From the gear I've seen currently, there are very, very few upgrades for people in T6 gear.

Granted we only have access to level 77, and instances around 77.

Any gear that has dmg and spirit does not compare to pure damage on T6, even if you value spirit 1:1 with damage. We're going to have to wait and see what we get at 80 I guess.

This is consistent with how TBC itemization worked, by the way. I didn't upgrade two or three of my Naxxramas DPS pieces until Karazhan, for example. Expect a speeding time leveling if you have the uber sunwell gear.

I wasn't implying that Spirit would become the new stamina. More like, spirit as the new spellpower. It would just be assumed that spirit (along with Spellpower) would be on any gear that is desired by cloth wearers.

As for evaluating spirit gear in the context of dps added, I am not sure that is quite a fair comparison anymore. Before Imp Spirit tap, we could never rely on O5SR regen, and since VT was returning 5% of dps done, we didn't need it at all. It was simple, the more +dmg, the more regen we had, and at sufficient levels we ran "infinite".

With VT nerfed to 2.5% (or 2%, it isn't clear to me that may or may not have been an inadvertant error by the poster), relying purely on dmg to keep your mana pool may not be viable anymore. (It could, especially if our dmg really did get scaled to 2x our previous levels).

Assuming that we cannot rely on regen based solely on VT, spirit becomes much more interesting, not just as a dmg stat via Twisted faith, but now as a regen stat too. While we won't get the full benefit of spirit regen, 50% regen with +50% in spirit (imp spirit tap) along with Meditation, is pretty close. Assuming that both talents (once imp st procs) are approximately equal to being OFSR, then that means every time we get a crit, we would be regening as if we were OFSR for 8 seconds.. which at 700 spirit and 600 Intellect, at level 70 means 799 mp/5 during those 8 seconds. That is nothing to sneeze at, especially as we still get the mana back from the VT. I know the regen formula is different for level 80, but the idea is still that while our mana returns to the party won't be ridiculous, we may still in fact be able to go "infinite" if we have sufficient spirit.

IF gear itemization does ask us to choose between spirit and additional spellpower, than, we may have different gear sets, 1 for short fights, and 1 for longer endurance fights.

In retrospect it is easy for me to see why when I was soloing and questing in beta, I never had any mana issues at all. While I had generic spirit tap on live, having Imp Spirit tap in beta increased my regen (even in my TBC non-spirit gear) to such a degree that I just never worried about mana. However, during instances, when I could not rely on Normal Spirit Tap procing, and was trying to Tab dot on trash which meant no imp ST procing, my regen suffered when compared to TBC encounters.

It would not be a terrible thing in my opinion if we did have to think more about personal regen rather than just focusing on pure dps for gearing. In a way, this would be an end-around method of giving SPs another scaleable stat such as crit, by making spirit relevant to us, not just for dmg, but for endurance. We would then have another way to scale. In fact, it would give us an interesting symmetry to holy priests who currently balance +heals and + spirit.

The flaw in your thinking is that you believe we need more personal regen.

Even 2% VT and meditation is adequate, especially when coupled with imp spirit tap (even though it's gains scale with spirit, there's no reason to stack for it) and the lack of needing to refresh SW:P on single targets.

If you want to worry about balancing your mana usage/regen, play a mage.

If we didn't have to worry about personal regen for WotlK at all, then the nerf to VT really didn't do the trick then right? Mana is designed to be a constraint for casters, and while the concept of us as mana batteries is great, it will mean that there will still be incentive to bring more than one SP if we are not constrained as other casters in terms of mana (and we allow other casters to not be constrained in turn, albeit to a lesser degree).

Just as an example. Assume that Blizzard makes a boss encounter that lasts 15 minutes long. And, just for sake of convenience we don't consider the group regen of SPs. Would a raid leader take a 2nd SP who outputs 20% less dps than a mage, but at the 12 minute mark has plenty of mana to continue dpsing, while the mage is trying to evocate or a second lock is stuck lifetapping?

Remember, with the pot change, mana issues will become more prominent for classes that always relied on them in the past anyhow.

If we really didn't have to worry about personal regen at all when considering gearing choices, then we become the crutch for encounter designs that become a hardship on mana as a constraint. And this is exactly the sort of thing I thought the VT nerf was supposed to take out. My understanding was that because of VT, mana usage was no longer a constraint in designs, which in turn breaks the purpose of mana. (unless you count Phase 2 ROS etc).

