Javaed posted on August 02, 2009
So far the 3.2 patch hasn't had very many changes to Priests. The Shadow tree has gotten some minor tweaks, but they're almost entirely PVP related. There are, however, two very significant PVE changes that you have to dig deep into the patch notes to find.
1) Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3-second Interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.
So, this is a fairly significant change, especially if you've been raiding as a Shadow Priest for any significant period of time. One of the things that's always bothered me, even back in Kara, was the fact that almost all NPCs in raiding environments were immune to this spell. After 3.2 this problem with be fixed, so overall this is a nice little buff to the raid utility we can offer a raid.
2) Glyph of Shadow: This glyph can now be triggered by critical strikes from periodic damage.
Now this is actually a pretty huge buff. According to the description on Glyph of Shadow, it converts 10% of our Spirit to Spell Power when one of our spells crit. The problem is, up until 3.2, the buff from the glyph was not activated by periodic effects (aka DoTs). Since the glyph buff has a relatively short duration, this resulted in in most of us having only 70% - 80% uptime of the glyph.
Now, there's been a lot of specualation over whether the current (patch 3.1.3) behavior is intended or not, but almost all Shadow Priests have agreed that the glyph should proc from DoT crits. Well, it looks like Blizz has agreed, which means we'll be walking into the patch with a little extra spell power on longer fights, which means a little extra DPS.