Are you supposed to heal as a shadow priest?

Guides New Player Help and Guides
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Or just focus on dps? Or both?

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You should be focusing on dps. (Which is true for pretty much all dps classes.) If you’re in a group and the healer dies, you can consider dropping form to heal, but even then, in many cases you’d be better off trying to make stuff dead by continuing dps.

Really, the only time it’s really called for is if you’re recovering from a wipe and the healer is eating/drinking. Topping people off who aren’t eating before you start pulling again can be helpful. But once there is stuff to kill, that’s your focus.

What can be more useful as a dps is dispelling, especially if you can dispel a magic type the healer can’t. Diseases aren’t usually a big problem, but knowing when mass dispel can be put to good use makes for a good shadow priest. (Also, using your interrupts and offensive dispels are key as dps!) These things will be way more useful to your healer, and won’t throw you out of form.

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3

Even as a DPS it is nice to have Flash Heal to use. Better than a mage having to eat after most fights to replenish health.

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No you won’t be. A well placed shadow mend can save someone or yourself but your strongest group saver is Vampiric Embrace. Basically turns you into an extra healer for 15 seconds.

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If a few die after a fight but not a total wipe, Rez people and heal them while the healer drinks. If the group is hurt, and the healer is drinking, and the tank is not pulling the next group, heal people if not in combat.

In combat, if the healer dies, and the tank is close to death, and you don’t think you can finish the mobs without the tank, heal the tank.

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both: Vampiric Embrace heals for 85% of your single target damage and with things like Mindgames, Void Torrent and Mind Blast bursts that’s a lot of healing in a short amount of time

(And if you want you can talent into San’lyan to improve that even further)

if your healer is struggling you can throw a Shadow Mend or two but you can’t cast many and during that time you’re not really doing the damage thing you should be doing