What the hell am I talking about? Oh, that game again...
I'll pretend it's my fandom.
I acquired a very, very nice staff. It packs a wallop and gives my critical strike rating a nice bump. (Critical strike rating being your odds of hitting something "just right" and thus doing 150-200% of the usual damage.) The only problem was, my skill with Staves was 1. To put this in perspective, my skill in Wands is 165 and I'm working towards 225. So clearly, if I wanted to use this lovely weapon, I was going to have to power level that skill, which is exactly what I did. I ran from Brill to Silverpine beating every damn thing to death with a big glowy stick. After a while, I'd leveled up far enough I was no longer getting credit for two-hitting low-level monsters, so I headed off to Tarren Mill to hunt yetis with a stick.
The things I was killing in Silverpine were levels 8-13, to my level 34. The yetis are level 32-33, so it's a much more even match, and when you consider that all my armor, as a priest, is made of silk, when a yeti starts beating on me, I go down pretty quick. Or I would, if I hadn't finally acquired one of the signature abilities of the Shadow Priest--the damage I do to others heals me.
It's called Vampiric Embrace, and it is very gratifying. I start with VE and throw down a couple of spells that do Damage Over Time (dots) and the health starts flowing out of them and into me. I reap 15% of the damage as healing. Given that I don't have lots of armor and I'm not tough, I have a double reliance on maintaining a very high, very constant level of spell damage. So I have to keep casting. Also, if I maintain a high level of spell damage, they die faster, which is also a plus, obviously.
On the other hand, spells consume magical energy, mana, so the balancing consideration is that, while I need to keep pouring on the damage, I have to do it without burning all my mana. This is a very tough balancing act. Right now, I'm focusing on keeping the damage at peak level, and if I run low on mana, then when the fight ends, I sit down and rest and let it regenerate.
To this end, people who play shadow priests work constantly on getting just a little more dps (damage per second) out of their spell rotations, stats, and gear. I haven't reached the point where I'm doing mathematical calculations to quantify the factors, but I am sitting here trying to decide between equipping a Glyph of Mind Flay or a Glyph of Power Word: Shield. The one does added damage to the enemy, the other gives added protection to me. You see the trade-off here.
I acquired a very, very nice staff. It packs a wallop and gives my critical strike rating a nice bump. (Critical strike rating being your odds of hitting something "just right" and thus doing 150-200% of the usual damage.) The only problem was, my skill with Staves was 1. To put this in perspective, my skill in Wands is 165 and I'm working towards 225. So clearly, if I wanted to use this lovely weapon, I was going to have to power level that skill, which is exactly what I did. I ran from Brill to Silverpine beating every damn thing to death with a big glowy stick. After a while, I'd leveled up far enough I was no longer getting credit for two-hitting low-level monsters, so I headed off to Tarren Mill to hunt yetis with a stick.
The things I was killing in Silverpine were levels 8-13, to my level 34. The yetis are level 32-33, so it's a much more even match, and when you consider that all my armor, as a priest, is made of silk, when a yeti starts beating on me, I go down pretty quick. Or I would, if I hadn't finally acquired one of the signature abilities of the Shadow Priest--the damage I do to others heals me.
It's called Vampiric Embrace, and it is very gratifying. I start with VE and throw down a couple of spells that do Damage Over Time (dots) and the health starts flowing out of them and into me. I reap 15% of the damage as healing. Given that I don't have lots of armor and I'm not tough, I have a double reliance on maintaining a very high, very constant level of spell damage. So I have to keep casting. Also, if I maintain a high level of spell damage, they die faster, which is also a plus, obviously.
On the other hand, spells consume magical energy, mana, so the balancing consideration is that, while I need to keep pouring on the damage, I have to do it without burning all my mana. This is a very tough balancing act. Right now, I'm focusing on keeping the damage at peak level, and if I run low on mana, then when the fight ends, I sit down and rest and let it regenerate.
To this end, people who play shadow priests work constantly on getting just a little more dps (damage per second) out of their spell rotations, stats, and gear. I haven't reached the point where I'm doing mathematical calculations to quantify the factors, but I am sitting here trying to decide between equipping a Glyph of Mind Flay or a Glyph of Power Word: Shield. The one does added damage to the enemy, the other gives added protection to me. You see the trade-off here.