VictoriaMyst

ive seen all the priorities for spell rotation, but I haven't seen anything on when to use Vampiric Embrace. Is there a certain rotation when to use that spell, or is it random? I normally make it one of the first spells that I cast.

 

• DeeNogger

VE causes essentially no threat upon application, so if you are going to use it casting it first during that few moments of "let the tank get a head start" is good. VE does, however, increase your threat by a large amount because of the extra healing aggro. I dont know the math off the top of my head, but I recall hearing that VE healing aggro will be up to 40% of your total aggro if all 5 party members are being healed (over heals cause 0 threat). Use that as a ball park for how much extra threat VE will add. At least for my guild, using VE on a boss fight is the exception, not the usual.

I write things The word of DeeNogger New Blog! 7/6/2009

 

galzohar

The reason for VE not being in the rotation is that the imporance of it depends on the fight. If you're healing heavily pop it first... If you're having aggro problems never pop it at all (or pop once you stop having aggro problems in place of a MF). In general you should probably put it up when it's down and you're supposed to cast MF by the rotation, although again this is fight-specific if you're needing to do lots of healing VE increases in priority, if you have aggro problems it drops down all the way to "never use it" depending on how severe your aggro problems are and how important the is healing you do.

 

Caligula

I use VE on every fight except Loot Reaver. It's just unnecessary threat there and the healing isn't too intensive so it's really doing nothing except generating extra threat. Even on Gurtogg, a similar encounter (threat-wise) I use VE. The extra healing buffer on that fight lightens the load on the healers.

I usually refresh VE when it has between 5 and 10 seconds left (priority wise, after VT and SWP) just in case of resists.

 

tedv

When it's not crucial to have the buff up but still helpful to have (ie. most boss fights), I often use Vampiric Embrace as a 1.5 second filler in my rotation. For example, suppose you have 2 seconds left on your Vampiric Touch but your Mind Blast and Death are on cooldown, and Shadow Word: Pain is already up. You can either wait half a second and cast touch, you can cast a full mind flay and lose a little mana regen from touch, or you can refresh embrace and start casting your touch when it has .5 seconds left.

Embrace is also a good spell to cast if you have to move but can't cast death or pain for some reason. It's almost always worth one global cooldown per minute to keep it up though.

 

• Snowy

Agreed on the use of Embrace. Moving to the next platform at Al'Ar? Refresh Embrace. Phase transition about to happen at Hydross? Refresh VE. Moving around at Council (which happens frequently) -- refresh VE... and so on.

On fights where I make a substantial contribution to healing via VE where groups might even be planned around it, I don't wait until it's about to fall off, I do it with 10 seconds left, to guard against a resist. Generally that's Naj'entus, Teron, Gurtogg, RoS P2/P3, Mother, Illidan P2 for BT content.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

◊ Kalman

VEing during movement has the nice side benefit of refreshing your Crusade stack, as well; I've even used it specifically for this purpose (VEing a sheeped add on Lurker, for example).

The only fights I don't like VE on are VR, Morogrim, and Hydross. On Morogrim, even with fade I seem to have bad luck (or our murloc tanks just aren't generating enough heal threat). On Hydross it was mostly due to one of our former tanks being terrible at threat gen; I can probably get away with it now. VR, obviously, just not worth it.

 

• DeeNogger

With the new heroic haste rewards I am given the decision between haste and spell damage. On the last page someone did some quick-and-dirty math to show that 2 haste is about equal to 1 spell power. Is this for all situations, or just for when you have enough haste to obtain a 2.75 (or better) Mind Flay? Right now I have the Bracers of Havok with a +12 pvp gem in it. This gives my bracers slot 42 spell power. The heroic bracers have only 29 spell power but also have 25 spell haste. A similar situation can be said for my pants slot, I currently have Trial Fire pants (with 3x +9 spell power gems) which have 76 spell damage. The heroic pants have only 54 spell power but have 45 spell haste.

Assuming that the 2 spell haste = 1 spell power is in fact the case at all times (as far as increasing your overall dps) than these items are very very close to equal. What are you guys doing? Dropping the higher spell power for haste? Or keeping the better spell power till T6 loot that has haste and high +damage?

I write things The word of DeeNogger New Blog! 7/6/2009

 

galzohar

Bracers of havoc are rather weak (as are many of the epic bracers available) - "of shadow wrath" gets up to 44 damage afaik and it's green...

 

• DeeNogger

I would say that the 2 +damage difference is made up for by the stats on the Havok bracers. Regardless, its not a huge difference. Also, the holy grail of bracers would be the epic "of shadow wrath" that has a very small chance of dropping off the beast boss in the basement of karazhan.

