The Shadow Priest concept remains strong and sound. But we still need attention.

I started writing a very long comment in reply to Natarumah’s very interesting analysis on the Priest Class Q&A and Expectations for Shadowpriest design in 5.0.

My point of view is a little different. I agree that a lot of creative thought at Blizzard seems to be placed on the healing aspect of Priest-ing. And there are many wasted opportunities for Shadow Priest game play improvement and design. As I spend most of my time soloing content and doing dailies, with the occasional 10 man raid thrown in – I do, occasionally, get to participate in my guild’s “alt” runs – I see our spell and talent abilities differently than players who only raid or PVP with their Shadow Priests.

Natarumah makes many excellent points about the current problems a Shadow Priest is likely to experience while raiding. And he has many creative ideas on how the class could be re-imagined and further developed. Please do read his well rounded post. And then come back and try and understand my impressions and haphazard observations.

First and foremost I do think that a big reason that developers don’t try and “fix” Shadow Priest game play is simple numbers. People still play Shadow Priests. Many players choose to play Priests. DPS Priests and Warriors never seem to fall out of favour with the player base. Numbers indicate that there is no problem with Shadow Priest-ing. So why change it?

If it ain’t broke…

Every single 10 man raid that I’ve done this expansion (and I think, at most, that’s about 10 or 15 raids) I’ve been one of several Priests. And often not the only Shadow Priest. Priests, in general, seem to be abundant.

I do believe that a lot of design focus is driven by numbers right now. Blizzard are likely worried about getting a certain percentage of players into the normal modes of their next raid zone. They’re worried about getting a percentage of players through the hard mode of their next raid zone. They’re worried about losing subscribers. They’re trying to meet KPIs.

When almost all the Rogues in Azeroth put down their swords (or daggers if you like) and choose to play as a different damage dealing class the developers notice. I still remember the scarcity of Rogues at the start of Wrath of the Lich King and Blizzard responded by revamping the Subtlety talent tree and put the OP feeling back into Rogue game play. (Sure, it was nerfed with the next major content patch but for weeks you’d run into Rogues boasting about their Honor Among Thieves combo points or crits or whatnot). Even though they didn’t receive a straight up boost to their damage output, they received some talent revisions that made players feel powerful once again.

Shadow Priests and DPS Warriors usually see a different scenario: a patch is released, a spell is fine tuned or new content is available, and suddenly one of our abilities becomes noticeably glitched. And if it glitches in a way that we can exploit, or results in us topping the damage charts, heads and shoulders above Mages (or Rogues), we’re quickly brought back into line.

But I wouldn’t still be playing my Shadow Priest if they didn’t still work. I’m not talking about damage output numbers. Something about the spells, the abilities, the utility buffs we provide, something… still feels very, very right. The Shadow Priest isn’t showy. But many of the Shadow Priests that I’ve played with – often players who have only recently picked up the class/spec – very nearly slip into role playing without much prompting from me. Pretty uncommon to find on a PVP server.

I’m convinced that Shadow Priests really inhabit their avatars. They are their character. Manipulators of the mind. The ones who rejected the healing side of our nature. The black sheep.

Or perhaps only a Hunter would recognise another Hunter as deeply immersed in the class as they themselves are. Who knows?

Mind Spike

The one place where I have to disagree with Natarumah is on the topic of Mind Spike.

I adore Mind Spike. I rarely use it during raiding, sure, but it’s my go to spell for dailies and solo content. I don’t think that I used Mind Spike very much during leveling but now that I have gotten used to it… it’s perfect for taking down a level 85 mob. The Mind Spike x 3 + Mind Blast + SW:D combination will take down 9 out of 10 mobs. Most will go down before reaching for SW:D if you get a critical strike. It’s fast, and you take little damage simply because you can bring down your foe often before they even reach you.

I really like it. Even though I picked up Cataclysm to see my Priest sprout wings and to save the day with Leap of Faith… I am more impressed with Mind Spike than either of those other new-with-Cataclysm abilities.

Juggling DoTs… and Buffs

Unfortunately I’m not particularly impressed with the implementation of Evangelism and Empowering Shadows. I don’t think Evangelism (eventually consumed by Archangel) is particularly intuitive to understand. I don’t understand it. Frankly I think I need to consult some external game resources to understand how to use Evangelism and Archangel to best effect. Playing the game itself doesn’t really teach me enough.

I should feel powerful when I cast Archangel, but I don’t. I actually feel that it throws all my carefully juggled buffs out of whack. And I spend the duration of Archangel trying to get all my buffs back up and running instead of simply kicking ass.

Frankly I think I spend way too much time watching my stacks of Empowering Shadows and Shadow Orbs when I’m in combat. I can’t imagine playing with the default UI and staring at the rows of buff icons.

Managing your Shadow Orbs is too random and uncontrolled. I have come close on many occasions to announcing out loud on vent “Can we pull in the next 5 seconds? I’ve got an Orb right now! I can’t afford to waste it!” and I’ve also come close to complaining verbally at the – far too frequent – occurances of terrible bad luck when the constant tick of a single Shadow Word: Pain and the constant casting of Mind Flay doesn’t produce one single Shadow Orb for the entire 15 second duration of Empowered Shadows.

I may have held my tongue so far but I can promise you that my internal monologue goes something like this “okay… just a few more seconds before Empowering Shadows drops off… been a long time since I cast Mind Blast… how is it I still don’t have an Orb? I need an Orb! What another Mind Flay that generated no Orbs?! I need an Orb! What? Is that the 5th or 6th Mind Flay that didn’t generate…” while I watch Empowered Shadows drop off. Terrible RNG happens much more than it should in regards to Shadow Orbs.

The slow build up of our damage dealing is worse in Cataclysm than ever before. I thought the intention with Cataclysm was to reduce the Shadow Priest damage ramp up time by removing Shadow Weaving. But I’d take Shadow Weaving back over what we have now. Shadow Weaving stacks could be built up immediately and with predictability as you launched into a fight. And unless there was an extremely lengthy phase change with no combat you could easily build up Shadow Weaving and then mostly forget about it.

And just focus on DoT uptime instead.

Class balance

I’m not sure what to make of the plans for 5.0. I still think we have some awesome things going for us as a damage dealers especially compared to our cloth-wearing cousins: Mages and Warlocks.

Our DPS seems to be on par. That is no small thing and not to be dismissed.

Mind Sear is freaking awesome in my opinion. I adore that we can now cast off a tank or friendly target. In fact I wish more of our abilities could be thrown on a friendly target. I’d love to have Psychic Scream fear 3-5 mobs in a 8 yard radius around a tank, or a healer.

Our crowd control isn’t good enough for a damage dealer and I still feel that I drag down a 5 man group in that regard. We can reduce damage (Scream) and occasionally interrupt one mob (Horror) but we can’t tie up a mob indefinitely unless we resort to Mind Control which is clunky and disorienting and is usually a DPS loss. It also makes your own avatar very vulnerable and no matter how well you plan your MC there’s going to be a chance that another enemy mob will charge your avatar, launch an AoE attack in the general vicinity of your avatar or otherwise lay a fire at your feet that will put you in a difficult decision: break MC and potentially unleash that mob on your healer or yourself, or wait and see if your avatar can survive the “bad” that you’re unable to move away from.

Mind Control is going to need some serious improvements to turn it into a workable method of CC. And even then I can’t imagine it being anything other than slightly awkward.

