3.1 WHAT

From MMOChampion:

• Dispersion (Tier 11) now clears all snare and movement impairing effects when cast, and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
• Shadowform (Tier 7) now gives your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit.
• Darkness moved from Tier 6 to Tier 1.
• Silence (Tier 5) range increased to 30 yards. (Previously was 20 yards)
• Vampiric Embrace (Tier 5) now lasts 5 mins. (Previously lasted 1 min)
• Spirit Tap (Tier 1) now increases mana regeneration while casting by 87%. (Previously 50%)
• Improved Spirit Tap (Tier 1) increases mana regeneration while casting by 17/33%. (Previously 10/20%)
• *New Talent* Improved Devouring Plague, Tier 6, 3 point talent - Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.

SW:P, DP, and VT can crit.
I am still not sure if this is a nerf or a buff. At first glance, it seems very very buffy- spell that ticks can now crit?! FAAABULOUS

But then.... The old shadow form used to read "Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch abilities deal increased percentage damage equal to your spell critical strike chance." New 3.1 SF does not have this.

Now, if Shadow Power increased the crit bonus of those three spells in addition to Mind Blast, Mind Flay and SW:D, I think we'd have a real winner.

So I'll have to see which is better, the 25%ish increase in damage from those DoTs, or those DoTs critting 25% of the time.

The change to DP is pretty cool all around I think. It's especially pretty good for PvP where we have little to no front end damage and instead have to rely on the DoTs ticking away, and usually by the time they've ticked enough to do serious damage we have ret pallys and DKs teabagging our lifeless un-shadowy corpses. Not saying that the front-end damage addition to DP is going to prevent said teabagging, but it is a very nice addition, and should be wonderful for DPS in raids as well.

I'm interested to see if that intial damage with DP will be able to crit.... probably, since DP is crittable now. If so, DP is definately back to being combined with Inner Focus. I started using Inner Focus then DP to help conserve mana back at the start of raiding in WotLK. But as my mana regen and INT increased with better gear and I started not having mana issues, I started to use inner focus with Mind Blast, just to get the crit bonus. So now if I can use the 100% mana reduction and make the crit useful on DP, that will be very very nice- and I'll have to not resort to using pots, arcane torrent, or dispersion in the middle of a fight anymore.

Those are my thoughts as of now, and they'll surely change once I come to a few more realizations about the updates- and they'll definately change once 3.1 goes live and I'm playing it.


This will probably be my new build.