[5.4] Discipline Healing Changes

Hey, everyone, long time no see. I fell into a bit of a rut, and, well, as you can see, I haven't been writing. But anyway, I'm back for 5.4, and it's one hell of a patch.

In case you've been healing all along, here's a quick rundown of what's changed. On the other hand, if you're new to Disc, I should have a new Discipline Basics guide up next week.

Insanity

See you all in Trollduar.

Hey, everybody, guess who's back. (Hint: it's me.) Unless you've been under a rock, you all know 5.2 is out. As patches go, this one's pretty glorious for Shadow priests. We've all been a little bit on the wimpy side through last tier, and the couple buffs we've gotten are quite welcome.

Shadow Buffs

• Insanity redesigned. Details below.
• Shadowform damage bonus increased to 25%, up from 20%.
• (Not yet live) Shadow Word: Pain damage increased 25%.
• Power Infusion now grants 5% damage while active, in addition to its previous effects.
• Shadowy Apparition pathing is noticeably improved, and the limit is increased to 10 at a time, up from 3. They still fail a lot, but it's a lot less.
• AoE target cap increased to 20. While this effects all classes, it will bring Shadow closer to specs that can apply DoTs in an AoE in very-many-target situations, and greatly increase the healing of Halo in 25man raids.

Shadow Nerfs

• From Darkness, Comes Light nerfed (to the ground, baby!) Proc rate much lower than tooltip listed rate. The Surge of Light portion can no-longer proc for Shadow.
• Healing from Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Renew and Prayer of Mending reduced to 80% of previous.
• Dispersion is a shadow spell, and can be locked by school interrupts. (This has already killed me a couple times in 5mans.)
• Glyph of Mind Spike is now worthless. (Further reducing the value of From Darkness, Comes Light.)

Mind Flay: apply directly to the forehead.

The New Insanity

As promised, let's talk about the new Insanity. The Solace and Insanity talent no-longer grants Shadow priests a spell. Instead, if you start a Mind Flay cast on a foe with your Devouring Plague on it, the cast morphs into Mind Flay (Insanity), dealing +33% damage per Shadow Orb spent. It's an entirely different spell, but I couldn't find it on Wowhead to link it. This bonus damage persists for the duration of the channel, potentially lasting beyond the end of the Devouring Plague DoT itself.

It hits hard. 99% damage may not sound like a lot on such a weak spell, but you can really feel the oomph. Running Solace and Insanity obviously increases the value of Divine Insight, but it also makes sense to use any of the other tier-6 talents with it when they're applicable.

Using Insanity

It is a damage gain (albeit a small one) to prematurely-refresh DoTs shortly before casting Devouring Plague if they would expire during the Insanity period.

Given the option, it is obviously worthwhile to begin an extra Mind Flay (Insanity) immediately before Devouring Plague would expire, allowing you to channel about 2 seconds beyond the end of the effect.

I've read that Mind Blast is higher priority than Mind Flay (Insanity), but by my math, the damage you lose by delaying Mind Blasts (and also the resultant Insanity phases) is approximately equal to the damage you gain from greater Insanity utilization right now. Even so, I believe you should use Mind Blast if it comes off cooldown; the Devouring Plague damage makes that a small damage gain.

Do not cast DoTs during Insanity, and use tier-7 talents only if you would lose the opportunity to do so if you delayed them (for example, AoE targets no-longer clumped for Halo if you wait.)

Discipline priest buffs.

(Source)

So, Discipline just got some more buffs via hotfix earlier this week. I was surprised; I was already dominating the healing in early Heart of Fear. While this may have been (mostly) due to ideal fight mechanics, I still shudder to think what the healing meters will look like this weekend. Just from shifting Divine Aegis from 30% to 50% (base; pre-mastery) I should gain about 17% healing output, and a bit of mana, as I can stop casting on the raid after Force and Verve sooner. The Rapture change from 150% to 200% should ensure that my mana won't run low before the boss dies anymore.

All-in-all, I'm feeling vindicated about my feelings earlier this expansion regarding Discipline balance. Now if only Mistweaver monks had nerfs in the pipe instead of more buffs.

