3 DoTs. Couldn't be easier, right?

Dusknoir, who has been playing his Shadow Priest to level 85, has given me lots of food for thought in his latest post. Frankly, since the game was patched with our Cataclysm talent trees and mastery I’ve been trying to play my Shadow Priest at level 80 the way that I’ve played her during Wrath of the Lich King.

Well it’s time to come to grips with the Cataclysm Shadow Priest play style. And we have nearly all the tools and time at our disposal to perfect our spell casting while we level up.

In Part 2 I’m going to help you (and me) come to grips with our Mastery: Shadow Orbs and Mind Blast. In this post I’m going to try and break you of six years of conditioning and teach you to recast your damage over time spells early.

If, like me, you’re a NW (Non Warlock) I strongly suggest that you head over to Cynwise’s blog and read his post about Warlock DoTs in Cataclysm. There are lots of diagrams, I promise. I’m going to just look at how the new Damage over Time approach applies to our Shadow Priest spells: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague.

I’m going to try and give you diagrams too.

Breaking the Habit

Prior to the release of Cataclysm Shadow Priests strived for 100% DoT uptime. That hasn’t changed. We want our DoTs to be up on the target all the time, reapplying our DoT the moment it runs out.

Old model: Reapply too early and you will overwrite and “clip” your previous application of the DoT, wasting a damage tick and wasting your casting time (when you could have been casting something else) and wasting your mana. Inevitably there would be tiny gaps of time in between applications. Frankly, I was usually pretty happy to get to about a 95% DoT uptime.

New model: Blizzard have been kind to DoT casters and Shadow Priests. Now, in the same manner that you can queue up your next spell while still casting your current spell, you can queue up your next application of a DoT.

If, for example, your Devouring Plague spell has just 1 more tick of damage to dole out before expiring, a new application of Devouring Plague will allow the first application and its last tick to play through before starting in on the new duration. It won’t clip your last tick.

Recasting a little bit early will give you 100% DoT Uptime

Theoretically this allows for 100% DoT uptime. And, as aspiring master Shadow Priests, we should work very, very hard to play just that precisely.

Aim: Cast after the 2nd last tick but before the last tick and before your DoT expires.

Recast too early – before the 2nd last tick – and you will clip off the end of your first DoT application. Recast too late – after the last tick – and you will delay the first tick of your second application and lose DPS.

So the next question you should probably ask is, if the last tick occurs right as my DoT expires with 0 seconds remaining, when does my 2nd last tick occur? How do I know when I have entered the ideal recast window of opportunity?

Ticks, Haste and the Countdown

If you love ForteXorcist as much as I do, you can easily configure your Spell Timer to display the tick intervals on your DoTs. In fact, the diagram above was retooled from a screen capture taken with ForteXorcist monitoring my Devouring Plague applications.

At level 85 Haste will not effect the duration of our DoT spells. They will remain constant regardless of the amount of Haste Rating you equip on your gear. Instead Haste Rating will increase the number of times damage is dealt during your DoT, and, in the case of Vampiric Touch, Haste Rating should decrease the time it takes to cast the spell.

Devouring Plague ticks at different Haste amounts

If we take the example above, let’s look at it again with 5% Haste (any high level Shadow Priest in Shadowform would benefit from their own Mind Quickening buff), and with a significant amount of Haste Rating from gear (in my Tier 10 gear set).

You can see that with more Haste the recast window of time shrinks as damage is inflicted more frequently in the same period (24 seconds for Devouring Plague). This is the challenge of the well geared Shadow Priest: adapting and becoming more precise.

Devouring Plague

In the example above Devouring Plague deals damage 9 times over the course of 24 seconds. There is a 3 second gap between each tick (8 intervals between 9 ticks). In the Hasted example above Devouring Plague deals damage 12 times over the course of 24 seconds. There is a 2.18 second gap between each tick (11 intervals between 12 ticks).

When to recast Devouring Plague

I use ForteXorcist’s countdown timer on my Spell Timer bars. This means that I can see the time (in seconds and tenths of a second) still remaining on my Devouring Plague. So the number to keep in my mind when wearing my current gear is 2.1 seconds. If I see my Devouring Plague with less than 2 seconds remaining I should recast Devouring Plague on that target.

What makes Devouring Plague unusual is the restriction that dictates only one target can be afflicted by your Devouring Plague disease at a time.

If you cast Devouring Plague on one target, and then only a few seconds later cast Devouring Plague on a second target the first DoT immediately drops off. That said, I think it wise to only recast Devouring Plague early (just before that last tick) if you intend to remain on the same target. If you wish to dot up a different target with Devouring Plague I think it best to let your current Devouring Plague run its full duration and expire entirely before you recast.

Shadow Word: Pain

Shadow Word: Pain lasts 18 seconds. With no additional Haste from gear it deals damage 6 times over the course of 18 seconds. There is a 3.6 second gap between each tick (5 intervals between 6 ticks). With 39% Haste Shadow Word: Pain deals damage 9 times over the course of 18 seconds. There is a 2.25 second gap between each tick (8 intervals between 9 ticks).

Unlike Devouring Plague we don’t (or shouldn’t) need to recast Shadow Word: Pain to keep it active on our target. Instead we cast Mind Flay on our Shadow Word: Pain afflicted enemies to reset Shadow Word: Pain.

Talented we have only a 60% chance to refresh Shadow Word: Pain with 1 Mind Flay. If you’re DPSing on just one target this is fine: you’ll Mind Flay your target many, many times within 18 seconds. If you’re focusing on another target and only swapping back to a mob in order to refresh SW:P that 60% chance makes things much harder to predict. I know that in the last few weeks I’ve had many a SW:P DoT expire because Pain and Suffering hasn’t worked.

I think a more sensible approach would be to anticipate that you will need to cast two Mind Flays in succession to guarantee (or near abouts) a refresh of Shadow Word: Pain.

When to refresh Shadow Word: Pain with Mind Flay

Theoretically it is possible to start up two Mind Flays inside that optimum window before the second last tick. Honestly, I don’t think this is going to work well in the actual game – especially once you take lag into consideration! Clipping a tick or two of Shadow Word: Pain isn’t a huge DPS loss or waste of resources: after all, casting Mind Flay is a nice chunk of our damage on its own.

I think I will be target switching back to my Shadow Word: Pain targets once SW:P has about 4 seconds remaining and lining up two Mind Flays in quick succession. Only once I’m sure that Shadow Word: Pain has been refreshed will I switch back off.

Vampiric Touch

Vampiric Touch is our only DoT that has a cast time to reapply. We need to take that into consideration and start casting just that bit earlier again. Naked with 5% Haste, Vampiric Touch deals damage 5 times over the course of 15 seconds. There is a 3.75 second gap between each tick (4 intervals between 5 ticks). In the 39% Haste example above VT deals damage 7 times over the course of 15 seconds. There is a 2.5 second gap between each tick (6 intervals between 7 ticks).

When to recast Vampiric Touch

If we factor in the time it takes to cast Vampiric Touch (1.39 seconds at 5% Haste, 1.04 seconds at 39% Haste) the point at which we can recast Vampiric Touch is actually quite early. With 3.5 seconds still remaining on my first Vampiric Touch in my current gear I can start casting the second one safely.

A Discovery: The start of your DoT is padded

ForteXorcist tends to morph the positioning of ticks on its Spell Timer bar in the second or two after you apply a DoT. I assume that it calculates the positioning of each tick given your current amount of Haste immediately after you cast.

This led me to question how accurate the display was. I assumed that a DoT would tick immediately on application and then always tick as it expires. With this assumption my Spell Timer bar mislead me and I often counted 1 additional tick that, according to Recount, didn’t exist.

I went back to basics. I applied one DoT, just one spell, and actually counted the number of times WoW popped up a damage number. I soon realised that most DoTs, in fact, do not tick immediately after application. But they do always tick just as they expire. I believe this is the new way that Blizzard have approached their Haste calculations.

For example, at 5% Haste you get 5 ticks out of Vampiric Touch. Now imagine that at 6% Haste you tip over into the next bracket in which you get 1 more tick in the same duration.

Being just under a Haste tipping point (eg 5%) sucks

In the first example there’s a good second or two of wasted time before your spell even starts to do damage.

This leads me to believe that however Blizzard have spaced out ticks across the static time duration of a DoT, they’re doing some rounding to keep the intervals to say, half second possibilities instead of tenths or hundredths of a second. Perhaps it’s possible to have DoTs tick at:

5 seconds, 5.5 seconds, 6 seconds, 6.5 seconds = interval of half a second

but not possible to have them tick at:

5 seconds, 5.95 seconds, 6.9 seconds, 7.85 seconds = interval of .95 seconds

The Haste Sweet Spots

In this article I’ve compared Haste at 5% vs Haste at 39%. Is it likely that Shadow Priests will be raiding with a 39% Haste at level 85? Eventually, yes, I think so. I haven’t done any investigating of gear for max level Cataclysm Shadow Priests just yet but with each new maximum level cap the amount of Haste Rating needed to provide 1% of Haste increases quite a bit. This means that once I reach level 85 I might need double the Haste Rating that I have now to get even close to 39% Haste.