As for wanting to play a mage.. I don't understand that analogy. In a way, I found the symmetry in gear choices to be more akin to Holy priests. They want Spellpower, but they also gear for regen, by considering spirit. You aren't going to find mages who ever gear for regen, and if you can point out a mage who sockets spirit gems.. well that would be interesting. Mages gear for dps, they just are constrained by mana. Making SPs consider spirit as a valueable stat for regen purposes would specifically delineate us from aff locks, mages, and just about any other dps caster out there. So why wouldn't it be interesting? From the look of things, Blizz seems reluctant to allow us to scale dmg-wise with dps classes. If that is the case, then allowing us to scale for endurance seems to be an interesting trade-off, especially if we find ourselves in encounters that make mana a constraint again.

New iteration of Glyphs :
I don't know what Blizzard is trying with this but more proof that devs are grasping at straws here :
- MF : I for one never was one of those clamouring for more range, but it has been a concern for some so... Still hoping that removing snare means spell dmg coefficient is increased accordingly...
- SW:P : still completely situational (tab dotting mobs), on a standard mob fight this means we will save 20% of the cost of one SW:P on a 10 minutes fight
- Fade : unless the spell is reworked to be a permanent aggro dump this is useless

It's more that they gave us a talent which says "you never have to refresh your shadow word pain again", so making it cheaper seems pointless. Given the HoT glyphs that have fewer ticks but increase the value of each tick, maybe they could do the same thing for our DoTs. Fundamentally, shadow priests (and every DPS class) will only be interested in the Glyphs that increase damage.

All that said, this is still a beta. I'm sure they'll figure that out sooner or later.

The swp glyphs seems ok for pvp. The MF glyph is still an improvement, you might be happy about it if some fights in WotlK require it. The new fade glyph is good for ... 5-man ? /cry.
Anyway, shadowpriests won't be spending much gold on glyphs at this point, so blizzard should change that

Extra duration on fade is useless in 5-mans as well:

1. you don't need fade, you tank it for a few sec, and now you can even disperse
2. the mob should be dead or taunted before normal fade end time
3. the aggro reduction of fade is so low you don't notice it while your DoT's keep ticking away

Fade can be an enormous asset in 5 mans simply because it can be the difference between the mob coming over and reworking your face or bouncing back to the tank. Please notice the word can. Fade wont always be enough to dump the mob, but in a 5man situation, especially when you pull a mob with VE/VT aggro (ie, not your primary target) fade will be enough to get it back on the tank, at least temporarily. Druids, Paladins, and Shaman have no such ability. Druids can go bear, paladins can bubble, certainly, but fade can be a very elegant aggro drop in a 5 man situation.

That being said its almost 100% fucking usless once you step into a raid (10, 20, 25 or 40 man).

The other thing that people have to realize is some of these are going to be Minor glyphs, and as such won't have a major effect on your character. It's not like you're only going to have 4 Minors to choose from either, there's going to be a wider selection and if this one doesn't measure up then you simply won't get it, and get another one instead.

The VT nerf is not particularly because shadow priests can sustain dps for absurd periods of time. It doesn't matter that they can, as their dps is considerably below all pure dps classes, and many hybrids as well. It's primarily because healers are taken out of the regen game, Hunters are currently sustained by JoW alone, and warlocks have infinite mana at the cost of gcds already. Mages are the only dps who might really feel the VT nerf.

A warlock lifetapping heavily due to the lower regen changes (which, btw, is probably not going to happen if they are destro due to isl) will still put out plenty more damage than a shadow priest. Mages have ways to sustain for long fights at the cost of dps stats (armor & consumables), and they will also still out damage priests, so I'm not sure where the comparison you are trying to make is.

You obviously are not aware of how mages function currently in TBC. In late 25 mans, the entire mage game is to end the fight exactly as you oom. It means managing mana heavily and choosing whether to gem or flamecap, mana or destro pot, etc. You also seem to be ignorant to the existence of arcane mages, there are many who gear for spirit/int instead of straight spellpower/haste because it provides higher dps. Of course, should they switch to fire, they'd need to regem completely, but that's another story.

Spirit will change exactly nothing in wotlk. Warlocks are already going to need it as much as we do, and if mages run mage armor more often, they will as well (and arcane always will). The primary reason shadow priests will be necessary on endurance fights is for the healers, not dps, as long as we are still sub-par at it.

