Deathlace

The DB from vanillagaming is also SORT OF incorrect since it is based on stock mangos(?) and it actually does have Arcane Missiles occupying a debuff slot. However if you ever look at videos from Vanilla WoW, you will see multiple mages using AM on a boss with 8 debuffs already on it. Furthermore, you will notice no debuff icon on a target that you apply Arcane Missiles to. On the flip side, I believe Starshards does have a debuff icon? It's possible it never took a debuff slot in original vanilla. Honestly, I don't know if it did. I didn't play a Priest back then. But you'd find it next to impossible to find proof to support that claim. It was easy to find Mages using Arcane Missiles in a raid setting. Finding Starshards being used in a raid setting, however....

The reason Arcane Missiles can crit is because it is not technically a DoT. In fact, it does not take a debuff slot so it is simply considered x separate spells that hit the target while you remain channeling. Starshards and Mind Flay, on the other hand, take up a debuff slot. Therefore, they are considered DoTs and cannot crit.

This is 100% incorrect. The Alterac Valley patch added a lot of MC gear. Some examples include Staff of Domination, Ring of Spellpower, Robe of Volatile Power, etc. In fact, most top-tier items that you think about from MC do not drop till 1.5. @Caph http://rexas.tv/nostItems/ I wish I could show you a list, but the best I've got is this. If you look for a piece of gear and it doesn't have the Azuregos/Kazzak/DM tag on it, then it didn't drop till the gear update that comes with the Alterac Valley patch. As far as I know, all MC gear besides Bindings of the Windseeker will start dropping after patch 1.5.

Thanks, that was my question. Never mind, then!

@Roxanne Flowers Thank you for that link. That seems to indicate to me that it is very worth using a single gear slot somewhere with spell penetration to bypass that remaining 15 Holy resistance, just to avoid the potential for partial resists altogether.

I'm going to move the discussion away from this pointless argument. I have a mechanics question which, if someone could answer, would be great! So my understanding is that there is no Holy Resistance on any mob other than level-based resistances. So this implies that raid bosses should have 15 level-based resistance (since it's 5 per level above you). Does Spell Penetration from gear work to bypass that 15 resistance?

Definitely post an update later on. Next time I level a priest I'd like to try. My current priest is already too far into 60 on the new server, but I'll always level another!

We need more posts like this. Enjoyed reading it!

@Ram @Theloras @tippsarve You might find this useful. I made this for myself for the new server. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GThZJM5Vf7utUTQyS7lVDmEcASQFEDNb7nGax4FZ3Ms/edit#gid=600475609 For anybody who says you cannot play alternative and hybrids builds in vanilla, my only question to you is how difficult do you find vanilla? Vanilla raids are easy as hell and you sure as hell don't need to mix-max to the nth degree to clear anything. Perhaps if your guild is struggling with raids such as Molten Core, you have other problems to fix first rather than looking to alternate specs. For those of us who can clear MC with our eyes closed, there are many fun specs for you to try. I hope you find the spreadsheet I made for myself useful and interesting. But this thread reminded me once again to avoid posting on forums.

I'm playing it this time around, so maybe in the future!

Nobody is (or should) be denying that Shadow Priest talents are overpowered as hell. 10% hit is absolutely insane. The only thing I'm bringing up is scaling. I played a Shadow Priest through all of Nost. They simply do not scale off any useful stat. Hit? Don't need it beyond 6%. Crit? Useless except for Mind Blast. Spellpower? It's their only scaling stat and all their spells have horrible co-efficients. Mind Blast scales at 42.8% of your spell power and Mind Flay is 45.7% of your spellpower. Yes, SW:P is decent there, but it's over 24 seconds, which translates to not very good values in terms of spellpower/second. That's really bad for your only scaling stat. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uYtIy7-hyCcvBQ30MiWUW9O4W9T7i54bVdYdIDThFvI/edit#gid=600475609 On the flip side, you bring up the 1.5 crit multiplier, but at least Smite HAS a crit multiplier. Shadow Priests only have one on Mind Blast. As you approach higher gear scaling, Smite will overtake Shadow damage if you completely ignore the raid DPS Shadow Weaving brings simply because of scalability. Consider Smite's scaling. It scales off crit (albeit worse than Mages/Warlocks), scales at 71.4% of spellpower. This is already way better than all your Shadow spells. If you now add world buffs onto the equation, Smite will far outstrip Shadow because all that spell crit you get from World Buffs is useless for Shadow (Dire Maul, Songflower, Onyxia, etc). Once again, Smite is very much inferior in a raid setting because they bring no useful buffs. If you are going for an optimal raid group, you need a Shadow Priest.

