It may just be me but this sucks

I gave my divine shadow idea a road test in Nagraand while grinding clefthoof leather.

Admittedly, this is hardly a difficult test for a level 70 character in epic gear. Now was it particularly scientific. I just played around a bit and compared how it felt to the cookie-cutter shadow build pre-patch.

Those of you who scoffed at the idea of a shadow priest with divine spirit will be smugly pleased to know it was rather... lacklustre. Mana was, as I predicted, bountiful, but killing was slow. I had a small insight into what it must be like to solo as a healing class and have newfound respect for all my friends and colleagues who persevere at it.

Then we went to Karazhan for the murkblood boss so I respecced to a more appropriate raiding build with dispersion. And I was still unimpressed.

We went in with only six players, one of whom was level 69. That was a strong indication to me of just how out-of-balance the game is right now. My under-geared, neglected elemental shaman alt is topping 1,000 dps in heroics, and he's never stepped foot in a raid. But that's not the full story, because despite the ease of the instance and the apparent boosts to class spells and talents, Merlot still felt underwhelming.

Mana was an absolute nightmare, much more than usual, even with improved divine spirit. During boss fights, and on several large pulls, I had to pot, disperse, cast hymn of hope, all while replenishment was practically a permanent buff, and still ran out of mana at an alarming rate. To get dispersion, I had to drop inner focus and meditation, which would account for a small part of the problem. Then there are my crit and spirit ratings, which are probably too low to get much benefit out of improved spirit tap. Ultimately though, this has to be a direct result of the vampiric touch nerf. Adjusting is proving much harder than I had expected. I just hope these problems are easily solved by new gear and a few more talent points.

I also noticed, or rather failed to notice, much difference in my dps. I'm absolutely sure some of this is down to human error — I moved some spells around to fit devouring plague and dispersion in and found myself hitting the wrong keys quite a lot. The devouring plague cooldown is also an issue in that it wasn't always ready when I needed it. I really don't think the spell is good enough to warrant such a long cooldown but meh.

Another problem I am having is adjusting to the utter explosion in spell noises and effects. Has anyone else noticed this? Suddenly every class is popping and beeping like Wall-e at a disco. I use sound a lot more than I realised to time my spell casting and know what's going on around me, so it's putting me right off my game.

All-in-all, my dps barely shifted from pre-patch levels. Will it improve as I get used to my key bindings? I can only hope so. I'd be interested in knowing what other shadow priests have found, so please drop me a note if you've got any tips for how to adjust.