1- What is the role of shadow priests in PvE raids?
• In most raids, I am in a healers or offensive casters group. My main role is to improve mana regeneration of the group (Vampiric Touch). Another role is health regeneration (Vampiric Embrace) following aoe damage (ie.: Gruul's Shatter ability).
• Shadow priests also improve the damage done by other spellcasters (Misery, Shadow Weaving), and can still use their dispel ability.
• While we do reasonable dps, our main role is indirect support through damage dealt to enemies.
2- What is the talent tree required to be a raiding shadow priest?
Here is the core talent spec you should get for raiding (you can choose spirit tap or blackout on the first tier - farming vs pvp):
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?000000000000000000000000000000000000000000053250010250123051051
• the remaining points can be spent on anything you wish, although most shadow priests will fill 14 points in discipline for Meditation and Inner Focus.
Here is my personal spec, if anyone wants to know:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?500212013000000000000000000000000000000000053252310251123051051
3- How do you play a shadow priest?
• I will only cover a basic boss fight. For trash, follow your instinct.
• Always remain in shadowform unless there is an emergency (ie.: most healers died and the boss is at 2% while the tank is up). We are not healers or hybrids, our usefullness is dependant upon our dps.
• Keep your dots up on the target all the time (especially Vampiric Touch) and use Mind Flay constantly. Be careful of using Vampiric Embrace early in the fight, it may raise your aggro too quickly.
• On long fights, do not to use mind blast and sw:death too often, they are not mana efficient and may cause you to go oom too quickly.
Resist the temptation of shielding yourself unless necessary, it costs a lot of mana and chances are Vampiric Embrace will help you regain health. Most of the time, I will use a mind blast if I quickly need some more hp.
• Nightbane is a good boss to gauge your abilities as a shadow priest. If you can manage not to go oom on him, you play your class right.
Some useful mods to help you:
• KLHThreatMeter - Will give you a good idea of the threat you generate. Do not raid without this.
• A dot indicator (I use Chronometer, available at wowace.com) - Helps you know when you cast your dots and when they are about to expire.
4- What stats do I need to be a good shadow priest?
Shadow Damage. Basically, this is the most important stat since our ability to regenerate mana and support our group is directly related to our ability to deal damage.
Since all of our spells are shadow, well, figure it out. Aim for at least 1k shadow damage.
Other nice stats: Stamina, Intellect are always useful. A small amount of hit rating is good (although Shadow Focus is already +10% Hit). Mp5 is good to help mana regeneration.
Not so nice stats:
• Spell Critical Hit - wasted on a shadow priest. All of our mana efficient spells (dots, mind flay) cannot crit. The spells that do crit are mana inefficient and only do 50% more damage on crits.
• Spirit - not useless, but not very good (unless you don't get meditation, then yes it's useless). Shadow priests spend most of their time in the "5 seconds rule", which minimize the effect of the mana regeneration gained from spirit.
WARNING: rants in the following sections
5- Alright Saercain, what is your problem with the l33t gear dropping in raids?
• Most of the equipment for offensive spellcasters seems to be focused for mages (with a lot of spell critical hit) or warlock (spell hit and stamina - much better for shadow priests though).
• Even our tiered armor is filled with Spirit and spell critical hit (just take a look at the tiered vendors in Shattrah).
• Note: Most people say it is because the "Regalia" armors are made with "Smiting" priests in mind. Alright then, I ask you, how often do you see a "Smiting" priest in a raid doing dps? If you do see them tell me, because I don't see those often.
• In raids, the majority of priests are either holy/disc and are primary healers, or they are shadow priest and are "mana batteries". And don't even try to tell me about power infusion. Misery does more for a raid than power infusion would do even with a 10 sec. cooldown.
What kind of Bizarro world are developpers living in that they bother making raid gear for a non-existant spec. For farming?
6- Ok, well what happens in the future?
• Here is what I think will happen. Many shadow priests have already reached their optimal gear (Shadoweave set, crafted sets), and items that should be clear upgrades (tier 5 quality loot), will mostly be "sidegrades" until Black Temple.
• Consequence: The necessary nerfs to Shadow Priests will have to be reversed due to the poor itemization. Other classes will improve their damage, while shadow priests will remain at more or less the same level.
7- The problems of Blizzard
• Shadow priests do too much dps for the amazing abilities they bring in raid.
• It's kind of true. Let's say there is 4 mages and 2 warlocks in the raid. Simply by keeping my dots on the target, and assuming all those spellcasters do equal damage, I already give (6 x 5%) Misery + (2 x 10%) Shadow Weaving = 50%.
• I already contributed to 50% damage of one spellcaster and I didn't even do anything but keep Shadow Weaving and Misery up.
• Then, you add my own dps AND mana regeneration/health regeneration abilities. Yes, you understand why shadow priests are useful now.
8- How can this be fixed?
• Don't ask me. Some idea I had would be to make our raid abilities be related to other stats that seem to be available to priests.
• Since Blizzard seems to like our "Regalia" amors as they are right now, maybe our abilities to support our group should be related to this.
• What about possible crits from the EFFECTS (not dps) of Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace? This would make the spell critical hit stat useful to us without improving our dps too much.
• Or make those abilities related to +Healing and/or Spirit. This way, Shadow priests could have a choice of interesting gear available to them to maximize their dps versus their regenaration abilities.
• Think about it, in mana-intensive fights shadowpriests would maximize their mana-regeneration abilities, and in other fights they could try to do max dps. It would make our class a whole lot more interesting and challenging to play.
• While I understand that the probability to have an impact on the game by posting on a forum is around the same as emptying an ocean with a spoon, I wanted to give some opinions on how I think Shadow Priests will require attention from the developpers once the majority of the players will be raiding 25-men content (although I wonder if developpers still remember about the priest class).
