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Shadow Priests in MoPFollow

#1 Jan 16 2013 at 8:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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The only topics I found for us Shadow Priests were really old and Cata-related so I figured I might as well start a new one.
Who still plays a Shadow Priest in 5.1? PvE or PvP oriented? How are your experiences so far?

Myself, I mostly do PvE. My guild went 10/16 nHC last night when we sneaked into Terrace with the help of a friend from another guild that downed Empress recently. The first two bosses of Terrace were rather easy. We even killed the first one doing the Elite sequence.
Shadows (imo) do extremely well on some fights (Elegon, Will of the Emporer, Protectors) and rather poorly on some other encounters (Zor'lok, Ta'vak). I don't know if the QQ that Shadows scaling with gear and with Heroism being bad is warranted. On fights with much movement I always have a hard time keeping up, damagewise, but that might in part be a problem with my choice of talents. When I just have to move occassionally and have much time to stand still and pewpew I never have the impression that we lack competitive DPS.
But I also outgear most of my guildies by 2-5 ilevels so my impression might be wrong.

If anyone knowledgeable wants to take a look at my gear/talents I'd appreciate any kind of input. As of now, while I'm writing this, I have the t14 LFR helm (483) in my bags and just need to reforge and gem him to replace the 476 thing I'm currently wearing. Then I'll finally have the 2p bonus. But honestly, I think our setbonuses are pretty underwhelming in this raidtier.

Edit to add: My armory is in my sig. Just in case... Smiley: wink

Edited, Jan 16th 2013 9:55am by TherealLogros
#2 Jan 16 2013 at 2:51 PM Rating: Good
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I raid Shadow. My guild is #7 on the server, 2905 world, and have down 7/16 heroic. I'm no bodhi, but I think I can answer any questions you have.

Taking a quick glance at your gear, I see some gemming issues. You're using Energized greens to fill your blue slots (Haste/Spirit). I'd recommend switching those out for Purified purples (Int/Spirit). Switch out the Quick yellows (Pure haste) for Reckless oranges (Int/Haste). For red and prismatic slots, Brillaint reds (Pure Int). Intellect is super good, and you need to have it everywhere. It is better than even Haste by far. Basically, your gemming should be thus: If red slot, use Brilliant. If yellow slot, use Reckless. If blue slot, use Purified. All have Int and a useful stat.

Mastery is sh*t, it seems like you realize that.

As far as talents/glyphs go, It's hard to go wrong now. Divine Star/Halo/Cascade is really fight specific. If you're constantly close to the boss, get Divine Star. If you're far away and there's a lot of spread out adds (like Elegon and Will), get Cascade. Otherwise, get Halo. Cast Halo and Cascade from max range if possible (the addon HaloPro on Curse does a great job for helping with this). Keep all three on cooldown, period.

I prefer Glyph of Vampiric Embrace, as it increases the power of VE (you heal more overall, even with the reduced duration). Gives you a mini tranq almost for a raid cooldown, though it's far from necessary. Fade can be useful, but I find the damage reduction kind of underwhelming. Still, every little bit helps the healers.

Other choices are Glyph of Mind Spike and Glyph of Mind Flay. Again, this is pretty much preference, so you're fine to even go with what you've got (though I would still recommend VE).

Switch out Mindbender for From Darkness, Comes Light if you're dealing with a fight where you are multidotting. It scales VERY well with multidotting. So does Divine Insight, but if you are multidotting, then adds are likely dying, at which point ToF is better. I can't really think of a fight in which you want to take Divine Insight that's not a single-target fight.

Seriously, Twist of Fate is overpowered, abuse it like a red headed stepchild whenever and wherever possible. Make sure to refresh your DoTs just before it expires for maximum benefit.

Even though Haste is very good and Mastery is very not, I would still recommend swaping the enchant on your boots out for Pandaren's Step. The movespeed is absolutely essential for raiding. It seems terrible on paper, but in practice it is great. The entire raid should be using a movespeed enchant on the boots.

I'd swap out the spellthread on your pants for the Sanctified one (Int/Spirit instead of Int/Crit). This frees up some reforging on your gear that you can instead use for Haste. Namely, the helm (Mastery -> Haste instead of Mastery -> Spirit)

Edited, Jan 16th 2013 5:39pm by IDrownFish
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#3 Jan 16 2013 at 3:04 PM Rating: Good
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And you pretty much nailed the issue on the head. Shadowpriests are insanely strong on certain fights right now, and terrible on others. That is to say, we are gods of damage on fights with frequent quick dying adds so we can abuse Twist of Fate and Shadow Word: Death for the extra orb, and on single target fights we are terrible.

I'm not happy at all with how Shadow is at the moment, and I think it needs some serious work on Blizz's part. Shadow Word: Insanity is getting redone next patch, though they haven't yet announced details, so we'll see how that turns out. Even still, there are a lot of issues. Our Mastery is nothing but a second crit. We don't have a reliable burst DPS cooldown. We are outshined by Affliction warlocks in almost every situation (though that's likely more to do with Affliction being overpowered than us being underpowered). Some talents are completely worthless to us. Shadow Orbs is an awkward mechanic. With certain talents, we have Fire Mage level randomness. Single Target dps is absolutely terrible.

