This list is of gear acquired from 5-mans, heroic dungeons, crafted items, reputation rewards, and BoE world drops. A lot of where this gear comes from is a mystery to me, so this is definitely a work in progress. I know the list seems bloated, but I'm keeping all options on the table at this point. Suggestions are more than welcome!

(Inspired by Runy of Unbearably HoT's Particularly Heroic Shopping List)

Items are listed top to bottom from most desired to least (assuming hit capped).  Not hit capped?  See the bottom of the post!

This list will be maintained and updated on the Gear Plan - WotLK page.

Head

Forgotten Shadow Hood
Volkhan's Hood - Hall of Lightning (Normal)

Neck

Amulet of the Spell Flinger
Necromancer's Amulet
Dragon Prow Amulet

Shoulders

Dark Runic Mantle
Mantle of the Tribunal

Back

Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape
Shroud of Dedicated Research - Rep Reward, Kirin Tor
Subterranean Waterfall Shroud
Cape of Seething Steam - Halls of Lightning (Normal) - 29 hit rating
Dark Soldier Cape - Rep Reward, Ebon Blade - 29 hit rating

Chest

Egg Sac Robes
Drakewing Raiments
Robes of Crackling Flame - Rep Reward, Kirin Tor
Black Duskweave Robe - Tailoring BoE (410)
Arcane Flame Alter-Garb
Ornate Woolen Stola
Vestments of the Scholar - The Oculus
Ebonweave Robe - Tailoring BoE (this looks awesome!) - 68 hit rating

Wrist

Cuffs of Winged Levitation - The Oculus (Heroic)
Savage Wound Wrap
Azure Cloth Bindings - Violet Hold (Heroic)
Ancestral Sinew Wristguards - Rep Reward, The Wyrmrest Accord (Revered)
Frostsavage Bracers - Tailoring BoE

Hands

Spellweave Gloves - Tailoring BoE
Gloves of Glistening Runes - The Nexus (Heroic)
Silken Bridge Handwraps
Giant-Hair Woven Gloves
Overlook Handguards - Drek'tharon Keep (Heroic)
Ebonweave Gloves - Tailoring BoE - 51 hit rating
Gloves of Distorted Time
Sterile Flesh-Handling Gloves - Rep Reward, Ebon Blade
Gloves of the Crystal Gardener - The Nexus (Heroic)
Gloves of the Azure-Lord - The Oculus (Normal)
Muddied Crimson Gloves

Waist

Belt of Dark Mending - Rep Reward, Ebon Blade (Exalted)
Sash of the Servant - Azjol-Nerub (Heroic)

Legs

Woven Bracae Leggings - Halls of Lightning (Heroic)
Sorrowgrave's Breeches
Frostsavage Leggings - Tailoring BoE
Skirt of the Old Kingdom - Ahn'kahet (Heroic)
Breeches of the Caller - Utgarde Keep (Heroic)

Feet

Sandals of Crimson Fury - Rep Reward, The Wyrmrest Accord (Exalted)
Cleric's Linen Shoes - The Nexus (Heroic)
The Conjurer's Slippers - The Oculus (Normal)
Stone-Worn Footwraps - Azjol-Nerub (Heroic)
Footwraps of Teleportation - Violet Hold (Heroic)
Frostsavage Boots - Tailoring BoE

Rings

Band of Guile - CoT Stratholme (Heroic)
Annhylde's Ring - Utgarde Keep (Heroic)
Signet of Hopeful Light - Rep Reward, Argent Crusade (Exalted)
The Prospector's Prize - Halls of Stone (Heroic) - 51 hit rating
Ring of the Frenzied Wolvar
Ring of the Traitor King - Azjol-Nerub (Heroic)
Globule Signet
Arcane Focal Signet - Gundrak
Spectral Seal of the Prophet
Band of Enchanted Growth
Enchanted Wire Stitching - CoT Stratholme (Normal)

Weapon

War Mace of Unrequited Love - The Nexus (Heroic)
Gavel of the Brewing Storm - Rep Reward, The Wyrmrest Accord (Revered)
Staff of Wayward Principles - Utgarde Keep
Staff of Sinister Claws
Netherbreath Spellblade
Flameheart Spell Scalpel - Rep Reward, Kirin Tor (Revered) - 34 hit rating
Gavel of the Flesh Crafter
Totemic Purification Rod - Rep Reward, Kalu'ak (Revered)
Beguiling Scepter - CoT Stratholme
Sempiternal Staff - CoT Stratholme (Normal)
Frozen Scepter of Necromancy - Gundrak
Malygos' Favor - The Oculus

Off Hand

Temple Crystal Fragment
Seal of Valgarde - Utgarde Pinnacle
Tome of Salramm - CoT Stratholme (Normal)
Orb of the Eastern Kingdoms - Rep Reward, Alliance Vanguard (Revered)
Prison Manifest
Telestra's Journal - The Nexus (Heroic) - 39 hit rating

Wand

Rod of the Fallen Monarch
Wand of San'layn - 14 hit rating
Wand of Ahnkahet
Shinygem Rod - Rep Reward, The Oracles (Revered)

Pseudo-Conclusion: Hit Rating Wishlist

Stacking +hit is the best thing you can do to increase your dps. All the +spellpower and +crit in the world won't help if you're not hitting the boss.

According to shadowpriest.com, the level 80 hit cap is 289. With that in mind, here is my "try to get it for Naxx10" hit gear.

