When discussing shadowpriest AoE I realized I was as unhappy with what felt like limitations. There is something I just don’t like much about using searing nightmare. Part of it is the sitting and channeling mind sear, aswell and how clunky the nightmares fit into a single channel. Part of it is that you also still need to be getting in Void Touch, Mind Blasts and Void Bolts for spirits. Part of it is how it feels like it only feels really good on big target pulls. It’s just really busy and not rewarding for me.
But then I thought back to when I was messing with misery and focusing on spirits after getting the second potency slot for haunting apparations. The damage wasn’t bad by any means. I was pretty surprised at how much of my overall damage was spirits by the end of each run, firmly taking #2 spot. It didn’t have 10k+ spikes that you’d see on a big nightmare, but it was stable on a variety of 3-4 target pulls. I did position much closer to the targets to try and make sure that damage was landing, standing just out of melee range on most pulls, which has its drawbacks.
So now I want to try it again, but go a little more all in with it. Try some talents I don’t really run ever as well as a legendary I don’t think many people run. I am excited to give it a whirl and will report back on how it felt.
Shadowflame Prism Legendary.
Death and Madness
Misery
Auspicious Spirits
Mindbender
Ancient Madness/Surrender to Madness
Haunting Apparitions and Rabid Shadows for conduits.
Mindbender would have some pretty good uptime and synergize with Death and Madness towards the end of a pull. On top of that the extra insanity generation from the attack speed and duration sounds tasty.
I wonder about Ancient Madness to incite more crit procs for double spirits, but Surrender to Madness might come out ahead with the extra mind blasts that would synergize with shadowflame prism. Because the build and playstyle would be cleaving while dumping most of your damage on a single target, surrender to madness might also be a way safer option than when you are running nightmare.
I had to do some torghast to make the legendary. Over the weekend I will be running a bunch with it and taking some notes. The one quick mythic dungeon I did was a bad sample because the mage was killing stuff too fast. Although first boss of plaguefall I did about 6.5k and mindbender was a pretty big chunk of that. Little dude hits hard with the conduit and hero on him.
I too cannot stand using Searing Nightmare. Feels awful. Throws off what I consider one of the most satisfying rotations I’ve played without it.
3 Likes
I just wanna spawn spooky bois.
2 Likes
I think you go NightFae then either a full crit>haste build and take STM (along with the other talents+conduits needed) or stick with haste>mast>crit and take Ancient madness.
My first set up absolutely maximizes the amount of void forms you can get (3 in 1.5 min, is 45 sec), so maxing out your crit and haste will net you tons of spooky bois and mind bender smacks.
Second set up would be 1 less void form per 1.5min, but your overall damage should theoretically be burstier imo.
Hopefully some of that makes sense lol.
Maximizing voidforms for extra spirits and mind blasts for shadowflame prism is definitely a positive. Night Fae would be ideal, I have necro though and just to optimize that I am not gonna switch. Surrender to Madness helps round it out though, especially if you time it well. Often people try and snipe a low health target for safety, but you lose the extra insanity generation and cast while moving. If you can get in 15+ seconds of the double insanity you really notice the extra DP which pumps out more spirits.
The hard part is that you really would want to have really high crit with this. Ancient Madness helps for an initial pull but you really feel the slowdown of not having the extra voidform from STM. The extra charge of mind blast and spirits from void bolts outweighs the possible extra spirits from crits.
Shadowflame Prism also seemed to vary a bit, sometimes it was 780ish a hit, sometimes 1.5k to 2.2k. I’ll have more data later tonight. The teleport function is quite nice as you can snap it to where you want it with a SWD. Again I need to run different levels of keys to see better data, where targets live long enough to see it come through.
Mind Bender uptime on average was really good, 22-25 seconds. If running STM (my one run was Ancient) you could probably push that to almost 30 seconds. That would be if you used two voidforms in one pull instead of using eruption one pull then STM the next though. Mixing them between pulls probably would be better for overall throughput. I was genuinely surprised on the bosses how much damage it was doing. At a glance my logs looked like my unholy dk, it was a significant amount of my overall, almost 1k dps alone from just his attacks, not even factoring in the extra DP damage from the insanity. This also was running a super quick m0 (had raid coming up and just wanted to try it out once) so that was just one cast of mindbender. On a fight that lasts long enough to get 2 out, you are really seeing a lot of extra damage. Also due to the teleport on every mindblast he is very sticky if boss has any kind of movement.
Probably will be running a dozen keys or so over tonight and tomorrow and will post breakdowns of dps per pull and ability, uptimes and such.
1 Like
I think one of the big issues with Shadowflame Prism is the spells it’s tied to.
Mind Blast and Shadow Word Death aren’t spells we’re using often enough to get good value out of Shadowflame except for maybe Explosive weeks. If it triggered off of void bolt, devouring plague, or maybe even insanity expenditure (so it synergizes with searing nightmare) it’d be way way better.
I’d agree on SW:D but Mind Blast - no. The cooldown is rather short at 6 seconds and you get charges from voidform, and if you are casting voidform right after using mind blast you are getting even more out in a shorter window. You also gain them through Dark Thoughts.
Also considering it teleports your Mindbender, does AoE and adds duration, you actually want to use SW:D during your bender, and you will get 2 of them off per mindbender cast. Even more so if you start to get procs of Death and Madness.
The actual damage portion so far seemed lackluster but I need to run more to see. It is similar to call of the void though in that you get a good chunk of insanity with the increased duration of mindbender. So you would need to factor in the damage from shadowflame itself, the damage from the increased duration of mindbender and the extra devouring plagues you would get off. It at least is completely removed from RNG - you WILL be getting a fairly steady amount of insanity every pull with its low CD.
Just a note - Mindbender has attack speed of 1.5 but also benefits from your haste, including hero/lust/power infusion. Add that to conduit - for me that was about 108% haste on the mindbender itself bringing it to about .72 attack speed. Average duration was 25 seconds which would be 34/35 attacks. Thats 175 insanity on that stacked cast of mindbender. Considering that’s when you throw the kitchen sink at it - without any other haste buffs just base and conduit would be about 24/25 attacks or 125 insanity.
Just like call of the void, the hidden aspect of shadowflame prism is the extra insanity generation - extra damage from the AoE hit and duration of mindbender is icing on the cake. The real comparison though is how does it hold up to searing nightmare. If I were to change anything I would make it do a fixed amount of damage spread amongst up to 5 targets so it would not have the exact same problem as searing - smaller target pulls.