Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, I haven't posted much for a couple of reasons.

Recently, I started the long and confusing work of planning my own wedding, which is taking a lot more than I expected, as I didn't really know anything beyond what I wanted for the ceremony itself...there's sooo much crap that goes into making a wedding happen.

Secondly, Tony (my fiancee) plays WoW as well, however he began a character on the same server as our long time friend Tas. Since WoW is one of the only ways we can spend time together until he moves back here, I made a new Shadow Priest on the same server - hence the long guide to Shadow Priests finally being mostly finished.

We're already into Outlands, and we should be into Northrend by this coming week, if not sooner. We'll probably get 65 or 66 tonight, as we average about 2 - 3 levels a day. Oddly enough, our professions are staying almost the same level as our characters. =)

WoW: Ixy's Shadow Priest Guide

Introduction
Shadow priest is perhaps my most beloved class/spec in the game. I played it way, way back before there was even much use for it. Every time I've come back to WoW, I've picked up a shadow priest as at least an alt, and then eventually devoted a ton of time into Teiris.

This will be updated as things change for our spec, as we discuss and dissect the class together on this board. A lot of it will be drawn from other sources in the beginning and throughout it's maintenance.

Shadow priests have been moving towards a more heavily DPS oriented spec for a long while now; the emphasis on utility was decreased when Vampiric Touch was transformed into a replenishment ability, and said replenishment was handed out to other classes.

There will be several focuses to this thread - gearing for entry level raids, gearing for 25 man raids, talents and rotations, etc.

This is obviously a massive work in progress. Aside from finding all of the basic information, I am comparing items, building talent trees, creating item sets, and formatting it all into something that looks pretty on the forums. I'm going to try to toss out a bit of everything at first, especially the spell rotations and gearing bits for starting raiders.

Credits
ElitistJerks.com
WoWhead.com
MaxDPS.com
Amaterasura of Hydraxis/Teiris of Steamwheedle Cartel
Serephyne of Steamwheedle Cartel



Stat Math
Our stat priorities have changed several times over the course of WoW's existence; this portion will probably be updated again at some point as they continue to move Shadow Priests into a heavier DPS role.

Currently, we want to get gear with the following stats, in this order:
Hit (Until Capped)
Crit
Haste
Spirit
Intelligence
Everything Else

Combat Ratings:
1% crit = 45.9 critical strike rating
1% hit = 26.23 hit rating
1% haste = 32.79 haste rating

1% crit = 166.67 intellect

3/3 Shadow Focus & 3/3 Misery Shadow Priest Hit Cap is 11% or around 289 at level 80. If you are a Draenei Priest, you can deduct another 1% from your hit cap.


Regen:
5 * 0.005575 * sqrt{Int} * Spirit = OO5SR regen



Gems
Gems will of course be varied depending upon what gear you have. This is merely a list of suggestions for quick referencing!

Red:
Runed Stormjewel - 23 Spellpower
Runed Scarlet Ruby - 19 Spellpower

Yellow:
Rigid Stormjewel - 23 Hit

Orange:
Veiled Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Hit Rating
Potent Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Critical Strike Rating
Reckless Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Haste Rating
Luminous Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Intellect

All gems with a * indicate Epic gems that have not yet been released/discovered on Live Servers.


Glyphs
Major
The first two glyphs you get should be Shadow and Shadow Word: Pain. The third glyph can be taken up by Mind Flay or by Fade, depending upon your play style. MF will make it so you have about a 34 yard range, but Fade will let you drop aggro more often.

Glyph of Shadow - While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spellpower by 10% of your Spirit for 10 seconds.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain - Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

Glyph of Dispersion - Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 seconds.

Glyph of Fade - Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.

Glyph of Mind Flay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target's movement speed by 10%.

Minor
Aside from the obvious Shadowfiend and Fading, there's really not a lot of good minor glyphs out there for priests in general, and Shadow priests in specific. The Levitate glyph is nice for bag space, though...

Glyph of Shadowfiend - Receive 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage.

Glyph of Fading - Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%.

Glyph of Levitate - Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.


Consumables
Elixir of Major Shadow Power - Increase Shadow spell power by 55 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.

Spellpower Elixir - Increase spell power by 58 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom - Increase Intellect and Spirit by 30 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Elixir of Might Thoughts - Increase Intellect by 45 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Elixir of Spirit - Increase Spirit by 50 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Flask of the Frost Wyrm - Increases spell power by 125 for 1.00 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.

Tender Shoveltusk Steak - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Firecracker Salmon - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Fish Feast - Set out a great feast that will feed your party! Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 80 Attack Power, 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Spiced Worm Burger - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Critical Strike Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Spicy Blue Nettlefish - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Critical Strike Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Very Burnt Worg - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Imperial Manta Ray Steak - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.



Talent Builds
Preserved for Reference - Historical Specs
There were a few ways you could spec a shadow priest for raiding, though they were all quite similar at their cores.

Ye Olde Shadow Spec - This build leaves you with 2 extra points that can be used in a number of ways. The most common are 2 into Imp VE, or Shadow Affinity which is not really required on single target raid bosses but may help on groups of raid mobs.

Mental Agility Shadow Spec - This build cuts out Veiled Shadows, and a bit of Twisted Faith in favour of Mental Agility in the Disc tree. This allows for a slight damage increase, however since you only should need to cast Shadow Word: Pain once per mob you target, you're left with only two instant cast spells - Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death.

