I looked and didnt find anything on these forums about this if there is please direct me.

I resently was allowed to become the offical guild shadow priest. =)
My Guild has MC, ZG, BWL, AQ20 on farm, AQ40 is trying us.

What Im curious on is equipment. While I have a great grasp on healing,
I am some what lacking in the +dam gear info.
Whats more important +spell or +shadow? I would tend to belive more of a +spell
becuase it will also help in emergency healing.

Are there any spreadsheets out there?

Also Whats a good dps cycle? VP-SWP-MB-MF-MF-MB?

And are there any good strats that actually utilize a shadow priest end game?

+Damage gear does help if you have to pop out to heal, and is generally easier to find than +shadow gear.
Since Mind flay can't crit, you don't need to worry about having much crit gear.

To cycles, I guess it would be best to stack up Shadow weaving quickly, so a few Rank 1 SWP to get it full then cycle between MB/MF should work (assuming you are alliance and have JoW up, otherwise you need lots of mana pots).


Maybe the official Priest forums has a few shadow priest trolls that may be more experienced.

No, they aren't viable in endgame.
Due to the poor return from +dam on mindflay your dps will scale much less well with any gear compared to a mage or warlock. Shadow priests also have to get noticably closer to most mobs than other casters, and run out of mana faster.

Is it worth having a priest specced to weaving to keep it up on bosses while healing? maybe.
But as a dps class your guild would be better off bring a mage / lock to the raid.

Thanks for the valuable imput.

Combine shadow Weaving with the Constant sream of dps and Vampiric Embrace, a Shadow Priest has
alot to offer to a raid.

I would focus on good attainable gear that increases your DPS. Note I didn't say +spell or +shadow - pick whichever you can get easily. Having +spell gear will help your healing some if you have to pop out to heal, but it's not a MAJOR improvement because typically that gear will be lacking spirit, so your regen is still going to suck. It's a good idea to pass on gear that has +crit and leave that for the mages/locks. Mish'undare may look tasty, but a large portion of it will be wasted on a shadowpriest. Use Crimson Felt Hat or the Hexxar's Cover instead.

As for DPS cycle, I find myself using SWP less and less as it frequently gets pushed off the debuff list before it expires. I tend to strictly mind flay, occasionally tossing in a MB as the situation warrants. Expect to need consumables if you are Horde for sure. I always enter MC/BWL with a good stack of mana pots, NDB's, and Demonic Runes. Mageblood potions are good too to add a little bit more mp/5. A typical Ragnaros fight, for example, will see me use 3-4 NDB's, 2 mana pots, and 2 demonic runes.

If your raid leader doesn't know the most effective place to put a shadowpriest for each fight, educate him. We can be of help in a rogue group on Firemaw for example, with VE allowing the rogues to stay out a little longer, increasing DPS for them. For Rags, I'm usually with the warlocks, so they can lifetap right from the start, giving them basically unlimited mana for the fight. Find the group that can benefit the most from VE for a particular fight, and get yourself in there.

Finally, don't fret too much about damage meters. You'll never out DPS a competent epic'ed out rogue, so don't try. Just focus on constant sustainable damage, and you can still shield/dispel other people as necessary. Take advanage of your versatility, there are situations where I'll come out of shadow and start healing. Just don't start pretending that you are a warlock or mage and can only DPS. The fact of the matter is, it's still a privledge to be able to be a shadowpriest, because they could always just bring a mage or a lock instead of you, and they would do the job better.

Awesome input thank you very much.

I usually do end up in the warlock group and have been adopted as one now =D. As far as trinckets, I always keep marlis eye in a slot for the mana regen... Good Idea or bad? for my trinkets should I use mana regen ones or dps ones?

Also on my benni/ana should I drop the +healing and slap on +spell? or wait for my hand of nef?

If you want to go all out for damage then the best cycle is -- SWP, 3x(MB, MF, MF) -- giving you a 24 second cycle. Unfortunately this burns through your mana fast. In any fight that isn't uber fast you'll just be sticking the MF due to it's far greater mana efficientcy.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=6773

Summary of thread:

1) Heal when it helps and dps when not healing. Not the other way around.
2) Be Alliance.
3) Don't roll over mages for +dmg gear.
4) Profit.

On #3, in a lot of cases you don't have to fight over mages on items because the best shadowpriest dps items aren't the same items as the best mage items. Just from BWL, Ring of Blackrock, Firemaw's Clutch, Essence Gatherer and Lok'Amir il Romathis are all great shadow priest items that mages either don't want or can't equip. There's also things like Vestments of the Shifting Sands that would be great for mages, except thier class robes are close enough for them not to care. Focusing on items like these you can get a fairly solid damage set without annoying other casters.

I disagree with this.