I do feel that in raids I am more resilient (so to speak) than Warlocks and Mages. The immunity to damage granted by Dispersion means that you can live through almost anything other than a boss beating on you without cease. Vampiric Embrace seems to keep my health bar somewhat stable. Levitate shouldn’t be forgotten either.

Leap of Faith and Missed Opportunities

I do feel that Evangelism + Archangel were designed for healing Priests and – in its dark from – is mostly confusing as a Shadow Priest. It’s an opportunity to feel powerful and it totally misses the mark. It could be an on demand (ok, there is some prep work required) I Win/Burn Phase button.

Leap of Faith removes Shadowform and I can’t agree more with Natarumah on this one: it’s a lost opportunity to approach this as a healing utility spell that only a healing Priest would/should use. Why can’t a damage dealer be raid aware enough to pull a friend out of danger? I think Leap of Faith could save a life if Shadow Priests weren’t actively discouraged against using it in the same way we are discouraged to drop Shadowform and heal.

“Leap of Faith will continue to have a facing requirement because healers should not just be staring at health bars but should also be paying attention to the raid environment.”

I’m not sure if Blizzard are stereotyping Shadow Priests and damage dealers as being selfish, damage meter hogging whores or if Blizzard are slighting healers for not being more aware of their surroundings. I think all Priests might have been insulted with that reply in the Q&A.

***

What do you think?

Do you feel the same way about your Shadow Priest? That, deep-down, we just work as a concept and a spec? Do you feel we have been largely forgotten while the focus has stayed on Discipline and Holy Priest-ing?

Meet Snakevenom, Holy Priest Extrodinaire (yet, like so many Priests, still unable to remove poisons)

Cassandri and Lathere would like to introduce Snakevenom, a golden, glowing Holy Priest. After a Vent discussion regarding the change to the healing Priest Tier 10 set bonuses he posted the following article on our guild forums. We thought it was too interesting not to share. This post is by Snakevenom.

Old Tier 10, 4 piece bonus:

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

New/Redesigned Tier 10, 4 piece bonus:

Increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

While I applaud Blizzard for listening to the feedback of the Priest community, implementing a change of this magnitude four months after 3.3 was released is absurd.

If you have the current 4 piece Tier 10 and like it, congratulations: it’s gone.

If you geared for off-tier pieces, you are now expected to waste Emblems of Frost and DKP to re-itemize. If, like me, you spend your DKP elsewhere and bought and sold Primordial Saronite, you have just lost four months worth of Emblems. For you, Patch 3.3 might as well have been released today.

I will not be saving Emblems for this new 4-piece. However, I would be furious if I thought it was good enough to justify completely re-planning my gear set.

Like many full time Holy Priests I currently run a Holy (Renew) / Holy (Flash Heal) dual talent specialization – swapping from spec to spec depending on the demands of the encounter. For example, I use my Holy (Renew) build to heal Blood Queen Lana’thal. I get a lot of healing out of Renew in this fight. My Recount for this fight looks about like this:

• Renew: 35%
• Circle of Healing: 28%
• Prayer of Mending: 21%
• Impowered Renew: 11%

When you add up the percentage of healing provided by Renew and Empowered Renew, Renew makes up 46% of my overall healing. A 5% Renew boost (if I were to equip 4pc Tier 10) should increase output by 2.3%.

However, in order to equip 4 pieces of Tier 10 I would need to drop two pieces of Tier 9 and would thus lose my Tier 9 2pc bonus: 20% gain to Prayer of Mending. Starting to look like a pretty stupid upgrade?

Prayer of Mending with Tier 9 2pc = 21% of my healing
Prayer of Mending without Tier 9 2pc * 1.2 (120%) = 21% of my healing
Prayer of Mending without Tier 9 2pc = 17.5% of my healing

or look at it like this:

T9 2pc is 3.5% of my overall healing. The 4pc T10 would net me a 2.3% healing gain overall – and that’s in a fight where Renew contributes significantly to my healing output.

Now With Spikes!

Chavez sums it up nicely in this thread at Plus Heal (I apologise if you’ve already read it – I thought it was very funny and right on the money, too):

I’m not typically one who rags on Blizzard, because they made a great game and human beings make mistakes. Goddamn though. Was months of commentary ranging from legitimate theorycraft and analysis to downright QQ not enough for them? Imagine if it was Chrysler:

Chrysler: Hey guys we’re replacing the tires on our new line of minivans with large steel wheels with spikes in them.

Customer: Um we don’t think that’s a good idea. The spikes will tear up the road.

Chrysler: We feel that adding the spikes will help our minivans have a greater off-road capability and add an element of fun to the highway experience. Internal testing has shown that this feature is no less enjoyable or effective than regular rubber tires, which are boring anyway.

Customer: It’s not a good idea. Nobody’s gonna get the steel spike wheels. They’re just gonna go somewhere else and buy the regular rubber tires.

Chrysler: We feel that this is a very promising feature on our new line and we’ll let the evidence speak for itself once it goes live.

The tires are released onto the market

Customer: Hey Chrysler. Remember what we told you about the steel spikes being a bad idea? Yeah we were right.

Chrysler: …

Customer: Well?

Chrysler: Ok, you’re right. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll come out to your house and replace the spike wheels on your car with rubber tires. But you have to be currently using the spike wheels. Oh, and to make up for it, we’ll make them the best tires money can buy.

Customer: What? I got rid of my spike wheels because they’re garbage. The tires I have now are fine, but you’re saying I miss out on what you’re offering as a consolation because I did what I said I was going to do about your bad idea?

Chrysler: Yeah pretty much. Oh, while you’re at it, get fucked.

The Solution

In my opinion, the Priest healing 4pc should look like this:

Snakevenom’s Tier 10, 4 set bonus:

Increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Circle of Healing spells by 10%.

Boosting the effect of Power Word: Shield benefits Discipline Priests (who we share our set bonus with, lets not forget) by improving one of their core abilities. In turn, boosting Circle of Healing buffs one of the important, and lets not forget unique, spells that Holy Priests have at their fingertips – and a spell that we use in near about every single encounter. Renew is far too situational to make a good set bonus.

My solution benefits both Discipline Priests and Holy Priest equally – yet neither really benefits from a boost to two spells at once because neither type of healing priest uses both of these spells.

In the example above – Blood Queen Lana’thel – my Recount breakdown of my spells was like so:

• Renew: 35%
• Circle of Healing: 28%
• Prayer of Mending: 21%
• Empowered Renew: 11%

I calculated above that the latest Tier 10 4 piece bonus change would improve my overall healing by 2.3% (boosting Renew). I also calculated that Tier 9 2 piece bonus is approximately a 3.5% boost to my overall healing. I think it’s fair to say that Blizzard are aiming for the 2-5% benefit per set bonus.

Boosting my Circle of Healing spell by 10% would boost my overall healing (in the example above) by 2.8% (10% of 28%). I think that’s more than reasonable. I think the final Tier in the expansion should be truly impressive and the investment of 4 pieces of gear should net you a higher healing gain than a 2 piece bonus.

But I’d take a 10% boost to Circle of Healing and a modest 2.8% overall healing increase for a Tier Set Bonus that I can benefit from in all encounters.

He runs on blood rage

I think of Deathbringer Saurfang as the “Bubble boss”. I can’t think of any boss, certainly no others in Icecrown (yes, of course we haven’t seen them all yet) that make you think: Yes. It’s good to be a Priest.

Algalon the Observer made me think “Yes, it’s good to be a Shadow Priest” but Saurfang is weak against all Priests. Discipline most especially.

