A hunter and a shadow priest in my guild have arguments about the strategy we use for mobs that have adds pop as part of the fight, such as "The Curator" (Karazhan) or "Warchief Kargath" (Shattered Halls).

In most fights we have the shadow priest continue focus upon the "boss" and provide the kickback mana regen from their dps, rather than switch focus and and dps the adds which need to be killed as they pop.

The hunter maintains that this is special treatment of the shadow priest, and that they too should focus on the adds when they pop and that the extra dps from them dotting and nuking would make for an easier fight overall. The spriest complains that this would hurt their mana pool too much, that they wouldn't be able to maintain the dps, that dotting is inefficient as the adds die far too quickly, and that their nuke is on a long cooldown.

Should the shadowpriest maintain focus on a single mob, or switch and mindblast the adds down?

I know that they both frequent this board and respect the opinions of the members here. Thank you for your time.

Do you have trouble killing the adds without the spriest helping ?

If not, keeping the spriest on boss has to be alot better for bringing the boss down faster and to give that nice mana return

We keep our shadow priest on curator full time. There is no way he'll have time to VE/VT adds, and the adds die quick enough without him anyway.

We don't seem to have any problem taking out the adds. In the case of the curator, I would say that each add does die in 15 seconds or less without help from the shadowpriest. I just don't know if the hunters' point that we are mollycoddling the shadowpriest is valid.

Edit for spelling/grammar.

It isn't special treatment, it's using the class to it's fullest, and woe to the one who can't tell that.

As a mage, I'm more then happy working the adds.

We have our Shadow Priest stay on Curator full-time, unless we are having issues (which we haven't so far, but the "plan" is as such anyhow) at which time he is instructed to use a Mind Blast to help, then go back to Curator. Kinda pointless to waste time with a DoT-oriented DPS setup on mobs that will die in 5-8 seconds anyhow.

Every class needs "special treatment" because no class is the same. You assign stuff as it is best suited to beating an encounter. I'm sure the Hunter would prefer to stay on Curator to have a better chance of "winning" damage meters--but, honestly, winning encounters is the only thing that matters.

Ya. Melee/hunters are the best for short-lived adds (provided that the movement requirements are low) due to the windup and travel time requirements for casters. Even for mages/locks/ele shaman, the amount of wasted bolts in the air on stuff like that when things die... and due to shadow priest mechanics, it's a particular waste. Shadow priests are really designed to build up on a single target over a long period.

One of the best ways to improved DPS efficiency on fights with adds like that is actually to tell casters to change targets at 10-15%ish (depending on the amount of hp the add has, of course), since it's likely that anything they start to cast then will be wasted anyway.

1. Dots are simply ineficient if they aren't allowed full duration. First it takes time to put them up (cast time / GCD), then it takes 3s after they land for them to tick, and finally if the add dies fast the dots simply didn't have to do enough damage to be worth the mana spent. SW:P and VT is 900-1000 mana spent, if it's used for every add the priest simply won't have mana for anything else. And if you don't use the dots, you lose 40% of your damage output.

2. Warlocks (if there are any) rarely if ever bother to put CoS on adds, but they are easily convinced to drop it on the boss even if they aren't dpsing the boss. That's another 10% / 13% damage that's wasted.

3. Building up Shadoweaving takes time, at least 5s to get to 5/5. This means for half the time it takes to kill the add the shadowpriest is gimped in damage. Not to mention the debuff won't be there and needs to be built up again when you DPS the boss between the adds (Evocate on Curator for example, 15% extra shadow damage debuff already there makes a difference).

4. The class is simply inefficient when dealing with low hp adds where they don't have time to setup a good dps cycle. The best 10s killtime cycle would be VT + Mindflay on every add, but that yields far less damage than a VT+SW:P+MB+Mindflay cycle on a fully debuffed stationary target (the boss).

5. Using VE takes another GCD, so you have to choose either losing another 1.5s out of the 10s it takes to kill the add, or failing to put a decent perma-renew on all the party.

So yes, using a shadowpriest on succesive low hp adds means a severe drop in their damage output, and ofcourse the mana returned. If you really need them to dps those adds because you can't kill them fast enough, by all means do it, but if you can let him on the boss. The difference between the scenarios is dramatic.

Again/confirming. Shadow priest on the boss is the most efficient method.

Basically it boils down to this- a huge huge part of why you're bringing the shadow priest in the first place is their high dps and mana regen capacity. It is impossible to act as a mana battery to your party if you are splitting your focus on adds which die quickly... and your dps drops significantly as well.

You CAN split focus on several adds that are alive for a significant portion of the fight- but at a very significant longevity loss- it's usually not worth it.

Shadow priests make a great Hateful Bolt soaker as well- their DPS will help heal themselves as well as healing thier party from the incidental damage from the sparks. There's not a good reason to take the shadow priest *off* Curator honestly- even if you're having trouble killing the adds you should look someplace else for that missing dps- the loss of mana and healing from the shadow priest is so significant moving off the boss that you can wind up crippling yourself just as badly.

Special consideration is when a dps member is too stupid to assist and is told to DPS the boss instead because they're hopeless. Shadow priest on the boss isn't special consideration- it's strategy.

The hunter and the shadow priest really should get on good footing. The hunter will want mana regen down the stretch and pecking at his main source of regen certainly isn't wise. Hunters may rarely get special treatment, but that's just how current class balance is set up. Desirability and utility isn't uniform.

And at the end of the day, the goal is to get curator down reliably (and possibly fast). Not what class did what exactly. And certainly if there isn't enough DPS on adds the shadow priest will have to help but I understand that's not the argument here.

Thread derail hoooo!

Anyhow, if you have a shadowpriest, having them healing for flares and dpsing during evocates is just blegh in my opinion when you could just drop the shadow priest in the melee group, heal them for free and get more damage done to curator to boot. Also, it's going to take the shadow priest at least 10 seconds (if you count getting a full stack of weaving up) to get ready prior to each evocate, not to mention the mana cost of shifting in and out all the time ... it just doesn't make sense to me.

Just my $0.02 - and I'm fully converted to the dark side.