Forget everything: class preview incoming

Our first fleshy taste of what Cataclysm will mean for priests is due tomorrow (Wednesday, 7 April), as Blizzard prepare to release a full range of class previews.

In the words of Bashiok:

"The type of information you can expect from these posts are a list of the news spells from 80-85, the new passive mastery bonuses for all talent trees, a brief outline of some of the talent changes we're currently planning, and in some cases new low level spells for select classes."

It's only a day away, but I can't help speculating a little about what we're going to see for shadow priests. Plus, it's a Tuesday morning, and fantasising about WoW is infinitely more pleasurable than the pile of work haunting my inbox.

Wrath has been a bit of a rollercoaster for shadow priests, but I think our current situation is solid. Our mechanics allow skill to shine over gear, and our array of spells enables us to do competitive damage, scale well, and adapt adequately to most circumstances. I think the basic design philosophy of 'keep dots up and use filler spells to their maximum' is unlikely to change. What we can expect is a more varied array of 'active' talents and a stronger focus on managing our own resources in long fights.

Mana management
We've already been warned that spirit will not be a dps stat in Cataclysm, so I am braced to say farewell to spirit tap. It's not the great talent it used to be, but for all of its shortcomings, it remains the only way a priest has of regaining mana beyond drinking until they hit Outland and eventually pick up dispersion and shadowfiend. So I hope that in the shakeup of talents and spell acquisition, we see changes designed to address mana issues early in a priest's life.

And I hope to finally see the death of replenishment in raids. If developers are serious about balancing mana regeneration around a class's own talents, and making a clear distinction between healers and dps, then they really ought to drop this elephant in the room once and for all. I could live with it as a self-only effect, as long as they drop the silly, druidy name and give it a title more becoming of a master of dark powers.

Better still, if we must have it, please unlink it from it's clumsy mind blast trigger. Vampiric touch was once conceived as a leech effect, it would be nice to see a return to that evocative design.

Dee pee ess
As I said, I think raid damage is in a fairly good place right now, but levelling priests could do with a boost to early damage. Damage before mind flay is shameful. It takes a glyph and holy fire at level 20 before our key nuke, smite, can even match a lowly wand. Other classes have it much easier, particularly melee.

They could fix the situation easily by increasing shadow word: pain's base damage — the spell is massively underpowered, particularly at low levels, let along in end game. Inner fire could also provide spell power from the start instead of only at higher ranks.

Developers have also hinted in the past that we may get an entirely new, spammable nuke in Cataclysm — something I currently struggle to see the need for in raiding but which might be a perfect fit for early levelling (more on this below).

New talents and spells?
New spell ranks are going — or rather, won't be learned but will increase automatically as we level. I'm curious to see what this will mean for our regular visits to the trainer. Currently, new spells are learned very unevenly: there's a huge glut of them early on, and large gaps without any between the round levels (20, 30, 40 etc). Could we learn spells less frequently, will the present higher-level spells be learned earlier on, or will there be a mass of new spells to fill the gaps?

We'll almost certainly get new spells as a reward for levelling to 85. My biggest hope is finally to get the dark prayer I have been pleading for for so long. A channelled spell that boosts damage (and possibly healing) temporarily would be a dream. Please Blizzard, I would only write nice things about you from now on :)

As I mentioned above, there was talk a while back of a possible new, spammable nuke, and while I can see this having some application early on, I'm not sure how it could work in end game. Two possibilities that I can see so far: one, it replaces something from our active range of spells (what, I'm not sure), two it becomes an addition to our active range of spells. The first option doesn't appeal to me, the second frightens me. I'm a simple shadow priest, I don't want to have to manage another variable. But it's too early to worry, we don't even know if a spell is incoming.

Finally, we've been promised more active talents and fewer passive 'improves x by y' talents. I don't think we'll see the full talent trees tomorrow, and even if we did it would be way too early to speculate about builds. But we're likely to get a feel for the way the new talents will go. It would be nice to see some possibility for hybrid builds, or even just more variety in build options.

Roll on Wednesday!

Glyphs for levelling

**Some of these glyphs are changing in patch 3.3. I'll update the guide shortly. Glyph of mindflay is now awesome, not much else to note.**

While you're busy grinding your new shadow priest to 80, I'll save you the trouble of researching glyphs and give you your options here. It won't take me long, there aren't many. Seriously, I don't know who designed the array of priest glyphs but they a) actively hate the class, b) have no clue about the class or c) are a moron. Take your pick.

We're going to do this by level, as our glyph slots open up. It's not a terribly logical arrangement but see paragraph above. Sometimes it makes sense to switch glyphs around in-between, and I'll mention those too at the appropriate level. If you're really interested, I have listed the whole gamut of priest glyphs at the bottom, along with the level they become available, so feel free to ignore me and plan your own spread.

Level 15 — one major, one minor
Congratulations, your first glyph slots! At level 15, you have access to seven major and two minor glyphs.

The selection of uninspiring major glyphs include a couple you should never consider under any circumstances (inner fire, fade), and two that you can't even use yet (shadow word: pain, smite). At this level, you will probably be shielding a lot, and the glyph of power word: shield is one of the few decent options available.

You only have access to two minor glyphs at this stage and one of them is worthless. Take the glyph of fortitude.

Level 20
When you learn inner fire, you might want to pick up the glyph of smite. The effect was changed recently from reducing pushback to increasing damage while the inner fire dot is on the target (thanks to Aaron in the comments for pointing this out). Personally, I took smite off my cast bar at 20, too irritated with the long cast time and mana drain, but even if you cast smite only once per target this glyph will do more for you than power word: shield.

Level 30 — one major
Now is the time to pick up the glyph of shadow word: pain. If you really want to, you can pick it up sooner to replace your first glyph, but as I mentioned in the levelling guide, mind flay is not instantly a great spell. It takes some time and some additional talents to really show it in its best light. It's not really worth a glyph until level 28 when you pick up rank 2 of the spell. Your best options for the second slot remain power word: shield and smite — which you choose really depends on how often you use smite.