Improved Divine Spirit Shadow Spec - This build may be invalidated shortly when Divine Spirit is folded into our regular abilities. While this build allows for Imp DS (which grants us more spirit, and adds spellpower equal to 100% of our spirit), it forgoes the self mana regen talent Dispersion and all of Twisted Faith.

Current Builds
Shadow Priest - With the new 3.1 patch, there really is little reason to delve to far into the Discipline tree much. This is how the spec looks, though some people will change around the two points in Improved Shadowform for max'd out Twisted Faith. I personally find the reduced pushback better due to the heavy use of Mind Flay.



Spells and Rotations
Current Spells
Devouring Plague (Rank 9)
25% of base mana
30 yd range
Instant cast
24 sec cooldown
Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 1376 Shadow damage over 24 sec. 15% of damage caused by the Devouring Plague heals the caster.


Vampiric Touch (Rank 5)
16% of base mana
30 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Causes 850 Shadow damage over 15 sec to your target and causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second when you deal damage from Mind Blast. In addition, if the Vampiric Touch is dispelled it will cause 680 damage to the afflicted target.


Vampiric Embrace
30 yd range
Instant
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes you to be healed for 15% and other party members to be healed for 3% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 5 min.


Mind Flay (Rank 9)
9% of base mana
20 yd range
Channeled
Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 588 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.


Shadow Word: Pain (Rank 12)
22% of base mana
30 yd range
Instant cast
A word of darkness that causes 1380 Shadow damage over 18 sec.


Raiding Spell Rotation
By and large, full spell rotations only work on boss mobs - trash is usually dead way to quickly for them to matter. That being said, we're going to first look at what you may be able to pull off on a trash mob followed by what to be doing with bosses.

Trash Mobs
While we'd like to think that trash mobs have enough HP for a full rotation, they typically don't. Most trash mobs in instances and raids and even soloing will be dead before the fourth spell lands, so we need less spells to crank out some DPS and pull off a Replenishment.

I suggest putting up a Vampiric Touch, and immediately hitting a Ming Blast to trigger replenishment. From there you can throw out a Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay a bit until the mob is dead or Mind Blast is back up.

If there are groups of mobs, you can always pick a focus target and lay down Mind Sear for some mindless DPS.

Boss Mobs
This type of mob will have more health, and aside from their own special tricks which you will need to take into consideration. This is where you will have time to use an opening spell rotation, and a maintenance rotation.

You'll want to open each boss mob up with this rotation: Devouring Plague (SW 1), Vampiric Touch (SW 2), Vampiric Embrace, Mind Blast (SW 3), Mind Flay/Mind Sear (SW 4/5), Shadow Word: Pain.

Now, there may be some question as to why Shadow Word: Pain is appearing so late in the rotation; by going through five spells prior to dropping SW:P, you get a maximized SW:P on the boss being refreshed every time you do Mind Flay/Sear.

From there, you start prioritizing your spells like this: Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast, Mind Flay/Sear. This is your basic maintenance rotation for the rest of that boss fight.

If SW:P drops for some reason, refresh it manually. If you lose Shadow Weaving x5 due to repositioning, begin the opening rotation again to bring it back up, and then come back into the maintenance rotation.



Pre-Raiding Gear
This research was done using Rawr with the following settings:
13/0/58 Talent Spec
Buffs - Divine Spirit, Improved PW: Fortitude, Shadow Protection, Heroic Presence (not really counted), Misery, Spellpower Elixir, Elixir of Draenic Wisdom, Hit Food
+3 (Boss) Relative Level
100% FSR time
6 Minute Fight
100ms Game/Brain Latency
100% Effect from Shadowfiend/Replenishment/JoW
2% Focus on Survivability
Above mentioned Spell Priority/Rotation

This is the top end version of the gear available before raiding. Now, one might not realistically get all of this before raiding, but it is what you should be shooting for - if something's an upgrade but not the Best in Slot, take it for now and if you get better later on, great!



Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum Gear
This research was done using Rawr with the following settings:
13/0/58 Talent Spec
Buffs - Divine Spirit, Improved PW: Fortitude, Shadow Protection, Heroic Presence (not really counted), Misery, Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Hit Food (Naxx10) or SP Food
+3 (Boss) Relative Level
100% FSR time
6 Minute Fight
100ms Game/Brain Latency
100% Effect from Shadowfiend/Replenishment/JoW
2% Focus on Survivability
Above mentioned Spell Priority/Rotation

For these gear sets, the Overall value was used to determine the best in slot items. Overall value balances burst DPS, sustained DPS, and survivability which is technically not optimized for any specific playstyle. I tried to keep these as "neutral" as possible, however I plan on including a Burst DPS set and Sustained DPS set using all of the gear available to a raider from these three zones.

10 Man Naxxramas Set
25 Man Naxxramas Set
Complete Pre-Ulduar Set

Now, the complete Pre-Ulduar Set pulls from all of the instances including the additional drakes in Obsidian Sanctum which does include Sarth +3D drops. If your guild is not dropping Sarth +3D to get the bracer, stick with the Punctillious Binding from prior sets.



Ulduar Gear
With how scattered and incomplete the Ulduar item information is so far, this will take a few weeks to develop and get posted - half the items aren't listing from their proper bosses or modes, and half of them are not even showing up in Theorycrafting websites.