I write things The word of DeeNogger New Blog! 7/6/2009

 

Metrosexuelf

I'm nowhere near the number cruncher that most other people that post here are; however, my own impression from experimenting with it is that you shouldn't bother with either the legs of the bracers. The legs because it is too big of a hit in damage and the bracers because you will soon have access to enough hearts to craft [Bracers of Nimble Thought]. Unless you can hit 140ish passive haste I don't think the drop in damage is worth it.

 

galzohar

It's more like a 5 damage difference though since the 12 damage pvp gem can go replace another 9 damage gem so 2+3=5. And yeah the karazan bracers are awesome but so hard to get... Shadow wrath green should cost a few gold on the AH - and be better and much much cheaper than bracers of havoc.

 

Jimad

I'm hoping someone can provide me with a bit of information about shadow priests in a raid setting. I'm a warlock in a guild that is 4/6 SSC and 1/4 TK. I know almost nothing about shadow priests, and how they work, other than their damage boosting buffs are simply incredible for us locks, and pretty damn good for other casters, as well.

1) Our guild leaders have become fairly reluctant at recruiting / utilizing shadow priests simply because "they die too much". Would it be somewhat common for shadow priests to be higher on the aggro table than other dps classes, causing their own death? If extremely high inherent aggro isn't the cause of frequent spriest deaths, is there another reason for them "dying too much"? Does it just boil down to bad players? I really want a spriest in our raids for Shadow Weaving and Misery, and I know VE is quite beneficial to other classes as well. Can anyone provide me with a good counter to the "spriests just die too much" argument.

2) Could someone be so kind as to make a summary of all the benefits a shadow priest brings to a raid. I know I've come across quite a few in this thread, but I'm sure a few are missing. I'm really hoping I can get enough evidence of their benefits that I can turn the opinions of the leaders around. Frankly, I'm tired of seeing the melee and hunter classes benefiting so much from Windfury, Curse of Recklessness, Leader of the Pack, Sunder Armor, etc ..., while our casters receive nothing. There is a false belief that our melee and hunters are simply better than the caster classes. The fact is they receive numerous buffs to their damage, but the casters can't get Misery, Shadow Weaving, Totem of Wrath, Heroism, and on and on. Help me show them the light, and get a spriest back in the raid! Thanks =)

 

Amonra

1. They shouldn't die any more than other classes provided they don't use SWD at inappropriate times. Other than SWD they don't take any more damage than other classes.

If they use VE and it is healing a lot then they will pick up a lot of aggro, but with decent tanks its only really Void Reaver and Gurtogg where threat becomes a serious issue. If VE is doing a lot of healing then they are bringing a big benefit to the raid.


2. The first shadow priest brings an enormous benefit to the raid. +5% extra damage for every mage on the raid. +15% extra damage for every warlock on the raid. The actual benefit depends how many of those classes you bring to the raid, but if you have a reasonably balanced number then thats a huge benefit.

They regen a lot of mana for everyone in their group. About as much as if you could chug a super mana potion every minute. This enables the casters/hunters in their group to do further damage. Alternatively it allows the healers to last much longer.

Threat permitting, VE can also be a big help on encounters as it helps to reduce the demands on raid healers. However, while useful, there aren't a lot of fights where this is exceptionally useful with the probable exception of phase 3 RoS. Depends how many healers you have I guess, if you are short on healers then this could be a big benefit.

Above all this, a well played shadow priest can output good dps in their own right. On a few fights they can even top the dps charts. Prior to finishing Hyjal/BT they can do even better than most classes because in just tailored gear they can be in the equivalent of T5 already.

The second shadow priest adds rather smaller, but still very useful benefits - their own dps plus mana regen for another group on the raid. Adding more than 2 shadow priests has very diminishing returns because it starts to become difficult to find mana dependent groups to usefully add them to.

 

Polleke

1) Shadow priests don't die more often. The threat we generate is not higher than any other class by itself. If agro is the reason they are dying, drop VE and pulling agro is really the tanks fault. VE is not the reason you want a shadow priest anyway. Also the average mage will have less hp than the average spriest.
If your raid leaders experience is that they die too often it boils down to bad players.

2) Reason number one is mana. It will allow your mages to go all out on damage. And once you bring more, you can also get your hunters, warlocks and last but not least your healers some extra mana to play with. And with some extra I mean up to 25000 mana (thats 10 mana potions) to each group member on fights like A'lar. Thats really non trivial amounts, and not comparable with judgement of wisdom, mana spring, blessing of wisdom, not even close.

We give a 5% damage boost to all casters damage through misery. Thats more than flasks will give you. Shadow damage for your warlocks is increased with 10% through shadow weaving. Thats like an extra CoS on a target.

