FDCL and DI during leveling?

[Damerflinn]

So I recently hit 75 on my priest. And I'm wondering which talents I should be going with as a shadow priest.

I had been using FDCL up until now. But combined with DI I tend to get a lot of overlapping procs that lead to the proc from DI being wasted because it uses the FDCL proc first. So I took it off and use Mindbender at the moment. I know that ToF is supposed to be better later on, but burn phases are already so short that it didn't seem worth it. And I didn't think that we were supposed to take Power Infusion.

Also, Mind Sear? Waste of time now? I remember being so happy when I got it on my first priest, because it was really strong, now it seems like a waste of time as I do more DPS if I just put SW: p on everything and then single target down. Should I be multi dotting then using mind sear?

[Deleted]

Leveling? You should play with the talents you enjoy, and experiment with them all when you feel like it.

In T3 and T5 FDCL, DI, ToF and MB are highly competitive from min-maxing raiding point of view (SWI and PI are not).

Some tricks for soloing:

Mind Sear works great on Shadowfiend/Mindbender, and Shadowfiend/Mindbender is more than burst. You can let it tank if you use Fade. I quite like it during soloing (at l90) and liked it more with Void Shift pre-nerf.

ToF proc you can and should abuse. One trick is bursting down something to get the proc and then DoTing everything up with that proc. If you're playing with others (LFG etc) make sure you abuse this as well (nuke the skull first).

Void Shift unfortunately doesn't work anymore on Shadowfiend/Mindbender/Void Vendril/Psyfiend it was quite OP. It'd have been something you'd be able to play with also in PvP and soloing, after 87.

Once you reach T6/90 you'll find Halo and Cascade both useful (even during soloing) with DS filling a nieche.

Which leaves me to say you did not mention T1/T2/T4 at all. Those are utility-based, not output related which is why they're actually interesting to play with during soloing and PvP. Play around with them. The more you experiment with those, the better you'll become at level 90 be it soloing, world PvP, BGs, arena, LFD, raiding, etc.

[Damerflinn]

I didn't mention the other tiers of talents because I feel I have a good grasp on them and what they do and such.

My whole issue is that at the scaling of gear and base stats while you level, I was reaching such a high haste point that my SW: P procs were overlapping quite a bit, and causing issues with wasting procs of free instant MB's because of already existing FDCL procs. And wondering how that could be worked around.

I like that Mindbender is only a minute CD, making it available for more then one or two bosses in a dungeon since a great deal of the time bosses come fast as things are chain pulled. But I hadn't honestly tried ToF so maybe I'll give it a go, I mostly run dungeons, with as few quests as possible. But since I'm in Icecrown now, I have no choice but to do a bit more questing, so I'll play around with ToF a bit more.

[Arlee]

I leveled 80-85 with both DI and FDCL and really enjoyed it, made me able to be pretty bursty which was nice for killing things quickly, though that was also helped some by have the Legendary from Cata so my results might be biased I would say try all the talents and pick what you seem to enjoy the most, leveling is the time to get a good feeling for how the different talents work and get a good grasp on what situations make different ones better.

[Anthonian]

Like said earlier you don't really need to worry about it while leveling, just have fun any try them out. At 90 if you do go with FDCL and DI you will always want to prioritize a DI proc over a FDCL proc. Always. More Mind Blasts means more Shadow Orbs which means more DPs. I can get a little overwhelming a first when everything procs all at once but as long as you know your priorities you'll find that they work quite well together.

As for Mind Sear, it sucks. I only really ever use it when there are 5 or 6+ adds. Outside of that it's much more efficient to multi-DoT. Depending on the type of adds I'll just SW:P them all and put VT on my main target. That way I've got DoTs rolling on all of them and since it's SW:P you'll catch a good amount of DI procs. You'll get a lot more DPS out of that then you will with Mind Sear.

[Deleted]

In my opinion, for levelling there are a few talents which really shine over the others;

ToF - will proc very often because, as mentioned above, you can burst down one mob and get it to proc and usually you'll refresh it with another mob before it fades. If you keep pulling 5 ish mobs at a time like this it's easy to keep the damage and the proc rolling. It also buffs healing, which is again useful.

Void Tendrils - Combined with glyph of Psychic Scream is very useful because you can pretty much keep a lot of mobs nicely controlled and keep your distance by rotating these two spells when needed.

Divine Star - strictly not levelling but still good for questing, simply because Halo always pulls too many unintended mobs and cascade needs you to be at a distance and mobs to be spread, which isn't always the case when levelling. Divine Star works great for close quarters (just face the way you came and the star won't pull more mobs ahead) and also heals you too, plus mobs will most likely be grouped up if you're using Void Tendrils.

Other tiers use whichever suits you best but keep in mind for end game content you'll use most talents for different applications so good to practice with all and see how you feel. There's no right choice.

[hikamiro]

nobody seemed to note that you aren't actually "wasting procs". Although it is annoying that FDCL is consumed for an instant mindblast before DI, it isn't much of a dps loss, DI still refeshes the CD and thats really what you take the talent for.

[Damerflinn]

@Hikamiro I hadn't thought of it that way. That does make me see it in a slightly different light. I could also replace the Mind Spike Glyph with something else in order to take advantage of the instant casts with the DI procs, but it seemed like the two just work together so well it was almost like you are supposed to use FDCL with the glyph to maximize its usefulness.

I've started to play around with ToF now that fights are lasting a bit longer, but I think that it will be better to wait til Cata dungeons to really start messing with things, as it still seems like things are dying to fast to really make it worth it. But we'll see, I've been using it as a healer a bit, and love the bit of complexity it can give rotations (I can see it being amazing for Disc) but healing is a bit of a joke while leveling.