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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWoW Patch 3.1 PTR Shadow Priest changes
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 24th 2009 at 3:00AM
The PTR patch notes have hit, and while we don't have the entire spread of changes yet (they'll be coming in waves), we do have a lot of pretty good material to look at. Personally, I think the Shadow Priest changes are pretty great this time around. PvP Shadow Priests might feel a little disappointed, but PvE Priests should be fairly happy with how things are going so far.Even PvP received a few good buffs, but while it's a step in the right direction, it simply isn't enough. It feels as if they're trying to approach some of the big issues carefully, when they really do need to go in there and start making pretty sweeping changes to the PvP-centric talents of the Shadow Priest. A lot needs to change to make the Shadow Priest relevant in PvP again without strapping a Warlock to their hip at all times.
Enough of that, though. Let's look into the changes, shall we?
- Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now receives mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
Well, Shadowfiend needs serious buffs in some situations, and while this will help a bit, I think it's too little. One of the big issues with Shadowfiend is that it's so easily juked in PvP. Absorption shields on the enemy won't totally hose you anymore (since the attack just needs to land, not do damage) and that's a good thing, but it's still going to be able to be kited around. It needs to move faster than players, not as fast as players. Against someone who's playing smart, the Priest simply won't get a mana return from the Fiend.
It's not going to do its job in PvP until that happens, period. It's a little better, but still not so good.
PvE, the bugger might be a lot more reliable if that HP buff is substantial. Having him die to random things makes me facepalm each and every time, there's no reason he should be able to die at all, so if they can prevent the gibs I'm perfectly happy with him. It also looks like he'll be doing more damage, so that should be neat.
- Blackout: This talent has been removed.
- Darkness: This talent is now in Tier 1, moved up from Tier 6.
- Devouring Plague has a new icon.
- Dispersion: Now clears all snare and movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
- Shadowform: Bonus damage from critical strike chance removed and replaced by the ability of those periodic damage spells to generate critical strikes.
That's angels singing.
- Silence: Range increased to 30 yards.
- Vampiric Embrace duration increased to 5 minutes, up from 1 minute. PvP duration is now 60 seconds. Cooldown removed.
- New Talent: Improved Devouring Plague (Shadow): Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.
My big concern with the addition of this talent? Previously, a PvE build totally ignored Blackout, picked up Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap, and worked down the tree. Now a PvE build will be picking up the Spirit Taps, then Darkness, and then start working down the tree. That's going to be more talents spent in the tree than we were previously, and most Shadow builds barely scraped together enough points to pick up Meditation in the Discipline tree for our mana regen.
Now, will this be a problem? Potentially, but perhaps not. My Shadow Priest doesn't run out of mana at all at this point, but I have Meditation. Does Meditation make that big of a difference? Will the buffs to the Shadowfiend make up for a potential loss of Meditation's mana regen? Or will we need to gloss over some of our DPS talents to get those points into the Discipline tree?
I suspect that we'll be fine passing over Meditation. Hopefully Improved Spirit Tap, Replenishment, and the Shadowfiend buffs will keep us in the green. We'll find out sooner or later.
There are a few other changes coming for Priests in patch 3.1 that aren't aimed directly at the Shadow tree, but will help us out a bit anyway. Divine Spirit, as we've mentioned before, is becoming baseline. Every Priest will get the first rank at level 31. It won't be the fancy improved Divine Spirit for us Shadow Priests, but additional Spirit always rules and we'll be able to buff it ourselves now.
Improved Fortitude is getting a secondary effect as well, it's going to grant the Priest an additional 4% stamina with two points in the talent. Priests can always use a bit more survivability, both in PvE and PvP, so if they're going to add on some extra health to a talent I was investing in anyway, I'm really not going to complain.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Tyler Feb 24th 2009 3:05PM
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050320300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000325323051013010323152301351&glyph=121719020306&version=9614#
Thats what I would do. I'm used to Inner focus
OSDeath Feb 24th 2009 3:16PM
Meditation is crucial to Priests I think. Prior to hitting 80 I didn't take the talent, instead just concentrating on the Shadow Talents. Yet every instance I went into I was going OOM, even on simple trash pulls. I did a Violet Hold where I was wanding through alot of fights, and that was with a steady rotation of Shadowfiends and Dispersions. Then, I respec'd to grab Meditation, and at 80 was able to just plain have it and I haven't had any mana issues since.
What I'm basically saying is that with out meditation our spells will drain us much faster than Replenishment will keep us up. I hope that we either get Meditation as a baseline or it moves down the talent tree. Every priest in every tree picks up Meditation. To me that implies that either it is too good or should be baseline.
Eisengel Feb 24th 2009 3:50PM
Yes. I posted on this a while back in the Priest forums, but unless you have a massive amount of Int, the cost of proccing Replenishment (VT+MB) will always be higher than the amount of mana you regen from it. As I recall the amount of mana you would need to make proccing Replenishment mana-neutral (i.e. Replenishment gives you the mana it cost to cast it) was something like 25k or 26k, which I think was not anywhere near possible even with the absolute best Priest-equippable gear in the game. Replenishment is there so that you can Replenish you party's or raid's mana... it will always cost more mana for you to cast than you get back from it until you have a massive mana bar.
