Nerd Culture Podcast

Conviction’s original purpose was to create a cycle of healing, dealing, and preventing damage. This cycle continues and flourishes in 5.2, so long as the Priest has a good amount of Spirit, Mastery, and Crit %.

Click here to see the spec on WoWHead

Thankfully, with the new talents there have been some new great additions to this spec. For example, Void Tendrils can remove some melee enemies from you for a few precious seconds, and while using the Holy Fire/Smite combo with Glyph of Smite (which increases Smite damage during the Holy Fire DoT effect), the Void Tendrils are healed from damage dealt due to Atonement! Also, Divine Star is a great way to deal and heal damage, as whenever it critically heals, it creates an absorption shield on those that were in its path. Also, Penance has a new added effect of giving you a cast of your Shield even if you are under the effect of Weakened Soul, along with Smite casts having a 15% chance for a free and instant Flash Heal.

Also, Atonement will still be your best friend, healing or possibly even giving you a damage prevention shield while you deal damage to your enemies. Train of Thought will also help you to throw more damage around, using Smite to reduce the cool down of Penance.

AoE can have some tense moments with this spec, but there are several spells that will help in such situations. Void Tendrils will help to keep their distance from you, and Psychic Scream will help as well once they break the roots (if they even get that chance due to the healing from Atonement). Power Word: Shield should be kept up as much as possible to help keep you healthy. If things start to get really hairy, then Pain Suppression will alleviate a good amount of the damage. Plus, as stated above, Smite will be allowing the use of free and instant Flash Heals, which also brings up Divine Aegis which creates a free shield when there is a critical hit. And Angelic Bulwark gives a player an absorption shield if they are reduced below 30% of their life for those just in case emergencies.

As for the Major Glyphs of Power Word: Shield and Reflective Shield, these help the cycle of healing, damage and prevention as well. Power Word: Shield converts 20% of the shield into a heal, so as to make sure that your health is further kept up, but be sure if possible to make use of that heal or its wasted (unless its a critical heal that procs Divine Aegis). Reflective Shield forces those that would do you harm to feel some of their own damage. All in all, this spec is very similar to where it was, but I feel it has more utility due to the addition of Void Tendrils and Divine Star, which have helped my Priest in numerous occasions and made this a very powerful spec.

Welcome to my latest WoW Yoda spec – Withering Touch.

I usually don’t like Shadow Priests much, so I had to do quite a lot of testing and research before I got a spec I was proud to include as a WoW Yoda spec. After all, I have to protect my reputation!

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bcGZZGbGdMzrdbfo:RMkbzMVz0

I know that the first thing that will come to most people’s minds are some of the talents that grant spells – those of course being Silence, Archangel and Psychic Horror. My reasons for this are due to the fact that generally a 45 second cool down for only a 3-5 second effect on a target isn’t that good, especially since priests don’t get an interrupt, so you may as well just forego it. Archangel, which you would be using for its Dark Purpose, increases damage of your non damage over time abilities, which aren’t generally used except on trash so it’s only real purpose is just a 90 second delay on just a 5% increase to your mana and a little extra damage to maybe 2 Mind Blast castings. As for Psychic Horror, yes 10 seconds without a weapon is very bad for the melee target, and 3 seconds trembling in fear is also bad, however a 2 min cooldown ruins any benefits it may have. I would much rather prefer to save the points for something a little more useful.

So, now that I have that out of the way, here is the reasoning for what I have chosen for Withering Touch! Darkness is a prerequisite to increase the amount of damage your DoT spells will do and to decrease cast time of your Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, and Mind Flay.  With this spec, your main goal is to gather at least one Shadow Orb through Shadow Word: Pain or Mind Flay, then cast your Mind Blast to gain your 10% DoT buff. The best part about that is that you don’t need all 3 Shadow Orbs to gain the full 10% and having more than 1 Orb doesn’t increase the DoT buff increase, so only 1 orb is needed and the rest is just gravy.  So you will want to keep as many enemies as possible to have your DoTs on them.

That being said this will require a lot of mana, which I have already thought of. Masochism, Vampiric Touch, Dispersion, Mental Agility, Veiled Shadows and Glyph of Spirit Tap will all assist in either reducing your mana cost or increasing your mana production. There are also plenty of damage increasing talents to help with efficiency, which I won’t name here since there are so many.

As for the rotation, on a single target – Vampiric Touch will be your opener, followed by your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death, followed by Mind Flay, then continue with Mind Flay and Mind Blast until your DoTs run out, in which you will want to recast them. For multi targets it is slightly different – You will want to choose a target to be your “main” target. This will be the one that will have your Vampiric Touch and  Mind Blasts will be cast on. All enemies should have Shadow Word: Pain and you hit them with a Mind Sear. And remember to move around whenever you are casting any of your instant spells, this way you have a chance to proc your Shadowy Apparitions.

All in all, this spec will take down your enemy in writhing pain and agony in no time at all!