Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest FAQs, part 2
by Fox Van Allen 
Oct 19th 2011 at 3:00PM
Greetings from beautiful Southern California, home of BlizzCon 2011! Now, I know what you're all thinking: "Oh, beloved Fox. Have you gone Hollywood on us? Don't tell us you've changed!" Sorry kids, I went Hollywood about 10 minutes before that plane hit the ground at LAX. I'm marrying that other Kardashian girl, and I've already got a reality show deal inked about the marriage with E! This is legit love, people -- no Hollywood smoke and mirrors about it.
Thankfully, though, I haven't forgotten about all you little people in flyover country who made me a star. As a special gift to you, I'm offering
Empowered Shadow
We'll get things started with a simple question that a lot of people seem to have:
@marcooscoos asks via the twit-box:
question: when i consume my orbs and gain ES, do I need to recast my dots for the increased damage to take effect?In simplest terms: yes.
If you cast Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague without the Empowered Shadow buff on you, you'll have to recast the two DOTs after getting ES to get its benefit. Thankfully though, if you have to go a few seconds without ES active, your casts of VT and DP won't lose the ES bonus unless you have to refresh them.
Shadow Word: Pain would work the same way, but any shadow priest worth his salt invests two points in the Pain and Suffering talent. That talent automatically refreshes SW:P via casts of Mind Flay. Each automatic refresh checks to see whether or not ES is up and active, so you really only have to cast the spell once per fight.
Glyph of Shadow ... revealed!
@Bleuchz asks via Twitter:
Do we know anything about the Glyph of Shadow? Rumor is that it changes shadow form to Fox Van Allen form. W/e that means >_>Sorry, there's only one Fox Van Allen, and I don't like the world being crowded with poor imitations. And Blizzard has already stated that it doesn't want endgame raiders running around without shirts, so ... I don't know what to tell you there.
Last week, when the question was asked, we really didn't know a lot about the minor Glyph of Shadow beyond the tooltip: Alters the appearance of your Shadowform. Smart money was on the glyph making it easier to see shadow priest gear to allow us to better take advantage of transmogrification.
Well, good news: Glyph of Shadow finally works on the patch 4.3 PTR. And it's pretty much exactly what we thought it was. Take a look at these screenshots, courtesy of WoWHead:
How Fox Van Allen starts a fight
Last week, I touched on the topic of openers, stating how they generally don't have much of an impact on a long boss fight. That said, Chalcedony asked in the comments:
What do you use as an opener? I usually do 2 Mind Spikes, followed by a VT, MB, then apply DP and SWP. Is that bad?I probably don't need to tell you this, but generally, different situations call for different openers. If I'm soloing (or DPSing trash in a 5-man heroic), my opener looks a lot like yours. Two Mind Spikes are great to guarantee an instant-cast crit of MB; following those Mind Spikes with Vampiric Touch is a great way to get Replenishment rolling with that inevitable cast. Remember, in terms of mana usage and raw damage output, VT is our best DOT for a short fight. I often find that casting DP and SW:P on trash is a waste, but for stronger trash with higher health pools, it's sometimes warranted. (It's also nice to be able take advantage of your four-piece tier 12 shadow priest bonus.)
As for longer, boss-type fights, I generally don't start with Mind Spike. My general rationale is that I want to get Empowered Shadows started sooner rather than later, so I typically make my first cast Shadow Word: Pain to start generating Shadow Orbs. I typically follow that up with Vampiric Touch, and if I haven't gotten a Shadow Orb yet, Devouring Plague. If the dark gods still haven't bequeathed upon me an Orb, I shrug, cast Mind Blast anyway, and then start with my Mind Flay filler until I get that Orb. I generally recast all my DOTs once I've consumed an Orb and Empowered Shadow is up.
After about 5 or 10 seconds into the fight, I send out my Shadowfiend. And once all three DOTs are up, I use Dark Archangel. Most of the mana regen from the two are lost, but those early moments in the fight represent a magic aligning of just about every buff its possible to have, from Lightweave to trinket procs to Power Torrent to a Volcanic Potion pre-pot. The multiplier effect is absolutely insane, and if you're not taking advantage of it by stacking yet another buff on there, you're missing out on something great.
