A fresh view at Shadow Priest TBC scaling - Page 2

Ele · 11/17/06, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Ayr

Interestingly enough, I find the Shadowpriest to be the most stackable offspec in TBC. You don't want more than 1 Enhancement shaman in your party, you don't want more one than Retribution paladin in your raid, but you can never have too much mana returned from VT. For example, if you stack 2 Shadowpriests in the same group, both benefit from the other's mana return, which allows them to use more instants for more DPS, which means more mana/life returned to the other 3 members of the party.

For example, a shadowpriest at +600 dmg will do 675 DPS just by keeping dots up and mindflay, with a 19.91 DPM (JoW+BoW+Meditation included) and returns 169 mp5 to the whole party. However if you stack two shadowpriests in the same party, you can use SW:D and MB every time they are up to reach 898 DPS and 224 mp5 to the whole party, for roughly the same mana spent. And ofcourse, the more +dmg increases, the better the scaling.

It will be interesting to see what kind of group setups will be made. Do you put the shadowpriests in the group with the mana hungry fire mages? Or give mana to the healers? Or put them in the main tank group so the MT gets constant health renewed, the paladin gets mana and the imp warlock gets both mana and health?

Indeed this is a really valid point, but with a 25 raid size it's going to be hard to fit in every good and useful spec.
I'm quite sure that 1 shadowpriest will have a reserved spot in a raid if things stay the way they are now, but more than that would be kinda pushing.

On a parallel topic, I was just wondering if 5 shadowpriests would have access to an infinite mana pool when grouped together. It could lead to some hilarious group setup for a 5men instance run. Assuming little to no consumables (except the odd mana pot here and there if badly needed).

Banelion · 11/17/06, 1:12 PM

I've seen a post about that on the WoW forums somewhere ...

There was a lot of math and theory backing it, I think the 5 priests ended up with infinite mana and over 1000 HP per seconds or something. Can't recall the exact figures. Can't be too hard to work out, mind.

Holyman · 11/17/06, 1:46 PM

Originally Posted by Ele

On a parallel topic, I was just wondering if 5 shadowpriests would have access to an infinite mana pool when grouped together. It could lead to some hilarious group setup for a 5men instance run. Assuming little to no consumables (except the odd mana pot here and there if badly needed).

5 is very overkill.

If you have 2 shadow priests in 1 group. And if they both have around 8 DPM avg while using Mind Blast & SW:D on every cooldown.

8 * 5% = 40% refunded

But there is 2! So avg, they would only spend 20% of what the tooltip of their spell actually say. Counting in Jow, bow, mediation and so on those 20% would be easily dealt with, and those 2 shadowpriests and their whole group would practically have endless mana.

Fugazi · 11/17/06, 4:26 PM

Do you guys think 4 shadowpriests and a main tank would be a viable raid healing set up? Maybe a few more healers to watch groups and spot heal...

Looking at these numbers, I wonder if the 4 shadowpriest 1 tank group might trivialize content. Like a long duration low dps boss could be 5 manned with this group... Having a garaunted constant 800 - 1000 hps seems a little strong.

Aphyrax · 11/17/06, 5:12 PM

I have a mage and a shadow priest. And one thing that is often forgotten in the wow-board "why is my mind flay not scaling as much as a frostbolt" threads is that priests are a hybrid class and as such must pay a hybrid penalty. Otherwise the pure classes become obsolete. I am already considering dumping my mage as my main for the expansion because I really hate what they have done to the class recently. If mind flay scaled at significantly more than 57% then there would be absolutely no point in playing my mage any more, because the only thing he would have over my priest would be AI, poly, decurse and portals and guess what - those things arent fun (well poly is fun in PvP).

asharpton · 11/17/06, 5:21 PM

Originally Posted by Fugazi

Do you guys think 4 shadowpriests and a main tank would be a viable raid healing set up? Maybe a few more healers to watch groups and spot heal...

Looking at these numbers, I wonder if the 4 shadowpriest 1 tank group might trivialize content. Like a long duration low dps boss could be 5 manned with this group... Having a garaunted constant 800 - 1000 hps seems a little strong.

1 warr, 3shadow priests 1 paly or perhaps better yet... 1 shaman.

then you have a tank
3 dps / healers / mana batteries
With a shaman you get the spell damage totem, a 'healer', even more mana, perhaps some dps.

edit : shaman resto spec will have earthshield too o_O
I of course am just speculating, but this group does seem possible.