Wednesday 9 December 2009

3.3 Shadow Priest Glyphs

Amongst many other delightful shadow priest changes coming with 3.3, we now have a slightly more varied glyph selection to choose from. Here are the 3.3 changes concerning shadow priest glyphs:

Glyph of Mind Flay
Old Effect: Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards.
New Effect: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

Glyph of Shadow
Old Effect: While in Shadowform, your non-periodic spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec.
New Effect: While in Shadowform, your non-periodic spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 30% of your Spirit for 10 sec.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Old Effect: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
New Effect: The periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restore 1% of your base mana.

Glyph of Mind Flay and Glyph of Shadow remain the mandatory glyphs for a raiding priest. Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain is optional now, and if you don't want to spend gold changing it around then there isn't a massive reason for doing so. Just remember that Haste not affecting Shadow Word: Pain means there is no scaling, just base mana over base tick. I will be swapping it for Glyph of Dispersion. The attractiveness of a 1 minute 15 second cooldown on greater mana regen and damage reduction appeals to me, despite the con of a 6 second silence. Just make sure you have this macro for the last one:

#showtooltip Dispersion
/cancelaura Dispersion
/cast Dispersion

So you can double tap Dispersion to control over how much mana you want to regen. or just to quickly get out of roots when you're too lazy to fade..

Lastly there is Glyph of Shadow Word: Death - Very situational, but it is the only other glyph option that directly boosts damage. I already seldom use SW:D as it is, so it wouldn't be worth my while glyphing this for now, but if the results are significant then I could see this moving up to a mandatory spot. But for now I'll worry about not being gibbed in Icecrown with my Dispersion glyph!

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