sure if ther eIS a cd on Mind Freeze.

In either case, you seem to be in a VERY specific situation, but if that's the situation you find yourself in every week, maybe losing a hundred or so points of dps isn't such a bad thing. But if your raid is made or broken by whether or not your spriest specced into silence, then by all means take silence!

Here's the short version, since I kinda repeat myself several times:
Improved Spirit Tap = ~100 dps (or less)
Silence = Semi-useful on one encounter, but relatively useless for all others.

Choice is up to you though.


**Edit** and see, this is why I don't play a shadow priest =p All my gear still has spirit on it, since I recently changed from disc/holy to shadow/holy.

[Wuga]

On the contrary, from what I've read, even with the four piece bonus it's still a DPS gain to use Mind Blast as close to being off cooldown as possible. I'm in the top raiding guild on my server, though I've been merely a casual, friend-rank since the release of ToC, but our shadow priests still tend to spec into improved mind blast and use it regularly. They're some pretty damn good shadow priests too.

You'd have to sim it in your particular gear to be sure, but generally speaking the dpet (damage per execute time) will be higher for mind flay than for mind blast for an icc-geared priest with the 4p set. This means casting mb will be a dps loss compared to just spamming mf.

It may still worth using mb from time to time under this scenario, mainly to improve dot uptime (say you have 2s left on vampiric touch - you are probably better off casting mb->vt rather than channeling an entire mf before recasting vt). The base cd on mb is adequate for this, however, so you can usually drop the points in imp mb without sacrificing dps.

[Achtland]

-his is consistant with other sources I've read. I was debating marginal dps gain over raid utility with another shadowpriest. I still spec into Imp mindblast simply because I'm usually the only source of replenishment if our hunter and ret pally dont show up. I run a ten man guild. I just wanted some answers that weren't from a spreadsheet since I'm terrible with stuff like that. These points are all the same points I brought up to him...he thinks I'm nuts =P

I was also under the impression that MB got edited out of rotation based on how much haste you have. I have 4pc t10 with one piece of sanctified. Should I really be taking out mindblast if I dont need to cast it for replenishment?

Edit: Yes I'm consistantly 9.8-10k dps across all raid bosses...it gets higher based on boss mechanics but that's my base dps.

[Frmercury]

Get Spirit Tap, you'll need the regen for longer / AoE fights like LK and Halion.

Secondly it is a DPS boost, even if some of you think it's minimal or near zero. What else can you really spec into that's worth it?

Also, was this 10 or 25? Why couldn't you get 1-2 interrupters per side that don't have to waste talent points to get it?

Edit (From a DPS standpoint):
Q) So T10 4pc is pretty awesome, I should just stop using MB right?

A) Not so fast there. It's not that simple even when it is... that simple.

Firstly, lets establish if there's even a theoretical DPS gain from dropping MB. Go to this link, open the spreadsheet, check your stats on Armory and get either a Yes or No.

http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t84746-s...riends/p7/#168

If you get a No - keep MB in your rotation as outlined in the Rotation section

If you get a Yes - yes, you can theoretically drop MB from your rotation. That said here's some food for though and pearls of wisdom from Griemak @ http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...7476&sid=1#159

There are ISSUES with dropping MB:
1. Error, network congestion, server latency, hardware lag, reaction time, attention deficit... etc. all contribute to make MF's DPET higher than MB's. These are the same environmental variables that affect MF's performance more than MB.
2. Channeling is not easy. The more MF's you cast, the higher chance you have of screwing it up by losing the third tick, waiting for the channel to finish adding more delay, etc.
3. [nochannel] macros will result in a DPS loss if you drop MB, the delay caused by [nochannel] macros will cause a lot of "downtime", this "downtime" can be reduced by casting [nochannel] less, AKA: MB.
4. DoT uptime can suffer. Currently, Simulationcraft is showing an overall DPS loss when dropping MB. One reason among many is that the DP and VT uptime suffers due to the filler spell, MF, being a longer cast to finish before refreshing the DoT than using the binary filler spells of MB and MF. (can be negated by clipping MF at 2 ticks, requires higher precision and enters in more risk)
5. It's boring, attention can be diverted, the mind may wander... precision in casting could suffer.

Of course, many of the "issues" can also be gains if these issues plague your shadow priest today. For some, MF can relieve the congestion and confusion of the MB cooldown, upping your personal DPS. Just remember, that fixing these issues regardless of dropping MB or not would have been a DPS increase as well.

I believe MB is safe, not due to Blizzard's design, but rather our error. It is through lag and latency that MF's DPET overtakes MB's, the same lag and latency that effects MF more than MB. The error that makes MF superior, supposedly, is the same error that can lower our overall DPS if we do drop MB.

PS - You can keep 100% uptime with 0/5 Imp MB in a 10 man group, easy. 15 second duration on Replenishment, 8 second untalented CD on MB.

[Achtland]

It's a ten man, that's why we couldn't. And I'm already a kingslayer ten man. I dont have issues with mana on Lichking that my dispersion and shadowfiend dont fix.

[Frmercury]

Again, it is a DPS increase. There are no other DPS increasing talents you can get with those free points either... so... why?

[Kelesti]

Again, it is a DPS increase. There are no other DPS increasing talents you can get with those free points either... so... why?

And even without the increased Spell Power from Twisted Faith/Glyph of Shadows, it's a mana longevity talent which means you need to use Dispersion less, thus a DPS increase.

[jonish]

I was more concerned with the removal of all pushback protection ? unless I missed it being put back in somewhere else.

[Frmercury]

I was more concerned with the removal of all pushback protection ? unless I missed it being put back in somewhere else.

It's passive once you put your first point into Shadow. It's still 70%