More Harharhar on the PTR

Things are heating up on the PTR as we are reaching the release of patch 3.3. And we, little Shades in the back, are actually standing to get quite a bit of improvement. If these things come true, we can expect to see ourselves right back towards the top of the DPS lists again. Here’s a summary:

• Shadowform will allow Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to benefit from Haste – it will reduce the duration and the time between dot ticks by your haste %.
• Improved Devouring Plague will deal 10%/20%/30% of its total periodic damage instantly upon casting – doubled from 5%/10%/15%.
• Vampiric Embrace will be a 30-minute buff on ourselves instead of a debuff on opponents. It cannot be dispelled.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain renamed to Glyph of Mind Flay.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain will now restore 1% of your base mana per periodic damage tick.
• Glyph of Shadow will now grant 30% of your Spirit to spellpower instead of 10%.

In short, Haste will now provide scaling for us; but not quite linear. You see, it makes our DoTs tick faster and thus deal more damage. However, this also means a short DoT duration, more recasts and thus a lot more mana use. Especially Shades at around the 1K-1100 Haste (the Haste specialists) will find themselves drained quicker and may need to scale down on their Haste ratings. The change to the glyph of Shadow Word: Pain (mana restore per tick) seems to be a way to assist high-haste Shadowpriests a bit in this.

The changes to Devouring Plague and VE are PvP buffs, designed to let us live longer as well as provide more burst damage. Technically the VE change is a buff on us, and should provide healing from all damage done, regardless to what creature, but somehow I have the idea that there will be trouble in this department. It should give the same amount of healing, but in the change from debuff to buff I can see something going wrong. In any case it will save us global cooldowns, which means more DPS.

Things do look good, very good.

A short glance at 3.3.0

Interrupting the radio silence for a short update on what 3.3.0 brings for us. There’s not too much there so far, but MMO-Champion released some set bonuses and the armor set looks for a few of the Tier 10. Ours are…interesting.

2 Pieces (Damage): (Updated) The critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells is increased by 5%.

4 Pieces (Damage): (Updated) Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 0.5 seconds.

So what does this mean for us? Well, we’re going to get a hell of a lot more damage out of our main DoTs, because their chance to crit has been increased. And, as each crit is 100% additional damage, this is quite a bit. I have been stacking up on crit for quite a while myself and am currently at about 30-40% raidbuffed. Now, assuming Tier 10 hasn’t got the +Hit fetish our T9 had, that we may like to have 2pT8 and 2pT9.

The 4-piece bonus makes life easier on us; by shortening MF by 0.5 seconds, we need less Haste to get 2 Mind Flays in between Mind Blasts, and that was all we were really using Haste for anyway.

Another change: Mind Flay will be 30 yards base range. Goodbye MF Glyph in PvE! It will now suddenly be an awesome long-range nuke in PvP, since it will outstrip almost anything (except Hunters I guess).

Edit: As posted by Molgan, this blue post shows the ideas for Haste and Shadowpriests in 3.3. Mind however, that this is only a test. But if it improves our scaling, it can’t be bad in any way.

Hey! We get a buff!

The newest changes planned for patch 3.2 (and on the PTR) have been announced. I scanned them listlessly, until my eyes hit a buff planned for us little Shades. No! Could this be the bandaid to help us live in raids until Cataclysm? Judge for yourself, it might just make me reconsider the use of (Improved) Spirit Tap…

• Twisted Faith now increases your spell power by 4/6/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
• Improved Spirit Tap effect changed to : Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes have a 100% chance and your Mind Flay critical strikes have a 50% chance to increase your total Spirit by 10%. Mana regeneration effect remains unchanged.

It seems to resound a bit with the post placed on the Blizzard forum here, where Shadowpriest PvE concerns are laid out in a logical manner. Especially the part where other caster classes gain a greater benefit from Spirit than we do (We used to gain 30% from Spirit as Spellpower in the Wrath beta, but this was nerfed to 10%).

Only a short update post today, as work is killingly busy. I’m planning to complete my Spell Focus series soon!

Races and racials, oh my!

When I first saw the racial abilities of the Worgen and Goblins, I was pleasantly surprised. Those are quite the powerhouses they have there; that would be awesome! Goblins get a hobgoblin manservant to access their bank (I just know people will give them names) and rocket boosts at a touch of their oversized belt buckles. They also get the best deals regardless of reputation and have a bonus when using potions. Worgen can shift into Worgen shape in battle (while they normally fight in Wolf form) and have a bonus to damage done. They also can skin very fast, very well and without using a knife. This seems less awesome than Goblins, but their shapeshifting animations make up for it.

Of course, Blizzard plans to also update the other races to a similar level. I can only speculate what this would be, but expect solid combos like the Draenei and Blood Elves already have to be more common. This fits in with the redesign of the classes, stats and talent trees that are planned. On the whole, I am reeling a bit at the magnitude of the changes, and their familiarity…

You see, a lot of the things (like guild bonuses and recipes) have featured on Age of Conan before, as has the idea of “downranking yourself” or “upping a party member to your level” so you can play together at a level difference. The change for Hunters to use Focus instead of mana remenisces of the way that Hunters work in Lord of the Rings online, where a hunter builds up focus and releases it into powerful shots. Does the new warlock shard system look familiar? You should, because it is identical to the way that Unholy Assassins in Age of Conan empower themselves to unleash shadowy havoc.

The way the new stats are looking, as well as “combat rating”…errr, I mean Mastery of course, is also a part of that game.

I realize now that Blizzard’s taken a long good look at their game mechanics, and decided to streamline it with what is popular in other games. While this borders on plagiarism, we can only hope that this will be wrapped up in a typical WoW package, and adapted to the needs of the players, rather than a straight cut-and-paste.

Still, I think a horde-side Goblin bank alt seems more than tantalizing (Hey, Greedy Goblin! Now you can do it in style ^_^), and a Troll Druid would be most likely made of win and awesome on a stick and covered with awesome sauce.

Finally, I also think that a few stories, theories and RP guides on Worgen shadowpriests are brewing in the back of my mind…mmmm, delicious!

The Cataclysm

It is true – the leaked information that was presented by MMO-Champion turned out to be true after all! This comes as a surprise to me, both pleasant and unpleasant. Sure, there are new quests and zones, an exciting addition in a secondary skill and a continuation of the storyline…but something deep inside me nags that this means the end of the old WoW – that something that was once awesome will be lost and the game seems more…pale. Anyway, here’s a quick list of the things previewed in this video, while I catch my breath:

• Level Cap 85
• Worgen join the Alliance, Goblins join the Horde
• Many new class combos including Gnome Priest, Tauren Paladin, Human Hunter and Troll Rogue
• Archaeology becomes a new secondary profession
• Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep will be updated and have a heroic mode
• Desolace becomes…less desolate
• Darkshore and Ashenvale become heavily contested as the Horde invades
• The barrens is split in twain, Durotar may be lost
• There will be new, rated Battlegrounds
• Deathwing will feature as the main enemy
• There will be a guild leveling and a guild achievement system
• A new character progression system: Path of the Titans

What this all means and how some of these things are implemented, I cannot say. It looks like the classic dungeons will have their old forms as well as a new level 80+ mode. By the things shown in the trailer the “destroyed” locations also neatly miss the quest-important zones, which is good. What the Path of the Titans exactly means is something I am very curious about, as well as what we can do with Archeology.

The Cataclysm just turned profitable! Let’s just hope it erases the bad taste in my mouth. I hope it will be awesome.

Edit: This just in from the Class panel:

Shadow Priests will most likely get a nuke without cooldown in Cataclysm.

Just saying…