I began TBC as my guild's only Shadow priest, and when arenas kicked off, I chose to PvP as Shadow as well. I played on a decent team of players with middling interest in the arena system, and we managed to do alright for ourselves with ten games a week (1900-2000 range for most of the season). I spent the points I earned to improve my Shadow gear exclusively, and as time went by, I became more and more enthused about arenas and PvP in general. At the start of Season 2, I happily went about spending my 5000 points to augment my existing gear. Right now, I have 11000 unbuffed hp and 415 resilience (~450 by the end of this week), which I think is more than respectable.

Anyway, Season 2 started, and I went about trying to find myself an arena team (previous one disbanded - one member left for a very serious team, one has more or less stopped playing). I want(ed) to participate at the highest level of competition for this season, so I approached players with similar gear and goals. The answer, so far, has simply been "Shadow priests are very weak in 5v5." Maybe I would be worth bringing on some sort of zerg team, I am told, but no one is interested in making one of those. Warrior/Paladin/Shaman/X with two healers seems to be the order of the day, and I just don't seem to have a place there.

This brings me to the heart of my question. At this point, it seems clear that I will not make it onto a serious 5v5 team this season. This is very, very disappointing, especially since our guild will probably finish up all of the existing PvE content within a month. Hopefully I will get some few points from a 3v3 team, and meanwhile, I am left with several options for 5v5:

(1) Keeping at it, attempting to pick up some sort of backup spot on a top team, and keeping myself free in the meantime
(2) Joining/forming a guild point-farming team, good for a 1700 rating and a fair number of poitns a week
(3) Attempting to form my own competitive team from scratch (with what composition? I honestly don't know), probably by cherrypicking some of the better players from less competitive guilds
(4) Same as one of the above . . . except playing seriously as Holy (with a combination of PvE healing gear, PvP Shadow gear, and 28/33/0, I could approximate midrange Holy PvP gear)

Option (4) would also mean an immediate end to my raiding career, but that's another issue entirely. There's also another choice I have to make: for the long term. Should I be spending my arena and honor points on healing gear, hopefully reaching the top by the start of Season 3 (and finding a decent team then), or should I continue spending points on fleshing out my Shadow set? This is a huge, huge decision, and whichever way I go is basically a gamble on my chances of finding a team as either spec for Season 3 (or 4). I really have no idea of what I should do. If anyone has any advice or insight into what I should do about any of this, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

I'm in abit of the same situation as you, started already in season one for me though, a shadow priest is just not wanted for 5vs5 I am afraid.

I am not really sure if their is anything you can do about it tbh.

You could ofcourse spec holy for pvp and start collecting gear for that as well, but not really sure of how much more "in demand" this will make you.

Even if my team is less serious and has both me and a feral druid so we spent most of our time at mid 1700's due to this and having no really reliable healers, I can feel your pain. I just feel they could be a lot higher without me dying every time someone sneezes. And I do have 4 pieces of gladiator's gear, the weapon and some honor rewards, so for that rating I am pretty well equipped.

But anyway, in my mind the solutions are 4, mostly what you described:

a) Just play with my team for fun and laughs and stick at the 1700's.

b) Form a new 2Xwarlocks/paladin/me/x team to try to be more competitive, even if I am unsure how far we can go with this team. It will certainly be rough at first while we are not arena geared. But I am not sure how much of an option it is for me seeing it's hard to find people interested in arena beyond point farming at all.

c) Do the same with a 3vs3 team, where the scenario can have more success. Feels a bit like playing in league b though.

d) Also pondering starting to gather healing gear, but I can't afford the weekly respec and certainly can't stay holy for raiding at this point (we are at Kael). The appeal in it is limited anyway though, shaman/paladin really seems a better healing combination. Even if I guess mana burn and elemental shaman could work too. But this is definitely too much trouble for everyone involved.

I would go with b if I knew I could find suitable people, but since I am not so confident in that, it will propably be a combination of a and c.

You could respec twice a week, unless your one of those guilds that raids like, tuesday, thursday, sat, sun.

Just be like me start recruiting your own team... We aren't "great" but we float between 1650-1800 depending on which slackers from my group are on last season.
Now we run 1 Plds / Ench Shaman / myself / Rogue / ( Pld / Shaman healer ) for the most part because all the warriors / warlocks were ninjaed away.