Posters like cryofsorrow who put their fingers in their ears and refuse to engage in meaningful discussion simply reminds me why I don't bother posting on this forum. You can see the math, and presumably understand it. Obviously the reason you won't see raid logs is because there's no reason to take a Smite priest to a raid over a Mage. Does that mean the DPS isn't relatively high? No. DPS is all about math. Screaming "SHOW ME MUH LOGS" is idiotic. Nobody is arguing that taking a Smite priest to a raid is "optimal" but denying basic math is a whole other thing.

I think you misunderstand. I do know how things are "supposed" to work. I believe the OP wants to know if it is working correctly on Elysium, not clarification on the intended mechanic?

Not that this may be of much help, but I'll confirm it 100% for Nost 1.0, for what it's worth. Of course, I haven't done testing here to know if it is still on a two-roll system here though.

Hi there! I'm having a little bit of a hard time figuring out what stats are going to appear on gear on the fresh server. I've been using the wayback machine so far, but I was wondering if there was a better way to browse through different gear and see what stats they're going to have. Thanks!

Yep. @ShrideviI'm aware of vanillagaming but that really isn't accurate when it comes to the fresh server.

Apologize for bringing up an old post (and this is very much nit-picking since I don't believe Blue Dragon is amazing), but a tick is every 2 seconds, isn't it? If that's the case, with your numbers of ~74 normal regen for 15 seconds, you should be getting ~555 mana for the duration (74 x 7.5), not 370? Obviously it'll be a bit less since you can't tick in fractions of seconds, so if we assume 7 ticks in 15 seconds, that will result in ~518 mana. Thus, if Blue Dragon procs twice, it's already better than Shard of the Scale since that will result in ~1036 mana. If it procs 3 times, it's miles ahead of Shard of the Scale. Of course, arguably Blue Dragon is still worse due to the RNG element attached to it. Did I miss something or were your numbers off? The reason this stood out for me was because I remember doing the math on Blue Dragon and comparing it to Shard of the Scale. On paper Blue Dragon appeared to be better, but in practice I wasn't fond of relying on the proc.

You're going to have to work off a Mage/Warlock pre-raid BiS list. There isn't going to be anything for the less popular specs. Since I assume your intention is to raid as Elemental, you're going to have to put in the extra work and research up a list yourself. I'll link the pre-raid BiS list below which includes Mage/Warlock, and you'll have to make your own from there. A small tip, you might want to consider using a 4-piece dungeon set. You'll have a few pieces of gear without spellpower anyway, and getting a 4-piece Dungeon set would be pretty good there. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j81TgG0p_HrYKajiUiQfYIoSUx1culzy2u_Fc4wtiS8/edit#gid=329725463

Thanks for the clarification! I definitely agree with using a 4-piece Dreadmist then.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050609085701/http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/itemset.html?setid=183 Is the above not going to be the stats for Dreadmist? In the above link it doesn't have the spellpower boost in it's 4-piece.

Items with stuff like "of fiery wrath", "of frozen wrath" etc, would you be able to tell me which patch they went in? I'm curious when they become available on the fresh server. Second question, does "of Holy Wrath" exist? I never saw this on the Nostalrius PvP realm, but some sources on the web say it does exist while others seem to leave it out. Would you know?

This is what I intend to do. :-) To be fair, Smite scales well with spellpower and a good coefficient, but it lacks a 100% crit damage talent most DPS classes have. Also you will have the issue of going OOM in longer fights and no good way to keep up.

It was just semi-nitpicking to say that fear ward is very good but not necessary to beat fights. That being said, if you're playing shadow and you are assigned to fear ward, lose your DPS and keep it up.

Well, to be fair, no fight needs fear ward to beat the encounter. Horde does fine without it.

This is what my raid group ran before Nost shut down. It works fine. The other option is to skip PI and get plenty of healing talents, except you get Shadow Weaving too (I think we found this was better actually, PI is good but not THAT good).