Hymn of the Black Crusade

Carefully bound scrolls of heavy vellum inscribed with silvery runes that glow with moonlit gloom are distributed among the followers of the Shadow faiths, along with small travel-worthy codici containing prayers to the Void. The scrolls are commandment and invitation alike to join the Black Crusade to Northrend…

The Hymn of the Black Crusade

“Embroider your cloaks with sigils of darkness, and adorn your robes with talismans of Gloom. Finish your prayers at your sepulchural shrines and weave your wisdom on life’s shortening loom.

Caravans of midnight-black horses carry doom-plated warriors to the water’s edge harbor, where oiled up sails strike wind under sailormen’s ardor.

Cast your voice to the wind, a hymn of dark praise, to the humble priests marching to end Northrend’s disgrace. Dusk-furred hounds jar at the chains, held by keen-eyed huntsmen and the purest of maids, as the warlords align to prepare for their raids.

On the icy plains of Northrend our tents shall amass, like burials shrouds preparing for a dusky church mass. Under the fury of the winds last rights will be read, for the Lich Kings’ unlawful children, the dire walking dead.

And among the hooded councillors and gloomlit candles, shall be the deathdealers, rogues and their gambles. Our wispy grasp shall be around Kel’thuzad’s neck, as the warlocks shall effort to keep their demons in check.

And the ivory moon, pale and uncaring, lights up the banners our scouts will be bearing; a trumpet howls and is lost in the wind. We shall give Arthas the time to think over his sins.

Gather all children, of our lost and dark faith. Rise every shadow, worker and wraith!

Our march will continue until the world’s end – for the Black Crusade shall rise and devour Northrend.”

A Shade of Many Talents

Today’s post eyes forward to the talents we may have in WotLK; so far I have not paid too much attention to our talent builds, as they seem to change almost daily. Now that the dust seems to have settled a bit, I feel it is time to define a couple of base builds I intend on using once my shiny expansion is installed.

In order, these builds tackle leveling to 80, doing heroics and lesser raids, and then PvP. I am not looking at the end-raid builds yet, as this mainly relies on the type of gear I would be able to acquire, as well as how a Shadowpriest will – really – play in Wrath.

Leveling talent spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000325323241223110325152301000

Obtainable from level 70, the focus for this talent build is to kill a lot of mobs (at the same time) while having as little downtime as possible. Mobs are controlled with Blackouts and Fears, while having improved armor, fortitude and shielding as defensive skills. As we are not likely to face mobs more than 2 or 3 levels above us, I neglected Misery.

Also, the lack of Spirit on our gear makes Twisted Faith not very useful at these levels. There is a lot of mana generation in this build, and with Improved Spirit Tap you should rarely have to drink. This talent build is like the old Affliction Warlock playstyle: Dot, Dot, Fear, Dot, Dot, Fear, Dead.

Raid/Heroic Spec (80): http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050230313030012000000000000000000000000000000000000000320323051023010305152301300

This build starts to focus more on damage and less on crowd control; mana efficiency is still very good, and the inclusion of Improved Prayer of Spirit means we get +80 spellpower right off the bat; again, low Spirit still means we are better off skipping Twisted Faith.

If you feel you are dying a lot due to damage, or suffering from sudden lows in mana, you could consider dropping Prayer of Spirit and investing those points in Dispersion.

PvP spec (80): http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=503230310000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000305023241223112305152021301

In this build, key lies in Defense and kill power while retaining a shred of mana efficiency. Silent Resolve gives you some Dispel protection, while Psychic Horror and Silence make for good control options. Dispersion is included as an emergency option; together with Devouring Plague and VE it effectively doubles as a reset button.

Next up I will start thinking about what items I have seen pop up from the Beta, and how I’d like to see those bad puppies gemmed and enchanted.

Beta build 8962 talent changes

Hello again! Time for a little update on the talent changes implemented in the latest beta build. It seems that the replenishment bug on Vampiric Touch was addressed (although the question remains if we are happy with that) and Dispersion was buffed to make us see it as a viable choice.

