EDIT: Months later, with a lot of BC raid experience, I can now pretty safely say "depends on the encounter". Any encounter where JoW can be kept up, a hunter does *not* need a SP. Sure its nice, sure it means we can use multi/arcane, and our dps increases a hell of a lot. But not as much as a mage, probably on par with locks.

Just killed Mother Shahraz with pally OTs, so JoL/JoW was up most the time, and mana was not a large issue at all (steady/auto) with pots and a mana tide (3 hunter shaman lock group). Topped dps as BM, a couple rogues behind, mages and warlocks almost beat the tank/pets.

Then there are fights like Vashj, where you can put a hunter in a SP group and he solos the entire west side elementals. Or shaman/spriest/hunter/hunter/hunter for Teron/Najentus type fights for super dps and pet survivability. Or fights like Archi where it doesnt really matter where you put your SPs.

But for an indefinite tank/spank without JoW... although mages can last longer than hunters, their dps loss is so great once oom, its worth throwing them a SP simply to make sure that doesnt happen.
end edit

original post:

Short Answer: depends on the encounter. Healing intensive fight, AoE fight, etc. What about relative 'stand and nuke' fights?


Long Answer(well, question):

Being a hunter, I obviously make great use out of a SP in any fight that goes for longer than 5 or so minutes (or 2 minutes if I'm not chain potting...but I'm a sucker for dps and still chain pot on things like Gruul). Any fight where my pet is in danger of dying is also welcomed by a SP. Being BM only emphasizes this, VE greatly increases my pets survivability, and BM typically burns through mana faster than other Hunter specs.

[My little story that sparked the post]
So I rock up for Void Reaver in 2.1, enjoying my increased damage as a BM hunter. I notice by swapping me with a mage in a SP group, I would give that party (SP, lock, mage, mage, me) 3% damage from Ferocious Inspiration, and the mage that swapped with me would get Wrath of Air in the group I was in (lock, healer, healer, swapped mage, shaman).

And more importantly to me: I would not have to call my pet in and out when Mend Pet simply cant keep up the HPS, and I would have mana to dps for longer than 4 minutes chain casting mend pet and chugging Super Mana and some Dark Runes (fel's for new content for me usually).

I thought to myself, surely the benefit of my buff to the caster dps group, and the buff the swapping mage gets from Wrath of Air, *and* the mammoth dps increase I would gain from the shadowpriest would outway one mage having to Gem + pot? The response from the raid leader was "sorry our mages will go oom and have to wand ". I copped it on the chin and ended up topping raid dps anyway, only just behind two warlocks. But I feel the raid could of done so much better.
[End story]

So my question is, how much does a Mage (fire or arcane, or warlock?) benefit from a shadowpriest in a ~7-10 minute fight? That length seems to be about the norm for any half important encounter. Would Wrath of Air be more beneficial to them over a shadowpriest if they couldn't have both?

- How long can a mage sustain damage when they Gem, Pot and Evoc? Some of my guilds mages replies were "we'd do pretty much zero damage without a SP by comparison", and "anything longer than a 5 minutes kills us".
- When they do go OOM, what is your dps loss? Do you simply have to wand, or do you chaincast scorch once you're at around 10% waiting for the next pot cooldown?


Am I being selfish thinking that (when group compositions allow, other variables such as GoA/WoA not included), hunters should really be getting a shadowpriest in long dps focused fights? Especially when pet health is in danger.

Mages, raid leaders, hunters, anyone!.. please shed some light on this if you can! Thanks.

Last time I ran it through the spreadsheet (couple weeks ago), it was 4:44m to OOM, 434,375 damage without a shadow priest and 9:37m to OOM, 642,948 total with a shadow priest in 10m, assuming full consumables, gems, evo, chain chugging pots. And that was with the most efficient spell rotation, which was 5:1 fireball:scorch in both cases.

Chain-scorching doesn't conserve nearly enough mana to start doing it at 10%. Sure, you could start scorching at 40%, but the dps loss is pretty high. Plus another issue is that you gain less and less benefit from the gem timer (unless you switch to demonic runes, but even those aren't like the top level gems)

As for wanding, it's 85-90% dps loss vs. normal dps.

Fire mages and elemental shaman for DPS classes.

Healers for healing intensive fights (pretty much morogrim is the only fight where our healers will get a shadowpriest).

You meantioned locks in passing so I figured I'd chime in. For us it really comes down to spec, if a lock is speced for affliction they should be able to sustain their own dps indefinitly with careful use of LT, DP, and pots. I'm sure other affliction locks will claim that having a shadow priest improves their DPS by allowing to waste GCDs on tapping and pacting all the time but I think if they were honest with themselves they'd have to admit that even with the hassle of sustaining your own mana an affliction lock is looking a pretty small loss compared to a hunter or mage going oom and droping to auto-shot/wand dps.

