I've probably been getting on my guildmates' nerves about Shadow Word: Death, but I still have to sing its praises here on the forums.

Shadow Word: Death is so awesome, it's indescribable.

For those unaware, it's a new spell for Priests at level 63 that is an instant attack doing approximately 500 base shadow damage to a target. If it kills the target, no problem. If it doesn't kill the target, the damage you do to them with the spell also damages the caster (so both you and the target take equal damage).

With 5/5 Mental Agility, it costs 218 mana to cast, if I recall correctly. That's dirt cheap. I'm not even shadow spec'ed and I'm in love with this spell.

It's not the damage it does, which admittedly is quite nice (750-1200 in my current DPS gear), it's the fact that it adds a whole new dimension to the Priest. One thing we've *never* had is an instant attack spell - something that will immediately smack a mob. Sure, there's Holy Nova, but you have to have the talent and you have to be standing right next to a mob for that to work; that's not exactly something Priests want to do often for obvious survival reasons. For tagging reasons alone, Shadow Word: Death is incredible. So what if it also damages me for 800-1000 hit points? That's cake to heal back, and meanwhile I've got the tag, you Mage and Hunter mother****ers.

For all those times humanoids have run away from me and I lacked a real "punch" spell to knock them out NOW NOW NOW before they grab one of their friends; for all those PvP situations where it's coming right down to the end and I lacked a spell that could finish them before they'd finish me; for the sheer amusement of snapping my fingers and watching something die...

Now's my time.

This spell adds a whole new dimension to Priests that just wasn't there before. For the longest time, Blizzard said that giving Priests an instant attack would unbalance the classes (and they were right), but they found a way to do it and make it interesting - by punishing the Priest if it doesn't kill the target.

Long live Shadow Word: Death!

So, my question to you others out there: is there a new spell/talent available that you feel changes the role/power of your class as significantly (or more)?

-Bolty

At level 62 I got Victory Rush on my warrior, and have been very pleased and surprised how good it is. It is an instance cast, zero rage attack that does damage equal to 35% of your attack power (like a mini bloodthrist). It's limitation to make it not overpowered is you can only use it for 15 seconds (and has a 15 second cooldown) after you land a killing blow on a target that yields honor/exp.

Those 15 seconds go by very fast I found. It basically only gives you time to run right to the next mob. If you have to mount up, or gather anything there is almost no way to get to another mob. But it's reasonable for such an awsome ability .

Besides just making grinding faster it also helps with adds. If you get a add you know you are going to get an victory rush hit on the second one.

I don't know how Victory Rush would be with different builds, but it's synergy with a fury build is very nice. You already have high AP from imp BS, and imp berserker stance. And it's another attack to proc fury. When I first tested the skill I went to an orc camp in NW hellfire pen. and just rolled through the place. With a VR crit and/or a BT crit mobs are already half dead, and fury is rolling.

One bug I've noticed is if you do BT and VR back to back they both do the same damage. I don't know if this is a display error, or a bug that is actually making them do the same damage. Depending on which one you do first the second will do the same, so if you can BT first, VR says it does the same damage, which would be a boost in damage.

I also just dinged 64 and got spell reflect. It's going to be worthless for grinding, and probably hard to use in PvP. I'll have to try it for tanking and see if I find some good spots for it.

The biggest boost of the expansion for my Druid so far was at level 61 when I was able to pick up Omen of Clarity to go with Mangle. Certainly, it is not a new ability, but it is a combination of abilities that was unreachable until hitting level 61. The ability to have free mangles is a huge boon toward killing things (in cat) and tanking things (in bear). Another good addition that I am looking forward to is Lacerate. Currently, my druid has trouble burning through rage, at times, when fighting a single boss-type mob because swipe is a rather inefficient rage use against a single target. Lacerate will add another single target skill to the spellbook that will definitely help out on single target aggro. While neither of these seem really "game-changing" they are definitely a major boost in power for a feral druid.

As for my shadow priest, I can't wait to get shadow word: death.

