I’m an experienced end-game Holy priest (Vanilla through AQ 20 and all of the subsequent expansions). I’m also an experienced shadow priest as shadow was the spec I used (and am using) to grind to 60. But, I’ve never, ever tried healing a dungeon as a shadow priest and, despite what I’ve read here in the forum, am concerned that shadow probably isn’t the spec for healing dungeons that its proponents claim. Especially at my current level (42)
However, I want to be proved wrong because I love healing and would like to think there are measures I might take to mitigate the risk healing as a shadow-specced priest presents. So, some questions:
Should I get a healing set (i.e., owl gear and items with +healing).
Above what dungeon level should I not heal (ZF? Strat?, BRD?.. etc.)
Can pots, potions, flasks, and mana-regen foods make up for shadow’s deficits?
How important is group makeup (e.g., having druid and mage buffs)?
Thanks, everyone, in advance. Any other advice would be very much appreciated.
You can easily heal through any 5-man Dungeon with your set of Shadow Damage. You won’t be as efficient as a Holy/Disc priest, but you’ll still be fine. I wouldn’t recommend raiding, specced as Shadow, and heal.
The concept people seem to have a hard time wrapping their head around is that you don’t have to be the best at something. You just have to be good enough to get the job done.
Repeating for emphasis: you can heal any pre-60 dungeon as Shadow spec wearing dps gear with little trouble. End game dungeons (particularly Stratholme/Scholomance) might be tricky, but once you have good enough gear, that should similarly get better. You will probably have more mana issues, but mage water is plenty cheap, and as Shadow it should be easy to farm consumables or grind cash to buy mana pots.
My main in Vanilla/TBC was a Shadow Priest. I main-healed all the Vanilla dungeon content regularly pretty easily back then without being over-geared for it (even PUGS, which I also did more of back then). That also includes regularly main-healing the time-crunching Baron 45 runs that I did with various guild-mates back then (again, without being over-geared for anyone in group, since none of us ever did any raiding outside of a few random runs in ZG).
In the TBC expansion I was also main healing for the guild as Shadow Spec in regular dungeons & even the Heroics (& some regular dungeon PUGs). It was noticeably tougher to do in TBC (especially the Heroics), but doable with a solid group who knew how to CC, pull, etc. Properly managing mana, mana regen & triage style healing is more vital however since your heals are less efficient. Probably helped that she was an Alchemist with the best mana potions always on hand when things got more intense than usual.
Thanks, everyone. My priest is a 300/300 alchemist/herb so the pots, potions, and flasks will be no problem. Might look on the AH for some Owl gear and maybe an item or two with healing stats.
Not really the same thing as what you’re asking, but we had either a ret paladin or prot paladin attempting to heal a 6 man UBRS Jed / Rend and the tank dropped several times.
I noticed they didn’t even begin casting heals until the tank was 40-50% and exclusively used Holy Light.
It may have just been a terrible pug, but it’s given me a complex about offspec healers.
You can heal all of them. BRD and LBRS can be shaky with a under geared tank if you don’t watch the pats/runners. If the tank is moving too quick for your mana usage make sure you let it be known, some of them just keep going and going. A good way to stop this if they aren’t listening is don’t heal them after a pull to full if you need to drink.
You should probably only off heal UBRS if you are going for the final boss of that instance.
Having a few pieces of healing gear won’t hurt, but you don’t need to carry a whole set, maybe +100 worth or so.
I had also mastered the art of stealing the killing blow in dungeons to get a good amount of Spirit Tap procs as a Shadow Spec Priest doing the main-healing role. It takes a bit of practice/timing, but you can get a lot of extra mana-regen in that fashion. Very useful while working through all the trash pulls or even Boss fights where lesser Boss minions are in play.
As someone else also noted, an under-geared or improperly played tank will indeed test your healing mettle more than anything while Shadow Spec healing, as will a lot of melee DPS taking peripheral/splash damage.
I wouldn’t take a shadow priest along as a healer after about 40-45.
Too much drinking, you’ll just slow everything down to a snails pace since you’ll be oom after every fight.
Which is why I prefaced my comment with “this isn’t the same thing you’re talking about”, but also demonstrated / backed up what OP was asking as far as the dungeon level range in which they can offspec heal effectively.
– Yes. Or a set that is +dmg/healing together.
– You can heal any level 5man as long as the tank is decent and the DPS aren’t idiots.
– Yes, but you should only need water and maybe food for 5mans. If a tank pulls when you’re under 50% mana or pulls so many that it drains your entire mana bar (aside from bosses) then your tank is stupid.
– Not nearly as important as you think. Mages are nice for water. What IS important is that they aren’t complete idiots.
