I rolled an 80 priest on the new beta server and was pvp'ing in Winterspring last night. The VE mechanic was really kinda meh. It seemed nowhere near as strong as the current implementation, and what I really disliked was that *I* might not even receive the buff if there are 10 other people in my raid who are lower mana than I am. The casting priest should always be one of the 10 (or the 11th).

Overall, I think SPs are in a pretty good place though. I don't have a lot of experience with them, and I was holding my own pretty good. imp shadowform rocks.