The 2 PLDs are alts of ppl. The ench shaman is an alt. Only Myself / Rogue are mains. We aren't very serious... Funny thing is we really only have trouble with 2 warriors / X / 2 PLD groups mostly... Whenever we were matched up against the 3 lock / pld / shaman groups it was a laughfest ( mostly due to Grounding Totem )...

I know my team won't get to 2500... but I just play for fun...

Shadowpriest is like the affliction warlock.

Your only place in 5v5 is with each other, so grab an affliction lock, find an elemental shaman and a holy paladin, and throw in whatever else for the 5th slot (warrior, hunter, mage, moonkin druid, or another warlock imo), and practice insta-gibbing warrior teams.

Ill echo this statement. Heel, you and I are in a similar situation PvP wise. My affliction buddy and I were very highly rated in 2v2. We dicked around on some seperate 5v5s and never really found our place. Most teams I was on, I would SW:P the kill target, dispell, silence, fear, then try and stay alive while healing myself. It sucked mostly because I was typically the first kill target and my survival with only 1 other healer and out of shadowform was limited.

I did, however, fill in some games for a very highly rated 5v5 team. 2100ish, and they finished higher later without me. It had 1 warlock, 1 amazing MS warrior, 1 pally, 1 Ele Shaman, and 1 feral druid. One might argue that it was the MS warrior that won the bracket for them, but by pairing with a warlock we could cause enough havoc to make it not worthwhile to try and dispell. Plus, about 50% of the time the opponents would go after the warlock or shaman first, which took away my constant role of "just survive a little bit longer than the other guy".

This season I am rebuilding from scratch. Picking the best players from my guild, but only some with arena experience.

Its gonna look like this: Me, Affliction warlock (my 2v2 partner), Mage, Pally, Warrior/Rogue

Both my warlock friend an I will be the best geared to be focus fired, and most teams will probably stick with coming for one of us first. I have faith in the other teammates ability to protect us enough, as well as crank out the damage. The only downside I see is that I will be the lone backup healer again. We will see how it works.

Pretty much as everyone else has said, we play with a Shadow Priest in S1 and will be doing it again in S2, unless you stack them with another Shadow Priest or Warlocks they aren't that good. If the goal was serious play I'd rather get another class in since finding an Affliction Warlock is rather hard.

Your best bet would probably be to form a new team since you could play to the strength of your class then, the basics would be Paladin, Warlock, Warrior, You, Someone else, you could try without a Warrior technically, but it's hard at times without one.

We raid seven days a week.

Just make spellcloth, shadowcloth and mooncloth every 4 days. That pays for most of my respecs between Destruction and Affliction. Of course, I only do the primal grinding while I'm affliction.

And, for the record, I've been in a successful 5v5 arena team from the start (#2 in the battlegroup) and haven't played with a Shadow Priest in the team since like, week 2 of the season.

Shadow Priests are very viable in 5v5, the problem is everyone runs the same 5v5 set-up Warrior Paladin + 2 DPS + 1 Healer.

Shadow Priests are not viable in this set-up because they usually go OOM before the fight is over and are very squishy due to lack of any escapability effects like blink, iceblock, etc that mages bring to the table or soul-link like Warlocks.

Try a 4 DPS & 1 Paladin set-up and you will see how viable shadow priests can be. The typical set-up is 2 affliction warlocks, 1 shadow priest, affliction lock, Paladin is the only 3 viable for this set-up, the other 2 can be any DPS but a rogue or MS warrior is recommended for MS or wound poison.

I have been seeing a lot of people looking for arena teams or for people to fill their teams lately. I am myself looking for some additions for my teams, but having had a 1900 rating last season I do not really want to pick up some random person from Orgrimmar chat. Yes I can armory them, but the sad fact is it is harder than it needs to be to get quality team members. Maybe someone could come up with a "dating" site for arena?

Thats not really any better then picking someone up in Orgrimmar, and reputation systems are horribly flawed. If you want to find good players, your best really is to ask some friends and see how people did last season, if someones a good player but was in a 1600 team the entire time chances are you could get them to join you.

I'd love something like this. I've had basically no luck finding anyone that actively likes to pvp, mostly just people that want to get their ten games in for the week. Knowing at least who's out there is much better then desperately hoping for people to make themselves known or begging to get on an already established team.

..which is kind of sad isn't it? I mean, you're a Warrior. If nothing else, find a good Paladin in EJ and ride that to 2k+ if you'd like games. That setup is as cookie-cutter as it gets for that bracket. Warrior/Paladin/Mage is also really dominant.

