Enjoying the mana returns from 3/3 Meditation (inside a Sindragosa Frost Tomb)

Natarumah at Twisted Faith recently theorised that there might be a point at which a heavily hasted Shadow Priest would “gain” more mana during combat by talenting into Focused Mind instead of Meditation. He’s absolutely right to ask the question.

Meditation works off our least favourite DPS boosting stat: Spirit. Furthermore even at high Spirit amounts it returns mana in the form of mana per 5 seconds (Mp5) which returns a constant stream of mana back to us for the length of the fight regardless of how many spells we output in that space of time. As we cast more and more spells during a set period, for example a standard 5 minute boss encounter, Mp5 becomes less valuable and insufficient to replenish (for lack of a better word) our resources as we spend mana more quickly.

Focused Mind, on the other hand, is a straight up, spell for spell, discount.

The trouble is this: we’ve been led to believe that 3/3 Meditation is mandatory in any Priest’s raiding build. And that Focused Mind is unnecessary because we shouldn’t lack for mana as Shadow Priests. Is that really still the case? Which is better in Icecrown Citadel, in practice?

A Case Study – Me

At the start of Icecrown Citadel I was talented for 3/3 Mediation and 1/3 Focused Mind – freeing up 2 points for Improved Vampiric Embrace. Months later and my talent build hasn’t changed. I started ICC with about 750 Haste. I gemmed for it, chose lower ilvl trinkets for it.

Now I’m at 935 Haste. I don’t gem for it, I don’t actively seek out Haste items. Yet even I have noticed a change in how I approach and manage my mana bar between then and now. That is to say – I didn’t bother managing it at all at the start of ICC. Shadowfiend was a DPS boost on a 3 minute cooldown and Dispersion was my 90% immunity, get-out-of-jail-free card. Now I actively use Shadowfiend to refill my mana bar as early in the fight as I can and try and bring him out a second time before the fight ends. If there’s even a tiny five second window in which I need to run across the room, run out of fire or stop casting for some other reason I reach for Dispersion.

Maybe it’s time to change our thinking. Is Meditation really so great? In my mind there’s only one way to know for sure. In this post I’ve gone through my latest World of Logs parses and extracted data from three fights in which:

1. I’m pretty confident that I played it (cast x,y,z) the same way I have been for weeks
2. I didn’t die
3. We didn’t wipe and followed a pretty standard strategy/approach

The three fights I’ve chosen – Festergut, Professor Putricide and Sindragosa – have been selected to represent how a Shadow Priest might cast in three very different fights – Single Target, Multi Target and AoE – respectively. I’ve tried to liven things up by colour coding a lot of the spell specific stuff. Hopefully it will also make the tables easier to understand. I’ve also dragged out the methodology and assumptions and stuck them way at the bottom as totally optional reading.

The Three Encounters

Assumed that SW:P was cast twice: once with 5/5 Shadow Weaving and once with max debuffs from other players.

There is no easy way to see how many times SW:P was applied. So I went in and counted each one in World of Logs for the duration of the fight. Shadow Word: Pain was cast 7 times on Prof Putricide and 10 times on Gas Clouds and Volatile Oozes. Therefore Shadow Word: Pain was cast 17 times.

Counting the Shadow Word: Pain casts individually shows that I cast it 8 times on Sindragosa and 11 times on Ice/Frost Tombs. Therefore Shadow Word: Pain was cast 19 times. I should also point out that I didn’t cast any AoE during the first of the 3 air phases, presumably because I was in a Frost Tomb myself. I think that’s pretty normal, but if you get lucky and don’t get Frost Tombed during any of the air phases your Mind Sear count would be higher.

Spell Costs (in Mana) with and without Focused Mind

Talenting into Focused Mind only reduces the cost of our “Mind” spells. It’s a direct discount on the cost to cast Mind Sear, Mind Blast and Mind Flay by up to 15%. No other spells are affected. Base mana of a level 80 Priest is 3863 mana. Final values are rounded up/down to closest whole number.

If you apply those costs to the number of each spell cast in the three fights (Festergut, Putricide and Sindragosa) you end up with these final mana costs:

• In Festergut talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 6536 mana
• In Professor Putricide talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 9336 mana
• In Sindragosa talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 10466 mana

Lets Consider Meditation

I have 238 Spirit. But just in case I’m not normal – which is quite possible – I’m going to calculate off the BiS (non heroic) 25 man gear set from Shadowpriest.com which ends up with 250 Spirit (base spirit + 70 from gear). When calculating Mediation I think it’s important to factor in the 80 Spirit we get by buffing ourselves with Prayer of Spirit. This boosts the BiS Shadow Priest gear set up to 330 Spirit; 210 mana per 5 seconds (mp5) while not casting.