You’ll reach Deathbringer Saurfang at the very end of the first wing of Icecrown Citadel 10/25 man. Technically the wing is called The Lower Spire but at the moment it doesn’t really matter because it’s the only wing that you can reach anyway. That one wing, with 4 boss encounters, is Icecrown Citadel as far as I am concerned. Just to recap here are the first four bosses summarised below:

The half skeleton:
Looks totally wicked, but he’s actually not very scary or painful at all

The chick with the mana shield:
Requires some coordination between casters and melee and a clear understanding that Hunters fall in the sweet spot between those two things. Go physical DPS! (Go go DoTs too)

The ship battle:
Think pirates with rockets and canons on wings. Don’t worry, this is not a vehicle fight. Props to Blizzard for finally getting it right!

The bubble boss:
Or, if you’re not a Priest, you may think of him as the “Blood boss”. Either works.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Now let’s get to the Bubble boss. If, like us, you make the mistake of doing zero research before attempting the boss fights in ICC, you may read the situation completely wrong and think it’s an endurance fight that requires you to kite/kill his adds and have excellent healers. But don’t be mislead! It’s actually a DPS race. It gets progressively harder to heal, so kill him quick.

Saurfang has quite a few abilities that, handled poorly, cause him to regenerate health. He also has a “rage” bar. We’ll call it blood power. It’s orange in case you were wondering. The key to winning this fight is to avoid, at all costs, doing anything that causes Saurfang to generate blood power. And he generates blood power when his special abilities deal damage to the raid.

The ability that we, as Priests, are particularly interested in is Boiling Blood and, further into the fight, Mark of the Fallen Champion.

1. Boiling Blood, Unlimited range, Instant
   Boils the blood of an enemy, inflicting 5000 Physical damage every 3 sec for 15 sec.
2. Mark of the Fallen Champion, 100 Energy AKA blood power, Unlimited range, 1.5 sec cast
   Causes Deathbringer Saurfang’s melee attacks to splash to this target, inflicting 6175 to 6825 additional Physical damage. If the target dies while under this effect Saurfang is healed for 5% of his total health.

Yes, Mark of the Fallen Champion is a doozy. But it also can’t be cast until the boss has generated that much blood power. You need to kill Deathbringer Saurfang before your raid has been marked five or more times because around that point your healers will break and someone who is marked will die.

Power Word: Shield absorbs damage before it hurts the target. So if you bubble targets afflicted by Boiling Blood and Mark of the Fallen Champion you can negate a portion of the blood power regeneration. How cool is that?

In our 25 man raid we have a Discipline Priest as part of the healing team so they are assigned to prioritise shielding targets taking damage as often as possible, wherever possible. Their shields are the strongest and strengthened by Discipline talents (and this one) that nearly all other healing or DPS Priests skip.

You probably could, if you loved Holy and didn’t have a full time Discipline Priest, just modify your talents to pick up 3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield for this fight. But you’d probably struggle significantly with the high mana cost as a Holy Priest cannot also talent into Rapture.

In 10 mans you don’t need a Discipline Priest, although, of course, it really really really will help you if one of your 3 healers happens to be a Disc Priest. We dropped down to two healers for 10 man (Lathere, Resto Druid and a Holy Paladin) and I helped them by shielding as Shadow. Us Shadow Priests may be stuck with a 4 second cooldown, non-boosted bubble, but it still works.

I believe a Holy Priest in a 10 man run would also contribute a lot to this fight by reaching for the Power Word: Shield button first to protect players with Boiling Blood and Mark of the Fallen Champion. I know it may seem strange, but if it delays future Marks just a little bit, it’s worth doing.

To help you help your raid I strongly recommend that you set up your preferred raid frames so you can see the Boiling Blood, Mark of the Fallen Champion and Weakened Soul debuffs. They show up on the default Blizzard UI raid frames and you can modify VuhDo, Healbot and Grid by setting up custom debuffs.

ps. I apologise if the links above refer to earlier versions of these Addons. As a VuhDo user I know the guide above refers to a 3.2 version of VuhDo because some of the configuration menus have changed. Here’s where you’ll find the VuhDo settings in the latest version for WoW 3.3:

VuhDo Custom Debuffs Configuration Menu

Fame and celebrity await?

A few readers suggested that I apply for the open WoW.com Priest columnist position. At first I was flattered and then I remembered that WoW.com is a news site. Heavy on the facts, light on the opinion. Kind of the opposite of me.

Although I really do love my Priest, and the entire Priest class in general, I just can’t imagine players finding the answers to their problem in my writing. When I want the low down on the latest Priest changes I head on over to Dusk Noir or Twisted Faith for some logical analysis. Sure, I might not be able to follow the theorycrafting line for line, but I tend to trust their conclusions all the same.

And that’s for the Priest spec that I actually understand well: Shadow. The thought that I might inform and educate the Discipline and Holy Priests out there… well that just boggles the mind!

If I’m mulling over a Shadow Priest issue (and I’m thinking over quite a few while we work on Heroic Anub’arak, I can tell you that) I’ll head over to Shadowpriest.com and jump into an existing thread to ask for advice or, if necessary, start up my own topic. Fortunately the community at Shadowpriest.com actually provide pretty helpful responses 99% of the time.

Although, I’m still seeking answers about the crit bonus to Inner Focus (which I don’t believe even works) and whether it increases the chance for a DoT spell to crit 25% for the duration of the DoT, or just the very first tick.

When I play, I don’t really think logically. I go with my instinct and what feels like the right choice at the right time.

CriticalQQ served me a dose of humble pie when he explained his reaction to being attacked by a stealth Rogue, and at what point it’s time to escape the stun lock:

Reaction (a) – I’m playing a Mage, the Rogue is very geared
Reaction (b) – I’m playing a Mage, the Rogue is not very geared at all
Reaction (c) – I’m playing a Paladin, the Rogue is very geared
Reaction (d) – I’m playing a Paladin, the Rogue is not very geared at all

And while I was reading it I was thinking to myself “I usually hit my trinket if I think everyone else is gonna die without me”. I think. Just in case I thought I was getting better at PVP here’s a nice reminder of how ignorant I actually am. My decision to trinket is based purely on feeling, not logic.

Of course Euripedes was arguing that of all the classes, Rogues are the most deadly when geared in PVP and barely a nuisance with starter PVP gear. And I absolutely have to agree. But the lesson I took away from reading his article was that most of my decision making in game isn’t based on fact or knowledge of PVP tactics. I’m making decisions based on what feels like the right thing to do at any given time.

For example, if I know that I’m going to die in a Battleground I might just cast Shadow Word: Death on my attacker anyway. It’s not going to kill them, not even close. But there are some moments when I just want to hurt them back so much that this actually seems like a good decision. Of course the only thing it’s likely to do is speed up my own death.

I’d like to be able to blame it on my lack of PVP ability and experience. But I’m not entirely sure that I make decisions in PVE for logical reasons either. Consider this situation:

3 mobs, all with a nice, large health pool, all of equal health, standing close together.

Option 1) Choose 1 and Mind Sear until the other two are dead, then finish off the last target
Option 2) Apply all DoTs to 1 target, apply Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain to the 2nd and 3rd target, Mind Flay until they all die
Option 3) Apply all DoTs to 1 target and Mind Sear until the other two are dead
Option 4) Apply DoTs to all targets and then Mind Sear

How long have we been playing this expansion? 1 year? Yet I still couldn’t tell you which of the 4 options above results in the most damage done. Presented with that scenario (which you only get to see about 20 times in a row each time you run a level 80 dungeon) I would probably choose one approach the first time, and then follow a different approach 5 minutes later in the exact same situation.

