I agree with you that speccing improved VE is a must. But I think it makes more sense to take a point out of meditation. With 2/3 meditation you will lose ~15 mp5. IF is at least ~16 mp5 if you use it with SW:P. I macro it with MB for a small dps boost. On Felmyst you could macro it with massdispell, that will be worth quite a bit more than 3/3 Mediation.

Yep. Actually, I dropped meditation fully (0/3) to see how well I would do mana-wise in the Sunwell. I haven't felt the need for it after killing Felmyst. IIRC, I don't think I ever had to drink a mana pot, except maybe after a Rebirth.

Undead priests also get a free Devouring Plague with Inner Focus. I recently dropped Imp VE to get a more pure DPS spec, but I'm wondering whether I should grab it again. I miss healing for 66% more. However, losing meditation points in light of the spirit regen changes seems counter-productive of sorts...though losing 1-2 points may be worth it.

WTB more spell hit for less shadow focus points?

I recently ran these number. When I was raid buffed with around 600 int and 353 spirit (including Divine Spirit and [Kreeg's Stout Beatdown]), each point in meditation is worth 40 m/5. With around 250 spirit and 600 int, each point is roughly 28 m/5. These all assume chain casting scenarios, mind you. So yes, it's a lot of mana.

Regarding Inner Focus, if you are undead, you save 1145 mana every 3 minutes when you cast Devouring Plague. That's a saving of 31.8 m/5, so undead should only drop Inner Focus when their buffed spirit gives them more m/5 than this (at around 270 spirit, 600 int).

If you are not undead, your best options for saving mana is shadow word pain, 575 mana saved every 3 minutes, or 16 m/5, meaning you should always drop Inner Focus. Of course you lose the option of casting Inner Focus on Mind Blast for extra crit. Given an average non-crit mind blast damage of 2700, you lose 25% of 1350 damage every 3 minutes. This is a 1.875 DPS loss, which is basically meaningless.

Conclusion: Every non-undead shadow priest should drop Inner Focus unless they really have points to spare and need the mana. Every well geared shadow priest that needs an extra talent point should cut Inner Focus before Meditation.

From the speccing for Brutallus fight discussion, I am assuming that threat is not an issue on this fight? Imp VE is great cept for that 66% increase in healing aggro. The thought of respeccing mid raid suxs, but I think the Imp VE will okay for Kalecgos. Threat not being a problem in the Demon World but watched closely on the Dragon. I usually need to just stop dpsing if I get the +100 threat Wild Magic. (Well, a little anywayz )

I've pulled aggro with improved VE and no Traquil Air totem while standing in melee range, but not while standing out of melee range. I've been around 1600 DPS with full consumables. So yes, it's something to worry about, but not very much of a worry.

You can work around some of this quite easily. Cast VE on the pull, and let it drop off normally. Coincidentally, it'll drop just as she's about to take off, so you can nuke without worrying about extra VE threat. I haven't really run into threat issues since having to wait after Gas Nova cooldown for Mass Dispel can take a bite out of optimal DPS anyways.

Threat is also really only an issue on the dragon until you're ported. That minute while you're in the shadow realm will give your tanks a massive threat buffer.

The nice thing about speccing imp VE is if you have extra hit gear lying around, those talent points come out of shadow focus. You can wear the extra hit for most stuff, and for important fights (brutallus and kalecgos) the elemental shaman hit totem allows you to swap the extra hit for about 60 extra haste. That way, you can effectively save talent points and still be hit capped.

Having started felmyst this week, I can say that I've had issues with pulling aggro from healing. Never on brutallus, though, but this priest is rather undergeared (barely over 1200 shadow damage and 100 haste unbuffed, only 3 pieces of T6). We needed another spriest and were planning no 3 weeks to gear me up on tokens nobody else needed, but ended up with one weeke of gearing, where only the legs and robe dropped.

Anyway, on Felmyst I generally experience almost no overhealing at all, so even pushing a puny 12 - 1300 dps with only 1/2 imp. ve I've still managed to get my face caved in a couple of times by the big 'ol dragon.

Did you have tranquil air totem? Seems like a perfect situation for it.

I was wondering for a shadow priest that keeps Mind Blast in their "rotation", about how much DPS is each point in Improved Mind Blast worth?

I currently have 1215 +shadow dmg, 86 +spell hit, 5/5 Shadow Focus, 3/5 Improved Mind Blast and 14 spell haste . With a little tweaking to my gear and gems I could easily get to at least 101 +spell hit, and with a new piece or two have at least 126 +spell hit, and was wondering about how much +shadow dmg I could lose and keep my DPS as high or higher than it is now?