Shadow Priest Glyphs [Mists]

Prime glyphs are gone.

With Mists less than two months away (and no recent Shadow changes), I think it's high time to start theorycrafting for Shadow in 5.0. One of the big things that'll strike right when 5.0 drops is the new glyph set. We'll probably need to buy mostly all-new glyphs, as a lot of the old item IDs no longer refer to valid glyphs. Unlike before, it's hard or impossible to say what will be the best ahead of time. Very few glyphs, if any, offer any sort of damage increase, and the ones that do are extremely situational and minor. Probably, the "correct" glyphs will vary on a per-fight basis, and we'll need to swap glyphs between every encounter. To that end, you may want to buy and learn more than just what you plan to use immediately.

The Future of Dispels

Mass Dispel looked like this in 2007. Cool, huh?

On the Mists beta, all defensive dispels have been given a cooldown. Single-target dispels all gained an 8 second cooldown, and Mass Dispel gained a 15 second cooldown. Since this change has been active since the very early days of the beta and hasn't been adjusted at all since then, I'm pretty sure it will make it to live. Additionally, the defensive component of all of our dispels now removes all harmful effects on the targets that match the category, not simply one or two.

Introductory Raids in Mists

Great news on the PvE front, regarding the launch of Mists of Pandaria! There will be zero raids available at launch. You may be thinking, "How is that great news??" Well, in today's post, I'll tell you why.

"[We might] delay opening Mogu’shan Vaults until a week or so after the expansion’s release, similar to how we’ve always handled the start of the PvP season, just to give players a little time to reach level 90 along with their friends and get acclimated to Pandaria’s new 5-player dungeons, daily quests, and scenarios."

Shadow Word: Insanity Mechanics

Archangel is no longer a talent option (probably because it was garbage for Holy). It has been replaced with Power Word: Solace, which deals a pitiful amount of Holy damage (or Shadow damage in Shadow spec) and restores 2% max mana. If you shift into Shadowform, however, it morphs into Shadow Word: Insanity. Its tooltip lies; see below.

Straight from Ghostcrawler (Source) :

"The damage scales based on the percentage of ticks that have already gone off from the spell (specifically, for each DoT, the damage is increased by (# ticks elapsed / (total ticks – 1)) * 100%, so for a base SW:P which would tick 6 times, SW:I gains 20% damage per tick elapsed), the tooltip should reflect this in a future build. The intention is that you can use Shadow Word: Insanity in solo combat when a mob is getting low to help push them into Shadow Word: Death range, or before your DoTs fall off on a raid boss to eek some more damage out of them. The damage increase based on duration is there to avoid a situation where the right way to play is to apply your DoTs and then blow them up, which we don’t consider fun gameplay."

It's obviously IMBA for PvP, but its PvE uses are less obvious. For narrow bust windows, if any, it may be useful. Depending on its base damage and SP-coefficient, it may also be rotational if/when your DoTs all run low at the same time. If our mana income is too low, then the talent also gives us the option to leave Shadowform to spam Mind Siphon. Frankly, I would be surprised if the talent comes anywhere close to viable when compared to the other options on that tier, but I haven't run the math yet.

New Layout

A typical reader.

Hey, everyone. New layout for the blog. I tried to keep it as similar to the old layout as I could. As you may notice, however, I failed to make it visually indistinguishable. From my experience with changes to Gmail, Youtube, etc., I know that this will be universally hated. Oh well. There were many minor things I wanted to change, and using Blogger's built-in system was simpler than learning HTML.

New Features

• Slightly grayer text background, 98% less likely to drive readers insane.
• Slightly wider main column, the first paragraphs in my posts are now golden rectangles.
• Added popular posts box on the right. 55% of you were coming here for the DPS guides anyway.

Collateral Damage

• Blog title now ugly(er).
• I will be widely hated by returning readers for the near future.
• That Blogger bar at the top now is now gray, down from blue.

