i would change your build. as shocking as this is, and i HAVE DONE THIS, you dont need that many points in threat reduction, even with spamming mind blast. the agro pulling ability of mind blast is hugely over stated by holy/disc priests.
i have dps'd a full MC with 0 points in affinity and 0 points in silent resolve. no issues with aggro, and i had all 5 points in imp mind blast (so every 6 seconds i was casteing a mind blast). I would strongly suggest 3 points in shadow affinity, as you have, but put those 5 points from silent resolve somewhere else.
incorperating more mind blasts into your casting order will increase your dps. as far as the mana thing though... that can be an issue. i would have to pop a major mana just about every MC boss fight, and some superior mana's on bigger/longer trash pulls. only thing i can think of is to get all the +int enchants possible.
We have a large supply of healing priests in our guild so I fortunately don't take up a healing spot generally. On the occasions I do need to heal I don't mind at all and do a decent job, but definately not optimal.
A question : If every fight I use demonic runes,major mana pots, brilliant mana oils, whipper roots and nightfin soup will my mana use still be too high in endgame bosss fights. Basicly if I have all these mats always in boss fights will I do alright? I would rather repeatedly farm these mats than spec holy so to speak. Would I be effiecent enough if I do this?
Anymore anylisis of shadowpriests effectiveness would be great.
mmm I havn't tested dps with only shadow affinity. Are you an alliance priest though? As BoS would obviously be a great boon. I don;t mind throwing a mindblast every now and then especially on dps intensive fights, but I find its mana effenciny horrible, I much prefer mindflay in general.
if your not casting mind blast, then you deffinatly dont need any points in shadow affinity. any small amount of agro you get could easily be faded off you. with mind blast there is always a chance (a big crit right at the begining) to grab agro, although i have only done it twice. Once in ZG (stealth power infusion and i critted real big on a beserker) and once in MC.
also depends on how good your tank is. if he sucks, then maybe you can grab it easier, i dunno.
From the perspective of someone who used to be PvE shadow specced on Alliance:
Mind flay can proc JoW multiple times in the same cast: ranks other than the maximum can actually gain you mana. When we were heavy on healers in ZG (prior to the change in the Hakkar encounter), I was able to mindflay for about 90% of the 15 minute fight, courtesy of a competent paladin. Pretty much anything can proc JoW, even applying non-damaging debuffs, as opposed to JoL, which only physical melee hits can proc.
Without getting too deep into the whole shaman v. paladin comparison that any post about JoW seems to beg for, paladin blessings and judgments make certain specs or certain classes better damage dealers, such as mm/survival hunters and shadow priests, while windfury totems put rogues and warriors (specifically MS warriors and sword rogues) even higher on the damage meter than they'd otherwise be. I'm not going to opine on whether a shaman or paladin is a better asset to a raid, but there are some builds that work out better for horde than alliance, and some builds that work out better for alliance than horde. Shadowpriest DPS in a raid is more feasible on alliance, that's all I'm sayin'.
As Shalas alluded, lower ranks of nukes are useful for your warlocks too: with 5 shadow weaving stacked on a boss, they can choose to use a lower rank of shadowbolt for the same damage and agro as their max rank in fights that are limited by mana efficiency, or to use their max rank for extra damage in fights that are limited by time.
If you choose to spend your DKP on a set of 'shadowmage' gear, and your guild doesn't set priority, don't forget to also grab at least 3 pieces of Transcendence (preferably in slots that have no good/easily obtainable options for shadow damage), the additional regen helps sustainability a lot. Also, if you're using DKP primarily on damage items, make sure to keep at least a backup set of healing gear, in situations where you need more healing power, spirit and +healing will make a lot more difference than spec.
If your guild sets priority, that opens up a whole new double bind, because if there are a lot of warlocks who regularly attend, you'll be waiting a long time to get your gear, most likely until the encounters it comes from are well past farm status. On the other hand, if there are only a few regular warlocks, you'll gear up fairly quickly, but you should ask yourself how much your shadow weaving is actually helping the raid
As for holy/disc dps, a smite spec priest with either spiritual guidance or power infusion can outdamage mind flay by chain casting smite, but has a weaker dot they need fo refresh more often, and worse damage/mana and agro/damage. Given an arbitrarily large amount of +damage, smite and holy fire will be better dps and dpm than mind flay and mind blast, just like given am arbitrarily large amount of attack power, a bear will hold agro better than a warrior. Unlike that example, the amount of +damage a priest can reasonably pack is nowhere close to that threshold.