1) You seem to say that Spirit in WoTLK will be near the exact same state of a stat for us as it is in TBC (which currently is of little value). And that the only value of Spirit for us will be in the dmg component via Twisted Faith. Buti think it is exactly imp spirit tap (and meditation and priest spirit regen) that differentiates us from other dps classes when it comes to the importance of spirit.

The change with IMP spirit tap is much more dramatic that you are giving credit for. If anything my personal regen with imp spirit tap even with the vt nerf is the same as TBC levels on single target dps. (lower than with trash as i am dot tabbing rather than casting my critable spells at every CD.). I do see myself being able to hit infinite mana relatively easily if I get a few pieces of items with decent spirit without giving away too much in terms of dps stats, even with a 1/2 as effective vt.

2) We also seem to disagree the significance of the above in terms of raid composition, and raid encounters. One aspect of why I believed VT to be broken in TBC was how easily it was to break mana as a constraint, not just for people in our group, but for outselves as well. Let's be clear, I think you stretch the mage example too far. Arcane mages do indeed have to spec slightly differently, but currently, i know of few arcane mages who would be willing to walk into a raid instance w/o a SP in their group. Mana is designed as a constraint, and VT broke it on a group basis. You make a statement that mana management now isn't a big deal in TBC, but I think that has more to do with both the current VT and being able to chain pot.

Nerfing VT and their comments that at 2.5% may still be too high, and their change to pots, leads me to think that they want to make sure that mana is a constraint again. And while I don't believe we'll see us be able to break mana as a restraint for other classes, it would be an interesting concept to allow us as the sole class that can just go all out on dmg for the entirety of a fight without having to worry about mana management.

3) Allowing Spirit to matter (more) for SP will allow SP to be a differentiated from other dps casters. For instance, my understanding in the beginning of TBV, frost mages were considered to be more mana efficient than Fire and certainly more than arcane. I am speculating (since we don't see lvl 80 itemization) that this is one direction that would be very interesting. As priests our spirit regen is incredible, and in my mind it would be neat if that becomes an actual advantage in end game. This would allow some difference in balancing gear and possibly not feeling gimped in dps charts when comparing ourselves to mages/locks/elem shaman/moonkins, etc.

My argument is purely on a normative level, "wouldn't it be cool if..." and I try to give some basis in current WotLK that may point to that speculation. You seem to be arguing on a descriptive level, "sprit doesn't matter because..." But we don't know what itemization will be like. You may be absolutely right, but personally that would feel like a missed opportunity.

As of right now in beta, Warlock lifetap scales with spirit... Are you aware of the beta changes for other classes?

That invalidates your entire concept of "priests are a beautiful and unique snowflake dps class who uses spirit". Also check fel armor rank 4. you'll be surprised. Warlocks get more out of this "spirit stacking" than we do.

I'm not sure why you think that the example of arcane mages using regen gems is "too far". They gear radically differently from fire and frost mages, because it tends to be significantly better for that play style. It also fits the goal of finishing every fight right as you run to 0 mana, because that's what the goal of an arcane mage is. If you want to learn more about it, however, visit the arcane mage thread.

I'm not sure why you are under the impression that shadow priests are supposed to have a mana constraint in wotlk. Considering that blizzard gave us even more mana reductions and personal regen talents to offset the lowered effectiveness of touch, such a conclusion seems completely wrong. I'm sure that other classes/specs are intended to watch their mana (lol @ mages), but shadow priests are clearly not.

On an unrelated note, I wish they'd do something useful with shadow glyphs. 10 yds on mindflay is decent, but the shadow word pain one is fairly worthless based on current raiding environments.

The fel armor change does make spirit more useful.. but I am sure you are aware that priest mana regen model is so much better than a lock, such that 30% mana regen by a lock doesn't compare to 30% mana regen for priests.

And the fact that they have increased our personal regen, seems to give me the idea that mana may not be a constraint for us.. but perhaps it will take some spirit gearing. I think your position is that making that gear choice won't be needed, and we can go infinite by focusing purely on dps stats as we have been in TBC. That's a perfectly valid position, but I am not sure whether you think it is preferable, or just unlikely to change.

My point wasn't that arcane mages don't gear differently. The point I was making was that arcane wouldn't really be viable, even with gear specs if it weren't for the current vt. In WotLK with a nerfed VT and no more chain potting, it will be more difficult for other classes to avoid mana as a constraint. I think that holy priest is still a better model for comparison.

