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Shadow Guard Vs. Devouring PlagueFollow

#1 Sep 27 2006 at 12:08 PM Rating: Decent
Alright, I have a 28 priest on Burning Blade. I started leveling Troll Priest and once I got here I realized I never got Devouring Plague, instead I got Shadow Guard. Which I found not to be a bad spell, but its not really awesome compared to Devouring Plague which can be very useful for a shadow Priest. I wanted to know other peoples opinions on these two spells.

Thankyou
#2 Sep 27 2006 at 12:42 PM Rating: Decent
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It's true that Devouring Plague is better than Shadow Guard, no debate about that, I believe. Does more damage AND heals the Priest.

I picked Troll though. I like the debuff from Hex of Weakness. The healing penalty ain't negligible IMO but I'm not very high level so meh.

But I think Devouring Plague can be great for a Shadow Priest, yeah. Soloing and PvP will be where that spell shines the most I guess.

EDIT: I took a second look at the spells and I came to this conclusion:
Holy crap! Devouring Plague costs WAY too much mana to cast. At highest rank, it almost costs 1k mana! So yeah, very useful and all, good damage and healing, but you gotta be able to regen that mana fast. Hex of Weakness and Shadowguard are rather cheap spells and still useful. Glad to be a Troll.

Edited, Sep 27th 2006 at 1:54pm PDT by Selverein
#3 Sep 28 2006 at 9:30 PM Rating: Decent
Selverein
Quote:
Devouring Plague costs WAY too much mana to cast.

so true.

For me Devouring Plague gos with Inner Focus,
PvP it's grate. Heres the combo...
"'Inner Focus', 'Devouring Plague', Shadow Word: Pain, 'Vampiric Embrace'."

all instant cast speels, I think thats a 3 sic window?
damage (x2), healing (x3), low mana ...3 min wait.
love it
#4 Sep 28 2006 at 10:36 PM Rating: Decent
nothing like 1 on 1'ing someone and casting SW: pain, dev plague, vamp embrance and renew on yourself, its really fun XD
#5 Sep 28 2006 at 10:43 PM Rating: Decent
Though, with shadowguard, even rank 1 - each of the three charges have a chance to proc a Blackout on the person who triggered it.

and yeah, Hex of weakness for raids = beautiful.

EDIT: Not only that, but it is WAY more mana efficient per damage than Devouring Plague.

Edited, Sep 28th 2006 at 11:48pm PDT by Wizardborn
#6 Sep 29 2006 at 12:15 AM Rating: Decent
Quote:
and yeah, Hex of weakness for raids = beautiful.

yer, the 'Touch of Weakness' is no good for raiding and theres better thing to do on a raid with your 'Inner Focus' then 'Devouring Plague'.

That shadowguard +Blackout thing is new, just 2 or 3 patchs ago and is was not like that. I have yet to play troll.

Edited, Sep 29th 2006 at 1:15am PDT by Maxzzzz
#7 Sep 29 2006 at 1:48 AM Rating: Decent
While devouring plague is very powerfull in pvp make sure you dont cast it on dwarves or a class that can dispell diseases.

because if you do, you are pretty @#%^ed 1 k mana is quite a drain

Edited, Sep 29th 2006 at 2:49am PDT by Jaigen
#8 Oct 04 2006 at 4:33 AM Rating: Decent
lol indeed
#9 Oct 04 2006 at 4:57 AM Rating: Decent
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I think that devouring plague in PvP is soso bc stuff dies pretty fast or you do. And it costs a lot of mana and has a big CD, its more a solo grind skill if you ask me.

Shadowgaurd in PvP rocks! It triggers all your shadow goodies, beside blackout also VA and Shadowweaving.

Also hex of weakness is good in PvP if you play vs healers who heal. To bad it doestn stack with mortal strike :)
#10 Oct 04 2006 at 8:25 PM Rating: Decent
Sjans
Quote:
I think that devouring plague in PvP is soso bc stuff dies pretty fast or you do. And it costs a lot of mana and has a big CD,


maybe Shadowgaurd is good too, I don't know, but in a 1v1 Devouring Plague is one of the beat things I seen.

"bc stuff dies pretty fast," yes, and you can make other things die faster then you with dp. You wont allways get the fill affect but thats ok, in BGs it's not allways about being mana/time efficient, some times it's just about surviving 1 more players attack.

"bc you die fast," dp can help to stop that, the combo of dp and ve is very good

"it costs a lot of mana," the combo is 'Inner Focus'+'Devouring Plague', so it's free and instant.

"has a big CD," yes 3 min for both the DP and the IF, for some thing this good I think thats ok
but thats just me, I'v never had shadowgaurd.