Maim's been huge and greatly improved the soloability of cat against higher level mobs. I have an unfortunate habit of fighting mobs of level +2, +3 or more (don't judge me!). Before 2.0, Bear (with high armor, frenzied regen, and bash->heal) was necessary to slowly eek my way to victory. But cat is now a viable (and more exciting) option. Next up: A stunlock cycle using Pounce, Bash, and Maim.

Also huge is stacking Improved Leader of the Pack with Improved Vampiric Embrace. My guild, by chance, is similar to Brista's "HealerGuild," (Although we describe ourselves as a '5-man' guild). It's not uncommon for our sister guild (a 'raiding' guild) to be looking for even a single available healer while we run instances with two shadowpriests and two feral druids. With iLoTP and 2xIVE, none of us leave our respective DPS forms on trash. Vampiric touch keeps mana up for the shadowpriests and the druids pop out to top people off between pulls. Heck, we can run the Ramparts and not cast a single in-combat heal until Vazruden.

For Warlocks it's two spells

The first at 62 is Fel Armor which grants the Warlock up to +50 spell damage and also returns 20% more life on healing affects which is quite nice. If you have the talents for it in the Demonology tree, this becomes +65 and +26% respectively with 3 of 3 talent points. When grouping, this is immensly powerful.

The second at 64 is Incinerate, a spell that does damage very similarly to Shadowbolt while being a bit more mana efficient and get a boost in damage if there is a Immolation on the target. For grinding my tactics have changed to putting dots on the target and then spamming Incinerate till the mob dies and it does damage on par with shadowbolt, but more efficiently.

Yeah, VR is a nice skill for PvE solo grinding. It's decent in group grinding, but you have to get the KB (I think), so it synergizes quite well with execute (no-rage ability when I have no rage and after I've probably delivered the KB!). It also seems to proc off of some strange things, i.e. I was able to use it after killing totems from a boss in the Slave pens (I wasn't tanking, so I wasn't in defensive stance). I don't get many KBs in PvP, so it's probably worthless there.

Spell reflect is gimicky in PvE 5-mans. It's another tool, which I don't mind. Rage cost is still extremely prohibitive (even while tanking). Not sure about the aggro mechanics of it, which would be nice to know.

Still need help in PvP I find.

God yes for Fel Armor. I went from ~170 or so Drain life tics at 61 to ~270 or so with that armor up. Its been phenominal. As for Incinerate I still haven't played around with it much, though it does seem damn good on paper. Will have to check it out some

Not sure it counts as "new" (since this talent was introduced back in 2.0 patch), but Water Elemental has the similar impact on mages' abilities. Even if it's not a real tank, you still can use your new pet to hold one mob attention long enough to kill another one... not to mention it adds pretty solid DPS by itself. The only problem is buggy pet control bar (which usually does not appear when pet is summoned in combat), but for this the workaround exists.

For hunters, Silencing Shot (again, introduced in 2.0 patch) makes the big difference - I even dropped my initial plans to re-spec Beast Mastery for leveling, only because of this talent. Sure, hunter never was a bad puller, but casters always gave me some trouble. Not anymore .

P.S. This all is applicable to PvE, I don't PvP at all.

-Snezhinka, lvl 60 (still ) mage
-Yolks, lvl 60 (alas ) hunter

Also something that's not NEW-new, but new enough to mention here:

Shadowfury talent, with the recently decreased cooldown (20 sec!)
It's AOE stun + shadow damage that (unlike HF and RoF) - can crit.
I haven't played my lock after 60 yet, but with a good tank and enough +dmg gear I was sailing smooth through DM east and Strat killing stuff very fast.

It's hard to describe, but it really makes a huge difference on the mob packs. Try respeccing into Destruction (on PTR, for example), you'll feel how good it is.

It also seems to proc when you break a sheep... guess kinda useful in figuring out which warrior did it...

Endless Rage almost lets us reach adequate Rage generation while using a two-handed weapon.

