The Cast Sequence Is A Lie!

I think I mentioned it before, but I'm going to mention it again, mostly for my own benefit. There really is no cast sequence for a shadow priest. Sure there is the start up phase where you throw up all the dots you have and then hit mind blast and mind flay, then refresh the dots so they gain the benefit of your shadow weaving buff. But, after that, it is really just making sure your dots are up, and that you use your nukes when they are off cool down, filling in with mind flay where needed.

Why do I mention this again? Because I have been having a horrible time with my dps lately. Halinka, with almost 1600 extra spell power, was doing 12-13k dps, with buffs. Why was she failing so miserably? Well, part of it might have been spec, which was very mana conservative. If you click her link now you will see her updated spec, which is pretty fabulous, in my opinion. The other thing hampering her dps was a silly idea that she could find a macro to make her spell rotation easier. Phooey. Anyone that says they have a magic macro that can solve all your dps problems will only be helping if your previous attempts at shadow dps were the equivalent of wanding things to death. I should smack myself for even trying it.

Spec squared away, and gear all set right, buttons reordered and nasty macros tossed aside, I screenshot the results after leaving the dummies in Ironforge (not the players, the practice dummies!).
1761. That's unbuffed, folks. I think I will now go back to Delgada and fix her, and play with the dummies in Silvermoon.

Not the blood elf guys. The Training Dummies. Geez. I'm sure none of them want to date my avatar. Besides, it's a known fact that they are happiest when preening in front of a mirror. I'll try not to get in their way.

Catch Up Gear For Shadow Priests

So, you are behind your guild by leaps and bounds. Your gear is pre-heroic, and theirs is post Ulduar. You feel left behind, but you don't want to burden them by asking for runs in Naxxramas when they really don't even care to dance another round with Heigen. What can you do?

Well, with the new Trial of the Champion instance, you can bag some i-level 200 epic pieces to help flesh out a good heroic ready set of gear. Everyone is running it, and if you are lucky, you'll find a group that is running it multiple times. Once you're in, stick with it. Here is a list of the gear that a shadow priest can use in this instance.

Belt of the Churning Blaze
Bindings of the Wicked
Handwraps of Surrendered Hope -yes it's a healer piece, but we like the spirit, and the red socket!
Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice -another healer piece, gemmed with a hit gem if you need hit, and a spirit gem, why not?
Mantle of Inconsolable Fear -this piece works well for healing as well.
The Confessor's Binding -this is a healing belt. If you get this one and not the other, it's not so bad, is it?
Signet of Purity -a nice ring for healing and dps
Brilliant Hailstone Amulet
Abyssal Rune
Tears of the Vanquished -I know it isn't a dps trinket, but if the healer doesn't want it, who would laugh at you for wanting all that intellect?(I believe that all my spells are helpful. I boycott the exception of my spells from Blizzard's idea of helpful. Phooey!)

These items don't cover all your gear slots. That's okay though. This is where you use the best item from Shadowpriest.com's beginning raid gear list. Let me throw up an example here. HolyNova, who is kicking herself for her bad choice in naming right now, has been building her shadow set, in hopes that one day she can be as dangerous and beautiful as that fire mage over there (we'll call him Larry). She was able to get the wrists, hit belt, hit neck, and the dps trinket from a few runs in Trial of the Champion. She is thrilled. She gems the hit neck with hit, enchants her bracers with more spellpower, adds a socket to her belt to put another hit gem in it, and puts on only these items. She has 107 hit rating now, and some other nice stats. Right now, we need to make sure her hit rating gets closer to cap. I have found for heroics, cap is not necessarily the same as it is for raiding. Still, we should aim for as close to that magic 289 as possible (assuming you have all points spent in misery and shadow focus). She found The Argent Skullcap kicking around in her bank, getting her to 168 hit rating. She healed a heroic Violet Hold and was lucky enough to get Mark of the War Prisoner, which boosted her hit rating to 241. At this point, some people might just run off without a robe and happily be able to complete Utgarde Keep on heroic mode, but we like well dressed priests. It's cold in Northrend! Speaking of cold, Nova has been working with the Ebon Blade (probably where she got her affinity for the dark side), and they liked her enough to sell her a Dark Soldier Cape. Her hit rating, now at 270, is looking more worthy of heroics. Now, our gal has been cooking and fishing and doing her regular daily dungeon quests without fail, and the Kirin Tor love her. They let her buy Robes of Crackling Flame, which make her think of Larry. Another item the Ebon Blade let her buy are Sterile Flesh-Handling Gloves. Her boots and pants have been hard to replace. She's just using her healing rings now, nothing special about them. They have haste and intellect and critical strike chance and stuff like that.