[MoP Beta] Shadow Priest Update - May 11

Huge rotation-changing, er, changes, are getting less frequent. Thus, these beta updates are getting progressively more boring. If I had something more interesting to write about, I'd probably be writing that instead.

Sources of Shadow Orbs

Currently only Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death (below 20%) provide Shadow Orbs. This makes Shadow Orb generation very predictable and regular, and as such, Devouring Plague is likely to be used at a very regular interval, much like it is today.

Mind Surge has been reworked, now allowing Haste to shorten the Mind Blast cooldown, which again smooths out Shadow Orb generation, and allows that part of the rotation to scale with Haste. The previous Mind Surge mechanic has been moved to the Divine Insight talent (level 75), so if nuke procs and irregular Shadow Orb gains are your cup of tea, you can spec into it.

Shadow Heals

Like many overpowered things in beta, the Shadow healing spec is mostly gone. Glyph of Dark Binding now applies to Prayer of Mending, Renew and Leap of Faith. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great glyph. It's just not the core piece of a viable hybrid spec anymore. Similarly, Shadow never got Discipline's mana/haste procs; that was a data-mining error. Oops!

Another glyph option, Glyph of Devouring Plague is available to increase your self-healing, but won't help the rest of your raid. It's actually quite sizable, increasing the damage-to-healing conversion from 15% up to a whopping 48%. (The tooltip lies.) On a related note, Devouring Plague has been nerfed into oblivion. I expect it'll get fixed in an upcoming beta patch though, beta balance is always wonky.


Mind Spike Proc

It's back, this time procing from Vampiric Touch ticks with the From Darkness, Comes Light talent (level 45.) This is a fun mechanic, and I was sad to see it gone last build.

Talents now Shadowform-Friendly

Many talents which previously broke Shadowform don't anymore. Huzzah!

Dungeon-Friendly CC

The Glyph of Psychic Scream now also applies to the Psyfiend talent. Also, huzzah!

Discipline

This isn't Shadow-related, but Discipline just got flip-turned upside-down. Spirit Shell is now a cooldown that converts all direct heal spells into absorbs. Neat! I fully expect this mechanic to change a lot over the coming weeks.

Shadow Overview

The beta Shadow rotation now closely resembles the live one. It's all about DoTs and using Mind Blast on cooldown, with Mind Flay filler. Sure, you can build a proc-filled rotation, or shift focus away from your DoTs, but those are talent choices, and if they get the balance right, will just be a matter of choice. Our scaling looks good, our new mastery looks, if anything, even better than the current one. In general, Shadow is in a pretty good shape right now. Switching from live to beta right now is about as seamless as the shift from 3.3 to 4.0 was. So relax everyone, the sky is no-longer falling like it was when Shadowy Apparitions was our primary nuke.

[MoP Beta] Shadow Priest Update - May 1

Need a new talent?
Why not Zoidberg?

Well, it looks like it's time for another beta post. I know I've been posting more about the beta than anything else lately, but there are just so many changes. Enough to warrant this post.

Recent Beta patches: Tuesday May 1, Friday April 27.

I actually wrote a full rant about the state of Shadow priests after the April 27 patch, which was made almost wholly obsolete by the May 1 patch. You can see that rant here, if interested. If you're wondering why the tone of all my beta posts is so positive, it's because things actually are looking good. That rant is a great example of what I write when things are bad; because they were, and I did.

The New Mastery

Mastery: Shadowy Recall - Your DoT ticks have an X% chance to deal damage twice.

It's like crit rating that only applies to DoTs... or is it? Many of our abilities have a chance to trigger on DoT damage. In addition to behaving like crit rating, this will also increase Shadow Orb procs from MF/SW:P, mana return and Mind Blasts from VT, and Shadowy Apparition procs from SW:P. Also, as we gear up, DoTs will shift towards greater prominence in our rotation. Cool. I like the new mastery's design.

Shadow Heals

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. Combined with a 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. Not only can you spec to heal your raid, but there's also a real DPS incentive to do it.

