I’d Rather Be Wowing!

What an exciting day with all the new information about what’s coming up in patch 3.1.

With respect to shadow priesting, I could list all the changes in 3.1 and what I think about it, but Merlot over at the Misery has done a spot on job on it :). So head there instead.

One of the more controversial change is the removal of extra damage component in our dots in lieu for change for crits in each dots tick. The fellows in shadowpriest.com are currently discussing and theorycrafting this change.  Unfortunately, so far the verdict is that it’s at best a “side-grade”, assuming that shadow power will eventually affect the bonus damage from crits (which does not reflect in the tooltip). But everything is not set to stone, and I am optimistic that we will see something good from it.

So how about those new glyphs, heh? Or the lack of it ><.  The ones that are relevant to shadow priests are as follows (courtesy to MMO):

• Glyph of Mind Control — Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. (Old:  12 sec.)
• Glyph of Dispersion  — Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.
• Glyph of Mind Sear *new*  — Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

Is it just me, or the Glyph of Dispersion does what “new” dispersion is supposed to do?  I wish that Glyph of Mind Sear is a minor glyph, because I kinda like it, but I don’t like it enough to swap any of my currently equipped glyphs. If it is a major glyph, it’s interesting to see that we have this choice, similar to that what mages have, to be better in AoE or in single target dps.

I know that the screenies of T8 have been floating for a while, but I still don’t like how priest set looks, it reminds me of rogues with the face mask and all. I want to keep my halo :). And how about the new waist and boots that we can get from tailoring (BoE), and the possible legendary mace!?  It’s time to start saving up for ebonweaves and spellweaves again.

For the past 2 weeks, we have been doing Naxx10 with 2 healers, where I am the only hybrid in the group. While I am familiar with other ways of doing the encounter with only 2 healers, the strategy that our group used was to have me and an affliction warlock tank the back bosses, where I usually started on the right back corner (holy damage) and my lock friend started on the left back (shadow damage).

I know that I would need to pop some healing, but I didn’t expect that VE doesn’t seem to do anything and that I would be doing some frantic healing. I notice, however, that my lock friend usually fares better, that he would be okay if I don’t heal him for a while, even when we swap position. I’m usually close to being out of mana when the front bosses go down (after fiend, dispersion, and mana pot). I even try putting up my healing gear, but that doesn’t seem to be helping.

Am I missing something here? Or is this normal? Any hints or tips so that I can be more in “control” of the situation instead of hoping that the dps is strong enough to kill the other two bosses before my mana is completely drained?

Continuing from my previous post, last Monday we went back to Naxx with only two goals in mind: killing Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad. And after lots of wipes, we did just that. And I won the key for Eye of Eternity :).

Recounting my experience and offering a somewhat amateurish tips below

Sapphiron

As a group, we aim to have about 300 frost resist. With the presence of frost resist aura, we just need to aim for about 170. I only have Glacial Slippers and Titanium Frostguard Ring on me, amounting to a little less than 300 frost resist. With this amount of frost resist, I took about 800 damage per 2 second (from Sapphiron’s Frost Aura). While not using the frost resist set probably would result in higher dps,  we felt that for learning the fight, they are useful to give some breathing room for the healers to also understand the movements of the fight. Especially considering that we have a lack of aoe healers.

Just a short summary to Sapp’s relevant abilities from the eye of a shadow priest. First is the consistent 1200 dmg per 2 second from his Frost Aura. I feel that keeping VE up at all time make a big difference in making myself less fragile (this is compared to our resident mage whose health drops below comfortable level way too many times). Two is his chill spell that looks like Shade’s Blizzard, though more irregular in its movement. I really hate this one because it’s really hard to see exactly the scope of the affected area. Not much advice I can provide other than try to avoid it, and pay attention to its movement, so that if you happened to get stuck in it, you know the “shortest” way to get out from it. PW.S helps in mitigating the damage while you make your way out.

