Shadow Orbs and Empowered Shadows

[HeatM1ser]

I wasn't sure if shadow orbs affected empowered shadows. Can someone explain the way they work with one another please?

[Magicochon]

Shadow orbs affect your mind blast + mind spike spells
Consumming a shadow orbs gives you the Shadow Power effect.
The amount of damage bonus from Shadow orb (1 max) = The amount of shadow damage bonus you get from Shadow power.

Your mastery increase this amount.

[Deleted]

MF and SW:P have a chance to proc an orb.
you can have up to 3 orbs at once.
you can consume any active orbs for an X% damage increase on mind blast or mind spike per orb.
consuming any amount of orbs increases your periodic damage by X%, unaffected by the amount of orbs you consume.
mastery (and this i'm unsure about) increases both the direct effect and the periodic effect.

[Twintop]

MF and SW:P have a chance to proc an orb.
you can have up to 3 orbs at once.
you can consume any active orbs for an X% damage increase on mind blast or mind spike per orb.
consuming any amount of orbs increases your periodic damage by X%, unaffected by the amount of orbs you consume.
mastery (and this i'm unsure about) increases both the direct effect and the periodic effect.

Each orb you have (max of 3) increases the damage of your next Mind Blast or Mind Spike spell by 10%. 0 orbs = 100% damage, 1 orb = 110% damage, 2 orbs = 120% damage, and 3 orbs = 130% damage. Mastery increases the effectiveness of the Empowered Shadows buff you get after consuming your Shadow Orbs by casting MB/MS. The ES buff is what increases your DoTs' damage once you apply them to a target when you have ES.

[Arlee]

Shadow orbs affect your mind blast + mind spike spells
Consumming a shadow orbs gives you the Shadow Power effect.
The amount of damage bonus from Shadow orb (1 max) = The amount of shadow damage bonus you get from Shadow power.

Your mastery increase this amount.

Err, consuming shadow orbs gives you the Empowered Shadows buff which increases the damage of your dots. You increase the amount by which es does this with the mastery stat.

Shadow Power is the passive bonus to our shadow magic that we get for spec'ing shadow. There is nothing we can do to increase this, it is sort of a cure all for the devs to fix issues if they think overall we are doing too much or too little (lol) damage

Slight difference

[HeatM1ser]

MF and SW:P have a chance to proc an orb.
you can have up to 3 orbs at once.
you can consume any active orbs for an X% damage increase on mind blast or mind spike per orb.
consuming any amount of orbs increases your periodic damage by X%, unaffected by the amount of orbs you consume.
mastery (and this i'm unsure about) increases both the direct effect and the periodic effect.

So are you saying that my shadow orbs will increase the damage done by my DOTs when empowered shows is up? And that damage increase will be greater with the more orbs I have up, therefor making mastery a viable stat?

I know 3 shadow orbs will affect my mind blast, what I'm trying to figure out is will it affect my DOTs because MB applies empowered shadows....so will my DOTs tick for more damage if I have more mastery and cast MB with 3 orbs, or wont my DOTs damage be affected by the orbs at all....thats the confusing part.

Now, before last nights raid I reforged some spirit to get 1 more point of mastery. I don't know if it was a fluke or as a result of the increased mastery, but I did 62K DPS on 25-man Heroic Halfus, which beat my previous mark by about 7000 DPS. So I dont know if I was just on my game more last night, or if the mastery made the difference, and if the shadow orbs had anything to do with that damage increase.

Each orb you have (max of 3) increases the damage of your next Mind Blast or Mind Spike spell by 10%. 0 orbs = 100% damage, 1 orb = 110% damage, 2 orbs = 120% damage, and 3 orbs = 130% damage. Mastery increases the effectiveness of the Empowered Shadows buff you get after consuming your Shadow Orbs by casting MB/MS. The ES buff is what increases your DoTs' damage once you apply them to a target when you have ES.

So it sounds like what your saying is that the more mastery I have, the more my DOT's will tick for, and that 3 orbs up when I cast MB will put out the maximum DOT damage?

Here is a link to last nights Heroic Halfus kill

And here is a link to the previous weeks Heroic Halfus kill

If you look at my DOT uptime for each fight, they are very similar....last weeks attempt was 7k DPS less damage and I had a much lower uptime on my DP...but VT and SW: P were about the same between the two weeks. I didnt just sit on Halfus and ignore the drakes so that I can boost my DPS output---each week I did significant damage to the other 3 drakes, so I'm trying to figure out what increased my DPS output so dramatically! I had the same gear for both weeks,too.

If going from 11 mastery to 12 mastery produced such good increases, then maybe I should reforge for more mastery. What do you guys see in the two reports, and what do you suggest?

[Arlee]

You get the same amount added to your dot damage if you proc it with 1 orb or 3. The only way to increase the effect from ES is to stack more mastery. Which is why it doesn't matter if you cast MB with one orb or 2 or 3. You will always get the same ES buff.

Say you have enough mastery to have ES increase your dots by 15%.

1 orb up = MB does damage+1 orb of buff = ES increases your dot damage by 15%
2 orbs up = MB does damage +2 orb of buff = ES increases your dot damage by 15%
3 orbs up = MB does damage +3 orb of buff = ES increases your dot damage by 15%

I wouldn't reforge out of haste for mastery personally. Reforging out of crit maybe. You can run simulation craft to figure out what stat would be the best way to increase your dps.