In addition to proccing off of intentional heals, Twist of Fate has also been proccing off of SW:D backlash and Devouring Plague heals when you're below 20% HP. This makes Twist of Fate appreciably more valuable than it previously was for Shadow, making it more competitive against the other level 75 talents. (Previously, it was weak.)

Shadowy Apparitions is passive again (and there was much rejoicing!)

Last beta patch, Shadowy Apparitions was our only rotational Shadow Orb-dump. Now it's the same old passive proc from SW:P. Huzzah! See my rant for why this is a good thing. Also, their chance to proc no longer rises while we're moving. Good. Another bad mechanic gone. Finally, the summon limit has been raised to 15, which should help in cases of path-finding errors. Now while several of them stand around useless, at least we'll still be able to proc more on something else.


Devouring Plague is back!


Devouring Plague had been gone since the start of beta, apparently never to return. Then, it returned today as our new Shadow Orb dump. It deals 2.5k per orb instantly, and another about 8.8k per orb per second for 2 seconds. Notably, our Shadow Orb dump still interacts with our mastery nicely. This DoT has two relevant haste breakpoints. It gains an extra tick at 25%, and a second extra tick at 75% (reachable with a base haste of 34.7%, plus Heroism.) 25% haste is likely to be a very important mark for Shadow in early Mists, possibly surpassing hit capping, as haste did in early Cataclysm.

Notably, Vampiric Touch no longer self-heals, but Devouring Plague does. 15% of damage dealt is converted to health. This amounts to a quick ~20k self-heal, which can be used on-demand to soften certain fight mechanics. Nice.

Sphincter Guys

Spectral Guise is slightly improved relative to when I wrote the rant. It still bites, but it now grants stealth instead of invisibility, meaning we can still see our foes. This is a minor step in the right direction.


Vampiric Touch procs stuff.

From Darkness, Comes Light no longer procs from SW:P, leaving VT as the only thing to proc Mind Spikes. Also, we got a new baseline passive ability, Mind Surge, which procs instant Mind Blasts off of VT. While VT was heavily nerfed 2 beta patches ago, it's still a little stronger than SW:P, and more so due to these procs.

State of the Spec

Things are looking pretty good. All of our talents are looking at least situationally viable. We have options for an off-healing spec, proc-heavy rotations, and/or burst cooldowns. We're almost free of all of our known buggy mechanics -- Shadowy Apparitions, while still susceptible to path-finding errors, is at least a minor part of our DPS once again.

Also, scaling looks likely to preserve our rotation as we gear up. Late in Wrath, we had issues with Mind Blast dropping out of the rotation at ICC gear levels, but the new mastery design seems built to reinforce the usage of spells that are already limited: DoTs and cooldowns.

Glyph of Dark Binding

I don't know how I missed this. With this in place, the recent addition of several Discipline abilities to Shadow spec seems more likely to be intentional. There has been a bit of buzz around the blogs about Shadow perhaps becoming a true hybrid spec, preforming nontrivial amounts of healing while in a damage spec. I'm starting to agree; it does look like that's the goal.

This glyph in particular looks very powerful. Even on live, I frequently de-form to heal someone in our H DS runs, both on farm bosses and on progression. With how many globals I lose to casting Shadowform, this would actually replace Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain for me from a raw DPS standpoint, not to mention the increased uptime on Shadowform's damage reduction. Also, this looks obviously god-mode and/or mandatory in PvP.

Shadow already has a lot of passive mana income from Vampiric Touch ticks, and with the addition of a 25% meditation effect, and Rapture, we should have the mana longevity to chain-cast heals for quite a long time. We may even see people using Shadow as a primary healing spec on easier fights, or where damage output is more important than healing. I must say, it's an exciting time to be a Shadow priest. This must be what it was like for the warlocks when they thought Demonology was becoming a tank spec.

(For some more analysis on the addition of Discipline abilities to Shadow, see this post.)

H Spine of Deathwing - Defeated!