Edited, Oct 4th 2006 at 9:28pm PDT by Maxzzzz
#11 Oct 05 2006 at 2:57 AM Rating: Decent
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Ive had this discusison with a friend who plays UD priest and he says he rarely uses it, even in world PvP, 24 seconds is to long and its dispellable, pala's suck :P
And he rather uses his IF with PoH or GH5 since DP cant crit. He reckons Shadowgaurd is more usefull for SP's.

I only PvP with my guild so i dont see 1v1 situations.

Edited, Oct 5th 2006 at 4:06am PDT by Sjans
#12 Oct 05 2006 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
it does fill like a waste to be missing out on that IF crit every time,

"IF with PoH or GH5"
"He reckons Shadowgaurd is more usefull for SP's"?
what? So he uses his IF with PoH or GH5 in shadow form? I think your frind is just lying to you Sjans,
crit or not there is no way I'm useing PoH in a 1v1 or 2v2 fight and going in as a shadow priest with out shadow form going...? ...mad.

yes it's a waste to not have the crit, but then it's a waste to be a shadow priest and use PoH or GH5, your missing out on all the quote shadow goodies.

Edited, Oct 5th 2006 at 4:38pm PDT by Maxzzzz
#13 Oct 05 2006 at 11:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
So he uses his IF with PoH or GH5 in shadow form?


No he drops out of SF, team PvP in that aspect is the same as PvE, you see someone needs healing you drop out of SF and fire up a inner focus + PoH.

Edited, Oct 6th 2006 at 12:25am PDT by Sjans
#14 Oct 06 2006 at 1:13 PM Rating: Decent
Sjans
Quote:
No he drops out of SF, team PvP in that aspect is the same as PvE, you see someone needs healing you drop out of SF and fire up a inner focus + PoH.

you drop out of Shadow form? what is this mid fight?
whats Inner Focus do Sjans? is it giving you a free spell?

so lets see how this gos now...
you drop out of Shadow form 'for free', you use Inner Focus 'for free', you cast Prayer of Healing 'for free', then being a shadow priest and all what do you do? go back into shadow form?
so your doing what? your making Prayer of Healing cost the same mana as it costs to go into shadow form...? Thats not free.

your friend drops out of Shadow form mid fight? what using up 2 more universal cool downs having to go out and then back into shadow form?
But your friend could just stay in shadow form crit Mind Blast onto the Vampiric Embrace target? yet thats not good enough?
2 universal cool downs uses up more time then casting one Mind Blast,
Vampiric Embrace mid fight is your party healer not a shadow priest casting Prayer of Healing.

whats that Sjans? you cast Prayer of Healing after the fight? thats assuming you win the fight, if you run into a enemy shadow priest in the BG with the same gear/talents/play skill as you...
they use there Inner Focus mid fight but your saving yours for Prayer of Healing after the fight assuming you win, well...
then you lose.
you can use Inner Focus, Prayer of Healing back at the graveyard if you like.
After wining the fight you can then safely drops out of SF and heal.

The combo your thinking of is...
'Holy Specialization','Inner Focus','Prayer of Healing' and 'Inspiration'.
your Prayer of Healing crits for free and your party all get the Inspiration buff mid fight so then thay can go on to win the fight ,super,
but as we are talking about shadow priests then we don't have that nice combo
so it's all rubbish
a waste of time and mana.

I think 'your friend' shall we call him Sjans 2 is no good at this game.

Edited, Oct 6th 2006 at 2:51pm PDT by Maxzzzz
#15 Apr 11 2016 at 10:06 AM Rating: Decent
Hey guys!

I've read the posts you've sent so far, and I think that most people seems to forget the most important factor when they compare these 2 spells: Coefficients!

So lets take a closer look at the 2 spells at maximum rank:

Devouring Plague

"1145 Mana
3mins Cooldown
Instant Cast

Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 152 Shadow damage over 24 seconds. Damage caused by the Devouring Plague heals the caster."

So this is a dot which will tick 8 times, and the spell benefits 80% of your shadow bonus damage over the duration (without talents). This means that each tick of the spell gets 10% of your shadow bonus damage (which is really-really bad compared to other dots where the base coeff per tick is higher than 20%).

Some says that the spell is kinda useless due to its very high mana cost, but this can be compensated if you use Inner Focus (both spells have 3 mins CD). To calculate the damage of each tick for the Devouring Plague (assuming your opponent has no damage reduction) we can use this formula:

Damage = ( 152 + 0.1 * X ) * 1.15 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 222.08 + 0.146 * X // if you already have 5 stacks of shadow weaving on your opponent

Where X is your bonus shadow damage. Now lets take some examples at certain bonus damage values:

Shadow Bonus Damage / Damage per tick
500 / 295
750 / 331
1000 / 368

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Shadowguard

"270 Mana
Instant Cast

The caster is surrounded by shadows. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for 130 Shadow damage. Attackers can only be damaged once every few seconds. This damage causes no threat. 3 charges. Lasts 10min."