That said, we do have some things going for us. We have a handful of raid-saving cooldowns (Void Shift, Hymn of Hope, Vampiric Embrace), are usually the last to die on an encounter thanks to a ton of passive damage reduction and healing abilities, can help the healers out in down phases thanks to our hybridness, and we have Leap of Faith, the single best spell in the game.

Our set bonuses are boring, but that's traditional for the first tier in an expansion. Blizzard likes people to get used to their rotation and class before shaking things up with fun set effects. Next tier will be, well, not great. But better, at least. It depends on how well the Shadowy Apparition rework is done.
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#4 Jan 16 2013 at 5:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thanks a lot! Yeah just looked up stat weighting and realized that 1 Int > 2 Haste. Somehow I had it in the back of my head that Haste is worth something like 0,6 Int. Maybe I misremembered or maybe stat weighting changed since my last visit to How2Priest. The former is absolutely possible. Smiley: lol

The next few days I will be away but after I'm back I will change my gemming accordingly. The Spellthread advice is really helpful. In essence I'm giving up some Crit for Haste which is always good. My biggest problem at this moment is that I am still under the recommended value for Haste. 8085 me thinks. And after I re-gemmed I will be even further away. That's not to say I disagree! I completely agree with you. But I thought with my iLevel 8085 Haste should be easily achievable.

I mainly choose Mindbender 1) to have more Mana returned to me and 2) because it makes our rotation a bit easier to predict and especially in progression fight I can really use that. Smiley: wink

I hope they change Hymn of Hope so it won't kick us out of Shadowform. The time spend channeling costs us much DPS already but the wasted GCD at the end to switch back to Shadowform is just unnecessary.

The Shadowy Apparitions need to move faster and their AI needs some overhaul. In the more dynamic fights with much boss movement there are always some of them stupid apparitions hovering hopelessly around and never reaching their destination. Another unnecessary DPS loss.
#5 Jan 16 2013 at 8:23 PM Rating: Good
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The thing about the magic 8085 number is that until it's actually within reach, it's best to focus on Intellect over Haste. You're close, and you will be able to soon depending on when you get new gear. But until then, Int still gets priority over haste.

As they put it over at howtopriest, "Giving up less than 250 int to gain 8085 haste is a straightforward DPS gain"

So if you can give up 250 int or less to reach that point, then you're golden. Your gear isn't there just yet (but it's close!)

And yeah, for progression, there's absolutely nothing wrong with avoiding a RNG bursty spec.

Edited, Jan 16th 2013 9:31pm by IDrownFish
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#6 Jan 17 2013 at 3:57 PM Rating: Decent
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How to play shadow and feel good about yourself:

1) Spec shadow.
2) Get PvP gear and play PvP.
3) ???
4) 2800 rating, Gladiator.

Edit: no seriously, shadow is ridiculously OP until 5.2.

Edited, Jan 17th 2013 1:57pm by Theophany
#7 Jan 18 2013 at 7:47 AM Rating: Good
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That's part of the problem. Blizzard is kind of locked into keeping Shadow how it is now, because any buffs will make Spriests unto gods in PvP, and any nerf will make them not worth a raid spot in PvE.

What's changing for Shadow in 5.2 that's making them no longer OP, Theo? All I'm seeing on the patch notes is maybe making Devouring Plague not as bursty (but I'm not even sure, the wording isn't clear). Most of the changes seem to aim at reigning in Disc in PvE.
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#8 Jan 18 2013 at 10:22 AM Rating: Decent
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IDrownFish of the Seven Seas wrote:
That's part of the problem. Blizzard is kind of locked into keeping Shadow how it is now, because any buffs will make Spriests unto gods in PvP, and any nerf will make them not worth a raid spot in PvE.

What's changing for Shadow in 5.2 that's making them no longer OP, Theo? All I'm seeing on the patch notes is maybe making Devouring Plague not as bursty (but I'm not even sure, the wording isn't clear). Most of the changes seem to aim at reigning in Disc in PvE.

PvP Power won't increase healing as well as damage for shadow. Right now (AFAIK), it does both. So they can be gods of damage and healing by stacking PvP Power.
#9 Jan 29 2013 at 1:58 AM Rating: Decent
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I really lost interest in my priest all together with the shadow changes in Cata. I loved my Shadow Priest in WOTLK. Right now it sits at lvl 83
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#10 Feb 04 2013 at 6:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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IDrownFish of the Seven Seas wrote:
I raid Shadow.


Smiley: disappointed
#11 Feb 04 2013 at 7:51 AM Rating: Good
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I heal as Holy occasionally, too! That's not too bad, right?

Right?
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#12 Feb 04 2013 at 9:04 AM Rating: Excellent
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IDrownFish of the Seven Seas wrote:
I heal as Holy occasionally, too!


Well okay then. I'm glad the relentless application of pressure during your formative years had some effect, at least.
#13 Feb 04 2013 at 11:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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You should give Holy dps a try some time. It's pretty funny in LFRs and the like.
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#14 Feb 05 2013 at 5:45 AM Rating: Excellent
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I don't know if I could stand it, even for amusement purposes. If I stay in my Holy spec while questing it takes me half an hour to kill a bunny, even in Chastise. (Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?)
#15 Feb 05 2013 at 6:33 PM Rating: Good
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To be fair, rabbits can be a completely terrifying raid boss/MP reference.

Edited, Feb 5th 2013 7:34pm by IDrownFish
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