That particular quote was in reply to hacp comparing SPs without mana regeneration to the "relative obscurity of a ret paladin", before SW and Misery were cited as a reason to take the class on raids. I pointed out that if that were to happen we'd be rolling back to pre 2.0 again, taking the class for passive debuffs, easily applied by one SP.

As for objecting to stacking, I personally encourage variety, however there will always be certain classes/specs which are more 'desirable' than others for certain raid roles, rightly or wrongly.

Well, what's wrong with Disc/Holy and "HT" Balance/Resto dr00ds? And if you are going to be generous and include shadow priests, why not say, include Elemental shamans wearing restoration gear? or protection paladins wearing holy gear?

IIRC several of the mid-level Balance talents are actually fairly good for healing... for example.

First off you edited my quote to misquote me, I'm not sure why. Second off the problems will have to be addressed one way or another eventually if blizzard doesn't want the game to completely tip over the edge of the "shadow-priest event horizon". (okay, maybe that's a humorous exaggeration)

If you can bring 5 or more shadow priests and remove mana limitations from the fight blizzard will end up with shadow priests being the new alchemy.

As a shadow priest, I really do fear a nerf is incoming. I've seen the effect, and it is almost absurd. I ran in a group last night with an ele shammy, a warlock, and two mages. Between the shammy's mana stream totem and my own regen (<3 WoA), we had almost absurd amounts of mana. All of us were able to keep up a full nuke rotation for several minutes without even slowing down due to the raw regen available. One of the mages said he was getting so much mana that he took to spamming Arcane Blast for a bit just to see if he could use some up. It really is trivializing certain situations.

Another potential problem with the way Shadow Priests are set up is that they are a sort of infinite feedback loop. You do more damage, you get more mana back, that lets you do more damage, that lets you get more mana back, etc. The effect of each point of +damage is thus magnified for a shadow priest, meaning that if you gear a shadow priest up at a rate similar to what other caster DPS classes need to stay competitive, the shadow priest's mana regeneration rate is enough that, with smart use of cooldowns and potions, the shadow priest soon becomes functionally mana infinite, even with a full burn DPS cycle. Such is already nearly the case for most well-geared shadow priests on a lesser cycle.

However, an outright nerf of shadow priests in general to accommodate the top end would absolutely kill those not in that top bracket - in a mirror of the way the feedback cycle becomes so effective at the high end, it means that those below a certain threshold have to struggle just to keep up at the most basic level. Lower geared shadow priests lack the damage to feed themselves back sufficient mana to have any endurance whatsoever, let alone using the high mana cost burn DPS cycles the higher end shadow priests use.

It can be thought of similarly to warriors with top end equipment, and the nerf cycle they have had to endure - Warriors have a similar feedback mechanic in the form of that they get rage from damage, to do more damage, to get more rage, etc. Hence, as warrior weapon DPS increases, the warrior's effectiveness increases at a disproportionate rate. This results in the class as a whole getting nerfed to accomodate the top end, leaving those not on the cutting edge in a lurch as a result.

Balancing these feedback loops is difficult, to say the least. One idea I've been pondering has to do with Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch not returning equal mana to all effected - specifically, modify Shadow Form to act as a multiplier for the abilities, and then tone them down, so that the SPriest gets the same effect they are currently set up to, without the party members getting the sometimes absurd amount of mana they are currently getting. Hence, they can be throttled down to a more reasonable level without destroying the class' ability to function, and its PvP functionality. It would leave the feedback loop, but I see the SPriest feedback loop as less serious than the warrior one - the warrior issue caused an increase in DPS, where the priest feedback loop just causes an endurance increase, which is easily enough countered with encounter enrage mechanics.

Out of all of those, Elemental Shaman seem to be the most equipped for off-spec direct healing, and I would personally consider that a reasonable secondary benefit of the spec. While you wouldn't want one to be healing in a serious way with any frequency, I see it as viable in a pinch situation, be it tossing an occasional self heal when the other healers are busy, or a healer goes down and you lack any other options to take over. The spec and the gear are largely compatible with healing - not as good as someone fully specced and geared, but close enough to work in an emergency.

The others I don't see as particularly viable healing, even in an emergency. Balance, the problem is shifting - it requires time to shift out, and time and mana to shift back in, so they can't toss an occasional random heal like the ele shammy can. With Prot Pallies, the gear isn't particularly suited to healing. Shadow Priests suffer both issues when it comes to direct healing (VE excluded here) - they both have to drop a form, and the gear isn't particularly suited to healing, due to the prevalence of raw +shadow gear.

The best fix is just to combine spirit and intellect into one stat. Aside from arcane mages with arcane mind and mind mastery, intellect is also a pretty lackluster stat. There's a reason most raiding mages forgo stats. Right now, as a 10/48/3 spec, I value 1 point of intellect to be worth 20% of 1 point of +damage.

To be pedantically clear, I refer the reader to the reason I posted at the top of this page - Songster's post about 27 specs being in the game and 25 raid spots being available leading to the expectation of 1 spec per raid (or slightly less). I just showed that this wasn't feasible. I'm not arguing against the viability of an Elemental Shaman's healing potential (or Balance Druids or Protection Paladins), but if the expectation is to heal, he's under-specced to do so given the number of actual "healing specs" there are in that hodge-podge of 27.

Did you mean something other than 0.159? It sounds like the original poster (andastra) values int as 0.2 spell damage. You say you value it more highly but list it as 0.159.

Absolutely, you're right. Edited my comment.

That's an excellent idea, and one that I have been thinking about too: nerfing the effect of VT towards party members, but keeping it the same for the casting shadow priest.

I'm getting frustrated in this discussion by the seeming impression that shadow priests have no mana endurance issues. No one relies more on VT than shadow priests to keep their mana flowing. Nerfing VT will absolutely kill the ability of shadow priests to sustain DPS. It would be a much harsher blow to them than any other class who has come to rely on it.

A common scenario for me is to watch the mana bars of the rest of my party deplete at less than half the rate of my own. Usually when I am OOM, the rest of my party is at half mana or more.

A shadow priest needs VT to function at the same level as a mage without it. When a mage has the benefit of VT, their mana endurance goes far beyond that of a shadow priest.

Dreamstate druids are pretty much Paladins with curse of tongues on.