WUT

So, 3.3 is here.
The moment of truth.










...wut?
Ok okay, that was a wipe attempt.
Lets look at the meter from when we actually downed the boss.










WUT.

Well, to be fair, this was Lady Deathwhisper or whatever her name is, and melee wasn't consistantly DPSing like us casters were, cause they were off doing their things on the side of the room. Even still, I beat all the mages. I BEAT ALL THE MAGES.

SHADOW PRIEST BEAT MAGE IN DPS.

*girly squee*

I didn't have to scroll down in Recount to just above the tanks to see what my DPS was. GOD that lack of needing to scroll is such a nice feeling.

oh hay thar blog

Yeah, I have lacked in updating.

3.3 is practically here, and that means both shadow priest buffs, and me creaming myself over said buffs.

So here's the poop on our buffs. The list looks short, but the effects will be HUGE.

Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.

In the long run, this probably won't cause a whole lot more damage in PvE. ImpDP usually ends up being only like 3% of my total damage in a raid boss fight. This seems more like a PvP buff. Shadowpriests are tricky in PvP because our dots can get dispelled and blah blah you know this already. With imp DP doing more frontload damage, it's more non-dispellable, non-periodic damage we can do to an enemy player.
I also see this being a lot more helpful for quick burns- such as switching to an overcharged add on Emalon in VoA, or taking down those floaty frosty orbs on Anub'arak in ToC.

Mind Flay: The range of this ability has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
This means you don't have to use "Glyph of OH GOD I HAVE TO GET CLOSER TO THE BOSS THAN ALL OTHER CASTERS OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME MR. BOSS" So what happens to that glyph? I'll cover that a bit further on in this post. (God I wish I had this back in the BC days. I died so many times on Prince, trying to tip-toe close enough to mind flay)

Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.

Here is where you victory. HASTE. DOESN'T. SUCK. ANYMORE! This has been one of the many scaling problems that really made us the bottom of the DPS barrel. This is what will make us competitive DPS again. One of the only issues that I can see with this is that VT and DP will need to be cast more often. (But there's a glyph change that could help with that. More in the glyph section below.)

Vampiric Embrace: This talent now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff and only generates healing for single-target shadow damage spells.

While not absolutely necessary in my eyes, this is very nice addition. I can see it being a bit frustrating in PvP-- after dying, I already start running after being spirit rezzed, cast Fort, spirit, inner fire while running, mount up ASAP, and shift into shadow form while riding off. Adding VE to the list of buffs that I should cast will be annoying at most. But I'm sure I'll like it a lot more once I can just dot up every alliance in sight and watch the ticks heal me up.
In PvE this will be, simply put, awesome. I'm a selfish bastard most of the time. I don't put up VE unless I need to move and all my insta-casts are on CD or the DoT is already on the boss. It's just a GCD that could be better spent by an offensive spell. And it just plain ol' throws off my rotation. Everything, for me right now, just clicks into place. Having to put VE in the mix, it's obnoxious. So having it as a buff that I put on myself before the fight even begins? No more selfish bastard Tsululu.


Okay, now for glyphs:

Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph now increases the damage done by Mind Flay by 10% when the target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.


This used to just extend the range of Mind Flay. (AKA "Glyph of OH GOD I HAVE TO GET CLOSER TO THE BOSS THAN ALL OTHER CASTERS OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME MR. BOSS") With the change to base Mind Flay, there's no reason for this glyph to do that anymore.
But this glyph now does what Glyph of SW:P used to do. So what's that glyph up to in 3.3?

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain: The periodic damage ticks of Shadow Word: Pain now restore 1% of the priest's base mana with this glyph.

MANA! Not that spriests really EVER have mana problems. Between our replenishment, imp spirit tap, shadow fiend and dispersion (I complain about it, but it really is nice to have and I'd miss it if they took it away. Doesn't mean that it should be the 51 point talent though :p ) we've got a lot of moves to help with mana. Not to mention mind flay being one of the most mana efficient attacks in the game.
But with the changes to haste in relation to VT and DP, we'll be casting those spells a lot more than we used to. And DP is a pretty mana intensive spell (25% of base mana!)
I am hoping that this change to SW:P will be able to keep up with our increased mana usage.

Glyph of Shadow: While in Shadowform, this glyph causes non-periodic spell critical strikes to increase spell power by 30%, up from 10%, of the priest's total spirit for 10 seconds.

This glyph is pretty much the same, just even more useful than before. Not much to say, just 20% more spellpower from spirit than we used to get.


Overall, I'm really excited for these changes. I have been bitching for months. I have been getting wait listed for raids for months. And I have been patient, and I have been devoted to my class and spec. I will not play a mage for easy 8k dps. I will not respec and heal your asses. I am staying a shadow priest, and I will stick to it through the nerfs and buffs, because I freaking love playing it. With 3.3, I will STILL be playing what I love, and I hope that all my hard work and dedication to the class and my character will FINALLY be evident in the DPS charts.

GC sez...

