Shadow priest PvP changes

In this post I want to talk about the upcoming changes for shadow priests. Blizzard has recognized that shadow priest are doing to much damage within arena games. So in patch 5.2 some spells and glyphs will be changed so prevent shadow priests doing a lot of damage.

• Halo will no longer hit enemies that are in Stealth.
• Power Word: Solace has been replaced with a new talent: Solace & Insanity
  • For Shadow, this ability causes Mind Flay to gain the Insanity effect when it's cast on a target with 3 Shadow damage-over-time spells on it. Insanity increases the damage of Mind Flay by 33% per Shadow Orb consumed.
• Glyph of Mind Spike only works from Mind Spike that aren't instant casts from Surge of Darkness.
• Flash Heal and Binding Heal will heal for 30% less when cast by Shadow Priests.

The change on Halo is quite a pain for shadow priest. This spell was a great opportunity against stealth teams to disturb their opening. However I do understand this change since it was never the intention to break stealth in arena games. Being able to stealth is a huge advantage and a needed ability for some classes. So breaking stealth with this big AoE is overpowered.

Power Word: Solace has been totally replaced. The spell was not used very often by shadow priest so it is logical that the spell has been changed. However the new ability ain't that great either. It will only be useful if you have cast Devouring Plague upon a target and have the other dots up. Also Devouring Plague last for six seconds, so you can only profit from this spell for six seconds. I think the new talent won't be used that frequently.

To decrease the damage output of a priest the talent Surge of Darkness changed. Because you could get free mind spikes with this talent it also means to decrease the cooldown of the Mind Blast spell. This meant that you could get a instant Mind Blast.

With all these changes I think that shadow priest will play a less important role in arena matches. However shadow priest won't be nerfed on their utility which I think is more important then decrease of the damage will we get. I'm still do have the feeling this are not all the changes the priest will get. What kind of other changes do you expect?

Professions

Last Sunday I was able to do some other things within World of Warcraft then focus on my main goals. I already done my arena matches on Thursday, visit MC and AQ40 for the mini pets on Sunday and completed all LFR instances.

I’ve decides to level up one of my alt character.

I’ve started levelling my feral level 86 druid Ralpby. I am levelling my alts slowly because of their professions. The more professions I master the less gold I will be spending. The professions on my druid are mining and jewelcrafting. Recently I reached the maximum level of jewelcrafting. However mining was still a bit below level 600. So while levelling I was surprised to see that I completed the achievement Working For a Living

.

This meant that reached 600 skill in mining. Together with this achievement I’ve also completed the achievement Jack of All Trades. I now have five different professions on maximum level. Inscription and herbalism on my main (Ralpbix), alchemy on my warrior alt and jewelcrafting and mining on my druid.

At the end I hope to reach all professions to the maximum level. Not spending gold on enchants will probably save me a lot of gold.

How many maximum level professions do you have?

Personal goals

Once again I will try to write about my adventures within the World of Warcraft. I will start by writing about some personal goals I want to achieve. The game itself stays fun for me because of those personal goal. And those goals keep me busy during my limited time to play World of Warcraft.

I currently have my focus on an achievement added to the game in patch 5.1. The achievement is called Raiding with Leashes. This achievement is about collecting new battle pets which drops of various old raiding bosses. At this moment I already have collected nine of the twelve require battle pets. This means that I don’t have to visit Blackwing Lair and Naxxramas anymore.

I still need the following pets:

• Corefire Imp
• Viscidus Globule
• Mini Mindslayer

The second goal I currently focus on is getting an as high as possible arena rating in 2v2 bracket. I play together with my good friend Dionys. We’re having quite some fun trying to earn our conquest points. We have reached 1322 rating since this week. We are still increasing our ratings however we have a hard time against new made teams. They start with zero rating and 1500 matchrating. So chances are big that they already have better gear or more experience. However I welcome the gear changes in patch 5.2. More information about the gear changes for patch 5.2 will be written in a future post.

My third goal is to complete the legendary quest chain. Since this expansion all players are able to focus on the legendary chain because the needed items are also dropping in the LFR feature of the game. I’m currently on the quest The Strength of One's Foes and only need to collect two more Sigil of Wisdom. I hope that I can complete this quest next week.

What are your personal goals within the game?

Edit: The battle pet Mini Mindslayer just dropped for me. See screenshots below.