One Player, 5 Priests, 5v5 Arena

[briyan]

OK guys. I have been brainstorming, I love the multi-box, though my free time is dramatically down these days and I play WoW about an hour or so per week. I would love to see someone follow in the Aelli footsteps and take multi-box seriously to the 5v5 arena with full control on a single player (no stand-in healer).

What about 5 x Priest? Let me run down my idea.

1 Disc/Holy Priest (the healer)
2 hybrid Disc/Shadow Priests (31/0/30 points)
2 Full Shadow Priests (20/0/41 points)

Ultimately, this would be a team of all Dwarves.

Instant DoT Damage
We have our four Shadow Priests able to toss out coordinated 4 x Shadow Word: Pain at 36 yards. This puts pressure on the enemy to start healing or dispelling immediately, because this DoT will kill a player within about 12 seconds if he does not get dispelled or healed.

Stacking Magic Effects
All Shadow Spells will instantly proc four units of Shadow Weaving, which stacks up to five to increase all Shadow Damage done to the target by 10%. Our two deep Shadow Priests will both have Misery, which doesn't stack, but also causes target to take 5% more damage from spells. We also have the cheap and instant Vampiric Embrace, which we can plop on the target four at a time to help heal our party.

This means mega magic effects on our target, which creates a lot of pressure for dispeller(s). A single four-way instant SW: Pain will result in TEN individual magic effects on the target. Add a four-way instant VE and we have FIVE more, for a total of FIFTEEN magic effects in two GCDs.

Combined with the talent for 30% dispel resistance, this means trying to dispel our instant DoTs will be a full-time job.

Our "Burst" Combo
If we can get someone in LoS of our damage unit, we can work a four-way Mind Blast (1.5s cast) into Shadow Word: Death (instant) combo, which should basically kill any target, even with no crits. If we have a particularly poorly-positioned opponent, we can go Mind Blast into Mind Flay instead.

Offensive Utility
* Cheap Rank 1 instants (SW: Pain and VE) allow us to kill Grounding Totems and Spell Reflects or play mind games with dispellers
* Blackout ... all Shadow Damage spells have 20% chance to stun target for 3 secs ... four ways, yum!
* Four-way Mana Burn if we wish to humiliate in an easy game
* 3 x Power Infusion available to boost cast time for a kill shot
* We have FOUR Silences (5 sec silence, 24 yard range) at our disposal. If properly set up in a macro cycle to use only one Silence at a time, we could use these to theoretically silence a healer for 20 seconds in a row. That's not realistic, but four 5 second ranged silences will really help us shut down a healer or dispeller long enough to get a kill.
* Dispel, this can be overkill depending on how many are linked but obviously the ability to dispel buffs or HoTs with ease is here.
* Mass Dispel, this would probably be cast only by the main/healer priest you control, can be great for cocky mages or paladins

Defensive Utility!
Obviously each Priest is squishy, so defensive against physical is a very important item for our group. My vision would be the main character you control would be the healer (Disc/Holy priest), but this doesn't mean he's the only one that can help. The important factor is that all of the key defensive skills are instant, and most of these can benefit from 30% dispel protection talents.

* Vampiric Embrace (instant) from four players, causes 25% of damage done to heal the entire party
* All five can Fear Ward themselves at start (3 min cooldown)
* All five can pop Stoneform to increase armor and remove all poison/disease/bleeds (3 min cooldown)
* All five can pop Desperate Prayer to heal themselves instantly for 2-3k, though it pops Shadowform (10 min cooldown)
* All five can use Chastise, instant cast 3 second root (30 sec cooldown)
* All five can PW: Shield themselves, even the two in Shadowform
* Three priests can pop Renew and Prayer of Mending on any target
* Main priest can also use Flash of Light for heals if necessary
* Main priest can place Pain Suppression on any target if it gets focused (2 min cooldown)
* All five can Dispel each other, with a smart macro setup this can prevent most CC
* All five can Psychic Scream, even if this doesn't last full duration it's a small interrupt to disrupt the enemy if you're charged, and you can space them out for maximum effectiveness
* Mind Control, not realistic to use but hey it's there =)


Conclusion
I think this has a lot of potential... it would take a lot of practice in setting up your skills and macros to straight out the self-dispels and coordinate the healing and Silences, but I think mastering this could really lead to an awesome PvP team.

What do you guys think?

[Jaws5]

sounds good but 5 clothies will not do well againt some teams. 1 tired 1 shadow and 4 locks. did not work was well as i could have liked. also priest suck at mana issues.

[briyan]

sounds good but 5 clothies will not do well againt some teams. 1 tired 1 shadow and 4 locks. did not work was well as i could have liked. also priest suck at mana issues.

Well I agree that clothies are squishy, but I think the Shadow Priest has higher burst potential than the warlock, which is why I think this team could theoretically fare better. You also have several instant heals and damage shields to use with five priests, which shifts the team away from a completely gimmicky all-DPS setup. The targetable Pain Suppression is also a big boon, and was not available until recent patch.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The upside: mindblast + shadow word: death = nice burst on the first target.
The downside: not so great against spell-reflecting tanks with 12k+ HPs and a pocket druid/priest/shaman.
The ugly: once MB is down, you're stuck with mind flay. Nice against single targets that aren't in your face but lackluster against the rest.
The really ugly: no AoE. As a squishy team against a 5-man arena team, you either gank people one by one with relative impunity (i.e.: huge burst dmg) or you AoE them so badly that the healers can't keep up and everyone keels over. The waiting-game (aka column-humping) matches favor non-boxers and non-mana classes.

