Warlords of Draenor is the next expansion for World of Warcraft due out sometime this Fall. While in this stage of game testing a limited (unknown) number of people have access to the playable game. However through the release of Patch Notes and datamining the following mechanics changes are planned for Shadow Priests.
All of this is completely subject to change at any time.
Mastery:
- Shadowy Recall has been replaced with a new Mastery: Mental Anguish.
- Mastery: Mental Anguish: Increases the damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike and Mind Flay by 20%.
Stat Attunement:
- New passive abilities granting a 5% bonus to specific secondary stat bonuses received from equipped items have been added for all specializations.
- Priest (Shadow): Haste Attunement - You gain 5% more of the Haste stat from all sources.
Mana Regeneration:
- Shadow's base mana regen has been increased by 300%.
- Shadowfiend and Vampiric Touch no longer restore Mana.
- Mindbender now restores .75% Mana per swing, down from 1.75%.
DoTs:
- Damage over Time spells no longer 'snapshot' the caster's stats when cast, instead DoTs will calculate per tick of damage. Each time a DoT ticks it uses the stats present at that time on the caster to determine its damage.
- As such there are no longer DoT Haste Break Points. Instead DoTs will now do partial damage based on the time between the penultimate tick and the expiration of the DoT.
- All DoTs can now be extended beyond their baseline duration up to a maximum of 130%. Ex: An 15 second DoT can be extended to a maximum of 19.5 seconds.
Level 100 Talents:
- Clarity of Power (Shadow) - Your Mind Spike, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death deal 40% additional damage to targets not affected by your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch. Also reduces the cooldown on Mind Blast by 3 sec and makes it instant cast.
- Void Entropy (Shadow) - Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to deal up to XXXX Shadow damage over 60 sec. Devouring Plague will refresh this effect to its full 60 sec duration.
- Auspicious Spirits (Shadow) - Your Shadowy Apparitions grant you 1 Shadow Orb instead of dealing damage.
Talent Changes:
- Dominate Mind now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
- Psychic Scream is now a level-15 talent, replacing Psyfiend, and has a 45-second cooldown (up from 30 seconds).
- Void Tendrils’ Root effect now has a chance to break if the target takes sufficient damage.
- Void Tendrils now have 10% of the Priest’s health (down from 20%), and damage dealt to the rooted target is now also dealt to the Void Tendril itself.
- Angelic Feathers, if cast on players, will always prefer the casting priest over others, then pick the player closest to the targeted location. If there are no players where it is targeted, it will still create a feather that can be picked up, as before. Additionally, when collecting multiple feathers, the duration will be extended, instead of replaced.
- Angelic Feathers have been reduced to 60% movement speed increase, down from 80%.
- From Darkness, Comes Light renamed to Surge of Darkness
- Surge of Darkness - Periodic damage from your Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague has a 10% chance to grant you Surge of Darkness, causing your next Mind Spike to not consume your damage-over-time effects, become instant cast, cost no mana, and deal 50% additional damage. Limit 3 charges.
- Insanity - Consuming Shadow Orbs transforms your Mind Flay into Insanity for 2 sec per Shadow Orb consumed. Insanity deals 100% additional damage.
- Divine Insight has been renamed to Shadowy Insight for Shadow specialization.
- Divine Insight - Periodic damage from your Shadow Word: Pain and damage from your Mind Spike has a 5% chance to reset the cooldown on Mind Blast and cause your next Mind Blast within 12 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana.
- Twist of Fate - After damaging a target below 35% health, you deal 15% increased damage and healing for 10 sec.
- Power Infusion - Infuses the Priest with power for 20 sec, increasing haste by 25%.
- Cascade, Divine Star, and Halo no longer heal allies but are instant cast for Shadow Priests.
Spell Changes:
- Psychic Horror now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
- Mind Quickening (Shadow Passive) - Now provides 5% increase to Haste and Multistrike for all Party and Raid members.
- Mind Blast's cooldown is now reduced by Haste, but its base cooldown is now 9 seconds (up from 8 seconds).
- Power Word: Shield now has a chance for a critical effect based on critical strike chance and can Multistrike based on Multistrike chance for all specializations.
- Halo and Divine Star now follow standard AoE capping rules.
- Devouring Plague now always costs 3 Shadow Orbs.
- Devouring Plague no longer gains ticks with Haste, instead its duration will be reduced.
- Devouring Plague deals 100% of the initial hit as damage over 6 seconds.
- Devouring Plague - Now heals the Priest for 100% of direct damage and 100% of each tick.
- Shadowform - Prayer of Mending can no longer be cast in Shadowform.
- Shadow Word: Pain's initial damage is now considered direct damage, not periodic damage.
- Shadow Word: Pain's initial hit can no longer trigger Shadowy Apparitions or Shadowy Insight.
Spell Removals:
- Spiritual Precision has been removed.
- Binding Heal is no longer available to Shadow Priests.
- Hymn of Hope has been removed.
- Renew is now available only to Holy Priests.
- Shadow Word: Death is now available only to Shadow Priests.
- Void Shift has been removed.
- Inner Fire has been removed.
- Inner Will has been removed.
Warlords Leveling Perks:
- Enhanced Power Word: Shield - Reduces the duration of Weakened Soul caused by your Power Word: Shield by 5 sec.
- Improved Flash Heal - Increases the healing from your Flash Heal by 20%.
- Enhanced Shadow Orbs - You may have a maximum of 5 Shadow Orbs. No spell or ability will consume more than 3 orbs.
- Enhanced Shadow Word: Death - When Shadow Word: Death's cooldown is reset due to not killing a target, the resulting Shadow Word: Death cast can generate a Shadow Orb.
- Improved Vampiric Touch - Your Vampiric Touch deals 20% additional damage.
- Improved Mind Spike - Increases Mind Spike damage by 20%.
- (removed)Empowered Psychic Horror - Your Psychic Horror lasts an additional 20 sec.(removed)
- Improved Shadow Word: Pain - Your Shadow Word: Pain deals 20% additional damage.
- Enhanced Mind Flay - Your Mind Flay deals damage 1 additional time while its duration remains unchanged.
Glyphs:
- Glyph of Free Action: While Dispersion is active, you move 30% faster.
- Glyph of Delayed Coalescence: Dispersion lasts 3 sec longer, but when it has 2 sec remaining, its damage reduction reduces by 30% per sec.
- Glyph of Restored Faith: Leap of Faith pulls you to your target instead of pulling your target to you.
- Glyph of Miraculous Dispelling: Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 50%.
- Glyph of Silence: Reduces the cooldown on your Silence spell by 25 sec, but also reduces its duration by 2 sec.
- Glyph of Mind Harvest: The first time you damage an enemy with Mind Blast, you gain 2 additional Orbs. Mind Blasts base cooldown is increased by 4 seconds.
- Glyph of Vampiric Embrace: Your Vampiric Embrace converts an additional 75% (up from 50%) of the damage you deal into healing, but the duration is reduced by 5 sec.
Exclusive Glyphs:
- Dispersion: Glyph of Dispersion, Glyph of Free Action, and Glyph of Delayed Coalescence
- Leap of Faith: Glyph of Leap of Faith and Glyph of Restored Faith
Why aren't the damage values from the datamined information here?
The answer to that is simple: They do not matter at this stage. Damage values absolutely matter to us as a DPS class but the goal of Alphas (especially) and the majority of Beta is simply to get the game functioning properly. The development team focuses more on mechanics, rotations, playability, feel and bugs than worrying that all of the numbers are balanced. Serious number tuning occurs much later in the Beta version of the game. So until then we can focus our discussions on the same things they are: Mechanics.