It looks like early calculations are saying that 128 Haste Rating at level 85 is an increase of 1% of Haste.

Extra Haste Rating might not result in a steady, gradual improvement to your DPS. If you knew that equipping just 1 more point of Haste Rating would give your DoTs and additional tick (instead of a bunch of padding/wasted time) – you would do it whatever it took to get that 1 point. Reforge, re-gem, whatever!

However I think it’s safe to say that each of our three DoTs (Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague) are likely to gain extra ticks at different Haste points. After all, each has a different duration.

Amounts of Haste that will give you an extra tick of damage

This means that even if one of your DoTs isn’t quite getting that extra free tick at your current Haste Rating, perhaps one of your other DoTs is. And the steps between Haste “sweet spots” probably isn’t as big as you’d expect.

The three DoTs gain additional ticks as you increase Haste

And if you’d still like to know precisely when Haste will give you an extra DoT tick here are the tables from Nysem posted on Elitist Jerks:

TLDR?

Worry about Haste, but don’t worry too much about it! Every point is likely to help one of your three DoTs… and if nothing else, your Mind Flays will be faster.

Vampiric Embrace might not be visible to you, but it's as defining as Shadowform to us

I often feel that of all our Shadow Priest spells, Vampiric Embrace is the spell that is really only understood by those who have played a Shadow Priest.

Most people know that a Shadow Priest gets back a bit of passive healing while they deal damage. But Vampiric Embrace hasn’t been a hot topic during Wrath of the Lich King. We’ve talked about Dispersion and Mind Sear a lot. And so we should: they were new and interesting.

We’ve always taken Vampiric Embrace for granted. It’s one of our defining abilities, as important as Shadowform to my way of thinking.

The last time I remember really thinking about Vampiric Embrace was right before Wrath of the Lich King was released back at the end of the Burning Crusade. Up until then I think (from memory) Vampiric Embrace was a spell that we would cast on our target, it cost mana, only lasted for about a minute and any damage that we did to that target would heal back both the Shadow Priest and their four party members for 10% of the damage dealt. You could spend talents and I think you could boost that amount to almost 20%. So much has changed.

Mostly Vampiric Embrace was a bit of an annoyance. One that lazy Shadow Priests forgot about and one that smart Shadow Priests could use with a bit of planning to benefit their party and help keep themselves healthy during raid encounters.

And boy did we need it. Back then Shadow Word: Death, our instant spell with a very nasty 100% backlash, was part of our regular casting rotation.

In fact when I was first learning how to Shadow Priest I was given the advice to try and follow up a Shadow Word: Death cast with a Mind Blast. This way we would drop to a third health (from SW:D) and then prop ourselves back up to say half health with the Vampiric Embrace heal (from Mind Blast damage).

Still a distracted Shadow Priest could easily kill themselves by following their “rotation” and not paying attention to incoming environmental damage. And on a fight were the raid’s DPS was artificially boosted? We would often slip up and kill ourselves.

But I’m getting off track. Someone changed the numbers in the lead up to Wrath and for a very short time the amount that Vampiric Embrace healed was boosted to 25% of damage to the target… baseline. I think they may have increased it to a raid wide effect too briefly. Remember this was in the days when they were trying to simplify raid composition and buffs.

The TLDR version is that for about a week or two during the lead up to Wrath even Shadow Priests would admit “Vampiric Embrace is OP”. The nerfs were fast and furious. Shadow Priest DPS was increasing and nobody wanted to make healers obsolete.

Numbers were changed. But the most important change to the spell split the healing returns: the Shadow Priest would receive a much bigger heal from Vampiric Embrace, and the rest of their party would get a little bit. Vampiric Embrace existed to help keep Shadow Priests alive all on our own. It helped keep us independent.

I loved this change. I wanted to feel the effect of my own Vampiric Embrace spell, and I wanted some control over my own health bar. Just as Warlocks have both Life Tap and Drain Life, I wanted to know that I could choose to hurt myself with Shadow Word: Death, but that I could also heal myself in part with Vampiric Embrace – and, as the encounter demanded drop one or both from my spell casting altogether.

I loved all the changes made to Vampiric Embrace to make it more useful – to more than just long boss encounters that is – during Wrath of the Lich King. First Blizzard dropped the mana cost and then extended its duration to 5 minutes. Then it became the self buff, an aura, that we have now. No longer did we have to focus fire one target to receive the benefits. It became great for instances and 3-4 mob pulls.

Most of these changes made Vampiric Embrace an easier spell to use, and like Shadowform and Inner Fire it became a pre-fight buff rather than a decision you would make mid-combat.

See a Shadow Priest? Well assume they have Vampiric Embrace active. You won’t get one without the other.

But while Vampiric Embrace was going through a series of minor usability improvements it didn’t get much press. When, during Wrath of the Lich King, did you read a raid strategy guide that even mentioned the words “Vampiric Embrace”. I can think of only one fight in which Vampiric Embrace was noticeably useful to the raid’s success: Heroic Anub’arak in Trial of the Crusader.

As a member of a moderately successful guild I can tell you that we spent about 4-6 weeks working on that encounter and it was a doozy. Heroic Anub’arak, Heroic Lich King and Heroic Halion are the only encounters that I haven’t completed this expansion and I can tell you that I’d much prefer to be wiping on Heroic LK or Halion instead of Anub’arak.

Need to keep a party at near death indefinitely with a tiny trickle of heals keeping them alive? Vampiric Embrace to the rescue!

Meanwhile Blizzard have struggled to move Shadow Word: Death into its “rightful” place as an execute: a spell with no place in our rotation until our target is under 25% health. Unfortunately they haven’t been very successful. We dropped Shadow Word: Death out of our rotation back when we lost our Tier 7 four piece set bonus and we haven’t been harming ourselves with it until very, very recently.

It’s no wonder that over the space of two years Shadow Priests have been some of the most reliable, resilient (no, not the PVP kind!) clothies standing at your back.

We don’t die. We haven’t been killing ourselves with the backlash from Shadow Word: Death since we dropped it  and we’ve been keeping ourselves alive with hymns, Dispersion and Vampiric Embrace.

Obviously we’re doing too good a job.

It surprised me when I read Natarumah’s Survivability and DPS at stake post in which he outlines the direction that Blizzard are taking with Shadow Priests, Mastery and Vampiric Embrace in Cataclysm.

Vampiric Embrace is taking a pretty significant numbers hit. In Cataclysm we can expect to receive only 6% of our damage done to return back to us as a heal. And only 3% to go to our party members. Even if you assume our damage output will increase, that’s a significant reduction.

Natarumah points out that this puts Vampiric Embrace in a very weak position when you compare our self heal to those given to other classes like Warlocks.

I was a bit put out when I first saw Ret Paladins get their passive self heal with Wrath of the Lich King. I was a bit put out when I discovered that Death Knights were prone to self heal through damage. And I’m certainly not welcoming the news that our once unique utility ability is now the weakest self heal of the lot.

I understood what the Shadow Priest was in Wrath of the Lich King. We were the steady, dependable and slightly evil caster at the back that never did the most damage, but somehow steps out of the shadows as the last one standing. We had close ties to our Holy and Discipline brothers and sisters and often recited our Hymns when they couldn’t.

I was less comfortable with the power of our new and somewhat awkward AoE, Mind Sear, and never really liked the idea of being the one everyone looked to during AoE phases. I’m not sad to see Mind Sear nerfed in the lead up to Cataclysm.

We weren’t bursty. Never have been. As Shadow Priests we planned out in advance, independently. Like any serious DoT class we’d spread our damage around, prepping for a target switch long before our raid leader called it.

Natarumah is worried about our DPS nerfs, and to a certain extent I share that concern. But I’m more disturbed by weakening of Vampiric Embrace.

What will this mean for leveling?

If our self healing becomes both totally passive and of no real significance (read: it won’t save our life) and we lose our Hymns (our ties to our better selves) I’m not sure if Cassandri will even feel like a Shadow Priest anymore.

I know she’ll look like one, but will she still feel that way?

I can’t help but ask myself: what are we without Vampiric Embrace?

See those skeletons all over the ground? Yeah.

I just finished watching the latest episode of Big Crits. They’re so happy that they’re now 8/12 Heroic ICC.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha.

Well the first eight or nine Heroic modes in (25 man) Icecrown Citadel go down pretty easy. I’m sure the Big Crits guild will get Lady Deathwhisper next without too much trouble. But then they’re probably going to hit their heads against the wall also known as: Heroic Professor Putricide.

Having suffered about 2-3 months of wiping on Heroic Putricide we earned our first Heroic kill just this week. Compare that to the time it took us to get the nine heroic modes before that: less than 1 month. The ICC buff was at 15% when we killed Lady Deathwhisper and it was 25% on our first Heroic Professor Putricide kill.

I’m not sure that I’m qualified to offer tips and tricks for other Shadow Priests out there attempting this fight. But surely I’ve devoted such a large amount of game time to dying on this fight and I can share some hard-earned wisdom. 

