Souldrinker vs. Hand of Morchok

The Souldrinker LFR version always disappeared into the hand of DPS players.

Arawina wrote:I have both LFR SD and heroic HoM. I've spent quite some time with simc and have come to the conclusion (supported by logs of our raid) that heroic HoM is the one to go for me with my current gear. Also the extra mastery allows me to free up one trinket slot which I can use for whatever trinket works best - be it a dps trinket for the easier bosses like morchok or ultra on heroic or stamina trinkets for the later fights. I'm also quite unimpressed by the healing SD does, more than 50% (sometimes over 70%) end up in useless overheal and for most fights WoG heals me for more and much more effectively. Never seen SD drop besides LFR so I can't say anything about the higher ilvl versions.

According to a representative sample of my logs, my overhealing from souldrinker is ranging from 32-38%, and it is averaging about 5.5-6.5% of my total heals received. That being said, I'd definitely go with H HoM over LFR Souldrinker, but I think I'd probably keep normal souldrinker if H HoM dropped. The consistent ~5k heal is worth more to me then the stamina that the mastery would free up.

Complaining about how much overheal Souldrinker's proc does is, frankly, sort of missing the point.

How big is the health benefit of Soul Drinker's proc?

I am wondering whether to spend scarce conquest points on a PvP weapon (397) for ProtPvP or stick with my LFR SD (384). So in part, I'd be trading off a little resilience for the health of the proc. I wonder what the HPS equivalent (or some other metric) of the SD proc is?

A little off topic, but I wonder to what extent the weapon damage comparison would carry over to PvP? From theck's damage numbers, LFR SD is a tad better than the 397 PvP weapon. However, I am not sure how applicable those numbers are to PvP, where burst is important and you are unlikely to cycle through proper rotations. Would this in anyway affect the trade-off between the damage component of the SD proc and the higher base dps of a 397 weapon?

My gut feeling is to save my conquest points and stick with LFR SD over the 397 PvP weapon, but this is not grounded on a very firm basis. Any views?

You can extract an HPS estimate from the weapon sims, but I'd caution that the applicability to PvP is questionable. At the very least, the DPS estimates will be completely off if you're spending time off-target and breaking rotation. I also don't know how resilience affects Sacred Duty procs.

I think he means SD procc = Souldrinker procc not Sacred Duty.
As for in pvp its not really that easy to calculate as the procc isnt really reliable to heal in a pvp situation.
Its pretty nice for soloing as your hp goes down slowly and then back up a bit whenever, didnt have to waste a single GCD on healing myself this week (i mainly solo stuff as ret tho as its faster in most cases)
Interesting note tho is that the souldrinker doesnt seem to be able to procc when silenced or smth, as it did 0 damage/healing on voidreaver cuz you are silenced most of the time, that or cuz he is mechanical or smth,

Treck wrote:I think he means SD procc = Souldrinker procc not Sacred Duty.

That last sentence was a separate thought. My point was that the DPS estimates are heavily influenced by rotation, which includes SotR crits from Sacred Duty. I don't know whether resilience has any effect on SD-induced SotR crits, and thus whether the DPS values are at all skewed by it.

theckhd wrote:My point was that the DPS estimates are heavily influenced by rotation, which includes SotR crits from Sacred Duty.

I guess I should look at recount stats to see how the pattern of damage by spell differs in PvP compared to PvE. I suspect "ranged" damage (J, AS, HoW to an extent) may be more important and auto-attack less, as players are not as obliging as mobs when it comes to standing still and letting melee wail on them.

From what I read, crits (and esp. SotR crits from fishing for SD procs) may also be more important in PvP as the idea is often to burst down an opponent before they can be healed.

I have no idea what any of that would imply for a SD vs higher tier PvP weapon comparison though and was wondering if anyone else would care to speculate. I guess if auto-attacks are less important in PvP, that may be the detriment of the PVP weapon as its strongpoint is higher base damage and that matters more for auto-attacks than for most other abilities (I think).

The PvP weapon does come with some crit but I guess that's small potatoes and maybe the SD proc is itself a kind of burst damage that is valuable in PvP.

SD proc may help with burst, but it's not reliable. You can't really plan burst around it, it just happens (unlike activated trinkets/abilities.) If you want reliable burst, I'd probably go for the higher dps PvP weap.