Several additional glyphs have opened up to you by this level, but I wouldn't advise any of them for levelling at this stage. They include a number of healing glyphs, and some dubious 'utility' glyphs. Only two are true dps glyphs. The glyph of shadow, which opens up at level 20, isn't usable until at least level 40 (see what I mean about the design?) and the glyph of mind flay trades the spells snare for reach, which is a poor deal for levelling.

Level 34
In a rare moment of clarity, the designers made one glyph available at the same time as you learn the affected spell — levitate. I love the spell and I love the glyph and happily recommend you swap out the glyph of fortitude for it. It's clearly not mandatory though — light feathers aren't that expensive or hard to come by, so you may choose to keep the reagent cost instead.

Level 40
If you have spent your talent points wisely, you should now have access to shadowform. Go ahead and equip the glyph of shadow, replacing either the glyph of power word: shield or smite, whichever you've been using alongside shadow word: pain. At your level of gear, it won't provide a huge boost, but it will do more for you than any other glyph in the game after shadow word: pain. Sadly, you now have the two best glyphs for raiding; there's nowhere to go from here but downhill.

Level 50 — one minor
In the absence of any brilliant new glyphs, your best bet is to go back to fortitude. Glyph of shadow protection isn't a bad option for raiding, but I don't remember casting it often while levelling, and certainly not to the extent that the duration bothered me. Think about switching these glyphs around when you start raiding.

Level 70 — one minor
This is as good a time as any to equip the glyph of shadowfiend. It's the closest thing we've got to a mandatory minor glyph and you'll want it at 80 anyway.

Level 80 — one major
Ok, so you're not strictly levelling anymore but I'll cover off the last slot just to be thorough.

If you're going straight into raiding, I urge you to seriously think about the glyph of mind flay. Yes, it is an outrageous abuse of the glyph system to solve a fundamental flaw in a spell in this way, I hate that we are effectively cheated out of a slot, but I cannot stress how beneficial the added range is. There are many raid fights where positioning for an un-glyphed mind flay is very difficult and mind flay is too important to your raid dps to risk ever being out of range. Having said that, if you are confident you can manage the range issue without a glyph, you have a couple of other options. Glyph of shadow word: death provides a kind of ghetto execute, but don't expect this spell to contribute significantly to your raid dps. Glyph of mind sear is a fantastic choice for trash, but less useful on many bosses.

If you're going to continue questing and focus on solo content for a while yet, skip mind flay for now and consider either shadow word: death or dispersion for the shorter cooldown.

Full list of major glyphs
Numbers indicate the required level.

Glyph of Fade (15)
Glyph of Inner Fire (15)
Glyph of Power Word: Shield (15)
Glyph of Psychic Scream (15)
Glyph of Renew (15)
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain (15)
Glyph of Smite (15)
Glyph of Dispel Magic (18)
Glyph of Fear Ward (20)
Glyph of Flash Heal (20)
Glyph of Holy Nova (20)
Glyph of Mind Flay (20)
Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment (20)
Glyph of Shadow (20)
Glyph of Mind Control (30)
Glyph of Prayer of Healing (30)
Glyph of Spirit of Redemption (30)
Glyph of Lightwell (40)
Glyph of Circle of Healing (50)
Glyph of Pain Suppression (50)
Glyph of Dispersion (60)
Glyph of Guardian Spirit (60)
Glyph of Hymn of Hope (60)
Glyph of Penance (60)
Glyph of Shadow Word: Death (62)
Glyph of Mass Dispel (70)
Glyph of Mind Sear (75)

Full list of minor glyphs
Glyph of Fading (15)
Glyph of Fortitude (15)
Glyph of Levitate (34)
Glyph of Shackle Undead (20)
Glyph of Shadow Protection (30)
Glyph of Shadowfiend (70)

A new priest levelling spec: 10-40

You know when you've been drinking and it's late and you're really, really tired and just want to get home and you wish you could teleport to your bed instead of struggling with the Tube or night bus or taxi or interminable walk?

Your first 39 levels of life as a shadow priest are exactly like that. It's painful and boring and you just want it to end NOW but stick with it, because the comforting, snug warmth of your shadowform bed is mere moments away.

Like your drunken stumble home, there's no one right way to go. But levelling, as I have discovered, is painful enough as it is without hamstringing yourself with a stupid build. So we're going to have a stab at picking an optimum route all the same. Think of me as that chilli kebab you snatched from the takeaway to sustain you on the journey, and try not to think about the indigestion it will give you.

This isn't a fun process. Most of these talents are tuned for raiding and balanced around shadowform's damage modifier (hold onto that, it does get easier). The absence of many shining talents at least means there's plenty of wiggle room in the build. I'd encourage you to deviate in both the order and placement of points wherever you think it would work better for your play style.

Let me know how it works out for you :)

Levels 10-12 — spirit tap
Since the nerf to base mana regeneration, this talent has lost a lot of its lustre (two thirds, to be precise) but it's still one of the strongest early talents for levelling. If managed correctly it will help reduce downtime and keep you killing for longer. ('Managed' means ensuring you're out of the five-second rule when your target dies. It's a very, very boring way to level and we're going to break this rule as soon as we can. Around level 30 or so...)

Please under no circumstances put points in improved spirit tap — at least until you get shadowform and even then not unless you are running dps in instances a lot (I still wouldn't advise it). The buff from improved spirit tap, which is very weak to start with, can only be triggered by a mind blast crit (at least for now) — which is in itself a very rare occurrence at your level (5 or 6 per cent crit, am I right?) — and is overwritten by spirit tap anyway. This is a Talent You Should Not Take (TYSNT).

Levels 13-14 — shadow power
This is a beautiful talent that is almost utterly worthless to new priests, but you're going to spend points here because the alternative is worse.

