..and they’re a tad dissapointing, to say the least.
2 Piece Bonus
Increases the damage done by Devouring Plague by 15%.
4 Piece Bonus
Your Mind Blast spell increases your haste rating by 15 (0.46%).
There was a disclaimer at the begining of the post on MMO-Champion saying that some of the numbers may not have been correct, so I’m assuming the 4-piece bonus was one of them. Not even getting 1% haste from 4 pieces of T8? Something is wrong with that.
I’m not a huge fan of haste for Shadow Priests anyway. Lowering the global cooldown is barely noticeable due to everyone having different latency issues and the only 3 spells that will benefit from haste are Mind Flay, Mind Blast and Mind Sear. Mind Flay is used by us as a filler spell between DoT refreshes and Mind Blasts.. but taking Mind Flay from a 3 second spell to a 2.8 second spell still won’t let you clip another one (using it again before refreshing a DoT but stopping it before the full duration is over) without lowering your DPS since the first tick doesn’t hit for 1 second. You also have to actually USE Mind Blast to proc the set bonus but the spell has a cooldown so you don’t gain much benefit for that right away. Mind Sear is spammed on AoE trash but is it really going to be worth starting AoE trash pulls with Mind Blast for a mere 0.48% haste boost? Not IMO.
With Blizzard changing Shadowform to allow DoTs to crit, I would figure that they would change this to a crit bonus rather than haste. With the current nerfs to Winters Chill and Improved Scorch, we’re already losing 5% damage to our DoTs so a crit bonus would be more welcomed by the Shadow Priest community.
The 2 piece set bonus isn’t entirely too bad but still pretty lackluster for a set bonus (considering that Warlocks get a 20% boost to 2 of their DoTs and we only get a 15% boost to one of ours). Devouring Plague is our weakest DoT as it is, so any boost is a good thing.. plus taking in to consideration the new Improved Devouring Plague talent and the new DK Glyph of Pestilence that refreshes “all” diseases on the target, overall I guess this is a pretty solid set bonus for only having 2 pieces.
I suppose the trade off for the Warlock set bonus is that it increases the damage of 2 DoTs that have cast times where Devouring Plague is an instant cast.. so I suppose thats fair =P.
Hopefully the 4 set is wrong. Srs.
I dunno if it’s like this on your server, but it is on mine!
*EDIT* Ghostcrawler clarified in a blue post earlier that the 4pc Shadow set bonus is around 240 haste but “Those may not be the specific numbers, but that’s the ballpark IIRC”.
Just a note on the Warlock 2 piece – as of 3.1 Immolate and Unstable Affliction are exclusive to each other. So while it is a 20% bonus to both spells, the Warlock won’t be able to use both spells at the same time.
Immolate is being cut from Afflictions rotations as it is, from what I hear, with the changes to Shadow Embrace, etc., so no harm no foul. The Immolate bonus is still pretty good for the other two trees though, IMO.
At first glance I was wondering why Warlocks got 20% while Shadow Priests only got 15% and to our worst DoT.. but after considering that Immolate and UA both have cast times, I’m totally fine with only having a 15% boost.
Thanks for the information, though.. I never read that Immolate and UA would be exclusive so it’s good to know.
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@ Facemelter – Just bookmarked you today oddly enough lol. Thanks for stopping by!