Shadows of Doom: 3.0.2 for Shadow Priests
by Eliah Hecht 
Oct 14th 2008 at 7:30PM
Shadow has always been the "off-spec" for priests, from Classic, where it was questionable whether Shadow was viable for anything but leveling and PvP, to BC, where Shadow provides superb utility but limited DPS. Now I'm not saying Shadow will suddenly become the spec of choice for raiding priests, but the game is changing significantly in patch 3.0.2 and Wrath of the Lich King. Our coveted mana return is getting nerfed and spread around to Survival hunters and Retribution paladins, as well as us. But to compensate, our DPS is (supposedly) being brought up to par with the best of them.
A lot of this is coming in the form of a new and improved Mind Flay. Previously the "filler" spell that you cast during your rotation when you couldn't cast anything else, its spellpower coefficient is now being bumped up greatly, and perhaps more importantly, it can now crit! No longer must you shun crit rating to be a decent shadow priest.
Of course, there are also some dramatic talent tree changes - almost every talent is modified in some way. Let's start from the top and work our way down.
- Spirit Tap now does its magic for three talent points. The remaining two can be put into Improved Spirit Tap, which give you a chance to get mana back on Mind Blast and SW:D crits; the spirit boost will also help your damage with some later talents.
- Improved Shadow Word: Pain now increases the damage instead of the duration of the DoT; this is a gain in DPS, but a hit in mana efficiency. But that won't matter, because we won't be casting SW:P as much - you'll see why lower down.
- Shadow Focus dropped to three ranks. Now improves chance to hit with spells by 1/2/3% and reduces mana cost of Shadow spells by 2/4/6% (old version: improved chance to hit with spells by 2/4/6/8/10%). I still doubt we'll have much trouble reaching the hit cap, especially with the new Misery.
- Improved Fade renamed Veiled Shadows. Now decreases the cooldown of Shadowfiend by 1/2 minutes in addition to its previous effect. Worth taking now? I'm not sure, but I had some extra points, so I went ahead and did it in my sample build.
- Shadow Weaving dropped to 3 points for 100% chance, but only affects your own spells now, not nearby warlocks' or other shadow priests'. A nerf, but probably a necessary one to address excessive synergy.
- New talent: Mind Melt. Replaces Shadow Resilience. Learn to love the crit.
- Shadowform now decreases threat caused by 30% in addition to its previous effects. This is huge; combined with the buffs to tanking threat, we will have a vastly easier time not pulling aggro.
- Shadow Power redesigned; now makes our spell crits double damage (instead of the default 1.5x) with 5/5 points. All other DPS casters have a talent like this, and we need it with our new Mind Flay.
- New talent: Improved Shadowform. This should provide some much-needed PvP utility.
- Misery redesigned. Now provides +1/2/3% chance to hit with spells for all casters against the target, as well as increasing your shadow staples by 15% of your spellpower. Doesn't stack with Balance Druids' Improved Faerie Fire, but will still provide benefit to you even if you're in a raid with a boom-chicken.
- Vampiric Touch now causes Replenishment instead of its previous mana-return. Welcome to the new mana battery world.
- New talent: Pyschic Horror. Another PvP one; might also be useful for adventurous trash fights.
- New talent: Pain and Suffering. This is one of my favorite new talents in the entire game. Mind Flay automatically refreshes SW:P, so you just have to cast it once per mob. The reduced damage from SW:D is just icing on the cake.
- New talent: Twisted Faith. Spirit is now more useful for us. This should synergize well with Improved Spirit Tap for some mid-fight spirit boosts. But the main virtue of this talent will be the increased damage from MF and MB, our two biggest damage dealers. All in all, a very solid talent.
- And finally, our 51-point talent is Dispersion. I hate it. I absolutely think it's terrible - for PvE. Sure, it'll help a lot in PvP. But in PvE, for our 51-point talent, the pinnacle of our tree, to be a half-powered copy of an ability that every mage gets at level 20 is disheartening. Sure, we can move during it and we don't take much damage while it's active, but ultimately we have to stop casting for six seconds to get a third of our mana back every three minutes. I could probably find a talent I'd like better than this in any caster tree in the game. Don't get me wrong, I'll still take it (I wouldn't say no to a free mana potion every three minutes), but I'm taking practically everything else in the Shadow tree first.
