PvE full raiding Shadow priest build?
 

I am wondering about the stats and talents of a full raiding talent spec for a Shadow priest. Please post your Talent calculators, and ideas of what stats (such as intell, for more crit and mana, and etc.) what would a priest want more mp/5, crit %, + dmg, or mana? List all reccommended stats, and which more of a specific one.


Thanks-Yunie lvl 70 priest -

First off, don't sign your posts, it's frowned upon here. Second: http://www.shadowpriest.com/

I could be wrong because I have never played a priest, but I thought shadow priests don't use spells that can crit?

They have two spells that are capable of critting, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death. There is a talent that increases their crit chance by 15% and there is no talent that makes them 200% damage rather than 150%.

Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death can all crit. Not staple DPS spells, but they can.

The spread sheet you're looking for is: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t10122-shadow_priest_dps_spreadsheet/

Also, if you're just looking for talent spec ideas, look at the specs of the priests posting in that thread on the armory. It's pretty close to what you have right now. I'd just dump the other 20 in Discipline, up to 5/5 Mental Agility. The 14/0/47 spec doesn't beat 20/0/41 in PvE unless your gear is obscenely good. (I don't know what the break even point is, but it's over 1300 spell damage.)

Not to go too overboard in explanation, in an already redundant and I presume soon to be heaped thread, but thats honestly one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard and I can't really fathom how you not only believe it, but preach it. Moreover, I don't see the relevance a couple hundred damage could make in regard to your theory. For your comment to be true, you would have to be consistently out of mana, and simply put, we aren't. For a pve dps spec, for ANY class, saving mana vs gaining damaging stats is simply not reasonable comparison, hell it isn't even an afterthought. I've done things like tidewalker, with dps/ae dead(15ish+ minute kills), without a resto shaman, and didn't have mana issues until very near the end. I'm not saying 20/41 is necessarily a bad spec, but with that said, your argument makes no sense, and is simply untrue.


Actually they are.

That's acutually not always true. Your performance (longlivety) is heavily dependent on your group setup and the encounter given.
For instance, compare the difference between a Healer Group (e.g. Priest | Pala | Resto Shaman | Druid). Assuming any Healer goes for the Spellsurge Enchant that's a lot of Mana restored. Add Manatide to this, and it's (nearly) impossible to go oom without pulling aggro. But even when I am in a CasterDPS group, it's not that easy to fully drain my mana reservoir when chaining super mana potions.

As for the wants of a Shadowpriest:
I rate +Shadowdmg above everything else. Crit doesn't make that much sense since it only applies to MB/SW:'D, which represents only a small part of your overall damage, and there are encounters/situations where using SW:'D might kill you with a bit of bad luck.
MP5 is not that important, as described above you do not go oom very fast. Your +dmg also applies to your Manaregeneration (and that of your group, of course) so it's nice to have, but i wouldn't sacrifice +Dmg.

All in all, get +dmg everywhere you can, it's simply the stat wich has the most uses.

Edit:
I forgot, my current Armory Spec doesn't represent my normal Raid Spec. This is what I usually go for.

Going to agree with Oren. There is no breakpoint, when using pots and in a group with zero external regen. A Shadow Priest is in the raid for one reason, to restore a group's mana/health. The best means of achieving that is max DPS with 11/0/50, 14/0/47, or 20/0/41 (in order of potency) and maxing +dmg (EVERY other stat is over-budget). Everything a Shadow Priest will want is pre-SSC/TK (save for Lurker's belt), tailoring, and world "of Shadow Wrath" (Cloak, Wand, etc).

If T5 is accessible, 4 piece will be a stat (STA and INT) upgrade and damage sidegrade, come 2.1. I can't bother to pick that up until the rest of my raid has their main-spec pieces, because of needing all four pieces (not gloves) to make it worthwhile. Double tokens is going to help in that respect.

I spec 14/0/47 for PvE, I have to say going far enough into disc to get mental agility seems rather pointless.
I gear heavily towards +dmg and int, practically never have a shaman in my group, no spellsurge and mana issues are not a problem provided you are prepared to spam Super Manas. I carry Dark Runes for emergencies, and often when I'm in a healer group I get innervated, because I've kept all the healers mana so high.
Mana issues can always be solved by group setup and consumables, damage output from your spec/gear is something you cannot replace past regular elixirs/flask.

First, these "ridiculous" claims came both from spreadsheet analysis and my anecdotal evidence. (If you ever can't fathom where someone got an idea, it's pretty much always from analysis or someone's personal experience.) That does not mean my claim (Mental Agility > Shadow Power) is right, but it could be. At the very least, I don't think it's that clear cut.

Using the Shadow Priest spreadsheet with super mana potions turned on and 1300 spell damage (a reasonable amount while raid buffed), I still saw results that Mental Agility provided greater total damage and longevity, by almost 25%. The time at which it ran out of mana was still under the 10 minute mark, so it's not like the extra mana efficiency would be wasted on most boss fights. I was testing with 120 m/5 during FSR (not counting Vampiric Embrace, which the spreadsheet calculates on its own).

Now obviously that 120 m/5 is the crux if this issue. That stacks up as 34 m/5 from meditation on roughly 300 spirit, 50 from blessing of wisdom, 16 from mage blood, and another 20 from random m/5 on gear. If you go up to 160 m/5 from various sources, the 20/0/41 spec still has more longevity, but 14/0/47 only runs out after 10 minutes, making it the clear choice.