Stuff for Shadow Priests

Dispersion and Unbound Plague

Unlike the regular version of the Professor Putricide encounter, in which you should use the Tear Gas mass stun as a chance to Disperse and regain your mana during the phase transition, in Heroic mode you should save Dispersion for:

(a) an opportunity when you can’t really DPS anyway but need mana. This includes when you are the target of the red Gas Cloud (when you are the target of Gaseous Bloat) and will be running/kiting the cloud around the room, or, if you get hit and smacked with the Malleable Goo debuff.

But ideally you should use Dispersion for:

(b) extending the time you can hold Unbound Plague. Everyone in your raid should download and run the mod called Plagued. It does a simple little announce countdown that helps you monitor when the ticks of Unbound Plague are going to get too painful and you need to pass it off. Most guides/guilds recommend that you hold it for 10 seconds, 10 ticks. The Plagued mod counts down from 10 to 1 to notify the players around you. When the timer reaches 2 or 1 seconds to go, use Dispersion. Dispersion will numb the pain for the next 6 seconds. Just make sure you pass it off to someone else before Dispersion wears off because that 16th tick really, really hurts.

Your Shadowfiend and the Green Ooze

Talented, your Shadowfiend will be down on a 3 minute cooldown. And you should summon him twice – during the Phase 1->2 transition and the Phase 2->3 transition. Get him to attack the Green Ooze and he will help absorb the knockback damage. I like to wait until the first knockback before summoning my fiend, it’s usually players running to the second or third knockback point that having an extra friendly around to spread the damage really makes a difference.

Just be careful of this one little thing: if you’re currently using a macro (it’s often tied to Mind Flay) to get your fiend to use its Shadowcrawl ability, and you have the Gas Variable (thus, are attacking the Gas Cloud and not the Green Ooze) you need to make sure you don’t accidentally command your fiend to switch and appear right on the Gas Variable. Might be worth ditching the macro for this fight – after all, it’s not so much about the damage your pet deals, it’s about the damage it can absorb.

Professor Putricide: he’s right behind you!

Just because there’s a Gas Cloud or Green Ooze hanging around it doesn’t mean that you should let Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain drop off Professor Putricide. On a good attempt I can keep my DoT uptime fairly high, but on an unlucky attempt Professor Putricide will often be out of my range, or my Variable target will need all the DPS we can get (when you have a bunch of healers and tanks all with the Gas Variable you’re going to really need to focus fire if you’re one of the few DPS with the Gas Variable).

In Heroic mode Professor Putricide tends to spend a lot of his time hanging around his table – and he always heads there while you’re busy with the transition phases. Now, it could be different depending on what positioning strategy you’re using, but for me Professor Putricide was inevitably behind me when it was time to refresh my DoTs. This is quite annoying because I tend to rely on enemy nameplates to keep my targets in view/range and tab targetting to select them. And there are many occasions during the fight in which I can’t see the Professor’s nameplate.

Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague can all be cast with your back to Professor Putricide. Rely on a Focus frame or your DoT monitoring addon of choice instead of nameplates. And you can go a step further and create a macro for targetting Professor Putricide when he’s behind you:

/tar Professor Putricide

Simple! Actually because I’m so hesitant to spin my view around between my Variable target and the Professor I tend to let Shadow Word: Pain expire and just reapply it when it suits me (usually when I’m flying through the air from a knockback!) instead of trying to face the Professor to refresh SW:P with Mind Flay. This isn’t great for mana conservation, or for extending a boosted Shadow Word: Pain indefinitely, but it’s better than nothing.

2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace and Divine Hymn

I love Vampiric Embrace so I always talent into 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace. The first time we got the Professor into the final phase I was the last to die – a steady stream of damage will keep you alive long after the damage aura has killed your teammates.

As we started refining our Phase 3 approach I got put on a Divine Hymn rotation (the other Shadow Priest in the guild would chant her hymn around the 12-15% mark and then I would follow her, and then our healing Priests would follow me). I really disliked this approach – reciting my Divine Hymn was usually the closest I came to death. In our kill neither of us Shadow Priests used Divine Hymn, although I think maybe one of our Holy Priests may have used hers.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be the last DPS standing, too!

Improving your DPS

Absolutely the most effective way I was able to improve my DPS during this encounter was to keep all my DoTs running on both the Professor and whatever Gas Cloud/Green Ooze was up (or my Variable target during transition).

From there it’s a case of minimizing your movement. You need to be very careful not to get caught out by Malleable Goo and I would recommend being overly cautious while you’re wiping/practicing – move even when you’re fairly sure that you’re in the clear. You cannot afford to be hit. However, once you’re fairly confident that you aren’t being hit, try not to move unless you actually need to.

Unfortunately the stuff that will mess up your damage are all pretty important:

• being a good, thoughtful, Unbound Plague carrier
• intentionally stacking to absorb Green Ooze damage
• kiting the Gas Cloud if you are targetted
• moving away from the Gas Cloud before it retargets
• moving away from path of Malleable Goo

I would also argue that, as ranged DPS, getting the Gas Cloud variable is a pretty big DPS loss. In our strategy we had our ranged DPS continue to stack and absorb the Green Ooze damage even when they couldn’t DPS the Green Ooze themselves because they were debuffed with the Gas Variable. This mean that, if the Gas Cloud was kited out of our range, we couldn’t really DPS the Gas Cloud. As a Shadow Priest, you can still contribute by keeping your DoTs on the Professor.

By the way, a more experienced player told me that you should be aiming for 9k DPS from each of your raiders. On a lucky attempt (Green Ooze Variable, not targetted personally by the Gas Cloud, only carried the Plague once or twice) I could reach over 10k DPS. I saw a bit of a DPS drop once we hit Phase 3. On your average attempt I was still hovering around 9k DPS. If I got hit by Malleable Goo? 8k.

And every single attempt I had my ass kicked by our Hunters.

General Stuff for Ranged DPS and Healers

Zoom In

I think a lot of players, especially us ranged DPS, like to zoom their camera out to maximum distance so that we can see everything. In Professor Putricide having your camera a maximum distance can make it harder, not easier.

Ideally, you want your camera zoomed in close enough so that you can read the character names of the players standing nearby, but far enough away that you can judge which three directions Professor Putricide has thrown his three Malleable Goo.

I can’t stress how important it is to be able to see who’s standing nearby. We have 3 – yes, three! – Moonkin in our raids at the moment and 2 Hunters with that trinket that turns them into an ugly looking Gnoll. Our 2 Mages are fairly easy to identify because one is a Human and one is a Gnome. I’m also not the only Shadow Priest in the group.

We used vent to coordinate the spread of Unbound Plague. And the responsibility lay with the person currently handing Plague: when they were ready, they would run to pass it to the next carrier. But within the first few seconds of catching the Plague they had to call out on Vent who they intended to pass it to. And if your name was called, you would do your best to make catching the Plague safe – moving away from the rest of the raid (if you were a bit close to others) and then staying completely still while you identified who was trying to pass it to you.

Communication: Be Clear

When I would hear:”I’m passing the Plague to Cass”, my thought process immediately switched from juggling cast bars, DoTs and targets to:

Who said that? then Where are they standing?

Where am I standing? Do I still have an infected debuff from the last time I took the Plague? If so, can I afford to take it again? Are there people standing too close to me? Am I in the green ooze knockback area? Am I close to the Gas Cloud spawn point?

Professor Putricide casts Malleable Goo!

Oh crap. Is there a goo coming towards me? Of course there is. How can I avoid it and still be close to the plague carrier? Should I take the plague early?

It’s pretty easy to see how dealing with the Plague can take your mind off dealing damage. Now imagine that the person called out “I’m passing the plague to Cass” and I get half way through that distracting thought process only to realise that they’re actually standing 20 yards away and the other Shadow Priest in the guild is right next to them… they just got the name/person wrong.

Or, when you get the Plague and are unable to easily see if the Moonkin standing next to you is actually Player A, B or C. If you call out “I’m passing the Plague to… er that Moonkin nearby… wait! don’t move away” you distract three of your damage dealers all at the same time.

Pivoting for Malleable Goo

One of our newer healers was really struggling to avoid Malleable Goo and he was very upfront about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the timers or wasn’t trying to look and move out of the direction of the goo. He was. He was just having problems accurately determining the path of the goo flying through the air.

After a couple hours he pinpointed the problem: his camera was zoomed out so far that the ceilings and walls of the laboratory kept interfering, forcing him to pivot his camera view (when Malleable Goo was cast) to strange angles to see the room.

Try it – zoom in for Professor Putricide!

What's the opposite of being in the right time at the right place? This.

There’s a chance, a small chance, that I might be able to sneak my way into a 10 man Ulduar group bent on earning both their Rusted Protodrakes and the title, Herald of the Titans. I’m so excited!

Herald of the Titans is awarded when a group successfully kills Algalon, but only if they’re wearing 10 man gear. Fortunately Blizzard isn’t too picky about what constitutes 10 man gear and just put a restriction on the item level. Getting to Algalon in the first place requires you to complete all the hard modes: Flame Leviathan+4, Heartbreaker, Steelbreaker, Thorim+Sif, Hodir speed kill, Firefighter, Freya+3, General V without vapor and Yogg-1. All those 10 man hard modes award item level 226 gear. The same item level on normal mode 25 man Tier 8 gear.