Logical? Hardly!

So I don’t think I’m quite ready to shape my writing into something useful for the WoW.com audience. The comments that I’ve received have mostly been along the lines of “it’d be great to read some good Shadow Priest articles”. And those comments have encouraged me to blog more about Priest topics here at Hots & Dots.

When I responded to the Circle of Killers (DPS Questionnaire) I realised, and wrote, that when I sit down to write for HoTs & DoTs I rarely have Priest issues on my mind. I’m usually musing over something that has happened in our guild or how to better cope with X ability in Y raid encounter.

Perhaps, when I’m writing, I imagine that Lathere is my audience. We chat about our experiences in game a lot and what we talk about ends up becoming the things we blog about. If I were to start rambling about juggling Haste and Crit or whether it’s more beneficial for your raid to AOE whelps or help bring Onyxia back down to the ground, I’d lose her attention pretty damn fast.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think about Priest dilemmas all the time, I do. From the smallest things to the class defining “big questions” like: what the heck kind of DPS are we meant to be capable of? what makes our game play unique from that of other casters? what is it that makes Shadow fun to play? what makes Shadow not fun to play?

So I’ve made a vow to actually put those thoughts down in writing here on our blog. Instead of responding to Blizzard announcements on the forums or debating class mechanics at Shadowpriest.com. I’m going to bring those discussions to this site, too.

At the very least I can be sure that any argument posted here will actually be read by someone, somewhere. That’s much more than can be said about the official forums!

And finally, even though I don’t intend to vie for the job of Spiritual Guidance columnist, I’m going to address 2 questions that they ask of applicants just because I can. And because I know some of the writers for WoW.com occasionally stop by this site.

Q. What are some suggestions to improve WoW.com?

Frankly, I think the Priest column needs a new title. Spiritual Guidance makes us sound … wussy. We have the power to take over people’s minds and make them do things they never would have done otherwise!

My real suggestion is: more opinion pieces, please. The articles provide answers and announcements, but rarely opens the doors to debate. And there is also just way too much coverage of holiday events and achievements for my liking.

Q. What post at WoW.com do you feel exemplifies our best content?

The best article ever published on WoW.com was written by Alex Ziebart, who clearly loves his Shadow Priest, in response to the Q&A released by Blizzard in August: Shadow Priest Questions Answered.

Alex absolutely hit the nail on the head in his article and wrote from the heart. He couldn’t have summed up our concerns, as spriests, better. It was an opinion piece, and one that perhaps wasn’t entirely favorable to Blizzard. But he was so so right. And I know that reading his article reminded me that the WoW.com writers are players just like me, working on the same bosses I am and having the same problems.

A tower is left undefended by the enemy. I can do nothing.

I’m going through a phase of Battleground discontent. Playing Discipline is fun. But I’m certainly not a one-man-killing-machine. More and more often I watch my map, stuck “defending” a node on my own. Of course, I can’t really defend it on my own, I can only hope to scare off attackers who assume that my back is being guarded by a stealthed Rogue.

And I watch as a single Alliance mounts up and takes to the road picking off unsuspecting passerbys. You know the type. I’ve started to think of them as Lone Rangers. They can operate independently. They rarely stay with the group.

They can lead an attack. As a healer, I can only follow.

Who is mostly likely to be the Lone Ranger in your battleground? Forever riding off into the sunset with just his trusty horse as his companion?

• Paladins
• Druids (well, the ones that switch between all the forms and can deal a lot of damage… so not the Tree Form ones)
• Death Knights
• and these days even Warlocks

Notice that these are the classes that can deal quite a lot of damage while regenerating their own health or healing? These players don’t need other players to run around behind them healing them or helping them kill their target. Sure it will speed things up. But one on one, playing aggressively, they will usually come out on top.

As a healer, it doesn’t matter if I can spot the weak points in the enemy’s defense. Sure, I can point them out in battleground chat, and I always usually do, but I can’t run off and attack.

And when I get so frustrated that I do just run off on my own, it always goes badly. I can draw out combat with one other player for a good long time (assuming they are light on the stuns) but I won’t be able to kill them. That is, I won’t be able to kill them before help arrives. By then the element of surprise is well and truly gone and you’ve just highlighted to your enemy the weak point in their defense.

As a healer, I’m of best use to the group when I’m actually, well, healing. Not defending a node on my own. So often I’m lumped up with 90% of my team while we all attack one point. Even though I can see that we’re going to lose our other 2 nodes while we capture one. I can wish that 3 or 4 of our offense would break away and head back to defend our nodes. But I can’t make that happen. If I get truly frustrated, I’ll break away… and then remember I’m not a Lone Ranger.

I think this problem was hammered home in a Eye of the Storm match. I was stuck at Fel Rever Ruins with a Death Knight that I was pretty sure was AFK. They had parked their butt at the node closest to the graveyard. But I was still grateful. Just having another person next to me might deter the enemy from attacking. However as time went on, and we were losing, I could see that the Mage Tower, under Horde control, was apparently undefended. And most of the participants were squabbling over at the Blood Elf Tower.

So I suggested several times that we should try to capture MT over chat, both /battleground and, unsuccessfully, via /say to the Death Knight next to me.

Minutes go past. And I figure, fuck it. That AFK Death Knight can defend on their own. And I mount up and rush over that bridge. And who do I find single handedly trying to take on a Druid?

Another Priest. Another Discipline Priest at that.

[Battleground][Cassandri]Help MT need dpw

That’s meant to read “dps” but it’s bloody hard to type properly when you’re under attack.

The Druid wears us down and our cavalry never arrives. Within minutes I’m back to try my luck again. And so is the other Priest. Screw healing. I’m Smiting and Penancing my ass off. I think we actually did kill the Druid. Didn’t cap the tower though. But that Priest and I were buddies for the rest of the match.

Is that smart? To have two of your healing Priests trying to DPS their opponents side by side, far away from the rest of the group, keeping all the golden glowing goodness to ourselves? I don’t think so either.

I’m left pondering my place, as a healer, in Battlegrounds. I don’t feel that it is my job to defend a node. Certainly not on my own. But I can’t initiate an attack and expect to win. The best battlegrounds that I’ve played have been where I’ve, through chance, hooked up with a partner that can dish out the hurt.

As time goes on, and I become even more discontent with Battlegrounds, I’m becoming more active in my quest to find a partner. Sometimes I’ll just flat out ask in Battleground chat at the start of the match for a partner. This seems crazy, I usually join the queue to join a battleground because it’s one of the few activities at level 80 that doesn’t require you to organise a party beforehand.

Mr Lone Ranger… can I join you? Ride your coat-tails?

Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker agrees with me too

So it turns out that I may have offended the one person from our guild that reads this blog.

I’m sorry Papa. I’m sorry that so many Paladin tanks that I’ve come across in my PuGs have been bad. I’m sorry that they are lowering the standard. I’m sorry that I’ve judged them and have somehow implied that you, too, are bad.

I’m sorry that I said you weren’t as bad as your average Death Knight tank.

Here are 20 reasons why I, Cassandri, am deserving of Divine Intervention.