Beta updates:

• Mass Dispel is now much cheaper, but has a 15 second cooldown (like all other dispels in the beta).
• Void Shift is now baseline (level 87), and has a 6m cooldown. Now, much like Life Grip, all priests will have a new griefing tool. Or something functionally equivalent to Lay on Hands. Depends how responsible they are.
• Related: Spectral Guise is now a talent in the survivability tier.
• Many talents (mostly healing) have had their numbers tweaked. Yawn.
• From Darkness, Comes Light - Now can accumulate two charges. Cool, fewer go to waste, and can accumulate them for burst.
• Twist of Fate - Now lasts for 10sec after damaging/healing a low health target. This should make it appreciably better than it was, as before it was dramatically weaker than the other options on the same tier. Now on add fights it may be far superior.
• Mindbender - New talent. It's another Shadowfiend with twice the mana return, but a longer cooldown.
• Shadow got a bunch of Discipline abilities. Bug maybe? The list: Borrowed Time, Meditation (25%), Rapture, Spirit Shell. If this is not a mistake, then my thoughts are twofold. One: it's nice for Disc/Shadow priests so they don't need to heal like a holy priest if they need to heal in Shadow spec. Two: Healing is now much more appealing for a Shadow priest, as you'll likely be compensated for the time spent to cast a PW:S here and there in the form of haste and mana. It is possible that PW:S might become rotational, for the boost it offers to a DoT used immediately after, particularly with the tier-14 4-piece bonus. At first glance, PW:S seems to be DPS-neutral, which means it may as well be rotational for the survivability boost.
• Glyph of Fade now grants 10% damage reduction. Cool. More survivability tools are always welcome.
• We now have preliminary tier-14 set bonuses. 2 piece: +10% Mind Flay crit. Since we still have the MFcrit-to-Shadowfiend conversion, this will be a powerful mana boost. 4 piece: +3 sec DoT durations. Not overwhelmingly powerful for single-target, but sexy-awesome for multi-DoTing. I approve.

---

So, on Thursday, we rolled in and oneshot H Spine. I was surprised; when the fight ended abruptly, I thought we still had one plate to go; it felt just that easy. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing.

What we did differently

Our tendon burst DPS has been creeping steadily upwards the entire time we've been attempting H Spine, and feeling it was no longer necessary, several other DPS and I stopped trying to get cooldowns up before we detonated the Amalgamations, and simply focused on burning it as fast as possible. One of our tendon burn phases was perilously close to not meeting the DPS requirement because of this, but it made the fight dramatically shorter. The faster Amalgamation burn also caused the tendon phases to sync up nicely with the Fiery Grips so that we didn't need to kill the Corruption to reset the timer before entering tendon phase.

Our tanks adopted a different strategy for the 5th and 6th lifts; instead of attempting to kite the bloods, they stacked near the rest of the raid and dropped as much AoE as possible. The incidental AoE from procs and the tanks themselves killed 9 bloods almost precisely when the Amalgamation got low on HP. Also, this allowed them to more reliably establish aggro on new spawns, preventing them from meleeing random people.

We had a perfect storm of good RNG luck. I got such a good string of crits once, that I did 1.4M during a single tendon phase- not counting Shadowfiend damage. Likewise, despite making no attempt to get my Shadowfiend, and despite having about half the usual time between plates, he came up for 5 of the 6 plates. Other DPS report similar uncanny levels of luck. Also, the Blood Corruption: Earth was remarkably kind to us, dropping two stacks on both tanks right off the bat, and coating the majority of the raid before the end of the fight.

So was it just RNG then?

While the RNG probably helped immensely, the fact is that the healers finished the encounter with about 60% mana each, and unused healing and mana cooldowns. RNG simply doesn't account for that. Clearly the strategy changes were enough, and the favor of the RNG gods was just icing on the cake.

We spent considerable time on H Madness that night as well. I can see why very few guilds are 7/8H; Madness does seem much easier than H Spine. On about our 5th attempt, we made it to the final phase, and wiped only because we'd never seen it before. The fight is brutal on healing, but as a DPS, it's only marginally harder than normal mode, and this coming from someone who's having to use Dispersion to soak a 1.08M damage Impale meant for the tank. If we get it down before then, I'll write up a detailed account of our strategy for next week.

