The Clownsuit

So I finally found a couple of other Shadow Priests to model my gear after, but getting to that point is not going to be easy. You see, almost all of the gear upgrades (closer to sidegrades really) I can get are also upgrades for Warlocks and Mages. I need a few more pieces from Naxx, including the one from the quest to unlock EoE. I think there are two upgrades from Malygos drops, and two in H OS (with 2 or 3 drakes only). I gave in and spent all my valor tokens on the valor shoulders and gloves, and those are the only tier pieces for me.

Here's a list of my gear vs the gear I actually want. Not everything will be listed, because some of the upgrades are sitting in my bags rotting while I wait for the OTHER gear to drop. All it really does is redistribute the hit points and add a smidgey bit more spellpower.

Slot	Have	Want	Drops From
Head	Gothik's Cowl	Hood of Rationality	Heroic EoE
Neck	Chain of Latent Energies	Wyrmrest Necklace of Power	H Malygos Quest
Back	Deathchill Cloak	Pennant Cloak	H Sarth+2 drakes
Wrist	Azure Cloth Bindings	Bands of Impurity	H Naxx - Noth/Gluth
Legs	Leggings of Atrophy	Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster	H Malygos
Finger	Seized Beauty	Lost Jewel	H Naxx bosses
Finger	Band of Channeled Magic	Signet of Manifested Pain	H Naxx Kel'Thuzzad

I'd include my trinkets, because I want at least one of those to be upgraded to the Dying Curse for the +hit, but the jury's out on which to replace: Sundial of the Exiled, or Embrace of the Spider.

Anyway, the Shadow Priest's quest for epic gear is all about balance. Sure I'd like items with a higher overall rating, but I can't give up all my +hit, so a balance must be maintained. If I want to change out one or two pieces for higher spellpower, that's one or two OTHER pieces I must also change out. It's such a pain. UGH!

Shadow Priest Spells: Shadow Word: Pain

Shadow Word: Pain

SW: P, as it will henceforth be called, is another damage over time spell and is considered (at least by WoWwiki) to be the strongest DoT spell in the game. I am not sure I'd go THAT far, but it sure does do a lot of damage. There's also a talent in our shadow tree that gives SW:P up to 6% more damage overall. SW:P also benefits from Shadow Weaving (buffs all shadow damage by 2% per stack for up to 5 stacks. If you don't talent 3 points into this, I'll cry), and your +crit. That's right, a DoT that already does a ton of damage can also crit. Below is the base damage chart per rank.

Rank	Level	Mana cost	Damage
1	4	25%	30
2	10	25%	60
3	18	25%	120
4	26	25%	210
5	34	25%	330
6	42	25%	462
7	50	25%	606
8	58	25%	768
9	65	25%	906
10	70	22%	1116
11	75	22%	1176
12	80	22%	1380

The utility of this spell in a raid is undeniable for several reasons.

1. EVERY SINGLE PRIEST HAS THIS. I'll repeat: every priest in the game--be they holy, discipline, or shadow specced--has this spell. On DPS-race fights (i.e. Sartharion with drakes), it is invaluable. The reason Shadow priests are also invaluable is because our trainable spells make SW:P (and DP to a lesser extent) that much more viable for damage output.
   
2. You can use this spell while you run into a fight, and start your DPS that much sooner. The quicker
   
3. For most fights, a shadow priest SHOULD, theoretically, only have to throw it on a mob or boss once (for most fights; not all). Prior to the latest patch, this would be the 5th spell in your initial rotation, but due to some fixed bugs, it's bumped up to 2 or 3. Basically, you used to need 5 stacks of shadow weaving up to get the full dps benefit, but now, when SW:P refreshes (we'll discuss this when we discuss Mind Flay) it refreshes the damage based on current buff situation. In other words, SW:P refreshes, and will update itself based on the extra damage from shadow weaving/trinkets/etc. At least, that's my understanding.

Anyhoo, SW: P is your second/third spell in your initial DPS rotation (unless you have to run into position quickly, in which case it's 1 or 2). Next spell up for explanation is Shadow Word: Death. I'll try and post that later this week, but I'm raiding a LOT, and might not be able to contain my shakes if I manage to get my last few epics I need.

Two Drakes, One Onyxia Clone.

Having never seen the original "two girls, one cup" nonsense, I don't mind bringing up the disgusting image for you all.