1. I can dance (the macarena)
2. I always look good (yes, even when wearing the Hellfire Peninsula quest rewards)
3. I will heal you (when all the other healers die)
4. I will give you tons more stamina (consider me your 3rd trinket, On Use: 4k DPS)
5. I will resurrect you (and not just because someone else might teabag you if I don’t act quickly)
6. I will laugh when you make fun of Lathere (even if the joke is really bad)
7. I will make fun of our other tanks when they cannot tank a boss due to “fight mechanics”
8. I will buy flasks listed by your alt on AH (even if they are totally overpriced)
9. I will never complain about threat (I’ll let the Mages do that)
10. I will never give you grief for wearing a dress or a skirt
11. I will never roll on your gear
12. I will never roll on your offspec gear (even the glowing Spellpower bits)
13. I will not (verbally) encourage other players to raise the DKP cost when you are bidding
14. I will not get upset if you hit the wrong key and get the second person on the threat table killed (especially if they are a Mage)
15. I will eat your cooking (without complaint)
16. I will help summon you back to the raid if you go MIA
17. I have attempted tanking as a Paladin and totally sucked at it (but I do know now what Divine Plea is)
18. I think Mages and Death Knights are infinitely worse than any Paladin could ever be (and I can say that because our guild Mages and DKs won’t ever read this)
19. I am a Priest (and everyone knows that Paladins are part Priest, in fact, you could argue that Priests must have existed first before melee-rs even thought about studying holy “magic” so when you think about it you owe all your holy spells, which I’m sure have saved your life many many times, to the Priests who spent centuries praying in the Cathedral of Light before the first Paladin took to the battlefield)
20. The Divine Intervention shield fits around me and it doesn’t really fit around Lathere in her weird druid forms *cough* moonkin *cough*

New gear for Alliance and Horde Shadow Priests in 25 man ToC

It’s always hard to get your head around what gear/upgrades are the smartest to make when a new bunch of gear is released in game. This post is for:

1. The 25 Man raider who plays a Shadow Priest as their main spec
2. The 25 Man healing Priest who intends to gather a offspec Shadow set
3. The raider who also completes 10/25 hard or heroic modes
4. Me

My weightings are based off the theorycrafting work done by Shadowpriest.com (with some personal preference to how Haste and Hit are valued). This list showcases the best items available to you – as a 25 man raiding priest – with a Hit/Haste/Crit option per slot.

Tier 8 and 9 Set Bonuses Compared

Tier 8 (Conqueror’s Sanctification from Ulduar)
Tier 8 Items and set bonus/s
2 set bonus = 122 dps or 61 dps per item
4 set bonus+2 set bonus = 231 dps or 58 dps per item

Tier 9 (Velen’s/Zabra’s Triumph)
Tier 9 items and set bonus/s
2 set bonus = 133 dps or 66 dps per item
4 set bonus+2 set bonus = 259 dps or 65 dps per item

As you can see with both Tier sets you’re really not gaining a significant boost in DPS for your investment when you wear 4 pieces of Tier gear. Basically I translate this into: if you get a really really awesome piece of gear that’s going to drop you down to 3/5 Tier 8 or 9… take it.

I plan to be wearing a 2 piece Tier 8 and 2 piece Tier 9 set for a while.

Weakest Piece in Tier 9
If you do intend to try the Tier 9 4 set bonus (and I’d still like to try it) the helm is the least desirable item in the set. The Priest healing Tier 9 helm or, cheaper still, the badge option are better.

Weakest Piece in Tier 8
In Tier 8, the Shadow Priest legs are the weakest piece in the set.

Hit (Cap) and Haste

The gear goals are:

• About 11% haste
• 263 hit rating (Heroic Presence) or 289 hit rating (No Heroic Presence)
• Heaps of Spellpower and Critical Strike

Gear List

View the list at LootRank.com. Excluded items from hard, hard, hard modes – but they’ll show up if you click through to Loot Rank.

Not all ToC 10 and 25 Heroic loot has been announced and some of this may be incorrect.

Helm
Velen’s/Zabra’s Cowl of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Crit)
Hood of Fiery/Smouldering Aftermath 75 Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Haste)
Helm/Hood of Clouded Sight 75 Emblems of Triumph (Crit)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Cowl of Triumph ToC 25 (Crit)

Neck
Cry/Wail of the Valkyr ToC 25, Twin Val’kyr (Crit/Haste)
Pendant of Fiery Havoc Ulduar 25, Flame Leviathan HM (Hit/Haste)
Pendant of the Shallow Grave Ulduar 10, Thorim HM (Crit/Haste)
Darkbane Amulet/Pendant ToC 10, Twin Val’kyr (Hit/Crit)

Shoulder
Velen’s/Zabra’s Mantle of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Tier 9/Crit)
Mantle/Pauldrons of Catastrophic Emanation 75 Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Crit)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Mantle of Triumph ToC 25 (Tier 9/Crit)
Amice of Inconceivable Horror Ulduar, Yogg-Saron HM (Haste)

Back
Cloak/Shroud of Displacement ToC, Faction Champions 25 Heroic (Hit/Haste)
Drape of Mortal Downfall Ulduar, Iron Council 25 HM (Hit/Crit)
Cloak/Shroud of Displacement ToC, Faction Champions 25 (Hit/Haste)
Pennant Cloak OS, Sartharion +2 or +3 Drakes (Crit/Haste)
Drape/Shawl of the Refreshing Winds ToC, Northrend Beasts 25 (Haste)

Chest
Merlin’s Robe Crafted (Crit/Haste)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Robe of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Crit)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Raiments of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Tier 9/Haste)
Skyweaver Vestments/Robe ToC 25, Twin Val’kyr (Hit/Haste)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Robe of Triumph ToC 25 (No Tier bonus/Crit)
Flowing Vestments/Robes of Ascent ToC 25, Northrend Beasts (Haste)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Raiments of Triumph ToC 25 (Tier 9/Haste)

Wrist
Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers Crafted (Crit/Haste)
Dark Essence Bindings ToC 25, Twin Val’kyr (Hit/Crit)
Grasps of Reason Ulduar 25, XT-002 HM (Haste)
Armbands/Bindings of the Ashen Saint ToC 25, Anub’arak (Haste)

Hands
Velen’s/Zabra’s Handwraps of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Tier 9/Hit/Crit)
Gloves/Handwraps of the Lifeless Touch ToC 25, Anub’arak (Crit/Haste)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Handwraps of Triumph ToC 25 (Tier 9/Hit/Crit)

Waist
Belt/Cord of Biting Cold ToC 25 Heroic, Faction Champions (Hit/Crit)
Belt/Cord of Biting Cold ToC 25, Faction Champions (Hit/Crit)
Belt/Cord of the Tenebrous Mist ToC 25, Northrend Beasts (Haste)
Cord of the White Dawn Crafted (Crit)
Sash of Ancient Power Crafted (Hit/Haste)

Legs
Velen’s/Zabra’s Pants of Triumph ToC 25 Heroic (Tier 9/Hit/Haste)
Breeches/Leggings of the Deepening Void ToC 25, Anub’arak (Hit/Crit)
Velen’s/Zabra’s Pants of Triumph ToC 25 (Tier 9/Hit/Haste)
Leggings of the Soothing Touch ToC 25, Jaraxxus (Haste)

Feet
Boots/Sandals of the Mourning Widow ToC 25 Heroic, Faction Champions (Haste)
Treads of the False Oracle Ulduar 25, Yogg-Saron HM (Crit/Haste)
Boots/Footpads of the Icy Floe ToC 25, Anub’arak (Hit/Haste)
Boots of Fiery Resolution Ulduar 25, Flame Leviathan HM (Haste)
Sandals of the Silver Magus/Sunreaver Magus’ Sandals ToC 10, Faction Champions (Hit/Crit)
Boots/Sandals of the Mourning Widow ToC 25, Faction Champions (Haste)