I don't think we'll be getting there in T8... but maybe by T9 we'll start to see enough mana to make Replenishment mana-neutral, however we'll have so much mana by then it may be possible that Meditation regen will outstrip it, and even so, I have a strong feeling that if it goes mana-neutral, it will get nerfed.
James P Apr 4th 2009 2:18AM
I really never had a problem with PvE SP. For what was supposed to be a 'support' class they own in DPS if played well, with incredible survivability.
It's PvP I just can't get right. Still getting one shot by rogues and retardins. I really hope the PvP buffs are genuine. Otherwise I'm falling back on dual spec.
Maryjain Mar 20th 2009 11:39AM
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050320300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000325323051013010323152301351&glyph=121719020306&version=9614#
max dps/mana efficiency
Maryjain - The Forgotten Coast (H)
Drcrazyjr Apr 14th 2009 8:56AM
What is up with all the fail people wasting points in shadow affinity. Run with tanks that can hold threat. No one in my guild use threat reduction b/c it is a waste of points. Learn how to control threat and you can find a better use for those points.
Yukihoshi Apr 22nd 2009 9:42AM
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZZGxfVRfzdfqfzAo
This is what I use, PVE. Couple of notes on that:
They moved meditation up in the disc. tree, so you don't have to spend so many points in disc to get it. My mp5 with meditation is roughly the same as what it was before. Don't forget inner fire increases spellpower, and the amount of spellpower is buffed by the inner fire talent. Imp. PW:Fort for my own stamina and to build down the tree.
Shadow form itself gives a 30% threat reduction to shadow spells. Since there's only 1 boss I can think of that can dispel (and he's in MC I think), the additional threat reduction is entirely unnecessary; if your tank sucks so much that you're pulling threat in shadow form, it's time to get off the failboat before it sails away.
I prefer the speed of mind blast more than I do having the mana cost reduction from Focused Mind. Pre-3.1, I never OOM'd, never had to bother with my fiend or dispersion, except in rare occasions. Now I'm finding I actually throw the little bugger out there on most raid boss fights, which actually isn't such a bad thing; the increase to his damage just adds to the overall damage done. I still don't end up using both dispersion and fiend in the same fight usually, unless it's a particularly long one (Saph, KT, Thad for instance).
And while I'm on the subject of the fiend, there's a nice little minor glyph of Shadow Fiend that returns mana to me when the bugger dies (like on the Saph fight), so I don't really understand why people cry a lot over him dying. He starts right next to the person I cast it on, so the movement normalizing doesn't effect the way I use him. In pvp, yea, someone can kite my fiend around; and while they're kiting him around, I'm dotting them and mind flaying them to slow them down so the fiend can whack on them.
Personally, I like the improved vamp. embrace. Especially now that it lasts 5 minutes; it's not akward to make sure I keep it up and loose dps out of my rotation. Open with Vamp Embrace on a boss, and unless it's again one of those long boss fights, no need to reapply. SW:D is rarely worth using the GCD on (it's decent if you have the glyph and mob is ~35%, and if you have the 4 piece T7 bonus); the scaling is kinda =\ in comaprison to mindflay if you have good haste gear. If you use SW:D in your rotation, you should definatly have VE on. In 10 man raids, I'm 7-10% of the overall healing done with using nothing more than Vamp. Embrace. That's significant if you're doing 8-man achieves, or just using 2 healers.
I thought at first the dot critting thing would be a nerf, but a lot of us forget something important: we aren't warlocks. If you break down our recount, the source of our damage is Mind Flay, Mind Blast, Mind Sear as our top 3 sources. The DoT's are an accessory, and while they're essential to keep on to keep our dps high, they are not our main source of boom damage. What I'm finding is that my dps has remained roughly the same as pre-3.1 with the dot crits added to the higher damage output of DP. Our damage was somewhat problematic pre 3.1 in all honestly - you could just stack massive crit and try to look like a warlock with power dots. Doing so made it more important to keep all the dots on at all times, and frankly, other shadow priests that did that kind of a build never stood up to my dps in 25's, because they forgot our main damage is MF, MB, MS.
My rotation is: DP -> VT -> SW:P -> *MB -> MF x2 -> MB -> MFx2 -> MB -> MF -> renew VT (the cooldown of DP isn't quite up when I start refreshing VT; by the time it's cast it is) -> DP -> Repeat cycle from * onward.
If you use only 3 points in Mind Blast timer and put the other 2 points in the mana reduction, you'll need to get SW:D into the roation, something like this: DP -> VT -> SW:P -> *MB -> SW:D -> MFx2 -> MB -> MFx3 -> MB -> VT -> DP -> repeat from *.
This rotation is built entirely off the recast timer of DP, and you may have more or less MF between MB, depending on your haste gear/raid haste buffs. Pre-LK there wasn't such a thing as a 'rotation' for the S.Priest; we needed to cast based on reaction. Now, we're a simple cycle dps. With this rotation, replenishment should be on the raid at all times, and it is the best I have found for maximizing dps. If the target is a boss, or single trash with a lot of hp (ex big guys in OS), you can toss on the VE at the start for additional usefulness.