Lifebloom brings a whole new dimension to Druid healing. I knew they were shifting the focus more to that of heals over time for the Druid, but only upon training this spell did I understand the degree. I've gone instances without using Healing Touch at all. The mechanics behind casting and maintaining a 3x stack of lifebloom on those who need it, choosing not to refresh it at times so the large heal hits at the end, and integrating Regrowth and Rejuv. just makes for a completely different slant on the healing role.

And hey, I'm Balance specced.

/trots up to the boss spawn point
/declines Bolty's group invite
/places a Fire Trap
/sets pet to stay
/sets pet to Aggressive
/tar Bolty
/waits for spawn to pop to /gloat

Hunters still win I'm afraid

Regarding changes the one I've noticed as a Druid is the number of items which have a reduce threat on use property. There's one from a quest in Hellfire Peninsula, one for Sporegar rep and another one at least. This essentially makes Fade available to non-priests which is a very significant healer ability

I believe it existed in the game before but wasn't anything like so easily obtainable. In TBC raids I think we'll see a lot of healers using these once people figure out that giving up a small amount of healing power substantially reduces your repair bill. Sometimes of course you'll just dump the aggro onto another healer but sometimes this ability will prevent a wipe

Wonderful to hear that Monkey

We're just in the process of setting up the guild this week. Rather than full-on Healer only we've decided to stick to a ratio of 60% heal-capable classes with a month on, month off system for healing duties

We also will be sticking to 5 mans at first as we want slow quality growth rather than a rush to get enough level 70s to do the 25 mans.

Don't underestimate Spell Reflection in grinding. You know when I was soloing those Hederine Initiates seeing if an Eye of Shadow would drop? Kick was the main reason it was possible. The cost might be prohibitive, but if you build your attack around the reflect, and having the rage available for it, I'm sure it can be quite powerful.

As for myself ... I'll get back to you at 66. Envenom has been a mild disappointment, just barely clawing over Eviscerate in certain scenarios -> even with 0/3 Imp Eviscerate and 5/5 Deadly Poison. Deadly Throw seems like a nice addition to have, but I haven't used it yet, as I haven't seen a single decent throwing weapon.

Aspect of the Viper.

Downtime? What downtime?

There is one really nice throwing weapon that drops in one of the instances (I want to say it is from Underbog, but I'm not sure).

First boss in Underbog drops Needle Shrike, a 2 AP, 1 hit rating upgrade over Strikers Mark.

Mangle for Druids finally makes Feral Druids feral

Doesn't Mind Flay instantly tag a mob? I suppose SW:D has a longer range.

Excellent! Please let me know how it goes. We finally lost our online "healer" majority last night with the return of several inactive "non-healer" members (although many of them have "healer" alts!). Completely unsubstantiated reports from our membership indicates that more traditional warrior-priest-dps groups are actually running worse than our healer-majority runs. Even when we have a healing-healer, the splash healing from iVE or iLoTP is a significant boon to keep everyone at full health. And in my experience, our non-healing healers are better at managing threat (or maybe just surviving the inevitable aggro-pull).

If all you're talking about is needing a spell interrupt, wouldn't Shield Bash or even Pummel be better than Spell Reflect?

You don't tag a mob until you've damaged it. The 1st tick of damage from Mind Flay occurs after 1 second of casting. So you've got a 1 sec time delay from cast to tag, during which time others who've got instant cast spells that cause damage can beat you to the punch.

-WimpySmurf

Cloak. Of. Shadows.

~Frag

From a warlock point of view, I'd have to echo what Lissa said about Fel Armor and Incinerate.

The extra damage from Fel Armor is nice, but what you *really* notice is the extra 20% healing. You get some quite ridiculous numbers when large heals crit.

With a full Destruction spec, Incinerate essentially does the same damage as Shadowbolt for less mana. Since Destruction is probably the most mana inefficient warlock spec (compared to say Affliction locks who barely have to eat or drink at all), I really like. The casting graphic is cool too. It's just nice to have a spammable fire spell that isn't the low damage-high threat Searing Pain (a winning combination if ever there was one).

