The stats on these items give you a good taste of what the gear dropping from ICC is going to look like.

Leggings of Woven Death

Binds when equipped

Legs Cloth

309 Armor

+123 Stamina

+123 Intellect

Red Socket

Yellow Socket

Blue Socket

Socket Bonus: +9 Spell Power

Durability 75 / 75

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 84 (1.83% @ L80).

Equip: Improves haste rating by 108 (3.29% @ L80).

Equip: Increases spell power by 162.

Sandals of Consecration

Binds when equipped

Feet Cloth

243 Armor

+92 Stamina

+92 Intellect

+80 Spirit

Yellow Socket

Yellow Socket

Socket Bonus: +7 Spell Power

Durability 50 / 50

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 64 (1.39% @ L80).

Equip: Increases spell power by 122.

Deathfrost Boots

Binds when equipped

Feet Cloth

243 Armor

+92 Stamina

+92 Intellect

Red Socket

Blue Socket

Socket Bonus: +7 Spell Power

Durability 50 / 50

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Improves hit rating by 64 (2.44% @ L80).

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 80 (1.74% @ L80).

Equip: Increases spell power by 122.

Lightweave Leggings

Binds when equipped

Legs Cloth

309 Armor

+123 Stamina

+123 Intellect

+108 Spirit

Red Socket

Yellow Socket

Blue Socket

Socket Bonus: +9 Spell Power

Durability 75 / 75

Requires Level 80

Item Level 264

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 84 (1.83% @ L80).

Equip: Increases spell power by 162.

• Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.
• Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
• Vampiric Embrace: This ability is now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain- The periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restore 1% of your base mana. (Old – Your haste now reduces the time between the periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell. PTR Only change)
• Glyph of Shadow: While in Shadowform, this glyph causes non-periodic spell critical strikes to increase spell power by 30%, up from 10%, of the priest’s total spirit for 10 seconds.
• Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph now increases the damage done by Mind Flay by 10% when the target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

As you can see the changes being made to Shadow are substantial to say the least. Some estimates are saying that there is no way that this many buffs will make it to live servers. However, from resources including several very good players and several posting on Shadowpriest.com its looking like this will put shadow priests right on par with some of the best dps classes in the game without necessarily being to OP.

One of the biggest arguments in the Shadow Priest community right now is whether or not it will even be a good idea to cast Mind Blast in our regular rotation. Here is a great thread on Shadowpriest.com discussing the math of casting Mind Blast in 3.3. In case the math is too much for you here is a quick breakdown of how things look.

The magic number for spell power seems to be 5162. Meaning once you reach this much spell power through whatever means(buffs, trinkets, bonuses) you can at that point leave MB out of your rotation because dotting and MF will be higher dps. However, since the average player will need advanced 3.3 gear, a tier 10 4pc bonus, and full 25 man raid buff to even have the possibility of coming close to that magic number, it seems that at this time it is best to leave MB in our rotation. But the debate rages on as we get more and more data from the number crunchers. Keep an eye on this thread for more details.

Now as for the changes themselves I think they are pretty self explanatory but here are some specifics that have been worked out.

-As with spell power dots will be adjusted by the haste that you have when the cast goes off. So if you pop trinkets, use, pots, or get a proc and then cast SWP then that amount of haste will apply to it until the dot wears off or is removed. The refresh of SWP by MF does not reset the haste amount, it retains the amount from the original cast.

-Glyph of Mind Flay is now what Glyph of Shadow Word Pain used to be so that Glyph of SWP can give us the mana  regen necessary to constantly renew the DoTs that are now going to be effected by haste. The old effect of Glyph of Mind Flay is now a part of the actual spell without any penalty. The new permanent range of Mind Flay is 30 yards.

-Vampiric Embrace is now a 30 minute buff instead of a target debuff. While this buff is up any enemy that is damaged with your shadow spells (except for Mind Sear) will give health to the player and his/her party.

For those of you that are into the the nitty gritty details of things, here is a great quote from Griemak ( a regular contributor on Shadowpriest.com) on the effects of haste on shadow spells.

Griemak says:

New Casting Time = (Base Casting Time)/(1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))

% Spell Haste = (haste rating / 32.79) + (major-buff * minor-buff * lust-ism)

1.5 GCD becomes capped at 1.0 seconds with 50% haste

25% haste on gear is 820 haste, perhaps at the end of 3.3, but not at the beginning without raping crit rating. 650 is more appropriate…

650 / 32.79 = 19.82% haste

Potion of speed is added to this as it increases haste rating.

Minor-Raid buff is 3%
Major-Raid buff is 5%
Bloodlust/Heroism is 30%

w/o potion or lust-ism
(650 / 32.79) + (1.05 * 1.03) = 27.97%

w/ lust-sim
(650 / 32.79) + (1.05 * 1.03 * 1.3) = 60.415% 

w/ potion + lust-ism
((650+500) / 32.79) + (1.05 * 1.03 * 1.3) = 75.665%

MB and VT cast time
27.97% = 1.17
60.415% = .935
75.665% = .8538 

New time between DoT ticks and Non 4piece Tier 10 MF cast time
27.97% = 2.34
60.415% = 1.87
75.665% = 1.62 

MF 4p T10 cast
27.97% = 1.95
60.415% = 1.56
75.665% = 1.42 

Troll berserking is 20%, under lust-ism and potion of speed it would result in 103% haste.

