Uptime of dots, clipping MF whenever?

[Ayarea]

So lately I've been looking at my uptimes and it's really starting to do my head in. I take a fight that's generally easy to just go for it without having to move too much. It's not that my DPS is utterly shit, but I'm just unhappy about my uptimes.

I've been comparing my logs with some other shadowpriest their log.

My uptimes were the following (4.09 minutes fight - BQL HC) had 1 shroud of sorrow
VT 87.9%
DP 89.9%
SW:P 96.1%

His uptimes were the following (3.30 minutes fight - BQL HC)had 1 shroud of sorrow and 1 pact of the darkfallen.
VT 91.3%
DP 94.5%
SW:P 96.6%

After calculating some I came to the following conclusion:
I did 112 MF casts, which would bring me to 336 MFticks, I ended up with 308 (28 clips)
Did 22 VT casts, so should end up with 110 VT ticks, I ended up with 106 so I guess I must've clipped it somewhere? (edit: after rechecking the log browser I indeed refresh it too early at some point. Lost 1 clip there and near the end it ticked two times and then she died, so I lost 3 and that's the 4 clips right there at least).
14 DP casts, should've had 112 ticks, had 109 (I did cast DP on boss while running with shroud, so that explains that clipping.

One thing I don't get is that I always time my VT recast to be at the exact timer of when it's supposed to end. So say I got 1.1 second on my VT cast and there is 1.1 left on the timer I cast IF Mindflay allows it. That is on the 2nd or last tick.

Now we compare the other guys stats
He casted 95 MF, which should give him 285 ticks, he did 237 (48 clips)
20 VT casts, which would give 100 ticks, he had 99
DP was 13 casts and got him 103 ticks instead of 104.

So now I'm wondering one thing. Seeing he clipped his mindflay quiet often, does that mean he refreshes whenever the dot is supposedly running out? I always thought it was best to time it on the second mindflay clip or the last one when you recast dots. Though yeah my uptime seems shit, and for some reason I still seem to clip. Even though I try to aim as close to getting it 1.1second cast to falling off.

These are the logs for further information if people wish to. I compared my logs with Valaine from Inner Sanctum on Silvermoon, though I compared myself with others as well, but yeah.

My log: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-4l...?s=3824&e=4074
Valaine (Inner Sanctum) log: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/qqouv...?s=4939&e=5149

This seems to be one of my better fights on uptimes :/. I used this query to insert to see the casting and such: [{"spellNames": ["Vampiric Touch"], "targetNames": ["Blood-Queen Lana'thel"], "actorNames": ["Ayarea"]}]

Relatively new to the query thing so I don't really know how to see how it's being clipped and all with more then 2 spells. For some reason it keeps showing me Mindflay only.

Thanks for the help in advance.

[Kiora]

I haven't played in a few months (Since around Children's Week), but if I recall, VT and DP have a higher DPET than Mind Flay, so clipping Mind Flay for re-applying them is the better choice.

[Ayarea]

I haven't played in a few months (Since around Children's Week), but if I recall, VT and DP have a higher DPET than Mind Flay, so clipping Mind Flay for re-applying them is the better choice.

Yeah but I meant more, clipping whenever they fall off, or actually clip on the second mindflay tick. The 2nd mindflay tick is when I re- apply my dots if it's needed and not whenever they need refreshing so MF doesn't get clipped too much. I guess it's just casting whenever they fall off then.

[Dharmabhum]

Some spriests clip MF2 to reapply VT and DP but its such a fickle clip that its really easy to mess it up and cost yourself about 2/3 of a second and one MF tick that in most cases its not worth it. Personally I don't but there are other things I do.

Cast SW.D for the 1s GCD if you see VT or DP expiring very soon but not soon enough to start the VT cast.
Well I guess that's about it because SW.D is on a low enough CD that you can use it quite often, but that almost always goes in place of that MF you predict you'll be clipping in order to refresh DoTs. With 4T10 and the boatloads of haste we have, MF will either be just quick enough to finish before DoTs need to be refreshed, and if not, then SW.D is enough to delay the refresh so I don't have to clip MF or DoTs.

[Kelesti]

Cast SW.D for the 1s GCD if you see VT or DP expiring very soon but not soon enough to start the VT cast.

This is flat out wrong.

In the time it takes to get one low damage Death out, two ticks of Mind Flay would outpace it. If you don't have enough time for Mind Flay, you should be doing nothing. It doesn't matter what Death's cooldown is, it's not worth using in the current state of the game.

[davie]

This is flat out wrong.

In the time it takes to get one low damage Death out, two ticks of Mind Flay would outpace it. If you don't have enough time for Mind Flay, you should be doing nothing. It doesn't matter what Death's cooldown is, it's not worth using in the current state of the game.

Don't forget it has at least 1 use for when you have to move , its prossibly the most useless spell shadow has, but at least it has 1 use

[Kelesti]

Don't forget it has at least 1 use for when you have to move , its prossibly the most useless spell shadow has, but at least it has 1 use

True enough. It does do more damage than Improved Plague's hit.

