A Preliminary Discussion of Shadow Priest Talents in WotLK
 

Introduction
By now I'm sure almost everyone has seen the new talents that were datamined from the WotLK Friends and Family alpha client. I will start off by listing these talents in their current state since there will certainly be a great deal of confusion should these talents undergo future changes.

The talents:
The new spells:


Theorycraft:

Upon announcement of these new/revamped talents I immediately started work on hacking together an updated version of the Shadow Priest Gear Spreadsheet. Here's what I came up with:

DPS Spreadsheet with Current 2.4.2 Talents
DPS Spreadsheet with WotLK Talents

Please note that for the spreadsheet edited to include WotLK talents I did not evaluate if there were any changes to the best-in-game gear set, though I believe any item changes would have a minor (if any) impact on the comparison between talents. Also at this point the WotLK spreadsheet is inflexible and only intended to show a comparison between talents, don't expect accurate values if you start switching things around, there are a couple things that could bug it out due to the haste at which I put it together.


DPS
WotLK 2253 dps
2.4.2 2000 dps

With WotLK talents we see a DPS increase of about 12.6%.


Net Mana Out (both using Destruction Potions)
WotLK -25 MP5
2.4.2 -168 MP5

At the high end gear level we still have infinite mana without using Super Mana Potions, note that I did not include the WotLK talent Improved Spirit Tap as the proc rate, % spirit increase, and % regen while casting are all unknown to my knowledge.

Vampiric Touch Regen
WotLK 225 MP5
2.4.2 500 MP5

VT regen has reached a much more reasonable level, perhaps it may be too low at the low end gear level however.


Discussion

My preliminary thoughts were that the new changes would provide just the DPS increase the class needed and balance out the insane VT regen. Upon closer inspection it appears we may run into problems with mana regeneration for both ourselves (dependent on the Improved Spirit Tap mechanics) and our party, with not enough of a DPS increase to balance this out. On the other side of the argument with regard to mana regen, the fact that in the transition from 60 to 70 dps more than doubled for every single class, while mana costs increased by a comparatively smaller amount, if this trend continues in with the transition to TBC to WotLK our mana regen may be nearly as imbalanced as it is now. It is necessary to know the mana cost and dps scaling that occurs during the transition to level 80 before we can see the whole picture. At this point one thing seems certain however, Blizzard seems to have missed the mark with the new Shadow Priest spells, while there are certainly no problems with Shadow Priests gaining an AoE spell, two AoE spells that appear to have nearly the same mechanics seems to be wholly unnecessary.

Despite the nerf to VT, which is significant, Blizz seem to recognize the SP playstyle and go for a route that increased our personal regen with the new shadow focus, and imp spirit tap which will be a huge help to our personal mana regen without going nuts for the party regen. I suspect we'll still be able to play the same way (constant casting) without running out of mana.

They left VE untouched which is interesting given how useful that spell is at high dmg levels and with any encounters with raidwide dmg output.

They are most definitely making a push for crit to becomoe useful for SP, the new Shadow power talent not only increases crit chance, but crit dmg.

The nerf to shadow focus i think is an interesting one as it will make us search for more + hit gear. I am a bit worried though since we really don't do well under the hit cap unlike other dps caster classed.

This is an interesting bag that they gave SPs. It is essentially a recognition that we needed nerfs, but attempting to have out itemization scale better. (see the other thread on scaling).

Overall i think the changes are not radical, won't really change play style, but is sort of low on the "cool" factor. We really only got one new toy, which is that we can now AE.

I am curious though as to whether we will see more spirit in our gear. I can see this being a way for Blizz to give us itemization that is separate and distinct from mage/lock gear. I hope that will be the case, it makes sense from a class perspective and as a mechanic. Remember spirit regen, even IFSR can be quite good with enough Int.

The new horror effect talent and the new fade effect via improved shadowform may actually make (I never thought I'd say this) improved fade a viable PvP talent.

I'm actually really excited about these changes. The new VT changes are great coupled with the increase in damage. We all know VT has always been a bit broken. It scales too well and basically puts us in a position where they are capping our damage to hold back mana regen from being infinite. This (coupled with the new shadow power, spirit to damage talent, growing pains, etc.) moves us closer to a DPS class with some extra utility rather than a utility class with some poor DPS.

Thottbot has mined data with higher level spell ranks, which should give the general idea of mana cost scaling: Priest - Skills - Thottbot: World of Warcraft (edit: As of May 22, all http://thottbot.com/wotlk URLs are restricted, and the link won't work anymore.)