Now, we were talking about farming heroics for gear to catch up with, weren't we? With the set we have assembled, Nova should be able to hold her own any about any heroic. This is where the fun begins. You see, everyone, and I mean everyone, is farming heroics for the new badges right now. How does this impact Nova? As a healer or as a damage dealer, she will find more groups as she is flexible. More groups = more badges, and more chances at upgrades. Should she still run regular instances? Probably not, unless she is uncomfortable walking into a heroic not having done the regular version. Badges are the key, because the items that can be purchased are i-level 213 and 226, which is fine to jump into Ulduar with. Here is a list of items a priest can use, purchased with Badges of Conquest. Pair that with items you can get from heroics (here are some nice i-level 219's from ToC), and Nova can dazzle Larry with her new role as a damage dealer. Fireball? That is so yesterday. Eat a few of these dots and tell me how you feel in the morning. :)

I hope this is helpful for people, like me, who are trying hard to catch up as a new level 80 to people much further progressed. Comment if you found something fun that I missed. I love shopping for new gear!

Heroics, Heroics, And More Heroics!

Halinka got to run a few heroics yesterday and today. Today, after dinner, Delgada got to run some heroics, too. Seems both my horde guild and my alliance guild have gone heroic crazy. Why? Those damned tokens. Now, don't get me wrong, Halinka was happy to add that i-level 226 neckpiece to her hodgepodge of i-level 200 blues and purples (many of which were upgraded tonight. Thanks everyone!). She just feels a little out of her league yet. Who can blame her? She is so new to 80 that she hasn't sold off some of her green hit gear.

Delgada, on the other hand, was asked to heal tonight. Delgada hates healing. She'd rather try to dig through the glacier surrounding Arthas heart with her bare hands than be anything but a shadow priest. But, if you want the gear, sometimes you have to make allowances. Delgada found some gear that had a bit more mana regeneration on it and healed heroic Oculus, Nexus, Culling of Stratholme, Gundrak, and Drak'Tharon. She got herself a nice pair of bracers, several achievements, and a bronze drake. That's right, a bronze drake, that she can't ride yet. Delgada is a slacker. So, after the runs were through, she dug out every item in her bank that she could bear to part with, turned many bolts of netherweave into bags, churned out a few frostweave bags , cooked up all the raw meat she had iwth spices to make raiding food, and sent it all to Rowena to sell. Rowena is sitting on about 2500 gold, and had a mailbox full of teenage greens. She listed everything, and we're hoping for some nice profits.

Earlier today, Halinka got in on a Wintergrasp raid, and was invited to a 10 man Vault of Archavon run. She ran 25 man of the same instance yesterday, and with all the raid buffs,, her critical strike food, and her flask of the frost wyrm, she was pushing out about 2200 dps. In this run, she ran out of flasks, so she was using that pink elixir that boosts all stats, and an elixir of mighty spirit. Three wipes later, out of food, gear wrecked, and out of elixirs, Halinka's dps had been an abysmal 1350. I thought I had been doing everything right. I guess I wasn't. After complaining about mt shoddy performance in guild chat, one person suggested checking my rotation. I thought, you know, what has worked for me before this patch, may not work now. So I googled "Shadow priest spell rotation 3.2". It landed me on a forum post on shadowpriest.com's forums. No surprise there. If it is relevant to Shadow Priests, it has been discussed on their boards. They had macros! Here is the link, so I don't hog it all to myself. I tested it out on a dummy, doing one rotation of the start and then switching to main. I got my dps to 1750 at one point. Sounds like my problem is solved! Now, if only I could get Halinka a drake...