MB and VT: .74
DoT and 3.0MF: 1.48
2.5MF: 1.23

To some people that won’t make a lot of sense but its basically a break down of different Haste buffs, procs, and pots and how much they effect different spells. Since our biggest buff in this patch will be that our DoTs finally scale with haste you will be seeing a lot of these set ups in the near future so don’t get overwhelmed. Pretty soon I will be putting together some chats that show easily readable haste buffs and how to use them effectively in your rotation.

Speaking of rotations there are going to need to be some slight adjustments to our regular rotation to account for these new changes in 3.3. Our starting rotation for fights that do not require a run in will most likely be

VT, DP, MB, MF then SWP when the 5 stacks of shadow weaving are up.

After that then you go to a priority list that looks like this

DP>VT>MB>MF

For fights that require a run in different methods can be used but mostly likely the best setup will be

SWP, DP, SWD, VT, MB, SWP

I would also like to point out that according to the numbers given in the Mind Blast Math post, casting SWD right after MB is a dps increase until you get tier 10 gear.

Even thought these are the currently confirmed best rotations at this time we are still in the PTR phase of 3.3 and like all of these facts these numbers could change at any time.

I hope to get into even more detail on some of these items very soon in specific posts so stay tuned.

Here is a link to the patch in case you are having trouble downloading it from Blizzard Patch 3.2.2

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.2.2

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The Brood Mother Returns
After years of lurking in her lair battling the many brave adventurers who travelled from afar to challenge her, Onyxia returns stronger than before to commemorate World of Warcraft’s five-year anniversary.

• Onyxia has been scaled to offer new challenges to level 80 players and is now available for testing in 10- and 25-player modes.
• Adjusted for modern raiding, but with the fundamental experience of fighting the Brood Mother still in effect, including the horrors of her Deep Breaths!
• Onyxia will now drop level 80 item versions of some classic loot items from the level 60 encounter.
• Brood of Onyxia, a very rare 310%-speed mount modeled after Onyxia herself will be available for the luckiest of challengers.

General

• Armor Penetration Rating: The amount of armor penetration gained per point of this rating has been reduced by 12%.
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PvP
Battlegrounds

• Players level 11 and higher will now always see a daily Battleground quest, as the quest giver will only offer daily quests for a Battleground in which a player is eligible to participate according to level bracket (i.e. players levels 11-20 will always be offered a Warsong Gulch daily quest, while players levels 11-50 will be offered either an Arathi Basin or a Warsong Gulch daily quest, etc.).

Death Knight
Pets

• Gnaw: This death knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.

Blood

• Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.
• Subversion: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Scourge Strike by 3/6/9%.
• Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.

Frost

• Threat of Thassarian now also causes Rune Strike to use both weapons when dual-wielding.
• Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and changed back to granting 25% additional armor while active instead of flat damage reduction based on armor. The amount of strength granted has been reduced to 10%.
• Frost Presence: The damage reduction granted by this ability has been increased from 5% to 8%.

Unholy

• Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
• Dirge: This talent no longer grants additional runic power from using Obliterate.

Druid
Balance

• Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.
• Typhoon: The daze duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.

Feral Combat

• Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.
• Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid’s finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

Hunter
Beast Mastery

• The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
• Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

Mage
Arcane

• Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.
• Arcane Missiles: Casting this spell while both Missile Barrage and Clearcasting are active will cause only Missile Barrage to be consumed.
• Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.

Fire
Combustion: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of Fire spells by 50% while it is active. In addition, Living Bomb periodic ticks will no longer interact with the count or the charges on the talent.

Paladin
Protection

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Retribution

• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.
• Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Priest
Shadow

• Improved Spirit Tap: Mind Flay periodic critical strikes now have a 50% chance to trigger this talent.
• Twisted Faith now grants spell power equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of spirit, up from 2/4/6/8/10%.

Rogue

• Envenom’s scaling has been increased from 7% to 9% of attack power per combo point.
• Fan of Knives: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.

Assassination

• Master Poisoner: No longer increases the Deadly Poison application rate following a successful Envenom and instead now provides a 33/66/100% chance of preventing Envenom from consuming Deadly Poison.

Combat

• Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

Subtlety

• Honor Among Thieves: A 1-second cooldown is now enforced on how often a rogue can gain combo points from his party via this talent.

Shaman

• Cleansing Totem: No longer pulses instantly when dropped.
• Flame Shock: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.
• Lava Burst: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.

Elemental Combat

• Shamanism: Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.

Enhancement

• Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

Warrior
Arms

• Sword Specialization: Now has a 2/4/6/8/10% chance to proc an extra attack, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Protection

• Critical Block: This talent now grants a 20/40/60% chance to block double the normal amount instead of 10/20/30%.

Dungeons & Raids
Shadowfang Keep

• Wailing Guardsman: Screams of the Past will no longer have multiple applications on a target. Recast time has been increased.

Ulduar

• Increased the cooldown on Immortal Guardians’ Drain Life ability in the Yogg-Saron encounter.

Achievements

• The Achievement “Iron, Dwarf Medium Rare (25 player)” now requires 25 kills, down from 50.
• The Frostwolf Howler and Stormpike Battle Charger Achievements will now be awarded when a player learns the respective mount spells.

Professions

• The blacksmiths of Orgrimmar grew tired of running to the rear of the city to craft items and have installed a new anvil & forge at the General Store in the Valley of Strength.