Level 15-17 — shadow focus
Half your spells at this level are still holy, and this only affects shadow spells. Nonetheless, improving your chance to hit with spells is important for efficiency and there's nothing worse than wasting mind blast's cooldown for no reason.

Levels 18-20 — shadow power
We're going to go back and fill out this talent in the absence of anything better. Are you spotting a pattern here?

Levels 21-24
This is where it gets really miserable. You need to spend four points to get to tier four and have a plethora of mediocre talents to choose between. You can discount shadow affinity (a TYSNT) and take your pick between the rest of the shite:

• Improved shadow word: pain (2) — an abysmal talent even when raiding, two points here will boost your pain ticks by about two damage. Remember, your wand hits harder...
• Improved psychic scream (2) — it helps speed up fear-flay grinding (I'll explain in a minute) and it's a pre-requisite for silence, but neither of those things are strong arguments for blowing points here
• Improved mind blast (5) — reducing the cooldown on a spell that you probably only use once per mob is a silly thing to do, surely?
• Mind flay (1) — the iconic shadow priest spell, but a stiff breeze causes more damage than rank one, the base range is gimped, and until you get pushback protection from improved shadow form, there's no use spamming this point-blank

I personally went 2/2 in improved shadow word: pain and 1/1 in mind flay on the basis that I'd have to get them some time. Then 1/2 in improved psychic scream for fear-flay, but not feeling particularly happy about it.

Levels 25-26 — shadow reach
You are probably still pulling with holy fire at this level, which is not affected by this talent. But it does mean you can make more use of mind flay's snare as the mob runs towards you. Marginally useful.

Leve 27 — improved psychic scream
We're going to finish this off to ensure fear is off cooldown pretty much every mob we take on. This is essential for effective fear-flay grinding, which I'll stop hinting at cryptically and now explain.

So — line up your mob, cast your opening nukes, and dot the mob as it runs at you. If you move back while dotting, you should have time to get in one mind flay before it reaches melee range. Now you cast fear and mind flay it while it flits around. (Fear-flay, see? Well I didn't promise anything complicated.)

You rely on the range (with shadow reach) and snare of mind flay to keep the mob under contol. You can almost always find room to do this outdoors, and mind flay usually keeps the feared mob in range. You've got to be prepared for an add or two occasionally, but the original mob is usually dead by the time the add arrives, so no big deal. In fact, the biggest problem with this method is fear breaking early, but it's pretty reliable until later levels (Outland, as I recall, although fears now apparently break after less damage — I'll do some intrepid testing for you another time!)

You learn rank 2 of mind flay at level 28, and from that point the spell gets much easier to use — especially if combined with the glyph of shadow word: pain (more on glyphs in a later post.) This method is more mana-efficient than shielding, but then you are more likely to be casting when the mob dies, wasting a good chunk of spirit tap. I'd say the disadvantages pretty much balance out. This method wins for me because it's more interactive, and killing with mind flay is a helluva lot more fun than wanding. Try it out and see what you think. If you really don't think it's for you, those points in improved psychic scream would be better spent elsewhere. Improved mind blast, perhaps.

Levels 28-29 — shadow weaving
Oh god, is this the best we can do? Clearly I think the answer is yes, otherwise I wouldn't be recommending this talent next. But it's really not a good talent at this stage of your levelling — again, it's something that will be much more useful later on.

Veiled shadows, in case you haven't already realised, is a TYSNT.

Level 30 — vampiric embrace
Levels 31-32 — improved vampiric embrace
Continuing our theme of picking up talents that will be much more useful later on, these really will be points well spent eventually. In shadowform, you can pretty much take a beating one-on-one without loosing health. If you want, you can defer picking them up for a few levels, but the alternatives aren't that much better.

Level 33 — silence
I admit, silence is a situational spell, but it comes in handy while levelling to reduce incoming damage and pull ranged mobs into fear range. If you didn't take improved psychic scream, take your pick where to throw this point.

Level 34 — shadow weaving
We need to spend one more point to move up a tier and finishing this talent off feels as good a place as any to start. If you move between mobs quickly enough, you can ensure this buff is maintained at a full 10 per cent for as long as your mana holds out.

Levels 35-37 — improved devouring plague
This talent boosts devouring plague's tick value way above shadow word: pain — these are points well spent, even at this level. The mana cost and cooldown mean you probably won't be using it on every mob, but it's great for tougher mobs and to set-and-forget on adds.

Levels 38-39 — mind melt
The increased crit chance to mind blast and mind flay are pretty useful but we're really interested in this talent for the boost to dot crits — yet another thing we won't have till shadow form. But look, we're so very, very close now.

Level 40 — shadowform
Thank fuck for that. Your talents should now look something like this. It's been a complete pain in the arse, hasn't it? Was it this hard the first time round?

Don't worry, it's all over now. From here on in it's a complete joy :)

I'm going to take a break from talents to talk a bit about early gear choices, spells and glyphs next. We'll come back to talents and finish up levelling after that.

Shadow priest origins: general impressions

I've gone back to my roots and started levelling a second priest to help build a new guide for first-timers.

I wrote my first levelling guide back in February 2008. It began with five points in wand specialisation and recommended a healthy stack of spirit on early gear. That was the golden age of priest levelling, when wands hit like trucks and it was virtually impossible to run out of mana.

But talents that once shone in early levels have now either lost their lustre or vanished altogether as an unfortunate consequence of Blizzard's end-game balancing act — which is a shame, considering how much trouble they have gone to in other areas to improve the levelling experience (for 'improve', read 'speed up').

Rolling a priest now is a bit like rolling a mage — but without the nukes or free water.

The early years
When Lanchester crawled out of her tomb she had a mace and knew only how to smite, which is a kind of ranged tickle. Smite had a long cast time and did marginally more damage than the mace, at the cost of half her mana bar. At level 4 she leared shadow word: pain, and at level 6 she got power word: shield, neither of which helped us kill things much, but both spells proved marvellous mana dumps.

