Firstly lets take a look at the specialisation spells: Penance, Holy word: Chastise and Mind Flay. Got to say these are all pretty good choices, especially the holy and discipline choices, they give options to do damage at a low level and are going to become signature abilities for both of the healing specs, the perfect signature move for a healing class.
However Mind flay I am very much torn on.. like, sure it is the primary nuke of the shadow tree but it doesn't fit in with the structure of the shadow tree, I mean my experience at a low level really signifies how bad mind flay is, lets ask what mind flay means in terms of levelling:
1) 100% uptime needed on Power Word: Shield, I mean if you get 1 hit you lose a tick of mind flay, and that is huge whilst levelling and so you end up needing to keep up power word: shield up 100% of the time, whilst you could argue it isn't necessary I feel like it is rather mandatory whilst levelling.
2) Anything up until level 80 at the moment is like low health quick kill, meaning (according to your model) that the ideal rotation would be a combination of mind blast/mind spike.. a spell ironically unlocked at level 81 when dots become so much more useful because of the high hp in the new cataclysm areas :S. Mind flay should be used in combination with dots but dots aren't worth it until you get a spell that is useful later.
3) It doesn't teach you anything to do with say rotations at an early level you just learn that Mind Blast>Mind Flay and shadow word pain isn't worth casting... not exactly great in my opinion.
Now I feel the problem with mind flay, is that although it is useful whilst soloing, a 50% slow on melee mobs whilst closing for example, it makes your levelling spec very immobile, I mean when I levelled my shadow priest on live I actually levelled as a disc/holy hybrid for dpsing because it was more mana efficient and actually did more damage than being shadow until you got access to shadowform, and still only mana efficient once you gained access to dispersion. When you are levelling going a healing spec should mean you can do dungeons and can solo fine, but soloing as the dps spec is better.. this is just not the case on live nor on the beta.
Firstly, mana is absolutely attrocious on the beta for a priest, as a druid I never had to drink at all when going balance, even whilst wearing entirely feral gear but as a priest I am oom after killing about 5 mobs in a row with a 1000 mana base pool. I realise numbers are very much placeholder and such, but this problem exists on live aswell and I hope this is rectified in the beta.
I am also going to mention the fact that Blizzard has said in the past and currently that it is a failure on their part if you don't want to take the talent at the bottom of the tree, across the 3 trees we have Barrier, Guardian Spirit and Dispersion. I don't know how I feel about a situational talent being the bottom point of the tree. It has been bought up before about how dispersion wasn't a good "51 pt talent", however I actually think it was a good 51 pt talent, you took it because there wasn't anything better to take and having a situational survival talent is something shadow desperately needed.
However, it does not fit with the 31 point model, why is this? 31 point talent points are staple cooldowns of a spec seemingly, or a staple ability of the spec, dispersion doesn't fill this role imo, where you want people to have around 30 mandatory throughput points with around 11 choice talents, 5 in the off and 6 in the main trees, dispersion falls in the category of utility, I feel limited because I am locked into my shadow tree, and when I get onto it later the tree is actually well designed, but then I look in the first 2 tiers of discipline and I'm pissed I can't take all the dps talents there because I am "forced" to take dispersion. If the talent trees were applied without the lock in shadow I feel like people would be speccing 11/0/30 and not 5+x/5-x/31 or whatever the 5 should be that are definitive points. Now, don't get me wrong dispersion is not a bad talent nor would I want it to go away, but it does not fit in the current place of the tree.
Concluding these points, what are the things I think of when I think shadowpriests: Dots and Shadow form, this is what should be the points, I would propose a radical re-arrangement of the tree and specialisations, since I highly doubt mind spike would become a level 9 spell to learn, although this would be the absolute best resolution in terms of being able to redesign the trees. Maybe I'll digress a little but Mind spike needs to be available at low level imo, it could even be the shadow specialised skill, does it really do anything for holy/disc anyway? Since all the dps talents in those trees effect smite/holy fire/penance/chastise/mind flay.
I just want to make a disclaimer that I wouldn't expect all of these changes to happen but some would definitely be appreciated.
The first major thing I would propose that would alleviate lots of "pain" would be to switch mind flay and mind spike. I.E make Mind flay available to all priests at level 81 and have mind spike become the specialisation of Shadow, whilst perhaps it isn't something you would be definitively using in your rotations on patchwerk you are probably going to be using it a lot on a majority of fights, I can probably definitively say I could use it on half the fights in ICC right now, perhaps even more than half. I don't think mind flay available to holy priests and disc priests would be a bad thing, sure it would have some pvp ramifications but mind flay is a channelled spell and so you can't heal and apply a slow, I feel you could add this to the holy/disc toolkits and it would get some use, perhaps when going for a kill to stop a getaway, but thats similar to priests using holy fire/smites now so I don't think it would add much to the pvp matchup.