We provide group healing over time that can be really helpful on some fights. But it's certainly not the number one reason to get a spriest. The threat generated through it can be a problem. Nevertheless there are fights where a spriest can mean your healers dont have to pay attention to that group.

On trash, spriests can provide quite decent emergency healing. On several occasions I've saved trash pulls with dropping out of shadowform and popping a few heals.

In short, your raid leaders are really short sighted if they think spriests will not give benefit to their ranged casters. Most TBC fights still favor ranged dps over melee.

* Bla

 

◊ Kalman

We regularly raid with 3 spriests and it works out fairly well for us. Generally the first one goes to casters, second to mixed caster/hunter group, and the third either doubles up or goes to healers depending on the fight.

DeeNogger, consider the PvP bracers as another option - they're my regular raiding bracers. I give up a bit of damage vs Havok/Shadow Wrath, yes, but pick up a *lot* of HP.

 

◊ Asgorath

Particularly when [Vindicator's Dreadweave Cuffs] are released next week. You only lose 1 damage from [Bracers of Havok], but pick up 37 Stamina.

 

galzohar

Is there actually a noticeable benefit for doubling up shadow priests, assuming they at least get a shaman in the healer group? In top end raiding to shadow priests actually get mana limited spamming potions that giving them another will increase their DPS by any meaningful amount?

 

• Endahl

The likelihood of mana becoming an issue gradually goes down as gear improves. Mana management really shouldn't be capping shadow priest damage if mana potions and shadowfiend are managed right, unless a freak accident eats the shadowfiend. There are some benefits to having two shadow priests together, such as being able to use destro pots and possibly having more leeway for SWD on certain fights due to double VE, but overall the effect on dps shouldn't be terribly dramatic.

 

Metrosexuelf

The only fight I consistently need to use pots on is Illidari Council. There really is no benefit in stacking two shadow priests in a group -- better to just give one to healers and one to mages.

 

◊ Kalman

In T6 content, this may be more the case, but in T5 content, I consistently need pots to maintain a full rotation on Alar, Morogrim, and Lurker.

The benefit to doubling up is that you wind up with two spriests fully capable of tab-dotting every single add they see or running a full burn MB/SWD rotation essentially indefinitely. If your healers aren't running into mana issues, and you have 3+ spriests (we occasionally bring 4, and usually bring 3 simply because 2 of them are officers, I'm high attendance, and the 4th does occasionally like to raid) doubling up isn't a terrible idea, at least during T5.

 

Oni

My guild sometimes runs 3 Spriests on farmed instances, but only two to make room for healers and more prodctive DPS on "new" content.

With 3/5 avatar and the meditation changes in 2.3 my full burn longevity has risen dramatically, not enough to get off the potion crack-pipe, but by a decent margin. Unfortunately, we never double shadows in one group, one will be in with the two holy priests and the other with the mages and elemental shaman. As set up the spriests call mana battery or melter due to the gains from the shaman.

 

nataku

Having two spriests in the same group is only beneficial for the two spriests. The rest of the group will have an overflow of mana (other than maybe a CoH priest going spam crazy). Spreading out the spriests to more mana users results in more people having extra mana to go all out with. The spriests will be the only ones in their groups that heavily use potions instead of a whole group of people who weren't grouped with the stacked spriests. Besides, there is a ready supply of mana potions in T5 instances, so the spriests don't even have to worry about paying for too many potions. Back when I was doing T5 content, other mana users actively mailed me Nethergon Energy that they pick up in raids or the 5 mans since they didn't need them for themselves :P

For T6 instances, I agree that the only encounter where I heavily mana potion is Illidari Council. Illidan has plenty of breaks for my mana to regen naturally and every other fight is short enough where I can get by with 1-2 mana potions should my shadow fiend fail on me or if it's Kaz'rogal.

 

• Snowy

Stacking 2 spriests together seems sub-optimal to me, unless you're raiding with 4 or more of them. The only time we ever stuck 2 of us together was when we first reached Kaz'Rogal -- it allowed a spriest/spriest/mage/mage/ele shammy group to go full tilt the whole fight, instead of us running away at 30% or whatever. Our gear was considerably worse at that time, so the fight took a lot longer. These days I don't even pot and usually end the fight with well over half my mana bar left, due to it going so much faster each successive week.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Oni

Exactly...

Not to mention that while it may make it a bit easier on the rest of the DPS gear for gear a shadow priest really isn't going to comepete with an arcane mage.

Shadow Priests merely matured a bit faster then the other classes do to higher base/easier i.e. farmed/crafted tier 5 gear. In T5 the other casters well surpass us on overall output.

Overstacking Spriests for more mana is gimping raid DPS when there are far to many DPS checks in the encounters.