Basically, if I were considering shadow spec for raiding, there are four questions (in no particular order) I'd ask myself:
-Am I alliance? (it isn't impossible on horde, but it's a lot more feasible on alliance)
-What's the class composition of my raid? (do we have a paucity of healers, other shadowpreists or shadowpriest wannabes, or a dearth of warlocks)
-What kind of gear can I get? (will I be competing against the people my spec helps, will I be able to take what I want without excessively gimping myself as a healer)
-How good are my guild's warlocks? (will they adjust spell ranks, manage agro, and otherwise benefit from my spec, or will they just pull a Zibro?)
i would change your build. as shocking as this is, and i HAVE DONE THIS, you dont need that many points in threat reduction, even with spamming mind blast. the agro pulling ability of mind blast is hugely over stated by holy/disc priests.
i have dps'd a full MC with 0 points in affinity and 0 points in silent resolve. no issues with aggro, and i had all 5 points in imp mind blast (so every 6 seconds i was casteing a mind blast). I would strongly suggest 3 points in shadow affinity, as you have, but put those 5 points from silent resolve somewhere else.
incorperating more mind blasts into your casting order will increase your dps. as far as the mana thing though... that can be an issue. i would have to pop a major mana just about every MC boss fight, and some superior mana's on bigger/longer trash pulls. only thing i can think of is to get all the +int enchants possible.
thats my 2 cents
Originally Posted by DeeNogger
some fade comment
1. Max rank Mind Blast was bugged until 1.9/1.10 and didn't produce any extra aggro. It does now.
2. MC bosses are extremely forgiving when it comes to aggro, since they don't have any significant deaggro effects, and in most cases, you are dps'ing adds before you start on the boss. This is not a luxury you get to enjoy for the rest of the raiding game.
3. Fade does not permanently reduce aggro, and you sure as hell don't want to pull aggro off the maintank in anything above MC, even if you can fade it back off.
4. Your threat level scales a lot quicker than the tank's threat level when your gear gets better than MC/ZG quality.
From the perspective of someone who used to be PvE shadow specced on Alliance:
Mind flay can proc JoW multiple times in the same cast
No offense, but with one shadow priest saying the opposite in this thread, and logical conclusions based on blackout procs, I'm still a skeptic. I'm totally open to the shadow weaving application being able to proc JoW though, that makes sense, so I guess you will actually see two spell "hits" per Mind Flay, both at the time of cast.
I have only DPS'd in ZG and MC, *maybe* a tiny bit in AQ 20 (but i dont think so). Thus, i cannot speak to a shadow dpsing preists abilitys in BWL and certainly not in AQ 40 and things yet to come. However, i have dps'd both those (zg & mc) sense the unbugged mind blast aggro, and my pervious opinons still stand, however should be taken with a grain of salt sense i have not done it in BWL/AQ 40.
as far as my gear, i have benediction/anathea and a +33 shadow damage belt (cant think of the name). so my +shadow damage is at 102. not very high.
They're pretty horrible for PvP too, that video you saw was a joke. Let a endgame mage/warlock go trinket combo + flask + berserker and chain cast frostbolts without being hindered in a BG, and you'll see more impressive results.
That's possible, I never looked into it really. I was just theorizing based on the priest talents available to smite, and it's base 2.5 cast time scaling with +dmg gear well.
Really iTunes? Free downloads while supplies last?
Yeah, wasn't trying to jump down your throat or anything. Just got annoying for a while there when mages were screaming NREF due to that perfectly ordinary video.
No offense, but with one shadow priest saying the opposite in this thread, and logical conclusions based on blackout procs, I'm still a skeptic. I'm totally open to the shadow weaving application being able to proc JoW though, that makes sense, so I guess you will actually see two spell "hits" per Mind Flay, both at the time of cast.
Nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, try it on test and see for yourself. I'm inclined to believe that the SW debuff cannot proc JoW though, as I've never gotten 2 JoW procs off a SW:P or a MB, and I have gotten three from a MF.
It's probably worth mentioning that the SCT mod in the form I downloaded it didn't display JoW ticks until I configured it to, but they still showed up in my combat log.
fade stuff and threat reduction theorycraft
Yeah, threat reduction talents are nice, though they're not a necessity until you start to get more +damage gear.
In BWL boss fights, for example, if you pull agro, then a combination of human reaction time, latency, and the global cooldown can mean any amount of time between 0.05 seconds and 1.5 seconds between when you pull agro and when you fade. That's enough time to get your raid shadowflamed, chain cleaved, or firebreathed, and your MT, OTs, or RTs to get tail swiped, wing buffeted, or otherwise unable to take back agro.
