I really like that Shadow Priest contributes a bit of healing. As the sole DPS spec for the only class that has two healing specs, I appreciate that a bit of the healing carries over to the DPS role. I’d like to see a little more of it and I would even be willing to sacrifice some DPS to do so.
That’s it. There’s a lot of negative things to say about Shadow Priest but I just wanted to say something that I like about the spec for a change.
its unfortunate that nonhybrid dps heal more than actual hybrids.
especially one with two heal specs
Just took a quick peak at your profile.
Nothing stands out that you Played Shadow prior to Legion.
Maybe I’m wrong?
In any case, what you ask of was very much capable from classic-WoD with varying degrees of success pending the expansion.
But with tools like Power Word: Shield, bouncing Prayer of Mending with Shadow Word: Deaths, ability to Dispel harmful Magic debuffs or helpful Magic buffs from enemies, Vampiric Embrace to pump healing during your burst damage moments, Cascade or Halo to either damage and/or heal, Divine Hymm was accessible to any priest spec, Prayer of Healing was always a great tool to use in a pinch to spam for group or simply use Flash Heal and get mana back from Shadow Fiend during combat or Disperse between fights among other methods to restore mana, silence and stun to shut down potential deadly damage which essentially acts like a damage prevention cooldown, feathers and leap of faith to reposition your self and your group to prevent damage or death, Mind Control particularly nasty targets to prevent group from taking too much damage to reasonably heal.
I might have left out some bits as that is just me scraping from my personal memories of the old days when shadow could in a pinch become an off healer and if you were really attuned with it, you can keep both your damage and healing up and straight up replace a healer is 5 mans.
Being the healer in 5 mans as shadow was particularly fun as you could bring so much damage and healing alongside the other 3 dedicated DPS that the targets you fought are killed relatively fast enough with you being that 4th DPS and maintaining shields and Prayer of Mending bounces on yourself and the tank that you can pull it off fairly easy without much chaos happening.
Sadly, those days are long past ever since Legion gutted so much of what Priest had and split the rest to reside within a specific spec instead of being available to the class as a whole.
Difference being that healing had an opportunity cost of damage. The healing we do now is just part of the DPS rotation.
The opportunity cost stuff does still need some sizeable buffs though, flash heal does nothing…
Played back when the game was first released and just picked it back up a year ago.
“Back in my day you had to click the Lightwell!”
Flash heal is not even the worst offender. Talenting into PoM or Renew is worthless. Those used to be great healing tools for shadow.
Renew’s just a bad button all around, even on the spec that’s supposed to make good use of it, Holy
The first 20 seconds or so after halo feel great. My mind sear is tearing through the npc like a laser and ghosts are flying out of me. I only wish I could keep this feeling going through the whole rotation .