Engineering

• The Mind Amplification Dish no longer changes the appearance of your helmet.

Inscription

• Added a recipe for Runescroll of Fortitude. This item grants a stamina buff equal to the highest rank of Power Word: Fortitude (untalented) to all players in the raid. The effect of this runescroll is exclusive with other stamina scrolls and Power Word: Fortitude.

Leatherworking

• Added a recipe for Drums of Forgotten Kings. These drums increase all stats by 8% for all players in a raid. The effect of these drums is exclusive with Blessing of Kings.
• Added a recipe for Drums of the Wild. These drums grant a buff equal to the highest rank of Mark of the Wild (untalented) to all players in a raid. The effect of these drums is exclusive with Mark of the Wild.

Items

• The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection.
• Death Knight Tier-9 Tanking 4-Piece Set Bonus: Now decreases the cooldown on Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor, and Bone Shield by 10 seconds instead of 20.
• Druid Tier-8 Healer 4-Piece Set Bonus: The amount of healing this set bonus grants on the initial cast of Rejuvenation has been reduced by 50%. In addition, this set bonus no longer has strange interactions with Harold’s Rejuvenating Broach.
• Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
• Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
• Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.
• Totem of Quaking Earth: Attack power value increased to 400.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Bone Shield: This glyph now grants 1 additional charge instead of 2.
• Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph no longer reduces the magnitude of the movement reduction on the Mind Flay victim.
• Glyph of Scourge Strike: Redesigned. This glyph now causes Scourge Strike to extend the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 3 seconds each time Scourge Strike is used on a target, up to a maximum of 9 seconds.
• Glyph of Typhoon: This glyph now increases the range on Typhoon by 10 yards in addition to its current effects.
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now increases the armor gained from Unbreakable Armor by 20%.
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood: The glyph now increases the duration of Vampiric Blood by 5 seconds instead of 10.

User Interface
Battleground Queuing

• Players may now only queue for no more than two Battlegrounds at a time.
• The dialog box for entering a Battleground match has been changed to reflect the following options: “Enter Battle,” “Leave Queue,” and “Minimize.”
• The time a player has to enter a battle when selected has been reduced to 40 seconds when not already in a Battleground and 20 seconds when in a Battleground.
• Players already in a Battleground can now choose “Enter Battle” for a new Battleground under any circumstance (i.e. while dead, in combat, falling, etc.).
• A new Battleground will not launch until the maximum number of players on each side are in the queue (i.e. 40 players per side for Alterac Valley).
• The size of the Focus Frame can now be adjusted via the Interface Options menu.

Mail System Auto-Complete Feature

• The inline auto-complete feature for the mail system has been added back into the game. The mail system will now have both the pre- and post-3.2.0 auto-complete features available.
• Added a label to notify players that the Tab key will allow players to navigate through the character names listed via the auto-complete feature.

For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=11114

Bug Fixes

• Coliseum Trinkets: Some spells that should have triggered these trinkets will now trigger them (such as Holy Nova and Fel Armor).
• Death Knight Tier-9 DPS 4-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for disease damage ticks to be critical strikes.
• Hunter Tier-9 2-Piece Set Bonus: Critical damage from Serpent Sting will now work properly with the Mortal Shots and Expose Weakness talents.
• Lightweave Embroidery: This tailoring item enhancement will no longer trigger from the periodic healing granted by the warlock spell Fel Armor.
• Mote of Flame: Corrected a typo in the tooltip.
• Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.
• Shard of Flame: Corrected a typo in the tooltip.
• Val’anyr, Hammer of The Ancient Kings: Healing from Prayer of Mending now triggers the shield from this item. In addition, a bug was corrected which would cause the shield points to be overwritten rather than stack up as intended.

Death Knight

• Rune of Razorice: The frost vulnerability granted by this enchantment will now increase the damage done by Frost Fever as intended.

Druid

• Balance of Power: Misleading tooltip reworded. The tooltip previously reported an incorrect value for the increased chance to hit with spells. The actual benefit of the talent is unchanged.

Hunter

• Master’s Call: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds, Frostfire Bolt, and Slow.
• Trap Mastery’s (Survival) tooltip now states the correct amount of snakes summoned.

Mage

• Arcane Missiles: Ranks 12 and 13 will now properly cause players to enter combat.

Paladin

• Hand of Freedom: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Infected Wounds and Frostfire Bolt.

Priest

• Divine Aegis: Ranks 1 and 2 will now work with Holy Nova.
• Glyph of Power Word: Shield now correctly uses the Priest’s spell critical chance instead of the target’s.

Rogue

• Vanish: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Frostfire Bolt.
• Honor Among Thieves: This talent will now work properly again if two rogues with different ranks of the talent are in the same party.

Shaman

• Grounding Totem will now properly protect against the Death Grip spell.
• Lava Burst can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
• Lightning Shield: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
• Stoneclaw Totem’s pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
• Thunderstorm and Shamanistic Rage can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.

Warlock

• Demonic Circle: This ability now correctly removes the snaring component of Frostfire Bolt.
• Fel Armor: This spell was unable to set off trinkets and other effects. That has been corrected.
• When using Shadowbolt or Incinerate while having Backlash and Backdraft active, only Backlash will now be properly consumed.