[MoP Beta] (More) Mists of Pandaria Shadow Priest Changes

Some exciting things have changed since my previous post on the topic!

Spell/baseline passive effect changes:

• Mind Blast now generates 1 shadow orb on use, rather than consuming them. 6 sec cooldown, so expect it to take 18 sec to prepare a 3-orb special ability. More on those below. No word yet as to whether we also generate shadow orbs from Shadow Word: Pain.
• Mind Spike no longer interacts with shadow orbs.
• Vampiric Touch now refunds 15% of the damage dealt as Health. Notably, we now don't have a mana return mechanic that does not interrupt our DPS. Looks like we're using Dispersion for mana. However...
• Mind Flay is now free (no mana cost.)
• Shadowy Apparitions is now a level 10 spell instead of a passive effect.
• Shadowy Apparitions and Psychic Horror now use shadow orbs.
• Shadowy Apparitions summons 1 apparition per orb. This is likely a core-DPS spell.
• Psychic Horror now terrifies for 1 sec per orb. The disarm is still 10sec either way.
• Our Mastery: Shadow Orb Power now grants 1.6% per point to refund a shadow orb for each Shadowy Apparition summoned, and the same amount to all periodic damage (regardless of whether you've spent orbs recently or not.)
• Vampiric Embrace is now a cooldown. 15 sec duration, 2m cooldown. Converts 50% of all damage dealt to healing, which is then split evenly among the raid.

Talent changes since last week:

• Tier 1: Mind Control has replaced Psychic Scream as a tier-1 talent. It now has a 30sec cooldown.
• Tier 2: Phantasm now makes us untargettable by ranged attacks in addition to suppressing snares and roots.
• Tier 2: Path of the Devout now persists for an additional 30sec after levitate ends.
• Tier 2: Body and Soul now grants a 60% speed boost, up from 40%.
• Tier 3: From Darkness, Comes Light now makes your next Mind Spike instant and not consume your DoTs.
• Tier 3: There is an empty slot where Divine Star used to be (it is now tier-6).
• Tier 4: Angelic Bulwark is no longer a tier-4 option.
• Tier 4: Void Shift is now a tier-4 option (previously, tier 6) and it now heals the lower health pool 25%, instead of always healing you. This change is clearly designed to further support battleground griefing.
• Tier 5: Twist of Fate now has the magnitude of the damage/healing boost specified. 15%.
• Tier 5: Divine Insight redesigned. 40% chance on Mind Blast hit to cause your next Shadow Word: Death to treat the target as though low HP. With current numbers, this is now the best sustained DPS talent on this tier.
• Tier 6: Vampiric Dominance is gone. Its place is empty for now.
• Tier 6: Divine Star is now a tier-6 option. (Previously, tier-3.)
• Tier 6: Vow of Unity redesigned. 15 sec duration, 2m cooldown. Copies all heals between the two of you. Splits X% of all damage between the two of you. Cannot be cast on tanks.

Shadow-relevant new glyphs:

• Glyph of Dispel Magic - Your Dispel Magic spell also damages your target for X Holy damage when you successfully dispel a magical effect from a foe.
• Glyph of Enfeeblement - When you critically hit with your Mind Blast, you cause the target to be unable to move for 4 sec.
• Glyph of Inner Sanctum - Spell damage taken is reduced by 6% while within Inner Fire, and the movement speed bonus of your Inner Will is increased by 6%.

Mists of Pandaria Shadow Priest Changes

What? SHADOW PRIEST is evolving!
*Pokemon evolution music*

(For those interested, the current publicly available info can be found here.)

Ah, another expansion! We live in exciting times, folks. There's nothing quite so exhilarating as playing a brand-new expansion. We'll get to re-evaluate our entire class, compete with 200+ other players to tag our next quest mob, and boldly go where no panda has gone before (at least, if you level quickly.)

For now though, here's some pseudo-patch notes I've compiled from the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator.