Vampiric Touch

Causes 850 Shadow damage over 15 sec to your target and causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second when you deal damage from Mind Blast.
16% of base mana, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast

The Replenishment bug observed so far meant that every time we dealt damage, the effect was checked again, and 10 people got the Replenishment buff. One second later, the replenishment actually happened. However, because we have a near-99% damage uptime (we are always casting, we have DoTs, etc.) this meant no one was actually gaining mana…unless we twiddled our fingers.

My guess is that by tying the buff to an ability with a cooldown (Mind Blast) they work around this bug, and in one fell swoop control how much mana we regenerate. This is because we can only cast Mind Blast at most once every 8 seconds (5.5 seconds with 5 points in Improved Mind Blast).

Dispersion

You disperse into pure Shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% mana every 1 sec for 6 sec. Dispersion can be cast while stunned, feared or silenced. If Dispersion runs its full duration, and you are not the victim of any damage or harmful effects during its duration, your spells gain 25% damage for 1 min.
Instant, 3 min cooldown

It is once again back to 90% damage reduction for 6 seconds, but still only regenerates mana. This means it is still rather sub-par for PvP, because this means we are still effectively silenced for 6 seconds and give our opponents ample time to devise tactics to ruin our day. However, now that it can be cast while stunned, feared and silenced, it does give us a bit of breathing room when being crowd controlled.

In PvE however, it suddenly becomes a very attractive spell…Not only is it a mini-evocate, but it also gives a 1 minute duration buff for +25% damage. Yes, you could cast this before a battle begins and claim 1 minute of pwnage. Yes, you can also use this very well between pulls in a Zul’aman style chest run event.

Twin Disciplines

Increases your spell power on instant spells by 1-5%.

Err. What to say. Even with our amount of Instant-cast spells, Misery suddenly beats this talent by miles…which is a sad thing. Even so, if you have filler points you need to get deeper into Discipline, this is a good choice I reckon. See it as an “artificial scaling improvement” which may solve some issues if our scaling does not ramp up the amount we were hoping for.

Also, the mention of Mind Flay was removed, indicating that Mind Flay will no longer benefit from Twin Disciplines.

Priest racials – no more!

It seems that in the next build, Priests will no longer have racial abilities. As it stands now, we get to be fed a whole lot of additional power by this. As quoted by Koraa:

“In an upcoming build all Priest racials have been retired, except the following:

– Desperate Prayer – This is now the 11-point talent in Holy, Holy Nova is now a base ability. Cooldown also reduced to 30 seconds.
– Devouring Plague – Now a base ability. Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, mana cost greatly reduced.
– Symbol of Hope – Now a base ability. Now restores 5% base mana every 2 seconds for 8 seconds to your party. Renamed “Hymn of Hope.”

While this change does reduce the “uniqueness” of different Priests, we feel game balance as a whole will benefit.

Note: These new “racials” are not racials, they are trainable to all Priests.”

As much as I like the idea of all priests now being equal, and us getting Devouring Plague (for unclear reasons), one ability will bite the dust which I personally greatly loved: Shadowguard.

Once a Troll racial ability for Shadowpriests, and often underrated, is one I liked a lot because of its animation, its implications (hurt me and I hurt you back) as well as being one small addition to the Shadowpriest arsenal in PvP. It is the only form of reactive damage available to any Shadowpriest, and I would cry a little inside if it got lost in the shuffle. So, I ask of you, Blizzard: “Please give us Shadowpriests Shadowguard”.

WotLK release date confirmed

As posted on WoWHead, the release date for Wrath of the Lich King has been placed at 11/13/08. A mid-november release would mean, according to the people at MMO-champion, that the 3.0.2 patch would be released somewhere in October.

My apologies for rehashing news from other sites, but this is fundamental enough that I believe the news should spread asap.