Theorycraft, of course, but the general concepts are solid, and I've tried a 4-shadowpriest, priest+4lock and pally+4mage group in similar situations in world PVP (3-5 people trying to gank me). The mages were by FAR the most successful generally as they could one-shot the healer and then AoE the shit out of everyone else. Locks are good if the other team is all kindsa confused but once you get into semi-serious/decent PVPers, you can't divvy them up and take 'em apart like you can bored scrub raiders trying to world PVP. And resto druids/shammies can heal through 12 DoTs at once with enough gear if they're able to avoid your CC.

[Stealthy]

Theorycraft, of course, but the general concepts are solid, and I've tried a 4-shadowpriest, priest+4lock and pally+4mage group in similar situations in world PVP (3-5 people trying to gank me). The mages were by FAR the most successful generally as they could one-shot the healer and then AoE the shit out of everyone else. Locks are good if the other team is all kindsa confused but once you get into semi-serious/decent PVPers, you can't divvy them up and take 'em apart like you can bored scrub raiders trying to world PVP. And resto druids/shammies can heal through 12 DoTs at once with enough gear if they're able to avoid your CC.

Yep I have seen this first hand - I have had a geared rogue, mage and paly tear through my priest and lock team twice. Basically the paly would heal/cleanse through my dots while the rogue kept interrupting my heals. The mage would counterspell/cc/dps as needed. Admittedly my guys are very undergeared (blues & greens) and they were sporting S3 gear...but it did highlight one thing for me - in a priest + 4 DPS team, it is easy for other players to focus fire / lock down your priest...and there go your heals. Compare this with my shammy team - unless they can CC my whole team (AOE fear being about the only way), they cannot stop the healing.

Cheers,
Stealthy

[briyan]

Appreciate the feedback guys.

Just for more general background, I am thinking of this in the context of full PvP gear for these priests; I'm not sure it's worthwhile to discuss the merits of arena combat with anything less. Until gear reaches a certain point, any class can be easily focused and exploded by even two players. This plan would be for a serious arena-focused setup, full gear, dedicated PvPer controlling the 5 priests. Not really a team for mindless lols, but something seriously viable.

Also, I am talking about a setup that basically features 2 DPS, 2 Hybrid DPS/Healers, and 1 full Healer ... it's not really 4 DPS, although the 2 partial Shadow Priests do the same damage as the full Shadow Priests (except for the Shadow Form Bonus). So, it's not a single healer setup with that single weak point ... with all instant heals, the three healers can pop PoM and 3xRenew on any party member on top of the trickle heals coming in due to Vampiric Embrace and each priests' ability to Shield himself (even in Shadowform). Desperate Prayer (self cast from any priest) and Pain Suppression (targeted cast, from the main healer) should be able to easily keep someone up for a while with all the PoM and Renews (due to dispel blocking, and overall damage reduction).

But in general, I must disagree with your general notion that the DoTs can be healed through by a single healer -- you can spam heals to keep up with them, but it will definitey neutralize the healer completely. If we lowball the SWP at about 5000 damage each after resilience over 24 secs, that's roughly 833 damage per second for five, or 2500 damage every 3 second tick. This is obviously not instagib damage, but it will require continuous healing to keep someone up -- and that's just the DoTs from a single instant GCD, not our entire damage. If more than one player shows himself, we can easily pop it on him too, and now the healing difficulty is doubled. If a priest spams dispel on the target, it will take minimum 5 GCDs (assuming no resists) to clear them... that's 7.5 seconds. The idea is not that the SWP ticks are going to kill a player through heals, but they will force full healing/dispel attention on that player, setting up a kill. If we can land a Mind Blast + SWDeath combo (1.5 sec cast, 12 second cooldown for the combo) then it's game over for that player. Resto Druid HoTs can be dispelled, leaving them to mana-inefficient direct heals.

The Shadow Priest burst is not really "one and done" in the same way as a PoM Mage burst or a NS+EM+CL Shaman ... if we can get the 1.5 sec cast off, that Mind Blast + SWDeath combo is available every 12 seconds, and we've got party-wide instant heals ticking all the while. With our ability to drop 20,000 damage with a single instant DoT, we should be able to force the enemy to respond and create an opening for our kill combo.

Someone will need to come to us if they wish to kill a priest, and if they stay in range for more than a couple seconds, they will not be able to live (outside of immunities/CloS). Assuming we are taking advantage of pillar/LoS, their support will need to come within range as well, and this means more people to DoT up (or Silence in case of healer).

Again, obviously theorycraft, but I don't want you guys to write it off too quickly if your experiences are not with top-geared characters and a serious arena mindset. It's definitely true that teams hoping for a "mass chaos" effect via tons of DoTs or pets will probably break down as the competition improves, but I am hypothesizing that this team is much more well-rounded than either the mage bomb team or the warlock mass-DoT setup. It would be nice to have some AoE damage, but I think the healing and dispelling synergy is even better. My major worry is that it may be too difficult to coordinate the proper actions without simply running four damage-spammers, but I bet someone out there could do it.

Thoughts?

[ahsen3]

i rather like quad-box warlocks+1 healer.

IMO, warlock can do better on burst dps/survive abilities compare to priest.

[Stealthy]

Some more feedback here:

Looking for Arena results for non Shamans

Cheers,
Stealthy

[Mosg2]

I think the issue comes down to fear, to be honest. Priests are very well represented in 5's and Warlocks decently so.

Also, with no healing debuff ~850dps is healable by one toon fairly easily. Sure, if you get that on multiple toons it's a pain, but... I think the AE fear is going to bork you.

[Otlecs]

I think the AE fear is going to bork you.

Don't forget they all have their own Fear Ward too though.

I tried 5 shadow priests on a PvP server (EU-Boulderfist) but found them too squishy. The theory is all sound but I'm not sure how it would work in practice. I'd love to see it though