Just like when Blizzard released Magister’s Terace at the end of Burning Crusade, the new 5 man instance Trial of the Champion seems to be giving some players a bit of trouble. I have been in groups where the problem has been the tank, and groups where it is the healer, and sometimes the overall dps is just too low. Whatever the problem is 99% of the time effective strategy and good knowledge of an encounter trump most deficiencies a group will bring. Since I have tanked this on my Warrior, healed it on my Priest, and dps’d it on both my DK and Priest I feel I have a fairly well rounded set of experience and knowledge involving ToC so I thought that instead of just writing this from a Shadow Priests point-of-view I’d give the full view. I don’t normally do this but I’m on a real kick lately about players learning what is required from the other classes in a fight so that they can see full scope of what is involved in encounter. Learning the jobs of other classes will make you a better player and better teammate.

ToC- Setting up

If you are the group lead there are a few things to know that will help when setting up a group. First of, if anyone in your group is inexperienced at jousting they are going to make the first fight much harder on everyone else. Second, the first and third bosses are not very friendly to melee so i wouldn’t grab a tank and three melee dps unless you have a rocking healer. Last thing to think about in the set up is that this is not a instance to test out a new or under geared healer. Low dps or slightly under geared tank are both possible to drag through but of all the current heroics this one will give novice healers a good reason to go back to there main spec or reroll.

ToC- The Champions

The first boss of the instance is the ridiculous intro that requires +5 to Red Bull to sit through. At the end you will see the three champions enter the ring, each with an entourage of three Lieutenant level mobs all on horseback. So…obviously you will be jousting. Yay. As if this mechanic hasn’t been ground into us enough over the course of the Tournament.

Before the fight starts be sure to get up three shields. All 5 group members should attack the left of the three mobs when each group comes forward to fight. If each member charges the same target, it will be downed immediately and you can move on to the next target. In case you are new to the jousting or never got the hang of it, the order is Shield Breaker, Charge, and while you are charging the target use your sword strike. Immediately after passing the target renew your shield. Repeat this process until all nine minor mobs are dead.

The champions will been random so get an idea of who you will be fighting during the jousting against them. They will be either a Shaman, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, or Mage the names of which will be dependant on whether you are Horde or Alliance.

The Champions are slightly harder than the previous mobs and have an additional ability to remount and resume combat if they are left alone for a period of time. The way to keep them from remounting is to run over them like you do the skeletons in the Battle Before the Citadel quest. You do not have to charge them.

It is highly recommended that if your mount becomes close to dying that you approach another mount and when you are sure you wont get charged grab a new one. This can be done unlimited times so feel free to do it whenever you like. Also, if you do happen to die you are not locked out of the instance. You may reenter as fast as you can get back to the arena.

When you have defeated all three of the mounted champions the next phase will begin. I highly recommend running out of the instance to reset the mobs against the far wall. The reason being that you need to equip your weapons and the mobs will most likely be spread out leaving the tank with a much harder time with starting aggro.

Each of the champions have different abilities that make them challenging. However, the Warrior and Hunter cause the most problems in my opinion due to the Warrior’s Whirlwind and the Hunter’s Poison Traps. Both of these do horrific AoE damage and can take group members out without giving the healer a chance if they are not prepared. Melee needs to run away as soon as the whirlwind begins. The Warrior also has a charge ability that is specifically designed to annoy healers. The Hunter will quickly fill up the area will poison patches on the ground and anyone standing in them will take more damage than the healer can handle after more than a few seconds, even the tank. The other champions are each annoying in their own way but on a lesser scale. The rogue does high damage and applies poisons to a target, however this is single target and not terribly difficult to heal through. The Shaman will attempt to heal the group so if you get him he needs to be the first to die and have an interrupter up his ass the whole time. The Mage is by far the least amount of trouble except if his Polymorph hits a healer at a bad time.

Overall the best way to take down this group is to single target beginning with the healer if he is present, and ending with the Mage. Unless you are a DoT class caster or a DK do not worry about AoEing these mobs. you need to focus fire each down. Spriests, Afflic Locks, and DKs are more than welcome to spread around their STDs before singling out the kill target.

The healer needs to be wary of sudden AoE damage that might occur if Whirlwind or Poison Traps are used. After the first mob goes down the damge to the tank and group goes down signifigantly so you only have about 30 seconds of hardcore healing to do before the rest is smooth sailing. You should always remember to apply HoTs and/or Shields to the tank constantly so a poorly timed Charge or Polymorph doesn’t wipe the group while you sit helpless.

The tank probably has the easiest job as long as your group runs out after jousting. If not…well good luck to you. I hope you are good. Otherwise grabbing three stationary, close together mobs and holding aggro as the first target attacking should be pretty simple for any gear level, skill level, and class. Just remember to pick up the Warrior quickly when he charges someone and taunting even quicker if you lose aggro on one. As I said about the healers the hardest part is obviously when all three are up so blow you cool down in the beginning. you won’t need them later.

ToC- Eadric/Paleteress

Once you have completed looting from the Champions encounter, you will need to talk to Arelas Brightstart to begin the next boss.

