Do you actually enjoy the current state of shadow?

[Nestar]

ITT: People who don't parse talking about what's best for parsing.

Seeing as you seem so confident, lets do this.

I should preface this by saying, your rank is well done. This is purely to point out the difference the talent makes. I firmly believe that playing better will make a much bigger difference than any talent ever could.

Your own rank, 715k dps, 4:37 long

Damage done by Insanity: 8.27M
Damage done by Insanity Mastery: 3.44m
Total: 11.71

Perfect uptime sacrificed in order to maximize Insanity: (calculated as ticks lost on target)
Sun
66.69%/89.65% SWP.
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 34.4% (167*0.344=57.5 ticks lost)
60.63%/89.65% VT
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 47.8% (138*0.478=65.9 ticks lost)
He
71.70%/87.29% SWP
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 21.7% (177*0.217=38.4 ticks lost)
68.47%/87.29% VT
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 27.5% (140*0.275=38.5 ticks lost)
Rook
74.38%/78.63% SWP
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 5.7% (191*0.057=10.9 ticks lost)
68.87%/78.63% VT
Ticks gained from proper uptime: 14.2% (160*0.142=22.7 ticks lost)

Your lowest SWP was 25.647k
Your lowest VT was 31.961k

Adding in base boss critical chance and 9.7% amp on crits you get an average tick of:

SWP:35274.9
VT:43959.2

Total number of ticks lost
SWP:106.8
VT: 127.1

Total damage lost:

SWP: 3,767,359
VT: 5,587,214

The reason I used ticks lost as a calculation was so that I could add it up as the worst possible damage per tick, This proves that even doing the worst possible damage per tick, its still better than wasting it for insanity uptime.

Your DK is where I'm getting the perfect uptime from, if he was able to do the mob, so were you, you deliberately choose to not dot it, in order to maximize insanity uptime, It cost you damage, plain and simple.


And most importantly the final tally. The damage bonus from running insanity if you actually do attempt to properly dot everything.

Running insanity gained you half of 11.71m vs no talent in that row at all.

However, lets compare that to what you would have if you had not taken insanity, and instead maximized uptime. You would lose all your insanity damage (11.71m) and you would gain 9.354m in dot damage. However because you were not taking insanity, this opens up the option to take Mind Bender. Taking this would remove the entirety of your Shadow Fiend damage (2.97m) but instead would give you 7.73m of Mind Bender damage. Best yet, all of this is assuming it wouldnt give you any bonus time to cast a filler flay at all, which in all likelyhood it would.

A quick tally shows that replacing your focus on insanity with a focus on dots and using mind bender would give you: 2.404m more than you did.

Making these changes would have put you at 720,093. Just barely behind 6th rank. Almost 5k dps higher than you are currently.

[Aere]

Also worth mentioning, Higher mastery means more procs for FDCL, making it easier to replace all your mind flay casts with Mind Spike.

As far as uptime goes, the less you use mind flay, the better FDCL is in comparison to Insanity. Being able to bank charges on fdcl means every single time you would cast flay, you have a spike available. Rather than having to line up your flays with insanity, which becomes more and more wasteful the less you cast flay.

Yup - problem is that you barely even cast mind flay - your filler should be mind sear as long as there are 3 targets. Unless for some reason your guild isnt stacking them for cleave. those numbers are assuming FDCL is your filler 100%

Wow. Your understanding of how stats affect your spells and talents is clearly off.

I'll let you do a little experiment so you won't even have to trust me:

1. Unequip your trinkets (to minimize RNG)
2. Try FDCL.
3. Reforge full crit.
4. Try it again.
5. Reforge full mastery.
6. Try it again.
7. Realize how you need to stop following what you read in noxxic and start trying stuff out and understanding how things actually work.

oh hey.. look there was a post made about it not long ago.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post28738843

You really need to stop trying to make FDCL a thing - its not a thing.

Next post you make - link it to your logs using FDCL and someone else can probably do the maths for you to show that you would've gained more dps just by mind searing.

[Volitar]

I liked the talents pre insanity (even tho insanity is really good, I just feel like its too good and gets used way more than the other talents)(Also I didn't raid SOO so I don't really know about talent use now.

