Cedrich talks Shadow: Beta Spells & Talents talkthrough.

[Deleted]

So, a few weeks back when I decided to play my Priest through Beta as Shadow I started to look around for information on the differences between Live Shadow and Beta Shadow. It's easy to miss things while browsing through talent calculators or spell databases and the deluge of new data that arrives with each new patch is a little overwhelming. Whilst I didn't really find the info I was looking for, it occurred to me that there must be quite a few people out there who are either in the same boat, or who simply don't enjoy playing through beta content in the same way that I do. So, I set about at the weekend recording a 20 minute talk-through of most of the spell changes and talents relevant to Shadow as it stands in beta build 15699.

While it's my first attempt at something like this, and I do hum, haw and mince my words a lot, I'm happy enough with it to throw it out there into the big bad world in the hopes that someone finds the information useful. Voila!

I recommend you watch on 720 or 1080p quality - UI text may be difficult to read otherwise.

Update: A section on Glyphs was requested, and I'm only too happy to oblige!
Especially if I already have one recorded that I dropped from the original video to cut down on length.

I welcome any questions, comments or mockery you have. If there's sufficient interest, I may talk more about future patches and other aspects of the beta.

You can find details of the background music in the YouTube description - it's all freely available.

[Tripleblack]

Not bad, especially when I cant pay attention to the patches due to Diablo III :P

[Daws001]

Well, let's get straight to it. Cedrich, I find your accent to be adorable and completely disarming!

Nice, informative vid. I didn't realize Mind Flay still reduced Shadowfiend's cd (nice!) and I assume the Mindbender will also have that benefit (?). Also, didn't realize SW: Death no longer has the Life Tap functionality. I could have sworn that was baked into the tooltip before, idk, I haven't followed Priest changes closely. I liked having that extra functionality on it.

The wording on Power Infusion trips me up (casting speed vs haste). Does it also effect DoTs and Mind Blast's cd?

[Deleted]

Well, let's get straight to it. Cedrich, I find your accent to be adorable and completely disarming!

Aww shucks, you made me blush.

Nice, informative vid. I didn't realize Mind Flay still reduced Shadowfiend's cd (nice!) and I assume the Mindbender will also have that benefit (?). Also, didn't realize SW: Death no longer has the Life Tap functionality. I could have sworn that was baked into the tooltip before, idk, I haven't followed Priest changes closely. I liked having that extra functionality on it.

Yes, Mind Flay does currently reduce the cooldown on Mindbender.

The wording on Power Infusion trips me up (casting speed vs haste). Does it also effect DoTs and Mind Blast's cd?

Yes it does.

[KomlinEx]

Brilliant video, I was somewhat sad about reading the devouring plague nerfs, but it seems to still be pretty powerful (I've still yet to see an initial crit in any videos). Also loving to see that Mind Blast seems to scale so well with haste. I personally love the idea of using Archangel + PI, seems like it would look ridiculously cool, ah play-style choices. Any plans to go over the glyphs and whatnot?

EDIT: What are the actual numbers for the void tendril's health?

[Deleted]

Brilliant video, I was somewhat sad about reading the devouring plague nerfs, but it seems to still be pretty powerful (I've still yet to see an initial crit in any videos). Also loving to see that Mind Blast seems to scale so well with haste. I personally love the idea of using Archangel + PI, seems like it would look ridiculously cool, ah play-style choices. Any plans to go over the glyphs and whatnot?

EDIT: What are the actual numbers for the void tendril's health?

I did talk about glyphs, but I cut that section out because the entire video was over 30 minutes. I'll upload it separately tonight or tomorrow.

I'll find numbers for Tendrils after I'm done Dragonslaying for tonight, in a couple of hours.

[chezwickcheese]

Nice video! I'm seriously considering making my spriest my main in MOP instead of my mage. They just seem to have a wide variety of abilities, interesting mechanics and just look fun. As opposed to Mages who get the same old boring stuff and just look dull.

[Deleted]

Brilliant video, I was somewhat sad about reading the devouring plague nerfs, but it seems to still be pretty powerful (I've still yet to see an initial crit in any videos). Also loving to see that Mind Blast seems to scale so well with haste. I personally love the idea of using Archangel + PI, seems like it would look ridiculously cool, ah play-style choices. Any plans to go over the glyphs and whatnot?

EDIT: What are the actual numbers for the void tendril's health?

My Void Tendrils have about 48k HP at level 89. To give that a little perspective I have 240k HP. Many Goats died to bring you this information.

I also have a 5 minute blast through Glyphs uploading to YouTube as we speak. It's actually a section I cut from the Spells & Talents video to shorten it a little. Stay tuned.

Update: Glyphs video live, you can find it in the original post or here :- http://youtu.be/mAvd_KnZbJo

[Direshadow]

Yeah, gotta say, amazing video. Just like making a good pvp video, you need to strip away all the bull crap that isn't needed. No flashy heavy metal song is played, no silly swipes or dumb cuts, you go into detail of what real shadow priests want to know about.

Well done.

Swifty should learn from this.

[Deleted]

Hmmm I see some nice changes, but I'm still a bit confused about the glyphs and rotation :/

[PricklyBear]

Thanks for these videos! In some future video, I'd like to see single-target and multi-target rotations, if at all possible. Not very familiar with shadow priests in general, but they're looking like a lot more fun than mages in MoP.

[Kilee25]

I enjoyed watching this a lot. Thank you very much for posting. I shared it with my guildmates.

[lwalker8]

Oh this is great! I wish I'd seen it sooner. I haven't spent a lot of time on the beta, I don't think I can mentally handle leveling twice :P

[Randomerror]

Is haste still supposed to lower the cooldown of Mind Blast? Doesn't seem to on Beta anymore. Huge nerf.

[Deleted]

Is haste still supposed to lower the cooldown of Mind Blast? Doesn't seem to on Beta anymore. Huge nerf.

It doesn't seem to anymore, no. A lot of stuff changed in the last build so it's hard to tell if it's intended or not. Wait and see how things pan out I guess.

[lwalker8]

I'm currently using From Darkness Comes Light and Divine Insight. Anyone have any data to confirm or deny my suspicion that this is currently the best way to go? It seems the quickest way to get DP back up, which seems to be our highest damage source atm. But ... I have not logged anything so I'm not sure at all about any of this :P

[Deleted]

I'm currently using From Darkness Comes Light and Divine Insight. Anyone have any data to confirm or deny my suspicion that this is currently the best way to go? It seems the quickest way to get DP back up, which seems to be our highest damage source atm. But ... I have not logged anything so I'm not sure at all about any of this :P

You'll probably get a better answer in the Ask a Beta tester thread, I'm slightly out of touch with the latest beta build due to other things taking my attention at the moment.

Before the latest build, Mindbender/DI was by far the strongest talent combination, at least according to beta-updated versions of Simcraft. However, I've been hearing reports that Mindbender is acting strangely and doing very, very low damage as of the latest build. If that's true, then FLCD will obviously pull ahead since I see no reason why one would want to use Shadow Word: Insanity in PvE.

Otherwise, you're right. DP accounts for a huge percentage of our damage and maximizing it's uptime is the way to go.

[lwalker8]

Yeah, I've actually been questioning FDCL, as I've rarely had MS procs been of benefit in my tests. But if Mindbender's damage is busted, it's probably still better for now.

Blizzard's blue post seemed to suggets that they intended SW:I to be for PvE. But the damage would have to be much higher for it to be worth recasting DoTs.