I was asked: “What Ulduar gear do you still have?”

Perhaps they just want me for my Dispersion. Who knows and who cares, right? There’s a title at stake!

I knew that I still had my Tier 8 set in the bank. I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to armor. But I wasn’t sure what I had kept.

Unfortunately about a month or two ago I went through a mad Disenchanting spree in an attempt to clear out my full bank bags. Any item that I had no sentimental attachment to was turned into an Abyss Crystal. Fortunately I still had my weapon to go with my Tier set. But not much else. My belt from Ulduar still exists, although I put that down to pure luck.

I’m not sure exactly who is in this 10 man group. But I know that my friend in the group has killed Algalon on another character.  I’m sure that’s likely the case with some of the others in the group. I just know we’re up to the challenge, regardless of our gear.

My Herald of the Titans Set So Far

10 items. That still leaves a lot of slots empty including: Offhand, Wand, Neck, Back, Wrists, Feet, Ring.

A Patch 3.3 Shadow Priest in Ulduar

The interesting thing is that I’m not really trying to resurrect my old gear set. I’m not a Patch 3.1 Shadow Priest anymore. Things have changed, Shadow Priests have changed, and itemisation for Shadow Priest gear has certainly changed since then.

In Ulduar, in Patch 3.1, Shadow Priests geared for Spell Power alone. And when we couldn’t get that, we took Critical Strike Rating. Haste had next to no value to us – once we reached about 10% or 11% Haste it was enough to smooth out the hiccups in our rotation. In August of last year I posted:

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

These days it’s all about Haste. We now have modified talents that allow two of our most powerful DoTs to tick more quickly based on our Haste Rating. In my Icecrown Citadel gear I’m sitting at around 1000 Haste Rating.

But I look at the remnants of my Tier 8 gear and my decisions back then are starting to haunt me. First and foremost, why didn’t I at least buy the Shadow Tier 8 legs for my glory box? At the time choosing the healing legs instead of the Shadow legs seemed like such a sensible decision. I did have a 4 piece set (Helm, Shoulders, Gloves and Robe) but was quite happy to scale back to my 2 piece bonus (Helm, Gloves, Robe) when I upgraded to Amice of Inconceivable Horror.

I much prefer Amice of Inconceivable Horror now and then, but I can’t quite decide if my 4 piece bonus (a temporary Haste boost) might be really worthwhile now even if it wasn’t back then. I think it just might. Especially since Algalon is a single target fight where I should be able to sink into a straightforward rotation with lots of time to Mind Blast > Mind Flay > Mind Flay.

I’ll probably regem for Haste instead of Spell Power too. At least that’s easily fixed.

Depending on how my set turns out I know that I can boost Hit or Haste will my buff food on the day.

Lets Go Shopping

So if I assume that I just might get an invitation to this group, I’d like to be prepared. Perhaps having my gear set all ready to go will be the reason that I get an invite.

I have 7 item slots to fill. I’d like to get some Haste gear. I’d like to get another 150 Hit Rating. But if I can’t do that, then I can work towards an extra 110 Hit Rating and bring myself up to Hit Cap with buff food.

The first thing that I did when I figured out what was missing was open up my Tailoring panel. What ilvl 226 BoE items can be sewn? Boots and belts. That might be the way to go to get some appropriate shoes. I could consider replacing my existing belt with Sash of Ancient Power. (I find this dilemma amusing because I had the same dilemma about this time last year. Never did decide if it was worth the gold.)

The next place I can go shopping for level appropriate items is the Emblem Vendors. They offered me these:

1. Evoker’s Charm (19 Emblems of Conquest, ilvl 226)
2. Disguise of the Kumiho (25 Emblems of Valor, ilvl 213)
3. Wraps of the Astral Traveler (60 Emblems of Valor, ilvl 213)

There’s also a belt available through Emblems but I think the crafted options are much better.

I’ll check out the Auction House for BoE items which drop in Ulduar but I don’t expect many to be available since nobody really runs Ulduar anymore. I think when I was running Ulduar I wore Asimov’s Drape which is BoE. But I’m not sure I’d choose to wear a Spirit/Crit cloak now even if I could get my hand on it again.

For my second, and only missing, ring slot I think I might purchase Band of Channeled Magic or more likely I’ll work up to buying Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor. The gold cost of the ring doesn’t concern me too much because I almost bought this ring when I started the grind for The Insane title just to get the free trip to Dalaran every 30 minutes (I haven’t had my hearthstone set to anywhere Northrend for almost a month now).

Still Missing

The tricky slots to fill, I think, will be my Wand and Offhand. Perhaps the new Icecrown Citadel dungeons can offer me something for these.

Here are all the potential Off Hand items from Wowhead. Oh why did I disenchant my Ironmender? Will I be back to buying (again, for the second time) and using Ward of the Violet Citadel? Perhaps I should keep my eye out for the raid weekly and, if I’m really lucky, I might score Ignis’s 10 man Igniter Rod.

Here’s a question. Do offhand items count as “weapons” or “armor”. I think I was told that you could use ilvl 232 weapons for Herald of the Titans – I presume that one of the hard modes dishes out ilvl 232 weapons as a reward – so perhaps I can use a ilvl 232 two handed weapon or a ilvl 232 offhand?

From Wowhead comments (if you trust such a thing):

This achievement is very poorly worded. I got this achievement tonight, using an ilvl 232 weapon and wand. Due to the way 10man hardmode loot works, you can still get this achievement using ilvl 232 weapons, offhands, wands, ranged weapons, sigils, idols, etc etc. You cannot be wearing any armor, or using any trinkets higher than 226.
– Hina9888

Armour (all armor, rings, trinkets, necklaces, cloaks) must not be higher than ilevel 226. It does not matter where you got it from.
Weapons (main hand, off hand and ranged) must not be higher than ilevel 232. It does not matter where you got it from.
– Shadowtion

Here are the ilvl 232 off hands. Now the beautiful Shriveled Heart, from Halls of Reflection, is available. Or I could go for a 232 staff. Like Pit of Saron’s Engraved Gargoyle Femur. That’s one way to solve my concerns about Hit rating.

Here are the ilvl 200-232 wands. Falric in Halls of Reflection drops a 232 wand, Soulsplinter, if I want to play it risky. I think my best bet might be to grab Rod of the Fallen Monarch from Anub’arak in Azjol-Nerub during a daily Heroic.

To 4 piece or not to 4 piece… and to take a risk or play it safe

So I’m left with a few decisions to mull over. I could try and get my hands on a Tier Token and pick up my Shadow set legs. But if I can’t get that, do you think I should try and hold onto my 4 piece set bonus even if it means losing Amice of Inconceivable Horror?

And finally, I should I play it safe and stick to ilvl226 weapons, offhands and a wand? Or should I try and win the ilvl232 staff and wand available from the Icecrown Citadel 5 man heroics? Can I use my very pretty Frostsycthe of Lord Ahune?

Either way, I’ve got a lot of Emblems to grind.

An Addon for everything!

I gave everything a bit of a shuffle a couple weeks ago, mostly because I needed more help watching my Focus (Lich King) target’s cast bar (Defile) and who is being targeted (Me, or someone else in the raid). I switched to Shadowed Unit Frames. But changing my unit frames led me into making other changes.

Because I don’t PVP much these days and very rarely heal so VuhDo isn’t nearly as prominent in this layout as it has been in the past. I’ve also switched back to the default Combat Text because I just like the positioning of the text over the targets so much for AoE.

I thought it might be worth consolidating everything into a single post.

The Interface – Out of Combat

Out of combat, in raid

Out of combat, in raid, with add ons marked

The Interface – In Combat

In combat, in raid

In combat, in raid, with add ons marked

Add ons

Bloody Font | Combat Text
This tiny little mod will replace the default font for combat text with any TTF font file you want to use. I’m using Dafxter at the moment because the characters in the set are smaller than your average character font set and even double size critical hit numbers render quite well. Most fonts, including the default one, look jagged and pixelated on my screen.

Decursive | Raid/Unit Frames
Click to Dispel Magic and Cure Disease on any raid or party member. VuhDo can do this just as well, but I like this function to be separated out. My post about Decursive is here.

Dominos | Action Bars
Every spell bar or button, including my inventory and bags, are positioned and modified using Dominos. I like to leave a couple big button spaces free so I can move in fight specific spells eg Pyschic Scream for Lady Deathwhisper. My Shadowfiend pet bar appears in the gap right in the middle. My post about Dominos is here.

Deus Vox Encounters | Raid Boss Mod
A lot of people use Deadly Boss Mods for raid encounter timers and announcements. I switched to Deus Vox and stuck with it because it uses so many audio cues for the warnings. You can customize every single boss encounter and turn on only the warnings and bars that you need to know about. Deus Vox also comes with its own Proximity/Range finder (see above my mini map) and its own boss health bar (right of the mini map).

