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Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest's first look into the Raid Finder
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration and grant you one birthday wish ... Let's start off today's column with a question to you, the reader: How did you get your start raiding? Me, I got my start in the PUG raiding circuit of yore. Someone would spam trade chat with their need for one ranged DPS for whatever raid instance happened to be in fashion at the time. I'd whisper them, hoping to snag that elusive slot (and believe me, as a DPSer, that slot was very elusive). Generally, I had no idea what I was doing while in the raids. I knew not to stand in stuff and to target whatever had the skull over its head. I was a pretty lousy PUG raider. Let's face it -- we all were. PUG raids aren't known for their rates of success. Which is why I was intrigued when Blizzard announced its new Raid Finder system, coming in patch 4.3. Could Blizzard have found a way to make PUG raiding ... bearable?
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest Pandaren and the new MoP talent tree
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration (and to smack Tyler with a Shadow Word: Death when he's least expecting it). Cataclysm was a great expansion to play a shadow priest in, but if what we learned at BlizzCon 2011 is any clue, playing a shadow priest in Mists of Pandaria is going to be a whole lot better. I know those are big words, but when we start delving into the new-for-MoP talent trees, I feel these new talents will back those words up. We're getting a new playmate for our Shadowfiend, a whole new talent tree with spectacular new abilities, and a new, RNG-free mechanism for Shadow Orbs and Mind Blast. And, oh yeah: Pandaren can be shadow priests. Excited? You should be.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest FAQs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration (and on occasion, to be helpful, too). Hey everyone. I'm so excited I could just puke, because BlizzCon 2011 is almost here. It's like Christmas is around the corner. I'm so excited I can't sleep. I'm also so excited that I don't want to sit down and get my work done, but to be fair, I get that feeling regardless of whether BlizzCon is around the corner or not. I was so busy over these last few days getting ready for my trip to California that I didn't even have time to think up a super-awesome topic for today. Thankfully, my loyal minions on Twitter responded to my call for help. They were kind enough to bombard me with a ton of general questions about shadow priesting. And since I need the money I'm such an awesome guy, I'm going to answer a bunch of them right here and now.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest tier 13
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration. Fox is a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist. I'm not a fan of dancing. I'm just not coordinated to the point of memorizing complicated stepping patterns. And even if I was, do you think I need to go through such complicated mating rituals to impress? Please. I'm Fox Van Allen. That said, I was a bit distressed to learn about the new tier 13 bonuses and what they mean for shadow priests. Apparently, Blizzard wants us shadow priests to learn how to dance to maximize our DPS for the next raiding tier. No, seriously.
Spiritual Guidance: The sorta-official shadow priest census
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration. Spiritual Guidance has been edited for broadcast. Usually, I'm uninterested in hearing about anything but how good-looking or awesome I am. I tend to make an exception on topics relating to shadow priesting though. It's a fun spec in Cataclysm, and I sure hope it stays a fun, competitive spec in the Pandatown expansion too. Thankfully, there's something we can all do to guarantee the future of shadow priesting. Blizzard has started a thread on the official Blizzard forums specifically soliciting feedback from priests of all stripes. They ask some important things of us: what we think makes shadow priesting fun (and not fun), what we think of our rotation, our wish list, and what spells we use the least. The answers will be read by the development team and used to mold the shadow priest of 2012-13. Given the importance of the thread, I thought it'd be interesting to go through the responses there so far, share a few with you, and give my own answers and reactions. Today, it's all about where shadow priests are and where shadow priests should be going.
Spiritual Guidance: Revisiting The Burning Crusade and Wrath, solo
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration. Fox is weak versus Bubble Lead. To be fair, it's incredibly easy to get bored with current content. Sure, things like the Molten Front and Firelands are fun and exciting for a while, but several months later when you find yourself running the same content over and over ... well. I'm always looking for new and different things to do with my shadow priest. Last year, when I started getting bored with Icecrown Citadel, I started running heroic Magisters' Terrace solo, farming it for all sorts of goodies inside that I never wound up getting when the content was relevant. It turns out that soloing that stuff was a lot of fun, and judging by the emails I got after, a lot of you agreed with me. Some of you have been pressuring me to update that article for Cataclysm. Obviously, a lot has changed. Mainly, we've gotten stronger, but we've also got a few new tools at our disposal. Soloing Magisters' Terrace is old news. This time around, we're going to solo some more intimidating content: Wrath heroics and BC raids.
Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest leveling guide in 1,500 words or less
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's takes a brief respite from writing articles about how he refuses to date Magic: The Gathering players -- long enough, at least to write this entertaining nonsense. So, you've no doubt been seeing all these commercials on TV and these all-star athletes talking about how exciting and fun shadow priesting is. And it's true, all true -- shadow priesting is a high-end, VIP-exclusive lifestyle with a dope aftertaste. You should level a shadow priest. And lucky you -- leveling one has never been easier. In the olden days, talking leveling used to take pages after pages of information. Why, my old Wrath leveling guide was, like, four or five weeks long until I got distracted, started talking about something else, and never actually finished that guide. But for Cataclysm? Nah, nothing that intense. In fact, I'll bet I can give you a leveling guide in 1,500 words or less. (Give or take 157 or so.)
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 and shadow priest transmogrification
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's takes a brief respite from writing articles about how he refuses to date Magic: The Gathering players -- long enough, at least to write this entertaining nonsense. Despite the fact that Firelands of patch 4.2 is the latest and greatest raid, if your guild is anything like mine, you've been seeing pleas in guild chat to run places like Black Temple, Sunwell, and Serpentshrine Cavern. The reason, of course, is simple: patch 4.3 and the soon-to-be-implemented transmogrification feature. We've been talking shadow priest raid strategy this past month, and we'll finish that series up soon. For this week, though, follow me to the fitting rooms -- we're about to talk shadow priest fashion.
Spiritual Guidance: The shadow priest's guide to Majordomo Staghelm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's requires you all to kneel to the (his?) flame. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. Shannox: dead. Beth'tilac: dead. Rhyolith: dead. Alysrazor: dead. Baleroc: dead. We're on a roll deep, deep in the Firelands. Majordomo Staghelm is next -- the last obstacle between us and defeating Ragnaros once and for all. The Staghelm fight can be difficult to learn, if only because there are so many different phases that occur at seemingly random intervals. But they're not random, of course -- there's method to this madness. And once you learn how to beat Staghelm ... well, there's some very valuable treasure to be had.
Spiritual Guidance: Besting Baleroc (and other shadow priest alliteration)
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's soaks all Baleroc's Torment, while inflicting Torment of his own onto the heads of certain boomkin bloggers. If you ask me, variety is what makes a good raid. You have different, unique bosses, with different, unique mechanics. Some have adds; some don't. Some send you soaring through the skies. Some have weird vehicle mechanics. And some encounters, bless their hearts, are Patchwerk-style simple. That's sort of the niche Baleroc the Gatekeeper fills. There are some mechanics you need to know, of course -- it's not a mindless stand-and-DPS fight. There is one phase and there is one key DPS mechanic. And as far as that mechanic goes, we shadow priests are stars of the show.
Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest's guide to Alysrazor
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's steals all your feathers to become a soaring blur of purple. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. Last week, I talked about the gimmickry involved in the Lord Rhyolith fight. It's interesting and unique, but for us shadow priests, largely irrelevant. If only there were a fight with a super-cool gimmick that puts shadow priests on center stage and ... ... oh, wait, there totally is a fight like that: Alysrazor! The fight against Alysrazor is absolutely hectic, but in a fun way. Shadow priests get a stacking haste buff that will have you frantically mashing keys to maximize your DPS. We get a crit buff that guarantees near 100% Shadowfiend uptime. And, oh yeah -- we friggin' fly through the air. That's right, Alysrazor is all about the z-axis. It's time to go grab your Super Nintendo out of the attic, shadow priests, because it's about to get all Pilotwings up in here.
