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Vampiric Embrace

Vampiric Embrace

Instant	3 min cooldown

Requires Priest (Shadow)
Requires level 78

Fills you with the embrace of Shadow energy, causing you and your allies to be healed for 10% of any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal. Lasts 15 sec.

Buff

Vampiric Embrace

10% of any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal heals you and your allies.
15 seconds remaining

Spell Details

Duration

15 seconds

School

Shadow

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

3 minutes

GCD

0 seconds

Effect

Apply Aura: Periodic Dummy
Value: 10 every 1 second

Flags

Generates no threat

Guides

Raid and Class
cooldown list.

Ranged DPS
Overview -
Tips and Specs

Shadow Priest Guide

Warlords of Draenor
Priest Changes

Comments

Comment by DarkCrisis

Another great talent for Shadowpriests. Just remember that it's good "additional" healing and can never replace a good Heal or Flash Heal.

Comment by BoddAH

Does the healing from Vampiric Embrace work from a Priest using a Shadow type Wand?
I'm not lvl 30 yet, but this is a crucial question/answer for anyone leveling a priest imo.

"Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes all party members to be healed for 15% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 60 sec."

the tooltip says shadow *spell* so I guess no, but well...

Comment by rodent

Does this include if you do dmg with a shadow wand? Does anyone know?

Comment by Gfaded

I would like to know about the aggro since its adding additional healing to your shadow spells it should add more aggro to them as well right? please let me know if it does or doesn't.

Comment by Eluneril

Although it's stating the obvious, it will take pressure off healers when you're with those pesky life tapping locks in 5 mans

Comment by Althal

This is getting a nerf in group utility in patch 3.0.3:

# Vampiric Embrace now heals the priest by 15% and other party members by 3%. (Old - Priest and Party members all healed by 15%)

They do buff Improved Vampiric Embrace:

# Improved Vampiric Embrace now increases the healing received from Vampiric Embrace by 33/66%. (Up from 5/10%)

Which gives around 25% healing to yourself and ~5% to your party. In other words, this nerf/buff won't affect you directly, but only your party members.

Comment by Banali

Also, if you have the glyph of PW:Shield, it can also heal you without having to come out of shadowform. So I would much rather spend a bit o' mana and not have any push back and a free heal.

Comment by boaliinus

so how does this work with Grace and Focused Power?

Comment by midtown

From the 3.3 PTR - New! (10/13): Vampiric Embrace: This ability is now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff.

In other words, a shadow priest will have to cast VE on themselves once every 30 minutes, and presumably all shadow damage done to any target(s) will proc healing. This sounds like a HUGE buff for shadow priests!

Comment by Movanz

In Warcraft III VE's icon was used to portrait the acolyte's(basic undead worker) ability to unsummon your buildings to gain a % of the resources you used to build them,which was preferable instead of having them destroyed by the enemy.
Whenever you have a hard time on your shadow priest, i suggest you take look at the icon's symbol and ROCK ON \\m/.

Comment by Stryker666

Anyone know if Improved Vampiric Embrace will still work in the same way? (With slight difference)

VE heals you for 25% (167% of 15%)
VE heals others for 5% (167% of 3%)

Comment by Seriau

This has turned into a godly soloing tool at low levels. Without the need to pop it on every enemy, things die much faster. On my Priest I did not need to shield myself to keep from taking damage, which preserved my mana and increased speed even more.

I would not call this a nerf at all, but rather a change. And a very nice one.

Comment by Swarfega

Not seen an answer to this yet. Does VE actually increase your threat?

Comment by Foetsjie

Does the Icecrown Citadel Zone-wide buff also improve VE's healing?
So, let's say 25% buff is active, you hit a boss for 6k damage, do you get healed for 1125 or do you get healed for 900?

Thanks in advance

Comment by stevebat

This Healing nerf is there to penalize healers... Personally we are just fine using PW:S to stay alive and anything more is potent. If it makes you guys feel better DK Blood got nerfed too

Comment by qaccy

As much as it pains a shadow priest like myself, I have to say a nerf for this ability was quite warranted. At the end of Wrath, especially with things like the ICC zone buff, VE was so powerful that shadow priests literally never needed a healer's attention at all; hell, we could even ignore some fires like Deathwhisper's Death&Decay or Halion's meteor fires just because our self-healing completely outhealed the damage. With us being able to do full-out DPS at the same time, doesn't that seem a little bit...overpowered? Maybe not so much in PvP where damage is so sporadic, but in PvE it was outrageous.

That being said, the current numbers are a bit...low IMO. We're required to actually pay attention to graphics now, but only 6% is hardly enough to even keep us going while doing dailies and such. That may change with gear improvements, but who knows?

Comment by untossable

According to 4.0.6 patch notes Vampiric Embrace will no longer need to be refreshed (after 30 minutes)
Vampiric Embrace now lasts until canceled.

Though, why do I need to cast Vampiric Embrace on myself at all? Is there any situation in which I don't want that buff?
It should just be implemented like other passive talents that give a buff/aura, e. g. like Elemental Oath.

Edit: Removed the QQ section. I'm just tired of comments like the one below.

