Blizzard wants to make the leveling process easier for us to understand, and I appreciate that. It's a laudable goal. I didn't know how confusing the leveling process could be until I started leveling a worgen hunter. Over the course of three levels, I wound up having to deal with no fewer than seven new WoW Gold spells and abilities. It was just too much at once.
That's certainly not optimal, and it's not something I'd wish on a leveling shadow priest. But is the leveling experience currently broken for shadow? As someone who leveled a new 85 shadow priest from scratch in Cataclysm, I have to say no. But hey, WoW Gold change is coming anyway. (Must be an election year.)
What's the ugliest of the changes? Devouring Plague -- the spell is still nowhere to be seen. Now, I'm as big of a fan of simplification as the next guy, but is this WoW Gold thing really gone for good? Why? It's not a spell shadow priests use in every situation (that's a good thing), it's an easy-to-manage spell that's not forgettable (that's a good thing too), and it's something that fills in that long, lonely trek to 85 (that's a very good thing).
It could be the case that Blizzard forgot to put it in back in November, and then after we wondered aloud what happened to it, forgot again to put it back in this February. But it's looking more and more like DP was intentionally removed. Uh-oh.