Mind Bender vs From Darkness Comes Light

[LienFeng 1]

I've been playing a priest since back in wrath, started raid healing as Disc in ICC.  Currently healing for my guild's raid group as Disc with a Shammy and a Druid.

 

My raid leader has recently started leveling a priest.  He played Holy back in Vanilla but has not played one much until he started leveling this one. 

 

He just hit 45 and took from darkness comes light.  He was asking me about my build, and I said I didn't use it for the most part, except on some situational boss fights (like Gara in MSV for the spirit realm).  This of course started an argument that the other two talents are garbage and FDCL is superior for all fights, though he did say mind bender might be ok situationaly (for high dispel fights like pandas or Sha in SoO).

 

My responce was that I normally use mindbender, as the mana regen from it is constant and on a short cool down.  On low healing fights I will use Solace, if smite healing is more effective (usually 5 mans or older lfrs).  

 

He said that mana regen is crap, and that the free procs (which I pointed out are random) for his priest were almost always up, where my experiance was that the talent did not proc enough to actually be useful. 

 

Currently running a crit build with the 2 piece t16

 

So looking for other opinions on the two talents.  Which is more useful?  Situationally is one better than the other from some bosses? 

 

 

[Gwenymph 414]

If he has not played Holy since Vanilla, recently hit 45, and has not yet started to raid on this toon; it is hard to see how much weight his argument could hold without citing some concrete sources.

 

If you are using Solace on CD it is the better Mana Regen and Mana per Heal talent if that is a concern for your play style.  Personally, I only run w/ Mindbender on all fights, early and on CD.  If something has caused an unusually high mana consumption I'll time it w/ my or the SPriest Hymn.  This is of course just my preference and it has been the case all of SoO progression and farm.  I have tried FDCL but it does not fit my play.

 

I hope you get a few more opinions to round out the conversation. 

[Brewmonksta 157]

The Mindbender allows you to drop spirit via reforging in favor of more crit/mastery and will then give you more potential throughput. It may have less regen capability than solace but it requires less gcd's to maintain so imo is a better option.

 

Mindbender also provides a nice amount of dps as well.

 

Happy killing :)

[Espiee 161]

FDCL is simply not worth the talent you're given it as a discipline priest. Let me explain.

 

---- Mana regeneration ----

 

Looking exclusively at mana regeneration is not going to give a complete answer. It doesn't take into account certain factors such as whether FH will overheal 100% making most of the healing worthless(leaving only the DA shield), but it is nonetheless an important figure and it's instructive to know before going further

 

-- From Darkness, Comes Light --

 

FDCL works quite simply by giving every heal or smite that you cast a 15% chance to proc surge of light that will allow you to cast one Flash Heal mana-free.

 

Assuming 10% haste from various sources, you have a maximum of 22 GCDs per minute, but most likely less since spells like Penance and Prayer of Healing takes longer to cast, you may be waiting a few milliseconds for a spell to come off cooldown, have to move or interrupt a cast for an emergency heal. You can also proc it more often during Bloodlust which gives an another 30% haste. I think a fair average across a fight is about 20 GCDs per minute. At that figure, it means you get 3 procs of SoL every minute.

 

The mana you save using that proc needs to account for both the mana cost of the heal itself(5.9%) and the spell you don't have to cast in its place. Since penance itself heals for more and Holy Fire will work similarly to using an SoL proc, I'm just going to use the mana cost of smite here, since it's the most likely spell you would cast it instead of. At 5 stacks of evangelism, every smite costs 5670 mana, or 1.89% of your mana.

 

Additionally, you need to add the mana you get from shadowfiend to make the comparison fair(since Mindbender replaces it). At 3% mana per attack and 8 attacks per 3m that's 24% of your mana per 3m. In a 5m fight, you can use 2 of these, one with Hymn of Hope for a 15% more effective Shadowfiend. Accounting for that, Shadowfiend gives 8.6% mana per minute.

This brings the total mana saved with FDCL to 31.97% per minute.

 

-- Mindbender --

 

Mindbender is more simple. With 10% haste, MB will attack 11 times every cast, returning 1.75% mana per attack, or 19.25% mana per minute. Additionally, using HoH with one mindbender will increase the effectiveness of that MB by 15%, assuming a 5 min fight and 5 cast MB, that brings the total mana returned to 19.8275% mana per minute

 

-- Power Word: Solace --

 

Solace is much harder to account for since there's a lot to factor in. The spell replaces HF in your rotation, essentially saving you the mana it'd cost. Additionally it gives 1% back every cast and it gives access to shadowfiend which you don't have with mindbender.

 

Since HF has a long cooldown, it's hard to say how many stacks of evangelism you'll have when it's cast. At some points it'll have none, others 5. I'm assuming 3 stacks for this post since it's a decent middle-ground. This puts its mana cost for our purposes at 4428 mana, or 1.476%. Adding the 8.6% figure SF gives from earlier and the 1% mana PW: Solace gives per cast, puts the total for this talent at: 23.456% mana

 

---- Other concerns ----

 

It's fairly obvious in terms of mana saved that FDCL actually comes out far ahead of the others, with PW: Solace coming second, but:

 

What those numbers doesn't reflect is whether there was any actual mana saving. Using a SoL proc out of combat or on a target that won't be taking damage at all and is at full health, means you effectively wasted that proc and did no healing with it. Considering that you could alternatively have chosen not to use the proc then, means you essentially wasted the proc and not only didn’t save any mana, you wasted it.

