Pre-Raid Priest Gearing (Shadow)

[Malic]

Welcome to the dark side. I made a list of pre-raid gear that shadow priests will need.
This list covers all the gear you can get through
- Heroic Instances
- Justice Points
- Reputation

Further i made a list with enchants and gems which are relevant for us shadow priests in cataclysm.


BEST IN SLOT PRE-RAID GEAR OBTAINABLE BY HEROIC INSTANCES & JP
Head: Mask of New Snow - 2200 JP
Neck: Charm of the Muse - Halls of Origination - Trash
Shoulder: Mantle of Master Cho - Lost City of the Tol'vir - Siamat
Back:Solar Wind Cloak - Halls of Origination - Rajh
Robe: Robes of Embalmed Darkness - 2200 JP
Wrist: Sand Silk Wristband - Lost City of Tol'vir - Augh
Hands: Dolomite Adorned Gloves - Stonecore - Corborus
Waist: Stratosphere Belt - Vortex Pinnacle - Grand Vizier Ertan
Legs: Leggings of Charity - 2200 JP
Boots: Slippers of the Twilight Prophet - Stonecore - High Priestess Azil
Ring #1: Anthia's Ring - Throne of the Tides - Mindbender Ghur'sha
Ring #2: Band of Rays - Halls of Origination - Rajh
Trinket #1: Anhuur's Hymnal - Halls of Origination - Temple Guardian Anhuur
Trinket #2: Gale of Shadows - Grim Batol - Erudax
Main-Hand:Biting Wind - Vortex Pinnacle - Grand Vizier Ertan
Off-Hand: Apple-Bent Bough - 950 JP
Wand: Wand of Dark Worship - Stonecore - Trash
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1702 hit in total. You need 1742 hit for the cap. You should gem, reforge and enchant to reach this number.


This leads to following instances:
Halls Of Origination: 4 pieces
Stonecore: 3 pieces
Vortex Pinnacle: 2 piece
Lost City of the Tol'vir: 2 piece
Throne of the Tides: 1 pieces
Grim Batol: 1 piece

You can see here thats its not necessary to waste your time in Shadowfang Keep, Blackrock Caverns: or Deadmines if you are going for gearing up for raids asap.
You can however enjoy these instances nevertheless.


OPTIONAL PRE-RAID GEAR OBTAINABLE BY REPUTATION
Flamebloom Gloves
Cloak of Ancient Wisdom
Yellow Smoke Pendant
Band of Lamentation
Desert Walker Sandals
Robes of Orsis
Lightning Flash Pendant
Band of Singing Grass
Diamant's Ring of Temperance
Stump of Time
Insidious Staff

ENCHANTS
Head: Arcanum of Hyjal - Guardians of Hyjal Revered
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone - Therazane Exalted
Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Boots: Enchant Boots - Haste or Enchant Boots - Precision
Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread
Bracer: Enchant Bracer - Speed or Enchant Bracer - Precision
Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats
Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Haste
Off hand: Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect
Ring: Enchant Ring - Intellect

GEMS
META: Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond
RED: Brilliant Inferno Ruby
ORANGE: Artful Ember Topaz
ORANGE: Potent Ember Topaz
ORANGE: Reckless Ember Topaz
PURPLE: Purified Demonseye

Blue slots can be seen as your hitslot. If hitcapped you should stack int.


Of course there are more items you can get through professions like Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and Archeology.
Feel free to add an item or submit a change for an existing item. I will try to keep this updated.

Have fun

[ArmyAndy]

Thanks alot for this post

[Nahledge]

It would actually be slightly more beneficial to use items with spirit instead of hit raiting such as Apple-Bent Bough instead of Hermit's Lamp.

Thank you for the list though, it is a good start.

[Malic]

There is completely no difference between Hermit's Lamp and Apple-Bent Bough for shadowpriests.
Thanks for pointing that out though. I switched 2 items to spirit ones to be more hitcapped and stack more haste.

[spleen1015]

The regen from the Spirit makes the Apple-Bent Bough better.

[Malic]

Shadowpriests dont regen mana from spirit infight.

[Stickmenz]

thanks for this wonderful post! gives me a guideline when i decide how to gear up in da beginnin of cata!

[spleen1015]

You are correct.