Finger
Nebula Band Ulduar 10, Algalon (Crit/Haste)
Band of Deplorable Violence/Lurid Manifestation ToC 25, Anub’arak (Crit)
Band of the Invoker 35 Emblems of Triumph (Haste)
Signet of Manifested Pain Naxx 25, Kel’Thuzad (Crit/Haste)

Trinket
Reign of the Dead ToC 25, Anub’arak
Rumored to drop from Anub’arak in ToC 25 man. Sounds sweet!
Flare of the Heavens Ulduar 25, General Vezax HM
Eye of the Broodmother Ulduar 10, Razorscale
Illustration of the Dragon Soul OS 25, Sartharion
Dying Curse Naxx 25, Multiple Bosses (Hit)

2 Handed Weapon
Excluded because the ToC 25 maces and daggers are vastly superior.

1 Handed Weapon
Sunreaver Disciple’s Blade ToC 10 Heroic, Faction Champion (621 Spellpower/Crit/Haste)
Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings Ulduar (621 Spellpower/Crit/Haste)
Misery’s End/Suffering’s End ToC 25, Anub’arak (621 Spellpower/Crit/Haste)
Barb/Blade of Tarasque ToC 25, Northrend Beasts (621 Spellpower/Hit/Haste)

Off Hand
Symbol of Transgression/Talisman of Heedless Sins ToC 25, Lord Jaraxxus (Hit/Crit)
I’m so glad I spend DKP on this!
Chalice of Searing Light/Mystifying Charm ToC 25, Twin Val’kyr (Crit)
Chalice of Benedictus/Lightbane Focus ToC 10, Twin Val’kry (Hit/Haste)

Wand
Rod/Scepter of Imprisoned Souls ToC 10, Northrend Beasts (Crit/Haste)
Scepter of Lost Souls Ulduar 25, General Vezax (Crit/Haste)
Brimstone Igniter 25 Emblems of Triumph (Hit)
Scepter of Creation Ulduar 25, Ignis (Crit)

Lots of new gear for Alliance and Horde Shadow Priests

Bring on the shiny new gear! This post is aimed at Shadow Priests who fit into the below 4 descriptions and want to see some of the cool new loot available in game:

1. The 10 Man raider who sometimes PUGs the easy 25 Mans
2. The 25 Man raider who is trying to gear up a Shadow Priest alt or dual spec set
3. The casual player who runs heroics with friends and PUGs easy 25 mans
4. The player who has just come back from a break and wants to get back into 25 man raiding

This is not about this-item-is-better-than-that-item. The folks at Shadowpriest.com run some heavy duty DPS simulators and maintain a Best Raiding Gear list. Worth checking out and getting a sense of the true best-in-slot Shadow Priest items available from any source in the game: from Arena to 25 man and 10 man hardmodes.

In this list I have used my preferred stat weightings to create a list of achievable gear for the 10 man raider. Not all items have been listed but I’ve tried to find the best Hit, Haste and Critical Strike piece for each gear slot.

Some Goals

Be smart about your gear decisions. I would recommend aiming for:

• 10% or 11% haste
• 10% hit (if you always party with a Draenei for Heroic Presence)
  otherwise 11% hit
• Heaps of Spellpower and Critical Strike

Know Where You’re At

Look at your gear right now. You’re maintaining two caps – Hit (hard cap) and Haste (soft cap) – so be prepared to shuffle around gear as you win more new, shiny gear.

If you have more than 11% haste you’re probably not getting the most out of that extra haste unless you are a machine or have really good, low latency (which is why I tend to value haste lower than most simulations and shadowpriest.com).

Don’t disenchant and don’t be afraid to “down grade”. If you have too much haste or too much hit, look and see if you have a Spellpower/Crit alternative that you may have picked up in the past.

Now onto the gear… note: minimal hard mode gear listed here.

Gear (oooh, shinies!)

To see more options, or to change my stat weightings to suit you, please head over and view the entire list at Loot Rank.

Head
ilvl245 Hood of Fiery/Smoldering Aftermath: 75 x Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Haste)
ilvl245 Helm/Hood of Clouded Sight: 75 x Emblems of Triumph (Crit)
ilvl226 Conqueror’s Circlet of Sanctification: 58 Emblems of Conquest (Crit/Haste/Tier 8 bonus)
ilvl219 Gaze of the Unknown: The Black Knight, Trial of the Champion 5 Heroic (Hit/Crit)
ilvl232 Valen’s/Zabra’s Circlet of Conquest: 50 x Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Tier 9 bonus)

Neck
ilvl232 Darkbane Amulet/Pendant: Twin Val’kyr, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Hit/Crit)
ilvl226 Pendant of the Shallow Grave: Thorim Hardmode, Ulduar 10 (Crit/Haste)
ilvl219 Pendant of the Piercing Glare: Kologarn, Ulduar 10 (Hit/Haste)

Shoulder
ilvl245 Pauldrons/Mantle of Catastrophic Emanations: 45 Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Crit)
ilvl245 Pauldrons of Revered Mortality: 45 Emblems of Triumph (Haste)
ilvl232 Valen’s/Zabra’s Mantle of Conquest: 30 Emblems of Triumph (Crit/Tier 9 bonus)
ilvl219 Valorous Mantle of Sanctification: Thorim, Ulduar 10 (Crit/Tier 8 bonus)

Back
ilvl219 Kurisu’s Indecision: The Black Knight, Trial of the Champion 5 Heroic (Hit/Crit)
ilvl226 Cape of the Unworthy Wizard: Kel’Thuzad, Naxxramas 25 (Crit)
ilvl219 Drape of the Spellweaver: Ulduar Trash 10 (Crit/Haste)

Chest
ilvl245 Merlin’s Robe: Crafted, materials at AH (Crit/Haste)
The items necessary to craft this robe drop in 25 man raids – possibly on hard mode – and will probably cost a small fortune!
ilvl226 Conqueror’s Raiments of Sanctification:
58 Emblems of Conquest (Hit/Haste/Tier 8 bonus)
ilvl245 Flowing Robes of Ascent: Northrend Beasts, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Haste)
ilvl232 Vestments of the Sleepless: Anub’arak, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Hit/Crit)
ilvl232 Velen’s Raiments of Conquest: 50 Emblems of Triumph (Haste/Tier 9 bonus)

Bracers
ilvl245 Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers: Crafted, materials at AH (Crit/Haste)
The items necessary to craft these bracers drop in 25 man raids – possibly on hard mode – and will probably cost a small fortune!
ilvl232 Felspark Bracers: Lord Jaraxxus, Trial of the Crusader (Hit/Haste)
ilvl213 Bindings of the Expansive Mind: Instructor Razuvious, Naxxramas 25 (Hit/Crit)
ilvl213 Bands of Impurity: Noth the Plaguebringer, Naxxramas 25 (Crit)

Hands
Apologies for leaving this out by mistake!
ilvl226 Pulsar Gloves: Algalon, Ulduar 10 (Hit/Haste)
ilvl232 Looming Shadow Wraps: Twin Val’kyr, Trial of the Crusader (Hit/Haste)
ilvl232 Velen’s/Zabra’s Handwraps of Conquest: 30 Emblems of Triumph (Tier 9/Hit/Crit)

Waist
ilvl232 Icehowl Binding/Cinch: Northrend Beasts, Trial of the Crusader (Hit/Haste)
ilvl232 Belt of the Tenebrous Mist: Northrend Beasts, Trial of the Crusader (Haste)
ilvl226 Cord of the White Dawn: Crafted (Crit)