If you have a shadow priest in your raid you are using him to DPS and not to heal (unless you are assuming VE as that healing). If you are particularly short on healers and ask him to heal I can understand that, but in general, if you need a shadow preist to start healing, the fight is probably already on the downslope. If one of your DPS classes needs to pick up slack for your healers just because they can, tell your healers to suck less.

Shadowpriests are still highly effective on horde, just more effective on alliance.

As for the mage comment, shadowpreists often do much more damage than mages do. They have just as much a right as any dps caster class to roll on gear that will benefit them and the raid.

I've had the opportunity to run raids that made use of a well geared and competent shadow priest, both in farm and learning content. In my experience, the single biggest challenge you'll face is that the role of a shadow priest is one of the most misunderstood in the game at large. Comments like "just roll a mage" or "you're a priest go heal" will be common place. If you have the support of your guild, then you're mostly ok, if not, you are in for a very tough time. Generally there is only room for 1 shadow priest in a raid (at least one in SF doing damage). This means you're likely to get flack from both the mages/locks and from the priests who want to know why they can't be the shadow-mage. If you can't come up with a solution to this drama, honestly it's not worth the disruption for your guild.

As to general gameplay, my recommendations would be similar to many posted above. Be alliance - I wouldn't bother as horde. Your single largest obstacle to effective play is your lack of mana efficiency. JoW and BoW are gold for a shadow priest. Make sure you chat with your paladins and find out which fights they can/cannot use JoW and base your level of dps on the availability of this debuff. Make sure you have lots of consumable mana sources.

As for talents, take the threat redux talents. They stack with blessing of salvation for some whopping amount of threat reduction - I vaguely recall that it stacks to something like 75% reduction. Anyway it's big - and it's one of the strongest abilities of a shadow priest. You can make yourself literally invisible to the mob from a threat perspective.

As for utility - the features of the shadow priest I was most easily able to use in terms of raid strategy include; shadow weaving - the raid had a strong complement of warlocks, so this was really good. VE healing - typically I placed the shadow priest in a melee group where the rogues were likely to get AOE damage - e.g. ragnaros. VE is a continuous AOE heal and fairly efficient. And lastly - extremely low threat damage. With all the redux talents and BoS, the shadow priest is a great source of damage on aggro sensitive fights such as Broodlord.


For gear, I agree with the above - +dmg/heal and mp5 are your main stats. Your biggest challenge is going to be getting decent gear without causing drama - your best bet is to find out what mages/locks are looking for and make sure your goals and theirs are compatible or that you can come up with a compromise *prior* to dumping a bombshell on the raid by spending your DKP on something that people expected would go to a mage. Also, make sure you're considerate to the folk who are primary healers.

Knowing when to be in SF and when to heal is probably the most critical attribute of a shadow priest - actually similar statements can be said of any player that has the potential for hybrid or multiple roles in fights. I.e. have a good understanding of each boss fight and make sure you're bringing your raid the optimal use of your skills. There are definitely fights where every ounce of healing is key to success, and fights where healing isn't nearly as important, but more damage would be nice. I believe the shadow priest should view themselves as a healer who can provide value to the raid in the form of versatility when that healing role isn't as urgent. IMO if you end a raid/fight with #1 on the damage meter you have not been successful as a shadow priest. However if you kill Ragnaros at #4 on the damage meter *and* #7 on the heal meter after eliminating VE-overheal, you're doing your job.

Shadow priest is basically a wasted DPS slot, we have one in our guild because we had too many priests, but didn't want to boot any. So we let him go shadow and let him loot caster DPS gear. Casters hate it, and he does mediocre damage. Say NO to shadow priests, you will not regret it.

That's generally only true for single boss fights. There are so many fights now where killing faster means much much less healing is needed (jindo, razergore, nefarion phase 1, fankriss, cthun, and at least one fight in Naxx from what little I've seen).

That said, in those situations you're still generally better off having damage come from your shamans shocking, and your druids going cat than having your priests dps.

Having raided with a full time shadow priest, I must say that it is short sighted to say outright that shadow priests in a raid are stupid and do not deserve a raid slot.

In my opinion, whether the class succeeds largely depends on the person playing the class. Before I joined the guild, I must admit that I was rather skeptical of a Shadowpriest in a raid situation. This is mainly due to mana and to a lesser extent, aggro concerns.

The shadowpriest in my guild however, works very hard in making his class work, by working on his strengths, namely VE and shadow weaving, whilst at the same time, trying his best to reduce his weaknesses, by farming consumables.

Would he have been better off playing a mage or a warlock? Maybe. But because he enjoys playing a shadowpriest, he is willing to make the extra effort to make it work. Popping consumables on every timer, and spending almost every minute outside of raids farming felwood (gg timer nerf).

Because of that, he does a considerable amount of damage, and effective healing as well. Our warlocks can also attest to his utility, after slinging 1.8k non-crit shadowbolts. At the same time, placing him in our MT groups also give considerable effective healing for our MT at upwards of 100+ heal/sec almost all the time.

