Priestly Patch Notes: 3.1

I'd be remiss if I didn't post a log of the possible pretty patch notes pertaining to priests of a particularly purplish persuasion. Gleaned from MMO Champion, which is a little confusing to read until you scroll past the "undocumented changes" section, which I won't delve into here.

Spell changes:

• Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
• Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now receives mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised. (Anon's note: SQUEE!!!! I love you, ShadowFRIEND! Let's be together forever. It's only a matter of time before he's a proper combat pet.)

Talent changes:

• Blackout: This talent has been removed. (Anon's note: I forgot we even had this.)
  
• Darkness: This talent is now in tier-1, moved up from tier-6.
• Dispersion: Now clears all snare and movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
  
• New Talent: Improved Devouring Plague (Shadow): Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect. (Anon's note: This is too fantastic. DP is already my highest refresh-rate, and now with the instant damage, I'm going to be even MORE meticulous about cooldowns.)
  
• Shadowform: Bonus damage from critical strike chance removed and replaced by the ability of those periodic damage spells to generate critical strikes. (Anon's note: Hmm... I'll have to see this in practice before I conclude anything.)
  
• Silence: Range increased to 30 yards.
• Vampiric Embrace duration increased to 5 minutes, up from 1 minute. PvP duration is now 60 seconds. Cooldown removed.

Exciting patch all around! With the changes, I think this will be my new spec. Comments?

Shadow Priest Spells: Mind Flay

Mind Flay

Mind Flay (MF) is a channeled damage spell. It requires 10 points spent in the Shadow tree (i.e. you must be level 20), and is an absolute MUST HAVE for leveling, farming, endgame raiding, and pvp. Unless all you are doing is fishing, you will want this spell.

This is, for almost every situation, your high-damage-output spell. In its basic form, it reduces target's movement speed by 50%, and does damage as follows:

Rank	Level	Mana Cost	Damage (over 3 sec)
1	20	10% of base mana	45
2	28	10% of base mana	108
3	36	10% of base mana	159
4	44	10% of base mana	222
5	52	10% of base mana	282
6	60	10% of base mana	363
7	68	9% of base mana	450
8	74	9% of base mana	492
9	80	9% of base mana	588

The first one at level 20 is, of course, the talented spell, but you train up through rank 9 after that. There is a Mind Flay glyph that increases the spell's range and removes the movement speed effect There is some argument about the usefulness of the glyph, but if you ask me, an additional 10 yards to do damage is better than 3 seconds of slow movement. In raids, this glyph is essential if you want to move around less. MF is also boosted by the following talents (as listed by WoWwiki):

• Blackout, Darkness, Martyrdom, Shadow Affinity, Shadow Focus, Shadow Reach, Shadow Weaving, Shadowform, Vampiric Embrace, Focused Mind, Mind Melt, Shadow Power, Misery, Pain and Suffering, Twisted Faith, Focused Power

So, even though the base damage chart looks somewhat sad and pathetic, keep in mind how much damage you can do with all your talents/stats. I've seen Mind Flay hit for 5k each tick. That's 15,000 damage over 3 seconds, and that, my darlings, is nothing short of fantastic. MF is perfect for pretty much every situation, and should be your main spell cast in between cooldowns. Figuring out when to leave it for a full cast versus when to cut it short is tricky, but my general rule is to use a full cast when there are no pressing DoT refreshes coming up in the next few seconds, and cut it short when there are.

This little thing comes in at number 5 on my opening rotation, which brings our Shadow Weaving stacks right on up to five. Now we can REALLY bring the pain.

Next time, we'll do more boss fight strategies for my lovely priesties!

No Nerf for the Wicked

A little birdie just sent me to (VERY) unofficial patch notes for 3.1.0, and if they're real (people seem to think they are not), boy will I be excited. The full text can be found here, but I'll post just a few of the Shadow-Priesty things that made me squee my pants a little:

• Mental Strength: Also increases armor contribution from items by 5%/10%/15%.
• Mind Melt: Critical strike chance increased by 3%/6%.
• Improved Shadow Word: Pain: Now increases damage by 5%/10%.

And from official blue posts via MMO Champion, here's a far more likely change that is prettah good.

• Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.

That one seems more for PVP folks, but could be incredibly useful for a few boss fights here and there, and reducing magic damage is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS welcome. Even if the damage increases are naught but lies, I'll be happy with the Shadow Form and Dispersion buffs.

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.

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!