=== Glyphs F.A.Q. ===

Glyphs are a new type of items introduced in patch 3.0 / Wrath of the Lich King. They are produced by a new profession, Inscription. Glyphs enhance existing abilities by increasing some characteristic by a flat amount (e.g. Glyph of Water Elemental, that reduces the cooldown of Summon Water Elemental spell by 30 sec) or by adding a new flavor to the ability (e.g. Glyph of Moonfire, that increases the periodic damage of Moonfire by 75%, but initial damage is decreased by 90%).

Every character has several so-called "minor" and "major" slots designed for glyphs. As your toon gains levels, he/she will unlock additional slots, e.g. 2/2 minor/major glyphs at level 70, up to 3/3 glyphs at level 80. Inserting a glyph to the slot introduces a significant cooldown (1 hour), so that it's impossible to how-swap glyphs in combat or w/e. However, with the introduction of dual-spec system, each spec will have separate glyph slots.

It's very convenient to search glyphs at http://wotlk.wowhead.com. Along with sorting all glyphs list by required level, or required skill to make (mostly useless tho) it supports filtering by classes and by type (major/minor), which is priceless. Here are what glyphs we, Priests, have:
* Major glyphs: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?items=16.5&fi ... rs=1;crv=0
* Minor glyphs: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?items=16.5&fi ... rs=2;crv=0

=== DPS-enhancing glyphs ===

From a pure DPS standpoint we have exactly (only) 3 useful major glyphs:
* Glyph of Shadow Word: Death Targets below 35% health take an additional 10% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell (this has a potential to bring SWD from nearly worthless to situationally useful).
* Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
* Glyph of Shadow (promised) While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec (unlike Improved Spirit Tap, procs off all crits including Mind Flay).

Their DPS benefit and additional information is covered in SimCraft's latest report: http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraf ... testReport (note that at the moment when I'm writing this Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain doesn't stack with Twisted Faith; SimCraft assumes that it's a bug and models stackable behaviour).

=== Other prominent glyphs ===

* Glyph of Mind Flay Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it no longer reduces the target's movement speed (brings MF range to 36 yards talented).
* Glyph of Power Word: Shield Your Power Word: Shield also heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount (the healing effect is instant and CAN crit for 1.5x).
* Glyph of Dispel Magic Your Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 6% of maximum health (has no internal cooldown, can crit, doesn't heal hostile targets, works on self-dispels, affected by healing reducing debuffs).
* Glyph of Inner Fire Increases the charges on your Inner Fire spell by 20.
* Glyph of Mass Dispel Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 20%.
* Glyph of Levitate Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.

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Let's discuss: what glyphs combo you're going to use while leveling, in PvE, in PvP? What are the unexpected of uses or peculiarities of this or that glyph?

Only ones I'd consider using:

Major
Mass Dispel
Dispel Magic
Mind Flay
SW: Death

Minor
Shackle range
Shadow Prot
Levitate
Shadowfiend

I'll probably skip Mass Dispel and Shackle at 80. I like the fact that the Dispel Glyph heals but if Mass Dispel becomes a necessity for raids I'll probably switch. Pure personal preforance, I can see shackle being useful for Naxx but I didn't need it in Vanilla, so screw it imo.

At 70 you can't get Mass Dispel, SW: Death and Shadowfiend before Lich King unless they sneak LK herbs into the patch.

Hi there,

Shadow Word: Death Glyph isnt available at the moment.

So i decided to go for

Major:

Shadow Word: Pain (Multidots Reasons)
Mindflay

Minor:
Levitate
Power Word: Fortitude (In Case of infight rebuffing)
Fading

No real gain here especially in the minor slots - but sadly we dont have many options.

I just can't make myself use the Mind Flay glyph. The slow aspect is too fun for me to give up. It's the one and only slow/kite technique we have.

this is why i'm very excited about the new mutli-spec system.

blizzard said that glyphs will be tied to your spec.

so i can use the mind flay glyph with my PvE shadow spec, but remove it for my pvp shadow spec.

this way I can switch back and forth and use whichever glyph i want

I do have to say that except for with warriors I like the new MF glyph in BG and World PvP.

I mean the fact that MF can be cast through lots of objects (trees, stumps, walls, etc) and the increased range means that I can put the hurt on peeps from afar - ESPECIALLY when they are already preoccupied.

