Patch 3.0.3 is going up on live realms today, and with it comes changes.
Shadow Priests manage to get by without a massive list of changes and balancing acts, but the changes we do get are pretty good ones, I think. If you're interested in what you'll be seeing this afternoon, read on!
- Devouring Plague: The bonus coefficient has been increased to be on par with other DoT spells. Base damage on ranks 7,8,and 9 decreased to partially compensate for better scaling.
This is very, very nice. Devouring Plague's damage was pretty pitiful for awhile there, right after they
spread it to all Priests. It was sometimes even questionable whether it was actually worth using in raid situations because of the GCD and debuff slot. It needed this buff, and I'm glad to see it. The healing from it will be nice now as well, because every little bit helps with
Shadow Word: Death around.
- Shadowform: Devouring Plague, Shadow Word:Pain, and Vampiric Touch cast in Shadowform deal increased damage percentage equal to the player's chance to get a spell crit on their target. This is in addition to its previous effects.
This is absolutely huge for Shadow Priests and part of that whole scaling with Crit thing that we've needed so desperately. It's only the first in a couple of big changes Shadow Priests are going to see soon to finally put us on the level with the other DPS classes. Ideally, after Blizzard's latest round of buffs we're pretty close to where we should be, but time will tell if our scaling actually does work out as we hope. Regardless, this is an amazing, amazing change and I'm very glad to see it, even if it makes crit rating not actually
mean crit anymore.
This change also made me wonder: Is Shadowform the most powerful talent in
WoW in terms of how much it changes a class? I think so.
This is a nerf, and a substantial one. I won't hold any illusion that it wasn't absolutely necessary. Shadow Priests were doing disgusting amounts of healing with our new, higher DPS. It was just unreal. Nerfs never feel good, but a DPS spec really shouldn't be #2 or #3 on the healing meters in a 25-man raid on an AOE heavy encounter. Pulling it off feels awesome, but it really shouldn't be possible. I wonder if this nerf was perhaps too severe, but maybe not. It was needed one way or another. The only problem is that nerfs never feel good, even if they're needed. It breaks my heart to see my insane healing go away, but it had to happen.
- Shadow Word: Death: The self-damage from this spell can no longer be reflected or redirected.
This is a pretty interesting bug. It doesn't have a huge impact either way, I imagine it was just an unforeseen side effect of adding
Improved Spell Reflection and
Divine Guardian to the game. No big deal. I didn't even realize it was there, and it's pretty hard to take advantage of it. I'd call this a fix, not a nerf or anything like that.
- Vampiric Touch: The Spell power coefficient has been doubled and no longer triggers Replenishment when other Priests cast Mind Blast.
Like the Devouring Plague and Shadowform changes above, this is another huge step forward for Shadow Priests. Vampiric Touch actually seems to be doing more damage than Shadow Word: Pain now. It's ticking high enough that Shadow Priests are worried we're going to get
Ret Paladin'd sometime soon. After all of these changes, things are
really looking up for us at level 80. I'm going to remain a pessimist about being a Shadow Priest because good things never seem to last, but I must admit things seem much better than they were just a month ago.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain now increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. (Previously reduced the mana cost of Shadow Word: Pain)
This is fantastic compared to what it was. Since
Mind Flay extends the duration of Shadow Word: Pain now through
Twisted Faith, you won't be casting it very often at all. The mana it saved you was negligible. Multi-casting DoTs on multiple targets used to be a big tactic for Shadow Priests, but with
Mind Sear on the way it's not such a hot tactic anymore. The new version of this glyph expands upon the new synergy between Pain and Flay and I kind of like it!
- Glyph of Shadow - While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 seconds. (This glyph replaces Glyph of Mind Soothe)
Again, this is
great. Anything that helps a Shadow Priest's scaling is fantastic. Like Vampiric Touch, this is one of those things that has us afraid of getting Retribution'd by the devs. At level 80, gear is absolutely
slathered in Spirit. This Glyph has a substantial effect in PvE. Much better than that silly Mind Soothe thing. The only downside to this glyph is we have to wait awhile to get our shadowy paws on it. It requires Northrend materials to make.
That's all for us
Shadowfiends in this patch, and if you're interested in
the full patch notes, we have those as well. Overall, I like these changes and am happy to see them. I hope you are, too!
Wait, did I just call all of us incorporeal tentacle monsters?
Tags: devouring-plague, dispersoin, featured, glyph-of-mind-soothe, glyph-of-shadow, glyph-of-shadow-word-pain, improved-shadowform, mind-flay, mind-sear, patch-3.0.3, shadow, shadow-priest, shadow-priests, shadow-word-death, shadow-word-pain, shadowfiend, shadowform, tweet-this, twisted-faith, vampiric-embrace, vampiric-touch
Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, Buffs, Wrath of the Lich King
Nov 4th 2008 at 9:30AM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tih Nov 4th 2008 9:41AM
Isn't "Glyph of Mind Flay: Now sets snare to 10% instead of removing it." a good change as well?
holyground Nov 4th 2008 10:38AM
They made that change (0% to 10%) because they couldn't make a glyph actually remove the snare portion of the Mind Flay.
The situation they were seeing was that mind flay could still be broken out of with any snare removal effect because the spell was still technically a snare, even though it snared for 0%.
The situation was to rebuild the spell or change the glyph slightly. It's a wonder why the glyph change won out.
Antonia Nov 4th 2008 11:09AM
yeah that wasn't even mentioned, probably cause it has nothing to do with doing damage really... its still really nice though.
Fleur Nov 4th 2008 9:45AM
Yay!
Spazmoosifer Nov 7th 2008 6:49PM
From someone that is consistently mid to above average on the dps (and healing) charts (I was at #8 in DPS, and #6 in healing last night in BT), I think that this will be a great set of changes to the class, and look forward to using my newly increased damage in BT/Sunwell this coming week.