I could see the spell being very popular with Warlocks who put zero points in Destruction because of the base 2.5 second cast time.

Two of our warlocks have hit 70 already (nutters...), and I did a Blood Furnace run with one yesterday and got to see Ritual of Souls in action.

Three word summary: Lightwell for warlocks

It's a ritual like Summoning, but once cast you have a clickable gem with 10 Master Healthstone charges. Clicking the gem puts the Healthstone in your inventory instantly - no loot box or anything. Vorix would cast it before boss fights; we could then use the Healthstone in battle, run back to the gem and restrock mid-fight. I think I used one Soulwell about 3 times.

I officially declare it "Best warlock spell *ever*". (Once more mages see it, they'll be demanding "Fountain of Vending" - just wait!).

Chris

I haven't started on my warrior past 60, yet, but in theory Spell Reflect is better than Shield Bash because it returns the damage to the target, helping you kill faster. Given the rage cost, it's probably the case that it's better when one spell cast from the target would do more damage to the target than one shield bash plus one heroic strike. That's just theory, though.

It's not about one interrupt. It's about a group of them used to completely neuter a caster. For a Rogue, that means Kidney Shot, Kick, and Gouge. Having just one, or even two, isn't enough to stop NPCs from spellcasting. Having three, most of the time, is.

Yes. Through Improved Shield Bash (3 second silence on top of a 6 second lockout) and Concussion Blow, I can generally shut down casters long enough for them to die. In the case of Paladins, I can shut them down indefinitely

It's even easier for my Shaman, assuming we're talking about them casting at me, and not at themselves or others. Earth Shock is on such a short cooldown, I can usually substitute Grounding Totem or War Stomp to buy time for another shock

Spell Reflect only reflects the base damage of the spell being cast at you. So while that Fireball would normally hit you for 1,000 or more (well, maybe 900 or 800ish now that they've made Improved Fireball lower the spellpower coefficient), reflecting it back would hit them for 500 or so (wowhead and thottbot are both lagged to hell and back right now, so I can't get an exact number for max rank Fireball.) Even worse, it can be burned on a very weak rank1 instant (Rank1 Fireblast comes to mind), which means you just wasted 25 Rage to do very little or no damage (if they've got Fire Ward up), when that same Rage could be used for a Shield Bash + Heroic Strike combo with Rage left over (remember, any Protection Warrior worth his salt will have Focused Rage, and Arms and Fury specs would much rather just burn down the mob or player than try to tank it.)

In PvE, I think it would only be useful in very specific situations, since you'd expect raid bosses would be either immune to their own spells or even benefit from having them reflected back at them.

Not quite...

Cheers,
~Frag

So you're saying bouncing a fireball back at Ragnaros, the big fire dude, would actually hurt him?

I believe what he is saying is that there are likely some encounters in TBC that spell reflection works really well, that people should try it and not just rule it out.

(This is my speculation) It is possible that even some encounters are designed around it, such as reflecting a debuff on a boss, similar to using Hakkar's life drain against him.

I have cast Victory Rush once. Part of this is my fault, as I often settle into a routine or rythmn, and Victory Rush isn't something I watch out for. After toying with it last night in Blood Furnace, I don't see it being a staple. It's an awesome ability, rage free instant attack with good damage (for a Prot warrior at least). It does seem very limited. I haven't toyed with it much, but it appears that you have to get the killing blow, and you have to be in battle or berserker stance while getting the killing blow in order for it to trigger. Not getting the killing blow or being in defensive stance means that it will not activate, even if you switch out of defensive stance.

What this boils down to for me, is this: It's a nice solo grinding ability, with lots of use in group PvP. Nearly useless for 5 man tanking, which for me, sadly, is the bulk of where my time is spent.

I'm looking forward to spell reflection and intvervention much more.