Dark Soldier Cape - Rep Reward, Ebon Blade - 29 hit rating
Ebonweave Robe - Tailoring BoE (this looks awesome!) - 68 hit rating
Ebonweave Gloves - Tailoring BoE - 51 hit rating
The Prospector's Prize - Halls of Stone (Heroic) - 51 hit rating
Flameheart Spell Scalpel - Rep Reward, Kirin Tor (Revered) - 34 hit rating
Telestra's Journal - The Nexus (Heroic) - 39 hit rating
Wand of San'layn - 14 hit rating

Total: 286 hit

This should definitely be doable.

It means they hit me less 

So that is why my up and comming Holy priest has 4 points in Blackout giving me an 8% chance to stun,  ( Level 42 Now) Yes I am leveling her as Shadow.. but as soon as she hits 70 she is going Holy.

Popular discourse is that the Stunning Talents,  found in a Priests and also My fire Mages tier 1 trees are better used for Pvp, and I agree that once you stop questing its probably a waste of points,  however, as my 3rd Squishy when you are being beat upon by monsters, causing spell pushback and damaging my pretty armor. A stun every now and then is very useful.

 and She is still wearing her Leveling pants her tuxedo Pants with 35 + spell damage and 20 Stam Thread on them. And if she ever needs to heal, she can borrow my level 19 Holy Priests + 66 healing Pants - them being non bindable and all that..

About that Holy Priest Twink - Shes sorta parked at a mail box being my 'go to' girl round stormwind. The Futilty of playing one BG and trying to heal level 10's with 200 health got rather annoying.

For comparison, my main - the rogue - was easy to level. My dps was high so mobs went down fast. Stealth allowed me to pick my fights and avoid danger. Stun abilities kept me from taking too much damage. I could usually fight one mob after another after another for a while before having to stop and bandage or eat. Once I got Vanish then I was able to escape from bad pulls or adds.

My second toon was a prot pally. I had him prot specced from the very start because I wanted to learn the abilities well to make it easy to jump into tanking at 70. Leveling him was a chore. It took forever to kill a mob, and I had to drink to get my mana back after every couple of kills. Except for the few places where I could AoE grind, it was horrible. His survivability was incredible, though. I could accidentally pull 5-6 mobs and between his high armor and his bubble I'd get away.

Now I am leveling this shadow priest, and it has been ridiculously easy so far. My dps is not as high as a rogue, but its high enough to kill mobs pretty quickly. With PW:S I can avoid damage. Psychic Scream lets me manage bad pulls and adds, and Spirit Tap returns my mana to me fairly quickly after a fight.

The difference between the rogue and shadow priest has been how long I can go without eating or drinking. Since the rogue was fighting up-close-and-personal, he inevitably took damage and had to stop and eat or bandage periodically. With the priest, Spirit Tap gives me back mana after every kill so I rarely have to stop and drink.

I was in Winterspring at level 58 and I went into the valley where the 59 elite ice giants wander around. On my rogue I never would have attempted that, because it only takes a few hits to kill a leather-wearing rogue. On the priest - EZ. I pulled, SW:P, PW:S, dps for a few seconds. When PW:S went down I feared it and dotted. Had my PW:S up again before he got back to me, and Mind Flayed him the rest of the way down. I finished the fight with 100% health and still 25% mana. Crazy.

As long as I could pull one at a time, I could take out mobs that were red to me, usually with ease.

Now that I am in Outland it has not been so easy. The mobs hit harder, and their damage has gone up faster than mine has. Vampiric Embrace isn't keeping me fully healed anymore. Time to do some research. Then again, I keep hearing how badly Shadow Priests are getting nerfed in WotLK, so maybe I should go Disc or Holy.

A nice thing about the priest class in WotLK is that they may be able to use a lot of the same gear for either shadow or holy spec. Since +damage and +healing are being replace with +spellpower, I should be able to switch spec depending on the raid needs without having to swap out a whole set of gear. We'll see.

I first tried with my Baby human priest ( now level 33) kept her under the surface for the 60 seconds, thew a heal over time on and waited. Sure enough she started convulsing as she drowned and her combat log was showing her losing 277 health 'per tick'

I had to use her desperate prayer which had no cast time to top her up, as she was losing health too quickly for the renew to be much help, and I found that each drowning tick produced almost a spell pushback so it was harder to use longer spells.

I then tried it on my Shadow Priest ( not in shadow form of course ) with Renews and Flash heal close to hand and she was losing health at a rate of 1773 per tick which when you have 8821 health self buffed, and your flash heals that take 1.44 secs to cast are only healing you for 1600 odd your going down.

I then tested it with a prayer of mending to see if it would consider the drowning as 'damage' and it did as the prayer did its healing.

And no . no Priests were harmed during this test.  Just a little fearful of water now. ( it helps if you are sitting just below the surface so when your about to run outy of health, air is close at hand.

And yes this was rather morbid,

Was dem Shadow genommen wird ist seine einzigartige Funktionalität den Raid mit Mana zu versorgen, den Schattenschaden für sich und seine Warlock Kollegen und den generellen Casterschaden zu erhöhen.

Was an Raidsupport über bleibt sind 3% Hit via Schattenwort: Schmerz, die aber auch ein Druide bietet, und Manaregeneration über Vampirberührung, die analog nun auch Survival Hunter und Retri Palas bekommen. Von der Einzigartigkeit ist also nichts geblieben, wovon ja Blizzard generell weg kommen wollte um Class-Stacking in eine Richtung zu verhindern.

Nun stellt sich die Frage, warum man überhaupt einen Shadow mitnehmen sollte, wenn doch andere Klassen den gleichen Support bieten und dabei noch mehr DPS machen können als derzeit der Shadow.

