Most of you really need to realise that while Affliction warlocks most likely do not need a shadow priest that Destro warlocks do. A destro warlock is a mage with different flexibility.
You also need to consider the gear level of your warlocks vs your mages vs your hunters in order to justify who "needs" a shadow priest. A crappy geared player will not benefit from the shadow priest as much as any other well geared player would, so you should make sure that your well geared dpsers have shadow priests all the time.
I usually bring 2-3 shadow priests to the raid. I put them all in DPS groups as you can argue that the more DPS you output the faster the boss dies, the less mana intensive the fight is. There is a couple spam heal fights that I will give one group of healers a shadow priest but generally the DPSers have priority since we have awesome healers.
DPS Group 1:
Mage, Mage, DestroLock, BM Hunter, Spriest
DPS Group 2 will usually vary, if it's not a healer intensive fight then I will put a second shadow priest in that group and give the BM or TSA hunter to the melee group. Otherwise, the 3rd shadow priest will be in the healer group. One affliction lock is in the tank group and the second Affliction lock is in the healer group.
As a shadow priest I've had experience in practically every group setup mentioned here. But first, let me try summarizing the thread to this point.
- People are generally split on whether healers or DPS require shadow priests more
- Most people agree that warlocks are the DPS class that need them the least, and mages (and maybe hunters) need them the most
- Shaman are the healers that need shadow priests the most
- Stacking two shadow priests results in more total mana regenerated but might not help the raid as a whole
For a while we raided with one shadow priest in the healer group, and the second in that group too if we had one. The good news was that healers NEVER ran out of mana. The bad news was that stuff took a while to kill, meaning everyone else had to last a lot longer. Mage DPS suffered in particular.
Eventually we switched to the 1x shaman, 1x spriest, 3x mage setup for one group and gave the healers the other priest if we had one in the raid. As others have noted, this group setup means stuff dies faster, meaning your healers don't need as much mana. Extra mana for your DPS classes gives them the option of dealing damage faster too, by using mana inefficient high DPS cooldowns. And last, your raid gets more milage from wrath of air in this setup. If your mages and shadow priest are in separate groups and you only have one shaman to split between them, not all those casters get +100 spell damage. (Yes the healers could get +100 healing but that's not as useful.)
For most fights my prioritization is:
- Elemental / Resto Shaman
- Mage
- Hunter
- Moonkin Druid
- Priest / Paladin / Resto Druid
- Non-affliction Warlock
- Another Shadow Priest
- Affliction Warlock
And for healer intense fights, I'd put the healers just above mage but below the shaman.
Regarding stacking two shadow priests in the same group, this is only useful if both priests have poor gear and don't generate enough mana to support themselves. This is generally in the sub 750 spell damage range. Most of the time what happens is you generate far more mana than 5 people can actually use, and the 5 people who missed out on a shadow priest are mana starved.
Totem of Wrath (Does this stack? Spamming it stacks it briefly)
Mana Spring Totem
Wrath of Air (+121 w/ 2 pc T4)
Tranquil Air
Moonkin Aura
80s of Heroism/Bloodlust every 10 minutes(every fight).
I played a shadow priest through a majority of the pre-expansion raid content, as well as Karazhan and Gruul before taking an extended leave from raiding, so I have a good deal of experience with the class, if not some of the more bleeding edge encounters.
One thing to consider before grouping a Shadow Priest with multiple Warlocks is that it opens the possibility for the Priest to get into threat trouble. Because VE only produces threat for actual healing, your spells are going to produce a great deal more threat when you're feeding health to more than one person with lifetap. Obviously, different tanks means your mileage may vary, but I found that I had enough difficulty remaining below the tank even without constantly feeding health to an entire group.
Gruul: warrior MT is sustaining 1000 tps during the fight
Shadow priest is doing 900 dps on average, his parties healing is always healing he has salvation and shadow affinity.
His dps threat: 477tps
VT threat (assuming it does cause hate for this purpose): 112.5tps (no salvation added)
VE threat: 562 tps (assuming salvation and shadow affinity do not affect this healing, i believe they do but anywho)
shadow priests threat per second when party is taking damage is 1152 threat per second, main tank has a threat lead due to sensibly starting dps after the tanks have some aggro and he is doing 1000tps. 1152/1000 is 1.15 = 115% of main tanks threat generation. Shadow priest fails to pull aggro as chances are he will not catch up to the main tanks threat or be in melee range. This is just an example of how even if a shadow priest's VT and VE are affecting all and not reduced by salvation and talents he can still not pull aggro in the worst case scenario on gruul as it is almost impossible for all of the party to use 100% of the healing, almost.
Gruul: warrior MT is sustaining 1000 tps during the fight
Shadow priest is doing 900 dps on average, his parties healing is always healing he has salvation and shadow affinity.