People like to say that this spell is basically a Lightning Shield for Troll Priests, in some ways they are right, but actually there are 2 big differences:
-The amount of talents affecting the spell
-The Coefficient of Shadowguard

For shaman, there's a talent called Improved Lightning Shield in the enhancement talent tree which increases the damage by 5% for each talent point, up to a maximum of 15%. But thats all! For Priests, especially Shadow Priests, there are ways more talents which interacts with Shadowguard:

Shadow Tree:
-Darkness (+10% damage)
-Shadow Weaving (+10% damage at 5 stacks, and each proc of Shadowguard applies a stack of Shadow weaving)
-Misery (+5% damage)
-Shadowform (+15% damage)
-Vampiric Embrace (gain 25% of damage done as Health, kinda like a mini Earth Shield)
-Blackout (10% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds when Shadowguard procs)

Discipline Tree:
-Mental Agility (-10% Mana Cost)
-Force of Will (+5% damage)
-Silent Resolve (20% chance your Shadowguard wont be dispelled)

The good thing about Shadowguard is that it will proc against anyone who deals damage to you, regardless it's spell, ranged or melee attack. When Shadowguard procs, there's a ~3 sec cooldown before it can trigger again. If there is someone who's dealing damage to you constantly, then this means that your Shadowguard is basically a dot which will deal damage to your opponent every 3 seconds while proccing all the good shadow talents you have. Another interesting fact about this "dot" is that the damage itself is counted as Direct damage, which means that the damage reduction from resilience WILL NOT affect your overall damage (which is not the case for Devouring Plague), but on the other hand, Shadowguard is uncapable of landing a critical strike (just like Devouring Plague)

So this is how the formula looks like for Shadowguard (the coefficient for each tick is 39.2%, which means 117.6% for the spell overall)

Damage = ( 130 + 0.392 * X ) * 1.15 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 189.94 + 0.573 * X // if you already have 5 stacks of shadow weaving on your opponent

Where X is your bonus shadow damage. Now lets take some examples at certain bonus damage values:

Shadow Bonus Damage / Damage per tick
500 / 476
750 / 619
1000 / 762

If you compare the damage per tick of Devouring Plague and Shadowguard, then you can see that Shadowguard is better than Devo plague, and as your gear gets better, the difference will be even bigger. Other pros for Shadowguard:

-as it is a buff, you can cast it before combat, so you can save time during fighting, but I highly recommend to always keep an eye on your remaining charges of your shadowguard to make sure its always active.

-No cooldown

-Much more mana efficient, and rank 1 Shadowguard has the same coefficient as maximum rank, so you can deal a LOT of damage just for 50 mana!

-Much easier and faster to get 5 stacks of shadow Weaving on target (saving you extra mana)

-Not affected by the damage reduction of Resilience

-You dont get screwed if your opponent dispels your shadowguard, while its DEVASTATING if your opponent cleanse a Devouring Plague

-The ability to stun your opponent while you are stunned (Troll Shadow Priest can be a nightmare for any rogue player ^^)

-Shadowguard makes your character look unique while its active! Whirling shadow orb things looks cool trust me :D

Pros for Devouring Plague:

-Arguably more useful for PVE environment (but then I would recommend Starshards)

-With Vampiric Embrace active, Devo plague heals you for 125% of Damage done, but due to the fact that it deals much less damage per tick compared to Shadowguard, the heal difference is not that big.


Overall I think that Shadowguard is WAYS WAYS better than Devouring Plague, and the more realistic question is to compare Troll Priest and Undead Priest in both PVP and PVE side, but this comment is too long already, so I will write a "short" comparison next time :D Anyways, if you ask me, even with both racials and priest racials, Troll Priest (esp. Shadow Priest) is better in PVP, while Undead is a bit stronger in PVE.


Edited, Apr 11th 2016 12:12pm by ArcaneHymn
Necro Warning: This post occurred more than thirty days after the prior, and may be a necropost.
#16 Apr 12 2016 at 9:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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Surely a post from 2006 can't actually be relevant anymore given the changes to the game can it?
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#17 Apr 13 2016 at 9:22 AM Rating: Good
Ghost in the Machine
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Shadowguard was removed back in Wrath of the Lich King.
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#18 May 07 2016 at 10:20 AM Rating: Decent
It is not relevant in retail wow for sure, but those who plays on Vanilla or TBC Private server then it can be really helpful them to know about the advantages and disadvantages of different Priest racials.
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