Should you use Mind Sear in Mythic+?

Yes.

There are builds floating around that do not take Mind Sear for Mythic+. These builds are not suggested if your goal is overall key damage. In this post I'll talk about why Mind Sear is so valuable in keys and a little bit about why you see some top keys being done without it.

While the amount of damage percent Mind Sear will take up will vary from key to key it is always worth taking.

Example Temple Breakdown

Example Algethar breakdown

While not everyone logs their keystones, you can see quite clearly that Mind Sear builds are topping just about every key and affix combination. The main outlier here is Court of Stars, which makes sense because that key can be quite small pulls throughout the key but even on Tyranical the 2nd boss can get good value out of Mind Sear.

High Level Points

• Taking Mind Sear is very point efficient to talent into. Realistically you are not giving up much to have it, even if you only use it in a few pulls in the key.
• Not taking Mind Sear gives up 10%+ AoE damage while giving up 1 utility point in the top section. This gives up overall damage in the process.
• Top Players have several reasons they might be running these builds, the main one likely being they prefer the damage pattern for high keys. It's not something you should just blindly copy into your builds if you care about overall damage
• If you are looking for a build with more priority target damage (but sacrifices AoE damage) you can still do this while having Mind Sear. Better to have it should you need it.
• For any build, using Mind Devourer procs on Mind Sear with Mental Decay is almost always worth it due to the globals you save on any pack that will live long enough to require re-dotting.
• Using Mind Sear does not mean you cannot play Dark Ascension. Dark Ascension can be a very competitive cooldown choice, especially in pug groups or anything you are purposefully pulling one pack at a time.

Talent Pathing

The first big reason why it makes sense to always take Mind Sear is due to talent tree pathing. Mind Sear is in the first section of our talents, which realistically means you taking it is not costing you anything (albeit maybe some utility if you are also running Mind Spike). The other talent this is typically paired with is Mental Decay, which could be used for something else but gives a noticable gain since it means you do not have to manually DoT as much. Due to the point investment even at worst case scenario where you only use Mind Sear a few times in the key you still get insane amount of value for the small point investment.

Mind Sear vs. Devouring Plague

As our two Insanity spenders you have a choice where to spend your Insanity. This is your rough guide:

• 1 target: Devouring Plague
• 2 targets: Devouring Plague (use Mind Devourer on Mind Sear)
• 3 targets and above: Mind Sear

Various talent choices can influence this choice, especially around the 3 target range. That being said as soon as you hit 4 targets regardless of talents Mind Sear starts to be the clear winner. This means anytime you are fighting this many targets having Mind Sear is your ideal spender for overall damage.

Keep in mind this assumes when pressing Mind Sear that it is actually hitting all targets. In certain cases if mobs are too spread out the damage of Mind Sear will noteably suffer, but the target cutoffs are still relevant. Other reasons people might prefer to play without Mind Sear would be that since it is a channeled spell you are less mobile when you need to rely on planting often to get the damage out, even though it consumes Insanity at the same rate as Devouring Plague. For certain keys where you have to move often that can definitely hurt the power of Mind Sear if player poorly.

What if you want more priority damage?

The other reason to consider using Devouring Plague over Mind Sear is if you want to lower overall damage to gain priority damage. Obviously this is highly situational and group dependent and something that you can make as a choice on a pack by pack basis. You hardly will ever want to make this decision for an entire key, so the point of having Mind Sear is to have it when you need it.

On similar lines people sometimes think dropping Mind Sear for these builds picks up more single target with Idol of Y'Shaarj. Because of how weak Idol of N'Zoth is on single target this is actually not true. On both 3 and 5 minute sims we can clearly see that the typical "searless" builds that run Idol of Y'Shaarj and Idol of N'Zoth are behind on pure single target. Both of these sims are run without Bloodlust and no extra buffs.

• Y'Shaarj + N'Zoth Searless Talent Build

The notable problem with this build when it comes to Single target is that it does not include Dark Evangelism or Mental Decay, both of which are quite powerful in single target and AoE. The build is quite rigid if you want to take Mindbender, Mind Flay: Insanity, Encroaching Shadows, and Void Torrent which leads to losing talents that would otherwise be easier to get.

3 minute single target sim

5 minute single target sim

Now switching gears to priority target damage we can do smaller sims to check how things compare. These sims are looking at 5 and 8 target sims for 1 minute without Bloodlust/raid buffs. The Base sim in these cases is the raid single target setup with Voidform. I simmed the top builds using no sear and sear in addition to Dark Ascension and Voidform, this was done to see how much priority target damage you could do with typical sear builds if you decided to focus on priority damage for that pack.

Notes from below:

• Typical Mind Sear builds were about up to ~17%/26% (5t/8t) more overall DPS than the no Mind Sear build
• Typical Mind Sear builds that decide to focus on priority target damage were ~4% behind the no Mind Sear build on 5 targets and actually ahead by ~1% on 8 targets

5 target 1 minute sim

8 target 1 minute sim

So what is the difference between typical Mind Sear builds and typical Mind Sear-less builds?

• 2-5% less single target
• 5-10% less overall damage (depending on key/level/group)
• 0-5% more priority target damage in AoE
• More healing with Vampiric Embrace during Dark Ascension windows

All the data coming together seems to support that for most keys and groups dropping Mind Sear will cost overall damage for little to no gain in priority target damage, the key here is how you play the key. Just because you talent Mind Sear, does not mean you always need to use it. If you want that priority target damage play style, you do not need to drop Mind Sear to get that damage.

What about Dark Ascension?

Taking Dark Ascension has no impact on Mind Sear's viability. Dark Ascension does not buff its damage but still provides the boosted critical strike via Ancient Madness.

Is Dark Ascension good for keys? The short answer is yes, it has quite a few scenarios that makes sense taking it. The gap between the cooldowns is generally quite slim, but you can get great value out of Dark Ascension if you are just pulling one pack at a time or it lines up better with the pull pattern in general. Chain pulling or doing more than one pack at once starts to lean into making Void Eruption better, but even then having cooldown flexibility in the 1 minute Dark Ascension might be something you prefer. For most runs I would still suggest using Void Eruption but you can certainly experiment with Dark Ascension.

Even with Dark Ascension you still get lots of value out of having Mind Sear for Mind Devourer procs, that value is unchanged.

Yeah but what about Top Players?

When looking at top Shadow Priests by Raider.io scores you might find several keys being run without Mind Sear. There are several reasons this might be true, among the following:

• They are experimenting and trying out builds.
• They are willing to sacrifice overall damage to fit into the composition better based on what they need to push keys. This does not always translate 1:1 to your keys.
• Some might just prefer the playstyle and are willing to give up overall damage in order to play something thats more comfortable for them or feels better.

Conclusion

At the end of the day there is nothing wrong with trying these builds, please experiment, but as of now the data in both theoretical sims and modeling is clearly showing dropping Mind Sear does not make sense for overall damage output.