Mind Blast follow-up
I talked a lot about Mind Blast last week, but there's one last piece of information I didn't include about it. So, onoyoudidnt72592 asked in the comments:
I can't seem to find any information about our mindblast when you put into account the 4set bonus. I have my 4set and I tend to follow the same rotation as i would without. I guess I'm wondering if it becomes an on cooldown move, because i tend to not use mindblast until I have at least 1 orb. I don't know if the output of mindblast with 4set and dots up is more of a DPS gain to use on cooldown then to hold out for any amount of orbs.Just for clarification: The four-piece set bonus makes Mind Blast an incredibly powerful spell. It's a huge reason why shadow priests are starting to see six-digit hits of damage. (Sadly, the bonus is getting nerfed from 25% to 15% in patch 4.3. But 15% is still damn nice to have.) Without that set bonus, it's still powerful on its own right.
Regardless of whether you have the four-piece bonus, you should always be casting Mind Blast on cooldown if you've got all your DOTs active.
And some quick programming notes
Simply because it was asked: Yes, I'm still planning on doing a Ragnaros guide, and I'm glad you reminded me, because I had forgotten all about it. Next week's Spiritual Guidance will probably be about BlizzCon shadow priest bombshells (triple-speced level 90 pandaren shadow priests oh my god), but I'll get that Rag guide up ASAP following that.
Also, yes, I am getting the Dragonwrath, Tarecogsa's Wrath legendary ... eventually. I've run through the Nexus part of the quest chain, and it's really something epic. I'll try to work in a column on that soon. In the meantime, I can tell you this: From the ancedotal evidence I've seen from other players, this is a staff that you're going to work toward getting in patch 4.3 even if you don't have it now. It's that good.
See you all at BlizzCon!
Are you more interested in watching health bars go down than watching them bounce back up? We've got more for shadow priests, from Shadow Priest 101 to a list of every monster worth mind controlling and strategies for raiding Blackwing Descent.Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hirumared Oct 19th 2011 3:12PM
Does the Empowered shadow buff increase the damage of mind-flay too? Mind-flay does do periodic damage, so I would think it does.
Jonathan DuPont Oct 19th 2011 3:29PM
No it does not.
Fatherskull Oct 19th 2011 3:28PM
Yes it does. It also increases your Mind Sear damage. Very fun to top the charts on trash like the scorpions before you pull Shannox.
Abbadon Oct 19th 2011 3:32PM
How exactly do our buffs affect our shadowfiend? How does Bloodlust/Heroism/Timewarp affect it; ie, should we cast shadowfiend before or after? And... Do these same rules apply to a warlock's summoned demons, the doomguard and infernal?
I'm under the impression that our pet (and the demons) get some bonus from our buffs, but I've never been clear how the haste buff worked with them. Usually in raids, the call for Timewarp is spur of the moment which only leaves a fraction of a second to react - more like who's faster, you or the mage...
mitch_b_666 Oct 19th 2011 3:57PM
Hero or Timewarp are applied to the shadowfiend if it is up when cast. Think of it as an extension of yourself, if you're dead when it's popped and then get ressed, you wont get it. However, the fiend's stats are based on yours, so if you let your fiend loose, then get a power torrent proc, your fiend's stats will change to reflect this.
Bgrim Oct 19th 2011 4:08PM
i would think you would want to summon your shadowfiend before BL/TW. I know when my shaman was my main the feral spirits would get the BL buff if summoned before BL.
Revynn Oct 19th 2011 3:52PM
- "Also, yes, I am getting the Dragonwrath, Tarecogsa's Wrath legendary ... eventually. I've run through the Nexus part of the quest chain, and it's really something epic."
The Nexus event was fantastic. In fact, outside of the obnoxious amount of collecting (25 Embers, 1000 Cinders, 250 Essences) the entire process has been very enjoyable. I'm about 5 boss kills away from starting on Essences and we just finished my guilds first DW last week. I used to duke it out on the meters with the guy who got it and now I can't touch him.
Cameron Oct 19th 2011 4:54PM
Agreed. I should be starting on the 250 Essences next week (when our mage currently working on this finishes), and already the staff is amazing, plus the quest chain itself is very enjoyable.