I don't quite understand your position on mana. Is it that you think WotLK won't make mana more of a constraint than they have in TBC? The signs to me seem to point the other way. (no more downranking, no more chain potting, a nerfed VT, and increasing the value of spirit for all cloth wearers). And if that is true, then spirit does take more value for us-more so than other cloth wearers based on our spirit regen model.

At this point, I am not sure there is any more value to this back and forth, especially since you have taken a strangely hostile take on my speculation.

And I think we can all agree that the glyph changes are underwhelming and don't measure to the glyphs announced for other classes.

Warlocks have different regen model? I assumed (like mages and every other class to my knowledge) that the 2.4.3 spirit/int change affected all classes equally. Now we can assume that warlocks will not be getting outside the five second rule, but that is true for any dps class....like us.

It appears my idea was based on an incorrect assumption on the spirit regen differing across classes. My apologies.

Warlocks and priests gain the same amount of spellpower and casting regen from it, but while they have Lifetap scaling with spirit, we'll have IST and VT will see some indirect scaling via spirit. Part of the warlock spirit regen model relies on gcd's not spent on damage, while ours doesn't. I don't really see a problem here. The problem continues to be our lack of comparative scaling with the other spell stats, whereas warlocks are getting spirit as yet another stat they scale well with. A potential issue is the warlock talents; why Fel Armor starts out with numbers corresponding to our fully talented values without any point investment I don't quite understand.

That said -- and I have my reservations about the much-talked-about WotLK balancing pass that's supposedly yet to happen -- at the end of the day if shadow priests are still putting out subpar damage when 3.0 launches, that'll just mean balancing will happen between 3.0.1 and 3.1. It isn't like TBC classes were done in 2.0.1.

What Warlocks do with their gear is largely none of our concern. I fail to see the point of discussing a class that is going to (hopefully) be very different at Level 80 than at 70--namely, with at least 2 viable trees in high-end raiding.

Warlocks stacking/desiring Spirit as much as we do is questionable given the nature of itemization and the spec of the Warlock in question. I would expect an Affliction Warlock to stack Spirit, but they are very much like us, both in stats and scaling. The scaling issues of S-Priests are not limited to ourselves; they're more of a symptom of lesser scaling between DoTs and Direct Damage that has yet to be reigned in. "Blizzard hates/wants to ignore us" is not a good reason for bad S-Priest scaling. It's not that S-Priest scaling is bad, per se. We scale perfectly fine with +damage. It's just that we have little access to the other itemization scales. This is why merely fixing Mind Flay's coefficient won't do anything for us. Our problems are of something bigger than our little spec.

An 80 Destruction Warlock desiring Spirit, however, seems fishy. If Spirit becomes the new Stamina in terms of the itemization budget, then perhaps all Warlocks will stack spirit. However, Destro Warlocks get just as much benefit out of crit than Spirit, if not more so. The relevant issue for Destruction Warlocks (since everybody presupposes that Destruction Warlocks are going to be just as dominant at 80) is not that Spirit is more or less valuable to them objectively, but if crit and spirit can be viably stacked together.

We do not have that issue. Spirit and +Damage all seem to be on items together; it's not a choice for us, it's a boon. There still exists a solid differential between High Stamina, High Intellect, High Crit/Damage gear and High Stamina/High Intellect/High Spirit +Damage gear. There comes a point of having too many scaling stats. Having to balance between 4 different stats on potentially conflicting itemization standards is not something to be excited about. Diminishing returns will come into play, as will itemization constraints.

80 Itemization is still up in the air. If Spirit's itemization cost is lessened than this is the case. In the meantime, we've no idea.

And it's not really relevant to us. It may be popular or natural to compare ourselves with Warlocks, but it's a waste of time. We're not Warlocks, and we never will be. We're designed differently and made differently.

Because you are a utility DPS talent spec, and not a full DPS class. It makes sense. Get out of the Shadow-Priests-Are-Our-Own-Class mindset and a lot of the inequalities and injustices in WoW disappear.

Your answer depends on what you mean by "subpar." As utility DPS we will always be subpar. Don't like it? Reroll. Like it? Deal with it or accept it. It comes with the job. As a Shadow Priest you will never be pushing out the numbers of a Warlock or a Mage. A lot of us keep hoping and praying that Blizzard will magically fix our scaling with crit, haste, etc., and then we'll be putting out 90% of the DPS of a Warlock, and everyone will be happy.