Ding!

Now comes the REAL grind :)

She's Real Shadow Priestess!

Halinka reached 40 yesterday while healing a group that was running thr0ugh Scarlet Monastery's Cathedral. She got the Hand of Righteousness and Whitemane's Chapeau, and spent her point in the Shadow tree to get Shadowform. Feeling like a real shadow priestess, she let me run out the door and get frozen yogurt.

Well, since then she has managed to hit 41 and is waiting patiently to hit 42 (one bubble and a smidge of another left). She managed to hit exalted with Ironforge and Exodar, which leaves only Gnomeregan Exiles to work on. She has about 7500 reputation to grind out for them. Knowing she would need help, as she has outlevelled Gnomeregan and doesn't have any willing victims (who is really willing to run Gnomeregan without having first drunk themselves silly or having been paid an exhorbitant amount of gold to do it?), I begged hubby to get a death knight out of the starter zone to help me finish out a gazillion quests. That should account for roughly 3000 reputation. Then we will go find all the wonderful quests out in the far corners of the world to garner the rest of the needed faction points. I say we, but it will really be just I. He is only doing this after being promised, well, we won't go there. Is it sad that I have to bribe my hubby to play with me? Yes, I know, that was a silly question to ask. I already know it is sad!

I leave you with a picture of the lovely Halinka, bathed in shadow and astride her favorite mount (until she gets a mechanostrider).

Shadow Priest Kindergarten - Cast Sequence

Hello again, class. Today we will be looking at our spells and deciding what sequence to cast them in. First, I will try to explain why I have chosen to cast spells in the order I do, then I will take you on a field trip of sorts, linking to other websites that have crunched numbers and melted training dummies working out what they think is the ultimate cast sequence.

As a shadow priest, not only am I looking to put out some decent damage, but to help the rest of the mana users in my group or raid with their mana regeneration. At least, that is how I look at things. If you regularly run with a group with a retribution paladin, a frost mage, or a survival hunter, maybe you don't need to worry about it so much,and can concentrate on damage alone. Here is my idea on what order spells should be cast. I present to you, Delgada's cast bar.


I use my cast bar to prioritize my casting sequence, mostly because it is easy to see, and if I have to hand my keys over to a kid, it is easy to give directions like, "Just push the buttons from left to right as they light up!" as I am extracting the toddler from the top of my linen cabinet. When I use the bar, I start at Vampiric Touch. I use Inner Focus only during boss fights, and keep it as next in line to Mind Blast because, well, no mana and more critical is good for this spell. If my health bar is not having problems, I use Shadow Word: Death as often as it is up, because the damage is minimal compared to the damage it does. I then cast Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain. By then, Vampiric Touch needs a refresh, and Mind Blast is back up, as well as Shadow Word: Death. So the idea is, if while you are moving down the line, one of your items that has a cooldown becomes available, you go back to it. That doesn't mean I never get to Mind Flay. I do get to Mind Flay quite regularly, because I am talented for it to refresh Shadow Word: Pain, so that is effectively removed from my rotation after the first cast, so long as I don't fool around.

When soloing, the rotation is a bit different. I start out with a Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay until it is almost dead, then Shadow Word: Death. Since I have noone to speak to except myself for mana or health, there is almost no need for the other spells. I'll pull out the fiend for some mana regen, and out of combat I'll toss myself a Flash Heal or Renew and move right along.

