9 July 2009

Shadow priests enter arms race

Cold war hots up as face melters get mortal strike.

DALARAN. In two apparently unrelated incidents, weapons inspectors were expelled from the sovereign states of shadow priests and frost mages yesterday as both factions declared their intent to test mortal strike debuffs in open combat.

Both groups defended their actions by saying the technology would be used primarily as a deterrent to open agression.

The international association of arms warriors scoffed at these claims and responded immediately with a statement condemning the developments as irresponsible. They warned of "a new age of escalating hostilities" as Azeroth's class-based organisations strove to reproduce their own similar effects and countermeasures.

The coalition of combat medics, representing healers of all classes and factions, refused to comment publicly, but one inside source admitted the mood was "very sombre indeed".

If shadow priests and frost mages have manage to secure mortal strikes, most seasoned pvp observers fear it will only be a matter of time before more classes follow suit.

"To tell you the truth, this is what keeps me awake at night," one veteran Horde gladiator told this reporter. "It was bad enough when only arms warriors had it. Do you think those frost mages will be able to keep it a secret? No shit, it'll be in the hands of rogues before the season's out. Then all hell will break loose. It's the beginning of the end."

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This made me chuckle muchly - I can't tell you how much your blog amuses me :)

Anonymous said...

Rogues already have the MS debuff, of course. They do it via a poison.

Honestly, it seems a very odd decision on Blizzard's part. Rogue-Mage-Priest is already the "premier" comp. Now all three will have access to the MS debuff? I expect the real net effect will be to allow a rogue to use a different poison (maybe Mind-Numbing + Crippling) while the mage applies it.

chronic said...

@anon - first of all, priests in RMP will not have it since they spec discipline and the new priest MS is only for shadow.

Secondly, MS for mages won't make a huge impact in RMP since it doesn't stack with Wound Poison. So the idea is the open up new comps for mages; hopefully they aren't pigeonholed into running RMP for another season.

Rogues (at least, mutilate rogues) currently use Wound Poison on both weapons, they could easily switch poisons already if there was a better alternative. There isn't.

Cataclysmic said...

I love your blogging style and this is just another post that reiterates that :)

Nephalim said...

Hey Merlot, you might remember me from about a month ago, I've poured a lot of questions on you... thankfully I've been able to find answers to all of them, got to 60 fairly quickly using your guide, had really a lot of fun with it too :) I'm mostly able to handle 3-4 mobs my own level at a time and solo elites without breaking much of a sweat.

So this time there's just one question I'd like to ask you, but it's one that's been nagging me for quite a while...

Here's the thing: I have mostly focused on hoarding Spirit and Intellect on my gear up till now, based on the experience, that going OOM is basically equivalent to a quick and painful death. But no matter where I turn, I always read how Spirit is useless for shadow, and that you should focus on Spell Power and hit instead.

What do you recommend I do for the next 20 levels? Ignore Spirit as a whole and just stack up on '... of the Sorcerer' gear? Or should I just try to swap Spirit for mp5? Is mp5 even a viable stat for leveling?

Here's my gear at the moment, I know it's a super-noobish thing to ask but if you'd take a quick glance at it, maybe tell me how I'm on the wrong path... it really would mean a lot! :)

Cataclysmic said...

@Neph

Thats actually a question I'm interested in too. If you want to heal some instances while leveling as shadow, should you collect an Int+Spr gearset for healing and if so, what do you take for shadow?

Merlot said...

Neph, you've just reminded me how horribly slack I've been recently on the newb series. I did promise to write about gear at some point, didn't I?

Long answer will have to wait, but short answer is this: spellpower is always king, even for levelling. It's not very common on early gear, which is why I start off recommending a nice balance of intelect, spirit and stamina (but even that's probably wrong now!)

Hit is not so important providing you have the right talents.

If you gear through your sixties for pure dps your spirit and intellect will drop hideously. Even before the spirit nerf, spirit tap lost a lot of its lustre through Outland because of gear itemisation (they just didn't put spirit on dps cloth). The spellpower change helped a lot, but healing cloth is still generally sub-optimal for dps. So you'll kill things faster but have to drink more, is the bottom line.

Cataclysmic, your question depends on a)whether you have duel spec and b)whether your second spec is holy or disc. If you're healing with shadow talents, there's not much point in stacking spirit unless you've already gone deep enough into discipline for meditation (unlikely, I'm guessing). Similarly, if your alt spec is discipline, spirit does very little for you. Chances are your dps gear will be a better fit. I'd say it's only worth keeping a spirit set for healing if you have a holy offspec.