Destruction is completely different, however, because they have no way to cover the health costs of lifetapping without taking a DPS hit on a very inferior untalented life drain and no access to dark pact. Destruction locks still have to option of creating mana from health that isn't open to other caster classes when they run OOM but this isn't always an option unless you have healers toss them some heals. We can also use both VT and VE to generate mana from which allows us to double dip on mana regeneration, so to speak. With no healing sources a destruction lock OOM is also limited to wanding. Given these facts I'd say destruction locks get at least as much out of a shadow priest, if not more, than a mage.

as a warlock, I have no doubt that the raid gains more dps by putting a hunter with a shadowpriest than they do by putting me with a shadowpriest. especially in the situation you're talking about where I would gain wrath of air when I lose VT mana. the added damage from WoA should balance out the increased use of GCD on tap/pact.

if a warlock insists that they gain more from being in a shadowpriest group than (especially a beast master) hunter does, they are most likely just being selfish. even on some of the most healing intensive fights healers should always be able to spare a downranked HoT or two for you when you need it. or, if all else fails, drain life.

as an affliction warlock I don't even bring mana potions to raids, unless I have extras for some reason in which case I give them to healers. pre 2.10 I mostly saved my potion cooldown for limited invulnerability potions. now I use it for health pots when I'm in trouble.

Thanks for the replies.

Im shocked by the stats that you posted Papajan, 4:44 till oom *including* gems, pots, evoc, and raid buffs. I had no idea... can any other mages vouch for this sort of result too?

Our mages dont have a shadow priest for every fight, thats for sure... and fights like Hydros (used to) go for almost 10 minutes, and I'm pretty sure mages weren't OOM for half of the fight. Same with Lurker, which is a much longer fight.

Yes, 5 mins seems about right.

Less than five minutes would be standard if you incorporate spell haste through bloodlust and potential gear selections. I do like your line of thinking though and we definitely like to use hunters in spriest groups when possible. We still don't have a BM hunter yet though.

This is wrong. A Destro warlock out of mana can lifetap and get healed their dps goes down. A mage out of mana(having used all mana abilities and pots) can only wand, their dps is almost nothing.

A mage should always go into a spriest group over a warlock if the fight is over 5 minutes.

A Destruction lock is limited to lifetapping to a certain extent, since he can't heal himself up like an Affliction Warlock can. And in what fight can you limitless lifetap nowadays? None to very little. Being low on health means you will die shortly after on an AoE.

Destruction locks can still bandage themselves to fuel lifetapping, more than what a mage can do.

If you are at a point where your healers are so strapped for mana that you can't bum an occasional HOT, your raid likely has bigger issues on that fight than your DPS suffering. Destro warlocks also end up getting 7.56% of the damage they deal back as heals, or almost 10% if they are wearing 3/3 frozen shadoweave.

I can't think of a single fight where I am unable to lifetap if I'm low on mana. Obviously you wouldn't do it in the middle of a murloc wave on morogrim or agents on Solarian if you have them beating on you, but that's just common sense.

We have 3 shadowpriests but run with 2. We generally have 4 mages in every raid and they're in their own group with a shaman for mana spring (+tide, when available) and Wrath of Air. One of our shadowpriests is almost always in a hunter group (2 hunters, spriest, 2 paladins or 3 hunters, spriest, paladin) and the other is in another group full of healers.

When I get a shaman for WoA I generally don't even need to pot as long as I use inner focus and shadowfiend whenever cooldowns are up. The DPS increase from the totem more or less keeps me full or atleast above 50% mana. Having a shaman I also consistently stay in 1-3 spot on DM, without shaman since the patch I've bumped down to around the 5th spot.

On longer fights our hunters always get a spriest (no BM hunters so they only buff themselves), the difference is significant looking at damage meters between fights they had a VT battery and fights they did not. Mages used to get shadowpriests but now they feel that shaman totem + mage atiesh buff is better for them than a shadowpriest. I disagree, but they rarely go OOM and bosses die so there's really no point in arguing.

Well, the numbers I cited were from Vonture's spreadsheet. My experience is that most fights involve moving around and such, so 1) I'm not chain casting and 2) I'm dropping out of the 5sr sometimes. On Mag, for instance, I'm usually assigned to cube clicking, which can potentially reduce my dps time substantially. I've done the fight with and without a shadowpriest, and the difference in both the scorch/fireball ratio I use as well as the total output will vary drastically based on having the shadowpriest or not. But either way, I think I've only gone true OOM (no evo, gem, or potion CDs) at around 3% or so.

As for the damage difference, I gave a rough number, but if you're interested in a more specific one, most mages will have wands in the 90-130 dps range and main dps in the 900-1050 range.

Call me biased due to my class, but I'm also the raid leader and try to figure out this kind of stuff on a regular basis...

