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!

Shadow Priest Spells: Shadow Word: Death

Shadow Word: Death

Velcome to spell number four on our epic journey to Face-melty Priesthood. Shadow Word: Death is our instant-cast, cast-while-moving damage spell. The tooltip reads "A word of dark binding that inflicts X to Y Shadow damage to the target. If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target." This ability scales with gear/talents/glyphs etc. The damage it does to you, the caster, can also be mitigated somewhat, though the mechanics of that changed somewhat in the last patch. You probably notice that the icon for this spell is almost the same as the one for SW:P. Don't get confused!

Here is a handy dandy chart telling you base stats for SW:D:

Rank	Level	Mana Cost	Damage
1	62	14%	450 to 522
2	70	12%	572 to 664
3	75	12%	639 to 741
4	80	12%	750 to 870

There are just a few quick things to note about SW:D.

1. If you type it into many chat programs, people think you're smiling at them in a creepy way.
2. The best times to use SW:D are at the very beginning of a fight, when your more important cooldowns are less than 2 seconds away, or when you want to kill yourself to avoid durability loss.

This is a short post for a spell, because this is a short spell. I use it as number 4 in my opening sequence, and apply as needed (while running/vortexed/not quite cooled down). Healers, please don't be alarmed when we suddenly lose 5,000 HP. We did it to ourselves! Remember warlock hellfire spam? It's like that only less obnoxious.

Next time, we'll take a look at a little beauty called Mind Flay. Toodles!

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!

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!

Shadow Priests and Endgame Preparedness

I mentioned yesterday that I had doubts about shadow priest raid utility these days. Our guild went to Heroic Naxxramus last night and my damage was actually not too shabby considering I'm still in mostly blues (still carrying green trinkets, ew). Basically I've come to the conclusion that a shadow priest's ability to hold his or her own in a raid is dependent FIRST on spec, SECOND on spell rotation, and THIRD on gear.

1. The spec is easy. There are tons of theorycrafting sites out there that tell you the why, but generally speaking this is the WotLK raid spec of choice.
2. Spell rotation is hotly debated and depends quite a bit on gear and on the kind of fight you're in.
• For soloing, I like to use Vampiric Touch (VT) - Mind Blast (MB) - Devouring Plague (DP) - Mind Flay (MF) or Mind Sear (MS) x 2 - MB if needed, or repeat previous sequence - Shadow Word: Death (SWD) to finish.
• For 5-man heroics, I use MB - DP - SWD - VT - Shadow Word: Pain (SWP) - MF or MS - repeat. I drop Vampiric Embrace (VE) in there if the healing is shoddy.
• For most boss fights, I use VT - MB - DP - SWD - SWP - MF - VT - trinkets - Inner Focus (IF) - MB - SWD - DP - SWP
  


3. Gear is where the fun starts, because it is all about what your goal is. If you're going for a coveted raid spot, my impression is that +spellpower and +hit are tops, followed by +crit and +haste, though the topic is debated. The hit cap is 290, and to be honest, I'm having a hell of a time gearing for that and not losing too many points in other places. I find a +hit weapon, but I lose other stats in the process. Still working out the details on the gear issue. Ugh.
• Example 1: At my current gear level, I could use Flameheart Spell Scalpel + Telestra's Journal, or I could use Staff of Draconic Combat. Quick comparison tells you that the staff is better on Int, Spellpower, and Haste but the dagger+book is better on Crit and Hit. I technically only lose a little bit of spell power, I lose quite a bit on the other stats (I prefer haste to crit for now. Please argue against.)
• Example 2: Rings! I could go Signet of the Malevolent + The Prospector's Prize or Band of Guile + Annhylde's Ring. Both options are fine, but one is hit heavy with way less spellpower and one has no hit at all.

So you can see wherein the problem lies. Next time, I'll go into more detail about exactly why you should put a shadow priest in your raid.