Last night, the mighty 25 downed Sartharion with two drakes. I feel a little bad. Sarthypoo was just doing his job, protecting his brood's eggs, and we had to come in and get all up in his ugly face. "What? You wanna go? We'll go right now, beeyatch!" Right! So he didn't drop ANYTHING I cared about, which was sad, because the more I see the pieces I want, the less competition I'll eventually have for them!

The good news is that it was the first 25-man I'd run since the 3.0.8 patch, and I'd like to report that I popped in at number 2 in the overall WWS, and number 5 on the final kill (neither WWS counted time in the Twilight Portals killing Vesperon's minions). I finally broke the 3k dps barrier (on the kill, at least)! Next up: breaknig 4k. Just a few more gear upgrades and I'm good. Still need a better ring, and still need new bracers. Could use the valor token shoulders and gloves, too. (I won the gloves, but accidentally got the healing set piece...ticket's still open.) I wonder just a little bit if my increased dps has anything to do with blizzard fixing Mind Flay. "Mind Flay: Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling. Also corrected an issue where the damage from this ability was slightly delayed." Any theorynerds (looove youuu!) want to weigh in on that?

I also learned a little something about what I call "running dps," or doing damage while getting into/changing position for a boss fight. I've posted previously about spell rotation and what I use, but in light of the new patch, I've updated it slightly. Luckily, the updated initial cast sequence allows for changes during running dps fights. This is what I used last night:

DP > SW:P > SW:D > VT > MF(1tick) > MB

For "run in and stand still" fights, it's:

VT > DP > SW:P > SW:D > MF(1tick) > MB

Based on the latest theorycrafting threads I've seen, you benefit more from MB with 5 stacks of weaving than you do from SW:P with 5 stacks of weaving. I'll get to all that when I finish my series on Shadow Priest Spells. As for what to do when you finish the initial rotation, well, just do what you normally do, except you might need to use SW:D a little more frequently while you're running to and from portals and lava walls.

Stay tuned next time for the next Shadow Priest spell!

Shadow Priest Spells: Devouring Plague

Devouring Plague
Devouring Plague is a trainable spell, available at level 20. It costs a percentage of mana, does damage over 15 seconds that scales with the spell's level and your stats. It also heals you for 15% of the damage done. Below is a rank table from WoWwiki:

Rank	Mana Cost	Damage	Level
1	28% of base mana	152	20
2	28% of base mana	272	28
3	28% of base mana	400	36
4	28% of base mana	544	44
5	28% of base mana	712	52
6	28% of base mana	904	60
7	25% of base mana	1088	68
8	25% of base mana	1144	73
9	25% of base mana	1376	79

This is DoT number 2 on my refresh list. The damage it does is significant, and when soloing can be very nice to have to help save on health pots. On our last Naxx25 (well, the last with a WWS anyway) DP accounted for 18% of my total damage on bosses. The average DoT tick was 1670 and the max was 2181. This is all well and good, but let's get to the reason raid leaders should like this spell.

First of all, It's a DoT. This is good for the same reason any DoT is good: you can keep hurting bosses even if you have to move. It is an instant cast with a 30 yard range, which means we can still do damage to Malygos during the Vortex phase even if we're on the outer edge of the vortex. It ALSO keeps us healed during that fight, when the healers can't really do much. It ALSO increases healing if we have Vampiric Embrace (will discuss later) up on the target, making the Malygos fight even easier on us, and making it less likely that we will die before phase 2--something which cannot be said of mages and warlocks.

The other VERY nice thing about this spell is that it is a Disease, not a magic effect, and will be affected by the Death Knight spell Pestilence. Moving on to the next target and discovering DP is already there gives me the same feeling as getting an extra candy bar from a vending machine.

As mentioned, this spell should be second in your initial cast rotation; preceded by Vampiric Touch, and succeeded by Shadow Word: Pain. We'll discuss that next time! Hope this helps!

Small Successes inside of Failures

Last night, after a very long day, I came home to find I was supposed to be in a raid 30 minutes prior. I thought, and was dead certain, that the raid was an hour later than it was, so I was in a very horrid mood, hungry, and had a headache.

The next three hours were some of the most mind-numbingly bad Naxx10 boss attempts I have ever seen. Can you people not read up on boss strategies before you come? That is standard practice for ALL 10-man content in our guild. You read up on strategies beforehand, and fine-tune for your specific group. Am I way off here? Anyway, the point is not how miserably we did on boss fights, but how awesome I did at being a shadow priest.

