In the wake of sweeping alterations to shadow priests going live tonight, the inimitable Ghostcrawler has posted about a few more changes that will be making their way into the Wrath of the Lich King beta.

• Vampiric Embrace is getting nerfed to bits. Fully talented, it currently heals group (not raid) members for 25%. It's being changed to 5% to the group and 25% to the caster, again fully talented. A bit confused about this given GC's statement that "we don't want it to be terrible for priests in small groups" - 5% is pretty terrible.
• Vampiric Touch's coefficient is getting doubled, from 20% to 40%. Cool, though I don't expect this makes up a huge part of your damage at 80.
• Big DPS change: "Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch do an additional percentage damage equal to your critical strike chance." This is crittable DoTs, basically, with the randomness taken out. Instead of critting (say) 25% of the time for double damage, you just hit for 125% damage all the time. And of course our other damage spells (Mind Flay, Mind Blast, SW:D) can already crit normally.

I can't say I'm pleased by the massive VE nerf, but it's nice to see them picking up on promises of grade-A DPS for us now that we have less utility. Going from a state where two of our damage spells benefit from crit rating to a state where all of them do will be interesting.

Shadow has always been the "off-spec" for priests, from Classic, where it was questionable whether Shadow was viable for anything but leveling and PvP, to BC, where Shadow provides superb utility but limited DPS. Now I'm not saying Shadow will suddenly become the spec of choice for raiding priests, but the game is changing significantly in patch 3.0.2 and Wrath of the Lich King. Our coveted mana return is getting nerfed and spread around to Survival hunters and Retribution paladins, as well as us. But to compensate, our DPS is (supposedly) being brought up to par with the best of them.

A lot of this is coming in the form of a new and improved Mind Flay. Previously the "filler" spell that you cast during your rotation when you couldn't cast anything else, its spellpower coefficient is now being bumped up greatly, and perhaps more importantly, it can now crit! No longer must you shun crit rating to be a decent shadow priest.

Of course, there are also some dramatic talent tree changes - almost every talent is modified in some way. Let's start from the top and work our way down.

Welcome back to my guide on pre-Karazhan Shadow Priest gear. If you missed part one, where I talked about general stat importance, some sets, and the first half of the item slots, go read it now. Back? Good. On with the show. In this part I will be covering the remaining slots (from gloves on down), and talking about what gems to use (the red ones), as well as some places to look for more information.

Gloves

• Elementalist Gloves of Shadow Wrath. Yet another of Shadow Wrath green. Remember, I would advise against equipping too many of these, regardless of how good they are in-slot.
• Tempest's Touch (Caverns of Time quest).
• Gloves of the Deadwatcher (Shirrak, Heroic Auchenai Crypts )

Enchant

Major Spellpower is, quite expensive, but other BC enchants are not worth bothering with. I'd say put it on any of the above. The old-world enchant Shadow Power is equivalent for you, if that's more convenient.

Shadow priests, you are very desired in Karazhan. Between great DPS, mana returns for the group, and a Shackle, all KZ raids would probably benefit from having a face-melter along. This is a guide to gearing yourself up in order to get in those Karazhan raids and earn great epics, from Ritssyn's Lost Pendant to the Nathrezim Mindblade. Holy priests, this is not the post for you (unless you're trying to build a Shadow set as well) – look to the Holy Priest guide to gearing for Karazhan instead.

Due to the unique mechanics of Shadow Priest combat, there is one stat that rises above the rest for you: +damage (either shadow or all schools). More +damage means more DPS, of course, but it also means more mana back from Vampiric Touch; this will be your primary form of mana regeneration, and you should have VT up at all times. Spell hit is also very important. Assuming you have 5/5 Shadow Focus (which you should, unless you're already hit-capped), you need 76 spell hit to reach the cap on level 73 mobs (raid bosses are considered level 73). Additional spell hit is relatively useless, although that once you reach 101 hit, you can take a point out of Shadow Focus and move it elsewhere; it's probably not worth gearing for this specifically though.

Back in November of last year, I wrote a post for the Spiritual Guidance column called "The shadow diaries." In it, I pledged that I would recount my experiences of leveling a brand-new shadow priest. However, as you may have noticed (or not), that never happened. There's always too many things to do in this crazy virtual world of ours (not to mention that other, brighter world outside), so poor Hieronymus ended up getting neglected.

Why am I talking about a series of posts I didn't write? Well, I may not have had the fortitude to level another priest all the way to 70, on a strange server no less, but eventually two realizations came together. I already have a priest at level 70, and I'm doing a lot more soloing than grouping with her these days. I'd recently moved a few points in my long-held 23/38/0 spec over to the Holy damage talents, which sped up my dailies a bit. But then I thought, why not go all the way?