One Player, 5 Priests, 5v5 Arena

[Gurblash]

If you want advice from someone who's got 5 priests and tried arenas, get ahold of Morganti, he did the 5Priests thing. Loved AV hated Arena.

[Mosg2]

Fear ward helps the first time, but then you've got to wait until the cooldown is up. Psychic scream/HoT have much lower CD's than the ward, and they only need one good ~5 second fear on you and you're toast.

[Slats]

From someone who plays 4 Shadow Priests. Take it from me, they are fucking awful.



1) No Spammable Nuke. 24 Yard Range Channeled Spell is not good enough.

2) No decent burst. You have ONE shot, to kill someone, and its easily healed through on a team with decent HPS.

3) Your squishy as fuck. Like really really squishy.



Shamans are better in almost every way for PVP. And PVE. Priests are not the 'Shamans do it, look at me' answer. You need to try something else.



The biggest kilelr for Priests is it takes too much TIME to do damage and too many GLOBAL COOLDOWNS. A multiboxer makes use of using four characters to focus fire and a priest does not lend well to this idea. In a PVE enviroment SPriests are great.



Your idea wont ork and I'm sorry it wont. Its an uphill battle with a big wall at the top and I imagine everyone who made priests will agree with me (Morganti, Cephus etc).



-Dan

[Xorn]

Not sure whether somebody already mentioned it but as far as I know the following is wrong:

Cheap Rank 1 instants (SW: Pain and VE) allow us to kill Grounding Totems

A Dot like SWP and a simple magic effect like VE both do NOT destroy a grounding totem, instead you will get an immune message if I recall it correctly and nothings got changed here.

Sorry if am wrong here.

Xorn

[briyan]

Sounds like there has definitely been some work in this area, and not a lot of happiness in the results so far, I'm bummed =)

I definitely feel the Priests have advantage over Shaman with their wide array of instants, and their ability to dispel, but the passives from Shaman totems and their high armor and larger single instant burst with NS+EM+CL may just be too much better against most teams. The lack of spammable nuke is definitely a pretty weak point too.

As for Fear, well, Tremor Totem would be great, but we do have a few weapons against it:

* Fear Ward
* 5 x Silences that can be put on a priest/lock who runs close
* We can dispel Fear from each other if not everyone is hit

Grounding Totem was changed to be destroyed by any spell, not just direct damage, in the 2.3 patch.

[briyan]

From someone who plays 4 Shadow Priests. Take it from me, they are fucking awful.
...
Shamans are better in almost every way for PVP. And PVE. Priests are not the 'Shamans do it, look at me' answer. You need to try something else.

The biggest kilelr for Priests is it takes too much TIME to do damage and too many GLOBAL COOLDOWNS. A multiboxer makes use of using four characters to focus fire and a priest does not lend well to this idea. In a PVE enviroment SPriests are great.

Your idea wont ork and I'm sorry it wont. Its an uphill battle with a big wall at the top and I imagine everyone who made priests will agree with me (Morganti, Cephus etc).

-Dan

Hey Dan I am curious, did you run your Shadow Priests with a second person playing healer? Were you strictly DPS or did you use any heals on any of your priests? Did you pursue this seriously like Aelli with a fully arena-geared team? If so, did you run into a barrier early on or not until you faced more advanced teams? What type of ratings?

Just trying to get a better idea of how things went for you.

Also, Mind Flay ... seems like this would be hard to land but would almost guarantee a kill if someone ventured too close, as the damage ticks very fast. Did you find it completely impossible to land?

[Moredots]

Sounds like there has definitely been some work in this area, and not a lot of happiness in the results so far, I'm bummed =)

I definitely feel the Priests have advantage over Shaman with their wide array of instants, and their ability to dispel, but the passives from Shaman totems and their high armor and larger single instant burst with NS+EM+CL may just be too much better against most teams. The lack of spammable nuke is definitely a pretty weak point too.

As for Fear, well, Tremor Totem would be great, but we do have a few weapons against it:

* Fear Ward
* 5 x Silences that can be put on a priest/lock who runs close
* We can dispel Fear from each other if not everyone is hit

Grounding Totem was changed to be destroyed by any spell, not just direct damage, in the 2.3 patch.

I am bummed as well. I started 3 shamans but when I talked my brother into trying multiboxing with me (he is the prot paladin and resto shaman) i rolled 3 S priest... My theory crafting was the same as yours. I guess on paper they look amazing but I will trust everyones word here that its a better idea to just make shamans. There is a reason everyone has a few. I am just glad i read this at 25 on my priests and 16 on my shamans... it wont take long to catch my shamans up.

I talked to my brother and we are going to try a face melt off / FROSTSHOCK-athon!!! and see who works best for our combo. Although i'm inclined to want the shamans for pvp. Anyone else run a 2 person 5 man team of prot paladin resto shaman ran by one and three elemental shamans ran by another. I am thinking it will work fine... i will miss other class buffs and ability's but the burst should be great.

[Vyndree]

Another downside -- almost everything you do is dispellable.

Which is why Unstable Affliction is so godly as a cover DoT.

[Xorn]

Grounding Totem was changed to be destroyed by any spell, not just direct damage, in the 2.3 patch.

I really should play my shaman more often or read the patch notes regarding such stuff, thanks for the info!

Grounding Totem: This totem is now destroyed upon redirecting any spell to itself.

[Slats]

*No spell pushback talents
* No AoE
*High Mana Usage, no 'return mana talents' based of spell usage (ie spell cost reduction on crit like Shamans)
*Very quickly killed by AoE, fear is a short term answer to this
*Silence has a 24 yard range, usually your clones are *just* to far away to use it
*Mind Flay is channeled and has a 24 yard range - it hurts but easily LOS'd/interrupted.

I honestly thought Priests would be good. They have a lot of great tricks and as a single mobile Shadow Priest I think they can be an asset if played well. I however dont think they are the heavy DPS class they were pre-TBC. Stacking 4 of them just looks cool and is good for PvE where you take minimal damage that doesn't burst. It is very fun to load up a mob and MF it and it does look very awesome and flashy.

I really really wanted it to work, but after hours and hours of PvP and practice in Arenas - you are just too suspectiable to being rushed and zerged. PBAoE Fear is also frustrating as its hard to 'catch' enough players as they run to you vs running to them.

On the upside, Prayer Of Mending is amazing x4. If all Priests PoM themselves, and a mage aoes, its pretty funny to watch them heal over and over. However what is not funny is when a mage and a warrior both get in your face and then a rogue stuns your 3rd guy and some paladin stands just out of range healing and nobody lets you move and you fear and everyone trinkets and you *almost* kill one person but your being too interrupted by all the damage and eventually you run OOM and then you die.

I could just be crap at Priest - but I did alot of playing with Shaman and loved them. I just wanted to be priests to be different from the 40000 Shaman boxers we have. Be a bit unique. Unfortuantly it hasn't worked out that way.

I do however think we need to see people experiment more with Hunters and Druids.

-Dan