My guild is currently pounding through BT at a phenomenal rate and there is an inner argument regarding what the best classes are to combine with Shadow Priests. The raid leaders and officers are ranking it in the order of (regarding most important to get a shadow priest to least important):

1.) Mages
2.) Hunters
3.) Elemental Shaman
4.) Any DPS class with mana that isn't a Warlock
5.) Warlock

My argument is that we are wasting a large amount of a Shadow Priest's utility (in the health regen) grouping them up with classes almost exclusively other than warlocks. Their argument is that we can Life Tap and Dark Pact.

I'm wondering if anyone has any information on this topic, regarding which class is the best to combine with Shadow Priests. I've tried using the search function, and have yet to find anything that I'm really looking for.

Thanks,

Pre

The basic idea against giving warlocks a shadow priest is that they have so many more options to keep their dps going (even if it's lower). Mages, hunters and elemental shamans have exactly zero options for dps once they run out of mana and have to resort to wanding/auto shot/whatever. Thus, keeping your hp/mana topped up is of far less importance than feeding the other classes you mentioned with enough mana to see the encounter through.

While warlocks gain healing AND mana, they also don't need as much help with their mana as other classes.

On 1 hand, healers are the #1 class to group with shadow priests, but depending on their gear and the fight, it may not be needed. I really don't know what your needs in BT I can only answer based off of my knoledge of the classes...

If max DPS is what you're looking for, arcane mages is the #1 class to put with shadow priests. The more mana the arcane mage has, the more DPS he can do, as he always has the ability to get extreme DPS with extremely terrible mana efficiency. Even with a shadow priest though it can't be done much, but it's the #1 class where more mana gives more DPS.

Hunters I can't tell much, but they probably would gain a lot from shadow priests, the thing is in practice it never happens because the shadow priest goes with the mages (even if they aren't arcane if it's a long fight they will still be the #1 DPS class to need that mana), and with the mages goes a shaman (and a moonkin if you use one), having anything other than more DPS casters in that party is a waste. Shadow priests for hunters is only an option if you have 3 in the raid (which is definitely not a bad idea to bring if you can!).

Rogues and warriors obviously get the least from shadow priests and enhancement shamans, if you have them, will naturally be grouped with them, so again no point discussing.

Another thing about hunters is that it really depends how much your hutners are worth investing in as well (how good they are and their DPS)...
Note that while putting shadow priests with eachother helps the shadow priests a lot, they don't need it really and will benefit the raid more if spread out for multiple classes that need them. But depending on the fight, and especially if you have 3 shadow priests and have arcane mages in the raid, and no place to place the 3rd shadow priest efficiently, consider giving 2 shadow priests to the caster DPS group.

Generally with 3 shadow priests you would proabably have a "healer group", "caster DPS group" and a "leftover group" (2 other groups being physical damage and tank group). If you can arrange it well with the leftover group to be all mana users it's proably best to put the shadow priest there. Otherwise add him to the caster DPS group.

In a pure mana return POV, the only benefit a Warlock will get out of a Shadow Priest is less GCDs used to Life Tap. Comparing that to any other class that uses mana, you can see why your officers are (IMO, rightly) making that ranking.


Now if you factor in the healing from VE it becomes even worse to put Warlocks and SPriests together seeing as Warlocks have Fel Armor and a lot of goodies to heal themselves in the form of talents, skills and set bonii - something a lot of other classes lack.

We actually use shadowpriests for our healers mainly ;>

1. Healers
2. Mages
3. Elemental Shamans
4. Hunters / Warlocks

We dont have any Boonkins (thank God) and our Ele shamans are either trials or respecced to Resto or Enhancement. Hunters and Warlocks are more often than not grouped with melee or in a tank group for tanking and/or aura and the only time warlocks are in a SP group is if the healers need the extra HP or we just have too many SPs ;p

It honestly depends on the fight. Some fights are dps checks rather then healer checks. But if you were grouping them with dps I would definitely put warlocks last on the list also. Once mages or hunters or shamans run out of mana, we are done until it regens, for warlocks this isn't the case.

