Shadow priest and melee training in pvp

Classes Priest
1

How do you survive melee when shadow priest has to hardcast to do dmg ?

2
  • Prioritize keeping Dots up, especially on kill target.
  • Get precog. You’re going to spend the first min trying to figure out their kick pattern. That’s fine, then just make sure to make the most of your precog.
  • Feather + fade with fade talents can help make space.
  • If you’re running the PvP talent fade learn repetitive cycles dps make to get good at avoiding things, (ex) warriors like to charge > stormbolt. After they start their charge hit it to avoid the stun.
  • Don’t be afraid to be kicked if you don’t have a lot of damage or are waiting for CD’s. You’ve got two schools of magic, and smashing Dispel magic into enemies does 2 things. 1 build insanity and 2 removes beneficial buffs.
  • Assuming you’re playing VW I generally try and save 70ish insanity going into a Void Torrent. After the channel you can put out a lot of damage just by hitting the 3-4 devouring plagues that’s follow. Also I’ve found we consistently get a Shadowy Insight proc during our Rift Windows. (All of this is instant damage)
  • MF:I is great precog bait
  • Dispers early, just trade CD for CD, it’s short and you will probably get it back.
  • Flash heal applies 10% DR through the talent - this is nice when kick on shadow.
  • Also don’t be afraid to drop Phase Shift for Void Volley. Also if you’ve got MS already on your team dropping fiend for Driven is good synergy.
  • You’ve got a root talent, use it.
  • play in the open and try and avoid piller humping, it usually just puts the screws to your healer.

Shadow priest is also just really good at killing healers so keep the pressure up if the game allows and don’t let their healer do whatever they want.

If you watch F tier into the Move they are running Turbo. This might be comp to hard counter Spriest. But they also win 2/2 of their series keep an eye on how Wizk and Sterg move / work together.

4 Likes
3

I love how he/she asks how you survive melee as Shadow when you have to hardcast everything and your first bullet of advice was to “prioritize keeping dots up”…LOL

4

Especially since those dots don’t even tick for enough damage to show up on their HP bar. Every single class will just passively outheal them without having to do anything. Meanwhile, melee presses 1 button and we lose 1/3 of our HP.

5

“The best defense is a good offense”
This absolutely holds true at probably any level sub duelist. It’s pretty hard to stay offensive when you’re dying.
And also it’s First thing I said yea, But sure go ahead and ignore everything else I said in the post.
If youve got better advice go ahead and throw it out.

Except that often Vamp touch is one of our top damaging spells alone.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’ve got no idea how Spriest works because that post about our DoT’s alone tell me you’ve got no idea.

Vamp touch:
spawns shadow apparitions
Generates insanity
Enables our AoE
Adds extra damage through our mastery.

So while being in the top 3 for our damage often. It’s a pretty integral part of our kit.

6

So just going to put it out there that while everything you said is true there is a big difference between effective damage that leads to kills, this tends to be plague and rift collapse for shadow, and padding damage which is only high because its spread over multiple targets and should be constantly there.

Its the same with people who talk about disc having crazy high damage when people point out that one of its highest damage dealing abilities is actually PTW being applied to not just kill targets but passively spread with Penance. Its nice and needs to be done but it isn’t doing the killing.

V-touch against say an unholy death knight will be a ton of padded damage because when applied with Shadow Crash you will also be getting it on all their pets which really pads the meters. The bigger reasons to keep it up are the other things you stated, insanity generation/apparitions/link/etc.

7

Id actually argue that the damage done to the off targets is of bigger value than the damage to the main target.

High dampening games do happen. Even at 2k lobbies in SS my games are often between 2-3:30 min long(when I’m on my healers). Which is stupid high dampening for SS. The “pad” damage that wears on the team adds up a ton. Also take classes like Hpal which is very prominent right now. The best thing to do is wear the whole team down. They quickly lose value of their light of the martyr + light smith healing from that talent

But this is the case for all healers
Swapping on iron bark, pain suppression, guardian angle, yatta yatta. Swapping to targets at 80% health vs 100% health can absolutely secure kills.

In this aspect yes, Vamp pads the meters on pet damage. But the insanity generation alone will increase your effective damage overall. Which 100% makes it worth doing.

The thing is even in games without Bm / UDK’s Vamp touch is still a large part of our damage.

ALTHOUGH I would be curious to see it without unfurling damage on the overall. Problem is

Why wouldn’t you take a free instant cast that applies our dots + hits decently hard.

8

I fight melee quite a lot and here are some ways you can respond, that I’ve learned:

  • phase shift and void tendrils in tandem is actually really powerful, especially against DKs with army. Less strong against warriors but tbh fury warrior is probably one of your biggest counters in the game.

  • spriest is super momentum based and the class feels really powerful when you have it. Disrupting enemy cds with fear/horror/tendrils/silence on DKs or DHs during the opener can buy you time to build up insanity for getting the ball rolling. Opening part of most fights is going to be ccing as you get insanity up. Makes it fun to fight other spriests too since the opener is typically a little mind game.

  • flash heal is a 10% dmg reduction on a separate school, absolutely excellent for when you get kicked if there’s nothing to dispel, or for prepping for incoming burst you can tell is coming. Also great for baiting kicks in the middle of the fight so you can properly burst.

  • use disperse early since the cd is fairly short and I try to use it at high health if I can tell I’m about to get trucked. Much easier to mitigate damage than try and hold it and be stuck recovering at 30%.

  • scream and horror share different DR’s and have a short cd. Aside from warriors, people love to trinket scream. It’s a fairly dependable window to get burst off during the horror but if they trinket horror instead I typically shift and root to get a few yards of distance and burst.

this eddy was strong so I hope that made any sense but those are some things I do !!

Ps outside of rated netherweave net (for tailoring) has a very short cd and is a physically root if you need it in a pinch. Super easy to get if you have tailoring.