I tried shadow priest. While I like devouring plague, it seems to take a fair amount of insanity to use. It seems like half the time, I do Vampiric Touch/SWP/MB/ then a couple Mind Flays to kill the mob. I would like to end each fight with devouring plague, but it isn’t working out that way at low levels. I don’t like Mind Flay that much, but it seems a larger part of the rotation than I expected. I was hoping that a typical fight would include say one Mind Flay and end with a Devouring Plague.
Is there a way to limit the number of mind flays you need to get enough insantity for devouring plague, or is the spec just designed to use mind flay a lot?
DP is a spender, and when you’re low level and mobs die very quickly you’re not going to be getting a good sense of what the normal build/spend cycle is like. They just die too fast.
If you want a better picture of what the high level rotation is like, use the Trial Character option to roll a temporary Priest and go hit a training dummy. If you want advice on leveling, then either just use DP every second or third mob to nuke it down quickly or start trying to pull more mobs at once.
Yeah at low levels things did seem to die too quickly to make use of it, and this is also due to how little insanity you generate over time at those levels.
This is the important thing to emphasise. Low level insanity generation is pretty awful, so even on mobs that live longer (like dungeon bosses) you will only generate enough Insanity to use it once or twice at most. It’s like that for most of the leveling process as well.
If you use the Death and Madness talent you get 40 insanity after every mob. That’s 80% of the cost of a DP, and the incidental insanity you generate killing a mob will get you the rest. With this you can easily start every pull with a DP (or VT/SW:P then DP, as I like to do.) DP is a 6 second dot, so using it at the end of a fight is useless.
I looked this up, this death and madness talent is a big benefit if you use Shadow Word: Death. My first impression when reading the description of Shadow Word: Death was NO WAY AM I GOING TO USE THAT. So how do you use shadow word death without taking the penalty? Is it common to say get a mob just about dead with Mind Flay and then quick finishing it off with shadow word: death?
Yeah, or just take the hit. Shadow Priests self-heal quite a lot with Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague, and you can use Vampiric Embrace in a pinch. Just don’t do it when you’re almost dead and you’ll be fine.
The backlash damage isn’t that bad unless you’re hitting something with a large amount of damage amplification on it, and you don’t take any damage at all if Shadow Word: Death deals the killing blow. For most overworld mobs, as long as you cast Death when they are under 20% HP you will probably get the kill and take no damage.