Shadow Priest in build 70425: Devouring Plague and Vampiric Embrace can stay up all fight

Build 70425 went up on Oct 15. For Shadow it is the biggest change of the beta. We checked every Priest line in Blizzard’s notes against the build’s files, and the server’s hotfixes too. The server overrides none of these spells.

The gains

Devouring Plague runs nonstop. The cooldown dropped from 60 sec to 24 sec, and the disease lasts 24 sec. In build 70374 it covered 40% of a long fight. You can refresh it as it falls off. At rank 6 that is 848 base Shadow damage every 24 sec instead of every minute, about 2.5 times as much from the spell over a fight, and every point of it heals you. Every Forever Priest learns it at level 20, not just the Undead as in Classic.

Vampiric Embrace runs nonstop too. The cooldown halved to 30 sec, the same as its duration, and it can’t be resisted. Your party heals for 20% of your Shadow damage the whole fight, the extra Devouring Plague damage included.

Devouring Contagion jumps to 2 targets. When a target dies with your Devouring Plague on it, the plague spreads to two nearby enemies for its remaining time (was one). Blizzard also fixed the bug where the jump cost mana, played a cast and reset your cooldown. On packs while leveling, one plague keeps paying out.

Shadow Word: Death crits harder. It gets Shadowform’s +100% critical damage bonus, like your other Shadow spells. The cooldown went up to 18 sec. Blizzard’s notes say it was 12 sec; build 70374’s files said 15. If it doesn’t kill the target, you take 10% of your maximum health.

A new talent, Dark Inspiration. Row 4, five ranks. Each Mind Blast and each fully channeled Mind Flay raises your and your party’s Spirit by up to 15% for 10 sec. With Mind Blast coming back every few seconds it is close to always on, so it is a mana talent for you and your healer.

Improved Mind Blast moved up to row 2. A leveling Shadow Priest gets the shorter Mind Blast cooldown sooner.

Twin Disciplines covers more spells. The Discipline talent (5% at 5 ranks) also works on Shadow Word: Death, Mind Flay, Starshards and Penance. In the files it touches more spell families than in build 70374.

Changes that cut both ways

Improved Mind Flay was redesigned. In build 70374 it gave a flat 20% more Mind Flay damage and 10 yards more range. In 70425 each tick deals 20% more than the tick before it. A full channel ticks at 100%, 120% and 144%, about 21% more in total, a little better than before. Clip it after two ticks and you get 10% more. The 10 extra yards are gone, so Mind Flay is a closer-range spell again. Dark Inspiration also wants the full channel.

Mental Strength moved to row 2 of Discipline and tops out lower. It was already Intellect in build 70374, up to 15%. It drops to 10%, two rows earlier. That matters if you put points into Discipline on the way to Twin Disciplines.

The losses

Shadow Affinity is gone. Blizzard’s notes call it “Shadow Infinity”; the talent that left the tree is Shadow Affinity, which cut your Shadow spells’ threat by up to 30%. With Devouring Plague and Vampiric Embrace up all fight, your threat climbs faster in groups, and nothing in the Shadow tree lowers it. The answer sits in Discipline: Silent Resolve cuts the threat of all your spells by up to 30% (it used to cover only Holy spells).

Improved Fade is gone. It took up to 6 sec off Fade’s cooldown. Fade is back on its full cooldown for every Priest.

Wands make you stand still first. Every class has to stand still for 0.5 sec before a wand shoots, as in early WoW. Shadow Priests level on wands between Mind Blasts, so each shot costs a pause, and kiting with a wand gets slower.

Smaller lines

Renew from a high rank no longer blocks another Priest’s Renew on the same target. Power Word: Shield tells you when a stronger one is already on; the same file flag changed on both spells.
Inner Fire switched to a different armor effect type, part of a game-wide switch (283 spells in this build, from Devotion Aura to Gift of the Wild). The armor values are unchanged: 1,395 at rank 6.
Power in Light (Discipline) also works on targets with your Shadow Word: Pain, so a Smite build can lead with a DoT.
Shadow Weaving’s tooltip was fixed to say what the talent does: the target takes more Shadow damage from you alone.
The Quick and the Dead (Legacy perk: helpful spells cost nothing for a while after you’re resurrected) covers more Priest spells.

Racials that touch a Shadow Priest

Human: Sword Specialization became Ruthless, 2% critical strike chance with any weapon. With Shadowform’s +100% critical damage, crit matters more for Shadow than for most casters.
Dwarf: Mace Specialization became Earth Fury, 2% more critical damage and healing.
Gnome: Eureka! lasts 8 sec with no charge limit. Blizzard says it also strengthens Power Word: Shield; the Priest version’s spell list doesn’t show that yet, so it may live on the server.
Undead: Touch of the Grave fires 30% of the time for casters (was 10%) but only once every 25 sec (was 1 sec). It still drains 5% of the target’s maximum health. Blizzard’s notes call it “Touch of the Dead”.
Troll: Regeneration doubled to 20%.

What it adds up to

Solo and in long fights, Shadow comes out well ahead. Two spells that sat on a one-minute cooldown stay up all fight; one heals you, the other heals your party, and Mind Blast feeds a party-wide Spirit buff. In dungeons, watch your threat. The Shadow tree lost its only threat cut, so plan a few points in Silent Resolve or an early Fade. Wand leveling slows down a little, with half a second standing in place before every shot.

Sources

Blizzard, Development Notes (Oct 15)