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.

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!