His dps threat: 477tps
VT threat (assuming it does cause hate for this purpose): 112.5tps (no salvation added)
VE threat: 562 tps (assuming salvation and shadow affinity do not affect this healing, i believe they do but anywho)
shadow priests threat per second when party is taking damage is 1152 threat per second, main tank has a threat lead due to sensibly starting dps after the tanks have some aggro and he is doing 1000tps. 1152/1000 is 1.15 = 115% of main tanks threat generation. Shadow priest fails to pull aggro as chances are he will not catch up to the main tanks threat or be in melee range. This is just an example of how even if a shadow priest's VT and VE are affecting all and not reduced by salvation and talents he can still not pull aggro in the worst case scenario on gruul as it is almost impossible for all of the party to use 100% of the healing, almost.
Gruul is a terrible example of an agro sensitive fight. Play a shadowpriest on Morogrim or Void Reaver and lets talk.
We always group our single resto shaman with a Shadowpriest, usually no other healers get VT loving. On Naj'entus I think we had a Priest getting a VT as well maybe.
Outside of that, anecdotally from what I've seen - Hunters, then Mages benefit the most from Shadowpriests. When we first began raiding and all of our hunters were marks, and people were figuring out the new raiding mechanics, our hunters were abysmally low on the damage meters, same with Mages. Locks and Shadowpriests were destroying everyone. Slowly as time went on, and we figured out who needs what, someone thought it may be better to group Hunters and Mages with Shadowpriests, since a Mage going from 200k -> 400k is better than a Warlock going from 350 -> 500k total damage done. (rough numbers, just making things up).
Warlocks without a Shadowpriest do great DPS, and yes while they may benefit from a Shadowpriest, they can also benefit hugely from just a Shaman dropping Healing Stream and Wrath totem.
Now well into BC, the damage meters have changed quite a bit. Shadowpriests and Warlocks are still very near the top, but not necessarily always, since we put Hunters and Mages with Shadowpriests and our overall raid DPS is considerably higher.
shadow priests threat per second when party is taking damage is 1152 threat per second, main tank has a threat lead due to sensibly starting dps after the tanks have some aggro and he is doing 1000tps. 1152/1000 is 1.15 = 115% of main tanks threat generation. Shadow priest fails to pull aggro as chances are he will not catch up to the main tanks threat or be in melee range. This is just an example of how even if a shadow priest's VT and VE are affecting all and not reduced by salvation and talents he can still not pull aggro in the worst case scenario on gruul as it is almost impossible for all of the party to use 100% of the healing, almost.
As mentioned, Gruul is hardly aggro sensitive. But using your numbers, the Priest will have exceeded 110% of the MT's threat after 2 minutes. While this is fine from range, an unlucky Ground Slam could bring him/her to melee range, at which point they're dead.
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.
As a hunter, I can echo the fact that we go oom very fast if we are going all out (read multi-shot sucks up mana fast). Plus the healing from the SPriest plus Avoidance makes healing my pet an oddity rather than a constant necessity. This frees up my GCD and the mana hit from Mend Pet to allow for more DPS.
We typically have 2 Shadow Priests in our raid. One group is SPriest, Ele Shaman, Boomkin, 2x Mages (they rotate for this group). The other group is SPriest, Warlock, 2x Mages, Me (FI buff + my mana needs). Sometimes Group 2 will get a healer, or 2 Locks and 1 Mage depending on who is in the raid. For a while we lost a SPriest and only had one and you could see it in our overall raid performance.
in attempt to derail this slightly, how many spriests it too many? :o
Assuming they all do top notch dps, which classes would you take over them for dps?
Four is too many: You have five groups, two of which mostly lack mana bars (rogue group and tank group). The other three groups wants shadow priests.
If everyone deals equal DPS, I'd still take a fourth shadow priest though, since that gives one group infinite mana sustainability. 1000 DPS plus group mana regen of 1250 m/5 is better than 1000 DPS. I'd probably toss the mages in that group too and let them use all kinds of high DPS low DPM spells like Fireblast and triple stacked Arcane Blast. The only reason to cut the fourth priest would be if the fight has other demands-- for example you need a minimum of 5 mages and warlocks for AoE. Or if you are seriously running up against the boss' debuff limit.
As a rule of thumb never take a class that gets beat by another on DPS if it doesn't bring any extra utility? ;p
Like, if all your warlocks can beat all your mages, there is little point in bringing multiple mages. If your rogues lose to all the ranged DPSers in your raid and you're not going up against a kick-heavy fight, no point bringing rogues. In an optimal guild, though, all the DPS classes would do DPS similar enough to make them worth taking.
