Change / bug with Shadow Word Pain (SwP)

I can't find any confirmation if this is a bug or intended for SwP but the change is as follows:

SwP appears to check the damage multiplier at cast time not during ticks as other dots do so if you cast SwP before a full stack of debuffs (Shadow Weaving, Misery etc) are in place then the dot ticks will not increase. For this spell this is quite important since with patch 3.0.2 SwP is refreshed by Mindflay so is often not recast during a fight.

The plus side of this is that if you pop a trinket and get other short term damage buffs the dot will tick for far higher damage than it would normally as long as you do not recast it.

So to take advantage of this 'feature' ensure on bosses (trash die too quick for this to matter) that you have a full set of debuffs on the mob before you cast SwP or recast once you have a full stack of debuffs or hit trinkets etc then cast to get an enhanced modifier and ensure you keep the dot refreshed with Mindflay.

interesting... have no clue about this.. i hope it re-applyes as if have been casted again.

eeh,,, i hope it counts and get the buffs as if have been re casted... i ment.. o r something =)

SwP should be refreshed if you recast once you have a full set of buff/debuffs, there is one notable bug as far as this is concerned is that you can on occasion get a 'more powerful spell' error where it won't let you overwrite the spell because it thinks a more powerful version is already applied. This is usually caused by a totem or crit enhancement buff being present when you try to recast since there is now a crit modifier applied to the spell as Spell Damage.

A more worrying dps loss is actually a bug with Mind Flay, which is of course our bread-and-butter channel spell.

Mind-Flay - 3 second channeled spell causing Shadow Damage

Since the last patch it appears that the damage ticks to do not all occur during the visual 'cast' of the spell. Essentially what happens is that you start channeling, the first damage tick will occur at some point (it appears to vary) during the first second, you should then have two further damage ticks. The problem is that due to the delay of the first damage tick, the last one could actually occur AFTER the channel has finished so if you chain your Mind-Flay you will be cutting out the last tick. This means that during a longer fight where an SP will be chaining MF between cooldowns of the other spells you could be clipping 10% of the potential dps or if you were just casting MF 33%!

Unfortunately cast bars such as Quartz can't help with this problem so the player has to time their recast after the previous one has completed by watching the cast animation and starting the new channel shortly after the animation completes. I recommend practice on a target dummy to get the feel for it by chain casting MF only and noting when the damage ticks occur and when they stop.