Yet another reason why I love the new spindly and dark MF graphic

Picked up the MF glyph early on as it seems to be the only one that's actually helping in PVE. However, I still consider it a weak excuse of a ranged DD fix that's never come (hasn't it occurred to anyone else there's sth. wrong when a class supposed to deal ranged dps still gets caught in all the nasty melee debuffs in boss fights?)!

Not sure for second glyph, but I noticed in fights that require movement my SW:P sometimes runs out before I get a chance to stop and channel MF, so the SW:P glyph looks somewhat helpful, especially in light of my current mana issues. I won't complain however if the 3.0.3 changes to this glyph goes live

Lesser glyphs are currently very hard to get for obvious reasons. Might pick up the fade glyph when I can get one, and maybe the fiend glyph. None of the other glyphs seem to be helpful for PVE - don't know a single fight where shackle range was an issue, levitate gets used rarely anyway, and whenever shadow prot is needed, the duration is never an issue.

Picked up the PW:Fortitude glyph mainly because it was cheap and the only one available in the AH at the time I was looking - but since I didn't spec IPWF I won't be rebuffing in-fight ususally (and definitely not out of combat). I still might keep it since anything else provides even less utility...

If Glyph stand the way it is now.

PVP
Major
Glyph of Mind Flay
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Glyph of Dispel Magic


PVE
Major
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Glyph of Shadow
Glyph of Mind Flay

edit* 3.0.3 Glyph of Mind Flay: Now sets snare to 10% instead of removing it.
dont know whether the 10% is a bless or curse.
note
When attacking a Druid with Mind Flay, shapeshifting cancels it. I believe shapeshifting cancel the snare effect which also cancel the whole mindflay.

Or maybe it gets fixed and only removes the snare part or even snare comes back next tip (like hunters' frost trap) .. Altho i just hope for too much probably :p

Anyway I just wanted to add that glyph of dispel magic heals even if dispel gets resisted, by the wording of it, it doesn't seem clear to me if it's supposed to heal on use or on dispel.

question about glyph of shadow.

does the spirit -> spellpower bonus stack with twisted faith?

if not, have we asked blizzard if it's intentional or a bug?

For PvE:

Major:
Glyph of Mind Flay
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Glyph of Shadow

Minor:
Glyph of Levitate
Glyph of Shadow Protection
Glyph of Shadowfiend

Maybe Glyph of Shackle if I'm discontent with one of the above.

For PvP:

Major:
Glyph of Dispel Magic
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

Minor:
Glyph of Levitate
Glyph of Fading

There are no usefull glyphs for the 3rd slot in my opinion.

For minor I'm going with

Shadowfiend
Shackle
Levitate

Shadowfiend can be decent and I'd suppose there could be instances where you end up with 40+% of your mana due to when the fiend dies. Shackle range can always be used, especially as I'd expect to see more undead in Northrend raids. And Levitate for its cool factor.

Majors are more mental juggling for me. I'm leaning towards

SW:P
Shadow (10% pre 80 50% post) or
Mind Flay (70% pre 80, 30% post ) or
SWD (20% pre 80, 20% post)

SWP is simply a given in my opinion, MF seems to be really powerful and I appreciate the synergy between these two. The next two are the difficult ones. At 80 I think Shadow is a given due to the projects that seem to indicate 400 spirit is not an unreasonable achievement. But as you level I question its use, my spirit currently is 250 give or take and my crit rate is 22%. I dont think I crit often enough to use this as a leveling tool.

That brings up MF Glyph which I think is amazing. In movement based fights it gives you a larger range of effectiveness and i think having MF be the same range as your other spells is pretty meaningful. I've already been using this to great effect reducing my movement at council and in Hyjal so i can't see leveling without this. It also gives you a pretty good fast tag without the danger of SWD and that will be helpful during the first 2-3 weeks of WOTLK.

SWD is also useful as you level, espeically if you want to work a couple of zones ahead against mobs a level or two higher than you are. But I think leveling will be MF and SWP and then 80 will add Shadow to the mix.

Glyph of Shadowfiend, is going to be useful for pvp.

MF doesn't tag the mob till it ticks...trust me I know from running around to necropolis's (necropoli?) and if you've seen some of the other posts MF doesn't tick off the bat (which is obnoxious to me personally but w/e) so SW: D is still the prime way to tag a mob but shadowfiend works as well.

There is no joy in shadow, mighty mindflay has struck out .