Three points in Meditation that gives us half of our mana regeneration from Spirit out of combat (210 mp5) back to us during combat: 105 mp5. The amount of actual mana returned depends on the duration of the fight. In the three examples:

• In Festergut talenting into Mediation would gain you 5040 mana
• In Professor Putricide talenting into Mediation would gain you 10710 mana
• In Sindragosa talenting into Mediation would gain you 11760 mana

Mediation vs Focused Mind in Conclusion

Now we get to the most important bit – which talent actually returns the most mana fight for fight?

Focused Mind or Meditation return nearly identical results in practice at this level of gear: heavily hasted (thus casting more spells) with very little spirit items equipped. There’s simply not much difference between the performance of either talent.

Meditation seems to win out on longer fights, with or without Mind Sear.

Perhaps Meditation will always perform well even when we avoid equipping items with Spirit simply because Priests start out with a nice base amount of Spirit and we will always be able to boost that quite significantly by self buffing Prayer of Spirit.

Focused Mind only reduces the cost of our least expensive commonly used spells: Mind Flay and Mind Blast. Single target fights aren’t the fights that really drain our mana pool – saving mana here isn’t really a concern.

The fights that really drain our mana quickly are fights that give us multiple targets to DoT up. Our DoTs are our most expensive spells. If Focused Mind applied to our DoTs (Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain) instead of our direct damage casts I would definitely recommend choosing Focused Mind over Meditation. It would make for a much more interesting talent choice too: something that you would really only benefit from in fights where you are running several DoTs over multiple targets. But that’s when Shadow Priests really need some mana returned back to us.

Focused Mind might have performed better in Festergut because, not only is it a short fight, there is very little downtime during Festergut and no phase changes like there is in Professor Putricide and Sindragosa. Phase change downtime is an ideal chance to reap the benefits of mana returned through Mp5. Remember, Focused Mind isn’t going to save you mana unless you’re casting one of those three “Mind” spells. It might be worth mentioning that about one tenth of the Festergut fight will see me under the effects of Heroism – during which I cast pretty much nothing but Mind Flay – a situation in which Focused Mind would really shine.

But I have 4 talent points?!

Considering how similar the actual returns from Focused Mind and Meditation are in the three fights that I’ve analysed I would normal advise Shadow Priests to choose whichever talent is less difficult to reach in the talent tiers, or whichever talent has less prerequisites. Fortunately neither Focused Mind or Meditation are really out of our way in the talent tiers and furthermore, most Shadow Priests have more than 3 talents hanging around that could be dropped into mana regenerating talents.

I really like Improved Vampiric Embrace. That leaves me with 1 point in Focused Mind and 3 points in Meditation. Have you also got 4 points spread amongst the two? Is 3/3 Mediation and 1/3 Focused Mind the best option? Or is there a significantly better combination?

• 3/3 Mediation = 105 Mp5
• 2/3 Mediation = 69 Mp5
• 1/3 Mediation = 36 Mp5

The winning combination for each fight is highlighted below:

Point for point the talents perform equally well. There is no clear winning combination.

Throw your final points into either talent and I doubt you’ll be able to tell the difference. I do think it’s fair to say that 3/3 Meditation is no longer mandatory. I wouldn’t refuse a Shadow Priest raiding applicant if they talented for 3/3 Focused Mind instead of 3/3 Meditation.

Notes

Some notes on how I got to the actual results are below. If you trust me – feel free to skip the small print!

How I Counted the Casts using World of Logs Data

Channeled Spells: Mind Flay and Mind Sear I assumed that each counted Mind Flay and Mind Sear (both channeled spells) hits and crits – displayed as Direct Damage in World of Logs – are actually recording 1 tick of the channeled spell.

Mind Flay ticks 3 times in 1 channeled cast. So in the Festergut table 122 hits with Mind Flay + 118 crits with Mind Flay = 240 ticks of Mind Flay. 240 divided by 3 is 80 so it is assumed that I cast the spell Mind Flay 80 times, not 240 times.

Mind Sear ticks 5 times – once per second – in one 5 second channeled cast. So in the Sindragosa table 56 hits with Mind Sear + 53 crits with Mind Sear = 109 ticks of Mind Sear. 109 divided by 5 is 21.8 so it is assumed that I cast the spell 22 times, not 109 times. I should also point out that I only cast Mind Sear during the second and third air phase and not at all during the first. I was one of the trapped players in the first air phase. If I had not been trapped I would have cast more than 40 Mind Sears during the fight which might have led to a different conclusion.

Devouring Plague and Improved Devouring Plague Improved Devouring Plague is an effect that occurs when Devouring Plague is cast and instantly deals some damage. It is a side effect of casting the spell Devouring Plague, not a spell you can cast with a mana cost associated. However, as this effect occurs just once at the start of each cast of Devouring Plague I used the Improved Devouring Plague count to count how many times Devouring Plague was cast.