One of two bosses will come out to gloat about how awesome they are while surrounding you with 9 more trash mobs. The mobs are in groups of three consisting of a Priest, Pally, and Monk. Kill the Priest first then the Pally and finally the Monk. These mobs are annoyingly weak and seem to cause the encounter to drag out far longer than it should. For fun I recommend pulling two or three groups. Until the last mob dies the Boss will not aggro so dont be afraid to get close to it. On a side note, it is an constant irritation but one that should be addressed. The Monk mob will go immune when he is about to die. As a Priest I get a lot of pug player yelling at me to dispell the shield. I have no problem doing so but for everyone’s information the mob does not heal himself or do anything else after the shield wears off. He just sits there and can be one shot by any player.

Eadric the Pure

Eadric is the easier of the two since he is a very simple tank and spank with almost no group threatening abilities. Every 20 seconds or so a warning will flash on your screen that Eadric will flash a blinding light or some jazz. Turn and face away and it will not effect you at all. If you do not you will become blinded and run around for a few seconds without control of your character. You will also take a, not life threatening, but substantial amount of damage. Eadric’s only other noteworthy move is Hammer of Justice which immobilizes a player and if not removed causes them to become vulnerable to Hammer of Righteousness, which does 14000 damage if hit by it. The hammer from Hammer of Righteousness can be hurled back at Eadric for a large amount of damage and if it kills him will complete an achievement.

There is no complicated strat for this boss. Just do what you do and when it says a warning on the screen turn away from the boss. Pretty simple really.

Argent Confessor Paleteress

While this fight is considered by most people to be the harder of the two, it is still a very simple fight. Especially if you ahve even completed the Cathedral in Scarlet Monestary. The Boss herself is very weak and healers will find they barely have to heal the tank while only she is active. At about half health or so she will summon a Memory of the Past, which a random significant character from WoW lore. However, the Shadows do not actually have different moves meaning it doesn’t mater which you get. After summoning the Shadow Paleteress will go immune and cast weak spells at you until you defeat her minion. The Shadow hits pretty hard  and has both a Fear/Dot and a move that reduces your attack/casting speed by 90% for 4 seconds. I have heard from many people that it help to kite the Shadow or leave someone on Paleteress but neither of these are necessary. They only add another factor to the fight that can cause a wipe.

Tank the Shadow near Paleteress and use Tremor Totems, Fear Wards, Berserker Rage, or whatever to get out of the fears when you can. If you can’t its not going to kill you. The tank does not typically lose aggro because of the fear unless he was about to lose it anyway. Healers just look while feared at who has the lowest health and throw them a fast heal or a group heal before returning to the tank. Dots classes will once again shine on this fight since they can continue damage while feared.

After the Shadow has been defeated resume throttling Paleteress until she screams like a little girl and begs you to take her loot.

ToC- The Black Knight

And that concludes our entertainment for this evening……Wait! Whats that by the rafters! Damit its the Black Knight again. This guy is really starting to get on my nerves.

After you finish with Eadric/Paleteress and talk to Brightstar again the Black Knight will come down and go all emo before throwing Brightstar against a wall. Then hes like “Whoa ima kick you ass and such”. At that point he feebly attempts to kill you with weak attacks and a mildly annoying add the can explode if you aren’t careful.

But wait these more! He decides he doesn’t need skin and come back as a skelly and cast Army of the Dead before continuing to weakly attacking the tank. The Army itself does very little damage unless you are a melee heavy group and don’t move out before they start exploding. Kill the adds first the the boss. The tank should wait about 5 seconds into the second phase before using an AoE taunt. Constant AoE threat is recommended to keep aggro on the adds.

If all of your group is pretty full on health at the beginning of the third phase you are in good shape. The Black Knight decides bones were weighing him down also and becomes a ghost. Unfortunately for you he is a better ghost than a DK or Skelly. He does a respectable amount of regular AoE damage but as long as the healer focuses  on the marked target and occasionally throws a group heal or round of HoTs or the group you should be fine. Any kind of dps boosts, avoidance boosts, or speed boosts are recommended during this phase because it can wear down even the best healer if it drags on too long. There is really no special strat to Phase 3 other than do lots of dps and focus healing on the marked target while throwing occasional group heals.

That it for my guide to Heroic Trial of the Champion. I hope this was useful as it is but if you have any questions please feel free to email/twitter me anytime.

Hit

* 263 hit is the cap with 6 points between Shadow Focus and Misery and with a Draenei in your group

* 289.55 hit is the cap with 6 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 314.78 hit before you can go to 5 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 341.02 hit before you can go to 4 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 367.25 hit before you can go to 3 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 393.48 hit before you can go to 2 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 419.71 hit before you can go to 1 point between Shadow Focus and Misery

* 445.94 hit before you can go to 0 points between Shadow Focus and Misery

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Stat Priority

1. Hit (until cap)

2. Spellpower

3. Crit

4. Haste

5. Spirit

6. Intellect

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Percent Values

1% hit = 26.23 hit

1% haste = 32.79 haste

1% crit = 45.91 crit

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Psuedo Point Values

* 1 spellpower = 1 PP

* 1 intellect = 0.21 PP

* 1 spirit = 0.21 PP

* 1 spellcrit = 0.71 PP

* 1 spellhaste = 0.65 PP

* 1 spellhit = 1.31 PP

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Casting Priority List

1. Shadow Word Pain (only with 5x weaving stack and crit buffs)

2. Vampiric Touch

3. Mind Blast

4. Devouring Plague

5. Shadow Word: Death (only when there is between 1 and 1.5 seconds before the next non-mind flay should be cast)

6. Mind Flay

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Spell Coefficients

Devouring Plague- 18.49% (per tick)

