Endgame (PvE) Shadowpriest at Nostalrius

[Glomerulus]

I am wondering what you guys think about Shadowpriests chance to raid in an 8debuff raidenvironment?

Will shadow weaving get one of the eight slots? I realize this might depend on how many locks there is in the raid?

I am way past the point of believing shadowpriest is a bad hybrid lvling spec. I've seen so much evidence of shadowpriests doing top dmg in endgame raiding. The real question for me is wether or not the 8debuff limit will cause raidleaders to prioritize other debuffs over Shadow weaving, and thereby never allowing a shadowpriest to enter a raid until the debuff limit is raised to 16?

Would love to hear your thoughts in this topic!

[DrkAeris]

For <Blacklisted> as their designated Shadow Priest, I will say that this has been discussed at length over the past week or so.

What has been concluded is that while they are fully aware that I have zero desires to be a Holy/Disc Priest and stay as a dedicated Shadow user, that it'd be smart, until after MC and ONY are cleared and the pre-1.4 stuff is updated, that being an off-healer in raiding situations and a dispeller is the use that I'll be performing.

That said, while Shadow Weaving is absolutely crazy good for Warlocks (+15% to shadow damage on target) it was decided that, until the 16 debuff limit is implemented, it will not be used for our raiding situations. Reason being?

With the way gear is going to be and how hard it will be to keep tanks alive and raid members, the additional healing and dispelling far outweighs the additional 15% to a few warlocks in a whole raid. While it is nice and definitely going to be useful later, it makes more sense to have a lot more buffers for starting out than it is to simply have that Shadow Weaving buff (let's not forget that a shadow priest alone uses 4 debuff slots on a target (and yes Mind Flay counts as a debuff))

But to answer you, I know that, for myself, I'll still be fully shadow specced, albeit a few helpful additions in Holy to make the job for raiding a bit easier to handle (such as increased renew and 70% chance to avoid disruptions for healing spells, things like that) but as a dispeller and assisting healer, my primary job will simply be as a raid healer and remover of diseases and magic debuffs.

The Shadow Priest, truly, isn't viable until later content (I'm talking AQ-ish, unless you really know what you're doing before then) and even then, the luck on drop rates can gimp you. At the end of the day, knowing what to do and how to do is will ultimately be how you bring yourself into the top 10 damage dealers in your raid.

I hope this helped you! Enjoy and have fun! =)

[res]

As the previous poster said they become more "relevant" in the later stages of vanilla, and because of this and adding on to this, most other casters will be prioritised when it comes to gear in most raid groups, at least from my experience.

In my opinion I think shadow priests add a lot to a raid, but only if there is 1 and no more than 2 in a raid of 40, the ability to "become" a healer if needed is a big plus in a lot of boss fights. From my experience the best shadow priests I've played with are the ones that aren't afraid of picking up the healing those last few %s when needed.


As a bonus I guess you wont be ganked as easily when you're making your way to a raid, since we all know PVP is where shadow priests truly shine.

/ a healing priest

[Flaat]

What would be the best race allie/horde side for a Shadow priest?
Night elf Starshards seems pretty strong as a rotation filler?

[sloasdaylight]

Starshards is good on chromaggus when he becomes arcane sensitive, other than that its a terrible ability.

If you're going to PvE I'd recommend dwarves for fear ward, but its kind of a toss up between them and human IMO.

[Garfunkel]

What would be the best race allie/horde side for a Shadow priest?
Night elf Starshards seems pretty strong as a rotation filler?

It's actually a pretty mana-efficient spell, though everything else does better DPS but considering that rank 3, for example, is only 150 mana and does 288 dmg, it's not that bad.

[Grim]

There is no such thing as shadowpriest in raids during this patch, other then a hybrid, speccing up to shadow weaving and rest in disc/holy. They make sure to keep the 5 stacks on at all times (if enough locks in raid) while spending most of their time healing.

Usually assigned duty to the weakest geared priest in raid, same as for mages and their frost debuffing.

[meledyne]

What would be the best race allie/horde side for a Shadow priest?
Night elf Starshards seems pretty strong as a rotation filler?

It's actually a pretty mana-efficient spell, though everything else does better DPS but considering that rank 3, for example, is only 150 mana and does 288 dmg, it's not that bad.

Don't know if you tested, but Starshards as a racial spell must have the lowest priority on debuff list, thus being overwritten by almost everything as soon as target is capped on debuffs. This makes spell an absolute trash in PvE.

[Ganjo]

Shadow is worthless in raids until there are 16 slots and even then it would be better to just add another mage or lock to the group. The SPriest spell only heals and for a crap amount. They run out of mana very fast as well. People need to stop being dumbasses trying to run spriest, ret/prot pallys, and boomkins. None of those classes become viable until you are full AQ40 geared or have GM\HWL gear. Even with full AQ gear you WILL NOT be at the top of the DPS (or anywhere near it).

[Armilus]

Shadow is worthless in raids until there are 16 slots and even then it would be better to just add another mage or lock to the group. The SPriest spell only heals and for a crap amount. They run out of mana very fast as well. People need to stop being dumbasses trying to run spriest, ret/prot pallys, and boomkins. None of those classes become viable until you are full AQ40 geared or have GM\HWL gear. Even with full AQ gear you WILL NOT be at the top of the DPS (or anywhere near it).

Shadow priests increase ALL shadow damage by 15%. If you have 4 warlocks in your raid, then the shadow priest is 60% of a warlock by just spamming rank 1 SWP. The shadow priest only has to do 40% of the damage of a warlock to break even and most go a fair bit beyond that.

Ret/prot paladin, boomkin/feral druid, elemental/enhancement shaman are useless. Shadow priests are actually incredibly awesome, once you have 16 debuff slots.

If you attribute the bonus damage on all your warlocks to the shadow priest, they'd probably be the top DPS every raid (assuming you are bringing 4+ warlocks).

Until there are 16 debuff slots, shadow priests are worthless.