Some Concerns with Five Shadow Priests

[Quasi]

At first, I thought 5 Shamans were the obvious choice. After reading through the thread I started about Shamans in Arenas, I think Horde Shadow Priests may be a more viable route. However, before I spend $1500, shoot me down if you see any fallacious ideas.

Here's my general strategy in Arenas:

Two Troll and three Undead Shadow Priests. All will Fear Ward and Shield themselves before battle of course. Spell Trinket before you engage.

Start of Battle) Single Psychic Scream.
First Attack ) 2x Hex of Weakness and 3x SW : Pain at same time. Alternately, Silence their healer if it is range.
Second Attack) 3x SW: Pain and 2x VE at same time.
Third Attack) Full nukage, 5x Mind Blast followed instantly by 5x SW: Death.

The idea is simple: Preoccupy their Paladin and Priest with trying to dispel your main target of fear, DoTs, and debuffs (or Silence if possible), and then nuke the bejebus out of it. The first target should be quick to die, as Scream, Fear Ward and Shields will buy you at least 5-6 seconds of free reign before they can shatter your ranks.

After the first target, you will proceed to DoT their whole team while running constantly in and out of range and chain Silencing their healers, obviously recasting Shield again as soon as it falls (since you cast it before engagement).

As for the 3 UDs, that's fairly obvious. After Fear Ward is consumed, they will be your next line of defense against AoE Fear with WotF, dispelling the two Trolls.

Thoughts? Experiences? Criticism? I would appreciate all of those. :D

[Morganti]

I have 5 70 undead shadow priests who I have arena'd with, and while I'm definitely no expert at arena I'll give you my 5 cents.

1. Priest damage mitigation (even with the 15% of shadowform) is horrid. You get eaten very fast by focus firing 5mans.
2. Spriest mana consumption is HUGE. I went with a mana efficiency talent build and lost multiple games because I just plain ran out of juice.
3. Fear is nearly useless until halfway through the match when you are already losing people. Too many ways of getting out of it from what I've found.

As for your strategy, my thoughts to your points:
1. Your first fear is almost always eaten by a fear ward or trinket and you generally can catch no more than 3 (at the most) people in it's radius
2. Silence has a horrid short range and teams aren't overly worried about my dots in my experience as long as they know their healers are up. And dots are hella mana expensive.
3. Pain+VE isnt doing enough healing to survive any kind of pvp burst damage. it's wonderful in PvE, but PvP versus 5 VE isn't what it normally is.
4. Full nukage is great. My normal strat is a charge and burn on the healer with 5 blasts and 5 deaths and mind flay (if necessary). That being said, it puts you sitting still and within range of their dps, and that's a bad thing with spriest survivability, and survivability is key in arena IMO.
5. That 5-6 seconds you think you're gonna get is gonna be more like 1-2.
6. Staying out of range of groups is almost not an option once you engage....kiting and dotting versus charging warriors, frost mages, sprinting rogues, charging druids, ranged casters, hunters....it's quite tough. My best job at it has honestly been blowing through them at the start, insta-gibbing a healer, and keep running. Multiple healers is gonna put the hurt on you though.

TBH spriests rock in BG's....they rock in PVE....arena? not so much.

[Stealthy]

Just some quick thoughts...

Well you're not going to be doing instances with that group so it has to be PvP only right? If thats the case how can you not go 5 x undead? WoTF is self only, so you won't be using it to dispel your trolls. Plus devouring plague >>>>>>>>> Hex of crapness.

The problem with going 5 x shadow priests will be warriors & rogues. Warriors with their spell reflect and fear immunity will allow them to get close and mess you up. Same with Rogues and their Cloak of Skillz.

Cheers,

Stealthy

[Slats]

Shadowpriests are disgusting mana efficiency.



Do NOT kid yourself. VT is *shit* for PvP. Your biggest issues are:



MANA MANA MANA.

Range

No AoE

Squishy as hell



And you dont even have a spammable nuke. Mind Flay is 24 yards range. That is disgusting.



After playing them for a few months and playing massive amounts of hours on them, I see no viablew way to make priests work in PvP unless you have one and its your healer.



I am re-rolling a few different teams at the moment and working out what I want to do. I honestly think I'm just going to go with priest/mages for the pure fun factor, not the ownage factor.



-Slats

[xum]

Shadowpriests are disgusting mana efficiency.



Do NOT kid yourself. VT is *shit* for PvP. Your biggest issues are:



MANA MANA MANA.

Range

No AoE

Squishy as hell



And you dont even have a spammable nuke. Mind Flay is 24 yards range. That is disgusting.



After playing them for a few months and playing massive amounts of hours on them, I see no viablew way to make priests work in PvP unless you have one and its your healer.



I am re-rolling a few different teams at the moment and working out what I want to do. I honestly think I'm just going to go with priest/mages for the pure fun factor, not the ownage factor.