Lifebloom has been a definite help, but... Maim makes a big impact on the kitty-grinding! There are a lot of ways I can use these skills, alone or together:

* A 5-combo point Maim buys me enough time to do a full Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom, after which I can go back to killing them
* Lifebloom in such a case will usually heal their first big hit when they wake up
* I can use Maim to reposition myself behind them and get off another Shred
* I can use Maim to interrupt their spells, i.e. self-heals or debuffs

Maim should probably buy you enough time to clear combat and restealth, shouldn't it?

PvE (kitty grinding) if you clear combat and restealth, the mob will regain all its health.

That would be PVP! Not something I spend a great deal of time thinking about or pursuing. Horde on my server is wary of world PVP because of the 2-1 Alliance proportion.

Last I checked, Cho'gall was 2:1 or worse (WoWCensus is down, of course, so I can't get a recent check), yet that doesn't stop us from winning most of the time. Quality over quantity, IMO

EDIT: You should give PvP a try, even if it's not your forte. It's a much more fast-paced and unpredictable variety of WoW, and can be a lot of fun when you're grouped with friends. The ubar lewtz that you can get through it aren't bad, either

More fun when you lines are shorter too!

I think it's more like 4:1 on Stormrage, maybe even 5:1, although with the Expansion out many retired Horde players have come back. It was a hoot to see Holydeathray in Zangarmarsh the other day; we /hi'd each other. Many fun hours in Warsong Gulch before it went cross-server...

What irritates me (oh noes, Bolty's irritated at something? That never happens) is how stupid some of the Alliance players are. Idiots who don't let Horde cap objectives in Hellfire Peninsula don't realize that they're driving the Horde away so that they give up and stop bothering...which means you get nothing because Alliance will control all three points all the time. Yes, it's dumb of Blizzard to design encounters which require you to "lose" so that you can "win" (a.k.a. gain honor marks), but it's equally dumb of Alliance players on Stormrage to not realize this and wafflestomp any Horde 5 on 1 who attempts to do any kind of world PvP.

Same thing happens at Halaa. Alliance players should let the Horde take the city, so they can gain honor marks taking it back and do bombing runs. I doubt I'll ever get the chance, though, since the moment any Horde attempts any kind of assult, 18 zillion Alliance players flood the city and ultragank any Horde around.

Then of course there are the kiddies on Alliance side who somehow think they're badass because they own the Horde so hard. Doesn't stop them from ganking a Horde 5 on 1 all the time; they're badass!

Thankfully there are battlegrounds to set the story straight. At least before cross-server BGs, Horde pugs beat Alliance pugs on Stormrage about 90% of the time in WSG and AB, despite a significant gear disadvantage due to far less raid progression. Horde always lost in AV though because Alliance had a constant stream of replacement players while Horde would get bored and /afk. Can't blame them.

If I were Blizzard, I'd put some kind of mechanic into the system where if one faction owns objectives for too long (say, 24 straight hours), it would be zerged by a flood of the other faction's NPCs. That way cities like Halaa that are constantly under Alliance control would at least fall to the Horde every once in a while and give the grossly overpopulated faction a shot at some marks.

-Bolty

Yes, I blame Stormrage for single-handedly giving Skullcrusher queues

www.warcraftrealms.com reports:

Stormrage at 3.7:1 with a 2.4:1 activity ratio (approx 70.5 / 29.5 activity)
I guess lots more alts for alliance?


GOGO Terenas with one of the better Normal realm ratios at 2.1:1 with 1.7:1 activity ratio (approx 63 / 37 activity)

We get some of that if we PvP on horde-side on Terenas, but we can sometimes put together a large enough crew to make it interesting. And you do get marks for every kill, so you don't necessarily need to "lose to win". Unfortunately though, marks for every kill encourages corpse camping, which can drive people away or have them waiting to unflag before ressing.

I believe people were saying Victory Rush can generate Rage. This doesn't seem likely, since I can only assume it's yellow damage, but if it can, there's no reason not to use it. And, really, since it's completely free damage, you really don't have a reason not to use it every time it's available besides forgetting it

Is there a game-changing new power for paladins? My bet would go for the Crusader Aura. Out goes the carrot-on-a-stick, the +riding enchant on the gloves, etc. And the best part is: it is for the group!