Legs
ilvl232 Velen’s/Zabra’s Pants of Conquest: 50 Emblems of Triumph (Hit/Haste/Tier 9 bonus)
ilvl226 Leggings of Profound Darkness: General Vezax Hardmode, Ulduar 10 (Crit)
ilvl226 Leggings of the Wanton Spellcaster: Eye of Eternity (Hit/Haste)
ilvl226 Legwraps of the Master Conjurer: 39 Emblems of Conquest (Crit)
Notice how the Tier 8 Shadow Priest legs didn’t even make the list? *cough*

Feet
ilvl232 Sandals of the Silver Magus/Sunreaver Magus’ Sandals:
Faction Champions, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Hit/Crit)
ilvl226 Spellslinger’s Slippers: Crafted (Haste)
ilvl219 Boots of the Crackling Flame: The Black Knight, Trial of the Champion 5 Heroic (Hit/Crit)
ilvl226 Savior’s Slippers: Crafted (Crit)

Finger
ilvl245 Band of the Invoker: 35 Emblems of Triumph (Haste)
ilvl226 Shimmering Seal: Flame Leviathan Hardmode, Ulduar 10 (Hit)
ilvl226 Signet of Manifested Pain: Kel’thuzad, Naxxramas 25 (Haste/Crit)
ilvl245 Heartmender Circle: 35 Emblems of Triumph (Crit)

Trinket
ilvl213 Illustration of the Dragon Soul: Obsidian Sanctum
This one is about pure spellpower. I hope you’re lucky enough to win it!
ilvl219 Eye of the Broodmother: Razorscale, Ulduar 10 (Crit)
ilvl213 Dying Curse: Multiple Bosses, Naxxramas 25 (Hit)
ilvl200 Sundial of the Exiled: Emblems of Heroism/Conquest (Crit)
ilvl200 Abyssal Rune: Trial of the Champion 5 Heroic (Haste)

2 Hand Weapons
ilvl232 Illumination/Enlightenment: Twin Val’kyr, Trial of the Crusader 10 (550 SP/Crit/Haste)
ilvl232 Perdition/Cold Convergence: Anub’arak, Trial of the Crusader 10 (550 SP/Crit/Haste)
ilvl232 Icecore Staff: Hodir Hardmode, Ulduar 10 (550SP/Haste)
ilvl219 Unraveling Reach: Freya, Ulduar 10 (487 SP/Hit)

1 Hand Weapons
ilvl232 Blade of the Silver Disciple / Sunreaver Disciple’s Blade:
Faction Champions, Trial of the Crusader 10 (550 SP/Crit/Haste)
ilvl232 Mace of the Earthborn Chieftain / Argent Resolve:
Anub’arak, Trial of the Crusader 10 (550 SP/Crit)
ilvl226 Torch of Holy Fire: Kel’thuzad, Naxxramas 25 (550 SP/Haste)
ilvl219 Spectral Kris: The Black Knight, Trial of the Champion 5 Heroic (487 SP/Crit/Haste)

Offhand (to pair with your 1 Hand Weapon)
ilvl232 Chalice of Benedictus / Lightbane Focus:
Twin Val’kyr, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Hit/Haste)
ilvl219 Igniter Rod: Ignis, Ulduar 10 (Crit)
ilvl213 Matriarch’s Spawn: Maexxna, Naxxramas 25 (Haste)

Wand
ilvl232 Petrified Ivy Sprig: Freya+3 Hardmode, Ulduar 10 (Hit)
ilvl232 Scepter of Imprisoned Souls/Rod of Imprisoned Souls:
Northrend Beasts, Trial of the Crusader 10 (Haste/Crit)
ilvl245 Brimstone Igniter: 25 Emblems of Triumph (Hit)
ilvl213 Plague Igniter: Grobbulus, Naxxramas 25 (Crit)
ilvl213 Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians: Anub’rekhan, Naxxramas 25 (Hit/Haste)

You disperse into pure Shadow energy...

Since it’s implementation on the PTR (Public Test Realm) Shadow Priests have had mixed feelings about our 51 point talent, Dispersion. This post is intended to examine Dispersion and to describe the best and worst situations to use it.

Of course, all this advice comes from my own personal playing experiences – raiding, completing achievements, running dungeons and engaging in (*cough* getting ganked) in world PVP. I don’t do arenas and if I join a battleground, it’s as Discipline.

What does Dispersion do? Currently it reduces incoming damage by 90%, regenerates mana (I get back about 1/3 of my mana bar from it), and removes snares. You cannot cast during Dispersion. But you can move. It is often compared to a Mage’s Evocation.

Dispersion is a mana regen and/or survival 2-in-1 spell.

In the Priest Q&A Dispersion is described as:

a very valuable spell — nearly all Shadow priests take it

Not a compelling argument since many Holy Priest take Lightwell because it’s in a good place on the talent tree. Might as well, ya know? I think in my talent build if I were to drop Dispersion I would be trading it for Inner Focus.

A Brief History

• In it’s earliest incarnations on the PTR Dispersion regenerated health and mana.
• In it’s earliest incarnations on the PTR Dispersion boosted your spell power for a short time.
• Before Dispersion left the PTR the spell power boost was reduced significantly.
• By the time Dispersion came to the Live servers Dispersion had no spell power boost attached.
• In the week following the release of Ulduar, Dispersion worked in Ignis’s Slag Pot. Unfortunately Ignis was terribly bugged and when he came back fixed, Dispersion didn’t protect you from this damage anymore.

Other players have described other raid encounters where incoming damage is not reduced using Dispersion, but the Slag Pot is the one that springs to mind. When Priests talk about how the Dispersion tooltip lies, they’re talking about the you-can’t-depend-on-it-to-work-at-all incoming damage reduction.

Dispersion DON’Ts

During Boss Encounters When the Boss is Enraged (for Mana)

The type of fight I’m talking about is those ones where you can DPS down the boss until he’s at x% and suddenly he hits harder until he’s dead. You can’t DPS during Dispersion, and DPSing hard is critical to getting through enrage phases, so use a Runic Mana Pot or, even better, your Shadowfiend. If you must use Dispersion make sure that it has finished before the onset of the enrage.

During Boss Encounters to Prevent *insert boss ability* (for Survival)

Dispersion will allow you to avoid some melee hits should your tank die, or be slow to taunt or something. Don’t expect Dispersion to save you from things like General Vezax’s saronite green pool debuff damage. Of course there’s a small chance that you might discover one of the rare boss abilities that Dispersion will protect you from so you might as well give it a go.

During Boss Encounters (for Mana)

Try not to use Dispersion during boss encounters because you’re wasting DPS time. Think of it as your last resort. You should be able to get Shadowfiend out twice in most fights and survive on that mana in short, 1 or 2 target type boss encounters.

Always double check your Shadowfiend cooldown before using Dispersion to regen mana. If Shadowfiend is available find a target with some health and throw your Shadowfiend at it. Or use a Runic Mana Potion. Keep casting.

Note: Having raided a couple nights post patch 3.2, with reduced returns from Replenishment, I found I struggled significantly more with my mana pool than I have previously in Wrath and needed to use Dispersion more often.

When your Shadow Weaving stack is about to Wear Off (for Mana)

Cast something (preferably refreshing your Shadow Word: Pain with Mind Flay) first and then immediately Disperse. As soon as you’re out, Mind Flay again and you should have kept both 5/5 Shadow Weaving and Shadow Word: Pain active during Dispersion.