Also, from how I understand fade's functionality, it's a flat numeric agro reduction, temporarily clearing 800 points worth of hate for the spell's duration. To pull agro, you need to not only tie a mob's current target (hopefully your MT), but exceed their hate by 10% In longer fights, as damage and agro get higher, 800 points of hate quickly stops being more than 10% of the difference, which means that if the MT can't generate [10% of the hate you've built up over the entire fight minus 800] during the duration of fade, the mob's coming straight back to you. The best, and eventually the only solution is not to pull agro in the first place.
In regard to fade scaling, bosses with deaggro affects tend to be percentage based, while fade stays fixed. This means that fade stops being useful even before you hit that bosses particular agro ceiling.
(if anything above about agro mechanics doesn't sound right to you Jerks with a PhD in hateology or agroculture, please call me on it, I'm usually a month or two out of the proverbial loop)
A question : If every fight I use demonic runes,major mana pots, brilliant mana oils, whipper roots and nightfin soup will my mana use still be too high in endgame bosss fights. Basicly if I have all these mats always in boss fights will I do alright? I would rather repeatedly farm these mats than spec holy so to speak. Would I be effiecent enough if I do this?
I'd imagine so, but to test it I'd need to (a) spec back to shadow (b) convince the paladins not to use BoW/JoW for a raid (c) survive our hunters' attempts to track me down irl and murder me for turning off said Judgment of Hunter Goodness.
if you have that much of an aversion to holy, then play the spec that makes you enjoy the game, just remember that there's an opportunity cost associated with all those consumables, and if a healer dies and you need to step up, you'll have to do it with all your consumables on cooldown.
JoW functionality was changed in 1.9 (or perhaps 1.8). The sheer breadth and depth of what could trigger it was staggering, ranging from weapon procs to fiery enchants to paladin seals. Although I never did test mindflay or SW with it before then, currently mind flay can only activate it on the initial cast.
Edit: To clarify on the above before somebody comes in here and makes me look like an idiot, this is secondhand information based on priest statements in my guild both before and after the change. We have anywhere from two to three shadowpriests on raids usually and they all agree that this is the case however.
Presumably if you had a constant supply of mana pots, runes, NDBs, etc, you could potentially not have mana troubles as a horde shadow priest. The question is: Why? Why put yourself through all that trouble and time spent farming when you could play a mage or warlock with a similar role without the extra hassle? The amount of consumables you would go through while learning new encounters is mind boggling.
Prior to 1.10, I was shadow specced (for PvP, now I'm disc/holy which is far from a joke in PvP), and I enjoyed the option of speeding up trash clears and helping out on DPS in fights where mana is not a concern. I prefer healing to DPS in WoW raiding (if not I wouldn't be a priest), but I did kind of feel frustrated having the capacity for good DPS but unable to use it. I was hoping there would be some kind of mana regen talent like a high % proc clearcasting mind flay talent in the 1.10 review or a JoW-esque debuff in the shaman review, but of course, that didn't occur.
thats what it boils down to: play what makes you have the most fun.
You know, the purple that gives me the most enjoyment is a Cloak of Consumption I got in one of Louie's ZG runs last week. After I got it (over two shamans and a priest) and a Bloodtinged Kilt (uncontested), I went out and crit Mind Blast on a furbolg for 900. It felt good. Then I wore it for an entire MC ("hey none of the priests want to do MC please come and heal things") just to enrage one of the mages. That also felt good. And I did all of this with a 21/30 raid spec. So if you're not enjoying yourself, there are always ways to change that.
I've played two warlocks to 60 and raided extensively with one. I find shadowpriests more fun in raids. I find I have a more diverse gameplay, either sick dps or the ability to really experiance endgame raid healing (which Spriests don't do badly at all) I like that fact that spriests have the highest damage dot in the game, and that it gets 133% bonus, something warlocks don;t have.
Yeah so I don't mind farming mats for those benefits :>
Also, from how I understand fade's functionality, it's a flat numeric agro reduction, temporarily clearing 800 points worth of hate for the spell's duration. To pull agro, you need to not only tie a mob's current target (hopefully your MT), but exceed their hate by 10% In longer fights, as damage and agro get higher, 800 points of hate quickly stops being more than 10% of the difference, which means that if the MT can't generate [10% of the hate you've built up over the entire fight minus 800] during the duration of fade, the mob's coming straight back to you. The best, and eventually the only solution is not to pull agro in the first place.