Diese Problematik hat auch Blizzard erkannt und versucht nun die o.g. Klassen auf einem DPS Niveau zu balancen. Das ganze soll sich bei einem 2500er DPS Niveau Full Epic auf Level 80 einpendeln.
Und hier kam dann schon der erste Aufschrei „Aber, aber, Hunter fahren den DPS ja jetzt schon mit Level 70 im Raid“. Ja, richtig, aber sicher kein Deep Survival Hunter. Denn hierfür müssen 48 Punkte in den Baum investiert werden um an das Manaregtalent zu kommen. Und die DPS-Starken Hunter sind derzeit Beastmaster bzw. eine Mischung aus Marksman und Survival geskillt. Hier sollte man also nicht Äpfel und Birnen vergleichen, da Survival Hunter mit Sicherheit nicht die DPS-Maschinen sind, die wir derzeit aus den Raids kennen.

Aber zurück zum Shadow. Ich habe mich auf dem PTR für eine 7 0 54 Skillung entschieden, um mal alle Shadow-Talente testen zu können.

Was fällt nun auf? Nunja, nach ein paar Tests hab ich festgestellt, dass das bessere Gear mitunter mein Holygear ist, da ich in diesem wesentlich mehr Spellpower habe als im Shadowgear. Somit hab ich nur noch 4 Teile Shadow T6 angezogen für den 10% DamageBonus auf den Mindblast und den Rest meines Holygears angelassen. Bis auf das fehlende Hit wäre es optimal, da durch massig Manareg über WK und Spirit Tap beim Leveln keine Manaprobleme auftreten.

Ferner fällt auf, das MindFlay nun critten kann, was Crit nun auch zu einem ernstzunehmenden Stat für den Priester werden lässt. Haste versinkt damit fast in der Bedeutungslosigkeit. Das optimale Gear für den Shadow hat also neben Spellpower und Hit nun noch Crit und WK. Also quasi das identische Gear, was auch ein Holy tragen würde.

Nach den ersten Tests merkt man deutlich das Blizzard an der DPS Schraube gedreht hat. 4,5k Mind Blasts schaff ich sonst nichtmal raidbufft, ein Mindflay was mit 1,5k crittet, fast 4k Todeswörter sind schon heftig.
Erfrischung, was via Vampirberührung und anschließendem MindBlast für 15 Sekunden gestartet wird, stellt 0,25% des Maxmanas wieder her, bei mir also 15x 26 Mana. Leider ist es nun komplett damageunabhängig und stellt immer den gleichen Wert an Mana wieder her.

Dispersion, der neue Shildwall des Shadows dient auch als Quasi-Evocation wenn das Mana knapp werden sollte und liegt mit 3 Minunten auf einem akzeptablen Cooldown.

Insgesamt, wenn Survival Hunter und Retri Pala auf gleicher DPS Höhe mit dem Shadow liegen, gefallen mir die Änderungen soweit ganz gut, so dass ein Shadow im Raid seinen Platz wohl sicher haben sollte.

Ich hab das ganze mal gefrapst, schaut es Euch am besten in High Quality an, damit ihr noch was erkennen könnt ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIOF2UT_UYE

Aendi over at Voodoo Ventures posed the Blog Azeroth topic of the week: Why did you choose your class, and what are the pros and cons?

Now, I'm a bit of an altoholic (don't believe me? - meet the girls!). But, it seems that I'm a LOW LEVEL altoholic.

My main, my love, my only character over 60, is my priest. That being said, I had no idea what I was really getting into when I created Isis. I was going to duo my way up to 70 with my fiancé, and thought "huh, a healer would go well with a dps, I guess." Little did I know that I'd be shadow for the rest of my career.

Larísa at The Pink Pigtail Inn did a great write up of the pros and cons of being a mage, and since she's all sorts of awesome, I thought I'd emulate her for this post.

The Pros

Versatility
If you're unsure what you want to do when you hit endgame, a priest may be for you. Spec holy to be an insanely wonderful healer in raids. Go shadow if you decide you want to pew pew and melt faces. Spec discipline if you want to annoy the crap out of people in pvp who can't seem to kill you.

People want us around
Whether for awesome healing or to use us shadow types as a mana battery, raiders will want you in their raid!

Unique buff
No one else can raise health like we can with Power Word: Fortitude.

Shadowform
If you go shadow, no one will be able to see your clown gear when you first enter Outlands!

We can heal ourselves
This is a "well, duh?" for holy priests, but shadow priests - remember your heal buttons! This can speed up your leveling immensely because you're not stopping every two mobs to eat. When you get Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace, you'll rarely need to stop to eat or drink.

Wipe recovery
With Resurrection, we can get things moving quickly if there's a wipe. Very useful when raiding, or when leveling with friends.

The Cons

The Squishy Factor
Wearing only cloth armor, you'll likely have low health and low armor - you're squishy! If you get too many mobs on you, or a hard hitter, expect that you'll have a problem. Low level priests are hard to solo, and many priests are left to rot before ever hitting level 20. You're going to die, so get used to running for your corpse.

Mana Management
Stock up on water before you leave town to quest - you'll need it, especially in early levels! While you can heal yourself up, you'll be relying on spirit and water to keep your mana full.

You'll be asked to heal
Over and over and over when leveling. Even if you're shadow spec'd. The good thing is - you can! Even as shadow spec, you can heal regular instances well into your 60s.

You'll be blamed
If you're the healer, expect to be blamed for wipes that aren't your fault. Especially in PuGs, blame for a wipe is usually placed squarely on either the tank or the healer.

So you still want to be a priest?

Good choice! Being a priest is extremely rewarding. People love having you around, and your versatility means you bring a lot of potential to the end game. In addition, priests are easy to play, but very difficult to master, so when you really nail something, it brings a great sense of accomplishment.

Now go roll your priest!