While our hunters certainly benefit from shadow priest, they seem to be doing 1000+ dps even in long single target fights without one, so I see little point in boosting them more.
Mages seem to gain considerably, moving from mage armor + potion / managem on every cooldown with occational scorch to Molten armor + few manapots / managems mixed with Flame Caps and constant fireballing is huge boost. However, I'd say that if you have raiding moonkins, they should have the highest priority since moonkins are really mana consuming when going full burn, elemental shamans should also have a high priority. Destruction warlocks gain quite a bit from spriest also, so we try to give them one if we can, them being 4th in line, depending on fight.
Since we don't have Moonkins, our normal ranged dps groups are like:
spriest
destrolock
mage
mage
elem. shaman
spriest
mage
warlock
BM hunter
(healer, another hunter or third lock, depending a bit)
We run with 2 destruction locks who outdps everyone in raid with a decent margin and 1-2 affliction locks on top of that and generally with 3-4 mages. If we have only 1 shadow priest, mages tend to gain priority over warlocks and while I don't always agree with the following, we tend to group destruction warlocks with elemental shaman without spriest, warlock performance stays superb and if we give manatide or innervate to elem. shaman, he can keep doing decent dps even without spriest.
If fight has AOE, then Mages are top priority by far and warlocks come second. After you've fed your mages and warlocks with mana for AOE, it's time to worry about others.
Last edited by zepi : 06/26/07 at 4:20 PM.
Reason: capitalization
While our hunters certainly benefit from shadow priest, they seem to be doing 1000+ dps even in long single target fights without one, so I see little point in boosting them more.
Mages seem to gain considerably, moving from mage armor + potion / managem on every cooldown with occational scorch to Molten armor + few manapots / managems mixed with Flame Caps and constant fireballing is huge boost. However, I'd say that if you have raiding moonkins, they should have the highest priority since moonkins are really mana consuming when going full burn, elemental shamans should also have a high priority.
I agree pretty much completely with that list, but would reverse 1 & 2. Simply put, a Moonkin does NOTHING for a Shadow Priest (we're great parasites of them though, and gain a great deal) while Elem Shammy & SP have a whole mutually beneficial symbiotic thing going.
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.
I'm not sure how many melee you run around with and how many Shadow Priests, but an Affliction Warlock needs to be grouped with a SP just about less than any other DPS caster class. If putting an extra Affliction Warlock in a group without a SP means it frees up a spot for a Hunter, that is the way to go, especially if it's a BM hunter. The only benefit a Hunter would recieve in a melee group is 5% crit if you have a Druid, and his pet getting more AP from SoE. While that's a "boost", a Shadow Priest eclipses that greatly. Hunters and Fire Mages get a much bigger boost by having a Shadow Priest than an Affliction Warlock. Destro would also benefit, and I am not really sure how much Demo would.
In reguard to destruciton locks and shadow priests mana regen.
Using the current warlock spread sheet with stats input from various gear levels appears to indicate that the DPS gain moving from infinite (yes, infinite has in forever) mana sustainability via life tap to no life tapping results in a destruciton shadow lock DPS gain of roughly 16% reguardless of gear level. This makes sense because life tap scales with +dmg so while damage you could be doing instead of lifetapping goes up with gear the amount of time needed to tap goes down due to large taps.
Healing loss from LT is sometimes brought up but even at 100% mana regen levels we're talking 150 hp/s lost tops which can usually be covered in 3-4.5 secs per min from one healer via HoTs. Unless your healers are seriously overstressed health loss is a nonissue.
Given this fact it's obvious that providing a warlock with a shadow priest could not possibly increase DPS beyond 16% and is likely going to increase their DPS by a smaller percentage. Basically any class that is likely to realize gains of greater than 16% deserves a shadow priest for mana regen more. I will leave it to the other classes to assign some actual numbers to the effect a shadow priest has on their DPS but I've played around with the mage spreadsheet enough to know that they gain far more than 16% DPS by clicking the shadow priest box. I neither have experience playing as nor am familiar with the math reguarding BM hunters and I would love to see some data on that.
That said, in a 25 man raid there's usually 1 healer centered group, 1 melee centered group, 1 tank support group. That leaves two groups to place your destruction locks in. What happens to often is the group stacked with spell casting DPS buffs usually looks something like ele shaman, shadow priest, and 3x mages. This leaves the locks and the hunters off in the last group as a psudo garbage group full of leftovers.
While it's true that locks probably don't need a shadow priest as much as mages and elemental shaman it is also true that depriving you destruction locks of ele shaman buffs or moonkin buffs is very detramental to not only their own DPS but also the raid shadow DPS (no crit buff = less ISB uptime) which means less VT mana for everyone.
06/26/07, 10:25 AM
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