Our raw DPS is not important. We should only care about what happens with VT and our mana returns. Therein all our "scaling" lies. The only reason a Shadow Priest cares about DPS is to return mana to his party. If Blizzard puts our DPS or VT's percentage at a level that keeps VT's returns nigh equivalent to those of its current incarnation, I'll be happy, as should any Shadow Priest. We should not be looking for a massive DPS increase, as it's simply not going to happen.

The bigger problem with most Shadow Priests is that they never had the mindset of one to begin with. It's why you see so much of this obsession over DPS numbers and a silly desire to feel more significant. Most are completely blind to the ridiculous amount of significance we have.

Few Shadow Priests have actually accepted their low DPS role in raids, and why should we expect them to? It's a role that is completely counter to the urges of the human ego. Everybody wants to get praise and recognition, but most want it from really big numbers on the meters. It's not natural for a player in WoW, stimulated by the anonymity and individualism the Internet grants him, to expect the rewards of his abilities to come from 4 other people fighting to get into his group, or the fact that he helps 4 other people reach levels of DPS they could not come close to without him. It's a sacrificial mentality that so very few WoW Players are cut out for.

If most Shadow Priests are bad today because they were forced, one way or another, to go Shadow because of raid requirements, then most Shadow Priests complain/worry today because they never liked the role they were forced to fit into nor did they ever gain any sort of individual recognition or achievement from their guild for it whatsoever. It was more of a "Okay, you're a Shadow Priest. Give us some mana and shut up, slave." Few guilds see Shadow Priests as particularly valuable specs as opposed to a raid requirement on a checklist. They honestly don't care if the S-Priest is good or bad, just if the S-Priest is there. If he's good, the guild won't care, and if he's bad, the guild won't care, so there's no room for personal achievement. To exacerbate things further, the classes that S-Priests benefit the most tend to ignore the S-Priest himself and sit smugly content, believing that they're more important/powerful, blissfully ignorant of just how dependent he is on that insignificant purple guy shooting blue lasers at the boss with poor DPS.

If, on the other hand, you have an S-Priest that understood his role before he went into it, is happy with (or at least fulfills it without a chip on his shoulder), and have guildmates that are not only aware of how much benefit they get out of an S-Priest, but appreciate the S-Priest and recognize that he's good at what he does, you'll find that such an S-Priest that doesn't have very many worries at all. Many of our problems lie in the human element of gaming, and little to do with the concrete benefit we bring to raids.

I really disagree with you, Ptoleman.

One of the main reasons that gets players to become better is to actually *do* something worthwile and know they made a difference because they tried hard - do you honestly think it is good design if there is barely any difference between a "good" and a "poor" shadowpriest in the raid? That the only thing that counts is you being present and not how well you play? I'd call that extremely boring.

I know that my fellow raiders love us shadows for the mana/healing we produce and are aware of our impact on their healing output/DPS - but what motivation is there to play really good if you know that you can't really improve much?
The other shadows and me passed on every single [The Skull of Gul'dan] for our mages and warlocks, simply because they get better use out of it - even though it used to be BiS for us. We also passed on most caster items (besides the tier sets or the Brutallus mace) up to Kil'Jeaden's untimely death, because every item on us instead of the mage/warlock might have hurt our progression.

Going by the sound of your post you think it's ok that shadows scale significantly worse than other DPS - I think it is a very bad idea.
Call me selfish, but I don't want to feel bad every time looting an item that's BiS for me knowing it would have helped our progression more if it was on MageX/WarlockY instead of being on me.

Fix mind flay with a glyph and we're pretty much done. I hope the snare remove on the mind flay +10 yard glyph will buff the scaling too, since the snare is what's gimping the damage coefficient atm.

This really isn't all that important. The 'gimpy' coefficient on Mind Flay is compensated by the heavy use of DoT, which have an enormous coefficient/casting time.

The real problem is that Shadow Priests get less benefit than any other spellcaster out of spell critical and spell haste. The result is what is termed the "scaling problem". When additive bonuses start transitioning over to multiplicative bonuses, other casters start rapidly outstripping the capabilities of Shadow Priests since Shadow Priests get such small returns from any of the multiplicative bonuses except spell hit.