Personally, if there are 2 pieces like this, I am going to target the piece with Spirit because there is no downside in Shadow spec and it allows me to heal with out needing more gear.

Thank you for putting this list together.

[Scrubble]

Humans get 3% spirit.

[Deleted]

edit: Nvm my stupidity I forgot Spirit was classed as a seconday stat doh!

Nice guide either way

[Metric]

The crit meta is supposed to be having its requirements reverted at some point. I'll try and find the blue post on that somewhere... Wouldn't that still be BiS?

Edit: Tyvm for the guide btw. <3 Very helpful to know which instances not to waste time in.

Edit 2: Foundddd it. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...change-it-back

The current design has been reconsidered, so we're planning to revert gems that now require more blue than red gems back to their original requirements. Such a change can't be accomplished via a hotfix though, so we'll have to wait to revert these in a future patch.

[Malic]

The crit meta is BiS but the requirement is rediculous atm. A blue post on that would be nice.

[spleen1015]

I'd personally pick the item with +hit over spirit to give you more reforging options. Hits a dead stat once you are capped so any opportunity to reforge it off your gear is going to be more then welcome and you won't have that opportunity with the spirit equivalent item.

What Spleen said is also quite true so it comes down to your playstyle. If you are going to be healing as your second spec go for the spirit one for maximum gear overlap, if you want to min/max your gear go with the +hit one for optional reforging.

Nice guide either way

Can you explain this? From what I understand, reforging options all come down to what other stats are on the gear. In the example above with the OH, hit or spirit can be reforged to anything but haste. So, your reforging options are the same.

---------- Post added 2010-11-30 at 11:18 AM ----------

The crit meta is BiS but the requirement is rediculous atm. A blue post on that would be nice.

Here is the blue post.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2024?page=1#16

[Scrubble]

~

Spirit is reforgable and makes the item useful for a healing set.
If you have a choice between the 2, always pick spirit.

[Brashara]

Spirit items are slightly better because humans get 3% spirit or something, don't they? That means humans will get 3% more hit from spirit than they will from hit.

[Deleted]

Yeah that's my bad I keep thinking of Spirit as a primary stat on gear. I'm going to be dual speccing Disc so will be looking for as much gear overlap as possible.

[Malic]

Ok since it doesnt matter for a spriest, but maybe for your 2nd spec i switched the offhand for Apple-Bent Bough cause you really have a free choice at the vendor on that. Thanks for that.

[Thrayne]

spriests are going to be op a while in pve, so the gear will matter less than your ability to just spam shit

kinda like arcane mages for the past year

sucks that they reduced the spriest playstyle to "press buttons" instead of the dot management that it was, but i guess it's the only way blizz can fix anything is to make it spam-friendly

A.) Mages gear did matter, if the did 10k or 30k dps, so gear matters.

B.) They cut back MB damage and added +DoT damage to Mastery (triggered by loss of shadow orbs). That in combination with DAA/Evang stacks you will be trying to get a balance of buffs between having Mastery Dot buff up with Evang X 5 stacks and Popping DAA for double shadow damage on your MF/MB/SWD/MSp.

So the rotation and buff management will be much more than "press buttons" playstyle.

As for spamming a spell the only beneficial spell to spam is DP which has very high damage but you will be oom very quickly so no point in it.

[Deleted]

I'd change the boots to the rep ones from the optional list (desert walkers sandals), you won't have to gem hit and you'll increase your haste over mastery (by far our worst stat at the moment, even with the changes)

If you gem and enchant correctly you can reforge 40% of the spirit on the head, hands and back to get to 1746 hit and drop the rest into crit (as the other items have haste on them)

If someone can recommend a good place to host excel files I'll upload the quick and dirty stat calculator I've thrown together to show my work

[Arlee]

The crit meta is supposed to be having its requirements reverted at some point. I'll try and find the blue post on that somewhere... Wouldn't that still be BiS?

Edit: Tyvm for the guide btw. <3 Very helpful to know which instances not to waste time in.

Edit 2: Foundddd it. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...change-it-back

Unfortunately since they have to patch to fix it we might be waiting for 4.1 patch before that get fixed... I REALLY hope that isn't the case, but in the meantime we are stuck with it.