Spiritual Guidance: The shadow priest's guide to Lord Rhyolith
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's massive legs obscure your entire field of vision. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. We beat Shannox. We took down Beth'tilac. Look out, Lord Rhyolith -- you're next. For shadow priests, Firelands boss Lord Rhyolith isn't an especially fun fight. He's way too big, so if he gets anywhere near you, he'll take up your entire field of vision. He's heavily armored (at least at first), so you get to see some pretty sweet 500-damage Mind Flay ticks if you attack him directly. And while he's got an interesting gimmick, shadow priests typically don't play a part in exploiting it. Still, even if it's not the most exciting fight, there's still plenty for us to do, plenty of stuff to avoid getting hit by, and (best of all) plenty of epics to find inside once you crack him open like an egg.
Spiritual Guidance: Beth'tilac and proper shadow priest AOE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes out to trap and inject his prey with sweet, warm, shadowy poison. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. When I was just a little Fox kit, my parents bought me a pretty bitchin' Fisher-Price castle playset at a garage sale. It had a little drawbridge, a prison, and even a trap door. It also had a dungeon to put a dragon in. It was the most awesome thing ever. I used to play with it all the time down in our basement. One day, I had just reached my hand into the castle to grab one of the misshapen figurines when I felt a weird, hair-raising tingle. My hand had just collided with a spider web teeming with newly hatched spiderlings. I freaked the hell out and spent the next 10 minutes scrubbing my hand with soap. Twenty years later, it's time for revenge. The second boss of the Firelands raid, Beth'tilac, is an ugly spider that spawns massive amounts of Spiderlings. This time, though, I've got a solid AOE strategy. I'm ready for them -- and you can be, too.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest's guide to Shannox
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains down sweaty, sticky, uncomfortably warm destruction on all who oppose him (especially Tyler Caraway). Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. It's pretty miserable here in Boston today. I'm sweating, and not in the sexy, glistening skin way -- in the wring out a T-shirt way. It's, like, 90-something, which to a New Englander is damn hot. And to all you people who live in Las Vegas (Oh ho ho, it's 129 here today, you wimp!), shut up -- you chose to live in a place that's awful year round, not me. Anyway, this uncomfortable sweatiness has me starved for revenge. Beings of fire, you shall face my wrath! Over the next few uncomfortable, sweat-stained months of summer, we'll be taking on the bosses of the Firelands right here in Spiritual Guidance in seek of precious relief (and purples). This week: vile hunter Shannox and his adorable flaming skeleton pets.
Spiritual Guidance: What's the best race for a Horde shadow priest?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains down sheer purple destruction on all who oppose him (but he does so with love!). Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. A few weeks ago, I ran an article called "What Alliance race is best for shadow priests?" And man, did I get my ass flamed for doing it. A whole bunch of you complained that I was too hard on Team Blue, that a Horde sympathizer such as myself had no business writing such a thing. Just a small sampling of the fun comments: Wow arent you a tool. Why not throw in some Justine Bieber, George Bush, McDonalds, and whatever else is popular to hate bashing in there to get the fanboy juices really flowing? To answer the question, yes, I am a tool. That still doesn't change the fact that gnomes are the worst thing to happen since that time I saw Justine (sic) Bieber and George Bush eating at a McDonald's. With Gary Coleman? In a Suburu? Remember that, Lois? Anyway, follow me after the break. There aren't any Family Guy cutaways, I promise. We do kill off and eat a weatherman, though. So there's that.
Spiritual Guidance: Gearing up a shadow priest in Patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on all who oppose him (and even those who don't, provided they drop shiny purple epics on the way down). To some, patch 4.2 represented a great new opportunity to explore new content, including an "interesting" new quest chain involving "World-Shaman" Thrall and a new daily questing hub/zone, the Molten Front. To others, it was a chance to make money hand over fist on the auction house. To us shadow priests hoping to be the best we can be in the new Firelands raid, however, patch 4.2 means grinding. Hyjal dailies. Firelands trash. ZA/ZG runs. Sweet, familiar, awful grinding. For the most intrepid of grinders, your pain-inducing effort has finally borne fruit -- some of us already have the valor points saved up to buy an item at our faction's vendor in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. But what exactly should we be buying? Is the Molten Front grind worth it? And where exactly do you find the best pieces of equipment for your patch 4.2 shadow priest?
