Trouble

You have to factor in how much more dps the Shadow Priest allows warlocks and mages too. It's a nontrivial amount of mages and it's quite large for destro warlocks.

 

Tunch

I think 1 shadow priest is an obvious given. The questions people are posing are regarding 2+ shadow priests.

 

Dorlog

1400 is pretty good for a shadowpriest. I haven't been quite able to hit it on brutallus (usually between 1300 and 1350), although I do miss some (haste) gear, ZA / Heroic Mg hate me (nor do I have a skull of guldan). I looked over WWS's, and 1400+ is usually extremely well geared and/or several leatherworkers.

2 shadowpriests, 1 in each soak group, may well allow you to go 7 healers, it did for us. Feeding paladins is hps, and feeding ranged dps mana further boosts your dps. A shadowpriest doesn't solo heal up a soak (say he's doing 1300 dps at the time, slash does pushback on an spriest), he's healing 400hps. The first slash gets totally healed up, the second will miss about 2k, and the 3rd will need some help to be healed up or burn may own you. In a pinch, he'll probably just about heal everything up, but you'll still need some assisted healing.

It depends on what works for you really, we had a devil of a time fixing our setup, fine tuning specs, synergies, consumables (Thanks for the tip about the JC necklaces thread). In the end, we only barely did enough DPS, although really our kill try was quite sloppy.

 

• Snowy

I need a larger sample size to know what I'm capable of -- my best in 2 attempts has been 1450, and that's eating Meteor Slashes. Last week I got Burned so that threw my numbers out the window -- approx 100 dps less from the movement required and then not using SWD for that minute. (no need to give healers a heart attack here)

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

Goheels

Wow Web Stats

Our first kill, 2 shadow priests, 7 healers, 2 tanks. Of course...1 spriest is doing almost 1600 dps but is a spriest nonetheless. First time we've ever used a ret pally on a progression fight as well :o.

Also, we killed him slightly after enrage (5-10 sec)

 

delling

One of our spriests, with no group buffs, did 1350 DPS. The other one with a resto shaman did 1450.

Both were in soak groups.

Also, the first spriest had improved concentration aura, which helps them a lot on the mindflay channelling (I assume).

You could probably put them behind the boss and obtain a much higher DPS, and higher HPS. Higher slash damage, but we were going with 8-9 in each group anyway, which was a bit overkill.

 

Tempestra

WWS

This was our kill last week - all three shadowpriests were soaking. Sunarith wasn't using starshards as we had huge debuff limit issues. Kalley had a resto shaman and heroism, the others didn't. Sunarith and Kalley had three drummers, while Aristoteles had none.

1400-1500 is about what I'd expect from a soaking shadowpriest, and it's all very buff-dependant.

 

Hylo

We had 3 full time MT healers (2 palas and a holy priest) plus two resto shamans and another holy priest that contributed alot to the tank healing too. Our resto druid was raid/burn healing.

We didn't have Devotion aura for our tanks our second kill (I was providing it our first kill) - maybe that explains at least part of the damage.
That's about the same boost I saw in my healing when getting a shadowpriest

 

tedv

For what it's worth, I wasn't in a soak group. Primarily this is because shadow priests suffer more from pushback than any other class (no prevention and channeled spells suffer far more than spells with cast time), but also because it makes shadow word death safer to use. I could easily see losing 200 DPS from soaking, but I also don't see the reason to put shadow priests in soak groups. There's going to be 3 to 4 ranged who don't need to soak, so hunters and shadow priests make the most sense.

 

Tunch

It would seem to me that hunters would have an easier time soaking than warlocks. Warlocks have 0 pushback protection options (short of an ill-used paladin group slot, or an earth shield), and have to spam-cast their spell to maintain dps, and have no persistent damage otherwise. At least a BM hunter's steady shot is only a part of his dps. And even then, due to the cycle timing, it could very well turn out the slash hits when they aren't casting steady.

 

Anedris

Surely every destro lock would have intensity (70% pushback resistance)?

 

delling

Yep.

Holydin (Conc. aura) + 3 Destro Locks + Shadowpriest...

One of the best groups you can make for Brutallus I think!

Then throw the elemental shaman to the mages + other shadowpriest.

 

Tunch

Mkay I'm retarded, I didn't realize shadow bolt was added to intensity since (whatever patch it was). Ignore that. Yeah, at that point fire mages and destro locks are the best options for non-healer soakers, leaving hunters/spriests out where possible if you need the extra dps, at the expense of bigger slashes.

 

Gokey

I don't know if anyone has posted this, but Darkmoon Faire damage buff does not work in Sunwell. It is removed when you zone in.

 

• Subtlety

I don't think there is a big benefit to having more than 2 shadow priests on Brutallus, however 2 fits nicely, you can get your warlocks, mages and a couple healers(shaman and paladins) in on some of that love, assuming you don't run an extremely caster heavy raid. Although I could see an argument for hunter shadow priest or something, but anything more than 2 is a big DPS sink.

 

Shha

As i said, just make sure to use your shadowpriests as soak healers, and you can safely start dropping healers. Imo its 8 healer+1spriest, 7+2, or 6+3. WIth 3 spriests, VE embraces covers 100% of raid healing (minus burn of course), and 5 healers are perfectly capable of keeping tanks up (1 on burn).

 

xyruul

I wonder if this applies to the warchief haste buff or the Silithus buff. Either way, glad to hear at least DMF doesn't work.

 

Labrie

Just as a further example; heres a WWS of a 7 healer, 3 shadow priest kill to give people a better illustration of VE heal. I believe they were all specced improved VE, and as you can see, it is certainly a nontrivial amount of healing done. We kept them behind Brutallus so they didn't have to move when they got burn.

