Warning, this post contains some theorycrafting backed by little more than napkin math. Using this information as fact is strongly unadvised.
Let's take a closer look at the the bonuses.
2-set: At first I was a little underwhelmed but I'm starting to come around to this one. 20% extra damage on shadowfiend seems weak unless they buff the little guy. My fiend accounts for roughly 5% of my total damage on most fights, so we're looking at a 1% damage increase overall. It's good, but certainly not as powerful as it could be.
As for the 75 seconds off the cd time, this is certainly the "meat" of the bonus, but I'm mostly worried about the lack of synergy between the 2-set and 4-set here. The 4-set will substantially reduce the amount of outgoing mf's which will in turn increase the active cd on shadowfiend compared to what it without the t12 4-set. Based on some napkin math, the reduction in cd will be a ~45% increase in shadowfiend uptime based on the rather large assumption that the reduction in outgoing mf's will be offset by higher crit rates in better gear. Overall we're looking at a ~75% increase to total shadowfiend damage for a fight, amounting to a 3.2% damage increase which is non-trivial and certainly worth aiming for.
These numbers obviously aren't meant to be taken as gospel, but they can give us a rough estimate on how effective the bonus will be as I doubt they will deviate by a significant margin. As it stands, provided the 4-set doesn't reduce mf uptime to a point where a large portion is the 75 second cd reduction is wasted, this set bonus is pretty decent. We'll see how this plays out though, it could end up being more or less powerful than my initial impression and at the very least mana will likely cease to be an issue.
4-set: This one is tricky. At first glance it seems insanely powerful. However, there are a couple major concerns I have here. My primary concern is that a 3.5 second cd mind blast is not "really" a 3.5 second cd mind blast. What I mean is that there will be very few times where we're hitting mb the instant it comes off cd. Naturally you will wait for your mf to finish casting or aim to clip the second tick. Assuming the average priest has 25% haste raid buffed, you're looking at a 2.25 second mf cast. If you aren't the type to clip mf's then you will have to cast two full mf's in most situations, putting the effective cd of mb at 4.5 seconds rather than 3.5. If you do clip, you can clip the second tick of the second mf putting the effective cd of mb at 3.75 seconds, which is just about ideal with latency. Problem is, this may or may not introduce haste plateaus into our gearing. Once we reach 30% haste, the second tick of the second mf after a mb will be exactly at 3.5 seconds making this the nirvana of haste so to speak. More than this, however, and you will have to wait until 41.67% haste rolls around to realize the perfection of 2 full mf's in-between mb's. Whether or not this will lead to gearing around haste plateaus remains to be seen. For dots we don't particularly care about gearing around the plateaus, but this may be an extraordinary circumstance. One important thing to remember is that the 4-set will always lead to a dps benefit since you will always realize a portion of the shortened mb cd, but obviously how much of the shortened cd you benefit from will be in question.
Another problem I have with the 4-set is that it will reduce the amount of outgoing mf's by a decent amount. Operating under the "perfect" conditions that 3 second off the mb cd will lead to 46.2% more mb's (this obviously doesn't make sense as you will never be able to mb off cd every time). The extra time spent casting mb will almost exclusively be taken away from mf's. Reviewing my logs, I spend an average of 9% of a fight casting mb on most fights. With the tier bonus I would be looking at 13.158% of a fight casting mb. This extra 4.158% of the fight casting mb comes at the expense of mf uptime. Mf uptime is hard to measure due to its nature as the filler spell since certain fights will force it to be cast less often. However, across all my fights the average seems to be around 40% uptime. This means I would be casting about 89.6% as many mind flays as usual, which in turn leads to 10.4% less orbs and 10.4% less shadowfiend cd reductions from mf. This is a tough pill to swallow since orbs can be hard to come by at times and the 4-set will only exacerbate the problem. Mb accounts for ~13% of my damage on most fights, a 46.2% increase in mb's will give me a 6.006% increase in damage. Mf accounts for somewhere between 15% and 25% of my damage depending on the fight, leading to a 10.4% uptime reduction causing a 1.56%-2.6% damage loss. Overall it looks like the raw numbers give a 4% increase in damage done, which is not nearly as much as I expected it to be. This is further undermined by the fact that the real damage gain will be substantially lower due to the fact that:
a) mb will almost never be cast right off cd as I modeled here,
b) casting mb at such shorter intervals will cause the average damage to go down as a result of there not being more orbs to compensate, and
c) the set bonus isn't giving passive damage, it is trading mf uptime for mb damage which will result in decreased orb production and a longer shadowfiend cd.
I won't go ahead and attempt to model how much damage we will lose from these factors, but I would expect a 3% damage increase from the 4-set, which is about standard for most set bonuses. Maybe one factor I'm not giving enough weight to is the convenience of having mb on such a short cd if the orb gods are being particularly cruel, but I'm not a big fan of sacrificing one source of dps for another.
All in all, I think I'm a happy with our 2-set and disappointed with our 4-set. I'm just a little worried that the 4-set won't play out very well and will be a big hassle. Clearly the bonuses will be worth going for since we're looking at roughly 6% damage increase overall, but I'm hoping maybe some of the ideas are reworked to provide more synergy. I can't say I'm very fond of the idea of having to clip every other mf just to capitalize on my set bonus. Whether or not this puts us ahead or behind the other classes' tier bonuses remains to be seen, but I am a little jealous of other classes which seem to have spectacular bonuses, particularly those ignite and Nibelung-style procs. We shall see how things play out so nobody jump to any conclusions; I would be surprised if things were not reworked before they go live. Clearly all the numbers here are meant as estimates, but feel free to check my math and offer your own insight, I did most of this pretty hastily (pun intended).
One of the big factors I'm looking at in this reduced MB cooldown is that now we don't really have to worry (as much) about making sure there's a shadow orb up to cast it.
It makes things a little more faceroll, but think of it as with the 4p, if we MB without a shadow orb, we're only risking about 3 seconds of wasted empowered shadows rather than 6, so we can be more liberal with its use.
In essence, I think it will come down in most situations casting two flays between each mind blast UNLESS a shadow orb procs and empowered shadows would fall off, then you clip the flay. At EXTREMELY LOW levels of haste it might be worth it to always clip, but I think haste will be at the point for most people where a second mind flay will be wasting < 1 second of mb being off cd.
I think the reduced cd on shadowfiend will probably offset the not getting time off the cd on crits through veiled shadows some... one thing I am actually wondering (and there is no way to know for sure right now) is if there will be even more movement in fights than there is right now. In that case our casts of mf would be reduced anyways (no more casting 2-3 mf's in row is what I am thinking) and in that case the reduced mb cd might help to make-up the dps we might have lost otherwise.
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