I agree with this assessment. Hunters going all out are incredible at consuming mana, and can go OOM faster than any other mana dependant DPS class (AOE Situations excluded). A hunter going all out with optimal shot rotations on Steady, Arcane and Multishot is going to see huge DPS, but also a huge mana output that needs to be resupplied (chain potting won't be enough here).

My ranking would be this for DPS classes:
1) Hunters
2) Mages / Elemental Shammies / Boomkins
3) Warlocks

Depends on what kind of Warlock. An Affliction Warlock really does not need to be in a Shadow Priest group while a Destruction one greatly benefits from doing so. If your guild runs three Shadow Priests in a raid that should be more than enough for everyone who needs it to benefit from.

Having two shadow-priests in the same group can greatly increase the amount of damage they are able to put out given a fight length/intensity (read amount of target switching). More dps is more mana, which makes the idea of having multiple shadow priests grouped together and rotating the raid through that group seem viable.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Do your Shadow Priests run out of mana while chain chugging potions? I think having a Restoration Shaman coupled with a Shadow Priest in a caster DPS group would have more of a benefit. You want to split your Shadow Priests up because in a caster group (especially for mages) they can do more DPS and your healing groups can cast higher rank heals. If you have enough Shadow Priests to stack more than one in a group, your debuffs might start getting pushed off.

From a hunter POV, without a shadow priest, I have to chain chug mana pots and ask for judgement of wisdom or go OOM very quickly. So I'd agree with those above:

1) Hunters
2) Mages
3) Boomkins/Warlocks/etc.

There's no simple answer to this.

How we use shadow priests is:

if fight is very mana consuming for healers, then healers get all 3 shadow priests

if fight has "dps timer" then dps gets it

if fights is average fight that's not tight on either, then usually we give 1 to healers 2 to dps or 1 to healers and 1 to dps.

Also some fights you might need to combine SP to same group for them to dps whole fight, if you have ele shammies or balance druids, they might need extra attention as well. Doesn't help much I guess, but like I said it depends a lot on nature of the fight and number of shadow priests you use.

I play a shadow priest, and my experience is that on fights like Kael or Vashj (read: multitarget scenarios), it would be exceptionally easy to run out of mana while chain chugging Supers. You guys also missed the bit about rotating through the group, so let me rephrase the question.

In a raid setting where a shadow priest is limited by mana, is it profitable to stack two shadow priests in one group, thereby increasing the shadow priest's DPS and thus the mana returned by both shadow priests IF you rotate members of the raid in and out of the group?

You can use one for a DPS group and one for a healer group though oom healers is not a nice thing.

So priority of needs?

Shaman (resto/elemental)
Paladin(prot/holy)/Priest/Warlock/resto druid
Mage(Fire over frost)
Druid(balance)
shadow priest
hunter

My argument is that shamans give the most buffs to a shadow priest and therefore deserve the shadow priest. The next set all benefit around the same in a raid warlocks do get more out of a shadow priest then any other class now that spiritual attunement got fixed. Dps druids and mages are less important as they are good dps but the druid is slightly more important then the mage because it would boost shadow dps a little however a mage with infinite mana is mroe deadly . I place shadow priest before hunter because it would double the group regen however you would lose the regen in another group. Hunters are mana dependant however they provide better melee buffs and benefit a caster group by next to nothing.

If there's only 1 shadow priest, it goes to a healer group, but if we have 2+ we stack as many warlocks as we can in a group with one.
Warlocks benefit from both VE And VT since they continuously need extra healing.
If it's a long fight and mages require it, we'll give them a spriest.

Our hunters are low on spriest priority since if we can fit them in with melee, we do.

You don't place a hunter in a caster group really to buff that group, you place a shadowpriest into a hunter group instead. Without a spriest, unless there's a paladin keeping up JoW and they buff to the max, they do suboptimal dps.

We usually have 2 shadowpriests.

1 group of Spriest, hunterx2/3, healer
1 group of spriest, magex3, shaman

Ever since the hunters got a shadowpriest they have been consistently been in the top 1-5 of damage dealt. Before they lagged at 5-10.