Buttons 8 and beyond are not in my rotation, but they are there for other reasons. Mind Sear is an Area of Effect spell, and I use it while clearing trash. If my tank has a good lead on aggro, I will use Vampiric Embrace to help with healing. Dispersion is there in case I get in a rough spot and have the time for it to help me out. Fade I do use quite a bit, as the last two times I raided I found I was riding the tanks tail in aggro. Shadowform just needed a spot to put it in. My Shadow Fiend(though you don't see a button for it, I use AutoBar) I use whenever it is available for the teensy bit of dps it provides, and the mana it helps me regenerate.

So, there you have it. My spell rotation, if you can call it that. I did a search for spell rotations on the internet, and, I guess I have the right idea. Seems everyone is saying it is a priority sort of thing, and not necessarily a rotation. Go ahead, test me, do a search. I dare you. :)

Congratulations! You have finished with kindergarten. I'll leave you to go to other, more experienced shadow priests for the nitty gritty down and dirty of being a raiding 0r pvp shadow priest. I'm going to lay out a mat and take a nap!

Shadow Priest Kindergarten - The Look

Good Afternoon, class! Welcome back to Shadow Priest Kindergarten. Today we will be exploring the fun and fabulous world of Shadow Priest Fashion. We all wear cloth, but we don't always wear the same cloth as our healing other half.


As we are leveling, we shouldn't be too concerned about how we are dressed. Quest rewards and the odd lucky drop should carry us through. I do recommend picking up some Outland gear at level 58 to help protect and enhance until you are receiving the Outlandish gear that the quest givers reward. (Outlandish is a nice way to explain the look you get when combining the different quest rewards. It would be more accurate to say that it turns the female character into a Vegas showgirl with a cowboy hat. Thank goodness for our all outfit enhancing shadow form!)

In a few posts not long ago, I had lined up a guide to finding as much gear that provides Hit Rating as possible. As a shadow priest, we don't need to amass as much as a holy priest would, so pick and choose your favorite items to hit that magic rating of 290. This is for starters. When you feel comfortable in what you have, follow this link to Shadowpriest.com's ultimate shopping list. Just keep in mind as you shop, that if you replace an item that has hit with one that does not, you will have to make up that lost stat elsewhere. If you don't want to find gear that has it, follow this link to my guides on gemming, enchanting, and consumables to add hit rating.

Since the work here is already done, I will leave you to your shopping. Next class will be on spell priority. Since I am letting you out early today, please make good use of your time and visit some other priest-centric blogs, such as World of Snarkcraft, World of Matticus, The Egotistical Priest, Misery and the Pugnacious Priest. There may be a test later....

Lookit! Delgada Has Wings!

They invited me over to play with Loatheb tonight, and they even let me roll! Heroes' Mantle of Faith and Handbook of Obscure Remedies are my upgrades for tonight. How exciting! I even hit second place on our final attempt in damage done. No screen shot, sorry everyone, my UI is skunky and I don't wanna share it!

Shadow Priest Kindergarten - Talents

If you read the last two posts, you have a rough idea of what a priest is and what stats they use. Today, I'm going to dig into the Shadow tree and parts of the Discipline tree, and give you my opinion on how points should be spent as a shadow priest is leveling. At the end I will post a final spec for a PvE shadow priest. I may even get ambitious and pretend I know something about PvP, and post my interpretation of a PvP shadow build. Don't take my word on this as law. I know a few things, but I'll bet that if you are reading this, you are also quite intelligent and can reason your way into spending your own points!

I will be basing this on the new talent trees going live with patch 3.1. I wanted this post to be relevent for more than a week, so hop into the future with me, if you dare!