Thus it was that while limping round Death Knell the true cost of the mana regeneration nerf first began to dawn on me. We all looked at it as level 80 raiders, never giving the poor schmucks stuck grinding the barrens a second thought.

Levelling priests in the past have been able to rely on their natural mana regeneration to minimise down time and compensate for their steady dps. Even base mana regeneration was enough to replace a mana bar in a few seconds — the time it takes to set up your next target, say. But with Lanchester, I found myself drinking regularly in-between pulls, even at levels 3 and 4.

The nerf to out-of-combat regen has hit low-level priests hardest of all, so it's good to see that Blizzard are at least revisiting this issue.

Venturing out
At about level 5, we ran out of starter quests and set off into the wide world. The first thing we did was get a lesser magic wand. Our wand had a higher dps than our spells. We sometimes shielded, set the wand and nipped out for a cup of tea. We think somebody got the item levels of wands wrong somewhere along the line but hope nobody important notices.

Wands were the only fun thing about the next five levels. We still used spells, but more out of habit than effectiveness. Massive amounts of wanding was the only thing standing between us and a drinking problem.

We learned a new rank of smite at level 6, renew at 8 and - thank god - mind blast at 10. Like an old woman with corns, we crawled our way to talent points.

Towards maturity
We bought some extortionately priced auction house greens, stacking spirit and intellect. We dropped our first three talent points into spirit tap. We settled into a comfortable pattern of nuke > dot > shield > wand that left us well outside the five-second rule when spirit tap kicked in and we stretched back to watch the mana roll in (we'll come back to these things another time). Nothing happened.

Well ok, something happened. We got the green hand icon and I presume the tooltip was correct but the effect was utterly underwhelming. We persevered for another seven levels, stacking as much spirit and intellect as is inhumanly possible from uncommon cloth on a budget, but at level 20 we finally accepted that the glorious days of unending mana were over.

This is when we learned devouring plague and holy fire - this latter the spell equivalent of a St Bernard. Finally something that did higher dps than our wand. And it got slightly easier. Shame about the cooldown.

From here on out it's never as hard as the first twenty levels again, though you won't really be able to relax until shadowform at 40 and you are going to spend more time drinking than seems quite reasonable. You will get very, very bored of wanding and resent the fact that killing things any other way takes almost as long and most of your mana bar. There will be a time — several levels, in fact — where you will despair of your talent choices and wonder why spend them at all. You will think it can't possibly be this boring as a mage or a warlock and darkly contemplate re-rolling. But you won't, because at level 40 you learn shadowform, you get a new button, which makes a delicious hiss and turns you a creepy purple colour, you will look cool in anything, even eye-wateringly ugly Outland greens, it will get much easier to kill things and, you may hope, even a little bit fun.

I'll get to the practical stuff next, I promise :)

Shadow priest origins

When I set out to revise my shadow levelling guides, I realised the landscape had changed. Not only did Wrath render much of my previous advice obsolete, recent patches appeared to have fundamentally altered the levelling experience for priests — not, I suspected, in a good way.

So I created Lanchester, a Forsaken female in the image of James Whale's magnificent Bride of Frankenstein. This was before I realised the Forsaken were evil scumbags. I even made her an alchemist. Oops.

Putting our genocidal impulses aside, we set off to explore the early levels of priesthood with fresh eyes (or eye sockets, at any rate), and impart the meagre fruits of our wisdom to you, dear reader.

We'll muse about gear, talents and abilities, we'll laugh together, cry together, and if there's time we'll devise an appropriately grisly death for the misogynist programmer who modelled our saggy grey tits and camel's foot. You're one sick pervert, you know that?

Watch this space.

The dead zone

I got my mage to 60 over the weekend and bid a joyous farewell to Azeroth.

Those last ten levels were truly awful. I think it was a combination of the tedium of zone-hopping — Felwood to Ungoro to Plaguelands to Winterspring to Silithus — and the utter dearth of gear.

I forgot how pointless quest rewards were back in classic. I don't think I equipped anything after Hinterlands. No crafted armor is worth wearing and the auction house is virtually empty of decent gear until 55 or so, when BC drops start appearing for outrageously inflated prices. You can find the odd bit of spellpower gear but generally at the cost of stamina and intellect. I suppose you could run instances to pick up some reasonable blues, but who does anymore? I went through the Dark Portal still wearing some 40-something armor and jewellery, and don't get me started on weapons. Basically, 50-60 was vile.

Which got me thinking. If you are melee, or a hunter, your primary stats contribute directly to your combat stats — strength and agility boost attack power and crit at the same time, in various combinations, depending on your class. So even in crappy boe greens, which is what we're talking about here, your damage is respectable. But, short of a very poor conversion of intellect to crit, casters depend entirely on combat stats for damage, stats that are very hard to come by before Outland.

Presumably it all balances out somehow. But it did make we wonder if melee classes have an easier time traversing this dead zone of gear than casters, and why casters don't get more of a baseline benefit from primary stats.

And if you're wondering why I waited till 60 to move to Outland, that's because it took me all of two levels to hit 300 mining. Thorium, how I hate thee.

Rough guide to shadow talents

Work is hectic at the moment and the blog is having to take a back seat — which is a shame because some of the guides are out of date or just plain wrong and there are many, many great blogs I need to profile and add to my blog roll. I'll get around to it eventually.

In the meantime, there's a small chance some hapless young priest might stumble upon this blog in search of help and advice. What would happen to that bewildered adventurer if they saw me now? They would leave disappointed, confused, rudderless. That's a burden I'm not willing to bear.

So here, like a prophylactic for ignorance, is Merlot's rough guide to shadow talents — for pve, that is. While I could hazard a guess about pvp, I'd be talking out of my meta socket.

We're all pretty focused on levelling right now, so I've scored each talent out of five for its usefulness while levelling as well as raiding — five is most useful, one is pretty much useless.