Holy Nova- (Damage)16.06%

Mana Burn- 0.0%

Mind Blast- 42.80%

Mind Flay- 25.70% (per tick)

Mind Sear- 71.43%

Shadowfiend- 65.0%

Shadow Word: Death- 42.96%

Shadow Word: Pain- 18.29% (per tick), 110% (overall)

Smite- 71.40%

Vampiric Touch- 40.0% (per tick)

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Most Benefiting Professions

1. Enchanting/Blacksmithing

2. Jewelcrafting

3. Engineering

4. Inscription

5. Leather Working

6. Tailoring

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Best Gems

1. Runed Cardinal Ruby

2. Potent Ametrine

3. Purified Dreadstone

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Best Meta

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond

“Jewelcrafter only” gems get top priority

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Best Glyphs

Major Glyphs:

1. Glyph of Shadow

2. Glyph of SWP

3. Glyph of SWD

4. Glyph of Mind Flay

Minor Glyphs:

1. Glyph of Shadowfiend

2. Glyph of Fading

3. Glyph of Levitate

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Talent Specs

14/0/57- Get Meditation and Inner Focus in the Disc tree.

13/0/58- Get Meditation but not Inner Focus.

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Best Enchants (non profession)

Head- Arcanum of Burning Mysteries

Shoulders- Greater Inscription of the Storm

Cloak- Greater Speed

Chest- Powerful Stats

Wrists- Superior Spellpower

Gloves- Exceptional Spellpower

Waist- Eternal Belt Buckle

Legs- Brilliant Spellthread

Feet- Icewalker

2 Hander- Greater Spellpower

Main Hand- Mighty Spellpower

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Mana Regen

-Intellect is first priority because both Dispersion and Shadowfiend return mana based on mana pool. It also increases crit chance.

-Spirit is second because it increases spellpower as well as mana regen

-MP5 is third because it does nothing but supply mana regen.

-*This is ranked for regen not PP rankings

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Here is the Cheat Sheet in Open Office format http://adarkenedsoul.com/?attachment_id=1032. This link takes you to the page where the file link is. This link is not a direct download link.

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.

This was by far the most important topic covered in the Shadow section of the Q&A because it addressed the major issue that plagues our dps at the moment.

I like the method they are looking into as much as the suggestions being repeated all of the forums to give us a spell or ability that causes burst damage. Essentially a burst damage spell such as a self cast version of Heroism would be great and any class would love to get their hands on one, but the underlying issue with our spells is not that we dont do a lot of damage but our time to set up our damage causes us to play catch up for the rest of a fight.

Most long fights, Yogg and GenVez for example, have Shadow Priests showing strong results. Its in the shorter fights like Heartbreaker (XT Hardmode) that really have even the best Shadow Priests making excuses for the lack of comparative damage.

Changing talents to increase damage regardless of DoTs being applied would be a start, but I would also like to see a debuff that is applied  to a target when you really focus fire on it increasing your damage or the damage your enemy takes. Something like “Each consecutive Mind Flay tick gives the target a stack of Mental Exhaustion, when a target reaches 12 stacks your Mind Blast becomes instant cast and receives 100% critical strike damage bonus. Mind Blast consumes the Mental Exhaustion effect. Mental Exhaustion will not stack while DoTs are active.”

This would solve the issue of burst damage by giving a benefit for changing your regular spell cycle to increase damage but run out of mana quickly due to the higher mana cost per amount of damage and the lack of Replenishment (although you could get replenishment from the 50 other specs that now have it now).

It would also solve an issue that always bothered me about playing Shadow which is no matter what kind of encounter you are up against (not counting aoe) you never change which spells you use or the basic order that they are used in. In the long run the Q&A gives us no real indicator of what Blizzard plans to do to fix our dps issues but they seem to have a firm grasp on the problem and are working it out. That at least gives me hope.

-The developers don’t feel the penalty on the Glyph of Mind Flay is really that necessary anymore.

Not much of a surprise here. In reading all of the Q&As that have been released so far there seems to be a pattern of wanting to remove penalties on spells, abilities, and glyphs. This change should have been made a long time ago.

-It is possible that the dev team might remove the blacklash on SWD if the target is below a certain health.

It would be nice if this happened but what would the benefit really be? I didn’t stop casting SWD in my rotation because I received blacklash damage. I stopped using it because the spell is effectively a waste of a cooldown, being both a higher mana costs and less dps for the amount of time used than other spells in a Shadow Priests arsenal.

-There are no plans to change Dispertion in any way. They like it the way it is.

I can’t say that I am either surprised or disagree with their assessment here. Blizzard does not agree and has made it very public that end talent spells were never intended and should not be expected to be a high damage spell. In addition, Dispersion is quite useful in its own respect for both PvE and PvP purposes. If you are one of those people whose only concern is doing the most damage possible regardless of fight design and such then you are most likely dead half the fight from not moving out of something you should have and there is no helping you.

The was a lot more covered in the section regarding Shadow and the other two trees so I have posted the complete Q&A along with a link to the original blue posting for you viewing pleasure.

As to be expected when you have kids and other responsibilities outside of the game, I need to take a little time off to finish some things I have procrastinated on and spend some quality time with the fam. I still check the site daily and answer and questions asked of me so feel feel to email, comment, or Twitter me if you have any topics that you have questions or just want to discuss.

