Three things (for Disc healers):
- The thing about Shadow Mend is you have to use it. Nothing else is as effective for triage.
- People wonder why some Disc priests cast PW: Shield so much. PW: Shield can be cast on the move, applies atonement on the move, and is more more mana efficient in a lot of cases if you expect your target to take damage or more damage.
- Shadow Mend spamming on big pulls and/or for triage causes excessive mana burn–which I think negates the value of doing large pulls. This is because you can’t do any or much damage in these cases, and then you have to stop and drink.
I wonder though if you were to cast a Shadow Mend and then a PW:S what the result would be in some cases. Like if your shield then prevented all damage would the S Mend damage then kick in?
Shadowmend heals for 72% more healing, costs less mana, and casts at the same speed.
The bonus healing is contingent on the target taking damage - either from the DOT or any other source - but if other damage is being taken it’s just a far more effective and mana efficient heal.
Personally for Shadow I’d rather they just remove it though and buff our self-shielding, healing and Vampiric Embrace.
Here is the tool tip info for shadow mend on a 212 Disc priest:
1550 Mana
Instant (meaning can be cast on the move)
Shields an ally for 15 seconds., absorbing 2707 damage. You cannot shield the target again for 7.5 seconds.
Here is the tool tip info for shadow mend:
1750 mana
1.2 second cast (not instant, not able to be cast on the move)
Wraps an ally in shadows which heal for 5251, but at a price.
The ally will take 263 damage every one second until they have taken 2625 total damage from all sources, or leave combat.
So let’s do some math. First, the mana cost of a shield is 12% less. That is 100% - (1550/1750)*100.
Also, the absorption (or future healing) of a shield is 2707 when a lot of damage is about to come in. The healing of a shadow mend is 5251 after damage has already come in and a lot more is expected. But if you are still in combat and no more is expected then the healing a shadow mend does is 2630 healing, so less than the shield. But then why would you cast a shield if no more incoming damage was expected?
I personally like to shield when on the move and you expect future damage to come in. It also puts out atonement so that once you can do damage casting Schism (if talented into that), Mind Games and Smite when planted, where you can heal via damage via atonement. It also gives you some flexibility in that it offers you the freedom to move if you have to to avoid being stunned (on pride or otherwise) or avoid avoidable damage. PW:S also allows you to do that and then not have to cast shadow mend when you can plant. Hence you can get to doing dps sooner which translates into getting the mobs or boss down faster which in turn means less total healing needed in the fight.
It used to be a massive heal, now it’s eh. When it crits, it’s great though, but that’s rare as you can’t stack crit anymore through reforging.
Smend is great but they need to call it Flash Shadow Mend or something and give us a slower shadow mend which costs less mana heals more.
Idk. Switch Holy - it’s way more interactive and fun. Does about the same damage too if not more lol
Yeah, I don’t know. I find when I heal holy that it can pump the heals but you need the Flash Concentration buff. I like disc because you can simultaneously heal and do damage. When playing holy healing and damage are mutually exclusive. So on a cast by cast basis you do more as holy, but over a whole run you do more total damage casts as disc because you can cast smite (for example) a lot more.
When I play disc (in pugs) I do more total damage in a typical run. Mind you, I am rusty at holy because I don’t play it often. I also find holy to require you to have the flash concentration buff up at 5 stacks, which also requires maintenance casts when you could be doing damage.
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if you cast it on someone actively receiving damage the heal per second is very high because the enemy is negating the bad part of shadow word mend.
The people knocking smend as a mechanic haven’t played disc enough. It’s incredibly high throughput with our mastery, in dungeons it’s not uncommon to get a 20k+ crit on people. If they are taking damage then the dot is basically a non mechanic.
If people aren’t taking damage and / or aren’t in danger you should probably be healing them with atonement. This creates a very interesting mechanic for disc where you have to think about how to balance your hps sources.
My biggest problem with it is smend scales way better than atonement healing so your amount of smend spam goes up as you push higher m+ keys. I’d rather they shift that balance back.
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The bigger question is #1 why do disc priests have this over flash heal like they have had for the last 15 years, and #2 I have never actually seen anyone take damage or an actual dot from this on anyone in the game, bg or dungeon.
Disc’s identity shifted in legion to be a mix of light and shadow, with a focus on the players mental fortitude and discipline to balance both without being consumed. It received shadowmend during the legion prepatch, which is well over 4 years ago.
The dot component of shadow mend has been explained multiple times in this thread, but the tldr is that the debuff shadow mend applies holds until the target takes X amount of damage from any combined sources. Some can come from the dot, some from melee attacks, boss mechanics, whatever.
The bottom line is that if you heal someone with shadow mend who is taking damage from other sources, that damage will likely happen before the dot has a chance to tick or do anything, instead removing it.
Shadow mend also only applies the dot if you’re in combat, so you can use it to blast people up after packs or out of combat without worrying about them taking damage. The damage they take is almost always a negligible part of the spell’s effect though. The most obvious way to see it is to put yourself in combat with a mob, let it hit you a bit, then fear it and shadow mend yourself.
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