Fear Ward and Spell Haste for facemelters
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 3rd 2008 at 2:00PM
Yesterday's announcements brought two big notes that will be affecting Shadow Priests. The Fear Ward change and the fact that Spell Haste will affect the global cooldown.The Fear Ward change, like I mentioned in my last post, is primarily a convenience change for PvE. Reupping Fear Ward every 3 minutes when you need to keep putting Shadowform back on afterwards is annoying, and a large mana drain over long encounters. However, it wasn't crippling, so not a very big deal. What this will help the most is PvP, especially arenas. Having an arena match last longer than three minutes isn't unlikely, so you will probably want to put Fear Ward back up at some point throughout the match. Being required to drop Shadowform to do it is sort of a pain, considering both the loss of damage and the mitigation Shadowform supplies you with, arguably one of the Shadow Priest's strongest defenses.
The Spell Haste change is what has me a little excited. I'll admit right away, I haven't crunched any numbers. I'm notoriously bad at breaking down raw stats, I usually just eyeball my gear and take a guess. I'm right or pretty close more often than not but don't hate me too much if my guesses here are completely wrong. If you want to see some raw numbers, you can probably check them out over at the ShadowPriest.com forum.
I've noticed that in Hyjal and Black Temple, a Shadow Priest's damage starts to plateau. Through Karazhan, then most of SSC and TK, a Shadow Priest keeps pace very well with the other DPS classes. Every piece of gear is a substantial DPS boost, and there's little competition because Shadow Priests and Affliction Warlocks go for different gear than the Destro Locks and the Mages do. Things are pretty good! When Hyjal and BT come around, the iLevel system gets a little wonky. Because of how it works, the items that are split into multiple stats(crit, damage, haste) will eventually have a far greater overall DPS bonus than items that stack one stat: Spell damage. This becomes an issue when the Shadow Priests end up going after the "mage gear" because it gives us a better benefit than the gear "for us."
In the past, Shadow Priests have debated like crazy how useful Spell Haste really is for us, and there's never been a definitive answer. Some say yes, some say no, most say that its useful but only so much of it. Since Shadow spells are mostly instant or 1.5 second casts, Spell Haste only had an effect on Mind Flay, so it didn't make a very large difference. Now that the GCD will be going down with haste as well, it suddenly became much more desirable and I hope to see some great new Shadow Priest itemization in the Sunwell Plateau.
Filed under: Priest, Patches, News items, PvP, Raiding, Buffs, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Xutoo Feb 3rd 2008 4:57PM
I can give you a advice...go to EU priest foruns and see the ''real'' needs of our class
for example:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1829304462&sid=1
Or even better:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1152955337&sid=1
Priest comunity begging not for a buff but for a real balance of our classe...
This fear ward spell was never a essencial spell at arena...and if we only last for 13sec under focus i think that we wont have the chance to recast it:D
Bye and keep the good work
Alex Ziebart Feb 3rd 2008 5:54PM
Oh no, trust me, I know the real needs of the class. There's quite a few issues, ranging from "super important" to "would be kinda nice." I can't say I know how to fix them all, but I generally know whats what.
This is all we know about 2.4 so far thoguh, so instead of getting rather doom and gloom I just went a little more in-depth with those two bits in particular. When the full notes hit, I'll try to field those also if one of the other guys doesn't beat me to it.
Atilim Feb 3rd 2008 6:37PM
It doesn't change anything for affliction warlocks or spriest, since we get worse scaling anyway comperd to burst dmg classes
theRaptor Feb 3rd 2008 6:49PM
I think the gear pleateau kind of makes up for how stupidly good tailoring gear is for shadow priests. Shadow priests shouldn't be anywhere near the top of DPS with the utility they provide, but they are early on in raiding because of how good Frozen shadowweave is (my 63 shadow priest has six pieces of shadowcloth so far).
Hopefully with Blizzard looking into the iLevel system to fix retadins (who need nearly every stat in a decent quantity), they will fix issues with iLevel this (reducing the cost of spirit would be nice).
Alkahn Feb 3rd 2008 8:22PM
It's nice that we'll now have a 2nd stat to stack and see some returns. The returns for hit, haste, and crit were almost negligible. Also assuming the change affects heroism, that should also make that ability a bit friendlier to shadow priest DPS, and also make 5/5 imp mind blast a better talent option anytime haste may play a factor.
So far as "what shadow priests need".. eh, I think shadow priests are fine in PVE tbh. In early t5 content, I'm able to be top 3 on dmg reliably and return upwards of 100K of mana to my group. That kind of utility is kinda rediculous. As much as I hate to admit it, we should probably *do* less dmg relative to other DPSers given the kind of utility we provide.
Yeah once the tailoring "high" wears off and others catch up, I know I'm going to scale less than others in terms of personal DPS, and this haste change is a great answer to that, but even the current state of things, if that 100K mana is totally fixed and I don't see any improvements (which is not the case by any stretch) what my party can DO with that mana is still scaling with everyone else. So on the whole, shadow priests scale just fine, allowing for how overpowered Vampiric Touch is.
shadowwolf007 Feb 4th 2008 9:59AM
The haste change resolves a massive issue with Shadow Priesting later on. I think the GCD change on spells will provide a much larger benefit than people necessarily realize.
Being able to cast VT/SWP/VE in less than 4.5 seconds means you get into Mind Blasts & SWD's faster which means more Mind Flay Channels. Unfortunately, predicting DoT dropoffs means you have to re-learn your rotations. Practicing during dailies, though, should be enough.
Unfortunately, Haste will still result in no gain in DPM unlike Damage, so damage will be the better stat overall (DPS & DPM instead of just DPS) I bet.