What really struck me as I played around with my own talents and wrote this guide is how bottom-heavy shadow feels for levelling. To move on up the tree you really need to pick up talents that are of limited or questionable use for everyday grinding and questing. That's why I haven't bothered posting a levelling build yet — there are so many optional talents it really comes down to what works best for your play style.

If you're one of those bewildered adventurers searching for meaning in a strange new world, remember to check the comments where my more experienced readers will undoubtedly have exposed my horrendous errors.

Tier 1	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Spirit tap	3	5	2
Improved spirit tap	2	1	5
Blackout	5	3	1

Spirit tap is the star of any priest levelling build but it's only of situational use in a raid. Shame then that it's a prerequisite for improved spirit tap, as you'll need this in raids. Conversely, improved spirit tap is not much use for levelling — whether you crit a lot or not, the benefit is small on short fights and spirit tap will overwrite it when the mob dies.

Blackout's really not needed while levelling, but it definitely makes it easier. In raids, I'd avoid it: bosses are immune and tanks won't thank you if it procs while they're trying to move trash.

Tier 2	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Shadow affinity	3	1	5
Improved shadow word: pain	2	5	5
Shadow focus	3	3	5

For levelling, you don't need shadow affinity. To be honest, I don't even know if you need this talent in raids anymore, given shadow form's innate threat reduction. But I'll assume in a full raid build and geared properly it will come in very handy. No doubt we'll be hearing more about this from theorycrafters if it is indeed an issue.

Improved shadow word: pain is a no-brainer. More damage = good.

Shadow focus is one of those optional talents for levelling. Remember you need 4% spell hit to eliminate resists on equal-level mobs — well, between this and misery further down the tree, you're going to have 6%, enough for mobs two levels higher. That's not taking any hit you may have from gear into account. But you'll need 17% hit for raid bosses, so you won't want to skip this as you enter Naxx.

Tier 3	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Improved psychic scream	2	1	1
Improved mind blast	5	2	5

Improved psychic scream is a waste of points in any pve context; take this talent only if you want silence as it's a prerequisite.

Improved mindblast isn't terribly useful when levelling, but it is needed for raiding — the only question is how many points you should spend. Four points is probably enough here, unless you're factoring in a lot of haste.

Tier 4	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Veiled shadows	2	1	4
Shadow reach	2	5	5
Shadow weaving	3	3	5

Veiled shadows isn't terribly useful for levelling, but the reduced cooldown on your shadow fiend will be important in long raid encounters.

Similarly, shadow weaving isn't that important for levelling (you probably won't have time to benefit from a full stack, even if the mob is alive long enough to build it up) but it's a cornerstone of your raid dps.

Reach is almost mandatory with mind flay. Always take this.

Tier 5	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Silence	1	3	2
Vampiric embrace	1	5	2
Improved vampiric embrace	2	5	3
Focused mind	3	3	5

Silence is nice to have while levelling but you can easily survive without it, while in raids there are generally better options for interrupting caster trash and, as usual, bosses are immune. But I still like having it.

Since the nerf, I'm not sure how useful vampiric embrace is to raids, even in its improved form. But solo, it's still a wonderful spell and I'll never leave home without it.

Focused mind is easily skippable for levelling but it's important for your longevity in raids.

Tier 6	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Mind melt	2	3	5
Darkness	5	5	5

I don't think you're going to notice a 4% increased chance to crit while levelling, but I'd pick this talent up anyway for want of better options. For raiding it's a boost, no matter how small.

Darkness, again, is a no-brainer.

Tier 7	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Shadow form	1	5	5
Shadow power	5	5	5

No ambiguity here, no doubt — pick up your shadowy purple goodness and finally join the ranks of casters who enjoy double-damage crits. It's about time.

Tier 8	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Improved shadow form	2	5	3
Misery	3	4	5

The tooltip for improved shadow form must have been written by the work experience kid because it is grammatically — and therefore literally — wrong. What this talent actually does, in addition to the snare removal, is give shadow form 70% passive pushback reduction, and for that it is rather useful for levelling. Now you can more-or-less melt faces at point blank. What little pushback that remains will gimp you a little, but in two levels I've had no problems at all. So much so, that I rarely even bother to fear-flay any more. In BC raids I hardly ever wished for pushback protection, but I think it became more important in later content. That's why I've given it a rather non-committal 3 rating for raiding, but I'm sure someone will put me straight if I'm underestimating it.

Misery's great in any situation for the 15% spell power bonus; the hit may or may not be useful to you and your raid, but it comes as a package so make use of it if you can.

Tier 9	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Psychic horror	2	1	1
Vampiric touch	1	5	5
Pain and suffering	3	2	5

Psychic horror is in the improved psychic scream category: worthless for pve. It may even be worthless for pvp. Regardless, don't waste your points.

Vampiric touch is essential for any shadow build. It's now our most powerful dot (I think...) as well as triggering the rather underwhelming replenishment buff. What can I say, rain is as good as a river if your thirsty.

Pain and suffering doesn't really do much for levelling builds but you will be grateful for it in raids.

Tier 10	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Twisted faith	5	5	5

My favourite new talent is a dps win in virtually every situation, even though the spirit-to-spell power conversion is a bit lacklustre. For Merlot, at level 72, it equates to about 30 spell power or less than 3% of my total bonus spell power, but I assume that will get better as I collect raid gear designed around it. I love spirit and love having an excuse to gear for it. It works with spirit tap and improved spirit tap too, for an extra boost. The mind blast and mind flay boost is the best bit — shadow word: pain should almost always be up.

Tier 11	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Dispersion	1	2	3

And after my favourite new talent, comes my most disappointing.If you are this high in the tree — and really, if you're dps, you've no reason not to be — you might as well pick it up. But don't expect it to change your life.

While levelling, it may, at a push, save your life, but six seconds is a very short time in which to extricate yourself from danger and it is more than likely only going to delay the inevitable. Remember, those are six seconds during which you cannot shield, heal yourself or fear. My experience of it in solo combat so far is that it's simply a frustration. I don't even generally need the mana.