[Dierdre]

oh hey.. look there was a post made about it not long ago.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post28738843

There was! Did you read the part about "the difference between favoring crit and mastery is so minute overall"? And more importantly: Did you test it?

Here's a better (yet longer) one for you, where people who actually know what they're talking about explain in detail why and how stats affected your spells in 5.4:

http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4401

You can also look for Twintop and Drye's interview in Finalboss where they briefly explained how things worked in 5.4 too.

As for FDCL, as you yourself have repeatedly pointed out (and which was my point from the beginning), MFI is not better for protectors because:

1. The bulk of your damage will come from DoT management (and most of your time will be alloted to it)
2. When you actually do cast a filler, you'll likely use mind sear if adds are stacked
3. When you're not managing your DoTs or casting Mind Blast/t90/Mind Sear, i.e. when you're casting your lowest priority filler, you should switch back to 1 and 2 immediately, forcing you to stop MFI, which will result in overall suboptimal MFI usage; while FDCL (or even mindbender) allow for optimal use of your lowest priority filler. Which is ultimately a moot point because of 1.

It's not about making FDCL "a thing". It's about debunking the popular myth of MFI being vastly superior on every situation because noxxic told you so. Which it's not.

And yes, Imb4 "discussing 5.4 with WoD at the door". I know.

[Aere]

There was! Did you read the part about "the difference between favoring crit and mastery is so minute overall"? And more importantly: Did you test it?

Here's a better (yet longer) one for you, where people who actually know what they're talking about explain in detail why and how stats affected your spells in 5.4:

http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4401

You can also look for Twintop and Drye's interview in Finalboss where they briefly explained how things worked in 5.4 too.

As for FDCL, as you yourself have repeatedly pointed out (and which was my point from the beginning), MFI is not better for protectors because:

1. The bulk of your damage will come from DoT management (and most of your time will be alloted to it)
2. When you actually do cast a filler, you'll likely use mind sear if adds are stacked
3. When you're not managing your DoTs or casting Mind Blast/t90/Mind Sear, i.e. when you're casting your lowest priority filler, you should switch back to 1 and 2 immediately, forcing you to stop MFI, which will result in overall suboptimal MFI usage; while FDCL (or even mindbender) allow for optimal use of your lowest priority filler. Which is ultimately a moot point because of 1.

It's not about making FDCL "a thing". It's about debunking the popular myth of MFI being vastly superior on every situation because noxxic told you so. Which it's not.

And yes, Imb4 "discussing 5.4 with WoD at the door". I know.

The point is there is a difference. your mastery doesn't affect FDCL except for the chance at extra procs. I even gave you 100% FDCL procs in those numbers and it STILL isnt higher that MS on 3. The point is is that with Insanity is that its actually higher than MS on 3. Which means its actually worth casting. FDCL is not. If you are taking FDCL on protectors - you should actually untalent it as you would do more damage. Because of the ability to easily cleave and mind sear a lot more on protectors. Mindbender is also an option. If you kill it ~2:15, 5:15 - it will obviously be better then other timed kills i.e 3:15. FDCL is not an option. On every other fight Insanity IS vastly superior. Don't reply with Immerseus with aoeing adds either - if you're saying that mindbender is better you obviously don't have reliable dps in your raid that can efficiently aoe.

Because of the 1:1 ratio the more of one stat you have - the more it makes the other stat worth it. So going full crit indeed will lose you damage, even if it is small.



you know what? Fine - use FDCL be suboptimal, I really don't have the patience. Looking through previous forum posts you don't seem to listen - Blackmorgrim already told you:

Actually when it comes to this, leaning towards crit or mastery (depending on your spec) all its really doing is making your damage less consistent, and increasing the variation (while slightly lowering the average). Leaning towards crit on something like engineers would only benefit you if you're relying on Mindspike or MB to kill it, otherwise, dropping a 2-3 orb DP and using insanity would continue to favor more of the balance.

Whatever - not my problem.

[BooQT]

I actually really like the way shadow feels right now. I never liked the rng ramp up of previous expansions. I hope that they make Void Entropy worth casting because I like the feel of shadow as a dot class. CoP is great and all, but I honestly hate how it feels on Beta.

I'll play the spec and talents that contribute the most DPS on any given boss, but I truly hope that it's not CoP over half the time.