Need Shadow Priest Advice / Feedback

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I just hit 40 and spec’d over to shadow as the Holy leveling was getting to be a bit painful outside of Dungeons. (which most people seem to just be buying anymore, but that’s not what this thread is about)

For those experienced shadow priests, I had a few questions. What is your typical rotation in a dungeon? Do you always vampiric embrace before damaging a mob so that the group gets healed? (I had a tank mention in group that he liked the “off heals” that I provided during the run) It seems it would make runs much less stressful for the healer to have a shadow priest in the group. Outside of that, though. Do you typically Mind blast on cooldown? Spam the crap out of mind flay? Dot every single mob? (those dots are expensive!) I wasn’t going too hard and did notice my mana was an issue, but I’m not leveled enough to have the meditation talent from Discipline tree yet. Does it get better?

@ Tanks and Healers, what are your thoughts on Shadow Priests? Do you like having them in your groups? Or do you see “Shadow Priest DPS here” and sigh to yourself?

Thank you,

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Honestly, this is prolly a better resource than what you’ll find here, no offense to anyone. They just have great guides. Hope it helps.

`https://www.warcrafttavern.com/guides/wow-classic-pve-shadow-priest-guide/

(omit the ` from the beginning)

S Priests in Dungeons are aggro sponges, so there’s that…worse if they don’t know how to play their class.
Mind Blast is a mana killer. But you’re limited w/spells that crit. You’re mainly support, think of it that way & that should guide you.

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Here is my advice as a seasoned SPriest, if you plan to raid, even if you get a spot as a Spriest, heal instead. It’s not fun seeing a bunch if loot every week and all of it being useless due to optimization, and caused me to get super burnt out.

In to the dungeon questions, SWP everything, on big pulls it will literally be like 80% of your DPS. Dont use MB on cooldown use it sparingly it generates a super high amount of threat and you will pull off the tank if spammed, only use if you know the tank will hold threat, I have a threat meter just for this. Use mindflay as a filler I usually have rank 1, 3, and 6 in my bar depending on the situation and mana. Never actually use VE in PvE dosent make a big difference.

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i tend to rely on keeping up dots more i have a play stile of longevity i will dot every target and mind flay the mane target and if my mana is looking good then i will mind blast otherwise i wand the target and dot to get some mana regen going

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Pain, vampire, then wand the mob to death and hope you get spirit tap. You should still get wand spec maxed by 45, and swing the best one you can. Mind flay is a better use of your mana than mind blast, but you need to be conservative. How much you can cast depends on how many spirit taps you can get. Try to go for weak or fleeing mobs for killing hits. If anyone is eager to run down the fleeing mob, it should be the shadow because that gets you a spirit tap. Mind flay also snares, so it’s perfect on weak mobs that try to flee.

Btw, mana burn is a good nuke in most dungeons. It doesn’t have the high threat of mind blast. If an enemy has mana, then burn it.

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Depending on the composition/gearing of your group, dungeon trash mobs tend to die too quickly to bother with either Vampiric Embrace or the SW:Pain DoT. On longer-lasting bosses, or elite mobs that aren’t being focused-fired as heavily they can be useful.

Since you have no AoE in Classic. tab-targeting around & casting SW:Pain on multiple targets is your only real options besides focusing on one at a time.

Don’t open with Mind Blast while dpsing in groups, as it will likely pull aggro even with the 25% threat reduction talent. Open with a couple of Mind Flays & then start weaving Mind Blast in from there every 2 (or 3) Mind Flays. From a PvE perspective, you really don’t need more than 2 points put into the Mind Blast talent that reduces the cool-down, as two points is perfect for weaving it between 2 Mind Flays seamlessly.

Mind Blast is a great tool to use to snipe the kill shot & proc Spirit Taps in groups. With a little bit of timing & practice, you can get quite a bit of mana regen going this way.

Just like with Balance Druids, gear itemization is frustrating in Classic WoW for Shadow Priests. Priest/Druid official post-dungeon tier gear in raids is aimed at healing only & is not optimal for a DPS role at all. Just the way that it is. You will need to piece together random non-tier cloth pieces for both to get anywhere near where you want to be. ZG is a good place to get some non-tier dps cloth armor pieces once you begin to outgrow dungeons.