In a rogue group, the healing provided is also pretty handy because for a healer, there are some situations that I have encountered where the rogue loses a small amt of hp ~300 - 500 odd, which is nowhere here nor there to warrant a cast from a healer. These are the times when VE really shines.

Another anaecdotal circumstance that I found VE useful was on Emeriss. It feels really good to know that you WILL survive the debuff 100% even if your entire party got slept due to a bad round of luck. In fact, looking at how Blizzard is tuning the encounters towards AE damage, I have a feeling that VE is going to be more useful in Naxx that even now.

In conclusion, viewing a shadowpriest as just another mage is shortsighted. Remember that VE and shadowweaving are his strengths. If a shadowpriest can increase dps from warlocks and do comparable damage to a mage at the same time, and even give useful effective healing, I would say he pretty much prove his worth.

Bad player, nothing more. A shadow priest isn't an optimal dps class, but if they're doing mediocre damage it's because the player sucks.

The requirement here is that your mages and warlocks can delay gratification. Otherwise they will take that ring, clutch, vestments, etc. to "tide them over until their real loot drops" and get their nose out of joint if you want fair rights to it. I've seen Boots of the Vanguard, Jin's ring set, and Mantle of Wicked Revenge go to rogues who viewed it as a stepping stone to the items they really wanted but couldn't bear (pun intended) to pass up the opportunity to loot it over a feral druid.

Then the casters deserve to cry.

At least as Horde, you need a pretty amazing medicine cabinet full of consumables to make it work on anything but short fights. You're spending alot of time farming that could be eliminated as another DPS class, so you need to really love flaying over frost/shadowbolting. If something isn't done about mind flay's horrid scaling, you'll eventually fall pretty far behind.

I specced shadow for PvP prior to 1.10, and shadow weaving is still useful when you're primarily healing. Spam rank 1 SW:P (and top it off with max rank if you have the mana). It's not really a benefit solely linked to pure DPS.

The list Shalas mentioned is a list of items that mages and warlocks generally don't care for. Firemaw's Clutch because it's not Mana Igniting Cord (and +crit doesn't do a whole lot for shadow priests, so you can pass on that and Robes of Volatile Power), Ring of Blackrock because of the significant mana/5, Essence Gatherer because it doesn't have a single point of damage on it, and Lok'amir because they can't equip it. I might see a mage/warlock taking one of the first two if they really hadn't seen anything better drop, but we've had 7 Firemaw's Clutches drop and even in a huge raiding organization with a lot of turnover (196 people are listed as having killed a boss in BWL/AQ40) four of them have gone to priests.

Not to mention at the OP's progression state every mage is lusting for (or refuses to break) 8/8 NW, which solves half the problem right there.

Yeah. We used to have a guy in my guild specced some sort of bizarre abortion of a shadow build where he stopped at 21 points and sank the rest primarily into holy. He wasn't a joke in pvp and used rank 1 SW:P in raids for a 15% 'lock dps boost. Aside from that, he wore full healing gear and pretty much functioned like a pidgeonholed heal2/inspiration spammer. The only thing a 'pure' heal2 spammer had over him was meditation, which is marginalized by bow/jow. Though to be fair, the global cooldown kind of cramped his style.

You aren't necessarily sacrificing a healer for shadow weaving. You're sacrificing a healer only for that individual priest's dps.

It will also depend on your raid makeup to a certain extent. Shadow weaving is one of the nice benefits of having a shadow priest in the raid, but this scales with the number of warlocks that you raid with. 15% free damage is nice if you have a bunch of people taking advantage of it.

I've been tossing around the idea of a 19/2/30 build for raiding. The holy tree really is lackluster. The most important talent I'd miss would be -.5s off Heal/Gheal, Inspiration, and Imp PoH. I could live without -.5s Heal/Gheal, my main source of healing suprisingly still comes from Flash 4 and Flash 7. Imp PoH on the other hand would be hard to give up. Anyhow kind of getting off topic here ;o. Here's my CTprofile for potential gear and talent spec. This build would really shine with Atiash as your damage and healing both get a big boost. The gear is mostly +damage and healing and mp/5. http://www.ctprofiles.net/1539409

For AQ this build definately appears to fit and work well. The only fight that a Priest really can't have SW:P up full time and toss an occasional nuke is the Twin Emps, and depending on how your guild does it, the Priest may actually be able to. I'm really getting the impression that Blizzard is moving away from Healers heal and Tanks tank. C'Thun is just the beginning. I've only seen the first boss in each wing of Naxx, but they do not appear to be healing intensive fights. Only time will tell the direction Blizzard is going, but if it at all remotely follows the path that AQ has taken we will be seeing more of the alternative and hybrid uses of the healing classes in WoW.