Granted, most of the group was in here for the first or second time and didn't know what was going on at any given time (won't name names), but even on Maexxna I was not far below the others. I was on web wrap duty, you see, so I spent some time running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

So even though we wiped twice on every boss, there was a little gimmer of a smile coming from beyond my computer. Thanks, failgroup, for making me feel awesome.

Note: not everyone in the group was fail, but enough of it was fail that I have dubbed it "Failgroup." Stay tuned! Tomorrow I'll post another in depth look at a specific spell.

Shadow Priest Spells: Vampiric Touch

This post is for the WoW players of the world who don't know the first thing about Shadow Priest utility, and for players who need help understanding their own Shadow Priest. Starting with the most important spell in a Shadow Priest's inventory, here's the first in an ongoing list.

Vampiric Touch

Vampiric Touch is a spell gained from talent points in the shadow tree. It requires Shadowform and at least 40 points in the shadow tree. It has 4 additional trainable ranks, and in its final form, costs 16% of your base mana.

VT does a nice little bit of damage over time that scales with your stats, buffs, etc, and can be affected by crit. For example: last week's Sarth+1 drake kill put my average VT damage tick at 2112, with a maximum of 2994 (room for improvement). The tooltip for rank 5 tells you it does 935 damage over 15 seconds.

However, the best thing about VT, and why you should refresh it as often as you can, is the debuff it adds to the enemy. Every time you use Mind Blast (I shall discuss later), up to 10 people in your party/raid gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second. While this is a SIGNIFICANT nerf from the way VT used to work, it's still an incredibly useful thing to have in conjunction with the other classes that now offer slight mana replenishment. The damage boost is significant, and because of that, it's cast often in rotation.

In your shadowpriesting spell rotation, This should be your first cast in a fight (debatable), and should be one of the first things (if not THE first thing) you refresh when your timer gets low or runs out. The mana replenishment is absolutely adored by all your comrades. I promise.

Hope this was helpful to all!

Learning Something New

So! I learned something new about shadow priesting (and presumably gear in general). Back when I played my rogue almost exclusively in TBC, there was a clear line of gear upgrades for me. I didn't have to juggle stats and gems. There were solid numbers I needed, and things just fell right in line.

Either I was just copying other people's gear, or things are very different in WotLK! I've read threads upon threads about what stats are good and necessary, and what can be changed out for various upgrades, what you have to give up to get to the hit cap, how much spellpower is enough, etc., etc., and all I have come up with is:

There is no perfect priest gear list. The things with the highest hit rating aren't necessarily the ones with the best overall gear rating, but you HAVE to have hit, and it HAS to come from somewhere, which means you HAVE to get lucky with drops if you want to get the perfect balance.

For example, the Valorous Garb of Faith set gives a grand total of 452 spellpower, 91 hit, 166 crit, and 91 haste. Compare with the items I currently have in those slots: 354 spellpower, 136 hit, 167 crit, and 177 haste. The set bonuses on valor gear really aren't worth losing the hit rating, since that's the most important thing for me stat wise.

You're thinking "Ooo that's 100 spellpower you could have that you don't! True, but unless I want to sacrifies all the +hit I already have, the only smart set pieces to get would be the chest and shoulders, as they both have +hit, which is a must. I'm still not quite at 288.5 or whatever, but I'm at 285, and I am not replacing ANY of my +hit gear unless I get a significant amount of the stuff from other pieces of gear.

So while I have a few upgrades I could get, generally I need to keep my hit at or above what it currently is. If I replaced everything else with some hit gear, I would CONSIDER getting full valor, but honestly, I don't think I will.

Lesson learned: gear with a higher numerical ranking does not necessarily mean it's an upgrade.

Epic mounts and the people who love them

This post has absolutely NOTHING to do with Shadow Priests (except that I think I was pretty awesome at Malygos25 last night, and I DIDN'T DIE IN PHASE 3 for the first time ever).

Wednesday's One-Nite-Naxx clear left us with a whole raid day to hone our dragon-slaying skills. It took us an embarassing number of attemps to kill the ugly brute, but once we did, we discovered our efforts were well worth it. Inside Alexstrasza's Gift lay the Reins of the Blue Drake. Much oohing and ahhing commenced, and it was decided that instead of conveniently rolling 1-25, every person who wanted the reins would roll 1-100. After seeing 5 rolls of 90, we finally got someone who rolled 99 to win.

