a Darkened Soul

Misery-

-noun

1. a 3 point talent

2. When all 3 talents are taken (and they always should be) this talent increases your chance to hit with harmful spells by 3% for 24 seconds.

3. Increases the the benefit from spellpower gained by your Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Mind Sear spells by 15%

4. Misery can only be applied by casting either VT, SW:P, or MF

Misery is an important buff for not only yourself but for others in your raid because of the increased chance to hit that it gives. The hit cap for Shadow Priests is 289 if Misery has been applied otherwise you may miss with crucial spells in the beginning of a fight so I can not stress enough how important it is to get this buff up as quick as possible. Misery can only be applied by using Vampiric Touch, Mind Flay, or Shadow Word: Pain.

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Misery also gives a very nice damage buff to your Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Mind Sear spells. You can use this knowledge to increase damage in some interesting places.

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One of my favorite ways to boost my damage is to throw SW:P on every target I can in an aoe group before starting up with Mind Sear. You get increased damage on every target done by the Mind Sear as well as chance to hit and not to mention the SW:P ticks themselves running simultaneously with the Mind Sear ticks. On average I do between 10 to 20% more damage on aoe mobs than Shadow Priests that do not use this technique.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Shadow Weaving-

-noun

1. a 3 point talent

2. 3 points gives you a 100% chance to increase the shadow damage you deal by 2% for 15 seconds.

3. This effect stacks up to five times for a total of 10% extra damage done by all shadow spells.

This effect is often overlooked by many Priests I have talked to because it is automatically applied when using shadow spells. Understanding what you get with this talent can help you to increase your dps potential.

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The most important aspect of this spell is how it is used with SW:P. The damage done by SW:P is increased by 10% like other spells however if you do not have 5 stacks of the effect up when SW:P is cast your damage will be greatly reduced. You must recast SW:P manually to gain the effect of the 5 stacks if it was not done at the start.

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This is the reason that Shadow Priests have two different rotations, a starting rotation and then a combat rotation. The start up rotation is designed to apply Shadow Weaving efficiently and for the maximum dps potential.

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Starting rotation-

VT-DP-MB-MF-SW:P if standing still

SW:P-VT-DP-MB-MF-MF-SW:P if running in

Popularity: 3% [?]

I decided to go ahead and fill out this DPS questionnaire set up by Death Goddess over on her blog to give some of my own perspective on what it means to me to be a Shadow Priest. It was fun and I hope you guys enjoy it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary dps?

Ronburgndy- Shadow Priest 

What is your primary dpsing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Atm my answer would have to be 25 man raids. I haven’t had as much time to play in the last year so I am restricted to a few select activities. However, it really does go in waves. I have always been a big fan of PvP and Arenas and I also enjoy the occasional 5 man although the most of the ones currently available are getting stale.

What is your favorite dps spell/ability for your class and why?

Dispite the fact that it is a passive spell I think Shadowform would have to be my favorite. Shadowform is unlike anything available to other classes. It is a self buff in essence but so much more. If the tooltip for Shadowform told you all of the things that it actually does after talent points it would probably take up half of your screen. It is the defining spell for Shadow Priests and how they play with almost all buffs or nerfs seeming to come from or be somehow routed through this spell.

What dps spell do you use least for your class and why?

Mana Burn because as dps goes it doesn’t do much and with the exception of Arenas it is a weak spell due to the time it take to produce any visable results. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

The official Priest Q&A was released a few hours ago and surprisingly it seems to address most of the issues currently plaguing the Shadow tree. Don’t misunderstand though, there are very few solutions presented in this dialog and that might frustrate some people. However, addressing the issues that we have been hounding them with for months has scored Blizzard a few points in my book.

Some highlights of the Shadow part of the Q&A:

-They are looking into the “damage is increased while DoTs are active” talents, which they (and we) feel cause us to be handicapped in shorter fights where we don’t have the time to either apply DoTs or allow them to tick for any real value. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

VERSION 3.3.1 OF THIS CHEAT SHEET IS NOW AVAILABLE!

I thought something like this might be useful to people who have trouble finding the spriest info that they need. I have thrown together a Darkened Soul Shadow Priest PvE Cheat Sheet. I need to come up with a better name for it I know. I don’t claim to have come up with information on my own. However, I did work hard in verifying facts from multiple sources. Thanks to Shadowpriest.com, MMO-Champion, Elitist Jerks, and WoWHead users for doing all the number crunching. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 19% [?]