Doing the Multidot Dance in MoP

[MoanaLisa]

I will confess that I was never the greatest at multi-dotting on my best nights (could manage two OK but three was always a leap of faith...not the spell...just in the traditional sense). One thing I've noticed about the new spell schema is that I seem to be really busy just taking care of single target stuff including Surge of Darkness and Divine Insight procs.

I think that maintaining SW:Pain on two or three might be possible even without the MF refresh but I'm highly doubtful that it would be worth it to attempt to do this with VT as well. Since they're apparently moving us toward a more balanced (or unbalanced if you're unhappy about it) strategy of mixing nukes and dots, I foresee difficulties ahead. I believe that I've read somewhere that they (Blizzard) wanted to rethink this part of our spec since on good fights for multi-dotting we'd often run away with damage honors.

I know it's way early to really be talking about this yet but it seems to me that multi-dotting may be that one-ball-too-many-in-the-air event given the plethora of other things we're watching at the moment. Perhaps it's just because it's all new...

Any thoughts on this yet?

P.S. By the way, if anyone wants to say hello on the beta I'm on Lost Isles / Eschatonia / Guild is Reality Check.

[Rubine]

I can definitely see multi-dotting being a problem in MoP.

I played around at a dummy the other day on beta with having Surge of Darkness and Divine Insight. I hated it. I mean, I know some of my problem is not being comfortable with the standard Blizzard UI since I'm so used to my custom UI, but I felt like I was playing wack-a-mole with my buttons and not actually having a real rotation. I hope it changes...or I hope that those two talents don't end up being the best for DPS because I will be very unhappy.

[Blackmorgrim]

Surge of Darkness I believe is really a talent for those shadowpriest who really expressed an interest in a mage like rotation. Remember right now, it may seem very clunky because your haste levels are at endgame highs. When you hit 90 and haste drops from 32% down to 16 or 18%... you may see that the rotation becomes more manageable.

Plus, I still have a feeling the Surge of Darkness talent was more created with PVP and mobility in mind for when you can't really mindflay. When you have to constantly move, being able to throw out instant MS and auto-crit MBs will definitely make up for a large portion of the dps loss from being unable to mind flay.

Plus, keep in mind: Mind Flay has always been very important in the past, if not essential to our rotation. In BC it was the source of increased shadow damage. In Wrath it gained the ability to auto refresh SW:P. In Cata, it was not only a major generator of shadow orbs, but also procced evangelism, meaning just casting it increased our DPS by around 8-8.5%.

Realize that in MoP... mind flay does none of that. There is no evangelism... there's no damage increase proc... it doesn't even generate shadow orbs anymore. It is pure filler. As players, we need to keep that in mind and separate our emotional attachment to mind flay from the actual mechanics of not casting it.

However, as developers, I hope the folks at Blizz see that mindflay is filler that has been part of the body and soul of playing a shadow priest. The Icon of Mind Flay spawned the term 'face melter' to which many of us have referred to our class for ages. That's something to keep in mind if mechanics should begin to steer us away from casting mind flay.

Many of you newer shadowpriests (Wrath and later) might be skeptical about how you intend to multidot without mindflay auto refreshing. I would think that we'd have to do it the same way we did it back in BC. Multi-dotting effectively becomes massively dependant on stacking haste. The more haste the more gcds your dots last, meaning the more targets you can cast a dot on before the first one falls.

And again, keep in mind, in raiding, and maybe even heroics... you will be expected to change spec/glyphs as the situation dictates. While personal preference is an option, there will be fights that personal preference can be at a cost to your performance.

[MoanaLisa]

Realize that in MoP... mind flay does none of that. There is no evangelism... there's no damage increase proc... it doesn't even generate shadow orbs anymore. It is pure filler. As players, we need to keep that in mind and separate our emotional attachment to mind flay from the actual mechanics of not casting it.