Really, there are two different arguments here, being:
1) Who "gets the most" out of it
2) Who needs it the most

Now, many Warlocks and Paladins will argue that they get the most out of Shadow Priests--which, to an extent, is true--however I do not think they actually need it the most. As has been stated already, Warlocks can lifetap. Mana is not REALLY an issue for Locks, period. It has never been an issue for Warlocks in our guild, and it is more a luxury for them to have a Shadow Priest IMO. Paladins are arguable depending on if you have them MT healing or not, but in general Paladins are so much more mana-efficient than Priests that it is usually not required for them to have an external mana source.

My personal conclusion is that Fire Mages and Holy Priests are typically the most needy of the mana-using classes, followed by Hunters. Hunters get large benifit--however due to the fact that they have other means of doing DPS and mana recovery (Fel Mana) they tend to get slightly less priority than MT healing Priests or Fire Mages that piss through mana horribly.

I think if you want your Fire Mages to be able to sustain any notable damage in 7-10 minute fights, you more or less have to give them a Shadow Priest. Otherwise, they are simply going to be coasting at below-average damage figures for quite a while.

Fully potted, with double superior mana oil etc, I usually sustain dps for quite a while. I would much rather prefer a group with feral druid than a shadowpriest, especially as BM. Lotp makes the difference between more or less 100% uptime for FI, and it not being up all the time.

Put the paladins with the shadowpriest and tell them the price for that is permanent judgement of wisdom, mana problems for hunters solved!

Lifetapping is a dps loss. We don't actually cast from our health bar, we have to spend 1.5 seconds to convert that into mana: and even with our dots ticking, that results in quite a lot of downtime: I spend 1.5 out of every 10 seconds lifetapping. It's our version of downranking, and causes a dps hit also. And while yes I can just heal myself up, I take a further dps hit if I need to drain life because the healers are too busy to heal that HP back up (luckily that's rare.)

I'm not saying warlocks need it more or equal to mages, I don't know by what percentage a mage's dps increases with various specs. Just correcting your statement that mana isn't an issue for warlocks with a bit more details than the earlier post.

I get somewhere around a 15% dps boost from a shadow priest's mana regen as 1/21/39 (some day I should figure it out exactly -- just handwaving around what intervals I lifetap at and knowing the damage loss from tapping.)


Also, not a lock specs benefit the same amount from a shadowpriest. The nuking-oriented spec doesn't have as many dots ticking when we tap (so the dps loss is higher), our mana/second consumption is higher (nukes are less mana-efficient), and our lifetaps are far less time-efficient, than the dot-oriented spec (Destruction versus Affliction.)

By the same token, evocation is a huge dps loss for mages. While DP and mana gems (and mana pots of course) don't impact dps much, most everything else does. Even Invis is a nasty hit.

I'm not saying never give any warlocks a shadow priest but in real fights I can almost always find a better candidate for the raid as a whole. I prioritize elemental shaman and fire mages due to present mechanics.

Yeah when I was talking about this with a fellow mage, he was surprised to learn I spend far more time (and dps) on a raid lifetapping than he does evoc'ing. The thing is the evoc "feels" worse because it comes all at once.

I spent 9 seconds out of every minute lifetapping.

Your proper response to this, of course, is "but there's no cooldown on lifetap!" -- which I definitely concede.

Although selfishly I'd really like to get a better handle on how much both a fire and a frost mage actually gain from the shadowpriest . At least I'd feel better when I get kicked out of the group with the elemental totems AND the shadowpriest if I knew for sure it was better for the raid overall as opposed to just accepting that's what our mage raidleader thinks.


And this has been beaten into the ground, but I'd trade soulshatter for invis in a heartbeat . When it resists... I just cry! (literally. an outpouring of anguish on vent. apparently I'm amusing when I do this, but my heart is breaking inside.... Also I've gotten to the point enough where I'm holding back because soulshatter is only a 50% threat reduction that I am hoping warrior threatgen continues to scale as my gear does.)

That said, it's pretty darn funny when the (trash) mob peels off for the mage, he iceblocks. Mob turns to me because I'm now in melee range.... I soulshatter. And then it squishes the elemental shaman, who curses us at length as we suggest that perhaps he learn to manage his aggro so he doesn't die on raids. Good times!

You clearly understand shadow priests, I hope my raid leader gives me a shadow priest as well. I find that fire mages generally run OOM fastest, as a holy priest (dieing breed), can usually make it spamming rank 1 or 4 gheal through a fight with moderate cancelling/potting/regening.. But with a shadow priest I can make it the whole fight usually spamming rank 4 gheal, nonstop, sometimes without potting, depending on procs and what not.

I am inclined to agree, fire mages and holy priests get a very large benefit.

I'll hold you that Darkmantle next time I decide where to place you in our raids.