Elkano’s Buff Bars | Buff and Debuffs
I have a 4 column buff/debuff bar layout (you can see three of the four columns in these screen captures). From left to right:

1. Special buffs (not displayed) – includes things like Heroism, Power Infusion and Storm Power (if you remember Hodir), basically anything that will change how I cast temporarily goes here. These are scaled up significantly and coloured green.
2. Debuffs – in the screen capture you can see Chill of the Throne. I make sure my debuffs are very prominent and show both the icon and the name in text. They are coloured by the type of debuff (poison is green). They also work as timers which is really handy for watching important debuff countdowns like Blood Queen’s Essence of the Blood Queen and Sindragosa’s Instability stacks. I don’t know how I’d play with the default debuff icons! This is one of the most important parts of my interface.
3. Self Buffs – the tiny little line of self buffs is my readycheck checklist. Should contain at any given time Shadowform, Inner Fire, Vampiric Embrace, Flask of the Frost Wrym and Well Fed. I rarely look at this list once I enter combat but any trinket or gear procs show up here.
4. Buffs from others – occasionally I will scan this list to make sure I’m in range of a totem but otherwise I ignore it during combat.

Lathere’s post about Elkano’s Buff Bars is here.

ForteXorcist | DoT Monitor/Spell Timer
Another game changing mod. ForteXorcist tracks every single one of my active DoTs, across all mobs, during combat. Makes multi-dotting much easier and lets me track what mob has Devouring Plague even when I’m targeting something else. Unfortunately it doesn’t track DoTs on your Focus target. Or at least I can’t figure how to get ForteXorcist to track that. My post about ForteXorcist is here.

gChat | Chat Pane
A little add on that neatens up the Chat window considerably. All the buttons are hidden as is the input bar until you type “/” or hit Enter.

Omen | Threat Meter
The standard Threat Meter. Mine only shows up when I’m in combat.

Quartz | Cast Bar
Measures latency and displays it as part of the cast bar. An essential for any caster. My post about Quartz is here.

Recount | Damage Meter
The standard Damage Meter. I try not to look at it during combat.

SexyMap | Mini Map
Makes my mini map look good, hides all the buttons and things like the calendar and time until you hover your cursor over the map.

Shadow Green Light | Shadow Priest Mod
A mod that calculates whether it’s worth recasting Shadow Word: Pain based on how many debuffs are on your target and how many debuffs are available with your raid composition.

Shadowed Unit Frames | Raid/Unit Frames
Replaces the player, target and focus frames in my user interface. You can use Shadowed Unit Frames to draw frames for party members and raid members too, but I use VuhDo to do that. Sometimes it will display a boss frame, but not consistently for all bosses. I’m thinking about turning this feature off.

Tidy Plates | Name Plates
Replaces the default name plates with something a little prettier. You can download a few different skins if you don’t like the default design.

VuhDo | Raid/Unit Frames
The best healing raid frame add on out there. Even though I rarely heal VuhDo compacts all the important information about what’s going on around me in the raid – who is dead, who is being resurrected, who has DCed, who is a ghost, who has aggro etc – into a small space. It also shows who has been raid marked which is really handy when you’re running a boss mod like Deadly Boss Mods or Deus Vox Encounters so you can quickly identify the raid members with Spores in Festergut, Unchained Magic in Sindragosa, Mind Controlled in Lady Deathwhisper just to name a few. Lathere has written two posts about VuhDo: here and here.

Fine-tuning

My user interface is definitely a work in progress. I’ll always be tinkering.

Eventually I plan to bring my player, target and focus frames down underneath my cast bar. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the Deus Vox bars and warnings really get in the way – they tend to overlap my damage output numbers or get in the way of my target’s name plate.

ForteXorcist stops tracking DoTs on a target if I set that target to my be my Focus. I find it much harder to track DoTs when they’re listed in two different places and in two formats. I wish I could figure out a way to keep ForteXorcist tracking my Focus target.

And finally, I think I need to set up some kind of tool tip add on. My tool tips usually appear in the very bottom right corner of my screen and overlap my menu bars there. I’m not sure where I want my tooltips displayed, but I know that I need a special spot for them and an add on that can put them where they’re meant to go.

Welcome to the future!

I read the Priest Class Changes for Cataclysm (MMO Champion link for when the Blizzard one breaks) right after they were released. I was standing at a target dummy in Stormwind messing with my UI and it was a quiet afternoon when a guildie asked me if I had read the post. I read it. I thought: oh well that’s not great, not too bad either. And went back to making my ForteXorcist Spell Timer match the exact width of Quartz.

I counted myself lucky when, a day later, Lathere totally freaked out that Tree form might be taken away from her. At least they weren’t removing Shadowform or something!

During last night’s server maintenance I started reading what all the blogging Priests, mostly healers, thought of our class changes. I never intended to post on the two or three Shadow Priest changes mentioned. I hate doing news pieces for the blog – I always feel like I’m under some tight deadline to get things out while its is still relevant. But after I left my 2nd lengthy comment I discovered that I actually had quite a lot to say.

And I felt that someone ought to comment on the Shadow Priest changes. And since there are only a couple of Shadow Priest blogs out there… here goes.

I know, not actually a Shadow Priest change. But I’m actually really happy to hear about this change.

I tend to bring abilities out onto my toolbar the moment I learn them, convinced, that at some point, in some situation that spell will the right one to use. The very first time I healed (well successfully) was when I reached level 40 something and healed an entire Zul’Farruk run using Lesser Heal and Renew.

I don’t understand the logic in teaching new players one spell only to introduce them to something else later under a completely different name. Sure you want your heals to become more powerful as you rack up the levels. Isn’t that what Spell Ranks are for?

The first Shadow Priest change announced. I know that a lot will change between now and the release of Cataclysm and I really truly hope that it’s the name of this spell. I am willing to pay. Otherwise I’m forever going to be hearing Lord Marrogar saying “stick around!” like some kind of catchy horrifying remix by Mr Voletron.

Also, I don’t think Blizzard took into account that the Shadow Priest abbreviation for Mind Spike “MS” is already taken. Have you ever tried to read an Arcane Mage theory crafting article when 70% of the Arcane spells all abbreviate to “AB”?!

I’m glad that the developers have correctly identified that Shadow Priesting is pretty miserable in instances. Especially when your party brings a truckload of DPS in the form of a Mage or Hunter or Shaman or Paladin or… well you get the picture.

A year ago I would have said “who cares” and that feeling weak in one situation – a dungeon/raid trash – is a fair sacrifice for being so fun to play in other parts of the game. However, if Cataclysm follows the trend set in Wrath of the Lich King we’ll be running the Cataclysm heroics for the entire expansion. And for many players who don’t want to raid, they’ll be spending all their play time in dungeons wondering why their alt Mage still wearing level 80 gear can out-DPS their Shadow Priest.

I don’t really like Blizzard’s solution to the problem here. Partly that’s because Shadow Priests have been promised a new, no cooldown, nuke for Cataclysm. Something that will replace our channeled Mind Flay (with its snare utility) as our go-to spell in Cataclysm. I was really, really, looking forward to replacing the channeled part of our rotation with a direct damage spell that’s not so fussy. No more worry about clipping the spell too soon or being hampered by unpredictable latency. I’m worried that Mind Spike will be this new spell. And that we’ll still be Mind Flaying during boss encounters.

I don’t want Shadow Priests, even with our annoyingly long ramp up time, to change into something we’re not: bursty, with front loaded damage and spammy, benefiting from casting one spell over and over again. I feel that Mind Spike will make it easier to play a Shadow Priest without thinking in a dungeon setting. But I don’t think anybody who chooses to play a Shadow Priest should be happy about that.

Perhaps this spell will be the one that makes all the Discipline and Holy Priests out there no longer hate Shadow spec for solo play? If so, they should have called it Mind Smite.

I just read this as a PVP version of Inner Fire.

Other bloggers are reading all kinds of amazing things into this spell but I think it’s more likely that raiding Shadow Priests will be totally unwilling to loose the spellpower boost even temporarily mid fight – or whatever Inner Fire will give if spellpower is gone – unless they’re in a phase when they cannot cast at all.

Be handy for something like swimming to the orbs in Dreamwalker. But that’s a healer senario.

Wait. I know exactly what I’ll be using this for. To pop while clearing trash. Yep, I’ll just pop Dispersion at the same time and laugh at the Hunters and Mages as I fly past. Now I’m excited.

A lot as been said about this spell already. My initial reaction to this was simple: it’ll never make it to live servers. At the moment it has a 45 second cooldown. I also expect that it will have a nasty mana cost or high threat component but make no mistake: it will come with a high cost so that you, as a Priest, are hesitant to cast it.

Alternatively, I believe it may become in PVE what a Death Knight’s Death Grip has become. Something that the Death Knight uses to help the raid, that everybody fervently wishes they just wouldn’t use it at all. Eventually the Raid Leader snaps and declares that nothing is to be Death Grip-ped in raid. The ability that, if you use it under your own initiative as a Raider Trial, will soon get you gkicked.

On a more serious note, I dislike the notion that a Priest should be that responsible for their raid members. Priests are not baby sitters and even if your raid members don’t expect you to become one, I feel that having an ability like this will slowly change our own thinking about ourselves and our raid. For example, having Hymn of Hope forced me to be aware of other players’ mana. Even once they take that spell away, I’m sure parts of my brain will still be sparking unnecessarily when I see our Holy Paladin get brezzed.