Our healers almost never get a spriest, partly because they say that then they can not spend their mana fast enough. Hunters first, mages second, in my opinion.

As to 2 shadowpriests in a group, while I really liked the few times it has happened (hey, no potting for me!) it is, unfortunately, a great waste. Pots are cheap.

There is a difference between locks and mages too.

Affliction locks would not need a SPriest group at all. A heavy destruction lock would.

There is also a difference between mages. A deep frost mage with clearcasting would not need the SP group as much as a deep fire mage.

So you have to look at the talent builds before disregarding or prioritizing the people stuffed into a SPriest group.

1 Good Hunters/arcane mages
2 Fire mage
3 Good warlocks
3 rest

My guild shifted from shadow priests in healer groups to shadow priests in mana-based dps groups on most fights. If we had a third raiding shadow priest we probably would give that to healers, but at the moment we run with 1-2. The bottom line is that if you put a shadow priest with a healer, all you do is replace potion timers with VT mana. But if you put a shadow priest with DPS, you free up the potion timer for dps potions (Destruction Potion, Haste Potion) and/or enable more aggressive casting.

As such, given that Super Mana Pots are what they are, a shadow priest will not increase healer throughput nor will it have a huge impact on healer sustainability, whereas you can extend both DPS sustainability and throughput in a caster group.

I would agree that Affliction locks are low on the totem pole, but with regards to hunters, if you have a BM hunter handy they work pretty well even mixed in with casters in a shadow priest group. Increased VT output along with spells buffed by Ferocious Insp certainly doesn't hurt. They do need it less than other hunter specs though given the typically less intensive shot rotation.

On any given Raid night we have 3 Shadow Priests. We usually set them up with 2 DPS groups consisting of Mages and Warlocks and the other with a Healing group. As others have mentioned, it can sometimes be fight dependent. We only have 2 Hunters that actively raid and they don't often get the benefit of a Shadow Priest.

We raid with one or two. We always have one and he is an all-star that I'd put up against any spriest in the game.

We use him in a group with the mages (2 to 3) and ideally an elemental shaman. That group (G2, G1 being the MT group) is ideal soon (2 mages, 1 shaman, 1 spriest, 1 BM Hunter). Ah, but is it? No, not at all for the raid as a whole. It is however 'ideal' for keeping mages happy (and we need them for some fights and frankly, they tend to get pissy and leave without constant love) and it makes the BM hunter silly happy. The spriest in question already knows he's a lynchpin of the raid and the shaman comes and goes.

It is fun playing with new raid roles. All I can really say though is that spriests are sickeningly nice to have around and if all of them could perform at the level of our #1 version, that would indeed be imbalanced. The only annoying part is the moving of people (overhealing healers) for mana and the sad 'need' for mages to have a decent spriest for long fights. Hell, I'd take our resident top spriest just for his single-target dps alone.

From Hunter and CL point of view.

Running with 2x SP, 2x Hunter (SV + BM) most of the time so:

1.
ranged: 2mages+elemental+bm hunter+SP

Contrary to belief all classes (can) gain 101 spellpower (read scorpid poison for hunter) in that group. While no one complains about +3% damage, and or mana/hp regain.

2.
For rest of classes i think arcane mages and ele.shamans benefit most from mana regain.
(don't have boomkins) difference really shows for those 2 as I noticed. On some fights (specific) healers are clearly top choice or AoE folks.

Hunter specific:
For Hunter mana alone I dare to say, MM hunter is currently biggest mana consumer then SV then BM. But BM is only spec that gives and takes to/from SP (damage for mana/hp) thus placing with SP.

MM and SV hunters doing max dps are using max special rotation that burns mana faster than anything but don't contribute to caster group dps sadly. Luckily BM is also great dps at the moment.

I'm SV speced and chain pot + dual mana oil (+mageblood) so i can handle most of longer fights with only manaspring/tide (while getting GoA also for 99agi to me = 25ap rest of raid) so I'm usually in healer/mt/leftover group. (3-4 shamans/raid here)
While this might mean I burn more consumables than most of people, i do have FD that saves those sometimes on a wipe