That's it for our talents. How am I speccing, post-patch? It's hard to say for sure. I'd like to drop Meditation and Inner Focus and go flat-out Shadow, but I'm not sure if we'll be mana-efficient enough to do that, especially with much less coming back in the way of mana returns. If we do need Meditation, I honestly can't figure out what Shadow talents are the least bad to drop - any ideas on that?
Like many classes, we're in a bit of an awkward place right now. It seems like we're clearly expected to be able to grab Meditation and all our Shadow goodies at level 80, which is what the talent trees are designed for; I doubt Blizz is too concerned about what we'll do with ten fewer points. Has anyone been playing Shadow on the PTR? Any thoughts on whether Meditation is necessary? And is Dispersion semi-horrible for PvE, or am I really missing something?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
nehas Oct 14th 2008 7:37PM
"Without Dispersion, Shadow Priests would not be PvP viable. " - Koraa
fig Oct 14th 2008 7:52PM
"i would like to punch that moron in the face" -me (whenever i hear that poor excuse of a class designer open his mouth)
Aurigo Oct 14th 2008 7:52PM
A combination of CoS, Evasion, and Evocation for 6 seconds makes us PvP viable? I highly doubt it. It's like saying Ice Block makes mages pvp viable; it doesn't do much other than keeps you alive for 6 seconds.
"That's it for our talents. How am I speccing, post-patch? It's hard to say for sure. I'd like to drop Meditation and Inner Focus and go flat-out Shadow, but I'm not sure if we'll be mana-efficient enough to do that, especially with much less coming back in the way of mana returns. If we do need Meditation, I honestly can't figure out what Shadow talents are the least bad to drop - any ideas on that?"
That's pretty been my consensus since we lose a lot of dps in trying to go for meditation at 70 because it would result in not enough dps to make up for our nerfed utility.
WTB dispersion 25% dps buff!
adbiku Oct 14th 2008 8:03PM
I'm not a shadow priest. Never have been. Was looking at this for my roommate who thinks priests are beautiful.
I thought someone said that there was going to be some more restrictions on using potions in fights, though I was unsure of the details. Assuming they are going to limit it more drastically, isn't dispersion worthwhile for the mana return in absence of other resources?
Just my unknowledgable question.
Eisengel Oct 14th 2008 10:32PM
The false implication is that with Dispersion Spriests are now PvP viable. Now I haven't PvPed with my Spriest yet, but I'm going to guess that it's really just a stay of execution... you pop it once you get focused, then it expires, you get focused again, you throw a fear/shield, then you die.
This is... PvP viable?
Anthony Nov 18th 2008 4:06PM
there are a lot more reasons that priests aren't pvp viable. i won many many duels without dispersion. i think devouring plague is a much more useful talent.
Paul Oct 14th 2008 7:41PM
Dispersion is god awful, and the mana return nerf is borderline unforgivable. I'm shelving my much loved shadow priest until they work this swath of problems out, and give us something not just practical but fun as an end talent.
Wayne Oct 15th 2008 7:05AM
I hear ya man . it really seems thatpreist are taking a BIG Crack over the head =(
Michael Oct 14th 2008 7:44PM
I haven't been playing heavy shadow to the point where I've geared up with PVE gear and cleared the 25 mans.
However, I have cleared 10 man Naxx using the Premades on Murmur, keep in mind that was mostly geared with entry level 80 PVP gear, but...
From what I've seen, meditation is absolutely necessary. Sadly, so is dispersion, and I even got to the point where I needed the 3 minute shadow fiend. At that gear level, we go through mana like its nothing, and I wasn't even able to keep up Devouring Plague all that often without potting.
Vampiric Touch is annoying, I hate the fact that it requires Mind Blast to set it off. Because of the Mind Blast cooldown, you may just find yourself not being able to refresh Replenishment before it goes, Vampiric Touch in and of itself is annoying to cast and its DPS is pretty minimal (as always) but now it seems to be even more of a pain to keep Replenishment up than VT alone was. Given that, replenishment itself is pretty bad compared to old school VT.
Shadow Priests is like 2.0 all over again, start preparing your pots now as you will blow through mana. Unfortunately, I don't know if it will ever get much better considering Replenishment doesn't scale as like VT did.