Vampiric Touch Vampiric Touch is a damage over time spell. It deals damage every 3 seconds over 15 seconds per cast – 5 ticks for 1 cast. The number of hits and crits are added together and then divided by 5. Remainders are rounded up in case the spell has been reapplied too early or it did not tick out when combat ended.

Shadow Word: Pain In both the Festergut and Sindragosa examples Shadow Word: Pain was counted manually from the World of Logs timeline showing damage done by this spell. As Shadow Word: Pain can be refreshed indefinitely there is no clear cut method to calculate when it was cast based on the amount of times it ticked or dealt damage.

The Tedious Spells Cast x Spell Cost Calculations

This is the full table that I used to multiply all the spell costs by the number of times each spell was cast.

Staff, Dagger and Mace. In case you missed it: none of them are swords.

In Naxxramas I fought a political war to gain the right to bid DKP for the Shadow Priest best-in-slot weapon. In Ulduar, I lugged around a Guiding Star, a mace which other Shadow Priests at the time were forbidden to roll on. For Trial of the Crusader I had the opportunity to get my hands on a dagger for a change and not just any dagger, my first weapon in Wrath of the Lich King intended for damage dealers.

What do the Torch of Holy Fire and Guiding Star have in common? Mp5. Mp5 has no damage-increasing value to a Shadow Priest. We have scads of mana regenerating abilities, passive and active, at our disposal. Trust me, we don’t need Mp5.

When I passed on the Battered Hilt it wasn’t really a difficult decision. I can’t use Quel’Delar, Lens of the Mind. It’s a Sword. And Priests can’t equip Swords. And the Mace equivalent (at the time) had no Haste. It had Mp5. Making it significantly inferior to other weapons at that item level. Blizzard eventually changed the mace:

we have made a change that removes the mp5 from the main hand mace and changed that to haste to match the sword to make it more dps-worthy

I don’t understand it. Healers and casters alike love Haste. We all love Critical Strike rating. We all Most of us love Spirit (to differing degrees, yes). The only stat that you can put on a caster weapon that will turn the healers away is Hit Rating. The only stat you can put on a caster weapon that will turn us damage dealers away is Mp5.

So why put either? There’s nothing to stop Blizzard from filling our Tier items with the necessary Hit or Mp5. I’d much prefer to have to juggle having enough Hit on the rest of my gear – Tier, Bind on Pickup or crafted gear – than getting a chunk of it on my weapon. I heal with the same item, so I’d happily ditch the +hit component on Blade of the Tarasque. A healer stuck with an Mp5 weapon will be using that same weapon to DPS too I’ll bet.

The only reason I can think of for putting Mp5 or Hit on a weapon is to reduce demand for that item. Tanks and physical DPS don’t roll on the same weapons. And it would suck if half your raid considered the +1000 Spellpower/+100 Haste/+100 Crit weapon to be their Best-in-slot. Assume a raid made up of 4 tanks, 6 healers, 8 physical DPS and 7 caster DPS:

• If an item is clearly for tanks only you’re looking at about 25% chance of winning
• If an item is clearly for healers you’re looking at about 17% of winning
• If an item is for physical DPS you’ve only got about 13% chance of winning
• If an item is for caster DPS you’ve got about 14% chance of winning

That seems pretty fair to me. But if there was nothing to differentiate the healers and caster DPS items then those 11 players have only a 9% chance of winning an item. Or think of it like this, you might need to see the weapon you want drop 10 times before you win it. A tank needs only see it drop (at the most) 4 times before they have it.

In Monday night’s raid an argument started up when the Blood Prince Council dropped a sweet offhand: Shadow Silk Spindle. All the caster DPS, myself included, and most of the healers jumped in to bid. I left the bidding at about 4000 DKP (what I’d paid for my current, +hit offhand from ToC) and I think it sold to a Resto Druid for almost double that amount.

Party 3 wasn’t happy (that would be the party the caster DPS are slotted into by raid leaders everywhere). One of our Mages argued that it was a DPS item because another offhand existed elsewhere “for healers”. And that a healer bidding on the Shadow Silk Spindle was just revealing that they hadn’t done their homework or planned their gear upgrades.

Apparently because there is no Spirit on the Shadow Silk Spindle it isn’t intended for healers. (By the way, is anyone else having flashbacks to the Mage-post-3.1 mentality “its got Spirit on it, so it’s for Mages, duh”? Oh the irony) I was perplexed. I don’t think I’ve ever made a gear upgrade decision based on the presence of Spirit on an item for Shadow or for Discipline. I said as much in Party chat and pointed out that I thought that the offhand was ideal for Discipline, so who was I to say that it wasn’t also ideal for other healing classes?