EverythingRuned Oct 19th 2011 4:01PM
"Sorry, there's only one Fox Van Allen, and I don't like the world being crowded with poor imitations."
Wait... what do you call those things that pop out of your body on ticks of shadow word: pain?
Caliea Oct 19th 2011 4:26PM
Mogwai?
Aldarion Oct 20th 2011 8:04AM
Adipose.
Blacksleeves Oct 19th 2011 4:07PM
I have a question for Shadow priests. I've recently leveled a SP to 85, and I only have intentions to ever get them to run 5-mans. I use the rotation described above (SWP,VP,MB,DP), but I was wondering. Is there value to an opener of mind flay to activate dark archangel, follow by 2 MS, 1 MB, 2 more MS, a SW:D, then MB, and finally two more MS before starting the normal DoT rotation. The thought I had was that all of those initial casts would all benefit from the increased damage of Dark Archangel, along with crits from a couple of Mind Blasts, before moving into your regularly scheduled rotation. Thoughts?
Matrillik Oct 20th 2011 9:59AM
1st of all you should never be using SW:D unless your mana starved or the target is below 25% health. The only case where this could be viable is with a mob that does not have a lot of health, meaning it can be burned withing like 30 seconds. Then yes if you use this rotation and never switch to dotting you will do a ton of dps (though i would wait to use arch to make sure SW:D benefits from it when he's below 25%.)
Now using this rotation on a raid boss just isn't a good idea. Spriest already has insane ramp-up time and all you're reall doing with this is delaying that ramp-up and time and eating a ton of mana up. Using Archangel after you get a bunch of dots up and blast/orb rotation does a lot more dps than just spike comboing. Not only is your dot damage still rolling, but flay will have every damage modifier it has available (ES,procs/trinks,archangel,evangelism), giving it a significant boost along with generating orbs to get a chance at that elusive triple orb blast with arch up. This blast is generally the one to give you 100k crits.
Teth Oct 19th 2011 4:17PM
How do you feel about addons like facemelter? I find that using it as a supplement to your rotation, not something that should dictate it, really helps my dps. But I want other opinions. Is it cheating? If it is, how is it different from power auras in that respect?
Revynn Oct 19th 2011 5:38PM
There are a number if different addons for various specs like Facemelter. I used an addon called ShockandAwe during Wrath as I was learning how to play my Enhancement Shaman at 80 . . . For about an hour. it was great to have something -show- me what I was supposed to instead of simply reading some obscure flowchart or something. But once I saw and understood what it was trying to tell me, I didn't need it anymore.
Those addons are great as a learning tool if you're trying to diagnose fundamental problems in your playstyle or are just picking up the spec, but if you're depending on it to tell you what to do on a regular basis, then you're doing yourself more harm than good.
They're not cheating, they're training wheels. And your goal should be to get to a point that you dont need them anymore.
Revynn Oct 19th 2011 6:08PM
To clarify, I don't mean to add Power Auras in that group.
While Power Auras can be configured to replicate the effects of an addon like Facemelter (though one would argue that if you know your priority in enough depth to thoroughly manage that configuration then you don't need an addon to tell you what to do), it also does far more than that. You can set it up to tell you when your trinkets proc so you can stack cooldowns or when you're doing something stupid like sitting around in Aspect of the Fox on your Hunter instead of switching back after a movement phase. It can tell you when the Boomkin is dead and no longer providing the 8% spell damage debuff so you know to apply Curse of Elements on your Warlock or when the Fire Mage is dead so you can reapply DI on someone else . . .
The main difference between PA and Facemelter is that one is a very powerful open ended tool that can be configured to do just about anything you want, while the other is an out-of-the-box "Shadow Priesting for Beginners" addon.
venicide Oct 19th 2011 4:38PM
i got the dragonwrath last night, and its godly it makes the game completely change
Hirumared Oct 19th 2011 5:56PM
I thought so
Zaet Oct 19th 2011 7:52PM
Screw shadow ravens, I want shadowy bats
durandal Oct 20th 2011 3:54AM
^^ This!
Ravens for Alliance, bats for da Horde. Pleeease!