Some factoids about the Buff

• The buff is called Dark Energy.
• If you apply Shadow Word: Pain when Dark Energy is active, and refresh your SW:P using Mind Flay instead of manually reapplying it, your SW:P ticks will be boosted by Dark Energy the entire fight.
• If you absorb damage (by using PW:S for example) you will not gain the Dark Energy buff

Blizzard got it Right

Merlot of Misery thinks that Blizzard has dispersion all wrong. I disagree.

She notes:

Let's be absolutely clear what this means — dispersion is now an either/or spell. You can either use it to reduce incoming damage or to buff spell damage. You cannot have both.

And that's precisely why I like it. This is a difficult talent to use to it's fullest. Shadow priests are one of those classes that are easy to play, but very difficult to master. Ask anyone who has learned to precisely clip their Mind Flay ticks.

You know why I don't have a high end raiding warlock right now? Because I would be so bored with the one-button Shadowbolt spam style of play.

I like to make snap decisions and think on my feet. It's probably why the shadow priest spell priority system is so attractive to me. Instead of a standard rotation (like Mind Blast, 2x Mind Flay, Mind Blast, etc.), I'm re-evaluating my DoTs and cooldowns every single time I cast. Every time I cast Mind Blast, it's because it is the best possible choice for me at this very moment, not because it's time to hit button number 5 in my rotation.

Now, I'm looking at this from a raiding perspective because, well, that's what I do.

With the new Dispersion, I have choices. I can tailor my use of the spell to the situation.

• Will my tanks be able to get threat quickly? I'll cast Dispersion 6 seconds before the pull and melt faces from the outset, and have my SW:P ticking harder the entire fight.
• Do I need to do burst damage later in the fight (think Shade of Akama)? I'll save Dispersion for then.
• Is this a fight where there will be unpredictable heavy raid damage? Use Dispersion to save your butt and "OMG, Get out of the fire!"
• Am I making a rare trip to the battlegrounds? I can save Dispersion to get away from those damn melee types.

Bravo, Blizz, for making this a game where I have to think. THAT is why I like Dispersion, and why that shiny icon with the purple swirls will have a permanent place on my bar.

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a wish upon a star
Falling from the ceilings
Like a steady sparkling rain
And I would have liked to have used you
When I get to Northrend
Your channel burned out long before
Your legend ever will

So yeah. The announced removal of star shards has cut me.
I have resorted to Elton John for comfort. It was either him or Hamlet, but Horatio wasn't much interested in hearing my lament.

Well here are mine... but none of them seem in anyway remotely romantic, and they are mainly Shadow Priest specific

1. Priests can be Naughty or Nice ( Shadow & Holy)
2. We have a Very Special Touch ( Vampiric Touch : benfits the whole party) ..
3. We have a very special Embrace ( Vampiric Embrace: You will never want to let go)
4. We can do single Buffs or group ones too
5. We can get in our lovers Head ( Mindcontrol)
6. We look sexy in black. All the time. ( Shadow form: Hides bumps and flaws)
7. We always bring our own protection ( Power word Shield.)
8. We are not easily scared away ( Fear ward)
9. We can cure all diseases
10. We can dispell all deceptions and insecurities allowing the real you to shine ( dispell Magic)
11. We burn with Passion ( Inner fire)
12. If you suffer the " Little death" we can Resurrect you and make you do it again

I wrote a post some time back about what each class would be like to Date, it covers more the 'personalities and preferences' I've deduced from each class which is here if your interested. Twas a lot of fun to write.
Dating on Wow by Class

Anyways onwards !. So today I decided to not play WotLK beta and went on normal WoW. Right.. normal WoW? whats up with that, anyways, apperntly there was a patch today that went to PTR. It was patch 3.0.2 and I went and looked into it to see what kind of changes were made before WotLK is released. I grazed through some of the different class changes until I hit Priests. I also have a level 70 Shadow Priest along with my Shaman. Boy, some of the changes for priests were just eyebrow raising. Kinda like The Rock, you know that wreslter who is now a movie actor...ok maybe its just me who what I'm talking about.

One of the changes that caught my eye was the Shadowform change, we have no 30% threat reduction when in Shadowform! woot! Now I won't pull stuff off tanks who can't tank when I start my rotation. By no means am I saying that I am leet uber shadow priest. This is just my opinion. Another change that caught my eye was the removal of the GCD of Silence. Now I can cast something and silence at the same time! I think...No more seeing the little dark shadow going clockwise and hearing the phrase, "I can't use that yet" or something along those lines. (Yeah I don't remember what they say, sue me)

I think the most useless, well to me anyways change was the change to Lightwell. Ok really, who uses that? Maybe it has its uses but I really haven't found a use for it nor have I heard one. Maybe the occsaionaly use for healing. Sometimes I see it dropped during AV for some odd reason and its always fun to see. The change was this

"Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5."

Maybe now it has more uses then to light up a dark area of the map during a raid, but I still don't see it too viable for anything else. But hey, feel free to disagree and tell me its real use! Besides lighting a room.

Another change/add for priests that caught my eye were these 2 adds.

"Enlightenment: Increases your total Stamina, Spirit and Spell haste by 1/2/3/4/5%."

"New Talent: Twin Faiths (Discipline) - Increases your damage and healing by 1/2/3/4/5%."

Since the new thing in the sunwell patch is spell haste, I think this revamp of the talent will benefit and mesh in well with a priest. This talent used to be deep into the discipline tree but now it has been moved to   to the middle of the discipline talent tree. Sadly this makes me want to change to a disc priest, but if I do that I will not have my awsome shadowform. Who doesn't love to press the shadowform button and see your priest change to a figure of darkness?! Its like when spiderman turns into black spiderman, but less crazy and much more epic! The second change is a new talent that Blizzard added that also resides in the discipline tree. Its Twin Faiths. I think this will greatly benefit a priest with the spell and healing department. Its something that I would love to have as a disc priest. Wait..how come every cool thing seems to be for the disc priest, Blizzard must not like the specs I play, first shaman, now priest? Come on!

