Yet Another Warlock Nerf

We Shadow Priests have it pretty good in the Burning Crusade. Casters love us for our ability to refill their mana during a raid, raid leaders love us for the DPS we put out, and if by chance we’re needed to provide a small bit of healing now and again, we can. That’s why we’re so coveted by raiding guilds.

In the WotLK, we’re all hoping for more of the same. Lets take a look at some of the new talents available to Shadow Priests in the expansion.

First things first, Spirit Tap is now a 3 point talent, but has the same effect it did before. Still a must have for all Shadow Priests.

Added to Tier 1 is Improved Spirit Tap. It requires 3 points in Spirit Tap and increases your Spirit by 50% while casting when getting a critical strike with your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells. This is a must have talent for Shadow Priests. We gain 2 talent points from Spirit Tap going down to 3 points, but we’ll most definitely spend the spare points in this talent. It’ll be great for anything you do in game. Definite buff for the class.

In Tier 2, Shadow Focus now increases your chance to hit with Shadow spells, and reduces their mana cost. This is a good change in my opinion. It adds 3% hit, which is great once you reach endgame, and reduces mana cost, which is always good.

Shadow Resilience in Tier 6 now reduces all physical damage taken by 4%. The old talent just used to reduce chance to be critically hit. This talent was a must for PvP before, now its been changed to more of a PvE talent. Bad change if you’re a PvP player, good change if you are a PvE player.

Down in Tier 7, Shadowform now also reduces threat generated by 30%. Great change for raiding. Definitely a buff.

Shadow Power has been buffed and nerfed in that the critical strike chance for Mindblast and Shadow Word: Death has been nerfed from 15% to 10% if you invest all 5 points here. This talent has also been buffed in that your critical strike bonus has been increased by 50%. This is huge for PvE and raiding Shadow Priests. The extra damage will more than make up for the loss of some crit.

In Tier 8, Improved Shadowform is a new talent that has been added which gives you a 100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects via Fade. It also adds a 70% chance to reduce lost time to casting and channeling while in Shadowform. This a great talent for PvP, and a must for the arena.

Vampiric Touch down in Tier 9 has been nerfed slightly with party members now only receiving 2% mana for every shadow spell damage you cause. This is a change from 5%. A nerf definitely, especially for raiding shadow priests.

Psychic Horror is a new talent which gives your Psychic Scream a 100% chance to make the target flee in fear for 4 secs. This give you the ability to do a targeted Psychic Scream. Definitely a buff for PvP.

Pain and Suffering is a new talent that gives your Mind Flay a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain spell and reduces your damage to your Shadow Word: Death spell by 60%. This is more of a PvE focused talent which will be required for all raiding Shadow Priests.

Twisted faith, a new talent in Tier 10, increases your shadow spell damage by 30% of your total spirit. This talent also has the added benefit for adding 5% damage to your Mind Blast and Mind Flay spells for every Shadow based DoT you have on the target. Overall, this spell is a nice buff to our damage as we tend to stack Spirit in high mounts. The added benefit of the 5% damage to Mind Blast and Mind flay for each DoT is a nice buff as well.

The last new talent called Dispersion is available at 51 points in the Shadow Tree. This spell allows us to disperse into pure shadow energy and regenerate 6% of our total health and mana every second for 6 secs. All damage is reduced by 90%, but we cannot attack or cast any spells while this is active. This spell is the Shadow Priest equivalent for Evocation a Mage spell which allows them to regen 60% of their mana every 8 minutes. With Dispersion, We don’t get as much mana back, but it does have a shorter cooldown. Overall, a good spell, and a worthy use for a talent point if you are into PvE and raiding.

That’s our look at the changes coming to the Shadow Tree in WotLK. Overall I think most of the changes are good, despite the nerf to VT. I still have yet to get my beta key, so any of you that are in the beta, let us know in the comments what you think of the changes to the shadow tree.