Since I’ve been able to do some playing around on the PTR, I have my plans solidified for my talents and glyphs when the patch comes out in the next week or so. These choices are for being raid-ready at 80. I’ll certainly change things up for my off-spec and for leveling when the expansion drops on December 7.
Glyphs
As of the patch, you’ll get three glyphs each for your prime, major and minor glyph slots.
Prime
- Dispersion
Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 sec. - Shadow Word: Pain
Increases the periodic damage of your Shadow Word: Pain by 10%. - Mind Flay
Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
I know that Blizz wants us to move SW:Death back into our rotation, but until I actually see in action that I am using it enough to warrant its glyph, I’m choosing SW:P over it. In BC, when it was part of my rotation, I still don’t think it got enough use that I would pick decreasing its cooldown over something else. And if you are spamming it trying to get those juicy big crits at the 25% and under health levels, well you’d better have a healer keeping an eye on you unless you enjoy floor hugging.
Major
- Spirit Tap
When you kill a target with your Shadow Word: Death and yield experience or honor, you instantly receive 12% of your total mana over 12 sec. - Psychic Scream
Targets of your Psychic Scream spell now tremble in place instead of fleeing in fear, but the cooldown of Psychic Scream is increased by 3 sec. - Fade
Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec.
Despite not thinking I’ll be using SW:D a ton, the Spirit Tap glyph seems like a good buy (especially since there aren’t a ton of other glyphs in this range that I am dying to use.) The psychic Scream glyph rocks for providing PvE priests the ability to use Fear in a raid setting without sending off its targets to go find new friends. Huzzah! And given my love for using my Fade button, that glyph is also a no-brainer.
Minor
- Fortitude
Reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 50%. - Levitate
Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent. - Shadow Protection
Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection spell by 10 min.
Nothing to see here. Pick your favorite boring old minor glyphs. These are the ones I’ve used since the dawn of inscription.
Talents
I’ve used MMO Champion’s talent calculator to show my build. Basically, you go through the Shadow tree, minus the stun for Mind Blast and the psychic horro and sience points, then put your remaining points into Discipline.
(NOTE: Now that you get your talent points every other level, you can’t spend that next point in Discipline until you hit 81.)
Rotation
I’m not set on my rotation at this point. And from all the nerding back and forth on SP.com, I don’t know that anyone else is yet either. But this is what I am looking at:
SW:P > DP > VT > SW:D > MB> MF
Then wait for the MB and SW:D CDs to be back up, and refreshing DoTs as needed. Toss out your shadowfiend whenever the CD is available, starting when you are down 25% mana or thereabouts. If it’s a short fight, you may want to lead with it for pure DPS boost.
Reforging
The current talk is that mastery becomes better than crit and haste only at the point that you have 1400 of each of them. Which I, not having any heroic gear, certainly do not have. So at this point, I won’t be worrying about it, other than as a way to manage my hit rating. Basically, 40% of the following stats on a piece of gear may be reforged into any stat not currently present on that piece of gear:
- Critical Strike Rating
- Dodge Rating
- Expertise Rating
- Haste Rating
- Hit Rating
- Mastery Rating
- Parry Rating
- Spirit
Overall it’s looking like our 4.0.1 gear stat priority would be: Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Mastery (at hit cap) or Hit > Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Mastery (until hit cap)
For Further Patch Related Reading
- Who Can Dispell What at World of Matticus
- MMO Champion’s Priest Cataclysm Page
- MMO Champion’s New and Removed Glyphs page
- WoWWiki’s crowd control page
All of the brains over at shadowpriest.com say SW:D is the way to go. I think you are making a mistake by not using it.
I’ve done plenty of reading over there, as well as having played when it was part of the rotation (i.e. BC.) It’s fine in small measure (which is how I have it in the rotation above) but unless you have a healer really watching you it’s an excellent way to die, which is not a good way to maximize one’s DPS.
🙂
Similarly, I’ve heard that by the numbers, as a warlock, you could just spam searing pain to maximize your DPS. Right until you pulled aggro and died.
I wish I had planned out this stuff beforehand like you did; I just spent most of my time really confused on how to spec my lock! Den is down too, so I guess I will have to look tomorrow to see what the ideal spec is supposed to be. Also I will need figure out what is going on with searing pain and corruption for destro locks now, and if it is really possible to work searing pain into rotation without dying…seems really odd that they would make it part of our regular rotation.
Do love you for sharing this, haven’t really been following changes very much. And Shadow Weaving’s gone? \o/
GLad to share it — writing helps me think through what I have to do. And yeah, really weird not watching for my 5 stacks of shadow weaving…
🙂
I felt like I was behind a bit due to vacation. I still haven’t sorted out my shaman’s spec, or my lock alts either for that matter. So much to do!
Your priorities are weird.
Specifically, Spirit gives 101% of whatever Hit Rating gives. In any situation where you would want Hit, you would want Spirit. And Spirit offers non-zero benefit over Hit Rating.
I’m not sure if you are understanding the priority ranking. The idea is until you are hit capped, you want to focus on hit (the hit stat by itself or spirit transferred into hit); you won’t want to seek out spirit as a stat above and beyond that until lower in your priority tree, and then primarily due to it being used in Twisted Faith.
You’ll note that after hit cap, spirit is still on the priorities list, since it can offer some benefit, unlike hit which is not on the list. You did not specify but perhaps it was also the placement of mastery that you think is weird? The number crunchers say that until you are at crit and haste cap it’s not worth sinking points into.
This bit of theorycrafting is not mine –you’ll want to argue with the math heads at shadowpriest.com on it. I’ve seen the same priority list in several places therein.