plonq | Geekery

One of the last upgrades I got with our previous guild was this nice little wand from Instructor Razuvious:

Wand of the Whispering Dead
Binds when picked up
Wand
119 - 222 Shadow Damage Speed 1.50
(113.7 damage per second)
+10 Intellect
+9 Spirit
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 60
Equip: Increases healing done by spells
and effects by up to 22.
Sells for 14gold 89silver 94copper to vendors
Item Level 83

The wand has become an integral part of my attack when I'm playing solo. The routine looks like this:

Holy Fire
Smite
Shield (on self)
Shadow Word Pain
Mindblast
Wand... Wand... Wand... (repeat until dead)

It's not the fastest way to take down an opponent, but it is very mana-efficient. I could usually burn through 20-30 crunchies before having to stop for mana regeneration. The wand usually hits for 130ish per shot, with crits sometimes taking it close to 300. All the time, though, I couldn't shake this nagging curiousity about what kind of damage I could be doing with the wand if I was specced for shadow. Curiosity got the best of me last night and I bucked up the 15g to re-spec. I went with a full Shadow DPS spec, and tossed in the boost to wands under the Discipline tree. Having thus rendered myself mostly useless for raiding, I caught a Windrider up to Easter Plague Lands and unleashed my new arsenal on the first hostile critter I encountered.

O.M.F.G.

It's been awhile since I played a shadow priest, but I still remembered the basic attack.
Curse of Weakness
Mindblast
Shadow Word Pain
Shield(on self)
Mindflay
Mindflay
Wand... Wand (crit for 590)
Critter: x.x

In my previous incarnation as a shadow priest I made the mistake of not taking Spirit Tap as a talent. This time I bought it up to 100% proc, and I wonder now how I got by without it. By the time I turned my attention to the next hapless critter in the area, my mana had already ticked back to nearly full. Just for giggles, I teamed up with

atara's warlock, and we went on a tour of destruction through Silithus. We were a two-person wrecking crew. My damage output is nowhere near what she's tossing out with her 'lock, but it's more than double what it was before I did the switch to shadow. It is going to be really tough to spec back to holy once I'm done playing with this one.