I tried and tried to google this but no one seems to have a good 10.2 side by side comparison of mana regen / atonement heals / dps…
Basically - what are you giving up to use that point somewhere else until you have tier pieces.
Wowhead makes some great points for the use of each, but I am a numbers nerd and would love to see the breakdown.
I haven’t tested Shadowfiend, but this is what I saw using Mindbender…
Mindbender was my #1 dps ability. Most of that damage comes from the Inescapable Torment (Mindblast + Penance) cleave. The avg melee hit is 6.9k and the avg hit from the AOE cleave is 31.7k per target.
It also does a crap load of healing. 500+ hits a dungeon and 9k healing a cast which made it my 3rd highest healing ability after Atonement + Radiance. It also printed out 250k mana… literally sat above 90% mana almost the entire time on trash.
I casted it 35 times in a dungeon. Average uptime was 18s… It’s probably around a 35s reset.
Definitely feels like it would clap out Shadowfiend imho just from the higher uptime, free damage + healing, and mana return. Probably needs some nerfs.
The answer right now is Mindbender only until you have tier.
Once you have 4pc tier, you can reduce Shadowfiend enough that you MIGHT want to take it. If you do, you’re spending that point in Blaze of Light or DA depending on what you don’t have.
Realistically playing optimally, you’re going to have about a 30-45s cooldown on mindbender with 4p, and a 45-60s CD with sfiend.