Ana wrote:Fear shouldn't make them run that far. They always go straight away from you as soon as you cast for like 2 seconds, then stop and start wandering around (while you already flay them, keeping them at bay). Or they should, anyway. Maybe Nost messed up fear mechanics again while I wasn't looking. Been a few months since I leveled my priest.
It did take me a while to get the hang of setting up the flays after fears, admittedly. But once there I had the channel interrupted maybe once every 15-20 mobs.
Psychic scream will make them run at a higher speed than normal (almost like they popped Sprint) directly away from the priest's original position . They will run for ~2.5 seconds, then stop for a brief moment, repeat until Psychic Scream ends. As you start to channel Mind Flay, they will continue to run out of range. If you're lucky, you can get one Mind Flay off before the mob is out of range of it. If you're unlucky, you'll start to channel a second and the mob will run out of range and interrupt it, wasting your mana half way through the channel.
I am playing from the U.S., so perhaps my latency could be affecting this technique's performance, but maybe 4 out of 5 mobs will do this, and 1 out of 5 will also run out of range of the wand, even when chasing them during the GCD of Psychic Scream.
Ana wrote:Why are you even getting hit by mobs when in shadowform? Like, at all? All the advantages of PWS you listed are irrelevant if the target never touches you (and it shouldn't).
Just to be clear, my rotation:
MB -> SWP (with strafe-kite if didn't start at max range) -> 2x flay -> fear, chase on GCD -> 2x flay -> another flay or wand, doesn't matter, dot will finish the target anyway
I am getting hit because 480 mana spent on casting Power Word: Shield after a mob dies is better than spending 350 (Mind Blast) + 820-1025 (4-5x Mind Flay) + 96 (Rank 1 Psychic Scream) = 1266-1471 mana to kill a mob before it can touch me, especially when you're rocking as much Spirit as my guide suggests you should. You won't have the mana pool nor the regeneration to do that many casts on every mob without drinking. The DPS you gain for killing mobs that much faster is not worth the XP/hour lost by having to drink that much more often.
I don't cast Mind Blast unless there are other players nearby who are stealing mob tags or when I'm in PvP combat where DPS matters more than DPM. It doesn't deal nearly as much damage per mana as Mind Flay or Shadow Word: Pain does, and using it every mob will burn through mana too quickly. Yes, it does the most damage per second of any priest spell, but it does not do the most damage per mana. The only spell that does less damage per mana is Smite (and if you're Undead, Devouring Plague), and getting the most damage out of your mana is what is important while leveling, not the most damage per second.
I don't cast Psychic Scream because it leaves me vulnerable to ganks, and it leaves me vulnerable to the possibility of multiple mobs swarming me with no way to get them off.
The only reason I cast Mind Flay at all is because my Spirit Tap can compensate for casting 2-3 per mob without ever having to stop.