I am honestly thinking about trying the 11/0/50 spec next week. The only fight I ever use a mana pot on still is Council, and that's simply due to all the resists/poor mana return when Gathios has that Magic Resistance aura up. I've never have had to use a mana pot in Sunwell and I don't think I've even managed to dip below half mana on Brutallus. Since I picked up [Pantaloons of Growing Strife] (socketed with 2x Reckless Pyrestone and 1 Crimson Spinel) this week I have my Flays down to a 2.70 cast -- good enough to take advantage of 5/5 Imp MB. However I've been losing +hit on my gear so I need to put more points back into Shadow Focus.

I still think I want to keep 2/2 Imp VE, but I could see going with 1 point there as well. I can see other people needing not to put any there if you're running into serious threat issues -- although that probably means your tank needs to step up the TPS. For Felmyst as I stated above, please do make sure you're letting VE drop off naturally, there's no need to add in extra threat while she's airborne as you're blasting away at her. Healing at that point is much more relaxed since there's no Gas Nova/Encapsulate going on.

I'm in almost exactly the same situation (with the pants upgrade causing the same problems as well). I thought about dropping more points from discipline, but I'm edgy about cutting more than 2 points from discipline. What it really comes down to is how consistently you get a shaman and all three blessings. 11 points in discipline is simply not enough if you're missing mana stream and/or blessing of wisdom. It's also worth noting that mass dispel on Felmyst is not cheap, although you shouldn't have to cast it THAT often. In my case, I'm only grouped with a shaman 60% of the time, so I need to be careful with how I trim points. EJ has more shaman on roster than Aftermath does, though.

Trying to figure out what gear I should subsitute for haste gear as it seems to be quite popular.

Is my armory

I have all the za haste gear I can get except the weapon but I have the heroic MGT dagger I can use. I have like 480 badges also so I can get the extra haste gear the badge vendor has also. Any advice would be great. Just want to boost my over all dps

Felmyst is pretty easy from a mana perspective I think. Basically I make sure to refresh dots about 3 seconds before the Gas Nova CD is up, then I just sit there with my Mass Dispel circle where it needs to be. Half the time I'm getting some ticks outside of the 5SR. In the air phase, I spend very little mana -- usually the skellies are dead as the 2nd breath has been laid down, and I don't really bother doing DPS to skellies anymore since our AOE is so strong.

I figure the worst case scenario is I lose something like 80 mp/5 with no Meditation. Chugging mana pots on CD is greater than that, for sure.

Your points regarding blessings and shamans are good though and probably the deciding factor. We have 3 paladins for most fights, so I can count on BoW, and they're very good on having JoW up. I'm always with a shaman -- sometimes resto, sometimes elemental. Leaving 1 in Meditation may not be so bad -- since that's the equivalent of 2/3 "old" Meditation which we had the majority of TBC.

Is it really that much? I was just going off my character stat screen last night, which put me at something like 129 mp/5 while casting. I had about 45 mp/5 from actual stats on gear. It wouldn't be the first time the character sheet had lied though!

Armory lists you at 224 spirit, 480 int with no buffs at all.

Your buffed spirit will be 224 + 50 (Divine Spirit) + 20 (Food) + 25 (Stout Beatdown), plus 10%, or 351.
Your buffed int will be 480 + 40 (Arcane Int) - 5 (Stout Beatdown), plus 10%, or 567.

So with 567 int, 351 spirit, you regain 390 m/5 from spirit when not casting, which is 39 m/5 per point. Obviously meditation gets a lot worse when you're not fully raid buffed, but that's only the case on non-progression content, so the talent being worse isn't a huge deal.

Anyone fancy giving me a clue about this stout beetdown? Is it a quest chain? I have never been in dire maul being a post TBC player.

Run Dire Maul North, kill the king but don't kill Stomper Kreeg. Talk to Mizzle the Crafty, get the king buff, and then Stomper Kreeg will talk to you. Buy his hooch.

One of the other priests in my guild brought this to my attention today. If you need to free up a shadow point and you're thinking about dropping one out of Meditation, why not drop it out of Focused Mind instead?

Mind Blast is 450 mana, and you can use it at most once in a 5 second period. That's 22.5 mp/5 (really it's less because of the cooldown but we'll use these numbers just to prove the point and I don't feel like calculating it ). We'll say you cast 2 more MF's in that 5 second period (ignoring the fact that the 2nd MF would run into the next 5 seconds). MF is 230 mana, so 460 total for 2, 23 mp/5 total. So best case scenario, a time where you cast MB + 2xMF, you'll be getting 45.5 mp/5. Now if you factor in the time spent refreshing VT, SWP, VE and using SWD, there is no way that Focused Mind ends up being more than 39 mp/5 you're getting from 1 point in Meditation.

One thing to bear in mind is that FM also increases the value of your initial mana pool, your shadowfiend, and pots. FM increases DPM, which *is* different from simply looking at regen.