In raids, it is situationally useful. Before the expansion, I popped it in Kara when Nightbane feared me into charred earth and I popped it when Illhoof sacrified me. It was too short for both situations, but it was better than nothing. It will likely be used like this in Northrend too — our challenge will be to time our mana needs around specific boss effects to ensure we get the most out of both the damage reduction and mana regeneration, otherwise it just becomes a mana pot with a silence. Not what any of us hoped for our top tier talent, but I've been over that enough times to know when to quit moaning. No honestly, I have.

* PS, if you think the tables look weird, they are. Blogger hates me.

The divine shadow

Raiding went out of the window for Merlot weeks ago, now my biggest concern is how to spec and dress to surge through Northrend like a dose of clap. I think the weeks of inactivity have gone to my head, because I'm playing with a rather wacky hybrid idea.

What I really want is a heavy spirit shadow build. It suits how I like to play — dot, wand, loot, rinse, repeat. The combination of high base regeneration and spirit tap make for a single-target grinding dynamo. Or so I like to think.

It's a great idea in theory, but there are some practical obstacles.

Gear is one problem. I have only slightly more spirit on my current raid gear than agility. In Outland, spirit is almost exclusively a healer's privilege.

Had I the foresight to collect an off-spec set of healing gear, I'd be in a much stronger position now. With the upcoming changes to spell power, healing gear is looking ideal for my needs.

Sadly, I didn't. I can run a few instances now and pick some up, but my best bet is badge gear. I have over a hundred burning a hole in my bank, which should be enough to boost my spirit for starters.

Longer term, spirit seems more prevalent in Northrend so it should work itself out as I go.

The real headaches start when I look at talents. Spirit stackers have a clear incentive to pick up twisted faith, which increases spell damage by a proportion of your spirit. But if you're stacking spirit, you also want divine spirit and its improved version. Unfortunately, you can't have both.

In a raid situation, it's a no-brainer, you take the shadow talent and hope you have a disc priest in your group. But solo, I'm not so sure. The purpose of a levelling build is not to min/max but to support solo questing and grinding. Improved divine spirit also provides mana regeneration.

The question then becomes: can I kill quickly and easily enough without the greater spell damage? If the answer is yes, being able to kill mobs continuously without drinking downtime wins out.

So you see I'm leaning slightly in favour of improved divine spirit for levelling, but there's another problem. I can't get improved divine spirit and vampiric touch at 70. Meh. The earliest I can have the two is 73.

Do I really need VT for levelling? If they hadn't changed the mana regen, I would have said yes, absolutely, without question. But now I'm not so sure. Considering you have to cast mind blast to trigger replenishment, which just isn't in my normal grinding rotation, I doubt it. And anyway, I'm planning to end up with full mana between pulls, I shouldn't need replenishment.

I might need it for damage though. I just don't know. Maybe devouring plague will be able to take its place.

So in the end, I'm facing the possibility of a hybrid build for the journey to Northrend, one with divine spirit and shadow form — what I've taken to calling the divine shadow. But it all hinges on how much damage I need to put out on the way.

I know it's not going to win any dps race, and I'll almost certainly have to respec to run instances. But you've never needed high dps to burn through world mobs anyway, and I can't help drooling at the thought of those huge spirit tap ticks.

What do you think? It's a terrible idea right? Should I suck it up and spec dispersion? Go on, you can be honest. Just try to be kind :)

A shadow priest levelling spec (41-70)

Edit: this post fell sadly out of date when the talent trees were reworked for Wrath of the Lich King. It's now of minor historical interest at most. I'm working on a new levelling guide but Please check our my rough guide to shadow talents in the meantime.

You pop shadowform for the first time. You hear that deliciously creepy hiss. You start to shimmer and descend into the churning shadows.

You have abandoned the Light. There is no turning back.

Your journey past level 40 is one of discipline and power. You will learn to channel your destructive energies with focus and efficiency. You are the angel of death: dispassionate and devastating.

This build assumes that you followed my spec up to level 40. If not, go respec now! Our aims remain the same — to level swiftly and efficiently. To this end, we need to put our talent points into two trees. We are going to focus firstly on increasing our damage output then return to the discipline tree for some talents to help improve our mana efficiency. So let's get started...

Levels 41-45: wand specialisation (discipline tree)
We made good use of these points before shadowform and we want to get them back as early as possible. Wanding is going to remain an important source of damage as you level to 70. Don't forget, shadowform affects shadow wand damage too so always try to pick up shadow wands.

Levels 46-50: shadow weaving
Five points in shadow weaving will ensure each shadow damage spell you land increases shadow damage taken by your target by 2%. This effect stacks up to five times, so can amount up to a 10% damage increase. In reality, you will rarely if ever get a full stack on a single target in solo play, so this isn't that useful as a levelling talent. But you need the five points to reach the next level of talents, and a damage increase of even 4-6% is not to be sniffed at.

Levels 51-55: misery
The inspiration for my blog, if only because darkness was already taken. This increases all spell damage taken by the target by 5%. Again, it's not going to break your solo play, but it stacks nicely with all your other damage multipliers. Plus, it's nice to have when running instances.

Level 56: vampiric touch
Another class-defining talent, this spell causes damage over time and returns mana to you and your party equivalent to 5% of shadow damage dealt to the target while the spell is active. We could have taken this sooner if we hadn't put five points into wand specialisation, but I think the wand damage is more important.

Levels 57-58: improved power word: fortitude (discipline)
This increases the effect of your stamina buffs by 30%. These next few talents in the discipline tree are fillers in a way — our ultimate goal is meditation. But as you head into Outland, the extra stamina is really quite useful.

Levels 59-61: improved power word: shield (discipline)
Increases the damage absorbed by your bubble by 15%. Again, a bit of a filler talent. You need to move to the next level and the alternative talents are even less useful to you.