Mana costs increase between 59% and 70%. Here are some numbers I ran quickly in Windows calc, comparing max TBC ranks to WotLK ranks. Any double-checking of it would be appreciated:

Shadow Word: Pain
70: 575 mana
80: 915 mana (159% of 575)

Mind Blast
69: 450 mana
79: 715 mana (159% of 450)

Mind Flay
68: 230 mana
80: 390 mana (170% of 230)

Vampiric Touch
70: 425 mana
80: 700 mana (165% of 425)

Shadow Word: Death
70: 310 mana
80: 510 mana (165% of 310)

Not sure how to interpret this : does this mean with say a +100 dmg/heal equip effect that we now have a +120dmg/100 +heal effect ?
If it's only targeted at pure +healing effects it would be a weird low tiered talent to allow for weird specs where a priest with heal stuff on could do some DPS ?
Moreover the refresh part has me worried, while the idea is great (just slap SW:P once at beginning of a fight) it will mean we'll have to time MF pretty tight so as not to lose DPS on the duration refresh (except if they do it right but I kinda doubt it)...

I believe it means that you can wear +heal gear as a Shadowpriest - essentially wear the same gear whether healing or dps'ing, with the exception being pure +shadow dmg gear that might be superior for DPS.

Example given in the WotLK thread earlier:
[Golden Spellthread] gives 66 +heal and 22 +dmg. With the new talent, the 66 +heal would provide an additional 13.2 spell dmg, for a total of 35.2 spell dmg. This is actually 0.2 more than [Runic Spellthread] provides.

i hope that isn't the case, as it would make it completely screwy for us to compete with both dps casters and heal priests for the same gear. With dark spirit and imp spirit tap we want spirit itemization, and now asking us to go for + heal gear is just wonky.

Personally, i hope it allows us to double count +dmg rather than forcing us to weigh heal gear.

it's very nice to see some of our escapability issues being addressed for pvp. removing snares, adding a horror, even types of aoe/seed talents. it will be interesting to see what kind of counters melee type classes gain as well but at least it seems like it's heading in the right direction.

Considering that shadow focus drops from 10% to 3% maxed out, I don't think you'll be wearing too much +healing gear in a raid environment.

Better crits are nice, althoug the increased backlash from SWD may be problematic.

Shadow PvP is looking up with at least *some* pushback protection, and the ability to drop snares and having Dispersion. (Using Dispersion with 6 sec left on your 2nd Psychic Scream cooldown, then fear, fade if snared, and run)

Oh yeah and cant forget -- finally an AOE!

That said, we still need to get 13% hit from gear alone now, rather than 6%, and healing gear won't have any hit on it. So I'm pretty concerned about how we'll reach the hit cap. Not being hit capped is really, really bad too.

Found this
"Growing Pains - "Converts 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus healing into bonus spell damage. In addition, your Mind Flay has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target." on WotLK Information Wiki: WotLK Alpha Official Wiki anyone know if this is a reliable source? If so that would save alot of mana.

I think it's a nice solution rather, one of the problems with hybrids always was the need for multiple gear sets, with this system you can do with one, albeit without enchants/gems for both specs. It's rather odd they reduced the +hit from shadow focus though, as healing gear with spellhit isn't exactly in large supply, meaning you can't wear just healing stuff.

I doubt Growing Pains goes live like this, as it conflicts both with improved shadowword: pain (no use for a longer version now) and the changed shadow focus as mentioned. I honestly would prefer the proc to stay at around 3/6/../15, as it would add a certain dynamicness shadow lacks right now.

Edit: Too slow with posting and didn't see the imp.SW:P change. :(

I would agree with you if we were more like boomkins or Elemental shamans, or even ret/prot pallies. But when we dps we can't really spot heal, the shadowform sort of throws out the entire heal support, especially since we heal so much more when we actually do dmg. Ever since i hit 70, i have never healed in a raid setting at all. Having a heal set isn't an issue for me, since i would never be asked to heal without a respec anyway. i just don't see us popping in and out of Shadow form to throw a renew or POM once in a while, the mana cost is too great and we lose focus on what we are there for, to do dmg and return mana. Besides, i don't even think this would allow us to have one gear set. with gem socketing and the like, this still would require two distinct sets of gear for dpsing and healing.

Well, assuming you'll have a balance druid and a frost mage in the raid and are grouped with an elemental shaman, you'd still only need 3% from gear (that's if the talents would remain as they are now).
3% from Improved Faerie Fire, 3% from Totem of Wrath and 4% from Winter's Grasp (if that can be kept up on bosses).

With the new Imp SW:P listed up top it doesn't look like it's a duration increase anymore, rather a damage increase. So Growing Pains could be worthwhile.