When he took off to the air, he will shoot ice bolt to two random person, one after another. These two people will be ice tombed and you will need to hide behind the the ice block to avoid his other spell, i.e., Frost Breath, that will surely one-shot you when hit. The fact that he tombed two people sequentially is important. Hiding behind the ice block of the first person tombed before the 2nd person is tombed will afflict damage to you.  Also, chill/blizzard will still be going on during the air phase, and it is possible that the ice block lies in the area of the blizzard. So it might be preferable to “wait” for the second ice block and go there if it is safer.

When he’s on the air, you can still attack him. But not when you’re behind an ice tomb (LOS). Coincidentally, trying to cast while behind an ice block is a good check to see if you are truly safe from his Frost breath (you’re safe if you have that LOS warning).

Having some frost gears does reduce our dps capability so this fight can last pretty long, hence putting a strain on my mana bar. I found that my shadow fiend doesn’t last very long because of the Frost Aura. Investing in the glphy that return 5% mana when our fiend died prematurely I’m sure will help but I didn’t have that during this fight. Remembering to take out your fiend early, so that you can use it more than once, does make a difference. But what saves me is dispersion. I tend to save it during the air phase, where I popped it when I’m hiding behind an ice block or when I’m ice-blocked (yes dispersion is castable during it) or when I have to dash my way to an ice-block (and hoping I’ll make it before the frost breath goes down). I have not yet tried to see nor experienced  if dispersion can avoid you being on-shotted with the frost breath. Since I won’t be able to cast anything to him anyway, I minimize the down time from using dispersion.

Kel’Thuzad

You will start the fight standing in the middle of the room, fending from incoming (slow moving) mobs. Generally, casters and range is responsible for the skeleton and the banshee ladies. There isn’t really any tactics/strategies here. I think I used the most SW:D here :), especially to skellies that get too close.

Second phase will start after about 4 min. We still had some leftovers mobs when this phase begins, so the our first priority is clearing them off. As a shadow priest (and caster in general), there are only two things to know about this fight. First, is to spread out. Make sure that you are 10 yard away from anybody (mods can tell you if you are too lcose). If you stay spread out, you can just cast to your heart content except when a shadow fissure appears under your feet (which is the 2nd thing that you have to worry). If it is necessary, you can help your healers by PW:S-ing someone who is ice-blocked.

Kel is just too simple for casters in 10-man group. I imagine finding place to spread out is much more difficult in 25-man.

But I can’t help it, I’m so happy when I realized (after wasting several candles) that Prayer of Shadow Word Protection is now raid wide!!!

And really loving the buff for elemental shammy, it’s going to make switching Vh back to resto really difficult :).

Saturday morning, a friend whispered me and asked if I wanted to go for Naxx25 that he was about to form. The group was going to be mostly pug. I was in his pug group several times before, and yet, I didn’t know most of the people in this pug group.

We were attempting 3 wings and he wanted to start with the Military wing. I look at the roster. Hmm 5 priests, but I was the only shadow. I shuddered. That means that I’m going to be given the MC-ing duty. Oh, did I mention that this was my first Naxx25?

You should know from the post’s title - the outcome of attempts. I was the first priest to MC. First pull - Hmm what are all these buttons do? I took too long in initial taunting, MT was downed, and the other priest didn’t have a mic, and I must have missed his msg in raid chat to taunt it over. Why do they have the “cancel” button if it didn’t work for actually dismissing the MC?  Second pull - Raz was distracted too far from the MC-ed guy. As I was going to be in the range for taunt, I broke my MC because I went too far. Upon recovering, the other priest and I were not coordinating our taunt correctly.  Third pull - the other priest asked to be relieved from the duty, so another priest took over. The pull was ok - but messy - because we sometimes have the bone armor on cooldown when we were tanking. Two of the understudies were killed because of that. We just couldn’t recover from it. Fourth pull - things started really nicely. Except…I was following the suggestion to dismiss the understudy after tanking twice. That didn’t work so well. By the time I was asked to taunt the 2nd time, there were less than 15 sec left in my MC. To make matter worst, when the other priest tried to MC to take over my understudy, it broke because he wasn’t hit capped. Note to self - follow what you read in shadowpriest forum and not what people told you. By then, we gave up and went to another wing.