Comment by Valyndyral

According to 4.0.6 patch notes Vampiric Embrace will no longer need to be refreshed (after 30 minutes)

But still no buff or rather (partial) revert of the nerf to our self-heal. Rogue's Recuperate seems to do better in combat healing ...
How I miss the times when Shadow Priests didn't need to shield due to Improved Shadowform reducing cast push back and Vampiric Embrace doing decent heal.
Well, our shield falls of after 1-2 hits against quest mobs anyway. That priests are currently broken is a known fact by now.

They nerfed self-healing across the board, for all classes. Recuperate gives 3% of your total health every second (5% if you spend talents on it), which is significantly less than 6% of all single-target damage, especially if you're multi-dotting.

Death knights had the passive 3% healing removed entirely from Blood Presence, Death Strike's healing was nerfed three times in a row, and Rune Tap was cut from a 30% heal, to 10%.

4.0.6 is also slashing warlock self-healing. Ret paladins lost instant Flashes of Light, and must now sacrifice considerable damage if they want an instant heal.

All self-healing was toned down in Cataclysm, to account for the much higher health pools and the fact that if it wasn't, healers would be completely unnecessary. If you consider Shadow Priests in the greater context of the game, instead of simply whining about a percentage nerf out of context, you'll see that your self-healing is more than competitive, especially when you have access to actual healing spells, with Intellect on all your gear (traits that few other hybrids have). It won't be the end of the world for you to pop out of Shadowform to cast Renew and Prayer of Mending, if you're in serious danger of dying anyway. They're also buffing the strength of PW:S by 200% in 4.0.6 (Tripling the damage absorbed), which benefits Shadow Priests as much as any other priest spec.

Good shadow priests will continue to do well. Bad shadow priests will continue to whine about how they actually have to press buttons now instead of enjoying passive healing, passive damage reduction, and passive pushback. This is not surprising, and it is not a bad thing. Bad shadowpriests shouldn't be able to faceroll to victory by using their class as a crutch.

And given that Shadow Priests are seeing 96k Mind Blast crits on the PTR right now (Admittedly, with all procs up and the stars aligning), burst damage will also be far more competitive, meaning you won't have to struggle to stay alive as long as before anyway.

Comment by cronix91

4.0.6

Vampiric Embrace now lasts until canceled.

Comment by IDrownFish

There actually are situations in which you don't want to have it up, though they are few and far between. Think Anub in ToC back in Wrath. During Phase 3, you wanted to minimize healing to yourself so he would not gain as much health from his Leeching Swarm. It was useful to remove VE there.

Comment by Crazyflames

It needs to get buffed back, before people could do an average of say, 10k DPS, healing over 5% of your health each second, nearly 10%, but now DPS went up to 15k DPS, health tripling, 6% of 15k is 900 health per second, which is 0.9% of your health per second. A unique shadow priest ability is now weaker than a WARRIORS self healing and priest are the only class in the game with 2 healing specs...

Comment by Gnoktish

Although this spell seems unreliable for survival, however, any bit of healing really helps the group. No matter what, this spell can help your healers with a small bit of healing per second. It's a possibily that 166 healing tick on your DPS could've saved them!

Comment by assassaq

I was thinking about if vamperic embrace procs on healings trinkets? like Seal of the Seven Signs or similar trinkets?

Comment by taohinton

For anyone wondering about all the out of date comments, this ability has changed a lot in Mists of Pandaria.

Previously a constant buff, it's now a short but powerful cooldown, used to contribute a percentage of your damage as healing split between yourself and your allies. This means it's most beneficial when you're dealing a lot of damage, and of course when you/your allies need healing. Popping it during damage intensive periods can be helpful for healers. Combining it with a full array of DoTs and burst damage like a full Devouring Plague can lead to substantial healing.

Glyph of Vampiric Embrace causes it to generate a larger percentage of damage as healing, but over a shorter period. This adds up to the same overall percentage of damage, but can be far more effective for emergency healing, and for maximising the benefit from bursts of intense damage dealing. However, bear in mind this is a major glyph, competing with some very attractive options.

Vampiric Embrace's shared-out healing makes it far more effective for self-healing when you're out of range of any allies. In groups it adds up to a light AoE healing effect; when soloing this can be used to restore significant amounts of health. Note that this is not a smart heal, and will not be focused on those most in need, but shared out evenly.

Comment by wingzero890

I miss how good this spell used to be. Now its just another cooldown :(

Comment by davesignal

Just to address some misinformation-- 6.02 didn't nerf Vampiric Embrace, but rather buffed it. Previously, VE turned 50% (100% glyphed) of your DPS into a pool of healing that was then distributed to raid members. This effect didn't scale, which meant it was prone to overkill; 50% of your DPS as healing was a titanic amount of ~~over~~healing when solo, and a pittance in a 25 man raid.

Now, Vampiric Embrace turns 10% (20% glyphed) of your DPS into healing for every member of your raid or party, individually. That means that if you're in a 5-man group and you pop VE, they each get 10% of your DPS as healing, for 50% total-- the same amount as the original, MOP Vampiric Embrace. Meanwhile, if you're in a 30 man raid?

Well, they each get 10%, for a total of 300% of your DPS as raid healing, or a massive 600% if you glyph it.

Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Vampiric Embrace

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