PVP Shadow priests

Ive been just goofing around with this notion of a druid tank and 4 shadow priests. I saw lots of benifits..
MotW; Fort, Shadow protect, round robin bubbling, Vamp Embracex4, innervates, mind flay slows, Mind sear on the tank etc etc.

Yesterday, everyone hit 29. Shadowform up, I droped the bear, and joined Arathi Basin. Rolled in with high expectations, and left with my head in my hand. pittiful. I attempted this a few more times, microing with Grid, to keep whichever toon was focused well healed. Terrible. I ran this twice more, thinking, it was just the group. Totally discourraged.

So then I thought to myself. What if I healed? I swapped specs, and announced at the begining of the BG, "Im healing X4, and going to LM, then BS, the Mine... I'll heal whoever goes with me."

Well, this ended up a perfect game. Seems the entire bg, minus one or two, went with me.. or I went with them..lol. none of my toons died, and our death count for alliance was an average of "1". Zerg rolling.

My question is, has anyone had similar experience with shadow priests? Are they truly that aweful at PVP at this level? This experience has me questioning my thought at the group make up for later on too.

I haven't personally, tho I know many classes get many more tools to pvp with the higher the level. Perhaps keep leveling them and find out once you get some more utility?

And keep us posted because I plan to level preists too! Lol

Alright, will do. Oh, and Im not overlooking the other variable, that I just suck. Id rather not explore that one just yet.

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Originally Posted by Apps

Alright, will do. Oh, and Im not overlooking the other variable, that I just suck. Id rather not explore that one just yet.

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ROFL damn bro, beat yourself up more why dontcha~! :) lol

I wonder, what kinda gear did you have at the time? full boa stuff? or just random shit? Gear at lower levels in pvp matters quite a bit more than higher levels imho :)

Healing can make a huge difference in pvp too.

The biggest variable in rated battlegrounds, seems to be: the side with the more healing wins.
Probably going to be the same in normal battlegrounds too.

When you went healing, was it 4x Disc or 4x Holy?

Playing four of ten or four of fifteen will help in the lower (sized) battlegrounds.
You're less of the total team, compared to a five box.
Can you still blow up single classes with four healers?
Smite/Penance x4, Mindblast, SW: Death, etc?

Healing is extremely powerfull in the lower brackets because there are so few of them. So there is absolutely no Coordination needed to kill the oposing faction aslong as you double the healers they have. Faceroll indeed. I don't think this will change a lot untill you reach lvl 85. Once you have a good amount of resilience speccing shadow might be viable again. without resilience you're indeed very squishy.

Especially because nobody wears resilience and people die fast. That's nps for your healing powers, but it will be for an oposing healer.

Several people play 4 resto druids for PVPlolz and you'll hear that they love to play them.

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Originally Posted by ghonosyph

ROFL damn bro, beat yourself up more why dontcha~! :) lol

I wonder, what kinda gear did you have at the time? full boa stuff? or just random shit? Gear at lower levels in pvp matters quite a bit more than higher levels imho :)

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I had random dungeon stuff. Every priest is wearing damage cloth gear blues. I level via instance queueing, and occasionally do a few quests here and there, if I need a break from the dungeon grind. Definitely NOT the best of scenerios if I were a die hard PVPer.

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

....
When you went healing, was it 4x Disc or 4x Holy?
Can you still blow up single classes with four healers?
Smite/Penance x4, Mindblast, SW: Death, etc?

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all 4 were holy. Disc doesnt seem to have that much of a "healing" benifit at that level. Just not enough points into the talent tree yet... Im better with holy anyway.

I had to make a quick change when I swapped to holy, and the only way I know to shortcut it on the fly, is to use one of the ALT menu's and stagger spells across the bottom from one account to the fourth, then apply a repeater region over the entire bar. I.e. Heal(toon one) slot one; Heal (toon two) slot two, and so on. this way, I simply click a grid target from the main, and then press a std keybind.
Im sure there is a better way, but this was fast. drop n drag, make a window, swap priest windows to set up... done. requeue.


So heres an update:
Now level 36. At 34 was in a hot streak of BGs, till I leveled and put me in a newer bracket. obviously, the higher the bracket the better the average gear of the dpser. so healing a target that is "not as well geared" is difficult. Sounds shitty, but I just moved those people with crap gear to the side of the screen in grid, and simply didnt waste my mana healing them.

As you can see from the levels, healing is working out quite well. I havent tried to go back shadow yet. I'll give it a shot tonight.

I did have ONE BG where I met another boxer. he/she was boxing 3 rogues. If this is one of you bastards.. .well, my hats off to you. This boxer, tore me apart... each rogue swirling around me like a dog marking a tree on all sides. It was brutal. even with chain psychic screams, renews, and bubbles, he/she was a viable threat. Once, caught me at the spirit rez in warsong gultch, and upon rez... i was facing a white death screen again. We won that BG, but me thinks it was simply due to occupying the rogues time.

level 29 = shadow is suck, healing is good.
level 36 = shadow is ????, healing is good.

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

The biggest variable in rated battlegrounds, seems to be: the side with the more healing wins.

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Originally Posted by Apps

I did have ONE BG where I met another boxer. he/she was boxing 3 rogues. If this is one of you bastards.. .well, my hats off to you. This boxer, tore me apart... each rogue swirling around me like a dog marking a tree on all sides. It was brutal.