So we ventured to spider wing, one shotted the first boss. Crap…I was going to be asked to MC again. I was totally nervous by then, feeling that I’ve already let down people too many times. I was only half clear on what I was supposed to do. First frenzy - yes, I was ready, hit the button, we were good. Second frenzy - another successful MC. Upon third frenzy -  I had my MC target on focus. By the time they called out for 15 sec before frenzy, I had MC-ed him. All of a sudden, my MC broke. I know that it’s not because it expired. Could it be that I was on the Rain of Fire area? Oh crap. I re-mc-ed the target but nothing happened. Again. And Again. Tanks were dropping like flies. All of a sudden it was over. We managed to burn her down. Someone then told me that when MC breaks, the underlings become immune, and I had to pick another one. Duh…I’ve read about it, I just didn’t remember it :(.

We managed to clear the two wings. I was feeling low the whole the entire time. After the last boss in Plague, some people had to leave. So the raid leader, my friend, was looking for replacements. While we were having a break, the first MC-ing priest wrote in the raid chat that we should find more shadow priests that know how to do crap. I simply commented “Ouch”. I know that I’ve disappointed some people, but that still seems a bit harsh of a comment. What comes afterward was a bit more stingy. He then wrote that he didn’t know I was still there. Another rogue backed him up and indicated that I deserved it because he couldn’t figure out why I kept failing when MC-ing.

So here comes a bit ranty part of my post.

I know that I failed. I could try to come up with a bunch of excuses to justify my poor performance. In the end of the day, more than anything else, I was the one that disappointed at myself for not being able to do my task correctly. But I wish that people can understand that there are always margins of error when it comes to MC (as with anything else). And having to be that person to be responsible for the one breaking point is just too much pressure.

/sigh.

Another note to self: don’t attempt to do something that involves high amount of responsibility in a pug when you don’t know how to do it.

Shadow Priest related ones according to MMO-Champion:

• Abolish Disease and Cure Disease can now be cast while in Shadowform.
  We have been asking for this for a long time. I’m glad that they finally give them to us.
• Levitate is now castable on others.
  For any quests that are related with large body of water, I like to cast levitate and mount (flying mount) up. I’ve always feel bad that I can’t give my party member the same perks.
• Shadow
  • Shadowform: You can now shift into Shadowform while mounted or sitting. I
    don’t think this one makes any difference for me. Unless, if it works when you are eating/drinking too. Hmm…
    
  • Vampiric Embrace:  Mana cost of this spell has been removed.
    The mana cost of this spell is really miniscule to begin with. I guess we can now use it when we completely run out of mana. But since we have to do more damage to get more heal, I’m not really sure what is the point. The only thing that may be useful is that using VE will help us in getting FSR, but FSR is not usually the concern for any shadow priest. I won’t complain for the convenience though

Edit: Ooh, how could I miss this!? Is that mean no more need for SW:D pull??

Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.

It seems that several people arrived to this blog because of my old post about my take on the WotLK’s talent build. I feel kinda bad that the information on that post is mostly not relevant anymore and there’s no updated talent build ever since. Hence, the reason of this post.

Merlot over at the Misery has written a great assessment to shadow talents in general. Take a look over there if you are planning your own shadow build either for leveling or for raiding.

Here is the link to my current build. Keep in mind that I’m more PvE focused.

My take to my build choices.

Discipline (14 points)

Twin Disciplines - Rank 5/5
Increases the damage and healing done by your instant spells by 5%.
Anything that increases damages is a good thing. This is a very accessible talent in Discipline tree and for PvE, this is a clearly a better choice compared to Unbreakable Will.