If it does come in I’m going to follow Amber’s advice on how to use Leap of Faith:

Yank some easily movement impaired class to you for no reason other than to fuck up their DPS.

Yank the melee to you after they blow their cooldowns.

This is actually my favourite change announced. I’d love to return to a time when Vampiric Touch was 15 seconds, Shadow Word: Pain was 18 seconds and Devouring Plague was 24 seconds. At the moment Haste is shortening those durations and this can throw off your rhythm a little bit.

Anything that gives us a smoother rotation and higher DoT uptime is something I really favor.

I’d be really curious to see how they manage to pull this off. For as long as I’ve been playing the Shadow Priest Shadow Word: Death has either been a steady part of the rotation (the Burning Crusade) or absolutely not a part of the rotation (Wrath of the Lich King). At no point as the decision to use Shadow Word: Death been affected by the health of the boss.

Quite amusing when you think about it actually.

I’m quite a fan of Shadow Word: Death as it stands right now. It’s an excellent spell to cast when you’re on the move. It has a small penalty so you do need to use a part of your brain before using it (killing yourself is as embarrassing now as it was years ago). It’s an excellent spell to strike down mobs in heroics. If it crits it can feel godlike. PVP-ers still claim that you can use the backlash to break out of CC but this obviously requires a hell of a lot more skill and timing than I can manage.

Perhaps they could do something like make the damage dealt by Shadow Word: Death inversely scaled to the health of the target – like if you cast it when the boss is at 90% it does 10th of its potential damage. Cast it at 20% and it does 80% of it’s potential damage. And I don’t think Shadow Word: Death should ever kill you, it should be capped to bring you down to like 10% or something, but never outright kill you. Getting to 10% health is pretty dangerous all on its own.

Oh yeah. And if you want us to use it, make sure it hits harder than Mind Flay.

Awesome! So far we’re down to 4 buffs instead of 5 (6 if you count Shadowform) on the pre-pull buff checklist. Can you make Vampiric Embrace, Shadowform and Inner Fire/Will persist through death?

Oh my. Do I even want to get started? Replenishment is offered by four classes. Nearly half the classes available in the game. I want to see these raids that don’t have Replenishment. And don’t tell me that your Hunter/Mage chooses not to spec into it, because that’s not our problem. That’s your Hunter/Mage being inflexible. And who doesn’t have a Retribution Paladin hanging around? They’re everywhere.

I’ll bet you’re thinking “of course Cassandri takes Replenishment for granted – she’s a Shadow Priest!”. Well you’re wrong. I don’t take Replenishment for granted. I’m not a healer but I need it all the same. My spell costs and abilities are all factored around the understanding that I’ll be getting mana back from Replenishment. When they nerfed Replenishment you can bet I noticed it.

I love that Replenishment is a buff provided by DPS classes – something that we can give back to our healers. Frankly if they’re going to nerf Replenishment further I wish they’d just remove it from the game. Why bother? I’d like something amazing for my effort, instead of something that forces me to cast Mind Blast on a Vampiric Touch-ed target to keep it up.

That’s what I figured the Mind Spike spell was all about – short fights. I hadn’t really noticed the problem with being locked out of Shadow spells. Must be a PVP thing because any PVE Shadow lock out that I can think of – Lord Jaraxxus and his mistresses? – is preventable.

I don’t really understand the Mastery thing and I’m quite happy to figure that out once I’m hitting level 81. It’s true – our Shadow talents are mostly boosts to our damage under certain conditions: when such and such spell is up, when you’re in Shadowform etc. I’d be really excited to see what else they have in mind.

I’m ambivalent about the Shadow Orbs mechanic that they’ve brought up here. I think of Earth, Water and Lighning Shields as very unique Shaman abilties. Very visual Shaman abilities. They are also really annoying when they lose charges and drop off while you’re busy doing something else.

I don’t mind the idea of having some spare charges lying around, but my primary concern/question is “what is this going look/animate like?”. I don’t want to see a Shadowpriest hovering in the back of the room with 3 black balls spinning around their body. Give us something that complements Shadowform and doesn’t look anything like a Shaman’s shield and I’ll be happy. Ideally they won’t be visual at all and might just be a resource system like a Death Knight’s rune system – something only the Death Knight user can really see and monitor.

I remember when Misery was a debuff that meant the target was susceptible to Shadow Damage from the party/raid. But I can’t find anything to back that up.

Nobody enjoys spending talents to buff +hit anyway. No problem, get rid of it. Now what are you going to give us that is awesome?

Further Reading

• Amber at I Like Bubbles has an absolutely excellent overview/response to the changes. And she doesn’t snub Shadow Spec either.
• Natarumah at Twisted Faith shares his thoughts on the Shadow Priests changes
• DuskNoir comments on the Priest changes announced from a Shadow Priest point of view. He also has a bit to say about the Dispel changes.

Enjoying the mana returns from 3/3 Meditation (inside a Sindragosa Frost Tomb)

Natarumah at Twisted Faith recently theorised that there might be a point at which a heavily hasted Shadow Priest would “gain” more mana during combat by talenting into Focused Mind instead of Meditation. He’s absolutely right to ask the question.

Meditation works off our least favourite DPS boosting stat: Spirit. Furthermore even at high Spirit amounts it returns mana in the form of mana per 5 seconds (Mp5) which returns a constant stream of mana back to us for the length of the fight regardless of how many spells we output in that space of time. As we cast more and more spells during a set period, for example a standard 5 minute boss encounter, Mp5 becomes less valuable and insufficient to replenish (for lack of a better word) our resources as we spend mana more quickly.

Focused Mind, on the other hand, is a straight up, spell for spell, discount.

The trouble is this: we’ve been led to believe that 3/3 Meditation is mandatory in any Priest’s raiding build. And that Focused Mind is unnecessary because we shouldn’t lack for mana as Shadow Priests. Is that really still the case? Which is better in Icecrown Citadel, in practice?

A Case Study – Me

At the start of Icecrown Citadel I was talented for 3/3 Mediation and 1/3 Focused Mind – freeing up 2 points for Improved Vampiric Embrace. Months later and my talent build hasn’t changed. I started ICC with about 750 Haste. I gemmed for it, chose lower ilvl trinkets for it.

Now I’m at 935 Haste. I don’t gem for it, I don’t actively seek out Haste items. Yet even I have noticed a change in how I approach and manage my mana bar between then and now. That is to say – I didn’t bother managing it at all at the start of ICC. Shadowfiend was a DPS boost on a 3 minute cooldown and Dispersion was my 90% immunity, get-out-of-jail-free card. Now I actively use Shadowfiend to refill my mana bar as early in the fight as I can and try and bring him out a second time before the fight ends. If there’s even a tiny five second window in which I need to run across the room, run out of fire or stop casting for some other reason I reach for Dispersion.

Maybe it’s time to change our thinking. Is Meditation really so great? In my mind there’s only one way to know for sure. In this post I’ve gone through my latest World of Logs parses and extracted data from three fights in which:

1. I’m pretty confident that I played it (cast x,y,z) the same way I have been for weeks
2. I didn’t die
3. We didn’t wipe and followed a pretty standard strategy/approach

The three fights I’ve chosen – Festergut, Professor Putricide and Sindragosa – have been selected to represent how a Shadow Priest might cast in three very different fights – Single Target, Multi Target and AoE – respectively. I’ve tried to liven things up by colour coding a lot of the spell specific stuff. Hopefully it will also make the tables easier to understand. I’ve also dragged out the methodology and assumptions and stuck them way at the bottom as totally optional reading.

The Three Encounters

Assumed that SW:P was cast twice: once with 5/5 Shadow Weaving and once with max debuffs from other players.

There is no easy way to see how many times SW:P was applied. So I went in and counted each one in World of Logs for the duration of the fight. Shadow Word: Pain was cast 7 times on Prof Putricide and 10 times on Gas Clouds and Volatile Oozes. Therefore Shadow Word: Pain was cast 17 times.

Counting the Shadow Word: Pain casts individually shows that I cast it 8 times on Sindragosa and 11 times on Ice/Frost Tombs. Therefore Shadow Word: Pain was cast 19 times. I should also point out that I didn’t cast any AoE during the first of the 3 air phases, presumably because I was in a Frost Tomb myself. I think that’s pretty normal, but if you get lucky and don’t get Frost Tombed during any of the air phases your Mind Sear count would be higher.

Spell Costs (in Mana) with and without Focused Mind

Talenting into Focused Mind only reduces the cost of our “Mind” spells. It’s a direct discount on the cost to cast Mind Sear, Mind Blast and Mind Flay by up to 15%. No other spells are affected. Base mana of a level 80 Priest is 3863 mana. Final values are rounded up/down to closest whole number.

If you apply those costs to the number of each spell cast in the three fights (Festergut, Putricide and Sindragosa) you end up with these final mana costs:

• In Festergut talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 6536 mana
• In Professor Putricide talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 9336 mana
• In Sindragosa talenting into Focused Mind would gain you 10466 mana

Lets Consider Meditation

I have 238 Spirit. But just in case I’m not normal – which is quite possible – I’m going to calculate off the BiS (non heroic) 25 man gear set from Shadowpriest.com which ends up with 250 Spirit (base spirit + 70 from gear). When calculating Mediation I think it’s important to factor in the 80 Spirit we get by buffing ourselves with Prayer of Spirit. This boosts the BiS Shadow Priest gear set up to 330 Spirit; 210 mana per 5 seconds (mp5) while not casting.