In regard to fade scaling, bosses with deaggro affects tend to be percentage based, while fade stays fixed. This means that fade stops being useful even before you hit that bosses particular agro ceiling.
(if anything above about agro mechanics doesn't sound right to you Jerks with a PhD in hateology or agroculture, please call me on it, I'm usually a month or two out of the proverbial loop)
If it is a longer fight with a higher amount of aggro and you fade one of two things happen:
1. mob does not leave you as your fade wasn't enough to put the mt 10% over you.
2. mob will leave you alone and you can start light dps.
The mob will not leave you then come back if the aggro is high as if your fade allows the mt to go 10% above your current aggro (when faded) you are not going to go back 10% above that level if the aggro is sufficiently high. You only run the risk of a mob coming back to you on short trash fights that aren't normally properly tanked/dps (at least with us it is everyone going all out right away and tanks working on keeping the death toll low). Hopefully the trash is dead before the fade wears off or you get one of your PI priests to PI a lock or mage essentially offering the mob a snackrifice.
Fade bouncing is helpful at least for me on Razorgore, I usually end up kiting a few legos because I am shielding/renewing the other kiters. Since no one else has really done anything to them you can fade then click off fade to gain a few steps on them if they had gotten close.
I'm shadow specced for our raids, with a decent amount of +dmg (between 350-400 depending on what I want to wear) -- and I can say that using consumables during boss fights does make it so that mana isn't a problem. I find demonic runes to be absolutely perfect, as if you slap up a vampiric embrace you are going to heal the damage you took right back.
Having meditation is a help, and I also use the Blue Dragon trinket and it will usually proc a couple of times during a boss fight. For a fight like Rag, I never have a problem with mana, and land in the top 5 for DPS. It's true that shadowpriests have no burst damage, but I have high sustainable single-target DPS with minimal threat. In addition on Rag, I can be put in a group with either warlocks or hunters to keep them healed up via Vampiric. (Warlocks can life tap earlier as a result.)
In BWL, different story. While we have only cleared to Firemaw, I only use shadowform for Razorgore, where I destroy mages in a corner group. Vael obviously I prayer of heal, and I prefer to be an extra healer on Broodlord to help spread the healing out. (though I have DPS'ed before and just assign myself the duty of putting a shield on whoever gets MS'ed.) As we learn the new fights I can't justify being in shadowform and watching people die. But as we master them, I switch, and speed it up that much more.
Shadowform really shines for the 20 man instances. We usually have an abundance of healers who want to go, and not enough DPS, so I step right in and outside of one of our rogues with Perditions + something else I can't remember, I will top everyone else.
Finally my vampiric embrace is in essence another HoT on the MT to the tune of 300-400 per 3 sec.
I don't think it hurts a raid's viability that much as long as you know what role to perform, and when to heal. Also, I'm willing to farm the consumables to make me that much more effective. I think the person who said "play the spec that makes you enjoy the game" is absolutely correct. I PvP a LOT (hopefully attaining rank 12 this week) and trying to play a holy/disc priest in a pug BG is enough to make me tear my eyes out.
Oh, and finally - be considerate of the mages/warlocks. I'm not sure about your DKP system, but I have always been well ahead of them. I passed on all the general + dmg gear for a while. (I never took a mana igniting cord, ToEP, etc, until the regulars got a few - I still haven't got those 2 items in particular) This went a long ways in proving that I was much more concerned about the raid and others, than myself.
My guild on Deathwing currently has 1 Shadowpriest, and all he does is keep 5/5 Weaving up, and constant DPS on the mob. We've killed up to C'thun, and on almost every fight he is top 10 DPS with sync'd dmg meters. Granted he is in HWL gear + a smattering of non-set pve gear - his m/5 still has a long ways to go - but I really feel that using 1 Shadowpriest, and replacing 1 Warlock with him you really bring the efficiency of the raid up as a whole.
Our 3 Warlock, Shadowpriest, Shaman with TA group is a normal sight on my raids, and the Warlocks with VE have limitless mana, and once the Shadowpriest gets the Wand from Kri (Shadow Wands get +15% from Shadow form + additional damage from weaving) his long term DPS will be even more reliable. He brings Major Mana Pots to raids to supplement his long-term DPS , and even occasionally gets Innervates to really boost his DPS. They're quite an own raid class, and you should see him demolish Sartura/Huhuran placing top 5 for both fights.
We treat him as if we would treat any other warlock, he doesn't heal if ever (he does bring a heal set to raids however in the event of low healer turnout), and just focuses on pewpew. He is fairly considered for loot as well.
05/14/06, 4:42 PM
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