Shadow Focus (priest talent)

Shadow Focus
Shadow Focus (3 ranks) Increases your chance to hit with your Shadow spells by X%, and reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by Y%.
Requirements
Class	Priest
Properties
Affects	Shadow spells

Shadow Focus increases your chance to hit enemies with your Shadow spells by 1% | 2% | 3%. Also reduces mana cost all the Priests shadow spells by 2%, 4% or 6%, depenging on your rank.

Rank table

Rank	Chance to hit	Mana cost reduction
1	1%	2%
2	2%	4%
3	3%	6%

Notes

Many people overlook the power of Shadow Focus, but if you look through your combat log you will notice that although few mobs your own level resist your spells entirely, many of them resist at least some percentage of the damage. Shadow Focus increases your relative spell "level" to the mob, reducing the chance they will resist a portion or the entire spell outright. If you find yourself commonly dealing with mobs several levels higher than you, you will find this talent invaluable. In non-raiding situations, if you are the appropriate level for your zone/instance, 2-3 points should be all you need.

This talent directly effects your chance to hit or miss a mob, which is calculated based on the level difference between you.

 PvE Level    Talent Points Spent / Hit Chance
Difference     0      1     2     3
------------------------------------------------
    0         96%    97%   98%   99%
    1         95%    96%   97%   98%
    2         94%    95%   96%   97%
    3         83%    84%   85%   86%
    4         72%    73%   74%   75%
    5         61%    62%   63%   64%

 PvP Level    Talent Points Spent / Hit Chance
Difference     0      1     2     3
------------------------------------------------
    0         96%    97%   98%   99%
    1         95%    96%   97%   98%
    2         94%    95%   96%   97%
    3         87%    88%   89%   90%
    4         80%    81%   82%   83%
    5         73%    74%   75%   76%

If you plan on doing endgame instances/raids as a Shadow priest, 3 points in this talent are required to minimize resists against raid bosses. That leaves a 86% hit chance, so 14% must be made up with spell hit gear at 22.6 rating per 1% equals 368 rating.

When combined with the Shadow talent Misery, this increases your chance to hit (assuming 100% uptime of Misery) to 89%, and only 11% must be made up from gear, which equals 289 hit rating.

See the articles on spell hit and resistance for more information.

Patch changes

• Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Now a 3 point talent, down from 5. Now also reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by 2/4/6%.
  

External links

• Wowhead
• WoWDB