Improved Inner Fire - Rank 3/3
Increases the effect of your Inner Fire spell by 45%, and increases the total number of charges by 12.
At level 71, our inner fire is injected with steroid to provide additional spell power. With this talent, at level 80, having inner fire means an additional of  174 free spell power. Not too shabby.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude - Rank 2/2
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 30%.
This is great to help out in buffing your group, especially if you are the only priest in the group, but it’s totally compulsory.

Inner Focus - Rank 1/1
When activated, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.
This is another optional talent. The free cast is great but I picked it because of its synergy to the Improved Spirit Tap and the Glyph of Shadow (While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec). And yes, they do stack. Triggering IF with MB almost guarantee procs from both.

Meditation - Rank 3/3
Allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
I found speccing into this as compulsory. Even with it, I found myself relying on my fiend and dispersion to not running out of mana too often.

Shadow (57 points)

Spirit Tap - Rank 3/3
Gives you a 100% chance to gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target that yields experience or honor. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec.
For leveling and grinding, this talent is indispensable. There are some use of it for instance/raid provided that you can get the killing blow. Speaking only for instances, there are many occasions where you can trigger spirit tap (e.g., trash mob AoE). Even without it, being a requirement to Imp Spirit Tap is enough justification to put points to it.

Improved Spirit Tap - Rank 2/2
Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes increase your total Spirit by 10%. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 20% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
This and Twisted Faith will give 3% spirit as your spell power when it procs. I actually found it to be underwhelming at my current gear. But spell power is spell power. And who knows how much spirit we are donning at later stage. Compared to blackout, this talent does increase your damage.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain - Rank 2/2
Increases the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 6%.
More damage to your bread and butter dot. Should I say anything more?

Shadow Focus - Rank 3/3
Increases your chance to hit with your Shadow spells by 3%, and reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by 6%.
3% hit chance means 3*26 less spell hit in your gear = more other stats. The mana reduction is also necessary considering how expensive our spells are.

Improved Mind Blast - Rank 5/5
Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by 2.5 sec.
Well more MB means more damage. But, keep in mind that MB is also mana extensive. It really depends whether your gear can support it, otherwise, the cooldown reduction can be wasteful. You can reduce the points in here and put into shadow affinity (reduce threat from shadow spells). I don’t have any points there, and I don’t seem to have any problem with my threats.

Mind Flay - Rank 1/1
Assault the target’s mind with Shadow energy, causing 588 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.
I’m sorry for sounding harsh but you are not a shadow priest without Mind Flay.

Veiled Shadows - Rank 2/2
Decreases the cooldown of your Fade ability by 6 sec, and reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend ability by 2 minutes.
This is also an optional talent. If you want you can put the points somewhere else, but there isn’t really other good alternatives for them. I actually like this talent simply because I can use my fiend more often. Use it early and use it often.

Shadow Reach - Rank 2/2
Increases the range of your offensive Shadow spells by 20%.
More range is the better.

Shadow Weaving - Rank 3/3
Your Shadow damage spells have a 100% chance to increase the Shadow damage you deal by 2% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
Another dps boosting talent.

Vampiric Embrace - Rank 1/1
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes you to be healed for 15% and other party members to be healed for 3% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 1 min.
Another signature shadow priest’s spell. Although its functionality has been nerfed and it is now a shadow of its former self, plus SW:D is no longer part of our rotation, I still found it extremely useful for your own survivability. Having this as part of your grinding rotation almost eliminates the need to heal/bandage yourself, even without PW:S.

Improved Vampiric Embrace - Rank 2/2
Increases the healing received from Vampiric Embrace by 67%.
I found the increase in self healing especially to be extremely useful. But I think this is one of the optional talents.

Focused Mind - Rank 3/3
Reduces the mana cost of your Mind Blast, Mind Control, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by 15%.
I like mana reduction talents, I gobble them up whenever I can find them.

Mind Melt - Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by 4%.
Now that MF can crit and we do 200% of damage when crit, crit has become one of sought after stat. I’m not sure that the 4% increase affects the additional damage from our dots (look at the last component of Shadowform if you’re not sure what I’m talking about).

Darkness - Rank 5/5
Increases your Shadow spell damage by 10%.
More dps.