Personally I also like how they changed Reckoning. It is really great with fast one-handers, and occurs very often now.

Okay, 67 now, with some more background to go with it.

Deadly Throw: deadly what? I still haven't seen a decent throwing weapon, as every time I'm in Underbog that damn shaman totem drops.

Envenom: Treating it like an Eviscerate replacement, it sucks. Treating it as a tiny bit of bonus damage if the stars align, it's decent. My practice is to look out for any time where I would Evis, if DP >= CP, Envenom instead. If I don't know (it's hard keeping aware of that all the time ) or it's not, just Eviscerate. I'm sticking with 0/3 Imp Evis, 5/5 Vile Poisons, so it's worth it some of the time.

Shiv: Come on level 70, this will probably replace SS for me as a dagger rogue ...

Cloak of Shadows: Best for last. I don't have PvP experience with it yet. Soloing, it was incredible having another "oh crap!" tool when things break down. With only the one minute cooldown, it was also really funny using Cloak of Shadows as a replacement for interrupting casters. In 1v1 PvE, if a caster gets a non-instant spell off on a Rogue, the Rogue simply did something wrong. In instances, it was fun fighting with Bolty over who got to dispell the effects over me It really comes in handy for many little things in instances. In Underbog, I managed to avoid a fear a few times by casting it real quick when the mobs looked at me. In Mana-Tombs, I escaped the Prince's Frost Nova quickly to do some extra damage instead of just standing there waiting. When the only decurser was the tanking druid, removing curses from myself was awesome. Very fun, very useful in the right hands. Just gotta teach myself to stop using it on physical debuffs (ala Rend).

I've used it quite a bit more, and try to watch for it more often. It's still only great for grinding solo, and likely is useful for PvP (haven't done any since I got it), but I'm nearly always in a group. As the tank, I rarely get the killing blow, so it isn't triggered very often. I have confirmed that getting the killing blow in defensive stance does allow you to use the skill if you swap out of the stance. The difficulty in getting a killing blow is just that much harder in defensive stance without execute. Plus, with priests loving Shadow Word: Death, my chances of landing the killing blow have gotten that much more difficult. I watch for it and use it when I can, but it isn't often enough that I'm really excited about it.

I just dinged level 64 last night, and got Spell Reflection. I'm going to have some fun playing with that one...

I wanted to get to level 68 so badly so I could finally get my hands on Prayer of Mending. Last night was my first chance to use it in a group setting.

As the tooltip states, "Places a spell on the target that heals them for 800 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump. This spell can only be placed on one target at a time."

In my healing rig (still 8/8 Transcendence), PoM was healing for about 1400-1500 a pop. It doesn't get the full +heal bonus due to it being an instant-cast, which means that as time goes on and I gear up more and more, this spell may become less and less effective compared to other healing spells. But for now...

...hot damn, this thing is awesome. With the right talents picked up, it costs less than 300 mana to cast (far cheaper than a Flash Heal), is instant-cast, and is fully spammable. It has fantastic uses in PvE and PvP. It shifts the balance of healing power back to the Priests in spades and re-establishes the class as the dominant healer. F'ing treeform.

What makes Prayer of Mending so cool?

1) Talented up, it's dirt cheap mana-wise, and spammable.

2) Instant cast, which means I can cast it on the run. Hello, PvP...

3) Like Power Word: Shield, it's a fairly decent "oh crap" button as long as the target has enough hit points to survive another hit (due to it firing when the target is hit).

4) Like Power Word: Shield, it can be used to pre-buff a target when they're going into a nasty situation. Combining PW:S and PoM on a target yields a theoretical damage mitigation of up to ~3000 damage, depending on how the target takes damage. All aggro-free.