Priests

• Shadow Protection removed; magic resistances removed.
• Dispel Magic now removes ALL harmful spells when cast on self, but has an 8 second cooldown.
• Mind Blast is no longer baseline. It is now shadow-specific.
• Psychic Scream is no longer baseline. It is now a talent.
• Specializations
• Shadow
• Devouring Plague removed, in order to simplify the spec.
• Mind Blast now requires at least 1 Shadow Orb to cast.
• Silence is now baseline. (And there was much rejoicing!)
• Psychic Horror is now baseline.
• Vampiric Touch now heals the caster for 50% of the damage dealt as Health and Mana. We will never have to worry about running OOM again, even when healing.
• All heals other than Flash Heal and Power Word: Shield are no longer baseline; our healing toolkit will be much diminished.
• Many utility or situational spells no longer have a 40-yard range. Core DPS-rotational spells still have a 40-yard range, but we will once again have a positioning conflict when our utility is necessary.
• Pain and Suffering now has a 100% chance to refresh Shadow Word: Pain up from 66%, but it can no longer trigger off the initial application of Mind Flay.
• Talents
• Level 15 (Crowd Control)
• Void Tendrils - This is a mage's Frost Nova, but with a twist. Instead of breaking when the target takes damage, this will break when the tendril holding them dies. Mobs will likely break themselves out when they have no other target nearby. Lasts up to 20 sec.
• Psyfiend - Repeatedly fears anything attacking you for up to 1 minute. (The fear lasts 1 minute, not the Psyfiend.) Due to the long cooldown, I would assume that it fears more than 5 targets (the number Psychic Scream does), but it will take 1.5 sec to cast each fear. Less useful if you need stuff to stop attacking you right now. This is serious CC, and is likely to be highly desired in 5man dungeons in early Mists.
• Psychic Scream - Unaltered.
• Level 30 (Mobility)
• Body and Soul - Unaltered. Yay! Finally Discipline and Shadow get to have Holy's most fun toy. If used at maximal uptime, grants a 10.67% average movement speed increase. Due to the bursty nature of the movement though, this is likely meant for short sprints like getting out of the fire. On a 5.6 second or longer bout of movement, the speed boost will refund the time lost to casting PW:S. Can be used on others!
• Path of the Devout - +25% movement speed when you have anyone's Levitate on you. Good for long runs (like, running back into a wiped instance, for example.) Useless in combat, and also useless for over-world travel, since you will have a mount by this point. May allow us to kite in future raids.
• Phantasm - Also suppresses roots and snares for 3sec after use in addition to current effect. As always, will have uses in PvP. Likely to remain largely-useless in PvE.
• Level 45 (Core DPS or HPS)
• From Darkness, Comes Light - 15% chance on Mind Flay tick to grant a free, instant Mind Blast. Likely to be the best sustained DPS option, as the others have side benefits that would make them strictly better if this was not. The healing half of this talent is unusable for shadow priests, as we lack the spells required to consume the proc.
• Divine Star - A clone of a mage's Flame Orb, with a twist: also heals allies in the path. Of these three talents, this provides the most "free" healing. Likely to be lower DPS than From Darkness, Comes Light because of that. I will be a sad panda if this kicks us out of Shadowform, but I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard did do that.
• Archangel - No longer restores mana. Damage boosted 25%, up from 20%. The healing half of this talent is now unusable in shadow spec. Provides burst DPS on demand. Likely to be the highest DPS option for short fights, and obviously good for fights that need burst (like the Spine of Deathwing tendons.) Should be lower sustained DPS than From Darkness, Comes Light, because if it's not, then this is strictly better.
• Level 60 (Defensive Cooldowns)
• Desperate Prayer - Instantly heal yourself for 30% of max HP. 2 minute cooldown. Notably, this interacts with the new version of Vampiric Embrace, causing the healing to splash to some of your raid. At maximum usage, this has the highest sustained HPS of the talents on this tier. I would be unsurprised, but disappointed, if Blizzard makes this strip Shadowform.
• Angelic Bulwark - Increases your shields on yourself by 30%. You'd need to shield yourself 3-4 times per minute for this to even come close to the other talents. PW:S is our only shield, and it has a 15 second "cooldown". Do not take this talent; it is BAD for shadow.
• Final Prayer - When an attack reduces you below 30% HP but doesn't kill you, you gain a shield for 20% of your max HP. 90 second cooldown. Pros: automatic, shorter cooldown (may sync up with some fight mechanics better than Desperate Prayer). Cons: does not interact with Vampiric Dominance, lower average HPS, cannot be used on-demand, can be wasted when it is unnecessary (for example, Decimate effects). A viable choice, but Desperate Prayer is likely better in most situations.
• Level 75 (Situational DPS or HPS)
• Twist of Fate - Increases damage and healing dealt to targets below 20% HP. Does not say how much the increase is. Likely to be the best sustained DPS of the talents on this tier, otherwise Power Infusion would be strictly better, due to utility. In order to beat out Power Infusion for raw DPS, this needs to be +25% damage or more, and so I predict that it will be +25% or more.
• Power Infusion - Unchanged. Can be a burst DPS cooldown, or a healing cooldown if given to a healer. A fun toy, and may even be the best DPS talent if other spellcasters in the group can make better use of this than you. Obviously great utility.
• Divine Insight - Mind Spike hastens your next Mind Blast. Identical to our current Mind Melt effect. Boring, near-useless for PvE. May still see use in PvP.
• Level 90 (Healing)
• Vow of Unity - Links you to another player. Whenever you heal them, you gain HP equal to 20% of the heal. Whenever they take damage, 50% of it is redirected to you over 6 seconds. Ends if they take a hit greater than 30% of their max HP (has no cooldown, you can just reapply it). This is an extremely powerful defensive buff that you can put on anyone that needs to stay alive. Won't trivialize massive damage spikes in raids, but will trivialize trash mobs and basic boss melee swings on your tank. Unfortunately, exclusive with Vampiric Dominance, so you will need a source of external healing to survive this for long.
• Void Shift - Swap HP% with target ally. You heal 25% max HP. Everything that Vow of Unity is not, this is. Can trivialize massive bursts of raid damage, and can also be used to grief raid-members or battleground-mates. Can also be cast on self for an instant 25% heal, making it like a second, weaker Desperate Prayer. 3 minute cooldown.
• Vampiric Dominance - This is Vampiric embrace on steroids. (Meaning, almost exactly what it was 1-2 expansions ago.) Heals 3 "nearby" allies for 15% each of any damage you deal. We can assume that it will prefer low-HP allies. It's unclear whether this healing splashes near whatever you damaged, or if it's centered on you. Notably, this does not have the restriction to only proc off of single-target damage. I expect that to be fixed. If it doesn't though, cue massive HPS on AoE fights.