Just because I’m taking a break doesn’t mean I am not keeping up with everything or that I am not interested in WoW anymore.

Thanks for being understanding and I am sure I will be back posting in not too long.

Yesterday Blizzard announced some interesting new patch notes for 3.2 that just might have Shadow Priests that PvP jumping with joy.

• Vampiric Touch had its damage on dispell doubled. (From 680 to 1360 at Max Rank)
• Devouring Plague can now affect only one target at a time.
• Dispersion now has a 2 min cooldown. (Down from 3 min)
• Improved Mind Blast has an additional effect – while in Shadowform your Mind Blast also has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 20% for 10 sec.

Some of these changes could be seen as slight buffs to PvE, however its hard to see how most will be very useful for most raiding content. I can’t confirm this as of yet but from what I have heard the change to Devouring Plague will actually end up being the biggest buff. Having the DoT effect only only one target at a time as opposed to the current 24 second cooldown most likely means that the cooldown will reset as soon as the target with Devouring Plague has died. How useful will the change be? I have no idea as of yet. But it does seem a little better than being locked out of the spell for a full 24 seconds when a mob dies after 10.

As for PvP I am absolutely estatic with the changes. Some of the weakest points in Shadow Priest PvP are addressed by these buffs.

The idea of damage done by dispelling Devouring Plague was a great addition a few patches back but the damage was so low that it hasn’t really been much of a consequence. This damage buff should put a little hurt on those that find it funny to flick our DoTs of like an annoying mesquito.

The benefit of a shorter cooldown on Dispersion is pretty obvious, as is the “lets give everyone Mortal Strike” buff to Imp Mind Blast.

The combination of these changes add to mobility, defenses, and the ability to finish off enemies. This is not the burst damage buff that Shadow Priests have been begging for but these changes are going to help us out in PvP and especially in arenas.

Hopefully we will see some kind of buff to PvE before 3.2 is released. I don’t know how much longer I can take watching my undergeared DK do as much damage as my Priest. Its kind of starting to grind on my almost infinite patience to make excuses for Shadow’s lack of dps.

Courtesy of MMO-Champion

MMO-Champion has released the images of the new Tier 9 gear that will be dropping from the Argent Coliseum raid instances. The gear has a very Tier 3 look to it as do many of the other classes Tier 9 sets. I think this will give the old schoolers like myself a very nostalgic feeling and might even bring back some of that good old faction pride. (Edit: This is the Alliance set. I will post as soon as the Horde set pics become available.)

The items will now be attainable through a “General Token”. Meaning that the tier tokens will be tradable for any piece of the Tier 9 set instead of listing a specific piece. Blizzard states that this will help will guilds and players that are having trouble with recieving the same tokens over and over and not getting the piece they need.

Below is the stats for the Tier 9 items.

iLVL 258

MMO-Champion

iLVL 245

MMO-Champion

iLVL 232

MMO-Champion

Here are the Pics and stats for the Season 7 Arena set.

MMO-Champion

MMO-Champion

Priest (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Shadow Priest Q&A (Source)
Question 1: What does blizzard see as shadow priest roll in pvp or pve situations?
PVE: I dont pve much but from my understanding there are aoe monsters is this the niche you intended them to fill in pve? I once saw a blue saying that they didn’t want anyone filling that niche!
You’re a dps class that focuses on dots and “stealing energy” from opponents. I’ll write a prettier version for the official Q&A. Shadow priests can do single target damage and now in LK can do AE damage as well.

PVP: As you all may know Priest are the only class with TWO healing trees. Did you want our dps tree to also have a strong healing component through Vampric Embrace? I often hear shadow priest refered to as the Pre-BC caster tank, are there any intentions of turning shadows priest back into this role anytime soon?
Yes on the VE part. “Caster tank” as a role is a little risky. It basically means that melee have to close the gap to finally do damage to you, yet once they do… they still have trouble hurting you. I know that makes you want to say “But melee are crushing us right now!” That might be a problem, but doesn’t mean the right answer is to have non-fragile casters. You are probably tougher than mages, and still have decent escape mechanisms with Dispersion and fears.

Question 2: Was mind flay always intended to be our “filler,” damage spell instead of a nuke or was it ment to be a mainly pvp spell? If it wasn’t are you intending to give us a nuke? I ask because to my understanding shadow priest scale very poorly with haste which brings me to my next question.
We don’t really design every caster around nukes. That’s kind of a mage deal where they emphasize one main spell. We want the other casters to feel differently, to have rotations. Mind Flay is part of that.

Question 3: Does blizzard intend to make haste effect dots? As you all may know this would help with some scaling issues and I don’t see why they couldn’t do this, they already did it with crits!
It’s something we’re talking about. Haste is a problematic stat for a number of reasons. It isn’t always good for example if you don’t have enough room in your rotation to fit another spell. It isn’t good if you’re GCD capped. Now, it’s okay — in fact preferable — that stats aren’t equal for everyone. We like that not all casters would look at say a ring with haste, crit and spirit the same way.