So, you've hit level 10 and you have a whole talent point to spend. Congratulations! When I spent my first point, I spent it on Spirit Tap . I spent my next two points on that, too. Anything to keep your mana up will reduce down time, which leads to faster leveling. Level 13, and we have a new point to spend. If you want to hit Shadow Form by 40, we need to continue spending points in that tree. So our next talent to fill will be Darkness. At levels 18 and 19 we're going to want Improved Shadow Word: Pain filled, so we can get Mind Flay at level 20. At 21, until the talent is filled, I like to fill in Improved Mind Blast. At this level, you only have 4 shadow spells. The more you can use one, the better! The order you spend the next 4 points in is a matter of taste. I prefer filling in Shadow Reach before I touch Shadow Weaving for 2 points, because I like to keep mobs as far away as possible. Did you notice I only put 2 points in Shadow Weaving? That's all it takes to open up Vampiric Embrace , which needs to be open in order to get down to Shadow Form, but is also useful if you are taking on more than one mob at a time. While you are killing one mob, keep one with a dot or two on it and Vampiric Embrace to get a bit of health regen while it is slowly dying. Now, at level 32, we can finish off Shadow Weaving and spend our next points in Focused Mind, because less mana spent means more to deal damage with. The next 5 points are really a no brainer, because at this tier, there are only 5 points to spend. Improved Devouring Plague, at its top rank, says it increases the periodic damage of the spell by 15%, and deals 15% of the total periodic damage when cast(this could change, as 3.1 hasn't been set in stone yet). After those three points, or before, Mind Melt will add to your critical chance.

Now, we are level 40, and we get Shadowform! We have gained the effect that not only shouts out to all of Azeroth that we are shadow priests, but it sure disguises ugly armor. At level 40, the way you spend your points is all a matter of taste. If you are grouping a lot without another priest as healer, you might want to go a few points into the Discipline tree first. Start with Twin Disciplines for extra damage, then Improved Power Word: Fortitude for a little better buff. For now, that is probably all you will need to spend there. I might even suggest going back to Tier 2 of the shadow tree and grabbing Shadow Affinity for the extra threat reduction. From there, I would choose Shadow Power, then one point in Misery at level 56 would let us get Vampiric Touch at 57. Level 58 and 59 I would finish out Misery, so at 60 I could start filling in Pain and Suffering. By the time that is filled, if we were diligent about training, it would benefit our newly gained spell, Shadow Word: Death.

At 62, I like to hop back to the Discipline tree. Here is where you need to think a little. Do you want to spend 3 points in Silent Resolve or Improved Inner Fire, or spend 2 points in Martyrdom and stick a single point in Improved Inner Fire? Your choice. I'm not sure there is a perfect answer. If you find yourself healing in pinch, you might go with the first. If you are on a PvP server, the last might be your answer. Inner Fire is not a great spell, but if you must choose something, I'm sure not many will criticize you for choosing to improve it. The whole goal here is to get down to Meditation and Inner Focus. Once you have filled these, you will be at the ripe old age of 69, and getting ready to hit Northrend!

At 70, our next talent to fill will be Twisted Faith. Again, damage is your friend, and the more friends/damage, the better! At 75, you can pick up the ultimate talent in your shadow tree, Dispersion. This is a great talent for both PvP and PvE, and shouldn't be passed up (in my opinion, anyhow). Why would anyone pass up the chance to be a floating purple mass of shadow?
For our last 5 points, we will skip back to Shadow Focus and fill it, then even further back to Improved Spirit Tap. By this time, we will want the added hit bonus, and the added mana regeneration.

All that work, and we are now level 80! Here is our finished talent tree. Right here, my attempt at a PvP talent specialty. Now we can start getting together our gear. Next class will be about Shadow Priest Fashion for the new level 80. The bell is ringing...Recess Time!

At 80, if you find that you are needing more mana and threat reduction than range, a quick respec to add Veiled Shadows and lose Shadow Reach might be in order. Your results will vary! :)

Shadow Priest Kindergarten - Stats

Alright, class, our subject for today will be stats. What are they? What do they do? Which stats should we, as shadow priests, look for first?

Here we have our baby priest. She can't be shadow yet, because all she has are holy spells. That's ok, it still gives is some insight into what stats to start for from day one.


