Posts with tag shadow-orb-buff

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. This week, the venerable shadow-specced Fox Van Allen asks Theralion's Mirror who the fairest priest of them all is. Spoiler alert: It's not Dawn Moore.

One of the biggest mysteries for shadow priests during the development of Cataclysm was what our mastery mechanic would be. We had some vague notions of what we were getting early on -- Shadow Orbs -- but it took the boys at Blizzards a very long time to define what those orbs would actually do.

Perhaps it's that history that leads to one of the greatest misconceptions among shadow priests today. Most of us believe that Shadow Orbs are our mastery mechanism. They're not. If they were, shadow priests wouldn't see them until we trained mastery at level 80. Instead, we start seeing orbs as early as level 10.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Each Wednesday, the shadow-specced Fox Van Allen takes the helm of Spiritual Guidance, giving the world a brief respite from the not-so-evil machinations of his nemesis, Dawn Moore. On days that are not Wednesday, Fox is available for childrens' parties.

I'm a big fan of where shadow priests are right now in Cataclysm. We're able to churn out highly competitive damage in just about any fight. Combine that fact with our damn near legendary survivability, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would even think about playing another class.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, shadow priests aren't quite perfect. The spec has some small issues, and by now, we're all pretty familiar with what they are. Shadow priests have to suffer a terribly underpowered AoE, a limp mastery stat, and a weak Mind Blast. The good news: Blizzard game developers are taking a stab at fixing every major problem with shadow priests in the upcoming patch 4.0.6. The even better news: Shadow priests are getting some added bonuses that we didn't even ask for.

That's right: The best is getting even better.