Ok ok I know, I'm wrong about this because in WotLK there are some awsome changes for priests. Few adds that come to mind, is Improved Fade, Improved Shadowform, and Dispersion. Thoses talents seem awsome for a shadow priest.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll give the WotLK priest a try and I'll see how much I like it or hate it. Then again just changing into shadowform will make any change good or bad oboslete. Ok I'm just joking but... come on spiderman?! It would be like...

"Shadowpriest, Shadowpriest, does whatever a discipline priest can, throws a dot, and a couple more, will facepwn you and some more, look out!, here comes the shadowpriest in shadowform!!!"

Anyways...lack of sleep really does make you do stupid stuff. Please don't hold it against me :p

- Iternal

(Side note: See Sydera's post over at World of Matticus on How Achievements may rock WoW's social world.)

- Shadow Resilience re-designed. Now called Mind Melt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast spells by 2/4%.
- Shadow Power: Now 20/40/60/80/100% critical strike damage bonus, also works with Mind Flay.
- Improved Shadowform - The chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you Fade is now restored.
- Psychic Horror - Redesigned. Now reduces all damage done by targets when Psychic Scream ends by 15/30%. Lasts 6 sec.
- Dispersion - 90% damage reduction is restored.
- Misery - Now has 5/10/15% bonus spell power to Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast.

Also:

Discipline - About damage mitigation, utility and single target HPS. It's intended to be a better tank healer.

Holy - Good single target healer, but more healing utility. Intended to be the AOE healer, or the healer than can react to any situation. Only spec of a class that has an on demand HoT, AOE, Lightwell which players can click to heal themselves, a flash heal, a large greater heal.

Shadow - Obviously a single target sustained DPS, with Mind Sear now should be one of the strongest AOE classes.

So, taken overall, in PvE, I think Shadow Priests are still a bit down from where they were two days ago, but at least it's not the huge kick in the guts this morning was. We'll see how shadow priests work with spirit now.

Blizz tactic: Knock us down so hard we'll be happy with what we get.

EDIT

ShadowXXX from shadowpriest.com has created a mock up of what the priest talent trees will look like after the above promised changes.

Go ahead - try it out!

The pendulum has certainly swung the other way for shadow priests. Once again, some people are up in arms, and some, like myself, are hopeful that Blizz saw us as a bit OP, and needed to knock us down a bit before they could selectively build us up.

Here are the latest changes from mmo-champion:

Dispersion now reduces all damage taken by 60% (down from 90%) and doesn't regenerate health anymore.

Twisted Faith now increases your spell power on all spells (Old - only shadow spells) by 2/4/6/8/10% (down from 6/12/18/24/30%)

Improved Shadowform doesn't give a chance to remove all movement impairing effects when Fade is used anymore.

Misery doesn't increase the damage of your Mind Blast / Mind Flay / Mind Sear spells anymore.

Shadow Resilience now Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by all spells by 2/4%. (Old - Reduces physical damage taken by 2/4%.)

Improved Fade renamed to Veiled Shadows. Now Decreases the cooldown of your Fade ability by 6 sec, and reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend ability by 2 minutes.

Improved Spirit Tap now let your mana regenerate at a 10/20% (down from 25/50%) rate while casting.

Some of this looks like PvP stuff to me, so frankly, I don't care. I wouldn't have taken Dispersion as anything more than a gimmick for PvE anyway. Shadow Resilience is a PvP talent and they removed the movement impairing side of Improved Shadowform. Whatever, that doesn't really matter to me.

The Twisted Faith nerf makes me a bit sad. We only cast shadow spells, anyway. Perhaps Blizz expects that shadow priests could be that backseat healer in a jam? With the change from +spell damage or +healing to +spellpower, it wouldn't be the gear and talents preventing a spriest from healing, just the talents.

The Improved Spirit Tap thing might not be so bad. Keep in mind that the only talent we have right now that lets us regen mana while casting is Meditation in the Disc. tree. Even with the nerf, every time we critically strike with Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death, our spirit is increased by 5/10% and we will be able to regen 10/20% while casting. Maybe, as Merlot at Misery mentioned, there's too much spirit on the gear. Maybe it's a different issue: perhaps there is too much spell crit on the gear to allow us to continually proc that Improved Spirit Tap as it was. They are trying to homogenize caster gear.

The Misery change... sucks. That one just plain sucks.

Right! Optimism. Maybe Blizz needed to take us down before they could build us back up, and balance all classes. Here's hoping.

This optimism thing is hard. :( At least we get a new Mind Flay graphic? :/

This last notion is absolutely untrue, and I point to the Warhammer Online trailer as proof – Pretty people wearing lots of clothes are good, ugly creatures or those wearing not much clothing are evil. See? It's easy. And so true, too.

The Stereotype: An avatar of some dark power, who revels in the malefic puissance he receives. Usually younger than your stereotypical Holy Priest, the Shadow priest has at some point decided that service and sacrifice are for chumps, and that the highest cause should be oneself. (Some better read players may well work a bit of Anton LaVey to the mix.) They're patient in a leering, I-can-destroy-you-whenever-I-please kind of way, and while they may be just as wise as a holy priest, their wisdom runs less to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and more to "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!". Essentially, an inversion of holiness, a mix between Nietszche and Darth Vader in cloth armor.

