Blizzard may have finally found a way to add respectability to the shadowpriest. The latest changes are as follows.

* Shades of Darkness ability replaced with Shadowfiend.
* Focused Mind replaces Improved Shadow Weaving and has been reduced to three ranks reducing mana cost of affected spells by 5/10/15%.
* Shadow Power has been moved to Focused Mind’s previous position.
* Misery has been moved to the Shadow tree, replacing Shadow Power.
* New talent Enlightenment replaces Misery in the Discipline tree.
* Improved Shadow Weaving has been removed.
* New talent Vampiric Touch replaces Shadow Mend.
* Misery now affects Vampiric Touch instead of Holy Fire.
* Focused Power now affects Feared targets instead of Dazed targets.
* Improved Renew tooltip updated.
* Inspiration tooltip updated.
* Holy Reach tooltip updated.
* Spirit of Redemption now provides a Spirit increase and the duration has been increased.
* Surge of Light has swapped positions with Blessed Resilience and has been reduced to two ranks providing 25/50%.
* Lightwell has been reduced to a 6 minute cooldown and the effect duration has been decreased to 6 seconds.
* New talent Holy Concentration in the Holy tree.
* New talent Circle of Healing replaces Circle of Renewal.


The change in bold is the big one. The trees definining talent for raiding is now a DoT that gains full +dmg, but generates a mana return for every member of the priests party. Thats huge. Its a 15 second DoT, and a 5% mana return. Initially I thought 5% didn't sound like much, but assuming your post BC shadowpriest does 500DPS, (and I know Nikitabanana and Beckon can do numbers like that already without the new spells), then it would be 25mana/sec to every member of the party. Fully geared and with new spells and talents, numbers like 800DPS don't seem unreasonable. That would be 40mana/sec x 5 members of the party.

Hypothetically, if a shadowpriest could do 75% of a warlock/mages DPS, while generating that kind of mana return for your casters (all healer group prob), and keeping up shadowweaving, they are leagues more attractive than they are now.

I'm not a priest, but I do like the unique angle they decided to take with Shadow, I hope they keep it. Shadowmend was certainly powerful, but wasn't particulary interesting.

BC Shadowpriest does look pretty awesome. I think even in 25 man raids you could probably (in theory, based on current info) justify a spot for a well-played Shadowpriest in just about any situation.

Definetly a PvE buff. But kinda of a PvP nerf tho :(

I was really looking foward for the second PvP heal when holy schools are silenced. Shadow Priests were looking like the best arena healers because of that. Or even the quick emergency heals in dps form. Vampiric Touch isn't as good PvP wise.

Oh well, the other buffs kinda makes up for it. Shadow priests are still good PvP healers.

Based on what we know about hunters in the expansion, I think it would go better with them or warlocks. Healers already have a retarded amount of mana regeneration.

I've already done some math and assuming the "ideal" fight (i.e. don't have to move, don't get feared etc, tank is able to hold agro) I could in my current gear (but with TBC enchants, consumeables, spells and other classes buffs not counting Shaman Totems, so CoS, BoW, JoW) fully raid buffed put out 895 DPS forever (or until I ran out of pots or the boss died :P).

While putting out 895 DPS I'd be healing 278 health/second to everyone in my group.

I'd also be giving all the casters in my group 44.75 mana/second regen. Which is 223.75mp5.

For comparison the new (Improved) Blessing of Wisdom in TBC gives 50.4 mp5. JoW on a 3 second offensive cast gives 61.67mp5. On a 1.5 second cast it's 123.3mp5. With the currently fastest wand in the game (1.2 speed) it's 154.17 mp5.
I would imagine for a dual-wielding Enchancement Shaman they'd get more regen out of JoW than Vampirc Touch but.....they do stack so can have both. And again (apart from Shadow Priests of course) healers can't get the benefits of JoW while healing. And when they do want to start wanding for JoW procs they need to move in closer to the mob than max heal range. Of course the Shadow Priest will be up close anyway but with the constant VE healing he or she will be getting it's not that bad.

So, 895 DPS with +684 unbuffed dmg gear sustained.
278 heal/second to everyone in the Priest's party for only 40 extra mana a minute.
224 mp5 for every caster in the Priest's party.

Yeah, I'd say we got a buff ;)

This plays nicely into my little fantasy of a synergetic caster group within a raid. The notion of an elemental shaman, a shadowpriest, a moonkin, and a couple mage/warlocks entertains me. With BoS/BoW available this could be quite the mix.

Since when do Paladins run out of mana anyway? :P

Yeah VT looks a little too good right now, I fully expect a nerf sometime soon.

Flash-spamming, never (unless they're on a lag-free connection in pure +heal gear and not using any consumables at all).

However, with the apparent shift toward Holy Light in the expansion, Paladins will be able to use any amount of mana they can get their hands on.

I'd be very surprised if VT makes it into the expansion in it's current form.

Not much synergy there, except from moonkin crit aura -> pallies better heals, VT -> all get more mana. Shadow priest gains almost nothing from moonkin aura (critting spells are not significant part of their arsenal) and paladin auras doesn't have much to offer as well (except from low chance to avoid interruptions while mindflaying).

Now, something like that:

Shadow Priest, 41+ Elemental Shammy, 3 warlocks.

Shadow Priest benefits from -> spell damage totem, mana totem, VT/VE, imp STA aura, shadow weaving and misery.
Warlocks benefit from -> spell damage totem, crit totem, mana totem, VT/VE, shadow weaving and misery, own imp aura.
Elemental Shammy benefits from -> spell damage totem, crit totem, mana totem, VT/VE, misery, warlock imp aura.