Shadowform - Rank 1/1
Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage by 15%, reducing Physical damage done to you by 15% and threat generated by 30%. However, you may not cast Holy spells while in this form. Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch abilities deal increased percentage damage equal to your spell critical strike chance.
Remember what I said about MF? It’s the same thing here. But why wouldn’t you not want this? It is filled with plenty of goodness. The threat reduction component practically eliminates the need for shadow affinity. The increase in damage to our dots from spell crit rate makes us scaled better.

Shadow Power - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Shadow Word: Death spells by 100%.
This is what makes us able to deal 200% when crits.

Improved Shadowform - Rank 2/2
Your Fade ability now has a 100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when used while in Shadowform, and reduces casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 70% when casting any Shadow spell while in Shadowform.
There are some debate to whether this is necessary. I personally like the 70% reduction time lost, even if it’s not that useful with the current form of MF. Still, no good alternative for not taking the talent if you want to go deep in shadow.

Misery - Rank 3/3
Your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch spells also increase the chance for harmful spells to hit by 3% lasting 24 sec, and increases the damage of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by an amount equal to 15% of your spell power.
This talent gives shadow priests one  of their few group utilities. But I am going out of limb to say that it’s a good utility. More importantly, however, the self component of this talent is what makes this a must have talent.

Vampiric Touch - Rank 1/1
Causes 850 Shadow damage over 15 sec to your target and causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second when you deal damage from Mind Blast.
Similar to VE, the group utility of this talent is a shadow of its former self. However, currently VT is our highest damaging dot. Also, it provides replenishment in which all shadow priest is expected to have.

Pain and Suffering - Rank 3/3
Your Mind Flay has a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target, and reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 30%.
I used to underestimate the need for putting 3 points in this talent, especially with my lack of use of SW:D. But I found many occasions where I could only fit one MF before SW:P expires. With 3 points in this talent, at least I’m ensured that I could refresh SW:P whenever I want it.

Twisted Faith - Rank 5/5
Increases your spell power by 10% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain.
At the risk of sounding as a broken record, more dps is a good thing.

Dispersion - Rank 1/1
You disperse into pure Shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% mana every 1 sec for 6 sec. Dispersion can be cast while stunned, feared or silenced.
Dispersion saved me in several occasion. Dispersion is my emergency mana pot. I’ve learn to like it. It might not be the ideal talent for a dps tree, but since we are already this deep in the shadow tree, might as well grab it.

1. Dinged to 80! Now reputation grinding time…
2. WoW armory is updated with new looks, complete with achievement, etc. Good stuff!
3. Finally finished with the quests in Scholazar Basin area. I justified picking The Oracles side because of the Mysterious Egg that can hatch to 4 different pets. Just a heads up, if you are a JC that likes to complete your recipes, don’t forget to grab either the Design: Vivid Dark Jade (The Oracles) before doing A Hero’s Burden quest if you are switching to Frenzyheart or Design: Reckless Huge Citrine (The Frenzyheart) before doing Just Following Orders quest if you are going for the Oracles. Also, as far as I know, if you ever thinking of switching factions, you can go back and kill Artruis and save the other faction’s NPC instead. Completing the repeatable quest offered by this NPC will automatically put you in Honored standing with the new faction.

One thing I noticed as I gained a level higher is that mana regen plummeted as well. I initially started with the talent build that picks up the good stuff (aka dps enhancing) in the shadow tree up to Dispersion, before going to Disc. At lvl 75, I still don’t have enough points for Meditation. During levelling, I don’t find it to be too troublesome. With spirit tap after every single kill, rotating shadowfiend and dispersion whenever they are up, I could kill things fast and usually don’t have to stop and drink. There’s also enough traveling between locations that my mana will be full in time for me to start another batch of quests.

