Tuesday, January 25, 2011

S.C.T.M

 S.C.T.M: Simplifying Cooldowns Through Macros
Find it hard to manage all of your cooldowns as they come up? Here's a quick list of some usefull Macros, that can help you easily manage all of your cooldowns, and use them together.

     1. Binding Archangel, Volcanic potion, and Synapse Springs(Engineering ONLY) into one button
           - First, go into the Macro Menu, Create a "New" Macro, Pick an easily identifiable Icon to avoid confusion, and insert the following:

/Cast Archangel
/Use Volcanic Potion
(To bind Synapse Springs, You have to type " /Use <Name of Gloves>"(Example:/Use Flamebloom Gloves")


     2. Binding Leap of faith to specific players
           - This usually isn't advised, since you will lose DPS shifting in and out of shadowform, but if you have a player that can't seem to avoid danger, this can save you from wiping:

/Target <Name of player>  (Example:  /Target Stalvan)
/Cast Leap of Faith
/Whisper <Name of player> (Insert witty message here)

      3. Coordinating Power Infusion from a Discipline Priest (Disc priest required)
           1a. Create a Macro that sends a whisper to the discipline priest, to request Power infusion:
              /Whisper <Name of player>  (insert Power Infusion request message here)
     
           1b. The Macro the Discipline priest would then use accordingly would be:
              /Target <Name of Player>

              /Cast Power Infusion
              /Whisper <Name of Player> You Have Power Infusion!

       4. The Double Shield Macro (Engineering only)
             -Combining Power word: Shield, and the Grounded Plasma Shield from Engineering, you can survive rather bad situations. For example, if you cannot escape the Breath attack from the Valiona, and Theralion encounter quickly, this can save your life:

      /Cast Power Word: Shield
      /Use <Name of Belt>               (Example:  /Use Cord of Raven Queen )
                                                      Approximate Absorbtion Value: 22,000-27,000 Damage.
              

Friday, January 21, 2011

PTR 4.0.6 Build 13529: Thoughts regarding Shadow Priests.

I'd like to take some time to go over some of the changes in the most recent PTR build (13529), and share some of my thoughts about the changes regarding Shadow Priests.

1. Mind Blast: damage has been increased by 60%. Now deals  1617 to 1709  damage, up from  1028 to 1086 damage

- I really like this change. It felt like Mind Blast was not hitting very hard (Unless you had Shadow orbs, and archangel up). It felt like single target dps was a little on the low side compared to other classes, so I think this change would make Shadow Priests more competitive on Single-Target raid encounters.

2. Mind Sear: damage has been reduced by 30%. Now deals  104 to 113 Damage, down from  146 to 158 Damage.

- I know that AoE damage was lowered across the board, with Mind Sear feeling especially weak (In my opinion), and Ghostcrawler had mentioned that Mind Sear was weak as well. This is the PTR of course, so nothing is set in stone yet. I would be dissappointed if this change made it on live servers.

3.Shadow Power:  now Increases the damage done by your Shadow Orbs by 11.6%, down from 21.6%

- With the change to Mind Blast, this particular change does not seem that signifigant to me. I think this was changed directly because of the Mind Blast Buff, to balance it out properly. You would hit like a wrecking ball if they did not make this change, which would be OK with me.

Introductions

     Greetings, my name is Chris, and I play a Shadow Priest on the Realm Thrall. Right now, I am part of a small 10 man raiding guild called <Epic>. I've been playing world of warcraft since November of 2006, I've completed all of the Burning crusade content up to Felmyst Pre-nerf. In Wrath Of the Lich King, I completed all of the raid content all the way up to 11/12 Heroic ICC25, and Bane of the fallen king on 7/17/10.
      I wanted to start posting articles, so that I could share some of my thoughts, and opinions about happenings, and on-going changes in the Warcraft world that's related to Shadow Priests. Most of my posts will be directed towards that, on top of posting occasional Game reviews of titles that really catch my eye. I'll be posting new articles every 3-5 days, as i write them up. See you then!