5) Wait, "aggro free?" Yep. Unknown if this is a bug or not, but currently all healing done by Prayer of Mending will generate aggro for the target being healed, not the healer! Think about this for PvE situations. I can sit back at the start of nasty pulls and spam PoM on my tank and generate zero aggro for me, while piling more aggro onto the tank. This seems so ludicrously good that I expect it'll get fixed/nerfed. In a sense, I heal my tank and provide more DPS by allowing DPS'ers to cut in earlier. Throwing +700 aggro in to all mobs around on my tank is just insane. How many classes can actually add threat to someone else? (zomg nerf Priests!)

6) For fights where multiple people are taking consistent steady damage due to AoE/mass effects, this spell is ludicrous. It will bounce around the party and heal them up for a theoretical total healing of 6 * 1400 = 8400 for less than 300 mana...I'm trying to imagine fighting Vael with, say, 8 Priests tossing Prayer of Mending around. What a riot. We could cast it, fire off some DPS, cast it, DPS some more, etc etc etc...

7) While you can't control who PoM bounces to, if you have a party where the ranged characters all stand 20+ yards back, PoM will bounce back and forth between the melee characters up front who are more likely to take damage. When it works, it's glorious. It's like poetry - I sit back, pop a brewskie, and watch PoM heal the melee up every time they get hurt, bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball.

8) Rogue get aggro and pop evasion? PW:S, PoM. He can now take a hit from anything that won't one-shot him and have some time to vanish due to the healing buffer I've laid on him. Buys that extra second they might need to smack the button...

9) Mage going in for AoE? PW:S, PoM, Renew, and he'll be set for a while. In fact, PW:S + PoM can become the de-facto "oh crap" combo to get people out of a jam, depending on their health levels.




I'm still getting used to this spell myself, having only had one night of 5-mans to play with it. If the aggro mechanic stays in the game, its value as a tool to keep aggro off the Priest at the outset of fights is just nuts. It's cheap, it's powerful, it's game-changing for Priest healers. I'm still getting the hang of it, but it took just a few casts to realize how incredible it is.

There are already mods out to help Priests track where PoM has bounced to. One that was pointed out to me by a fellow healing addict is MendWatch. Haven't used it yet, but I could see how nice it would be since I'd have to try to track my PoMs by looking for the buff icon on my party frames. Amusing sometimes to watch it fly around as I'd giggle with glee.

Yeah, I'm weird.

-Bolty

Chopped up your post to point out a couple of things. First, I've noticed that lifebloom's direct heal after 6 seconds does the same thing, with the target healing themselves in the combat log instead of the druid healing them--I assume the target takes the aggro, too. Second, more experienced Rogues may disagree with me, but if PoM dumps aggro on the target...why would you use it to heal someone that just pulled aggro? Rogues might have vanish available, but no other melee DPS does (warriors, druids, etc.).

Well, there is "dr00d vanish", but that usually involves a repair bill

I've run three instances since I got spell reflect (The Slave Pens, The Underbog, and Mana-tombs). I can see a lot of negatives with it, and a few possitives.

Basically worthless for trash. The combination of high rage cost, and having a hard enough time holding aggro on multiple mobs means I can't just sit on 25 rage waiting to use it. So far it has always been better to use shield bash on trash.

It's on the global cooldown. This makes it hard to use on bosses that have fast cast spells. The one time I fought the last boss in the Underbog that has a chainlightning spell it was hard to get spell reflect off in time. I'd say I probably reflected 2 out of 4 or 5 CL because either I couldn't get it off fast enough, or I didn't have enough rage.

The one time spell reflect worked great was the last boss in Mana-tombs. First time fighting him I didn't know what he did, so I was focusing on positioning, and aggro, and got wasted by all the spells he cast. Second try I really focused on using spell reflect as much as I could. This time the spike damage was much, much less, and the boss went down no problems.

So it seems like there are going to be specific encounters that are going to be designed around spell reflect, and every other time it's not useful at all. Eh.

Question: Does SR reflect AOEs? I was reading on some of the boss's abilities in various instances and there were some nasty AOEs that would be nice to reflect if possible.