[Kaesebrezen]

What do you guys see in the two reports, and what do you suggest?

I see a high difference in your crit rate of each spell. Your VT had 20 more ticks and 30 more crits, with most of the extra crits on halfus.
In the lower DPS fight, you did more damage on the adds (you casted mindsear-.-)
Your Dark Intent uptime (or more specific the number of stacks) on the higher DPS fight is A LOT higher then on the lower DPS one. (144 buff gains vs. 77)

So in short: Blame your warlocks and rng on crit

On Mastery: The Number of Orbs consumed has nothing to do with strength of the Empowered Orb Buff. You only need one Orb every 2nd Mindblast to keep the Empowered Orb Buff up.

[Twintop]

Let me rephrase my response to try and clear up any confusion.

You get Shadow Orbs from SW: Pain and Mind Flay. The generation rate of these is not 100% guaranteed, but, do spawn with decent consistency. You can have as many as 3 Shadow Orbs at any time, but no more.

When you cast Mind Blast or Mind Spike with any Shadow Orbs, the MB or MS consume all Shadow Orbs taking your number back to 0. For each Shadow Orb you have, the damage is increased by 10% on that MB or MS. Like I said before, 0 orbs = 100% damage, 1 orb = 110% damage, 2 orbs = 120% damage, and 3 orbs = 130% damage. Regardless of if you hit your target with your MB or MS, you gain a buff called "Empowered Shadows".

Empowered Shadows increases your DoTs' damage based on how much mastery you have. This is always the same amount (unless you have trinkets that proc Mastery, like Theralion's Mirror) and the number of orbs you use when casting MB or MS doesn't have any effect on this value.


Because of the RNG involved with getting Shadow Orbs to proc, you can't be guaranteed to have an orb to use in a MB/MS cast before your current Empowered Shadows buff is going to fade off of you. This is the reason why SimulationCraft values Mastery slightly lower than Crit, since Empowered Shadows affects only VT/DP/SW: Pain and crit affects all spells.

[Kaesebrezen]

When you cast Mind Blast or Mind Spike with any Shadow Orbs, the MB or MS consume all Shadow Orbs taking your number back to 0. For each Shadow Orb you have, the damage is increased by 10% on that MB or MS. Like I said before, 0 orbs = 100% damage, 1 orb = 110% damage, 2 orbs = 120% damage, and 3 orbs = 130% damage. Regardless of if you hit your target with your MB or MS, you gain a buff called "Empowered Shadows"

The Damage increase on MB is not static, but affected by mastery and the values you have are only correct from level 10 to level 79.
Shadow Orbs default value is 10% increase on MB/MS per Orb, and 10% for DoTs. At Level 80 you gain your Mastery with 8 Mastery points for a 11.5% boost on Shadow Orbs, bringing them up to 21.5%.
So with 1 and 0 Mastery from gear (if you learned mastery from your trainer) Orb your Mindblast does 121.5%, with 2 Orbs 143%, with 3 Orbs 164.5%.
As long as you have 1 Orb when you cast MB, you gain empowered Orbs, which increases your DoT Damage by 10% + (Mastery * 1.15%).

[Proverbial]

Shadow orbs are only related to empowered shadows in that you need a shadow orb to get es up.

[Fleckens]

Because of the RNG involved with getting Shadow Orbs to proc, you can't be guaranteed to have an orb to use in a MB/MS cast before your current Empowered Shadows buff is going to fade off of you. This is the reason why SimulationCraft values Mastery slightly lower than Crit, since Empowered Shadows affects only VT/DP/SW: Pain and crit affects all spells.

Mind flay and mind sear are also affected by empowered shadows. What you said about rng is true though.

[Renue]

in simple terms use MB on cooldown as long as you have atleast 1 orb. using mb/ms will use those orbs and proc es

[Karei]

When you cast Mind Blast or Mind Spike with any Shadow Orbs, the MB or MS consume all Shadow Orbs taking your number back to 0. For each Shadow Orb you have, the damage is increased by 10% on that MB or MS. Like I said before, 0 orbs = 100% damage, 1 orb = 110% damage, 2 orbs = 120% damage, and 3 orbs = 130% damage. Regardless of if you hit your target with your MB or MS, you gain a buff called "Empowered Shadows".

I suggest you review your Mastery description.
Each Orb increases your Mind Blast/Mind Spike damage by X where X is your mastery.
This is not a fixed value but dependent on your mastery rating. My mastery increases my MB by 28.5% per Orb
If it was a fixed value how would you explain No orb MB crits of 24k and wit h3 orbs of 65k? Hardly a 30% increase

[Arlee]

I suggest you review your Mastery description.
Each Orb increases your Mind Blast/Mind Spike damage by X where X is your mastery.
This is not a fixed value but dependent on your mastery rating. My mastery increases my MB by 28.5% per Orb
If it was a fixed value how would you explain No orb MB crits of 24k and wit h3 orbs of 65k? Hardly a 30% increase

Yea I have to say I had always read the tooltip to mean that mastery only increased the damage bonus of es not the damage bonus of the orbs too. But it clearly stats in the tooltip the damage bonus the orbs give to MB and if you look at it with your gear on vs naked you can clearly see a change in the numbers.

Though it is vaguely moot because it doesn't really change our gearing or how we use MB (ie not specifically gearing for mastery or waiting for more orbs to use MB).