Question 4: Does blizzard think that dispel protection is a problem for dot heavy casters? If you do what are you planning to do to fix this? If you don’t why not? I understand that vampiric touch has a penalty for being removed but I just don’t feel like it is strong enough or even compares to it’s much stronger version unstable affliction.
We think the whole dispel protection game needs to be overhauled. Buffs should be valued for their buffs, not for whether or not they can protect other buffs. We need to change this whole system to something more sane. Whether or not you have a dispel, and whether or not your target is vulnerable to it has just become way too important. You are right that the VT penalty is so low as to be silly, and that’s something we would like to boost for 3.2.

Question 5: Alot of players feel as though replenishment should belong solely to shadow priest, we understand that you would like to “bring the player not the class,” but honestly could you say that having a unique class/spec ability is such a bad thing?
Yes, it’s a bad thing. It’s good if you’re a shadow priest wanting a raid slot. It’s bad if you’re the druid or warrior who can’t come because the raid leader feels like they must bring the shadow priest in order to raid. We want the challenge to be the encounters, not the logistics of building the group.

Question 6: It takes shadow priest significantly longer to set up our damage than other classes. Would it be in your intentions to add an initial damage component to vampiric touch and make it instant cast to help alleviate some of the wait-time for damage?
I think there is something to the set-up-your-damage issue, but at the same time, dots also have a lot of benefits over direct damage spells. We would not want any spell that Shadow priests felt like they could just cast instead of doing their rotation, and if the instant-damage spell was weaker than the rotation, it would likely see only situational use (though maybe that’s a fine niche).

Questions 7:Are you planning on implementing a snare/root for shadow priest? Shadow Priest is currently the only caster that has no snare/root abilities. These types of abilities are essential when we are not able to tank damage and wear cloth.
We don’t want to give every mechanic to every class if we can help it. Just above you asked if it was a bad thing to have some unique mechanics. Saying no isn’t the same as saying everyone can have some mechanics. We intend for the Shadow CC to be things like Psychic Horror and Silence, and to a much lesser extent, Mind Control.

Question 8: Shadow priest are always triggering our global cooldown but have no way to make it shorter. Are you planning to implement maybe a talent to reduce our global cooldown?
We wouldn’t do it through a talent, but we might let haste do it. Remember, the global is there for a reason. Having too many abilities short-circuit it will ultimately have consequences.

Question 9: : As you may know shadow priest have a fair amount of mobility issues, are you planning on adding a short immunity to snares after fade is used? ( Improved Fade ofcourse.)
No. We would be more likely to nerf snares. We don’t want to have an arms race of snares, then snare immunity, then the snare that can’t be made immune, and so on.

Question 10: Are you planning to add Body and Soul to the shadow tree?
No.

Question 11: The fear/blind DR has severely destroyed a lot of synergy shadowpriest and rogues shared, are you planning to revert this change next season?
No. The game needs more DR on crowd control, not less. Using your crowd control at the right time is awesome. Chaining different forms of CC together to keep an enemy from ever being able to move is a lot less fun.

Question 12: Dispersion a lot of people feel the abilities strength does not merit it as a 51 point talent, are there any plans to move this to a lower tier in the shadow tree? Will there be any plans to remove the silence effect it applies in the future?
We don’t want to remove the silence for the reason we’ve never wanted to remove it — we want Dispersion as an escape mechanism, not an offensive cooldown. We might lower Dispersion’s cooldown though. We want it to do it’s job, not get marginalized in the tree.

Question 13: Was the disarm on Psychic horror intended to occur after the “horror,” or during? Is there any intention of removing the travel time on Psychic Horror, If not will you add an animation?
What do you mean by animation? To the projectile or the target? The disarm was intended to occur during the horror.

Question 14: Psychic Scream is a very powerful spell for getting attackers off of you, but there are various ways to counter it. Would it be reasonable to add a penalty for removing this spell early, maybe a 2 second stun or a snare.
We do the dot / hot penalties because its a weakness of dots. We’re not crazy about going down the road of making all CC have a kiss / curse element with its removal.

Question 15: Most damage over time spells just tick with no special effect with an exception to a few. In order to help us damage better could we get more “effects” on our damage over time spells such as ticking hard initially and damage slowly wearing off.
This might be something we’d consider. I understand the concern.

Question 16: From my understanding there is a cooldown on Devouring Plague to keep us from putting it on multiple targets. Couldn’t you just make Devouring Plague only usable on 1 target at a time and remove the cooldown?
Yes. I’m not sure many players would consider that a buff though.

Question 17: Mind Control although this is a fun spell it isn’t very useful in pvp situations because it leaves your character immobile for however long and randomly breaks. Could mind control make the controlled target your pet but movable by using the same mechanic used to place a death and decay?
We might do something like that for pets in general. Mind Control however is a really powerful ability. Not only does it prevent the target from doing anything, it also lets you use their abilities against their allies. It’s going to be hard for us to remove too many downsides from the effect.

Question 18: Are you planning on giving spriest a new 51 point talent?
No. We want the 51-pointers to be very attractive, but not necessarily the most powerful talent in the tree. A great number, if not a majority, of Shadow priests have Dispersion so it’s hard to argue it isn’t attractive. I understand some players want the 51 to be a big damage spell for damage-dealing specs, but that just isn’t always what we think the tree needs. I’m not saying we are going to take the talent trees to 61 or 71 points soon, but if we did, just think of the expectation. Does the 71 pointer need to blow all of the previous talents out of the water? Do deeper talents need to become more powerful at the same time the character gets more of them? That leads to a lot of power inflation. We think talents probably account for too much of a character’s power already.