Alternatives: The Judge (Shadow Version): A true believer in a very good deity (such as Elune or the Holy Light), the Judge knows that the works of god must be kept righteous, and that sometimes the only creature who can find the rats in the wheat-field is a snake. They have devoted themselves to the Shadow not for themselves, but to find those who lurk in them. While you visit your god's wrath upon those unbelievers who would threaten it, your true targets are not outsiders but the corrupt and heretical; those foul and selfish priests who would make their religion serve themselves rather than others. The city priest who drains his parish's wallets with urgent prayers for tithings and then helps himself to the collection tray, or the town minister who receives the most vulnerable people in his care and preys upon them for his own pleasure; these are the ones who will meet you once on a moonless night. Part Angel of Death, part CIB detective; you answer not to the church but to your god alone. After all, whom among the church is invulnerable to corruption? You can answer to none of them. All must be accountable to god. And to you. (Definitely fits the Alliance races better, particular the Night Elves, Dwarves and Humans. This concept requires a church with a decent hierarchy to investigate, and the Horde races have a much different model of priesthood.)

The Exile: You didn't leave the church. The church left you. Once upon a time, you were holy, and true. You believed. But then something happened, a trauma that left you scarred and realised the church had nothing to offer you. Either you never talk about what trauma it was, or else you talk about it endlessly and bitterly. But once you left, you bitterly embraced its opposite. After all, you reasoned. A guy's gotta survive. You can't rely on anyone else. This would have made a good story. It would have. But there's one fly in the ointment: You still believe. Deep down, you know you've gone wrong, you know you've taken that wrong path. By day you drink and curse (in more ways than one), but you cry yourself to sleep at night begging for forgiveness. You do not revel in your dark power. It is your cross to bear. Maybe, somehow, you'll find a way to earn redemption. (Conveniently, the game features a way to mechanically represent that redemption: Respecs. Race wise, the alliance races all make sense for it, but the Blood Elves en masse could easily fit this archetype; they have rather a massive trauma in their past to face down, after all!)

The Dark Counsellor: Quiet. Ever, ever quiet. That's the word used so many times to describe you. But you're a loyal part of the group, you say your prayers and wear white robes. You are trusted as wise, and many seek your "holy" advice. This suits you tremendously. Much like your fellow shadow priests, you envisage a future guided by darkness and destruction, you see yourself as an avatar of the shadow. But, unlike your foolish brethren, you know the odds. You've worked out that on your own, you cannot triumph through force and shadowy might. But a poisoned word here, and a warrior defends, because you should not judge, a man who he should be destroying. A sinister whisper there, and the mage is isolated within her research, her capacity for good trapped in an Ivory Tower. You distribute good intentions to all around you, and let them pave the road themselves. (This is an excellent choice for a Troll; desperately trying to preserve the ways of voodoo with trickery and deceit in the orcish halls of leadership. Pretty much any race, however, could make it work. The idea of a corrupt counsellor is as old as time itself.)

Misery (Tier 8 ) changed to: Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch spells also increase the chance for harmful spells to hit by 1/2/3%, and increases the damage of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by an amount equal to 5/10/15% of your spell power.

It seems that Blizz just might not hate shadow priests after all. The hit chance still confuses - why would anyone be raiding under the hit cap, assuming a shadow priest or boomkin will be there? But the extra damage on our other spells is bea-U-tiful!

But for priests? A human priest is probably what most of us first think of when we hear the term "priest", a follower of the Holy Light, with a lot of Catholic overtones. They're not too far from the draenei, either, although there will be some differences. Now, what about a dwarven priest? Most of them these days will be worshiping the Titans, and there's going to be a notably different moral code here. A night elven priest (or more likely, priestess,) of Elune is going to be very different from all of them; consider that a priestess of Elune might consider pacifism to be a moral ideal to aspire to, in line with the goddess's teachings. But few priestess's of the Holy Light would ever agree, tenacity being one of their holy virtues.

And once we cross the faction divide, it now gets really different. A troll priest is going to be a hougan of voodoo, the undead priest will be completely different as probably a follower of the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow, and the blood elf... is...

I don't even have a clue what warped kind of religion a Blood Elf priest would teach.

Similarly and even more profoundly, the talent spec of a priest really matters for role-play. Again, an arms warrior is going to role-play around hitting stuff, a fury warrior around hitting stuff while yelling, and a protection warrior around hitting stuff with his shield. But a Holy priest is going to be focused on watching over his flock, being a pastor and preacher. But you just know a Shadow priest won't be, and instead is going to be maybe a prophet of doom. And who knows what a discipline priest is, exactly?

As such, we're going to be doing three different posts for Do It Different this week. Do It Different: Holy Priest and Do It Different: Shadow Priest respectively will show you how to make priests of that kind in ways that are familiar yet different, while (with apologies to Nike,) Just Do It: DIscipline Priests will try to make a case for how the Discipline priest is different yet again to both of them. And, out of acknowledgement that a Holy priest does not mean a good priest, nor a Shadow priest mean an evil one, we're going to try and include one good, one evil, and one neutral(ish) archetype for each.

We hope you enjoy.

Shocking, but true - the blues have spoken!

Koraa became shadow priests' new best friend after writing:

We'll be increasing Mind Flay's coefficient (base) by roughly 30% to start, and allow Mind Flay to crit. We may also do some tuneups to the Shadow tree as well, but as other players have mentioned the tree is really not the problem, just the base spells not scaling.

GASP!

It seems that Blizzard got the message loud and clear that the shadow priest community was ready to burn an effigy of the developers if some concerns weren't addressed. This one change won't fix everything, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. The promise of reviewing our Shadow Tree as well is promising, and I have more and more hope that my precious Isisxotic will remain shadow in Wrath.