On a very nicely worded post addressing the issues of Shadow in PvE, GC responded with the following:
"I am not able to comment on the questions proposed in your thread at this time, but I did want to address one point. "

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19595102428&sid=1&pageNo=7

The optimist in me says "OOH this means there are changes for 3.3 planned and they don't want to reveal them yet!"

But the pessimist in me says "This means they ain't doin SHIT for us, and they don't wanna say anything to prevent getting the backlash from it."

Shadow Priest DPS too low

A thread on the forums that's hitting a bit close to home:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18601081821&sid=1

Particularly this post... Everything he says is EXACTLY where I am, and how I feel:
I never thought I'd be adding my voice to a laundry list of complaints about shadow priests... for a long time, my mantra was "I'm a hybrid class, I offer good raid utility, so I don't have to be at the top of the charts..." but for the last several months, I've watched my DPS plummet, relative to the other members of my guild. Comparatively speaking, my dps is getting worse and worse as my gear gets better and better, and where in Naxx I was sitting comfortably on the dps meters, just below the mages and rogues and more or less even with the other hybrids, I now find myself floundering on the charts, and every time I click on a WWS link, I pray that I did more dps than the tanks (because sometimes I don't).

I don't know how to explain it. I didn't suddenly forget how to play a spriest when Ulduar came out--I work hard to keep my dots ticking and Mind Blast on cooldown at all times, and I know my gear is gemmed and enchanted correctly for the most part (I have an orange gem in my pants that I need to switch for a red, and yes, there are three purple gems when I only need two, but in all three cases the socket bonus is spellpower).

I realize that the fights are more difficult than Lolnaxx, and some of the encounters are not caster friendly, and it also doesn't help that, particularly in our ten-man runs, I am often the only caster dps, which means I am missing out on some raid buffs, but this alone doesn't account for the rapid decline in comparative dps I've been experiencing.

Obviously, we are scaling very poorly with gear at the moment. Part of this is the large amount of haste on everything, since haste has always been more questionable for us than for any other class. As another poster mentioned, having haste translate some way into our dots would be a nice boost and a good place to start.

Spirit is another issue that needs to be looked at. We have to spend five talent points in Twisted Faith to get a measly 10% of our spirit as spellpower, while Holy priests get 25% of their spirit as spellpower for the same investment. At the very least, we need Twisted Faith to be brought up to 25%--I've always thought of speccing Shadow as "going to the Dark Side" for a priest, and the draw of the Dark Side is supposed to be more power, not less :-D At this point, even a 50% spirit to spellpower conversion would not be unreasonable--hell, even warlocks get 30% of spirit as spellpower, and they don't even have to spend any talent points to get it.

Oh, and the "raid utility" argument just doesn't hold water anymore either. There's always a retribution paladin or a survival hunter to provide Replenishment, and Balance druids bring not only 3% hit, but also 3% haste, 5% critical strike chance, +13% magic damage against the boss, and the famous "battle rez," all while crushing us on the dps meters. Even Vampiric Embrace is little more than a joke, except perhaps for keeping yourself alive and giving the healers one less target to worry about. The healing it does for the party is laughable at best--the ret pally in my guild that's always at the top of the dps meter is also beating me on the healing meter :-p

I love playing a priest. I love being able to switch specs and step in to heal when one of our regulars is out. I love being challenged--I switched mains from a mage to this character because I wanted something more dynamic and challenging than just pressing two buttons over and over again. But, the way things are now, every day as a shadow priest is less and less fun and more and more frustrating. I sincerely hope that Blizzard hears our voices and does something to help us out.

Tier 9

http://www.wow.com/2009/07/22/mighty-battle-paladin-and-priest-tier-9-sets/#continued

DUDE.
I saw the Alliance priest Tier 9 a while back, but this is the first I'm seeing the Horde priest Tier 9. It does not match a Holy or Disc priest AT ALL.

BUT WHO CARES! I'M SHADOW AND THAT SET WILL LOOK PRETTY SWEET IN SHADOW FORM :D

ARRPEE

I am on an RP server.
I never RP.

Maybe I should.

So I'll start working out stories or whatever for my characters here.

o hai thar

So it's been like two months since I updated.

For a while, raids were going really well. Then people started getting occupied with summer stuff, and stopped coming. The people who were coming got upset that we didn't have enough to raid. We tried raiding with a few people who were only kinda ready (gear-wise) for Ulduar. We had some people talking smack about a few other guild mates, and ended up kicking them from the guild. Some of their friends left too. We lost about 5 DPSers.

Things have just been discouraging overall.

And we still haven't got Thorim down.

We switched to a DKP system, because a LOT of people were getting fussy that people who show up once in a blue moon have been winning gear over those who have been attending constantly.
This is a plus and everyone who is in the guild seems to like it. I think maybe one person quit because of this change. And they were someone who rarely showed up to raids anyway.It's kinda sad to lose them, but if they're gonna quit cause they can't get gear because they never put in the hard work on progression bosses, well then that's the very reason we instituted this DKP system.

But yeah. With these changes, we're kind of building the guild back up again.

Not like we've had problems like this before. Last summer when we were progressing through SSC, we had the same issues. And we survived, and ended up being the first (and only) Horde guild on the server to down Illidan before WotLK.