For soloing with Spirit Tap talent, you can pretty much kill non-stop using PW:Shield, Mind Blast, SW:Pain, Mind Flay & wand the rest for yellows. Drop the Mind Flay for greens if you want. Oranges are also easy but will require more casting/mana before dropping to wand only. I use PW:Shield because I don’t like casting Inner Fire after every pull or two to refresh the armor charges.

Inner Fire & armor bonuses actually help your PW:Shield hold up longer to physical damage, since physical damage is mitigated through armor before being applied to the PW:Shield absorb value in the game mechanics.

Both the Shadow threat reduction talent & the Discipline threat reducer can reduce more threat together, but the Shadow one alone is usually enough unless you are going balls to the wall with your casting. Don’t go group PvEing without the full Shadow threat talent invested at bare minimum if you expect to use Mind Blast. Salvation buff is also your friend.

Stack as much INT & SPRT as you can (in addtion to +spelldamage). You need the extra mana pool & regen. Make sure you have Meditation from Discipline for the extra combat regen. Inner focus is also nice for a zero-mana cost Mind Blast or whatever on demand every 3 minutes.

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spriest is an incomplete spec much like ret or balance trees. mind flay is your bread and butter spell, it has a 20yd range and only a 42% spellpower coefficient because it suffers from the “secondary effect” penalty (it applies a slow). its just a tragically bad spec that is only brought to 40man raids because the warlocks understandably want to deal more damage. with no aoe and bare-minimum levels of utility (20yd range silence, dispel), you’re borderline useless in 5mans.

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lol, you can literally bring zero DPS specs to 5-mans in Vanilla & still complete them easily.

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My advice : heal 5-10 mans shoot for raiding where you will be wanted and loved by your purple raidframed kin.

Losing 15% damage because the misconception that spriests are useless annoys me.

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yes, you can see the OP is asking about its viability in 5mans more or less. i’m just providing him with information. there is a reason it feels awful playing spriest in 5mans, because it is an incomplete spec.

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In 5 man Instances:

On trash: Vamp Embrace first. Don’t Mind Blast yet as you’ll pull agro. Don’t bother with SWP as trash mobs will die too fast. Instead, cast a couple of Mind Flays until the mob is below 2/3rds health, and then cycle between Mind Flay and Mind Blast whenever it’s off cooldown. Against bosses, add SWP to the mix and whatever specials you may have that add extra Shadow damage. Again, do not use Mind Blast right away unless you want to tank. Just keep using Mind Flay for a few seconds to allow tank to get sufficient agro before starting to cycle in Mind Blast.

In Raids:

First off, ignore the naysayers. Raids will only ever need a single Shadow Priest as more are redundant, but if you are that Shadow Priest, then don’t heal. First off, something VERY important to take note: mobs all have a limited number of debuff slots that can be used, so you’ll want to coordinate with your raid leader how many of those you can reserve for yourself. You need AT LEAST two for Mind Flay (even if it doesn’t actually do any slowdowns on bosses) and of course Shadow Weaving, the very reason you’re in the group. Shadow weaving gives an up to +15% Shadow damage to you and all your warlocks and will greatly ramp up your raid’s DPS numbers if there are a bunch of warlocks in there spamming Shadow Bolt. Rotation is similar to 5 mans, minus SWP due to the limited debuff slots. If you’re lucky enough to get a third debuff slot for yourself, you can mix in Vamp Embrace. If that’s the case, ask to be placed in the group that’s likely to take the most damage, either the tanks of life tapping Warlocks. One exceptional note here: You do not have the luxury of wanding when your mana is slow as you MUST keep Shadow Weaving stacks running. So if you are low on mana, start using Rank 1 Mind Flay. You won’t do much damage, but you’ll ensure your Warlocks keep hitting like trucks. The moment you stop casting Shadow spells at the target, Shadow Weaving stacks will disappear quickly.