The second major thing would be to *either* make shadowfiend available early, around level 12,14,16, 18 or 20, or make dispersion the specialised spell of shadow. I don't like the second point really because a) it doesn't do damage and means you still have to use smite/holy fire until mind flay, which would probably end up being a level 29 talent. It has to be specialised because it can't be made available to discipline/holy priests as a sub-spec option in my opinion for the pvp ramifications and pve mana regen mechanic. Making Shadowfiend early is probably what should happen, like I have said previously shadow priest mana regen at a low level is attrocious, obviously mana regen of a shadow priest is based upon shadowfiend at a high level, which is a 3 minute cooldown, this means that unfortunately priests eat mana like crazy at a low level because of an ability they don't have. Also, the fact that tier 1 has a talent that primarily is for reducing the cd on shadowfiend, whilst this makes sense for subspec options it is silly that early shadowpriests have a talent that you would never consider taking until level 64 (or whatever ridiculous level shadowfiend is learnt, maybe 66 D:)
The last thing I suggest is switching Dispersion with either Vampiric Touch or Shadowform, my personal preference is Shadowform. Although it is a large dps increase that levelling shadowpriests would go without, it's lost alot of its YOU NEED THIS EARLY, all it is now is a model change a 15% dps increase and a raid buff. Whereas before it also provided crit/haste application to dots, pushback resistance and stuff that is just useful for levelling. Now it is just a damage increase which isn't necessary for getting early, just in defining you are a shadowpriest.
Originally I thought that shadowform would end up being the specialised skill, but obviously that makes no sense because what is shadowform without dots and damage skills at a low level, you wouldn't be able to utilise it without at least mind flay. So since it IS the single defining talent of shadow I really think it deserves to be the 31 point talent, it fits all the bubbles and nobody would ever consider not taking it, in a similar vein to tree of life or metamorphosis, apart from permanent.
The problem shadowform has is that you gain nothing from it specially whilst levelling and you need it for raiding and stuff, so its position in the tree is relatively inconsequential towards levelling, so it just makes sense to make it the 31-point talent. You could make Vampiric Touch the defining ability aswell, but it really doesn't have the same signature as Shadowform, and stuff like sin and punishment would be forced earlier in the tree and be pointless to take before getting the spell.
Optimally I would like a combination of all these points implemented with mind spike the specialised skill, shadowfiend at level 12, mind flay at level 81, Dispersion as tier 3 talent and Shadowform as the 31 point talent. This doesn't really change the "feel" of the level 85 shadowpriest, but it makes the levelling experience much nicer, perhaps you would end up getting "too much too soon" but I feel like with numbers tuned for the 85 player these changes are necessary for mana to not be an issue for the lower level player.
If we move on to the actual feel of the shadow tree, the tree itself is pretty much perfect, the changes I have stated above make no difference to this, you have the perfect choice between utility and damage within this tree. The problem I have with Shadowpriest talent trees are the subspec options, firstly I have no choice but to subspec in discipline, there is nothing in holy that is worth devoting points to other than a self heal you can't use in shadowform. Whereas the discipline spec has a very packed top 2 tiers, I have say a choice between improved power word: shield and Mental Agility, thats an ok choice, but then I am choosing between dps and dps, in the second tier.. Improved Inner fire needs to go really, in every spec It competes with other talents far too much for an upgrade that increases spellpower, it just needs to be baked into the ability and axed imo because it's just a talent that feels mandatory and its just not fun choosing between dps and dps, because one will always win out, especially in terms of inner fire because evangelism and archangel is always going to be better than 15% of the spellpower upgrade.
I also feel the Improved Inner fire pidgeon-holes shadow into a discipline subspec along with evangelism+arcangel, I feel like evangelism and arcangel should be t1.
Looking at the other talent tree specs, I again see similar problems with the sub-speccing, considering that Inspiration is arguably very much wanted by discipline priests who want to tank heal, you are forced into dual speccing 2 discipline specs for group and aoe healing based on your points you take in the holy-subspec, which I feel isn't good. I like the fact that Blizzard wants all healers to be able to aoe heal and tank heal equally but making 2 nearly identical specs that differ by points for said role is wrong, they should be able to do both equally in the same spec and not be locked out, otherwise there will always be a "better" spec, and priests will be told to go disc/holy for tank healing and disc/holy for aoe healing depends which ends up the best.
The only way I can see this situation not happening is the flavours being so different that it's hard to define "best" in a scenario and just differentiate by how the spec feels, but again I feel that has to be achieved by 1 talent spec having the 30 mandatory points provide all the aoe healing/tank healing talents and the other mana regen talents, with the rest being utility talents stuff like the smite buffs and such.
Ye, you can probably tell I play mostly a shadowpriest based on the comments here but I feel like the trees at level 85 beyond subspecs are all great so far, they just need re-arranging for subspec possibilities and for ease of levelling purposes.
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