Level 62: inner focus (discipline)
This buff gives you a free spell every three minutes, and increases that spell's critical strike chance by 25%. Shadow priests should only ever use this on shadow word: pain (undead may wish to use devouring plague instead), which is your biggest mana cost in any spell rotation. It's useful to bind it to the spell in a macro to ensure you get the full benefit. At level 70, it can amount to up to 15 mp5 if used in this way.

Levels 63-65: meditation (discipline)
This is the reason we have specced so deeply into discipline. Meditation enables 30% of your base mana regeneration to continue while casting. As you progress through Outland and collect spell damage gear, you will see your spirit slowly dwindle and this helps to balance the reduced gains from spirit tap. You may have worked out that this talent too will become less useful as your spirit falls, but that can't be helped. This is simply better than the alternative, which is no mana regeneration at all. For me, this talent currently equates to 46 mp5 but you should start off with considerably more.

Levels 66-67: focused mind
Now that we are done with discipline we can return to shadow. These two points will max out focused mind and ensure the lowest possible mana cost for your mind blast and mind flay spells.

Levels 68-70: shadow power
It's difficult to know what to do with these last three points. If you are planning on raiding at 70, you're going to have to respec anyway, which makes spending them at all seem rather arbitrary. If you find yourself running lots of instances in your later levels, then I'd recommend putting these last three points into shadow affinity, which will reduce your threat by 25%. But if your experience is anything like mine, you'll find it much quicker and more convenient to level through quests and grinding, in which case threat reduction is irrelevant. You could put them in improved mind blast to reduce the spell's cooldown, but it's not terribly good practice to spam mind blast anyway. So I've opted to put them into shadow power. Three points will increase the critical strike chance of mind blast and shadow word: death by 9%. That's a nice increase for three points, but you're not going to be using these spells a lot solo. It's a shame that a school with such iconic talents as vampiric embrace, shadow form, darkness and vampiric touch finishes so limply but I guess we can't have it all our own way.

So there you have it. Congratulations on reaching level 70. If you've followed my advice, your talents should look something like this.

This is a nice final build if you're going to continue questing and grinding solo. But if you are planning on running instances and gearing up for raiding, the next thing you should do is respec. This build already has the core talents of a raiding build, but we'll need to move a few points around to maximise our utility and damage. But that's for another post.

A shadow priest levelling spec (1-40)

Edit: this post fell sadly out of date when the talent trees were reworked for Wrath of the Lich King. It's now of minor historical interest at most. I'm working on a new levelling guide but Please check our my rough guide to shadow talents in the meantime.

I'm a firm believer that all talents are equal — but like the book says, some talents are more equal than others.

This progressive build is my favourite way to get from level 10 to 40. It's designed around mana efficiency and minimal downtime. The ultimate goal is shadowform at level 40.

To get the most out of it, you need to get used to wanding down your mobs for the last 30-40% of their health. This should be sufficient to take you out of the five-second rule and ensure you get the full benefit from spirit tap. With the right balance of intellect, spirit and stamina, you'll be able to keep going indefinitely, making you the envy of mages everywhere and even putting hunters to their shame.

Levels 10-14: wand specialisation (discipline tree)
It may seen counterintuitive to start a shadow levelling build in discipline, but this talent is one of the gems of any solo priest build, adding an extra 25% to your wand damage. You will be wanding a lot on your way to 70 so make the most of it. Some guides will tell you to take spirit tap first then come back for this. That's fine too, but I find at low levels spirit regenerates fast enough on its own and prefer the dps increase up front.

Levels 15-19: spirit tap
Spirit tap does two things — when you land a killing blow on a mob, it doubles your normal mana regeneration for 15 seconds; it also enables 50% of your mana regeneration while casting (i.e. when you are within the five-second rule). So whether you are resting or tackling adds, you gain mana. This is the primary reason why you want to prioritise spirit gear as you level.

Levels 20-21: improved shadow word: pain
This increases the duration of shadow word: pain by six seconds. This means you get two additional ticks of damage from the spell, increasing its overall damage by 25%.

Levels 22-24: shadow focus
Each point in shadow focus reduced your target's chance to resist your spells by 2%. Fewer resists equals less time casting and greater mana efficiency. Three points is enough to ensure your spells have the maximum possible chance to land on mobs up to two levels higher than you, which makes questing and grinding a lot easier and ensures you get more experience per kill.

Levels 25-29: blackout
Blackout gives all your shadow damage spells a chance to stun your target. It's not a critical talent for levelling but it's very sweet when it goes off.

Levels 30-31: shadow reach
Increases the range of your offensive shadow spells by 20%. This is the reason why we have waited until now to take the next talent, mind flay.

Level 32: mind flay
Mind flay is a channelled spell that does damage over three seconds and reduces movement speed by 50%. It's a priest's most mana efficient spell. The channelled nature means it can be interrupted by damage, but the snare effect works beautifully with psychic scream, enabling you to keep a feared mob under control while doing damage. However, the range of the spell is so low that this method only really works with shadow reach.

Levels 33-34: improved psychic scream
This reduces the cooldown of psychic scream by four seconds. It's not an essential talent, but it makes continuous grinding using the fear/flay method that much easier. It's also a requirement for silence later on.

Level 35: vampiric embrace
A core talent of any shadow build, this debuff returns 15% of your shadow spell damage as health to you and your party. While playing solo, it reduces your reliance on the expensive power word: shield and helps to passively top up any splash damage as you go.

Levels 36-37: improved vampiric embrace
Increases the health returned by the spell to 25%. This talent really begins to shine at 40 with shadowform, when your incoming damage is reduced by 15%. You can pretty much take a beating one-on-one without loosing health.

Level 38: silence
This spell is on a fairly long cooldown, and as such is not a critical talent. However, it's your only spell interrupt at a distance and comes in very handy when fighting casters. The silence lasts long enough to pull the mob into fear range, giving you a second interrupt.