Spiritual Guidance: The basics of shadow priest PVP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen regularly insults normal people, so you should never take his writing seriously. Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. I've been writing the shadow version of Spiritual Guidance for over a year and a half now. In actuality, it seems like forever -- like I've covered every topic multiple times. And yet, in all those columns, there's one topic I've never really taken the time to address: shadow priest PVP. There's a reason, of course. PVP in and of itself is a damn complex subject. With a PVE encounter, there's some randomness, but it's all contained within a predetermined set of variables that you can research on a resource such as Wowhead. You may not know when Onyxia is gonna use her Deep Breath ability, but you know it's coming. PVP is different. You don't know what your opponent is thinking (if he's even thinking at all). Some battleground teams head into battle looking for a street fight, hoping to win with raw brutality and no real strategy. Other teams choreograph their movements and communicate through Ventrillo or Mumble, approaching each battle like amateur Douglas MacArthurs. There's no algorithm that tells you how your opponents will act and react to what you do. I'm far from a PVP expert myself, so I can really only offer you some of the PVP basics to get you started. If you're looking for top-level strategy, check out Blood Sport. If you're looking to get your feet wet and start exploring the other side of the World of Warcraft game ... read on.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.2 shadow priest trinkets
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on the growing list of WoW Insider columnists who oppose him (and sometimes, even on those who don't). I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gearing in Cataclysm is boring. It's not that there aren't best-in-slot pieces -- there absolutely are -- it's just that reforging makes getting those best-in-slot pieces a lot less important. After all, if you need more haste or more hit, you can always reforge other stats until you have as much as you want. Simple. There's one slot that's absolutely compelling, though, and that's the trinket slot. Trinket bonuses are so specific that it's often impossible to tell what's an upgrade and what isn't without a calculator or spreadsheet. And while those new i378 boots are almost guaranteed to be better than that i359 pair you currently have equipped, the same can't be said for the new trinkets. So, which of the new patch 4.2 trinkets make the cut ... if any? Is the Darkmoon Card: Volcano still king? And further, what the heck are our new stat weightings in patch 4.2 going to be so we can figure these answers out?
Spiritual Guidance: 8 reasons why your shadow priest DPS sucks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on all who oppose him (such as those who dress cats in outfits). It's pretty much a known fact that we shadow priests are looked up to the world over. (Especially by Tyler Caraway, but that's mostly just because he's very short.) The reasons behind the admiration are many, but one seems to be more compelling than the rest: Shadow priests are capable of doing stunningly awesome DPS. Big numbers are sexy. There's no denying it. The unfortunate reality, however, is that not every shadow priest gets to realize their true potential. Tiny problems and mistakes hold them back. And though some of these problems are easily fixed, the fact that they're damn near impossible to guess at and diagnose on your own leaves a lot of shadow priests frustrated. Without a doubt, there are an awful lot of potential pitfalls out there. If you follow me after the break, we'll talk about eight of the most common ones. More importantly, though, we'll suggest ways to overcome them and get your priest back on the path to greatness.
Spiritual Guidance: On the subject of Shadow Word: Death
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen provides stellar, thoughtful advice ... when not sabotaged by Tyler Caraway. Over the past few weeks here at Spiritual Guidance, we've been talking a bit about the simple mechanics of shadow priests, ultimately exposing them as anything but simple. In April, I put the inner workings of shadow priest mastery on display, spending over a thousand words to explain a concept that some other specs can wrap up in a few sentences. Last week, we talked about shadow priest spell haste and DOT mechanics, something so complex that even I messed up a bit when explaining. Today, we're giving Shadow Word: Death the same treatment. No other single spell generates so many questions in the shadow priest community, because no other single spell has so many complicating modifiers. You can improve it through three different talents and two different glyphs. The spell's effect changes depending on whether the target's health is above or below 25%. And, if that wasn't enough, the effect also changes depending on whether the target dies as a result of your SW:D cast. Oh, and unlike all your other spells, Shadow Word: Death can kill you. That seems important to work in there somehow.