Some people are up in arms about the death of unique classes, while others are welcoming the changes with open arms.

I'm in the middle.

I'm by no means a die hard theorycrafter, but I have been following the beta builds to see what's coming up for shadow priests. Prior to this post, I was ready to build up my healing set and respec to Holy when Wrath hit (blasphemy!). Shadow priests just weren't going to be viable in raids.

Now, we're not quite viable yet, but there's HOPE!

Why shadowpriests don't currently wtfpwn damage meters:

• Vampiric Touch - If we did as much dps as a lock or a mage, our party would never run out of mana
• Misery - who needs increased shadow priest damage when all your casters can do 5% more?
• Shadow Weaving - We don't do more dps - thanks to us, the locks do!

And I'm okay with that. Shadow priests do less dps because we bring MASSIVE utility. Check.

The Utility Nerf

Let's look at what our friendly neighborhood Blizz rep posted. Here are the bits I'm interested in:

In addition to this change, we also needed to address the "mana battery" roles in a raid. The mana regeneration effect they grant is no longer limited to their own party, and it no longer depends on the amount of damage they deal. Each time they trigger the mana regeneration effect, 10 people in their raid group will receive a buff which causes them to regenerate 0.5% of their maximum mana each second. This buff, Replenishment, will be given preferentially to raid members with the lowest mana, but will re-evaluate which raid members receive it each time it is fired. Replenishment is provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins.

And the spell changes:

Misery: Causes spells cast at the target to have +3% spell hit.
Shadow Weaving: Buffs only self.
Vampiric Touch: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on dealing damage.

Misery

Seriously? Good for shadow priests, but it doesn't bring much raid utility. If you're raiding with me under the hit cap, I'll hurt you.

Shadow Weaving

Bye bye, shadow priest/warlock synergy! Oh, and did I mention that Improved Shadow Bolt now only affects the warlock? No more ISB love for me :(

Vampiric Touch

How I love thee, let me count the ways! Now, shadow priests won't be the only mana batteries. Survival Hunters and Ret Pallies will be joining us on the caster "wtb" list. But our mana regen will affect ten people with the lowest mana. And here's the important part - mana return is not tied to our damage.

There's a lot of theorycrafting going on over at shadowpriest.com, mostly about how exactly the Replenishment buff will work. There's a lot of unanswered questions - does it stack with the other mana batteries? What's the duration? How is it reapplied? Are Shadow Priests, Ret Pallies, and Survival Hunters going to be equal in the mana battery capabilities?

Why It (Could Be) a Good Thing

We've lost a chunk of our utility. And the general balancing of classes is based off damage + utility, right? So it follows that (/hope) shadow priest damage will be addressed. We're no longer tied to low damage because we'd give back too much mana, or because we give so much increased spell damage to our locks and other casters. Now shadow priest spells can be adjusted and we can scale properly.

And forget about shadow priests - spreading the buffs and debuffs around is just plain good for the game.

How many times have raid leaders had to take along the noob shadow priest (>.>) because they needed the mana return? How many other raiders have had to sit on the sidelines because they can't compete for a raid spot against a class who brings a specific buff needed for an encounter?

Oh, I know the hardcore guilds will still min/max, and they'll find the least number of hybrids needed to cover the buffs and debuffs, and stack the rest of the raid with pure dps.

But for the rest of the WoW raiders? Ya know, 75% of the community? (did you know 82% of statistics are made up on the spot?) This is a good thing. Raid leaders can spend their time learning the new exciting encounters instead of figuring out exactly which class/spec you need, and exactly how to build the perfect group synergies. When Wrath hits, and guilds can progress through the entire game running only 10 man raids, the ability to pick up a buff or debuff from multiple classes will a blessing.

This opens the door to a whole new raiding world. And I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Ten minutes after I had the blog up and running Blizzard decided to bring Bloodhoof down for half an hour to fix a bug.  I figured this was God's way of telling me I should take a few minutes to talk about my latest character development exercise.

When I came to Bloodhoof, I wasn't sure if I was going to transfer characters from Gnomeregan or not.  At the moment it looks like I may transfer a few soon, but in the meantime I needed something to do so I tried to decide which class I had the least experience in.  The answer was obviously:  priest.

I've done healers before.  Hell, I got Nenianae to 70.  I have other healer characters that may be "off-spec" but I've only done a priest once -- and it didn't go too well.

So I made a dwarf priest and named him Wetnap.  I openly admit I stole the name from a forum post on funny names.  As the originator of the name pointed out, a wetnap is "the cleanest and the dirtiest of cloth".  I loved it, so I stole it.

I've been grinding him for the last couple of days and already have him on the verge of hitting Level 19.

There seems to be a real shortage of priests (except maybe shadow priests) on just about every server I've been on.  Why do you suppose that is?  Aside from the "healing is boring" argument (which I totally don't agree with) priests are quite obviously the most "squishy" of their healing brethren.  So how do you level with a class that "the experts" agree is so difficult to solo?  I have a few tips.

• Get a wand.  Even if you hate wands, get one to start.  If you're an enchanter as well you can make wands for cheap, cheap, cheap.  My usual mob-killing soloing strategy is Smite, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain (sometimes not in that order), then Power Word: Shield and then wand them to death.  The time you spend "wanding" them gives your mana a chance to recover.
• Get Spirit Tap -- even if you're not going to go Shadow.  It's at the top of the Shadow talent tree and it's a godsent for soloing.  When you finally get all five points into it, it will boost your spirit by 100% every time you kill a mob that yields experience.  Priests (in my opinion) should have spirit to begin with, so if you have a good amount of it, the Spirit Tap boost will help you immensely to regenerate your health and mana between fights.
• Learn ALL your skills.  It may sound obvious, but it pains me when I see mages who don't know how to summon mana gems, or druids who don't realize they can cure poison.  The priest especially has a number of "countermeasure" skills that a lot of players overlook.  Keep Psychic Scream, Power Word: Shield, and Fade (which all have pretty fast cooldowns) close-by.  Yes, I said Fade.  Fade can save your buttocks when the tank loses agro.  Put it on a button you can reach.  The fewer times you die, the faster you level.