Level 39: focused mind
As we're on a mana efficiency drive, where better to put a point than in a talent that reduces the mana cost of some of your spells? To be honest, it's a filler, but one point reduces the mana cost of mind flay, mind blast and mind control by 5%.

Level 40: darkness, shadowform
Shadowform requires 30 points in the shadow tree, so level 40 is the earliest we can pick it up. Unfortunately, five of our required points are currently languishing in the discipline tree so we'll need to respec.

Pick up the same talents described above and put your spare five points into darkness, which increases your shadow damage by 10%. Your final point goes into shadowform, and your build should look like this.

Congratulations, you have just increased your shadow dps by a whopping 15% with just one point. This increase also applies to shadow wand damage, so from now on it's worth trying to pick up only shadow damage wands.

The trade-off with shadowform is an inability to cast holy spells (essentially, just your heals, smite and holy fire), but with the damage multipliers on shadow spells from talents, you should never even consider holy damage again.

Unlearning your talents costs gold, and at level 40 you are probably saving up for your mount. If you don't have the money, it's not essential to respec. Simply put your next five points into darkness and pick up shadowform at 45.

So there you are: your first 40 or so levels as a shadow priest. This build won't top the damage metres but it is an incredibly efficient, effective build that will enable you to quest and grind swiftly and either heal or dps in groups as required. Next time, we'll take a look at later levels on the grind to 70.

What not to wear (part 1)

Being purple and transparent, I don't much care what my clothes look like. Still, this game does require a certain amount of fashion sense — enough to know what gear will enhance your class, spec and play style the most. A warrior with intellect or a hunter with a fiery weapon is a sad sight, like a transvestite in their mother's clothes. But figuring out what stats look best on you is the easy part. The real trick is finding the gear to match. And for shadow priests, it inevitably involves some compromise.

The basic advice for levelling priests is to balance intellect, spirit and stamina and add spell damage where you can. If you're specced shadow, you should have five points in spirit tap to reduce down-time in-between fights. With enough spirit, you will rarely need to drink at all in solo play.

As you progress through Outland, the choices become more difficult. The good news is that stamina and intellect are abundant, and this kind of gear usually comes with a smattering of spell damage. It's quite easy to build up a substantial quota of spell damage simply through quest rewards. The trouble is that spirit doesn't really feature on dps gear, so as your spell damage increases your mana efficiency will decline. Speccing into discipline for meditation will help, as will vampiric touch, but the returns from spirit tap will slowly decline and you will find yourself drinking more often in-between fights.

At 70, you face a dilemma. If you want to raid, you need to improve your spell damage. The consensus for Karazhan entry seems to be about +700 shadow damage. But this comes at a cost. The best spell damage gear provides less intellect and stamina. My own health and mana pools are lower now than when I first hit 70. Add to that the high threat caused by vampiric embrace and vampiric touch and you become incredibly squishy.

That's the price of raiding shadow. In return, you will provide more health and mana to your party, which at the end of the day is your reason for being there in the first place, so perhaps it's not a bad compromise after all.

There's one other stat that raiding shadow priests need to consider that I haven't covered here, and that's spell hit. More on that next time, along with some hints on how to gear up for raiding when you hit 70.

How not to play nicely with others

Grouping should be like driving. You should get lessons first and be made to pass a test before it's allowed. And everyone should be made to tank and heal at least once to get their licence.

I came to this conclusion yesterday after a brief and disastrous assault on the Scarlet Monastery with my warrior alt, Hoffman. I am really enjoying levelling him and thought, at 35, it was about time I started learning to tank. I picked a low level instance that would allow me some breathing room to make mistakes and had a well-balanced group with dps, healing and crowd control. How hard could it be?

I learnt just how hard on practically the first pull. We had a group of four mobs — 3 melee types and one caster. I put a big skull over the first caster but before I could mark the other three and explain the strategy a druid got too close and pulled agro. It was at this point that I realised I didn't know what to do. My instinct was to start hitting things so I ran to the caster and got his attention. But then I noticed the three melee mobs were hitting on the rest of the group. So I left the caster to find them. We were all bunched in one corner and I couldn't make out who was a mob and who was a player, so I thunderclapped, figuring I would get them all at once. I broke sheep. Meanwhile, the caster was happily nuking me without a care in the world. At some point, the priest dropped a fear bomb which resulted in adds. I broke some more sheep. I died. The rest of the group survived.

Time for some introspection. I was an awful tank. But it was my first time tanking, and nothing you do as a levelling warrior prepares you for the role. I was in defensive stance for pretty much the first time and unfamiliar with my action bar, not to mention the tactics of holding agro. But the rest of the group were pretty shoddy too, making mistakes and behaving in ways that made my job that much harder. I suddenly realised that the role of warrior is so much more than playing meat shield to a bunch of squishies. You have responsibility for the group, and they don't always make it easy for you.

Next time I group up with Merlot, I will have a new-found level of respect for my tank, however well they play their class. And I think it will be a long while before I venture back into the fray with Hoffman.

The ultimate quest

When you spent mind-number hours in the yeti cave waiting for Helcular's Rod to drop (substitute any other painful grinding memory here) you at least had something to look forward to. Every kill brought you a small step closer to Outland, every dead yeti meant a skill point in skinning, and a few extra coppers towards your mount. So it was something of a disappointment to hit 70 and realise nothing much had changed. Well, the 100 gold you needed for your blood elf racing turkey has inflated to 5000, and the yetis are elementals now, but it's all sinkingly familiar. While the taunting little blue line has vanished, you have the unsettling feeling that there are unseen levels left to climb. You inspect other players at a frequency bordering on paranoia. And they always have better gear than you. You discover the armory. You read a post on the blizzard forums that says you need a minium of 600 shadow damage to get into Karazhan. You don't even know what Karazhan is. You get the feeling that there is more to this game than levelling and resolve to do some research. And you think, modestly, that others might like to follow you on your quest.