All in all, the DPS increase I didn't notice much because of the PVP gear I had, it was slight at best. Mind Sear is a fun/good spell. Replenishment sucks and is even more annoying to keep up than VT was. All in all, I'm not that thrilled by any of the priest stuff (the other 2 specs are pretty much exact same as they have been the last year, nothing really new.)
fig Oct 14th 2008 7:52PM
one thing i can say that the fact that replenishment triggers off mind blast is a good thing because the cool down lets it tick for a while and actually do something (alltho very very little) back from when i was in beta i did notice a slight increase in dps, but only slight my t5 priest wasn't exactly doing the same damage as a t5 mage or lock would but i cant comment on lvl 80 tho because im a lazy bum and never got past 72
Reinard Oct 14th 2008 8:00PM
You REALLY have to keep in mind, though, how bad the gear they give those premades is for PVE. Like, really, terribad. I don't think it'll be quite as much of an issue when you have more than 150ish spirit and 14% crit >_
fig Oct 14th 2008 8:05PM
btw this is what im thinking for a spriest build
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcb0hZZG0fmkfzciqczI
for leveling purposes should be good got to have all the mana regen possible less downtime = faster lvling (thats why i even have one point in veiled shadows or imp shadowfiend as it should have been called)
VSUReaper Oct 14th 2008 7:45PM
I wasnt playing on the PTR, but on the Beta while leveling it helped alot!
Unfortunately, it looks impossible to build a lvl 70 build that has both dispersion and meditation.
rick gregory Oct 14th 2008 7:46PM
Dispersion is insultingly bad. It's useless in PvE and NO 51 point talent should be useless in PvE or in PvP. Better for one that the other, sure... but there's no reason to take Dispersion if you're speccing for PvE.
crsh Oct 14th 2008 7:47PM
You can add to that the 20% nerf to the great +shadow damage gear we so avidly collected during TBC and, if you're not prepared, you'll be getting an awful lot more resists now as our +hit cap used to be very easy to reach.
And of course we lost the monopoly on mana regen in raids; I don't mind that part so much, to be honest.
Doom & gloom, and all that jazz, but yeah, spriests got the nerf bat; they were however made a generic DPS caster spec with better usage of +crit (about frickin' time).
I have yet to believe our DPS was made on par with other casters though; despite what Blizzard has been saying, it just isn't true.
Matt Oct 14th 2008 8:04PM
It isn't really fair to say DPS is not where it should be until we see the 80 itemization more intimately.
Holy priests are going to feel the same pain because we haven't itemized for crit in the past, and suddenly our clearcasting is procced by crits.
Nezoia Oct 14th 2008 7:58PM
Improved Shadowform and Dispersion are made of win for Sunwell Plateau.
Sure I understand that you people doing easier instances dislike it, but again I barely need a shadowfiend for Black Temple clears these days.
Dispersion and Improved Shadowform is superb for PvE -- you just need to try it out to realise it.
SiN Oct 15th 2008 4:56AM
Ummm Lul...youre kidding right???
Both are not needed for SW. The only time Imp SF would come in handy would be on phase 2 of Souls, and maybe to counteract the pushback on Felmyst when Gas Nova hits..and even then its not even worth 2 points.
And when could you use Dispersion in SW?...Maybe on Kale in Demon phase..definiately not on brut, maybe on Fels during Air phase (Killing Skeles part, you should be dpsn her in the air until she flies off). Twins...umm no..GG Dispersion...uh oh..conflag..o.0
Imp SF is good for pvp, 1-2 fights in pve. But not worth the waste of points imo.
Dispersion is definiately not worth it. 51 points = no mana regen from Disc tree and you stop dpsn which means less regen for your casters/healers.
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Deb Oct 14th 2008 8:00PM
If only, only Koraa et.al. would understand that spriest, with all due respect, do pay the same $14.99 per month to have fun on WoW, perhaps we would see something more than being # 3 or #4 on the DSP meters.
Melchior Oct 14th 2008 7:59PM
I like dispersion... it would be great as a tier 3 talent. For this spell to be at the end of the fucking shadow tree is joke. How would mages feel if all they got at the end of their talent tree to be a fucking evocate?!? Nope every other dps caster class gets an actual dps spell... spriest=screwed.