Candina@WH Nov 4th 2008 9:48AM
More dps is good. Less group healing? bad.
I would have preferred they do something like keep the healing coefffieinct of VE and iVE, but reduce the number of people it heals (It goes to the bottom 10 now, make it the bottem 8 instead of ret-nerfing it)
My only complaint? Is that my tier4-5 gear or equivelants are now less useful.
I have passed on +crit gear for the past 2 years. Now I have to regear to get +crit gear? So I can scale well?
As I upgrade gear in the expansion, I will pick up +crit gear. but as I don't expect to get the expansion until December/January, thats about 3 months of futility ;-)
ILuvLamp Nov 4th 2008 9:57AM
These changes are great. I was planning on leveling a DK to stay raid viable in my guild. Now I think I will stop passing on all the new T6 drops we are seeing now that everything was super-nerfed.....
sephirah Nov 4th 2008 9:55AM
Your T4/T5 gear could be less useful, but what will you use it for?
Everybody will be in Northrend in the next months, if you don't get the xpac you won't have many thing to do (no TBC raids, no heroics, no bg).
So, less group healing isn't a problem if you have no groups to heal...
Manhands Nov 4th 2008 9:59AM
Just as an FYI at level 70 stacking crit on a shadow priest actually reduces your overall damage, by alot. its not till your mid 70s that you start to gain any benefit from stacking it.
Candina@WH Nov 4th 2008 9:59AM
Stop! You're depressing me! :-)
I will probably level my pally or my warlock to 70 until I get the Xpac. My gear will still be useful for dailes, I suppose, but it will be hard to evaluate the changes to Spriests without changing gear.
I have a hard time not pulling aggro now, and now I have to manage spikey damage, not something I have had to think about.
shadowwolf007 Nov 4th 2008 10:13AM
VE only heals your party members ( including pets ) and not the lowest 10 people. I believe you've mistaken replenishment for VE's effect.
Last night, in raw healing, through a BT clear, I did over 7 million in raw healing and 1.3 million in effective healing. Considering I was not in a tank group and didn't even use VE unless my group was taking damage, I could have easily done better.
I've have a few ZA and KZ runs where I've been #1 in effective healing by sitting in a tank group.
I'm happy to see our healing get nerf'd down to reason along with a DPS buff :)
Candina@WH Nov 4th 2008 10:19AM
Your right, I am mixing the VE with the VT / replenishment mechanic.
I thought that VE had the same mechanic raid wide, I was mistaken.
Since it is only the caster group (Enh Shammy's, Pallys and Druids usually go in our tank group), VE just make me the top in overhealing.
So, yeah, I will take a DPS buff for this nerf. :-)
Hardy Nov 4th 2008 9:49AM
Meh. Aside from Silent resolve, our DoTs are still to easily removable. I mean, at least warlocks have UA if they want.
Manhands Nov 4th 2008 9:56AM
OK, this is driving me nuts:
" * Vampiric Embrace now heals the priest by 15% and other party members by 3%, with Improved Vampiric Embrace increasing that by 66% with the full two points.
This is a nerf, and a substantial one. I won't hold any illusion that it wasn't absolutely necessary. Shadow Priests were doing disgusting amounts of healing with our new, higher DPS. It was just unreal. Nerfs never feel good, but a DPS spec really shouldn't be #2 or #3 on the healing meters in a 25-man raid on an AOE heavy encounter. Pulling it off feels awesome, but it really shouldn't be possible. I wonder if this nerf was perhaps too severe, but maybe not. It was needed one way or another. The only problem is that nerfs never feel good, even if they're needed. It breaks my heart to see my insane healing go away, but it had to happen"
this is yes a nerf in PvE (kinda), but is an amazing buff for PvP the health return is just shy of 25% of all the damage you deal. Example: pre-patch 2k MB hit returns 330 health, post-patch 2k MB hit returns 498 health (24.9% return) So i would most defenetly call this an amazing buff to our survival, which can be considered a buff for PvE, being as the less mana we spend on healing ourselve increases the amount of time we can grind with out having to drink.
Alex Ziebart Nov 4th 2008 11:15AM
The personal healing number hasn't changed. It's not a buff. You've always healed yourself for 25% of your damage. The only thing that was buffed was your damage. For PvP, self-healing purposes, the talent remains unchanged.
Manhands Nov 4th 2008 11:28AM
Im sorry to tell you this but your wrong, you've always healed yourself for 15% of the damage done and with imp VE that number is increased by 10% making it 16.5% now that Imp VE is 33/66% that number is increased by 66% making it 25%. So no it has not always been.
Alex Ziebart Nov 4th 2008 11:35AM
Hmm, you're probably right! I added the numbers together rather than increasing the base by the 10%.
Madwand Nov 4th 2008 1:11PM
Sorry, but I'd have no peace if this wasn't cleared up. :)
VE
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes all party members to be healed for 15% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 1 min.
ImpVE
Increases the percentage healed by Vampiric Embrace by an additional 10% (one could add: "of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 1 min").
Meaning it's: x*15%+x*10%=x*25%
So it is in fact the same.
feelthevibe Nov 4th 2008 1:14PM
Fail.
iVE used to increase the effect from 15% to an additional 10% up to 25%, not 10% of the 15%. If you thought that then seriously your a moron.
This change reduces the amount healed for your party to 5% to your party and your self healing remains at 25% with iVE.
Also, grinding is a very small part of PvE. Raiding priests that are switching out of shadowform to heal themselves, are reducing their dps and uptime considerably and should look to invest in some new healers.
Dart Nov 4th 2008 9:59AM
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain uses Jadefire Ink which comes from "milling Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whisker, and Wintersbite."
So its available now