-Slats

Have you considered going the 41/20/0 spec? Reflective shield damage + Holy Nova would be fun as hell (although again, mana inefficient).
As a non-shadow priest group, you could have 5 sets of PoMending up as well to help futher mitigate damage :)

Would be the survival spec'd 5-man team :)

[Slats]

Yeah I played with that, PoM is awesome, one cast is like 20k healing to your whole party, its impossible to get aoed down.



You have no mana gem, no evoc, no mana tide totem, no 60% reduction to cost on crit, no decent mp/5... basically once your OOM your OOM and recovery time is massive. Awesome for PvE, not so hot for PvP. Single target massive daamge is nice, but you need something you dont have in PvP - time.

[Quasi]

Just some quick thoughts...

Well you're not going to be doing instances with that group so it has to be PvP only right? If thats the case how can you not go 5 x undead? WoTF is self only, so you won't be using it to dispel your trolls. Plus devouring plague >>>>>>>>> Hex of crapness.

The problem with going 5 x shadow priests will be warriors & rogues. Warriors with their spell reflect and fear immunity will allow them to get close and mess you up. Same with Rogues and their Cloak of Skillz.

Cheers,

StealthyWell, I'll probably go 1 Troll and 4 UD. Hex is like a mini-MS debuff and it's worth having at least one. The UD Priests could dispel Psychic Scream, Howl of Terror, or Fear on the Troll.

I figured mana burn would be unstoppable. In 4 seconds, their healer would be completely useless. Then with DoTs ticking on everyone (I'd Mass Dispel Ice Block or Bubble), and the healer OOM, and 5 staggered AoE fears (they could only stop the first 2 or 3), it would be game over pretty quick.

Maybe I'm missing something. The only class I envision as a threat is the Rogue, and only for 5 seconds. Yet a Rogue can only do so much while the rest of his team is shutdown and OOM.

[Sanctume]

Just some quick thoughts...

Well you're not going to be doing instances with that group so it has to be PvP only right? If thats the case how can you not go 5 x undead? WoTF is self only, so you won't be using it to dispel your trolls. Plus devouring plague >>>>>>>>> Hex of crapness.

The problem with going 5 x shadow priests will be warriors & rogues. Warriors with their spell reflect and fear immunity will allow them to get close and mess you up. Same with Rogues and their Cloak of Skillz.

Cheers,

StealthyWell, I'll probably go 1 Troll and 4 UD. Hex is like a mini-MS debuff and it's worth having at least one. The UD Priests could dispel Psychic Scream, Howl of Terror, or Fear on the Troll.

I figured mana burn would be unstoppable. In 4 seconds, their healer would be completely useless. Then with DoTs ticking on everyone (I'd Mass Dispel Ice Block or Bubble), and the healer OOM, and 5 staggered AoE fears (they could only stop the first 2 or 3), it would be game over pretty quick.

Maybe I'm missing something. The only class I envision as a threat is the Rogue, and only for 5 seconds. Yet a Rogue can only do so much while the rest of his team is shutdown and OOM.My 70 Rogue does wonders to interrupt 2.

/focus Target2
Sap Target2
Stunlock Target1: Cheapshot (6 seconds) + hemo -> (target=focus Blind) + hemo -> Kidney Shot (3 of 5 seconds)
Kick / Gouge
WoTF / Trinket / Sprint / Cloak of Shadow
Vanish
Find targets

Let's say that's within 20-30 seconds of the start of the battle engagement. 2 of your SPriest are probably somewhere out or range of your main.

Repeat Stun lock.
Use Prep to reset Blind and Vanish.

[Boylston]

Well, I'll probably go 1 Troll and 4 UD. Hex is like a mini-MS debuff and it's worth having at least one. The UD Priests could dispel Psychic Scream, Howl of Terror, or Fear on the Troll.

I figured mana burn would be unstoppable. In 4 seconds, their healer would be completely useless. Then with DoTs ticking on everyone (I'd Mass Dispel Ice Block or Bubble), and the healer OOM, and 5 staggered AoE fears (they could only stop the first 2 or 3), it would be game over pretty quick.

Maybe I'm missing something. The only class I envision as a threat is the Rogue, and only for 5 seconds. Yet a Rogue can only do so much while the rest of his team is shutdown and
In four seconds, their healer might be useless, but you're probably down 1 (maybe 2) of your ultra-squishy team. There's nothing "pretty quick" about relying on your 5 DoTs ticking to kill their group.

I am not trying to bash your ideas, but it's just that they're theorycrafting based on the other team not doing a whole lot. Add a little realitycraft to your optimism and the situation might not look so rosy.

[Quasi]

In four seconds, their healer might be useless, but you're probably down 1 (maybe 2) of your ultra-squishy team. There's nothing "pretty quick" about relying on your 5 DoTs ticking to kill their group.

