Javaed posted on October 14, 2009
We've got some pretty huge changes in the latest PTR Build, with even more having been data mined. It looks like Blizzard has opted to give all of our DoTs haste scaling, and they're making some PVP tweaks to us as well. Things are looking up, but be mindful of the fact that the PTR is for testing purposes. It's not unknown for a PTR "buff" to be significantly weaker when it goes live, or not to go live at all. With that said, here's what we're looking at right now:
1) Shadow Form has been updated, in addition to everything else, the talent now lets Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague benefit from haste. This is perfect.
2) Glyph of Shadow has been buffed. It now gives us a Spell Power bonus equal to 30% of our total Spirit (up from 10%) when it procs. Combined with the recently buffed Twisted Faith, 50% of our Spirit becomes Spell Power.
3) Glyph of Mind Flay is not being removed. Instead, it now has the effects of Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain (Mind Flay damage is increased by 10% on targets afflicted with SW:P).
4) Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain is now a PVP / mana regen glyph. Every time SW:P ticks, we regain 1% of our base mana, that's 38.63 mana back on every tick. Not terrible at all.
5) The benefits of Improved Devouring Plague have increased. The initial proc damage has been doubled, a really nice boost to the spell.
6) Shadow Form costs significantly less mana. It's going from 32% of base mana, to 13% of base mana. At level 80 that means it's going from a cost of 1236 to 502 mana. A huge buff for PVP, as we can now toss out that occasional heal without being OOM after just a couple healing spells.
7) Vampiric Embrace is no longer a debuff. It is now a self buff, that lasts 30 minutes and cannot be dispelled. Basically, we have non-stop VE applied to all of our spells.
See that huge list of buffs? We're getting stronger overall DPS. Our spells are a bit more bursty now, so long as we have adequate levels of Haste. And we have some significant buffs to our mana efficiency. It's a very exciting patch for us.