I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Edited on December 10 for my latest build.

This post is written prior to WotLK’s release, so some of the content is no longer valid. The link of my current lvl 80 build can be found here.  Please refer to this post the explanation of my build.

My general impression of the talent trees (I mostly focus on the shadow tree):

• I am not entirely happy or looking forward for Dispersion, the 51-talent point skill. It feels a bit like a buffed-up evocate, in which we are taking less damage while regening mana/health. I wish that it’s somewhat scale with shadow damage, just in the case with shadowfiend. Also, it does feel like it’s more of a PVP talent. This frightened me a bit thinking that the supposedly defining talent of our tree is for PvP, that Blizzard is moving shadow priests more into PvP.
• I like a lot of the small changes happened in the tree, such as the improved spirit tap. I’ll discuss this a bit later.

So on with the build’s discussion. I chose this build with emphasis of DPS (of course) and longetivity.

In the discipline front (14 pts),

Twin Disciplines - Rank 5/5
Increases your spell damage and healing by 5%.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude - Rank 2/2
Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 30%.

Improved Power Word: Shield - Rank 3/3
Increases the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield by 15%.

Inner Focus - Rank 1/1
When activated, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.

Meditation - Rank 3/3
Allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Not much changes from the cookie cutter shadow priest’s build currently. It’s really a toss up between maximizing Unbreakable will or taking Wand specialization and having only 3 pts in Unbreakable Will. Twin Disciples easily takes care of this problem, giving us 5% more spell damage. I’m very tempted in allocating enough point to pick up Divine Spirit for an increase in spell damage. But, the loss of 6 more points for fillers just to get that skill is too much of a sacrifice.

In the shadow front (57 pts):

Spirit Tap - Rank 3/3
Gives you a 100% chance to gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target that yields experience or honor. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec.

Improved Spirit Tap - Rank 2/2
Gives you a 100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.

Shadow Affinity - Rank 3/3
Reduces the threat generated by your Shadow spells by 25%.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain - Rank 2/2
Increases the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 10%.

Shadow Focus - Rank 3/3
Increases your chance to hit with your Shadow spells by 3%, and reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by 6%.

Improved Mind Blast - Rank 5/5
Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by 2.5 sec.

Mind Flay - Rank 1/1
Assault the target’s mind with Shadow energy, causing 75 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.

Shadow Reach - Rank 2/2
Increases the range of your offensive Shadow spells by 20%.

Shadow Weaving - Rank 4/5
Your Shadow damage spells have a 80% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Shadow damage. This vulnerability increases the Shadow damage dealt to your target by 2% and lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Vampiric Embrace - Rank 1/1
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes all party members to be healed for 15% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 1 min.

Focused Mind - Rank 3/3
Reduces the mana cost of your Mind Blast, Mind Control, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by 15%.

Darkness - Rank 5/5
Increases your Shadow spell damage by 10%.

Shadowform - Rank 1/1
Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage by 15%, reducing Physical damage done to you by 15% and threat generated by 30%. However, you may not cast Holy spells while in this form.

Shadow Power - Rank 5/5
Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 10%, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 50%.

Improved Shadowform - Rank 2/2
Your Fade ability now has a 100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when used while in Shadowform, and gives you a 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage when casting any Shadow spell while in Shadow form.

Misery - Rank 5/5
Your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch spells also cause the target to take an additional 5% spell damage.

Vampiric Touch - Rank 1/1
Causes 450 Shadow damage over 15 sec to your target and causes all party members to gain mana equal to 2% of any Shadow spell damage you deal.

Pain and Suffering - Rank 3/3
Your Mind Flay has a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target, and reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 60%.

Twisted Faith - Rank 5/5
Increases your shadow spell power by 30% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 5% for each of your Shadow damage over time effects on the target.

Dispersion - Rank 1/1
You disperse into pure shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% health and mana every 1 sec for 6 sec.

Let’s see.

