Some Concerns with Five Shadow Priests

[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.