Mind Flay or Mind Sear?

[Fosters50 0]

So you need to choose between a Mind Flay or Mind Sear filler and have no other considerations (such as target priority) other than getting the most DPS out of your cast?

 

Here's the number crunch (such as it is).

 

Mind Flay [100% SP, 3 second channel] = 33% SP per second

Enhanced Mind Flay [100% SP, 2 second channel] = 50% SP per second

Mind Sear [125% SP, 5 second channel] = 25% SP per second

 

Searing TWO targets yields greater DPS (+17%) than Flaying ONE target.

Searing THREE targets yields greater DPS (+25%) than +Flaying ONE target.

 

So Mind Sear over Mind Flay with 2+ targets and Mind Sear over Enhanced Mind Flay with 3+ targets.

[Twintop 45]

You shouldn't break this down by second but rather by GCD or full cast time of one or the other.

Enhanced Mind Flay = 4 ticks over 2 GCDs = 2 ticks per GCD = 66% per GCD * Mastery (this is important)

Mind Sear = 5 + 1 ticks over 3 1/3 GCDs, where "+ 1" is on-hit if your previous GCD wasn't Mind Sear, so for a one-off cast it is really 3 1/3 GCDs over 5 seconds. The first GCD of Mind Sear does 50% (on-hit + 1 tick), the second does 50% (2 ticks), third does 25% (1 tick), and the final 1/3 does 25%.

Looking at the first 2 GCDs seconds of each (a full Mind Flay or the on-hit+2 GCDs of Mind Sear), you have:

Mind Flay: 4 ticks = 132% * Mastery

Mind Sear: 4 ticks = 100%

If you chained Mind Flay and Mind Sear for 4 GCDs total:

Mind Flay: 8 ticks = 264% * Mastery

Mind Sear: On-Hit + 6 ticks (@t = 2/3 GCD, 1 1/3 GCD, 2 GCD, 2 2/3 GCD, 3 1/3 GCD, and 4 GCD) = 175%

For 1 full channel of Mind Flay vs Mind Sear (2 GCDs), if your Mastery% is 51.51% or higher, Mind Flay is better than Mind Sear for 3 or fewer targets; if it is below 51.51%, Mind Flay is better than Mind Sear for 2 or fewer targets.

For 2 full channels of Mind Flay vs Mind Sear {with chaining} (4 GCDs), if your Mastery% is 50.86% or higher, Mind Flay is better than Mind Sear for 3 or fewer targets; if it is below 50.86%, Mind Flay is better than Mind Sear for 2 or fewer targets.

tldr: Above ~51.5% Mastery, more than 3 targets to use MS over MF; below this then more than 2 targets.