Congratulations, Vermie! You winned an epix!

I Am Perplexed...

Last night, our guild cleared Naxx25 in 4 hours. Recount told me I kicked ass and took names.

Recount is apparently a liar, because the WWS for the evening placed the other shadow priest MUCH higher, and placed me at just barely out-damaging the tanks. I just don't understand. The only stats she has that are higher than mine are Hit (she's way over the cap) and Mana Regen. Her gear is good, but so is mine now. I just have to hope that the new pieces of gear I picked up this week will help.

• Cincture of Polarity - Great +hit belt. Added a belt buckle and +16 spellpower gem
• Heigan's Putrid Vestments - More +hit. Need to enchant. I love the name of this though. Puuuutriiiid
• Leggings of Atrophy - Another great name. More +hit. STILL NOT FREAKING CAPPED. Waiting on a tailor to make my pantschant.
• Gothik's Cowl - Got this piece on Monday. Best hat I can probably get for now, and I got it for cheaps.
• Mantle of the Corrupted - Still more +hit, still not capped. Reeeally tryin here. There are a few better shoulder pieces, but I need the +hit.

Otherwise, I have NO idea what I'm doing wrong, and there's really no one to tell me in my guild. The other two shadow priests are... how do you say... unhelpful. I've turned to the theorycraft geniuses at shadowpriest.com, as I'm not very good at it. But seriously. By all accounts, hit for spriests is pretty broken right now, and some report seeing no misses on bosses after 157 hit or so. I just... ugh! I dunno what else to try. My life as a shadow priest is very much a roller coaster with the extremes of frustration and happiness.

Shadow Priests and Naxx 25 (Part 1)

Last night, I was pulled in randomly to a Naxx25 raid already in progress the SECOND I logged on. I was still technically holy specced after my aforementioned heroics on Saturday, so I had to speed over to IF and unlearn all my talents! Thank goodness they don't make you spend the gold to re-train every level of a spell anymore. Here's the Shadow Priest Boss Strategy I came up with from my limited encounters last night. Correct me if I'm wrong. Always. Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Instructor Razuvious (or, MC duty for dummies)
This is incredibly easy for a Shadow Priest. It's all about timing of cooldowns, and if it's one thing we know a heck of a lot about, it's cooldowns. Typically you and one other priest will be chosen to Mind Control a Death Knight Understudy. If you are not chosen for this task, remind your raid leader of your affinity for watching cooldown timers, and the fact that, as a shadow priest, you have PLENTY of +hit to ensure your MC does not miss on the level 82 mob. You have to be absolutely on top of your game or this could be disastrous. Here are the steps for supaa victoly:

1. Mind soothe your intended victim. Scoot down the ramp a bit until Mind Control is no longer out of range. Stay off to the Left or Right side of the ramp, depending on your intended target.
   
2. When the raid leader says GO, you hit the Mind Control buttan. Make sure ze buttan is easy to see, as you'll be needing it again fairly soon. From here on out, timing is everything.
   
3. If you're not the first one to tank Razuvious, wait until your Priestly Partner calls out for you before you start on step 4. If you're the first to tank, go to step 4 immediately after you MC the understudy.
4. There are 3 ability buttons (buttans) on your new minion. Unless you have screwed with your bar addons like I have, they will correspond to hotkeys. Press them in the following order:
• Press 6 on the keyboard - Bone Barrier will reduce your mob's damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds. If you do not do this FIRST, your mob will die, you will die, and your raid will run away screaming.
• Press 5 on the keyboard - Taunt, like the warrior ability of the same name, will cause your mob to tell Razuvious a "yo momma" joke, and thus pull aggro. Do this VERY FAST, as Razuvious will start attacking the raid otherwise. There is a 20 second cooldown. REMEMBER THIS NUMBER.
• Press 4 on the keyboard - Blood Strike. Instant melee attack that your minion uses on Razuvious. Mash this when the 4 second cooldown is up. You'll use this approximately 4 to 6 times before you must taunt again.
5. Once you have finished the initial 6, 5, 44444, 6, 5, 44444 rotation, your Mind Control will need to be refreshed. You can watch the cooldown if you like, but the absolute rule to follow is use Taunt twice, then redo Mind Control. Quickly right click MC on your Buffs area (I use CTMods for buff tracking) or just hit the MC button on your button bar to let go of the mob, then immediately (IMMEDIATELY!!) pick it up again.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until Razuvious dies. Whoever is closest to losing MC should then release his or her understudy and let the raid kill it. Then release yours if you have not already, and help your friends kill it.
   
