My Priest buddy Matt Low is going to cover the new Holy and Discipline glyphs later today, and I'm going to look at what us Shadow Fiends get so far. Let's leap right into the Shadow stuff, eh?

Glyph of Psychic Scream - Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 3 seconds.

Not bad, not amazing. You can argue that those 3 seconds will never, ever come into play in PvP, and you would be mostly correct. PvE, I've never said "Oh man I wish my silly fear lasted THREE MORE SECONDS" but oh well. Not all glyphs need to be drool-worthy. A Psychic Scream glyph might be something I would use while leveling. Reducing the cooldown by another 1-3 seconds would be far superior, though.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Death - Targets below 35% health take an additional 5% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell.

Kinda counter-intuitive to the new talent Pain and Suffering, but more damage is more damage. I don't see anything really very wrong with this glyph. Should be good for PvP, good for leveling. Works against Pain and Suffering for raiding, but like I said, yay damage. EDIT: What I mean by counter-intuitive is that Pain and Suffering reduces how much damage we take, but now we're buffing that damage back up. It isn't a huge deal, more damage is awesome, but I would rather see that damage placed on a different spell for a raiding setting. It's quality everywhere else.

Glyph of Mind Flay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 5 yards but it no longer reduces the target's movement speed.

I can't help but feel somewhat insulted by this. Mind Flay being a 30 yard range really should be baseline, not requiring talents and glyphs to still be one of the ranged nukes with the shortest range in WoW. And of course, it isn't simply a 'more range!' buff either. There's a downside, removing the snare which was laughable to begin with. I almost want to say "I hope Frostbolt loses its snare, too" but I don't really mean that. I don't want to bring Mages down with me. The Mind Flay debacle just blows my mind.

I do not understand why they can't put Shadow Priests on equal ground with the other caster classes in a raid as far as range, even after the removal of the snare. I don't get it. Even Arcane Missiles gets 36 yards. It's the same kind of spell! I really would like to try and rationalize this, but I don't think there is actually a way to do so at this point.

Glyph of Fade - Attacks made against you while Fade is active have a 10% chance to refresh its duration back to full.

I actually do not understand this glyph. If it works as the wording implies, it simply increases the duration on your current Fade. This glyph, as the wording explains it, is almost entirely useless. Let's take a closer look at it:

PvE: Fade does not gain anything by being on you for a longer period of time. You drop a set amount of Threat when you hit the button, and then that threat comes back 10 seconds later. However, if you are still being hit by a mob after you have used Fade, extending the spell's duration is not going to do a whole lot for you. It doesn't reduce your threat further, it doesn't increase your survival. It does nothing.

PvP: Shadow Priests have access to Improved Shadowform, which reduces all movement impairing effects when you use Fade in Shadowform. This snare removal happens when you push the Fade key. For the rest of the Fade duration, you have no snare resist, removal, or anything of that sort. It only occurs when you push the button. It happens once. Extending the duration does nothing whatsoever.

Now, if they changed a simple duration increase to recasting Fade entirely, that could be useful. If you pop Fade to escape a Hamstring, and then the Warrior closes that gap again before Fade is over and reapplies the snare, a 10% chance to break that Hamstring again would be great. However, that's not what the text implies. So... right now, that tooltip screams, "I am useless and terrible and nobody loves me!" but it has the potential to be nice if they completely reword it to do something else entirely. In its current form, this glyph does nothing.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain - Increases the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain by 3 sec.

Are you serious? Why does this even exist. It has no purpose. It is going to die cold and alone. The new Shadow talents render it totally useless and Holy or Disc would never, ever take it over something else. If this glyph affected Vampiric Touch, then it would be worth considering. Even if this is a Minor Glyph, there are no situations where it would have a use.

To sum up my feeling on these glyphs: It's a beta. I'm sure these aren't done, and I'm positive this isn't the completed list. Many of these will change, and more will be added to them. That being said, holy crap these are terrible!

Tags: fade, glyphs, improved-shadowform, mind-flay, shadow-priest, shadow-word-death, shadow-word-pain, wotlk, wotlk-beta, wrath, wrath-beta

Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King