So far the priest experience has been very enjoyable for me.  I'll keep you posted!

So as a breakdown from what we know so far about Spriests in Wrath-

-We now have AoE, although it is way overpriced in mana

-Our dps is supposed to be increased to compete with mage and warlock classes through talents like Pain and Suffering and Twisted Faith

-Our ability to regen mana for ourselves is no longer reliant on VT. Instead we have Improve Spirit Tap and the ability to convert Spirit to spellpower, making stacking Spirit applicable again.

-VT was nerfed to 2.5% from 5% but could be adapted to be a raid wide buff before Wrath is released.

-We were given some great PvP abilities like Dispersion, Imp Shadow Form, and Psychic Horror.

Let’s not forget we have months of the beta still to come for things to change for better or worse. The important thing is that I believe Blizzard is moving in the right direction with our class and spec, although they don’t have it all down yet.

Best Raiding Gear- Shadowpriest.com

DPS Spreadsheet- Shadowpriest.com

Haste for Dummies- Shadowpriest.com

Shadow Basics- Dwarfpriest.com

Tips and Tricks- Dwarfpriest.com

More to add later, this is a good start though. Happy reading.

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8770))
Raid-Wide Vampiric Touch
We're still in talks about how to consolidate buffs/debuffs between classes. Making VT raidwide is a possibility, but yes it would mean the value of multiple Shadow Priests in a raid is somewhat diminished. In a lot of ways we're okay with that (you shouldn't *have* to have multiple specs of one class in a raid), but there are a lot of other side effects we're not sure about right now. (Source)

Vampiric Touch nerf to 2.5%
To be honest, 2.5% still might be too high. In our tests, Shadow Priests were still providing around the same amount of mana to their party (if not more) than before because of their increased damage output. Not to mention the Priest wasn't going out of mana at all because of Spirit/Improved Spirit Tap. (Source)

I would like to express today the importance of research and theory crafting before making decisions in near end game content. As I have been climbing higher and higher in game content I've noticed that my decisions cost me more and more in game. Sometimes this has been good - increased dmg, survivability, better PvP, yada, yada, yada. This post is not about one of those positive times.

So while running Kara for badges on Tuesday night I received a piece of loot - this is unusual since I had been running Kara with the assumption that I don't need anything out of Kara. (Check out my armory to the side if you're curious) What loot you ask? Trial Fire Trousers off of the witch bitch in the oz opera event. After receiving them I thought to myself "hmmm3 gem slots, and +49 dmg will get me more spell dmg! than my spell strike legs!"

At this point the shadow gods should have dropped an anvil on my head with Spell Hit inscribed across the front.

No such anvil dropped.

Luckily I logged off that night before doing anything rash.

Unluckily I logged on the next day with 31 badges, 210g, and an acute case of stupidity. I gemmed my pants....all three slots with Runed Crimson Spinel....only to realize: "Wait! Now I have to change my talents to make up for the loss of 22 spell hit..." I wanted to mind control children off the edge of Thunder Bluff.

There is only one other possible solution I can think of at this point to maybe remedy the situation - haste. Once your reach 1400 raid buffed dmg 1 haste becomes equal to 1 dmg and recently in Hyjal I have been sitting around 1500 buffed raid dmg. SO I am going to re-gem my new pants with Haste and spell damage gems - then fix my tree to include more spell hit. I'm thinking with the change at least I'll get the socket bonus +5 spel damage then the added haste.

But now as I am looking more at it  this actually may continue to be an ok upgrade without regemming. After all my old pants had 2 +12s and 1 +9 runed gems. Thats one increase - but the thing that I am really noticing now is the difference in stamina and intellect - 30 more stamina and 32 more intellect.....thats a decent amount of survivability. Plus the extra life wil help alot with the AoE dmg and random target dmg I've been having an issue with in T6.

So tonight I will test the new trousers.

God I wish I had a personal theorycrafting assistant....

Twisted Faith- Increases your shadow spell power by 6/12/18/24/30% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 1/2/3/4/5% for each of your Shadow damage over time effects on the target.

Lets break down this talent into its two parts.

The first part states: Increases spell power by 6/12/18/24/30% of your total spirit. Up to this point spirit has been very important to holy and disc priests but not as much to shadow priests. In the Burning Crusade, the addition of mp5 made stacking spirit for mana regen pretty useless. Now spriests are going to have to go back to the old ways, stacking spirit not only for regen but also for increasing spell damage. If you combine this with the regen from Improved Spirit Tap, which is based off spirit, then you have spirit standing right behind spell power as the stat spriests will be building around in Wrath.

The second part of this talent states: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast by 1/2/3/4/5% for each of your shadow over time effects on the target. This is pretty self explanatory. Keeping up your dots at all times just became even more important than before. Mind Blast is also going to be more important in the priority list now that it and Mind Flay are amplified by dot stacking.

The effects of this talent on the overall game play of a spriest wont blow anyones socks off. However, I can see this as being a major contributer to my theory that shadow priests are looking at a much better dps standing in Wrath. Its seems that Blizzard is working on a synergy between mana regen talents based off damage done and damage done being amplified by mana regen stats. I personally am really excited about this talent and its applications towards PVE.