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.

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 ;)

Strange, my dream BC group is three paladins, a moonkin, and a shadowpriest.

Not that I'd be at all biased or anything.

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.

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...

Well i hope that WoW will take a brake from the : "If you can heal you WILL heal " mentality

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.