As I noted earlier it's still very early and impossible to know anything. Over the years if I had to roughly categorize the class I'd say we are dots--channels--nukes. With the new talents I'm now a bit on the fence. Rubine said something about whack-a-mole which perfectly described how I was feeling after about 45 minutes on a dummy. It appears at this point as if dots wouldn't be in first position in that list, particularly since the reduction in damage for VT (which may or may not stick), but after a couple of days of really working with it in a more or less controlled environment, I'm not entirely sure what the precedence generally would be.

I suspect a lot of people feel the same way which is why there's a deep discomfort with things as they are: with dots perhaps pushed more to the background and MF to be used purely as filler...well, do the math :) [intended]

No argument from here that we'll be looking at things on a fight-to-fight basis in the future which is another reason why this may be a somewhat specious discussion for now. They may cut the proc rate in half for Surge of Darkness for all we know.

It would be nice to see the conversation begin to get beyond things like "SA's SUCK!!1!" and "Give us ravens!" which seems to be the preponderance of what people are saying.

[Annesh]

Keep in mind that assuming the talent tree stays roughly the same, they'll have to make the "cooldown" talents roughly equivalent DPS to the "random proc" talents, in order to fulfill their vision of a truly preference-based talent system. Shadowpriests who prefer the old way can ignore the proc talents completely and take AA and PI, and Shadowpriests who want a new rotation can take the proc talents and feel like Ret paladins, but neither will produce significantly superior DPS.

Also, fuck I'm drunk right now. Someone make sure I don't accidentally vendor all my fucking items.

[jtewell]

We have always had a priotiy system and once the theory crafters get some time with the new talents we will know if refreshing VT is higher then fdcl proc. Remember though just because you have a proc doesnt mean you have to use it. On a multi DOT fight i am gonna guess refreshing dots and then spamming mindsear will still be top dps with 3+ targets.

Also as someone mentioned earlier fdcl procs are amazing for pvp. I am a long time shadow pvper and let me tell you MF doesnt get much use now. The changes they have made to spriests so far are amazing for pvp. We should finally be top tier pvp viable with out needing a baby sitter.

[Twintop]

And again, keep in mind, in raiding, and maybe even heroics... you will be expected to change spec/glyphs as the situation dictates. While personal preference is an option, there will be fights that personal preference can be at a cost to your performance.

This! This! A million times this! I have a very strong hunch that Shadow Priests will have different optimal specs for soloing, dungeons/heroics, single target boss fights, multiple target/adds boss fights, and high movement boss fights. There might be some overlap between these groups, but the days of truly having "1 spec" and making a small change for a specific boss (I.E.: Glyph of Dispersion for crystals on Baelroc) are behind us.

I'm OK with this. It will keep the game from going stale and exceptional Shadow Priests will excel on a per-fight basis while other classes might not have as many options available to them to deal with different mechanics, thus stagnating...

Also as someone mentioned earlier fdcl procs are amazing for pvp. I am a long time shadow pvper and let me tell you MF doesnt get much use now. The changes they have made to spriests so far are amazing for pvp. We should finally be top tier pvp viable with out needing a baby sitter.

Season 12 might be the best time for Shadow PvP in a long, long time. Blizzard has a tendency to over-tune changes, especially at the beginning of an expansion. I fully expect Season 13 / T15 raids to come with a hefty nerf bat, but such is life in this world...of Warcraft.

[Blackmorgrim]

In regards to shadow pvp...

There's the new dark binding glyph, allowing us to heal in shadowform.

The change to phantasm, not only making fade remove movement impairing effects, it makes us immune to them for 3 seconds, and untargetable by all ranged attacks.

FDCL- giving us access to more mobile burst while we have dots ticking on our opponents.

In addition to psychic horror and psychic scream... we now have psyfiend or void tendrils.

Silence is now baseline.

Halo will be very powerful in arena for rooting out stealth targets. Even if its on a 25 sec cooldown, that 30 yard aoe range is nothing to scoff at.

I'm still curious to play around with divine star and its boomerang effect... to see if its somehow possible to kite the spell for at least its 15s duration.

Spectral Guise still probably needs work to be an effective pvp tool, but angelic bulwark would make it almost impossible for you to die while dispersion remains active.