Three points in Meditation that gives us half of our mana regeneration from Spirit out of combat (210 mp5) back to us during combat: 105 mp5. The amount of actual mana returned depends on the duration of the fight. In the three examples:

• In Festergut talenting into Mediation would gain you 5040 mana
• In Professor Putricide talenting into Mediation would gain you 10710 mana
• In Sindragosa talenting into Mediation would gain you 11760 mana

Mediation vs Focused Mind in Conclusion

Now we get to the most important bit – which talent actually returns the most mana fight for fight?

Focused Mind or Meditation return nearly identical results in practice at this level of gear: heavily hasted (thus casting more spells) with very little spirit items equipped. There’s simply not much difference between the performance of either talent.

Meditation seems to win out on longer fights, with or without Mind Sear.

Perhaps Meditation will always perform well even when we avoid equipping items with Spirit simply because Priests start out with a nice base amount of Spirit and we will always be able to boost that quite significantly by self buffing Prayer of Spirit.

Focused Mind only reduces the cost of our least expensive commonly used spells: Mind Flay and Mind Blast. Single target fights aren’t the fights that really drain our mana pool – saving mana here isn’t really a concern.

The fights that really drain our mana quickly are fights that give us multiple targets to DoT up. Our DoTs are our most expensive spells. If Focused Mind applied to our DoTs (Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain) instead of our direct damage casts I would definitely recommend choosing Focused Mind over Meditation. It would make for a much more interesting talent choice too: something that you would really only benefit from in fights where you are running several DoTs over multiple targets. But that’s when Shadow Priests really need some mana returned back to us.

Focused Mind might have performed better in Festergut because, not only is it a short fight, there is very little downtime during Festergut and no phase changes like there is in Professor Putricide and Sindragosa. Phase change downtime is an ideal chance to reap the benefits of mana returned through Mp5. Remember, Focused Mind isn’t going to save you mana unless you’re casting one of those three “Mind” spells. It might be worth mentioning that about one tenth of the Festergut fight will see me under the effects of Heroism – during which I cast pretty much nothing but Mind Flay – a situation in which Focused Mind would really shine.

But I have 4 talent points?!

Considering how similar the actual returns from Focused Mind and Meditation are in the three fights that I’ve analysed I would normal advise Shadow Priests to choose whichever talent is less difficult to reach in the talent tiers, or whichever talent has less prerequisites. Fortunately neither Focused Mind or Meditation are really out of our way in the talent tiers and furthermore, most Shadow Priests have more than 3 talents hanging around that could be dropped into mana regenerating talents.

I really like Improved Vampiric Embrace. That leaves me with 1 point in Focused Mind and 3 points in Meditation. Have you also got 4 points spread amongst the two? Is 3/3 Mediation and 1/3 Focused Mind the best option? Or is there a significantly better combination?

• 3/3 Mediation = 105 Mp5
• 2/3 Mediation = 69 Mp5
• 1/3 Mediation = 36 Mp5

The winning combination for each fight is highlighted below:

Point for point the talents perform equally well. There is no clear winning combination.

Throw your final points into either talent and I doubt you’ll be able to tell the difference. I do think it’s fair to say that 3/3 Meditation is no longer mandatory. I wouldn’t refuse a Shadow Priest raiding applicant if they talented for 3/3 Focused Mind instead of 3/3 Meditation.

Notes

Some notes on how I got to the actual results are below. If you trust me – feel free to skip the small print!

How I Counted the Casts using World of Logs Data

Channeled Spells: Mind Flay and Mind Sear I assumed that each counted Mind Flay and Mind Sear (both channeled spells) hits and crits – displayed as Direct Damage in World of Logs – are actually recording 1 tick of the channeled spell.

Mind Flay ticks 3 times in 1 channeled cast. So in the Festergut table 122 hits with Mind Flay + 118 crits with Mind Flay = 240 ticks of Mind Flay. 240 divided by 3 is 80 so it is assumed that I cast the spell Mind Flay 80 times, not 240 times.

Mind Sear ticks 5 times – once per second – in one 5 second channeled cast. So in the Sindragosa table 56 hits with Mind Sear + 53 crits with Mind Sear = 109 ticks of Mind Sear. 109 divided by 5 is 21.8 so it is assumed that I cast the spell 22 times, not 109 times. I should also point out that I only cast Mind Sear during the second and third air phase and not at all during the first. I was one of the trapped players in the first air phase. If I had not been trapped I would have cast more than 40 Mind Sears during the fight which might have led to a different conclusion.

Devouring Plague and Improved Devouring Plague Improved Devouring Plague is an effect that occurs when Devouring Plague is cast and instantly deals some damage. It is a side effect of casting the spell Devouring Plague, not a spell you can cast with a mana cost associated. However, as this effect occurs just once at the start of each cast of Devouring Plague I used the Improved Devouring Plague count to count how many times Devouring Plague was cast.

Vampiric Touch Vampiric Touch is a damage over time spell. It deals damage every 3 seconds over 15 seconds per cast – 5 ticks for 1 cast. The number of hits and crits are added together and then divided by 5. Remainders are rounded up in case the spell has been reapplied too early or it did not tick out when combat ended.

Shadow Word: Pain In both the Festergut and Sindragosa examples Shadow Word: Pain was counted manually from the World of Logs timeline showing damage done by this spell. As Shadow Word: Pain can be refreshed indefinitely there is no clear cut method to calculate when it was cast based on the amount of times it ticked or dealt damage.

The Tedious Spells Cast x Spell Cost Calculations

This is the full table that I used to multiply all the spell costs by the number of times each spell was cast.

Unfortunately you can't just choose your gear based on looks alone

I think most players, certainly raiders, are used to evaluating gear attributes in terms of how they benefit their own character – their own class or even just what’s best for their own talent spec.

The advice I give to brand new Shadow Priests is very simple: Haste and Spell power are equally as good as each other and the value of Critical Strike Rating is about half that of Spell power or Haste, point for point. And if you’re not sure, choose the item with higher Spell power.

Then, if it’s a (formerly) Holy Priest asking, I tack on this final piece of advice: Never choose one item over an other because it has more Spirit.

Spirit

Just because Shadow Priests don’t value Spirit very highly it doesn’t mean that other cloth wearers, and Blizzard, feel the same way.

Let’s consider all the cloth wearing classes and raiding talent specs and compare what value 1 point of Spirit is worth compared to 1 point of Spell power:

Source: Wowhead’s Stat Weighting, when Spell power = 1.

Spirit was not mentioned/used to find Mage Fire or Frost gear, so I assume that it is irrelevant to these specs. Does anyone raid as Demonology these days?

I should also point out that Shadowpriest.com’s most recent testing for Tier 10 gear has valued Spirit more highly than it has in past Patches and I assume that the value on Wowhead of 0.21 (above) is from Patch 3.2. In Patch 3.3 Spirit has been valued at 0.59 compared to 1 point of Spell power. This is still less than the value of 1 point of Critical Strike Rating, which becomes important further on in the piece.

The Budget

The developers place a completely different value on Spirit – one that sits above class and talent mechanics. A single value that they use to create or budget gear.

What makes a 264 item different from a 251 item? More gear attributes. What makes one 264 item better than another 264 item? Personal preference. We might prefer one item over another item, both with the very same item level, but in Blizzard’s eyes they are equal.

Every single attribute – Stamina, Intellect etc, even empty sockets and magic resistances, is valued and the sum of these values adds up to give you an item of that item level. Compare these two similar items both item level 264:

Two offhands from Icecrown Citadel 25 man. Item level 264.

What value does Blizzard place on each attribute? What is the master value stat weighting list? I’m sure a more practised mathematician than I could figure it out. If x = stamina, y = intellect, z = spell power, a = spirit, b = haste, c = critical strike rating you might read the above items like:

Shadow Silk Spindle: 69x + 69y + 60c + 60b + 106z = ilvl264 offhand
Sundial of the Eternal Dusk: 69x + 69y + 60a + 60b + 106z = ilvl264 offhand

I might not be great at math, but I can see that Blizzard values 1 point of Spirit exactly the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating. Look again:

Offhand items, Item level 264, 60 Spirit = 60 Critical Strike Rating

The Sacrifice

Items that we prefer, the ones that become our best in slot, tend to have higher values of our strongest DPS producing attributes. That doesn’t mean we don’t need some of the other stuff to survive, or to have enough Mana to last.

I’m finding that this is most easily seen while I level up Caesandra, my baby Mage. The other night I passed on a belt that dropped in Blackrock Depths. At first glance it was a lovely combination of Stamina, Intellect, Spell power and Critical Strike Rating. But the belt that I’m wearing, and have been wearing for the last 15 levels or so, is still better for me. It has no Stamina, no Intellect. Just a bit or Armor and the rest of the budget spent on pure Spell power.