Given this data, I'd like to revise my statement to "20/0/41 is superior to 14/0/47 if your mana regen is lacking", not "if your spell damage is lacking".

I did try the 14/0/47 spec while raiding as well, and found I was simply less effective. But after looking at the mana regen numbers, I think it has more to do with composition issues in the raid group than individual gear. Here's my raid's situation:

• Spell Surge: No one in my guild uses it, although it's clearly excellent for healers.
• Judgement of Wisdom: I've never seen it cast once.
• Innervate: Our druids are almost all feral. I get innervated once every few weeks.
• Shaman: My guild is low on shaman. I almost never have a shaman in my group, even when we have more than two in the raid.

The thing is, any one of these four things is enough to increase your mana regen enough that 14/0/47 is the superior spec, if you're already starting with decent raid gear. Because I can count on none of them, that makes 20/0/41 better for me. And given the poster's gear set on the armory, it's probably better for them too.

That said, I really wish my raid group composition was such that I could spec 14/0/47.

As a rule, attempting to be condescending isn't normally a good defense. That said, I'm not offended. The point I was eluding to, with words like "fathom" was that any "analysis or personal experience" was either wrong and incomplete, or a result of player error. To that point, I have yet to see a spreadsheet that can make truly accurate calculations for our class, but moreover the method you say you used doesn't really make sense to the conversation.
Greater damage because of longevity. Theres a difference. Yes clearly longevity provides damage, but if the mana(longevity) is otherwise there anyway, then increasing longevity at the cost of damage does nothing, or in the case of a shadowpriest where damage=mana for everyone in your party, it is in fact a decrease in performance, not to mention the obvious decrease in damage.

I understand the point you were trying to make in the first place, and I understand the point of your last post; I just simply don't think the problem you're suggesting exists, and if it does I can't see it being present in any fight under or around 10ish minutes(which is basically everything). Regardless, recruit some shaman, they are a shadowpriest's single greatest ally.

That's too bad, when I'm raiding resto I go out of my way to RESERVE my innervates for the shadow priests, and our raid leader stacks me and a couple pallys in the shadow priest group to get the most out of Vamp Touch. I figure the more it allows the shadow priest to go all out on DPS, the more mana my innervate restores to the party, and helps the raid as a whole. (By the way, feral druids not innervating wtf? Your raid leader should smack them if they're not!)

As for spell crit as a stat, it's somewhat unavoidable becuase so much caster gear has it, and it certainly does not hurt to have it, but the dps gained per stat point ratio (which also translates to into "party health/mana returned ratio") is far inferior to spell hit and spell damage. Don't pass it up if the item is an upgrade otherwise, but don't seek it out either.

I raid with a 9/0/52 spec, though I picked up the extra crit talents for PvP. You could easily omit them and pick up meditation, and if I never PvPed I would end up doing just that.

As others have said, +damage is the stat you want over all else. Outside of performing DPS, your role as a shadowpriest is to feed mana (or life) to your group. This is directly proportional to the amount of damage you do. Your crit-capable spells end up not really figuring into this, as they generally aren't part of your cast cycle.

Meditation is more of a help to those times you slap on your healing gear than it is for the time you spend on DPS. As it stands, I have around 150 spirit, so meditation doesn't help me one bit when I am dotting things up. If I put on my healing gear this climbs to about 400, so it becomes more noticeable. It's ended up that I never really put on my healing gear, so I decided that spending points in meditation just wasn't worth it.

Mind Blast is really mana intensive. I personally don't use it much outside of trash pulls. With this newfangled SWD cooldown I will probably be working that out of my cycle some. Which is a real shame, since it hit about as hard as Mind Blast, at a much lower mana cost.

So, gearing out your shadowpriest is easy. Spec into the 10% spell hit talent, and stack another 5-6%, then just go balls out on +damage. Take crit where you can get it, but don't really gun for it. Also, be ready to take it in the ass for living rubies, as you are going to need a whole lotta them.

I would view it as, "the problem doesn't need to exist", but it certainly does. I'm not the raid leader, or even a guild officer, so I don't have the authority to demand innervates or certain group makeups. And besides-- they might have a very good reason for their decisions that I'm not aware of. Complaining doesn't help anyone. I do the best job I can in my raid group regardless, and that might mean the superior spec for this raid group is inferior for another.

Another thing I didn't mention was the threat cap issue. Personally I've found myself needing to hold back more and more as I get better gear upgrades just to make sure I don't pull aggro. In practice this means just casting Mind Flay, Pain, and Embrace. If you're already threat capped, mana efficiency talents will be better than 15% crit on two spells. (I'm not trying to say my gear is amazing; it's not. And my guild's tanks are good at what they do. It might just be that I've acquired damage gear faster than the tanks have acquired gear that increases threat generation.)

Last, because a shadow priest's job is essentially spending mana to give mana to everyone else, the worst possible thing that can happen is running out of mana. Opting for slightly lower DPS at the tradeoff of increased longevity will make you perform a little worse when things are going well, but provides stability for situations when things go bad. For example, if two or three DPSers die in the first thirty seconds and all of a sudden your remaining damage classes have to last longer.