Notable Missing Spells/Mechanics

• Masochism - Likely a Glyph.
• Improved Devouring Plague - It's possible we'll get a new spell (or Devouring Plague will come back) to spam while moving. If not though, it may be intentional that we're losing a mobile DPS option. After all, we are getting some major movement utility; what better incentive for us to actually use it?
• Paralysis - Probably a Glyph.
• Sin and Punishment (both parts) - Probably intentional that we're losing dispel protection for Vampiric Touch; dispels in general are being given a cooldown. Mind Flay crits reducing the cooldown of Shadowfiend may have simply been forgotten in the current talent calculator, or it could be a Glyph.
• Soul Warding - Not many shadow priests specced into it, but with Body and Soul around, we might have wanted to for the utility. Notably, Discipline is missing this too. Might be a Glyph?
• Most of our heals - I'm sad to see shadow's healing options so stripped, but it looks intentional.
• Cure Disease - Also looks intentional. When was the last time we actually used it though?

Conclusion

I for one am excited by these changes! Sure our rotation is being simplified a bit, but we're getting a TON of utility! If fights focus more on using our utility well, and less on DoT juggling, then I'm ok with that. Plus, we don't even know what new spells we'll be getting on the way to level 90. Maybe some of them will add back the rotational complexity we seem to be missing?