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Granted I only have 1 dungeon under my belt since hitting 40 and going shadow. I did end up on the top of the DPS meters and only pulled treat twice the entire run (growing pains trying to feel out when to MB).

I think if I take into consideration Tercia’s advise of letting a few rounds of mind flay go by before dumping MB on it, I should be good. Especially when I get that additional threat reduction from disc talent.

And if it means I chug a 50s consumable to be on par with others in a 5 man. I have no issue doing that.

Thanks for the advice everyone!

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in a dungeon you lie to people that you’re healer

Jokes aside you just throw swp and spam mindflay. Mind blast only when tank is great and threat isn’t an issue

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honestly, and I’m sure some people will disagree with me, but VE is kind of a waste of time, and by waste of time, I mean waste of your GCD time. The mob will already be dead by the time you get damage rolling. You always want to frontload your spells, and wait on the 5 sec mana regen. dot, mindflay, mindblast at +3 shadow weaving. You can always VE a boss if you want to, and most people do. A random trash mob though? mehh, kinda pointless.

Mindflay scales better with spell power. Mindblast, is like double the amount of mana as mindflay. If you’re mindblasting on CD, you will go OOM very quickly. You want to mindblast as few times as possible while maintaining the maximum damage output from it. I only mindblast for 2 conditions: 1, at 3+ stacks on Shadow weaving so that the mana you are spending on it actually does great damage for its use, and 2, to insure that you get the killing blow on a mob to trigger your spirit tap. Mindflay is your main ability after shadow word pain.

So, again, some priests may disagree with me, but this is purely from my experience. When you’re faced with 4+ mobs, to dot all of them will make you go OOM very quickly. As a shadow priest, understand, that when there is 4+ mobs, you will never be top dps. So don’t even try, don’t even bother. Just do single target damage, and let the mage or combat rogue be the star of the show.
That being said, shadow performs extremely well on 3 mobs (I find). You have the mana and ability to dot all 3, while simultaneously mindflaying/mindblasting 1 of them. In a 3-4 mob situation, shadow is fantastic. 5+ though, forget it, save the mana, you don’t get mind sear in classiic.

Very important, as I’m sure you have learned, but you need to spec 5/5 into spirit tap and trying to time your mindblasts (or wand hits) to the killing blow. You have a decent chance of getting spirit tap proc from shadow word pain and mindflay, but your 500+ dmg mind blast is kind of a guarantee if you time it right.

there are talents to limit your threat generation, but not worth it for leveling. What I’d recommend is wait for the tank to establish a couple stacks of Sunder Armor before mindblasting. that should insure that you don’t pull threat.

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tfw you’re on the stairs in ZF and you’re standing there like “derp, what do I do” while the mage blizzards and hogs all the glory. :confused:

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I’ll always look for another dps if I have a shadow priest asking to come. That’s just me some people don’t care but a spriest is always gonna slow a group down and is almost never useful.

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I literally do not care what comes into my 5 mans. If I have sufficient heals, anyone that doesn’t pull extra things and can keep pace is just going to make it faster than if I had to solo/duo it.

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VE is good with a weak healer in the group, it will pick up their slack. Shackle can be very useful in Strat, Scholo, and certain other dungeons when the group has a poor comp. Mind Control can be godly if you use it on the right casters to buff party members with or to DPS. An extra mage cannot pick up heals if the healer goes down, but a good s-priest sure can.

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Spriests are good to bring if you have a druid healer, because of the res. VE can be nice on bosses and strong elites. Non-geared groups will want a priest for scholo because shackle is really good for two boss fights, and even caster trash.

That said, I unironically think smite priests are better DPS in 5-mans. They bring res and shackle, they are basically an extra healer in oh-crap moments, they do more damage in AoE due to the holy nova spam, and off-heal more with said nova spam than a spriest with vampiric embrace. Their single target damage is comparable with shadow, and only significantly inferior on, say, 2-3 target cleave.

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One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here, mind control is a fantastic CC and as shadow, you have much less of a miss chance on it.

Be sure to control something that has fun spells to use :slight_smile:

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