Our baby has 20 of everything it seems, with a small bonus to Intellect and Spirit. Intellect gives a priest 15 mana per point, and a small amount of critical spell bonus. Spirit gives a small amount of health and mana regeneration. Stamina gives 10 health points per point. Agility and Strength are melee stats, and generally not useful to a priest. After reading that little bit, I have determined that, for now, I will want to pick up gear with Intellect, Stamina, and Spirit, with the emphasis on importance being in that order, to start. As you get higher in level, it pays to stack Intellect and Spirit as evenly as possible, and add the Stamina when it doesn't interfere too much.

As we level, some other stats will show up on our gear choices. Spell Power grants a bonus to damage and healing spells. Critical Strike Rating will increase our chance to get a critical hit. Haste will speed up our spell casting. The first of those three is easy to understand. An item with +20 spell power will give us 20 more damage and healing. Critical Strike Rating is a little different. All the bonus points your armor gives to critical strike do not just add in. Take that number, divide by 45.91(at level 80), and that will tell you what percent of crit rating your gear gives you, before figuring in the bonus from Intellect. As for Haste Rating, 32.79 points of haste give you 1% faster casting. For what fun this is causing with my global cooldown, I would rather go for crit rating instead. So, of the three stats, spell power, then crit rating, then haste, in that order. If your spell power is pretty high, you can reverse the first two, and work toward a better crit rating.

One stat I forgot to mention is Hit Rating. Hit Rating starts to be important around level 70. This helps you keep from missing with spells when attacking mobs from 3 levels below you to 3 levels above you. You will normally have 4% chance to miss a spell cast at a mob your level. In order to get rid of that 4% miss rate, a level 70 would need about 52 hit rating. But that only works for mobs at the same level. Most raid bosses are 3 levels above the cap of that zone (for example, Netherspite in Karazhan is a level 73 mob). In order to ensure that you would not miss on a level 73 mob, you would need 215 points of hit rating. At 80, the number, before talents, to shoot for is 446.

There you have them. Stats, and how they affect a priest. Next article will be on talent trees, and how to best spend your points. This will be, in part, an opinion piece, as I am sure how I spend my points may not be how most would spend their points. Stay tuned!

Thanks to WoWWiki and Shadowpriest.com for their insight into what stat is worth what. For a little help in game, try the add-on Rating Buster!

Shadow Priest Kindergarten - Prologue

What stats do I need, and what do they do?

What talents should I choose?

What glyphs are best for me?

What sites can I visit to find gear shopping lists and more in depth studies to improve my performance in raids?

These are questions I've been asking myself recently. My guild has too many healers for the one ten man group they are running, but not enough tanks available to make another group. When people advertise for a heroic, there are usually 3 healers vying for 2 spots. I find myself switching to an alt rather than having someone else miss out. Lately, however, the problem has been, not only too many healers, but not enough damage dealers. So, I went to my bank, picked up all the hit gear I had been saving, and headed for the Undercity to change my talent specialty.

Delgada was a raiding shadow priest during Burning Crusade, going holy only in the expectant few months before the Wrath expansion release. This allowed others to gear up alts, as many of our regular healers had taken a break to play other games, gear up alts, or had left to join guilds more progressed than ours. I know shadow, or rather, knew shadow. Things have changed since the Burning Crusade. Rotations are different, some spells work differently, some stats have gained a new popularity while others have become not quite as crucial as before. What worked back then doesn't work now! I found that out my first heroic dungeon in my blues and pieces pressed into use from my healing set, with my damage output right around 1050 per second. Dead last on my Recount meter. Back to square one. This "like new" level 80 that acts like she bought her character on E-bay. Ugh. I don't like that too much. So now is the time to educate myself, and help others as I do so!

The next post will be about what stats are desired by a shadow priest. It will tell you what each stat does for you, and what priority you should place on getting each stat. From there, I will direct you to a shopping list or two that I am finding useful.

Until then!