Dispersion DOs

When Hoping for Divine Intervention (for Survival)

One of my personal favourites is to Disperse during wipes after the tank has gone down and run in range of your fleeing Paladins hoping for a Divine Intervention.

To Tank the Boss at 1% (for Survival)

If you’ve crawled quite high on the threat meters and your tank dies you can take over tanking for a few seconds when the boss comes to you. Chances are by the time he goes after you your mages and warlocks will be dead grey squares in amongst your raid frames but you might buy some time for another tank to taunt or a druid to battle rez.

Great for tanking 1% wipes while you hope your DoTs tick over and finish the boss off.

Dispersion works nicely when you're waiting for quest mobs to die

Multi-dotting during Dailies/Questing (for Survival and Mana)

If you have a quest or a daily that requires you to kill a bunch of mobs, find a good spawn location and DoT up maybe 4 or 5 mobs with a couple DoTs and use Dispersion while you wait for them to die. You shouldn’t lose much health at all. Unfortunately you can’t do this more than once every couple minutes, so I tend to just use Vampiric Embrace on each mob instead while I wait for them to die.

Soloing Level 60 Dungeons (Survival and Mana)

Same method as above for multi-dotting stuff while questing. Holy Nova does a good job too since so many mobs interupt/silence you in lvl 60 dungeons.

While Looting or Chain Pulling (for Mana)

Dispersion is great to use while looting trash in between trash pulls. It’s even better when your raid is moving at a fast pace because you can keep running while regenning your mana. Laugh at the casters who have to sit down to drink.

When you can’t DPS anyway (for Mana)

Good times to use Dispersion are obvious breaks in boss fights where you’re moving into position but have no targets to DPS. This is also a good time to consider using Hymn of Hope too if your healers are struggling. Examples from Ulduar:

• Mimiron’s phase transitions
• Yogg Saron’s phase 1->2 transition
• When you have to visit/stand in a Sanity Well during the Yogg Saron fight
• Razorscale if your raid is waiting for more adds to spawn
• Ignis’s slag pot since you can’t cast there anyway

“Escaping” from the opposite faction in world PVP (for Survival)

Unfortunately Dispersion only works here if you have a friend to run to (since your chances of actually killing the other player are incredibly low). Can be used to buy a few seconds thinking time after the initial attack. Usually it will just prolong the whole miserable experience. It also tells your enemy that you’re Shadow spec if you are pretending to be Discipline and “hiding” out of Shadowform (a tactic I recommend).

Love/Hate

Blizzard love Dispersion. They want us to love it too. But it’s lacking somehow. I believe that’s because it exists to serve two purposes and doesn’t excel at either.

The mana regeneration component is a fall back, and yes it’s handy on fights where you can be mana drained or pour out a lot of DoTs but Shadow Priests already have two other mana regeneration abilities, Shadowfiend and Replenishment. Two signature class (well Replenishment used to be) abilities that we have been attached to for quite some time now. Dispersion is the new kid on the block.

Getting the most out of Shadowfiend actually requires some thought and I consider that to be as much a situation-dependent decision as using Dispersion. So, in my mind, Dispersion certainly doesn’t make Shadow Priests more interesting to play.

I would much prefer to see the Shadow Priest gain double returns from Replenishment, similar to how Vampiric Embrace heals the Priest more than their party, because I think this would make soloing as a Shadow Priest more enjoyable. I, for one, struggle with mana when solo or questing at level 80 and I have to stop and resort to drinking for mana much more frequently than Lath as Moonkin.

The “survival” aspect is even more unreliable. As mentioned early in the piece Dispersion doesn’t do anything to reduce damage from a lot of stuff during raids. I see the Mages in Hodir hardmode completely ignore Flash Freeze using Ice Block and I look at Dispersion with disappointment.

It also doesn’t deter enemies in PVP who tend to stick around and just wait it out. I see players give up and run away when a Paladin bubbles, sometimes from me when I PVP with Pain Supression, and I think of Dispersion and am disappointed. Perhaps there ought to be a Glyph of Dispersion that extends the duration of the effect out to twice as long whilst restoring no additional mana?

The only time I use Dispersion and really really love it? When I’m running past all the other casters while they have to sit down and drink. Plebs!

I would miss Dispersion if Blizzard removed it altogether. However, I know several Priests at shadowpriest.com who advocate dropping the talent altogether and they don’t appear to miss it at all.

Shadow Priest Tier 9: Zabra's Raiments

I can’t quite get a hang of patch pacing. For the first six months of Wrath of the Lich King I got thoroughly sick of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity. Especially Naxx.

These days my guild is “re-doing” Ulduar and working on each of the hard modes to summon and kill Azgalon the Observer and maybe even earn a legendary mace for the guild. I haven’t yet mastered each fight in Ulduar, far from it (can I admit that I still don’t really get Flame Leviathan?). And I’m enjoying myself. I haven’t gotten to my 4 set bonus and I only just replaced my Hammer of the Astral Plane last night.

Now Blizzard are talking about the next patch which contains a new raid. And a whole new Tier set. It just feels way too soon for me.

Both Vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade had 3 raiding tiers each so I had expected Tier 9 to come with Icecrown Citadel, assuming that fighting Arthas on the Frozen Throne would be the final raid instance in Wrath of the Lich King. And while I’m happy to see another raid instance being added to the game I would have been just as excited to see some additional items added to the existing 5 piece Tier 8 (eg. belt, shoes and bracers) or a bunch of Spell Power + Critical Strike cloth items of course!

I can’t help but wonder if this means Wrath of the Lich King will finish with Tier 10. At least it’s a nice round number.

Before I stick my head in the sand about this new raid I just had to look once at the Shadow Priest Tier 9. Just once to see what it looks like.

The Switch

My first impression is that Priest Tier 9 follows on from the spacesuit look of Tier 8 with some mage-like Kirin Tor purple eyes hovering around. Priest Tier 8 meets Mage Tier 7 perhaps? With weird orange red spikes sticking out the shoulders (kinda reminds me of any gloves in the game with the name Surgeon in the title: ick).

The stats on the gear follows the same trend as Tier 7 and Tier 8. Most have +hit and +haste and a couple have +crit. Nothing exciting really. The three +hit pieces should get you nicely to hit cap (or pretty close) so I’ll be looking for pure +Spell Power on everything else. Watch out healers!

The Flustration Count

2 pieces: Increases the duration of your Devouring Plague spell by 61 sec.

How this works I’m not quite sure. On a boss this will free up 1 global cooldown every now and again. I guess that has some value. You could perhaps stagger applying Devouring Plague across 2 targets (normally it’s limited to 1) since it would still be up on the first mob when it comes off cooldown. I think I’d prefer the 15% damage to Devouring Plague Tier 8 set bonus. Blizzard really wants us to love Devouring Plague, right?

4 pieces: Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay spell by 5%.

Well I love my Mind Flay. But this is hardly exciting. I mean, it’s the filler spell. It’s the spell you cast when you can’t cast anything else. I think I’d prefer a 2% increase to overall Critical Strike – and that’s less than my Meta Gem gives me. Or something vague like “Your Vampiric Touch has a chance to deal double damage”.

What do you guys think? I know the Hunter community are pretty upset by their set bonuses. I still think they could change between now and the release of Patch 3.2.

*Update*

MMO Champion has updated their information and link to this image of Priest Tier 9. Is either correct? Your guess is as good as mine.

Priest Tier 9