Shadow Priests

[dancook]

I tried Shadow priests before and I read 'you should always try to stay in shadowform unless you're healing between fights' - so I tried to stick to this and my survivability plummeted compared to disc.

I want to try it again, only this time - I want to use holy nova, I want to use heals - I'll go into shadow once I feel save to do so.

Has anyone had experience with this?

If I master this I feel i'll have more tools at my disposal - higher killing power and mana regeneration - just need to not die

[candlebox]

i loved my spriest back in ToGC days. I was considering this myself, but i question on my goals though. Its not a cast as you run class like the others can be.

From a pvp stand point it seems you will be playing more defensively than anything.

Although, Mind flay follows the target...so its great from a turret prospective. Mind Sear will keep the rogues off.

[Svpernova09]

If you are casting a shadow dps spell, yes you should be in Shadowform.

[HPAVC]

I roll with five shadow priests ... they are pretty slaughter house mind spike -> mind spike -> mind blast [proc] -> shadow word death -> shadow word death ... is a fuck load of burst. Only really a bubble saves someone from that sort of damage, soul link, shield wall, it takes the whole rotation then (you have to be quick with the dispells and have some mass dispel isboxer setup, its just pvp 101)

Sure they aren't arcane mages and they aren't shaman, but they decapitate someone if you get the jump on them laughably quick and they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, maybe too many tricks. The mind blast proc is pretty much a done deal on someone who cannot bubble.

I use a lot of mind sear, I mind sear a friendly target and that person is now has a crazy damage aura. Its great for concentrated area, I never cast it on foes they dont last long enough. I am also quick to finish off people with sw death x2 (x5) . You need a weak aura or power aura that says 'execute!!!' for sure.

Not sure who are killing your priests, but you gotta learn to use all their other crazy and frankly cheaty spells like shadow buddy, silence, horror, and obviously dispersion. Dispersion is so damn cheaty. Dispersion is my oh shit healing alternative (+90% reduction)

I tend to only use shields in my group, not really big on healing, if I heal its usually 'all prayer' and I use life grip to put my team back together at times. But thats just an alternative to walking over and getting a feared character out of a bush or something.

If your getting blendered by trying to go face to face with arms warriors, dancing rogues, enhancement shaman or multiples of those, you need to probably forget damage over time and go for nukes.

Remembering that the mind blast crit is stun with paralysis talent (which your going to get from mind spike) you got to be really quick for with focus fire.

If someone is closing on me or in melee range, I rarely ever have all 5 characters nuking the same rotation. One of them is (silence or fear or horror ) as opener + burst rotation and others are burst rotation. Shadow priest are way to squishy to go face down "will it blend classes".

I don't bother with evangelism, way too many buttons as it is

[dancook]

You inherently get a boost to shadow damage from being shadow spec, you obviously get talents to make it stronger - 15% from being shadow form and some haste?

I don't expect never go in shadowform - i just mean when you're the target then it might be best to keep alive some heals.

[dancook]

Thanks I've specced shadow and i'm going to give it a go - thanks for all the tips.. I'll give it ago! do you ever use mind flay? or maybe one priest can do the mind flay thing whilst others nuke heh..

i like your idea that their all do something different, i need to set that up!

[dancook]

HPVAC have you got any specific advice about setup? I'm theorycrafting now so far i've got..

Master Attack Key
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=8 Mind Spike, Mind Spike, Mind Spike, Mind Blast

With a RR for one priest every 15 seconds with
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=15 Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, Shadow word: Pain, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, Mind Flay
/cast Psychic Horror

My concern is that Mind Flay is 30 yard spell and Mind Spike 40, so one priest might not be doing anything useful.

Any thoughts?

Also any comments on..

Leap of Faith (won't cast simultaneously, but run macro on one window at a time in RR
!if (character is "slot 1") /cast [@soulia,nodead][@soulieu,nodead][@soulae,nodead][@soulee,nodead][@soulei,nodead] Leap of Faith
!if (character is "slot 2") /cast [@soulei,nodead][@soulia,nodead][@soulieu,nodead][@soulae,nodead][@soulee,nodead] Leap of Faith
!if (character is "slot 3") /cast [@soulee,nodead] [@soulei,nodead][@soulia,nodead][@soulieu,nodead][@soulae,nodead] Leap of Faith
!if (character is "slot 4") /cast [@soulae,nodead][@soulee,nodead][@soulei,nodead][@soulia,nodead][@soulieu,nodead] Leap of Faith
!if (character is "slot 5") /cast [@soulieu,nodead][@soulae,nodead][@soulee,nodead] [@soulei,nodead][@soulia,nodead] Leap of Faith

Do you ever play with Mind Control?

Perhaps I could cast 15 dots and the mind control and let them die (if it's enough!)

(updated to add dots into mind flay sequence)

[HPAVC]

/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence reset=8 Mind Spike, Mind Spike, Mind Spike, Mind Blast

I see your triple spike and I think you should drop the last one, you just want to instant cast blast (two spikes) and its proc (paralysis, and healing debuff) as soon as possible. This is a race to decapitation, not a race for the biggest overkill crit seconds after your target button mashes a tanking / survival cooldown. You just need the guy in shadow word death bonus range ... remember that, then you will burst on him.

If your not doing glyphed death, I think we just have a disagreement on strategy. Kill command, execute, etc ... abuse that instant cast + bonus damage shit.

I understand your desire for the the reset=8 here, but i think you should really examine your reset. Unless your overriding this with manual blasts. This will get mixed up when someone gets out of range, smoke bombs, vanishes, etc and you want to swap targets quick.

I would play around with this in pve someplace with 200k health mobs, remember this is your opening attack for quick kills with all your guys up and doing "turret of doom" in burst with this.

/cast [nostance] Shadowform
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence [harm,nodead] reset=combat/target/11 Mind Spike,Mind Spike,Mind Blast,Shadow Word: Death,Shadow Word: Death
/use 13
/use 14 

i am not entirely understanding how the damage over time 'grind' macro works for you. That's a long time to be tooling with four guys on one target.

/cast [nostance] Shadowform
/stopmacro [channeling]
/castsequence [harm,nodead]reset=15 Vampiric Touch,Devouring  Plague,Shadow word: Pain,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind  Flay,Mind Flay
/cast [harm,nodead]Mind Blast
/use 13
 /use 14 

I really dont like the idea of loosing paralysis procs. This is your macro with mind blasts on every cooldown if the gcd lag window lets it sneak in.

This also a macro that says 'i am standing right here' and looks very pve, here your trying to catch every little bonus refresh for the spells. i just worry that there you cannot wait that long for perfection. These macros are also horrible to recover from after fears or short stuns.

Probably want to bring two macros together mentally, one for starting your dot the other for maintaining pressure.

One the one macro I would swap to vt,swp,dp as dp isn't always something i want to spam.
In the second macor I would just do something like this.

/stopmacro [channeling]
 /castsequence [harm,nodead] Mind Flay
 /cast [harm,nodead]Mind Blast 

This class sucks for not wanting to code situational macros or playing with isboxer key sequence reset timers. Its definitely a good 8 or so macros.

I also omitted the /cast Archeangel stuff, but you likely want that to be sort of naturally random versus ununsed.

[dancook]

Thanks, ok I was worried it the target doesn't get down to 25% and I can't SW a second time - the macro would stop?

I'll make some changes based on your suggestions

[Narij]

How do you spec your priests? This is what I currently use:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfMoZZhrMkrkrddfo

I could see removing a point out of Masochism (maybe) and two points out of Harnessed Shadows, but other than that I don't know you pick up Improved Mind Blast