[shibbyy]

If you don't have enough time for Mind Flay, you should be doing nothing.

Sorry, but you should always be doing something, cast mind flay or mind blast or whatever, but don't stand around doing nothing it will decrease your dps 100% of the time.

[Ultima]

She probably means that it is not worth using as it uses a global CD, which may cause you to refresh the DoT later than you should. So it's better to wait for one second than to cast and spend 1.5~ seconds.

[Worshaka]

I highly doubt that you can increase your DPS by doing nothing... the more GCD's you use the more damage you will do. DPS is easy to analyse because it all comes down to maximising your GCD's. First way is to use the max amount of GCD's available, the 2nd way is to maximise the effect of those GCD's.

The only question here is whether the GCD of SW maximises the DPS relationship opposed to 2 ticks of MF which will take slightly more time than a GCD. To state that doing nothing for a second would be a better approach is rather counter intuiative... you'd have to show that the DPS loss of delaying a DoT refresh > than the effective damage you did delaying that DoT and I doubt you can show that.

[Ultima]

Can you not just work out the damage that the DoT adds from waiting and compare it to the likely damage of SW: D?

Anyway, I plan to flee this flee this thread and let Kelesti defend herself. Bye!

[Kelesti]

The point I made was closer to relevance prior to the 4pc10 that's so easily accessible to everyone now, about "doing nothing", which in past context was accurate.

The ideal, theoretical "exact GCD" exists. On paper. In practise, it doesn't. There won't be that magical time where you have exactly a Global Cooldown before you have to refresh Vampiric Touch or Plague. It'll either be short, or it'll be long. If it's Short, you short changed your DoT uptime. If it's longer, you missed potential mind flay ticks.

Prior to 4pc10, if you had 1GCD or less to refresh either of those (or a Mind Blast cooldown), you did nothing for that 1.2 seconds, just to not delay them (as the damage "gained" from bringing Death in did not outweigh the damage lost from delaying any of the other effects).

With 4pc10, 2 ticks of Mind Flay take the same time that Death does, but do more damage. So while the "Don't do anything" has gone by the wayside, bringing Death into the equation for anything outside of movement isn't a net gain, by any circumstance.

[Strykie]

Never break Mindflay for Dots.
Use Mindblast once or twice during VT durations to make sure your VT can get close to 100% uptime.
DP is so very slow that you can judge it much easier.

Log for "Valiane" is pretty piss poor for the gear they have, i did 600 less dps in less gear and with 320 ping as to <50 that EU people get.
I wouldn't look to take any advice/analyze their logs, you'll probably gimp yourself.
Same Bloodpact/sorrow/bite time

[zsun]

So now I'm wondering one thing. Seeing he clipped his mindflay quiet often, does that mean he refreshes whenever the dot is supposedly running out? I always thought it was best to time it on the second mindflay clip or the last one when you recast dots. Though yeah my uptime seems shit, and for some reason I still seem to clip. Even though I try to aim as close to getting it 1.1second cast to falling off.

Actually I don't recommend going to as precise as leaving VT till EXACTLY 1.1 seconds left before recasting it, simply because by doing so you are gimping your concentration on all other aspects of the fight at least once every 10 seconds (assuming your VT duration is 10 seconds). And this is just for VT, there is also DP to account for. Although if you practice it well enough and became quite good at it, that's fine with me, but normally I don't think it is a good idea to do this unless you are going for world records at DPS. (Actually I'm sure you don't leave it till 1.1 seconds, more like 1.3 seconds because of that "delay time" from the eyes to the brain and then from the brains to the fingers).

On the other hand, I also recommend to NOT clip that last tick on the Mind Flay. The most you will lose is half a second of downtime on VT. Between that extra tick of Mind Flay and half a second of extra uptime on VT, I'd definitely choose Mind Flay. As for "dead time" situations (around 1.5 seconds left till VT expires), where it is too late to channel another Mind Flay but too early to recast VT, I too simply wait it out doing nothing. However waiting should not be longer than half a second (usually this kind of dead time situations doesn't happen very often).

I'll give you a simple theoretical example. From the data you provided above, you have 28 clips on Mind Flay. Assuming each tick of Mind Flay does on average 6k damage, then you have effectively lost 168k damage. However by doing so, you have regained some uptime on your VT (and DP), and you may ask how many seconds of uptime did you regain? Well assuming each clip saved you 0.5 seconds, then you have successfully regained 14 seconds of VT (and DP) uptime. The question is, will VT (and DP) do enough damage to compensate 168k damage in 14 seconds? The simple answer is no.

I personally am not as hardcore as you are at playing my class, I don't even use a DoT Timer addon, lol... so technically I have no idea as to when is there 1.1 second remaining or 1.2 or whatever my VT cast time is (I don't even know myself o.o). But one thing I can tell you is that I don't clip mind flays for the pure purpose of maximizing DoT's uptime.