 

Even under more ideal circumstances where you used it on a tank, or another target, that needed some of the healing FH would do and had a chance to plant a DA shield on that target that would likely be 100% effective, FH remains a random proc that you can’t rely on. It can proc when you most need it, or when you least need it. This wouldn’t be an issue if the proc chance was higher – DA shields adhere to the same logic but the 50% crit+ you can reach makes the RNG much more favorable. At 15%, or 3 ppm, that is simply not the case for FDCL.

 

FDCL essentially suffers from two major things: It’s random with a low proc chance, and furthermore its mana return depends on using Flash Heals effectively.

 

The other two options, even disregarding PW: Solaces heal, are reliable and steady. You can depend on them and know that they’ll be there. The mana return is largely not based on healing, though PW: Solace to some degree it. This is however less of a concern given the heal is a smart-heal.

 

This all speaking about the talents in terms of how beneficial they are to your healing. If you're farming or otherwise don't care for your mana for whatever reason but instead want higher damage, neither Solace nor FDCL increases your DPS, the only talent in that row that would increase your DPS is mindbender.

 

I'm somewhat unconvinced that the gain is worth it though, at max level at least. If you're leveling as disc, Mindbender is certainly a valid choice. But in terms of raid dps, a throughput trinket like BBoY, replacing DSoD, would give a similar dump to your mana, but a significant increase to your intellect thereby boosting your DPS, by more than Mindbender would.

Edited September 4, 2014 by steve

[LienFeng 1]

Thanks for the advice all!  I decided to try a quick flex last night to try out fdcl and was not overly impressed... found the procs coming up at times when there was little damage to heal / fight was over and when there was a large damage spike I was not really seeing them show up at all...  

 

While running with my friend,  tanking for him on a baby dk, he's like oh look another proc, and another, and another... so I'm not sure if the spell procs more low level...  he could also have a larger % of haste on his gear than I do, which could account for why he see more procs that I am. edit - Was just checking stats ... keep in mind this is just base stats, not in a group, my haste is only 6.7%. 

 

If any one else has any advice or opinions on these talents I would love to hear them. 

Edited September 5, 2014 by LienFeng

[LostDignity 12]

They're only 2 fights i would use FDCL on,  those are Immerseus, and Malkorok.

 

On Immerseus you don't really need mana regen since the fight has it built in. Another reason, however, is that the instant cast really helps: You won't waste time running wards the blob then start casting, rather you can cast and run at the same time. If Halo wasn't so strong I would probably put this as mandatory for Immerseus.

 

Disc heals are pretty poor. Malkorok is one of those fight where atonement healing is horrible. If someone loses their shield, and you don't have Penance, you're going to have a hard time topping that player off. I would say that FDCL is complimented by this specific encounter. Free and instant Flash Heals are exactly what you need for those hit by the swirls, knock-ups, and the orbs.

 

Also, just theoretically, if you think about it there's 3 types of healing: Atonement, AoE, and single target. I can guarantee you that atonement (Smite), on most fights, will have the highest uptime followed by AoE (SS, IF on cd). For example, on fights like Protectors, or Norushen, there's no single target burst (if played correctly). As a result, if you don't want to waste procs, you're going to be forced to massively over heal. One more thing, if someone is about to die, I would be using PW:S not Flash heal (even if its instant).

 

Overall, I would say it is only good on fights that 1. Requires you to top people off constantly, and 2. atonement isn't a viable option.

 

off topic: Sorry for being a little blunt here, but how can you raid with someone who thinks 44level ups gives at least equal understanding of the class as someone who constantly raids. If he thinks spells are tuned for those under level 90, he is greatly mistaken. Most people don't start learning their class until level 90.

 

 

[LienFeng 1]

He is very opinionated at times lol  so when he finds something he thinks works, we do it his way. He's a tank / dps, so normally for tank / dps ideas he's spot on.  It's not the first time I've disagreed with him on how to run my disc priest... (I think the last one was why am I not using Holy Nova... that was kinda funny actually).  

 

I've been trying out FDCL ... and I'm finding the proc rate on it is abysmal.  Our normal group doesn't have a hunter/spriest/boomy that run with us normally and our shammy is a healer so we don't have the spell haste buff ... so my haste is roughly 7%... so I'm not sure if that's where the difference between my toon and his (he's 70 ish now and still swearing it's the best priest talent there is)

 

I have normally used mindbender on Mal, though i generally have pug healers with me so I'm doing extra duty to carry them, and needed the mana regen,  but I will try FDCL after the reset, see if that helps,  the instant cast on Immrsus is nice (tried it in flex) but the procs are so unrelable that IF I get one up for the split phase I'm lucky... 

 

Also thinking about taking some spirit out for more crit, been reading a few topics on here about it, so I'm not sure if my mana regen will be that great if I re-gem ... so may need the mana talents but won't know until I try it.