Technically the BRD belt was a better item overall, and it had a higher item level. If I was questing, I probably would have valued it differently. But I’m leveling inside the sheltered environment of PVE dungeons and I can easily sacrifice survivability stats – it’s up to the tank to take a beating, not me.

In the Burning Crusade I wore incredibly fragile caster pieces – Spellstrike over Battlecast gear, the Frozen Shadoweave set: items that sacrificed Stamina (survivability) in order to load up on DPS stats that rivaled higher tier gear. In preparation for Black Temple, where it was recommended that all players have at least 9000 health in order to survive the first boss, I came up short.

Shadow Priests: But I only want Spell power! Haste!

In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard have done away with items that are weak on survivability stats in order to hold more DPS stats. All the 213 cloth gear has about the same amount of Stamina and Intellect, all the 232 gear has a bit more, and so forth. You can pretty much ignore it entirely – it’s always there. We’re left to make upgrade decisions based on more interesting dilemmas – what has more power?

We know that Blizzard values 1 point of Spirit exactly the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating. Now factor in some Shadow Priest preferences:

• 1 point of Critical Strike is valued to be about 75% as good as 1 point of Spell power (100%) or Haste (100%)
• 1 point of Spirit is valued to be only about 50% as good as 1 point of Spell power (100%) or Haste (100%)

Blizzard values Critical Strike Rating and Spirit as equals, but if given the choice, us Shadow Priests would take Critical Strike Rating over Spirit any day.

Critical Strike Rating is our third priority attribute. Spell Power and Haste are more valuable so we tend to choose items with Haste over items with Critical Strike Rating. What worries me is that, in our quest for more and more Haste, I see many new Shadow Priests with lots of Haste/Spirit items. And seriously deficient in Critical Strike Rating.

Here’s the rub. Items that you have with Spirit on them, even though they might be loaded up on Haste, may be hurting your gear set and overall stats.

If you are wearing two rings:
1. Item level 251: Spellpower/Haste/Spirit
2. Item level 264: Spellpower/Haste

I would consider swapping out the 251 ring for a 264 Spellpower/Crit ring. The item might be considered lower on the Shadowpriest.com Best in Slot ranks (using the Haste>Critical Strike weightings) but it doesn’t mean it’s an inferior item. You can’t wear pure Haste items in every single one of your gear slots. Ok, you can, but the output would be worse than a balance Spellpower/Haste/Crit approach and you probably wouldn’t make the Hit cap. So don’t shy away from great items just because they have Critical Strike Rating on them and no Haste.

If you have 500 Spirit and 850 Critical Strike Rating, wouldn’t you prefer to have 400 Spirit and 950 Critical Strike Rating? You can do that using the same item level gear available to you – remember 1 point of Spirit is the same as 1 point of Critical Strike Rating according to Blizzard.

I know I’d much prefer the extra Critical Strike Rating.

The long and short of it

Every time you choose an item with Spirit, that item budget could have been spent on additional Critical Strike Rating, Haste or Hit. Keep an eye out for items that drop with zero Spirit, but with Hit or Critical Strike Rating. You still need Hit and some Critical Strike Rating in some of your gear slots so don’t discount these items just because they don’t have Haste.

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.

The first third of Pit of Saron: 5v2

I think my tank in yesterday’s Heroic Pit of Saron let me die on purpose to teach me a lesson. And this tank wasn’t completely in the wrong. If rule number one of DPSing is: Manage Your Threat, I was failing.

Disclaimer: Cassandri is a Shadow Priest. I will do, to the best of my ability, what Shadow Priests do best in any given situation. I should also point out that I will focus fire a few select mobs even if the group is too busy AoEing. Because, well, kill the dangerous one first, hey?

I’ve been queuing Heroic Pit of Saron as “Damage” pretty much every day since Patch 3.3 was released. Like Pugnacious Priest, I’m mad for the Nevermelting Ice Crystal. Mostly I just want to play around and experiment with it.

In all that time I’ve seen the trinket drop once and lost it to a Restoration Druid. I know there’s some debate on whether or not the trinket is good for healers… but come on – it’s perfect for Shadow Priests.

I’ve been queuing as Shadow, even though the queue times are crazy long, because I did once queue as a healer and told the 2 casters in the run:

Hi, I’m here to roll on the Nevermelting Ice Crystal if it drops.
If that’s a problem please say so now.

And I felt pretty bad about it. Potentially that’s 4 members of the party all after one drop (assuming you got grouped with 3 casters). And I don’t think that’s fair. So from then on I queued as Damage. Never expecting that I would end up losing to a healer anyway!

Anyway, back to last night’s run. First off, I was grouped with 3 Paladins (1 Prot, 1 Holy and 1 Ret). And a Rogue. I was thrilled. Who else but me would roll for the trinket in this group?

Then we started clearing the trash to the first boss. Wrathborn Laborers, 2 a time. So I started to do what I always do, and what Shadow Priests excel at: applying DoTs to both.

Now if I wanted to boost my damage to maximum I would do my level best to spread my DPS equally over the two mobs. More time alive = more damage done by DoTs. But I’m not that self-serving.

So I DoTed both and assisted the tank to concentrate my direct damage spells on one target. The first target dies, and we all switch to the second. I guess my threat was already pretty high by then because within a few seconds the mob turns around and glares at me. I hit Fade. It turns right back and I walk away without a scratch.

Rinse and repeat. Almost everything comes in pairs on the way to the first boss in PoS. And by repeat, I mean I needed to Fade a few times when I pulled threat. Usually it’s not too obvious to most of the party because I hit it before the mob has peeled away from the tank to hunt me down.

Then, on the last pull before the first boss, things went haywire. This time when the dragon rider (after the dragon was dead) turned to me, I faded. But I pulled threat again shortly after Fade wore off and all I could do was watch as the vykrul turned and ran at me. I’m pretty sure all I was thinking was “please taunt, please taunt”. The vykrul came right up to me, raised his axe and hit me – just once – before I see the !!! (imagine the taunt animation there) and he turns around to run back to the tank.

I survived that one hit. But it was close.

During the trash to Ick and Krick I ended up tanking a geist mob at one point when Fade was on cooldown. And died. I was actually a little embarrassed. I wasn’t trying to pull threat.

“Sorry I used to talent into reduced threat before 3.3. I miss it.”

It’s true. For the tail end of Trial of the Crusader I had a couple points in Shadow Affinity in the hopes that the reduced threat would let me get away with slightly earlier DPS on the Anub’arak spider adds. Had I become too used to playing with that extra safety net? It’s true, I have been relying on Fade more and more in instances…

After Ick was dead we cleared the mobs up to the gauntlet. I was doing my best to kill those Deathbringers ASAP but I’m not entirely sure what the rest of the group was doing. Fortunately the healer had my back (and I was pretty careful to keep up Power Word: Shield too) because I ate at least five or six Shadow Bolts before I could kill it.

I died again in the gauntlet. I thought I was playing it pretty safe by waiting until we were at the midway point and using Fade right before I started to Mind Sear. The moment it wore off… Cassandri dead.

Nobody else in the group seemed to be having problems pulling threat. I believe the Ret Paladin did pull threat once or twice but they never seemed to die or get hurt from it.

Lying dead on the floor of the gauntlet gave me time to think. That incident right before the first boss, where I took just one mighty hit before a taunt, was that intentional? A warning? Was the tank trying to teach me a lesson?

Hey, next time you pull, I won’t taunt at all.

Definitely explains my geist death. I doubt the guantlet death was intentional, I died so fast.

I don’t blame the tank for his thinking either. It’s the kind of thing I might do if I’m healing and I see someone standing in a fire, or, one of my personal favourites, standing in the ice to loot Mage-Lord Urom’s body during Oculus.

But I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I wasn’t picking some stray target out of the pack and focus firing on it. I wasn’t disregarding a kill order or raid symbols (because none were used). I was DPSing Shadow Priest style – which kind of means damage on all targets all the time. It’s kind of how we work.

Heck even Ghostcrawler kind of gave us some learn-to-play attitude over the matter of dungeon DPSing in our Q&A:

… there is an issue of player skill here too. If your group kills the skull first every time, then maybe you want to DoT the third or fourth mob in the group so that you do have the benefit of time elapsing. DoTs just work differently.

Furthermore I was using Fade as much as I could to keep the mobs right there on the tank. Perhaps I could have stopped DPS when I was getting close to pulling, and I did do that a few times during the run. But I can’t cancel my DoTs. Even when I stop casting direct damage spells there’s not much else I can do.

Fortunately for me, while the tank was trying to teach me a lesson the healer had my back. Thank god for that Holy Pally. Otherwise I think I might have died many more times than the two times that I did.

So to the tank that was trying to teach me a lesson: I know I pulled threat. I know that pulling a mob off you can get me killed. I know that makes me a bad DPS. But I really did try to drop threat when I could and beyond that there’s just not much more I can do.

The next time I’m going to heal though, I’m going to endeavor to be more like the I’ve-got-your-back healer from the party and cut the DPS members some slack. Perhaps the real lesson learned was given by the Holy Paladin, and not the Prot Paladin.

Oh yeah, still no trinket.