Of course some of those buffs are not group related, but keeping shadow priest in shaman group (for +spell damage totem) is kinda obvious combo.

In theory switching one warlock for moonkin would add more to the group (another crit bonus), but then it will lower number of pure DPS classes benefiting from whole pack of bonuses to 2.

Current version of VT looks a bit too good anyway especially with other mana regeneration methods (JoW/BoW, mana spring/tide, new mana regeneration talents) available it might get nerfed...

Healers have retarted amount of mana/5 in their gears atm, but no-one know for sure about TBC. Also, considering that downranking is going to get nerfed by a bit, it'd say that healers are going to need way more mana than they are used to.

The thing that bothers me, is that all "hybrid" classes look too good in their hybrid roles :(
Why would you bring any normal DPS-classes if your shadowpriests, oomkins, dmg-dealing shammys and cat-druids and put out increasing amounts of DPS while having high utility at the same time, while for instance mages are getting nerfed big time. I consider the case of 5-7 firemages -> 2-3 firemages to be quite a nerf, since my ignites are never going to reach the levels they do now. (3k ticks, I just love 'em).

Would imagine you'd be seeing 3 priests per 25 man raid - question is, would the mana income a shadow priest generates compensate for the fact that the 2 other priests are now healing for 3? I think so. What about healing for 5 though? Are your 2-3 paladins/shamans/druids going to be tanking, DPS'ing or healing?

Who can guess at what healing will be like in the expansion? Stackable HOTs + 50% more stamina + all the new buffs changes a lot of rules. Will more health mean mobs that cause more damage? Will heal per second become more important at the loss of efficiency? Or will the initial 60+ content will be weighted at the level of a player in tier 0.5 so much the same?

And why are Blizzard torturing me by only giving me 61 talent points :( Gief 6 more.

Main reason is that all those off specs are usually pretty useful only when you have only 1 of them, or at least only 1 per group. Group of 4 elemental shammies and 1 mage will be significantly worse in DPS role then group of 4 mages and 1 shammy. ;)

On 5 groups in 25 ppl raid, there will be probably 2 dealing physical damage (warriors, rogues, hunters), 2 with magical damage (mages, warlocks) and one healer group. For 2 physical damage groups, you have option of adding enhancement shaman/feral druid. For 2 spell damage groups - moonkin, elemental shaman or shadow priest. At the same time, healing group benefits from tree druid aura... While all hybrids in melee groups can do emergency healing if needed. Depending on fight, hybrids can also drop their DPS role in favor of full healing duty.

Of course it's pure theory until we see first encounters.

Yeah. As things CURRENTLY stand, I think that the optimal raid would have one of each tree. Every tree brings interesting and unique stuff to the new raiding environment - Disc has Improved Divine Spirit and massive survivability for a Priest, Holy is the pure Healbot, and Shadow adds raid damage buffs and hp/mana regen for their groups. Like james pointed out, we don't know what changes will be brought in full, but as it is I'm certainly planning on a raid group having one of each.

Well unless they mess up the balance, a shadow priest is never going to outdps a mage, warlock or hunter, and all the raid dps increasing talents can be provided by 1 shadow priest, so the benefit of bringing additional shadow priests are pretty minimal. I think Blizz is very much going for a greater than the sum of it's parts model where the raid is going to get stronger the more diverse it is. Most of the appealing raid talents in 'off' specs don't stack.

But you're missing the point of an offspec james.
That offpsec shadow priest isn't taking the slot of a healer (you don't go into a fight sort on healers!) he is taking the slot of another dps class (mage etc).

You compare the utilities of the offspec, to the DPS loss, and try to work out if it's worth it.

Why make this assumption? Why would a shadow priest take a mage / lock spot and not a priest spot in BC? It's not as if they're not still priests anyway. They can heal in heal intensive fights and dps in dps intensive ones.

There's 25 spots in a BC raid and 27 talent trees. That's a pretty close match and (whilst I don't think they're there with some trees yet) it really looks to me like Blizz wants every spec to have a place.

Lol.. No way will a shadow priest take the spot of another caster. Just that instead of bringing 3 holy priests you can take 2 holy and 1 shaodw with the shadow one beeing able to DPS from time to time.

If you are shaodw spec dosent mean you cant live outside of shadowform . Just dps on trash and put your healing gear on for the boss.

I was looking forward to ninja-healing in SF. Even when I became a tank I'd have ridiculous damage mitigation :\

Hm.

So a 4 warlock, 1 priest group could level up like crazy by blowing things up AND minimize downtime with VE+ManaVE.

If a hybrid would only use his offspec for trash and then perform his main class role for the boss, there is no point in bringing said hybrid to the raid. Simply because trash is largely irrelevant, while raid composition matters a lot for bosses.

That being said, a hybrid should not be compared with the pure classes from the offspec PoV only, as he will never be on equal footing with them (and it's a sign of bad design when they are - see fury warriors and rogues). So a shadowpriest should never perform as well as a pure caster DPS class (and with all the buffs fire gets in the xpac, fire mages really should not be worried). Yes you will take the offspec raid utility and use it as best possible, but in most cases even that won't be equal to dislodge the DPS of a pure class AND the utility it brings - AoE for example.

The true advantage of a hybrid spec will be his versatility, I think. A fury warrior can still tank an add in his DPS gear - far less efficiently than his protection counterpart - but as soon as that add is down he can switch to the boss and DPS. A shadowpriest can and should stop DPSing to heal if needed. The ability to change role as required is what makes hybrids viable - with the loss of efficiency bundled in, ofcourse. A shadowpriest will be able to heal 75% as well as a holy priest, and be able to DPS 75% as well as a mage/warlock, but he can switch roles between fights and even mid-fight.