Wow Web Stats

 

Shelendil

Shadow priests can still put out very respectable dps, enough to justify bringing more than one. Both our shadow priests were soaking and had a resto shaman in their group for totems and heroisms. One did 1600 (one leatherworker in the group and haste gear) and the other did 1400 (no leatherworkers, no haste gear, also took a burn). WWS

 

leizar

Myself and another shadow priest were scratching our heads a bit at how other shadow priests can be putting out <1400 dps on this encounter. Even with both of us soaking we were putting out 1500 each, with suboptimal t6 (missing some spinels, trinkets.) Soaking really doesn't have that much of an adverse effect, SW:D is completely safe as long as you aren't burning, and pay attention to the slash timer. The pushback is spread out enough that it doesn't seriously impact your dps also (unlike say, RoS, P2 Illidan.)

Relevant 6 minute WWS (try to ignore the lack of other dps optimization here)

Note that no destruction pots were used. The only group optimization we had was wrath of air, iirc. Haste and Timbal's seem to be pretty significant gains overall.

 

Shha

Take a note here - those shadowpriests could do a lot more healing if the shamns didnt heal with chain heals. Overhealing was huge there. I guess this depends on specs of your shamans too (not only the "major" specs, but also details like resto talent spreadout). With 3 shadowpriests doing 1.5M dmg total imp VE is able to heal 125%x1.5 = ~1.8M healing rounded down. Total Meteor Slash ability dmgwas around 1.1 M. Now with lets say 7 soakers per side+1 tank (9 melee+non soakers) the worst scenario is losing 2 people from one side bringing soaker number down to 6. The worst meteor slash timer is between 2nd and 3rd slash. 2nd slash dmg = 35000 split among 6 people = ~5800. Over 12 seconds spriest will heal up (assuming 1500 dps) 375x12=4500 hp (5400 to warlocks). That leaves the group at 1300 hp deficit, and about to take the 8300 slash. Sufficient hp to survive = 9600, which should be attainable by the brutallus attempting people easily.
Well you can imagine situation when 2 people miss the 2nd slash then spriest has to leave etc etc. But in reality it just doesnt happen, and if anything you can ask a shaman to drop 2 chain heals on tanks, so the jumps top them off.

Truth is we run 2 spriests, and they alreayd cover up our healing basically. They end up much higher on healing then labrie report simply because of more damage to heal. Anyway Morthoul damage was 516K - enough to do close to 650k healing IF his group actually needed it. More then any healer on this kill did.


Another thing to mention is, that 2 or 3 spriests let you put one with MT healers, which just makes it easier. No matter how many time i read on this board how "healers can manage" etc... its just easier when you have 3 paladins basically spamming 7k heals on your tanks. And on top of it we dont lose dps cause we can bring less overall healers doing more healing. I can understand that healers CAN last brutallus fight without spriest, but i wont accept the thesis that giving them spriest "doesnt improve their performance at all".

 

Mearis

I have done 1520 DPS without soaking/using destruction potions. If I soak I am down to 1420 DPS or so.

This is only with 2 destruction warlocks in the raid, and one with terrible gear, so very very low ISB uptime:

Wow Web Stats - 1420 soaking, but 3rd on healing done.

Wow Web Stats - 1520 dps, not soaking, didn't really have to move, no destruction potions so could have done quite a bit better.

With 3 destruction warlocks, not soaking, I could easily hit 1600 DPS using destruction potions, but having shadowpriest soak seem much much stronger as a strategy.

 

Shha

Looking at your WWS its pretty clear Mearis that you could drop 1 or both of your holy priests for more dps and still do fine. You have 3 spriests, just put 1 with your paladins and have them go all out on holy light. Put shamans on "ancestral fortitude duty" with one of them helping on final burns. Get druid to hot burn victims + tanks . Collect loot - seems like you lack this 1-2 more dpsers to kill him.

 

Mearis

We have 2 shadowpriests, not 3, and they are both with DPS. We had issues with tank deaths with 8 we just started to iron out, going down to 7 doesn't really seem feasable. He will die once we get some of our actually geared warlocks to log in, we had to do this with 2 warlocks, the second wearing partial karazan gear.

Our survival hunter was also doing horrendously, he is still has a lot of gear he needs to replace.

 

Shha

Well my bad, im not sure why i thought you have 3. Well we have 2 and our setup is as follows :

2 "melee groups" , consisting of our feral tank and melee dps + resto/enh shaman.
1 "paladin group" , spriest +3 paladins+random caster we think might need mana
1 "hunter group" , 3 hunters/tank/resto druid (we do double feral, id say if you use warrior, might wanna swap with the paladin)
1 "caster group , 3 casters/resto/spriest.

thats 6 healer total altohugh we can replace someone with extra.

Soak groups are ones with spriest and only them . Resto druid keeps burn people up + hunters (hunters dont take slashes, but they move in on their side if someone leaves for burn). Paladins spam holy light on current tank. Shamans heal the MT then the "switch tank" to get ancestral fort up (once its up on MT 3 paladins can heal easily through stomp - with ironshields etc ferals rarely get over 7k hit AFTER stomp. Thats it. We have really bigger problems then tank dying (undergeared dps due to huge burnout - most of our core raiders burned out on waiting for sunwell and just gave up on wow, sometimes burn victims dying). Honestly while wipes due to tank death do happen and they are spectacular of course, its very very a big problem, and they just dont repeat - aka its a "oh well we get him next time" thing. Extra healer (another resto druid) is put on burn healing, as it gives much more e