Staff, Dagger and Mace. In case you missed it: none of them are swords.

In Naxxramas I fought a political war to gain the right to bid DKP for the Shadow Priest best-in-slot weapon. In Ulduar, I lugged around a Guiding Star, a mace which other Shadow Priests at the time were forbidden to roll on. For Trial of the Crusader I had the opportunity to get my hands on a dagger for a change and not just any dagger, my first weapon in Wrath of the Lich King intended for damage dealers.

What do the Torch of Holy Fire and Guiding Star have in common? Mp5. Mp5 has no damage-increasing value to a Shadow Priest. We have scads of mana regenerating abilities, passive and active, at our disposal. Trust me, we don’t need Mp5.

When I passed on the Battered Hilt it wasn’t really a difficult decision. I can’t use Quel’Delar, Lens of the Mind. It’s a Sword. And Priests can’t equip Swords. And the Mace equivalent (at the time) had no Haste. It had Mp5. Making it significantly inferior to other weapons at that item level. Blizzard eventually changed the mace:

we have made a change that removes the mp5 from the main hand mace and changed that to haste to match the sword to make it more dps-worthy

I don’t understand it. Healers and casters alike love Haste. We all love Critical Strike rating. We all Most of us love Spirit (to differing degrees, yes). The only stat that you can put on a caster weapon that will turn the healers away is Hit Rating. The only stat you can put on a caster weapon that will turn us damage dealers away is Mp5.

So why put either? There’s nothing to stop Blizzard from filling our Tier items with the necessary Hit or Mp5. I’d much prefer to have to juggle having enough Hit on the rest of my gear – Tier, Bind on Pickup or crafted gear – than getting a chunk of it on my weapon. I heal with the same item, so I’d happily ditch the +hit component on Blade of the Tarasque. A healer stuck with an Mp5 weapon will be using that same weapon to DPS too I’ll bet.

The only reason I can think of for putting Mp5 or Hit on a weapon is to reduce demand for that item. Tanks and physical DPS don’t roll on the same weapons. And it would suck if half your raid considered the +1000 Spellpower/+100 Haste/+100 Crit weapon to be their Best-in-slot. Assume a raid made up of 4 tanks, 6 healers, 8 physical DPS and 7 caster DPS:

• If an item is clearly for tanks only you’re looking at about 25% chance of winning
• If an item is clearly for healers you’re looking at about 17% of winning
• If an item is for physical DPS you’ve only got about 13% chance of winning
• If an item is for caster DPS you’ve got about 14% chance of winning

That seems pretty fair to me. But if there was nothing to differentiate the healers and caster DPS items then those 11 players have only a 9% chance of winning an item. Or think of it like this, you might need to see the weapon you want drop 10 times before you win it. A tank needs only see it drop (at the most) 4 times before they have it.

In Monday night’s raid an argument started up when the Blood Prince Council dropped a sweet offhand: Shadow Silk Spindle. All the caster DPS, myself included, and most of the healers jumped in to bid. I left the bidding at about 4000 DKP (what I’d paid for my current, +hit offhand from ToC) and I think it sold to a Resto Druid for almost double that amount.

Party 3 wasn’t happy (that would be the party the caster DPS are slotted into by raid leaders everywhere). One of our Mages argued that it was a DPS item because another offhand existed elsewhere “for healers”. And that a healer bidding on the Shadow Silk Spindle was just revealing that they hadn’t done their homework or planned their gear upgrades.

Apparently because there is no Spirit on the Shadow Silk Spindle it isn’t intended for healers. (By the way, is anyone else having flashbacks to the Mage-post-3.1 mentality “its got Spirit on it, so it’s for Mages, duh”? Oh the irony) I was perplexed. I don’t think I’ve ever made a gear upgrade decision based on the presence of Spirit on an item for Shadow or for Discipline. I said as much in Party chat and pointed out that I thought that the offhand was ideal for Discipline, so who was I to say that it wasn’t also ideal for other healing classes?

If this is the amount of debate caused by an ambiguous offhand item, would I be witness to the same debate if a dagger with the same distribution of Spellpower, Intellect, Haste and Crit dropped? You’re right. It would probably be even worse.

So they may still be some ambiguity about Spirit and whether it is or isn’t a healer stat. But there’s no ambiguity about Mp5. Mp5 only benefits healers. There is no talent, armor or glyph that says “Your mana regained per 5 seconds is converted into spellpower”. There is with Spirit, but not Mp5.

So guess what the new Shadow Priest best-in-slot weapon is from Icecrown Citadel?

Royal Scepter of Terenas II
Binds when picked up
Main Hand [Mace]
+71 Stamina
+71 Intellect
Item Level 271
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63
Equip: Restores 31 mana per 5 sec
Equip: Increases spell power by 792

And here’s the Sword that we won’t ever be able to get our hands on:

Bloodsurge, Kel’Thuzad’s Blade of Agony
Binds when picked up
Main Hand [Sword]
+71 Stamina
+71 Intellect
Item Level 271
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63
Equip: Improves haste rating by 63
Equip: Increases spell power by 792

63 Haste rating, that’s what we’re short changed. Haste Rating is currently valued to be as important as Spell power for Shadow Priests (that is, until you reach about 800 Haste). So to make the Mace as good as the Sword for Shadow Priests they would either have to:

• add 63 Haste or
• add about 90 Critical Strike Rating or
• boost the total spell power up to 855.

Not likely. So instead we’re also going to be forced to endure a ton of healer hate (well if the Torch of Holy Fire incident taught me anything). Competition for the sword will be limited to Mages, Warlocks and Holy Paladins. Competition for the mace will include Restoration and Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priests, Moonkin, Restoration Druids, Holy and Discipline Priests.

I wonder if this is some new type of Hybrid Tax. 5-10% less DPS and crappy weapons you need to squabble with your healers over.