Embrace the Light
With the addition of Glyph of Dark Binding, Shadow priests can now heal without a double-whammy to their DPS from needing to re-cast Shadowform. Additionally, Shadow has received several mana-return mechanics and abilities that proc on heals that were previously exclusive to Discipline. Coupled with the level 75 talent option, Twist of Fate, it will be a damage gain to heal someone who is below 20% HP.
At 0% haste, the buff gained from Twist of Fate perfectly cancels the time lost to casting a Flash Heal, assuming you won't cast any DoTs during the 10 second buff, and exceeds it if you do. As haste levels rise, both the cost of casting the heal, and the benefit to DoTs rises. Yes, not only can you spec to heal your raid, but there's also a real DPS incentive to do it.
Prediction: This time next year, World of Matticus will be ranting about "those damned heal-sniping shadow priests". Oh well, it's better than at the end of Wrath of the Lich King when we used the healers' manabars as a resource for unlimited Shadow Word: Death spam.
Hope You Like Pets... and Being a Melee Spec
Shadowy Apparitions is now our only rotational Shadow Orb-dump. This would be fine, if it weren't for that fact that pets have traditionally been a clunky mechanic, and any damage given to non-DoTs is damage that needs to be nerfed out of DoTs for us to be balanced. I foresee the ability failing spectacularly on any fight with uneven terrain, flying targets, or minor movement - they move so slowly that anything chasing your tank can easily outrun them.
Compound this with the fact that we can still only have 3 active at once, and we may find ourselves wasting orbs waiting for the old ones to catch up to their target. To counter this, we'll need to stand in melee range to ensure they detonate immediately.
Oh, and Psychic Horror got taken away again. They made it baseline, only for it to be a big DPS hit to cast it; it'll consume our orbs. Look on the bright side though: something to do while you're waiting for your Apparitions to
Blizzard: We Accidentally Your DoTs
Devouring Plague has been gone since the start of beta, apparently never to return. Shadow Word: Pain has turned into a clone of the old Devouring Plague. In the most recent build, Vampiric Touch's damage was dropped dramatically, leaving it dealing less than half of what it does on live... at level 87 in level 87 gear (slightly superior to H DS gear).
DoT scaling has become so bad that people on the beta forums are considering dropping VT from our rotation. They're wrong, of course; you'd be mad to drop VT! After all, where else are you going to get enough mana to sustain your DPS from? Think of VT as the new mana filler, replacing Masochism. Seriously though, it has a 25k DPeT in high-end gear; that's below the threshold to drop it from the rotation for high-end Shadow priests when we can do without the mana.
Edit: Tier 14 will fix it! The tier-14 4-set bonus brings the DPeT of VT above that of the rotation as a whole. Note that I have already accounted for haste above, so it'll only be barely worth using in high-end raid gear.
Sphincter Guys
Spectral Guise basically defines uselessness. It breaks on AOE damage, breaks on auto-attack damage, and doesn't drop threat. It is literally less useful than a potion of invisibility, having shorter duration and many more ways to break early. To show my derision, I shall refer to this spell as "Sphincter Guys" until it's fixed.
A Design That Doesn't Suck Shadow Orbs
So, with the Empowered Shadow effect becoming passive, I think we can all agree that Shadow Orbs are now "unnecessary" in the sense that nothing balanced would be hurt by their removal. Yes, 3-orb Mind Blast burst was unbalanced; one-shotting same-level PvP-geared opponents is overpowered. But, not wanting to waste art assets or the Shadow Orb design, Blizzard seems to want to keep them around somehow.
At first, they made them Mind Blast currency -- remember, no longer tied to Empowered Shadows, so it's not vital to cast Mind Blast at regular intervals. This was fine by me; Mind Blast on cooldown has long been a staple of good Shadow DPS, if not an important one. Changing that to Mind Blast on proc wouldn't change much, and would even give us a decent burst option in the form of triple-Mind Blast.
Then they repealed it and gave us Shadowy Apparitions instead. I've mentioned above the problems with that. Apart from inherent flaws in the mechanic, this also means it no longer interacts with Mind Spike, Archangel and Divine Insight. Also, because the orbs are now spent all at once, it basically mandates that we spend them when we have three, and only when we have three. This makes the mechanic more susceptible to wasted procs and limits the ability to stockpile them for burst. For all of these reasons, I feel that Shadow Apparitions is innately inferior to Mind Blast as a Shadow Orb dump.
Also, recall that Psychic Horror is now bound to Shadow Orbs as well, making it doubly penalizing to cast, costing both a GCD and a significant burst of damage. I'm not inherently opposed to tying Shadow Orbs to utility/CC, but I am opposed to mixing their uses. We should not have to trade more damage for utility than other classes do.
So what should Blizzard do? Return to the "Shadow Orbs as Mind Blast currency" model. It has enough benefits over the current model that I consider this to be the best way to tie Shadow Orbs to damage. Remove the Shadow Orb cost from Psychic Horror. Make Mind Blast instant (the only mechanical benefit of Shadowy Apparitions: it can be cast while moving.) Also, consider making Mind Spike proc shadow orbs, to preserve the current MSp -> MB leveling/questing rotation. Also because they synergize so well that it just feels right. Return VT to a "reasonable" DPeT -- at least 30% over the total rotation DPS.
Alternately: Remove Shadow Orbs from the DPS rotation, bind them to more utility abilities. (Or just remove them period.)
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