If this is the amount of debate caused by an ambiguous offhand item, would I be witness to the same debate if a dagger with the same distribution of Spellpower, Intellect, Haste and Crit dropped? You’re right. It would probably be even worse.

So they may still be some ambiguity about Spirit and whether it is or isn’t a healer stat. But there’s no ambiguity about Mp5. Mp5 only benefits healers. There is no talent, armor or glyph that says “Your mana regained per 5 seconds is converted into spellpower”. There is with Spirit, but not Mp5.

So guess what the new Shadow Priest best-in-slot weapon is from Icecrown Citadel?

Royal Scepter of Terenas II
Binds when picked up
Main Hand [Mace]
+71 Stamina
+71 Intellect
Item Level 271
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63
Equip: Restores 31 mana per 5 sec
Equip: Increases spell power by 792

And here’s the Sword that we won’t ever be able to get our hands on:

Bloodsurge, Kel’Thuzad’s Blade of Agony
Binds when picked up
Main Hand [Sword]
+71 Stamina
+71 Intellect
Item Level 271
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63
Equip: Improves haste rating by 63
Equip: Increases spell power by 792

63 Haste rating, that’s what we’re short changed. Haste Rating is currently valued to be as important as Spell power for Shadow Priests (that is, until you reach about 800 Haste). So to make the Mace as good as the Sword for Shadow Priests they would either have to:

• add 63 Haste or
• add about 90 Critical Strike Rating or
• boost the total spell power up to 855.

Not likely. So instead we’re also going to be forced to endure a ton of healer hate (well if the Torch of Holy Fire incident taught me anything). Competition for the sword will be limited to Mages, Warlocks and Holy Paladins. Competition for the mace will include Restoration and Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priests, Moonkin, Restoration Druids, Holy and Discipline Priests.

I wonder if this is some new type of Hybrid Tax. 5-10% less DPS and crappy weapons you need to squabble with your healers over.

** Update **
If you’ve come across this article because you are a Mage and genuinely want to know the value of Mp5 to your class the answer is zero. Mages receive no true benefit – you will not see an increase in damage done and if you are running out of mana this problem is not best solved by choosing gear with Mp5. Mp5 is not Spirit (which does have value for Mages because it converts to Critical Strike, therefore increasing damage).

Zaldinar, a respected theorycrafter in the Mage community, values armor statistics for Mages like so (Fire Mages, PVE, not hit capped):

1. Hit: 29
2. Spell Power: 27
3. Haste: 23
4. Critical Strike: 18
5. Intellect: 6
6. Spirit: ?*

For example, compare [Cassandri's Cap of Intelligence] +20 Intellect to [Lathere's Mask of Striking Blows]  +10 Critical Strike. According to Zaldinar, each point of Intellect is worth 6 and each point of Critical Strike is worth 18:

Cassandri’s Cap of Intelligence = 20 Intellect x 6 = 120
Lathere’s Mask of Striking Blows = 10 Critical Strike x 18 = 180

A Mage would benefit more by equipping [Lathere's Mask of Striking Blows].

No other stat on your armor will increase your damage. Armor, Mp5, Attack Power, you can ignore these stats because you gain nothing by increasing them.

* Zaldinar does not include a weighting for Spirit on his Loot Rank template most likely because the Template was created prior to Patch 3.1 and Spirit had no value to Mages at the time. Spirit is quite important for Mages now, but I’ll need to do some further research to find out how it compares to the other stats.

*** End Update ***

Since reaching level 80 on my Shaman I have pugged Naxx 25 each week and lost more than (yes, I’m counting) eight MP5 items to Mages and other DPSers.

This weekend I lost Chains of Adoration and Seized Beauty to the same Mage in the run.

Upon inspection the Mage’s gear really isn’t that bad. A mix of item level 200 and 213 epics, all with suitable stats – hit, spell power, crit etc and sensible gemming.

So I’m convinced the mage in question does know what gear benefits their class otherwise I’d be seeing blue gem sockets filled with Spell Power + Mp5 or something right?

Honestly when an Mp5 item drops I really don’t expect anyone except the Holy Paladins and Restoration Shamans to roll for it.

And just the other day I was reading a thread (I think via blue.mmo-champion) when Blizzard voiced their concern that Paladins could ignore the need for Mp5 significantly, whilst Shamans cannot ignore Mp5 just as healing Priests and Druids cannot afford to ignore Spirit.

Yet in my pugs an Mp5 item drops and all the healers roll as do many of the dps. Pure greed? A misunderstanding in the Mage community regarding the benefit of Mp5 versus other stats? People desperate to achieve the [Epic] achievement?

I’m seeing this trend each week on Caelstraez. Is it happening on all servers and in all pugs? What are your experiences on other realms?