I doubt they could kill any of the SPriests before I killed their first player. I would run straight into their group and cast Psychic Scream repeatedly until it sticks on at least some of them and Mana Burn the healer. They'd be scattered and without a healer. If a fear-immune Warrior jumps in while I'm doing this, 5x Inner Focus/Mind Blast + 5x SW: Death and finish off anything left with Mind Flay.

Sure, not a flawless strategy, but it would be an extremely solid point to work from and tweak.

[roddo]

Fear isn't the power it used to be, with DR and everyone having a trinket its hard to get it to stick and stay stuck. Ok you spammed 5 aoe fears, but the warriors already killed at least one of your crew, the beast master hunter took out another, and you still have no healing. 5v5 is organized chaos, once the toons start running like chickens with their heads cut off its easier for your opponent to regroup than it is for you. If they have a pally healer they just bubble out of fear and heal themselves, and you just burnt your opening rush. A shaman with a tremor totem totally screws your fear tactic. Theres so many counters to your one trick pony, sure you'll blow away newb groups, but a decent group with decent gear will be a huge challenge.

[Slats]

Quasi, I hate to burst your theorycrafting bubble, but this is world of warcraft, not world of everyonestandsstillwhileyouwtfpwnthemcraft.



In the game I play, people fight back. Both Morganti and myself play Shadowpriests, we tried them out when they were not all the rage and well there are reasons why there isn't 40,000 priest teams. Cephus an EU boxer also has this team and he has many many months experience with them and he has also rolled a 'PvP' group.



Do you know what ELSE kills Shadowpriests? Being frost nova'd in place, everyone running behind you and aoeing the fuck out of you. Shadowpriests have No "Oh fuck save me button" every body you fight probably does against your four dots which costs 24 billion mana, dont always stick so you hit it 3 or 4 times, using half of your priests mana to get one round of dots off. Then you switch targets and it takes about 1-2seconds for the server to pass your new target to the other clients. In that 1-2seconds, you are a sitting duck while someone else beats the snot out of you. Then a mage chain poly's your main and all your macros break. Then your dead.



If you want to be a successful multiboxer in PvP I am 350% determined that you REQUIRE some form of AoE ability. Wether it is big hitting fire nova totems as your answer to Warriors rushing into you - wether it is a million angry treeants because it makes you a bitch to mouse target in a forrest of death, wether its hellfire/seed of corruption spam or a mage slapping you with his CoC.



Hell even hunters have AoE in the form of snake/explosion trap.

[Bueller]

I would have to agree. I played a solo SP in competitive arena until a few weeks into Season 3. In my experience, SP is always first target which indicates squishy. Fear is all but usless anymore and they have zero survivability. I have retired my SP from hardcore arena due to continual frustration and now just do 10 games a week for fun and a few points. I shutter at the thought of 5 SP's in Arena.

That's not to say I wouldn't love to see a 5 SP team succeed. My SP has always been my favorite toon to play and it's a bummer that they are currently gimped in arena.

[Jaws5]

its going to hurt with priests your fear and silence are very short range. You would be much better off with 4 locks and 1 shadow priest. at least with them you have more dots, pet bubble S/L 4 locks and shadow weaving are nice. my 5 v 5 are now very well greared with 300 plus resiliance. they also have very effective ways to deal with fear. Locks have 2 fears they can also heal themselves (if speced right) I still do not think at grp of all cloth can do well on 5vs5. Wars and rogues have to many ways get close and stay close.

3 mages and 2 holy priests may work out. hands down best 5 man is 5 orc shammy. my pve grp is 1 prot war 1 holy preist and 3 arc/fire mages. Ihave pvped with this grp . you have to have 5 pcs 5 screens and 5 ways to have a new leader and follow assist set up. once they know what your main is , they go for it.

I do pvp with 1 shadow priest and 4 afflic locks fun in bgs and world pvp. but in 5 vs 5 they have little chance to with against many teams that have full season 2 and 3 gear. let alone the raiding teams at put up 5 mans.

[Valorin]

I'm gonna have to agree with the others too. I play an SP solo in arenas, currently just 2v2 and lately a single of week of 3v3. Moving up to 3v3 was insane. Without enough CC, I was the first one dead every time. A few of the games it was all I could do just to keep myself alive, which bought my teammates time, but means I didn't do any damage.. at all. As for mana, I've rarely had fights in 2v2 where mana was an issue because of the shadowfiend and free mana proc (I never remember the names of anything of these things, it's merely a neuron path to a keystroke for me). Anyway, we did have one 3v3 that ended in us sitting down to drink and go at it again, which was totally insane. There's is definitely a *huge* survivability issue with SP's which is why I think Disc is the new fad, with pain suppression and so forth.