While instancing, however, the lack of mana regeration is much more noticeable. I noticed that I am the only one from the group that usually needs to sit and drink after 2-3 pulls - seeing that my GL/MT never wants to wait between pull, I often end up resorting to less mana intensive priorities. Darn those warlocks and their life tap. Replenishment doesn’t really do squat for me, with my crits rating plummeting as well, the frequency of spirit tap to proc is less and less, and I need to time my shadowfiend and dispersion so that I don’t have them in cooldown in time for boss fight.

Afterward, I respecced and grabbed all the 3 points of Meditation before going into the shadow tree. At my level, I am able to go all the way to Dispersion while only sacrificing the talent that gives more crit chances and other utilities (VE, threat reduction, and shadowfiend cd reduction). This spec works quite as well during levelling and it provides more longevity during instances. But I found that it’s still not enough.

From the 5 instances that I’ve done (Ut Keep, Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Ahn’Kahet, and Drak’tharon), there are at least 1 boss fight that involves repeated phases, where in each of the phase, you would have to redo all your dots (think Lurker). For example in Ut Keep, the last boss will die and ress back, so you need to re-apply your dots all over again. This is probably the least taxing example of this type of fights. In the latter 3 instances I listed, it is common for a boss fight to go as long as 3-4 repeated phases.

In Azjol-Nerub, the 2nd boss that you encounter consisted of 3 “pulls” of trashes before the boss appears. It is not really a pull per se, however, as you are placed in combat from the moment you pulled the first trash until you killed the boss. So even when you just sit around waiting, you cannot drink up in between. The last boss of that instance repeatedly burrows himself, spawning a bunch of trashes, and come back up - each time the period in which he stays above the ground becomes shorter. During these types of fights, I’ve been so challenged in managing my mana that even with drinking pots, shadowfiend, and dispersion, I can end up oom toward the end of the fight.

Granted that I still use much of my lvl 70 gears that are sorely lacking in spirit (I think only 1 piece has spirit in it, and I replaced one of boots with one that has spirit). I remember when some people in beta are complaining about this, GC simply said for us to equip more spirit based gear. But most of the time, spirit-based gears don’t really have other good stats, such as crits, hits, and hastes (this actually a bit more common than the previous two).  Well, maybe I just need to suck it up, put more spirit-based gears even if I need to sacrifice some of my spell power.

E dinged 75 yesterday and had been Mind Sear-ing ever since! (Also died twice because of being over-excited and tried it on to more mobs that E can handle :)).

Having an AoE type arsenal, especially one with “unique” mechanism such as Mind Sear, certainly adds an interesting twist in her playstyle. So Mind-sear:

1. is a 5-sec channeled spell that ticks every one second with the cost of 28% base mana.
2. damages the mobs 10 yds around the target, but not the target itself.

With these characteristics, it seems reasonable to only cast Mind Sear on the target that won’t die too fast, in order for Mind Sear to be cost-effective. What I am struggling with is finding a good spell “rotation” prior doing Mind Sear. There are some approaches that I can think of.

The first strategy is to maintain full dots on one mob and use that mob to start Mind Sear. With this approach, it is generally easy to interleave other spells in order to maintain full dots and replenishment. But we may run into the problem of having the main target dies prematurely. I found this approach works great for pulls with one elite and multiple non-elite adds or in boss fights that have multiple waves of adds (some encounters that come to mind: first boss in Utgarde Keep, the first boss in Azjol-Nerub, and the Novos the Summoner fight in Drak’Tharon keep).

The second strategy is to keep the dots on multiple mobs, usually SW:P because it’s instant and spammable before proceeding to mind sear them. This way, we spread the Misery debuffs on multiple target and increases mind sear damage on these targets up to 15% of your spell power. Unfortunately since SW:P is only refreshed by Mind Flay - with long fights, we might end up with the debuffs and SW:P dropping prematurely. Also the upfront overhead to unload the dots may be not ideal for too short of fight. This approach seems preferrable for groups of multiple Elites.

Of course, there are the extremes of just doing Mind Sear right away if you have groups on non-elites and combining the first strategy with 2nd one. Based on your experience, do you have a good approach/tips to when and how Mind Sear should be used?