7. Profit.

If, for some reason, you're not tasked with MC duty, Just kill Razuvious and the non-MC'd understudies as hard as you can, and maybe throw up VE to help with healing top-offs, as healers will be stretched thin if your raid decided to use two healers to do MCs. If your raid insists on using healing priests, you might want to make sure your +hit is high enough.

Gothik the Harvester (or, DoTs? We don't need no stinkin' DoTs!)
When you enter the room, you'll see Gothik standing up on a platform on the opposite wall, and a gate next to the entrance with prison bars dividing the room. You will be assigned to either the left or the right side. The left side is the Living side; the right side is Undead. When the encounter begins, the gate will close. It is a dps race after that.

There really aren't many steps to this one. You are a DPS monkey. Not pulling aggro from the tanks is the tricky part in phase one. There are 3 types of mobs. They spawn first on the left. Once killed, their spirits go to the right side, where the other group has to kill them. It goes back and forth for awhile.

1. Unrelenting/Spectral Trainees - These are nonelites. Just target and mindsear on the first wave. After that, just use Mind Flay when you see one. You will kill 24 in all.
   
2. Unrelenting/Spectral Death Knights - Elites that cannot be CCd. VT + DP + MF is all I really had time to do. They go down fast with focused DPS. You CAN use Mind sear, but be very careful, as it's easy to pull aggro.
3. Unrelenting/Spectral Riders - Super tough elites. On the living side, you must only kill one at a time. Do NOT pull aggro, or you will die. I recommend just tossing some DoTs and concentrating on the other mobs.

Throughout phase 1, it is a dps and healing race to keep everyone alive. There are many mobs at once, and you have to be careful on the Living side that you don't overwhelm the Dead side with too many elites at once. There are usually only 2 tanks per side. Phase 2 is easy peasy. Gothik will come down to the living side. You will hit him with DoTs, and MB/MF until he teleports to the other side. Eventually, for phase 3, the gate is opened and it's just Tank n Spank to the end. Just do your normal routine in this phase.

Four Horsemen (or, Just let me hit play on Yakity Sax)
This fight is very simple, and doesn't really require bullets or list points, but since I like indented text, here you go.

1. Four tanks will drag each of the four horsemen to a different corner. You, the Shadow Priest, will stack (for the love of god, please stack) with the other casters and pull out all the stops on your assigned Miniboss (generally Kor'Thazz or Rivendare first). Our group generally sticks casters on Thane Kor'Thazz's side.
2. Do some damage. Make these wussies cry.
   
3. Every 3 marks (see the WoWWiki article to find out specifics), the tanks on Kor'Thazz and Rivendare will need to taunt the bosses off each other. There are two strategies you may follow, but generally your half of the DPS will either run with the tank, or wait for a meteor and stay put. Many times, this part is chaotic. Just keep damaging, trust your tank, and stay in a stack, and you will be fine.
4. Once the first two are down, you'll go do DPS on the last two. Blaumeux does a void zone thing. Stay out of those. While on Zeliek, just stay spread out. You will need to pay attention and switch sides every 3 marks until the bosses are dead, just like on the first two.
   
5. Profit.
   

Edit: Added Four Horsemen strategy. Toodles!

The Good Fight

I had to respec Holy (vomit) this weekend to get heroic groups. I pugged, and it made me want to cry. It did not help that I tried to heal the hardest heroic 5-man boss in the game when I hadn't healed for 6 months or so. I had to re-learn spell rotations and fix my buttons correctly. Not an easy task when in a hurry, but eventually, we managed to do it. So thanks for the patience of the A-team guildies that helped out your B-team sister. You guys are okay.

Speaking of good fights, I've been reading theorycraft websites all day and I'm just about to explode. It's fun to a point, but I'd really just like someone to out and out tell me the best spell rotation for my gear level. Tonight, I'm headed to the training dummy and testing my output. I'll report what I find.