• With the new Twisted Faith talent, it seems like picking up Improved Spirit Tap is a mandatory. For 8 second, whenever your spell crits, you’ll get a 50% x 30% = 15% increase in your spell damage from spirit. Any killing blow can get up to 50% mana regen while casting. It will certainly help to reduce the downtime while grinding/questing, as to maximize the spell power buff.
• Improved SW:P changes from extending the duration of SW:P to a static 10% increase. This seems to imply the need to pick up Pain and Suffering talent. Since I’m not much of a theorycrafter, I’m not sure whether the reduction from 140% coefficient of spell damage from the original Improved SW:P makes up from the 10% damage increase (considering less global cooldown to worry about).
• Shadow Focus has changed. In a sense, it is nerfed so that our hit cap will be significantly higher. But the reduction in the mana cost is awesome.
• MB and Shadow Power are maximized to allow more proc of Imp. Spirit Tap.
• 2/2 improved shadowform give us 70% pushback resistance. In one hand, it potentially removes the need of SW:Shield during leveling (except for mulitple mobs). In raid, I can think so many times I wish that this talent would come right now! I can’t believe I almost missed the change in the shadowform itself. It will come with 30% threat reduction. It certainly most welcomed to shadowpriest that frequently found themselves in threat-capped situation. It does make me wonder though, whether we can drop some points from Shadow Affinity.
• VT is nerfed, sadly. But I hope it means that we’ll get a better scaling.
• Pain and Suffering will streamline our spell rotation. The reduction in damage when dealing SW:D also means that we can cast more SW:D.
• Twisted Faith gives us more stat to worry about: sprit. At first glance, it supplies us with the damage scaling that we desperately needed, except the fact that Mage and Warlock has similar talent. The interesting part of it is the increase in 5% with every DoT that you have on the mob. For the unlucky alliance, that means 10% increase (I don’t think MF counts as a DoT).
• And of course, there’s Dispersion. It’s a 2nd shadowfiend with a much costly price tag. Like I said, I’m not exactly brimming with joy with this talent. We are too deep into the talent tree, might as well grab this talent. Not like there’s a better talent to allocate the point into.

I was reading Misery’s post today (it’s always good to find blog of another shadow priests) about a new tool called imba (imba = leet talk for imbalanced for those who doesn’t know it). In short, it would rate your gears and build and provide some suggestions to how you can improve it. For example, it does tell you if you mis-enchant some of your gears and provides a better enchantment for your class and build. It also tells you which instance that you should be running at your current gear level.

Note however that “imba” can only asses characters of level 70. As far as I can notice, their analysis on the enchants, gems, and builds is quite spot on. In regard for low level equipments, however, I suspect that they only care whether the gears were green or not (regardless of their stat).

After running the tool, I was surprised to find that I have 10 low level gems. I know that I have been saving money to upgrade them, but I didn’t realize that I have that many. Wow. I need to start working on updating them I suppose. If only Runed Living Ruby is not outrageously high at this moment ><

I’ve been thinking of redoing my talent tree. The way it is right now, on my discipline tier, I have PW:S(1/3) and Martyrdom (2/2). I felt that my shield is quite weak as it is right now. Martyrdom rarely procs on me, and even when they proc, they usually went to waste. I’ve been thinking of moving the 2 points to PW:S.

/mathmode on

*Disclaimer: I can’t do math *

PW:S absorb 1265 damage as of patch 2.3 (According to Wowhead - I wish the patch note would spell it out) but it benefits from 30% of +healing damage that you have (according to wowwiki). with my current +healing, the absorption is (1265+ 0.3* 667) = 1465. Ugh. Maxing Improved SW:S, gave me an extra 15% absorption, which is only another 220 damage (additional 146 damage from previous build). Now, is it worth it? Probably not, that’s usually 1 extra hit that I can take…but unless I want to put my points to Silent Resolve, I don’t see any other choice.

/ mathmode off

Another change that I would like to make is to put more points on Improved MB. I currently put 2 out of 5 points in it, which translates to 1 sec reduction of MB’s cooldown (from 8 sec to 7 sec). Now, the problem is, I don’t have many potential points that I can cut from the shadow tree to put there. If I’m putting more points in MB, it seems reasonable that I should put more points in Shadow Power (currently 2/5).

Current available candidates to take points from are Improved VE (2/2), Shadow Weaving (4/5). Improved Psychic Scream (2/2) and Silence (1/1). At least until I can get more +hit gear, which means I can start taking points off Shadow Focus.

• Imp VE is the likeliest candidate to take at least 1 point off. I don’t use it that often except on bosses. Taking the points off means 5-10% reduction on the heal that I provide, which translate to minimum 50h per sec. It’s not too bad, since I’m not supposed to be a healer to begin with. I think my paly healer would miss it though

• Shadow Weaving is important for my overall dps. The current point allocation is on my comfortable level - it has a good chance to stick the debuff. When I was reading shadowpriest forum, it seems that the minimum recommended point is 3/5. On the boss, the fight is long enough that I can see that taking one point of it probably won’t mess up on ensuring the buff is always there and stacked maximally. But on trash, I usually end up with only 3 stacks, I’m not sure what would be the impact of only having 60% chance of debuffing.

• I desperately wants to keep Imp PS. My guild’s 5 party group is usually scarce in CC. One of CC that we do is chain-fearing. It’s not the best strategy, but it works. It also save my butt during farming or dailies. In term of raid, it’s not particularly useful. And I want to be more serious in that.

• Silence is conditional, as in the case with Psychic Scream. It has some usefulness during farming. It’s great for PVP. It’s also great for instance run for pulling caster or recovery after the MC on the caster breaks. But, to get Silence, I need to put all points in Imp PS. It’s a great skill which I use quite frequently. I admit that there’s way to get around not having it. So, is it a good enough skill to put 3 points into?

*Confused*