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Rogues are tmo the most overpowered spec in bg bracket till 80 bracket, 1 shotting geared toons. So want to add to ualaa's statement: side with most rogues wins.

That being said, why don't you run your druid as healer for pvp? Tree + 4 shadow priest is a very mobile team.

Lol can honestly say I fucking hate rogues in bgs when they realize that they can chain sap and occupy my whole time in a bg. They can't be found easily and will pretty much shut me down, lol sap is OP ! Good to hear you're doing well, too bad you don't have full boa gear lol that stuff is so good for pvping in at low levels as its pretty much top of the line for your level. I did that with my druids till around lvl 78 then upgraded to a full set of pvp gear crafted and honor bound. Lol this was pre cataclysm but was so much fun. Think I'll start some priests tonight!

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Originally Posted by zenga

Rogues are tmo the most overpowered spec in bg bracket till 80 bracket, 1 shotting geared toons. So want to add to ualaa's statement: side with most rogues wins.

That being said, why don't you run your druid as healer for pvp? Tree + 4 shadow priest is a very mobile team.

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Originally Posted by ghonosyph

Lol can honestly say I fucking hate rogues in bgs .... Think I'll start some priests tonight!

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Yup, I started a 5 man rogue team late in the evening. LOL

During the honor grind with the druids...
They went for a: Mages; b: AoE_Fear_Classes; c: Rogues; and d: Everyone else.

Don't like the AoE freezing, and they could power shift at that point.
Don't like being fear bombed, and they has Berserk at that point.
Don't like one stupid &^&^ rogue, who will chain sap the entire team.




For the click based healing.
Disregard the pictures, as they were from the previous guide.
http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=3
My last post in that thread, reflects the current Grid/GridCustomLayouts for 4.0.x

The PvP brackets are: x0-x4 and x5-x9.
I find x3-x4 and x8-x9 to be the most enjoyable.

So, heres a quick update.
Priests
4 priests are now level 52. I did some swapping of specs again back to shadow, and I have learned the following with regards to working priests in PVP BGs…

Heal early levels, have one heal, and three shadow for upper levels.

I.e. 40-43 heal; and 43-45 dps / heal

I have found I can take just about any node of same number of players (4v4) in upper levels per BG. Vamp emb X3, with a Disc priest dmg and heals is very hard to lose one toon. Renew all, run in, bubble all, dot up, and maintain mind flay or sear, while 4th refreshes heals.

If I run into more opposition… I.e. (4+ vs 4) I am round robin’ing the psychic scream, and just take down targets. Of course some classes just give me trouble. Hunters. BM huntards seem to be the bane of my existence on priests.

Healing, well that’s a no brainer. I go Disc x 4 and announce to the BG at the start, what I am, and where Im going. The result is zerg ownage. My going stat is 31w-18l. I am on a 14 game win streak.

Rogues.

I chuckled at this, but now Im strongly considering dropping the priests for this rogue team. 2 combat, and 2 sub. They are specced towards quick escapes of traps, running away, stealthing etc. level 21 rogues. I setup the interface with target along with some basic macros to include SStrike, Slice n Dice.

I like recuperate, nightstalker, and relentless strikes, and precision as the early main talents for these toons.

As I spam the dps keys, IWT is refreshed, thus making the slaves run around the target like a bunch of wild monkeys, often they will be behind the target and get in a backstab. Stealthed, I open up with ambush, then go to town. I cant wait for round robin kidney shots.

Sounds like great fun

I did 5x spriests at 60 and I dominated. Devouring plague was all that was required, but round robin fears and disarms were hawt. And if I ever got in trouble I just holy nova spammed. But then blizz changed everything around for the xpac :(

You can see in my sig my priests :P

I just bit the bullet and transferred three priests from my first failed RAF attempt. It took me forever and I picked a server i had played on years ago. The Horde to Alliance ratio was way over 10:1 and I had rolled alliance because i never played them before. It took forever because it was nonstop ganking after the starting zone. It was a five priest group.

Anyway, my point is that i finally have five accounts entirely full of 60+ toons!!!! And I have enough unused 60 healers that I may try leveling this team up from 60 in bgs:

60 paladin
60 shamanx2
60 priest x2

I dont have 5x any single healing class left at 60. Spec recommendations for this comp? Apps, is there anything you feel like you miss having with five priests in BGs?

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Originally Posted by katsurahama

I just bit the bullet and transferred three priests from my first failed RAF attempt. It took me forever and I picked a server i had played on years ago. The Horde to Alliance ratio was way over 10:1 and I had rolled alliance because i never played them before. It took forever because it was nonstop ganking after the starting zone. It was a five priest group.

Anyway, my point is that i finally have five accounts entirely full of 60+ toons!!!! And I have enough unused 60 healers that I may try leveling this team up from 60 in bgs:

60 paladin
60 shamanx2
60 priest x2

I dont have 5x any single healing class left at 60. Spec recommendations for this comp? Apps, is there anything you feel like you miss having with five priests in BGs?

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Ya. I run 4 priests, and I feel as though a warlock would cap this team off nicely. Just to spam seed, and have the AOE stun from Demo, would (in my opinion), should, be enough to give me an extra few seconds I need form those pesky rogues.

RR kidney shots will not be good due to diminishing returns with itself. It also shares DR with most other abilities they have now, which kinda sucks. Combat can get like a 9-12 second kidney shot though...

Shadow priests this expansion are REALLY powerful, so i wouldn't be surprised if they worked really well.