New Rotation Ideas

With the changes to priest racials and shadow tree talents i will have to take a good look at my current cast rotation and figure out how to improve my DPS.

Thanks to Pain and Suffering i no longer have to keep casting Shadow Word: Pain, which is a pain in the ass to refresh as it's very expensive this also allows us to keep misery up indefinately which gives us a good amount of damage as well as a spell hit bonus.

Vampiric touch needs to be up at all times so that replenishment can be used, mind blast should be used whenever the cooldown is over so that replenish can be refreshed regularly.

Devouring Plague is another DoT to our arsenal which i can use liberaly but should be careful with as even with the mana cost lowered it's still more expensive then SW:P, because DP heals you for the damage it does it has good synergy with Shadow Word: Death which should be used very cautiously as a badly timed SW:D can easily kill you (Prince's Feeble being the biggest case of bad timing for me) especial now that our crits do twice as much damage.

Vampiric Embrace should see more use now that we have more threat mitagation from shadow form, however this spell should be used cautiously as it can generate a lot of aggro very quickly and we don't have a real aggro drop.

And last but not least Mind Flay which is easily our most mana efficent spell and now that it can crit it's become considerably more dangerous i use this spell between Mind Blast cooldowns and should cast it at least once every 20 seconds or so in order to refresh SW:P (shouldent be a problem :p)

So my basic cast rotation should look like this:

VT > SW:P (once only) > MB > MF

With DP, SW:D and VE being weaved in as i see fit

Priest Racial Changes

WoW beta gives a lot of good chances to express opinions, whether they be choice discussions on how to play the new class designs or random QQ.
As most priests already know there are changes to the priests racials where as all race specific priests spells have been stripped down to the most useful ones and spread amoungest everyone.

All Priests can now use:

Devouring Plague - a DoT spell that heals us for a percentage of the damage done, Previously Undead Only

Hymn of Hope - a channeled spell that restores a percentage of mana to all party members - Previously called Symbol of Hope and was Draenai only

Desperate Prayer - an instant cast self heal, now a 11 point talent in the holy tree replaceing holy nova (now a base line skill) previously a Human and Dwarf skill

All other race spells have been dropped meaning my Blood Elf Priest loses:

Consume Magic - consumes a random priest buff and restores a small amount of mana, i never used this spell anyway the mana restored was too little to compensate for losing a good buff

Touch of Weakness - a Meager spell at best but i used this a lot as a little help against mobs, the biggest reason that i'll miss this spell is because it sometimes proc'd blackout which was hilarious when a rogue trys to gank me and gets stunned :p

Overall i think the trade off is well met and i will make far better use of the new spells then the old ones (except hymn of hope as it's a holy spell that dosent give as much mana as it's previous carnation).

New Header

Yay i finally got round to making a Header for my blog, the images where obtained through google, it's not bad for something thrown together in 30 mins especialy in microsoft paint :p.

I also added a Blog roll which i'll get round to expanding at some point, just goes to show how good boredom is as a motivator. ^^

I might be able to make it look quite nice one i get round to realy messing with the features.

My Band of Merry Alts

I have a tendancy to roll new alts whenever i'm bored and although a lot of them never make it past level 20 i enjoy most of the time i spend on them, it gives me a broader perspective when grouping with certain classes as i know there core gameplay mechanics and abilities.

I've played every class except druids (I truely hate them and wouldent hesitate to attacking any flagged NE drood i come across), I play almost completely on the horde side now although i originally started out on the alliance i switched because all my freinds played horde and i wanted to play with them.

My first charecter (or at least the oldest non-deleted charecter i still have) is a human paladin at level 32, she's called Koushirou and resides on the Eonar EU server.
This was back when i first started playing WoW so she brings back a lot of nostalgia, everything i learned about Grouping, WoW lingro and Stat placement i learned on this toon.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Koushirou

From there i moved on to my second charecter and so far my only 70 who's a Blood Elf Priest also called Koushirou who's on Sunstrider EU, i refined my WoW knowledge on this charecter and learned a lot about Talent placement and Professions (i leveled as Disc spec until level 63 when i switched to shadow, don't ask me how i did it i honestly don't know).
This is on a PvP server so naturally i got my first taste of being ganked where i generaed enouth rage to put a warrior to shame. :p
She is currently my main and will probably be the first charecter i level to 80.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Koushirou

Other then that i have me small army of low level alts, who i like to mess around with which include:

Erio - my 26 Blood Elf Rogue (i rolled her with the intention of doing PvP and being a general asshole to alliance members :p, assumeing i get round to leveling her)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Erio

Procela - my 11 Tauren Shaman (rolled so i could go Wind Fury spec, probably has the lowest chance of ever reaching 70)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Procela

Teana - my 13 Blood Elf Hunter (rolled for the lulz probably will never make it past 20)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Teana

and finally Nanoha - my Blood Elf Mage (rolled with the name of an anime charecter i like and will be leveled as an arcane mage, has the highest chance of reaching 70 as i like the idea of emulating the charecter :D)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Nanoha

I also have a dropped charecter who i rolled in order to play with a freind but he has since moved servers shes called Haneko and ironically was not far off 70 as a level 64 undead warlock.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Haneko

I'll probably make a lot more alts, i intend to make a Death Knight when the next expansion hits (big surprise :p) and also intend to level a warrior at some point.

Wotlk Thoughts

It's been a long time since my last post, i actually stopped blogging when one of my friends also stopped but now i'm bored so i'll try my hand at blogging again.

I've been following the Wotlk beta news for awhile now as i try and decide whether i should stick to playing my priest or else re-roll to a differant class, i started some new classes to mess around with which ironically are both classes i claimed to be unable to play well.

The priest seems to be doing OK with all the changes and messing around to the overall class structure, interestingly with the changes to spell power you can now gear a shadow priest as if it was a healer and get some nice results, which would turn out to be excellant news if they impliment the "Dual Talent Specs" that they are rumored to be working on.

The changes to shadow priest DPS makes it so we are a lot more powerful then before and should new be doing the competitive damage along with the rest of the hybrid classes, although i'm rather annoyed by the changes to Vampiric Touch.

I actually like the changes made with the replenishment buff as it releases the limiter placed on the shadow priest but i don't like how 2 other classes now have the ability to use the replenishment buff, i guess it's just me being angry at losing the niche catagory that i've always occupied.

Giving replenishment to survival hunters dosent bother me too much as you don't see too many survival specced hunters outside of battle grounds or arenas (not sure whether that will change in wotlk or not), but since ret paladins have been speculated to be slightly OP in the next patch then most people will probably take them along to raids and dungeons instead of shadow priests.

Overall though i'm quite please with all the buffs we've been getting and hope that by level 80 i can be doing DPS compareable to the rest of my raid group.