Yes I know the good setups. Finding good people is the problem.

What makes it worse is that most active players are in a raiding guild. Scheduling around that is not fun. And when almost all your friends are in the same raiding guild (as is the case for me, after 2 years of playing with the same guys most contacts outside the guild have eroded), then where do you go about finding quality PvP partners when all the interested guildies are already taken?

It is always possible to pick up someone especially if you have an already made team. But as someone with full PvP gear and decent rating last season I do not want to waste my time with someone who just wants to AFK his way to free epics. And most people who are now entering the arena circuit are of that variety. Some might decide to like it and become serious about it, but I don't have the time to find the few gems.

This whole thing is putting a serious dent in my arena enjoyment.

The main "flaw" of the shadow priest is 2 things I guess (in perception)

1. Soft DPS compared to say, an elemental shaman or Soul Link warlock

2. Tendency to go OOM quicker.

The best thing you can do to combat this is setup a team that alleviates these issues, and find a UA lock to play with. Stacking DOTs (and debuffs in general) is a powerful tool that no class combo can add like shadow priest + UA lock. Paladin, UA Lock, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman, and Warrior is probably the most ideal setup for this, but you could probably play Paladin UA lock Shadowpriestx2 or Lockx2 with a rogue to a pretty high level as well. You have *some* lineup flexibility, the most important thing is making a team setup with lots of high-dps low survivability targets so you aren't assisted on and killed every time.

Against any decend team, your not really "counted" as a dps class, your role in 5v5 with high rating/against good teams mostly consist out of tanking their dps as shadowpriests are in most cases the first target people will go for(obviously as it screws us over badly and we don't have awesome cooldowns as iceblock and such.

In other words, use most of your instant spells, put some SW:P's up for blackout procs,dispell self/team/opponents,shield,mass dispell on bubbles/start and possibly do a finishing blow with a SW:D.If you can kite by having a hunter/shaman or even a warrior then you'll be able to do some dps in between kiting and doing the above already.

Shadowpriests are underrated in my eyes, playing 3dps+2 healers isn't the only option in 5v5, having a support class can REALLY be usefull and is definately underrated.

Or as mentioned above, playing 4dps+paladin healer would make shadowpriests shine slightly more then they are in most common setups, having UA makes your dots unable to be dispelled properly meaning that people will die from dots alone if you dot multiple targets and interupt their heal(er)s enough/on the right moment.

In terms of gear, i'd personaly rather gimp my damage a bit for more survivability as as long as i'm not dead, the other people in my team are safe, with some skilled healers they won't kill you that easely either because of SF+IFire.

If you have issues finding people, try dueling people outside of if/orgri/shatt and people tend to take a look after a while anyway after checking AH/bank/whatever, if you can find some good people by seeing them duel/dueling them yourself you can talk to them and if your any good yourself you should be able to get them to join you if they aren't in any serious team, worked for me in S1 at least ^_^

Other way is obviously inviting guildies/friends but i presume you've tried this already as thats the easiest way to find people.

Do we have a thread that is mostly for discussion of arena lineups and synergies? Discussion of tactics and gear is one thing, but building the right arena team from the beginning is another.

The 5v5 megathread is kind of all over the place, I am thinking we should ask the mods to lock it and start separate threads for focused discussion. That way wouldn't have random threads littering the PvP forum about what kind of partners are good for each and every class and spec.

Your chances of being on a serious 5v5 team are indeed diminished by the fact that a Discipline priest (possibly with some Shadow) is almost categorically preferable to a deep shadow Priest. Just as you wouldn't want to run around with a Ret Pally or a Fury Warrior, a serious team would probably not have a Shadow Priest in its ideal roster, from my experience.

Again, though shadow priests do much better in lineups with heavy dps. Paladin as the healer, plus ice mage, warlock, shadow priest + 1 dps have a lot of CC to throw around. If the last DPS is an elemental shaman, you have 4x magic dps and can blow up warriors easily. Use CC to lock down 1-2 healers, and then just unload into the warrior with all the burst you can manage. Lead with deathcoil, then follow with AP+frostbolt+fireblast, warlock dots and nukes, SWP into SWD, and EM+CL / NS+LB / earth shock should drop any warrior.

The hard part is getting your coordination down to the point where you can do that easily.