Are shadow priests an effective class on pvp servers?
I am pretty much done with this borefest they call a pve server. I was thinking of making a priest as my first character on a pvp server. My first choice was going to be an undead rogue of course, but I would rather be needed in end game than gank 24/7. I was thinking about leveling up as shadow then switch to support at 60 to get nice gear, then back to shadow later on. =)
Any suggestions on this?
-Aelace
(12/12/2005 9:18:11 AM PST)
pretty sure its top tier 1v1
If you aren’t being 10v1d then yes shadow priest is amazing. I win almost every single 1v1 and most 1v2s on my server in pretty bad gear.
The issue is when you are on an imbalanced server or if you get overwhelmed altogether, you are really just fresh meat sitting there. You have no escapes/stealths so it can be really annoying try to zone in somewhere or in a horde/alliance heavy spot.
For some reason my original post went up with a bunch of errors so I just opted to delete it instead of looking stupid.
Shadow priests are fun, but endgame you will be forced to heal unless you’re lucky and get to be the one shadow priest on the raid team. Priests are also over populated, unless you are friends with a tank on some kind, you will have some trouble finding groups.
Just going into more detail here… if you raid
There’s a lot of people who simply just don’t like to raid, like myself. Shadow priest have a real easy time at 60 unless you plan on raiding every week in nonpugs.
Pugging is actually easier to get into than guild groups.
In the Faerlina dueling tournament priest has the highest overall win rate by a strong margin, for what thats worth.
Shadow priest is very powerful but, in my personal opinion, boring. You have zero mobility and you basically use the same rotation in PvP as you do in PvE.
I mean… if you are a really bad pvper then sure lol. You don’t have a ‘rotation’ for pvp at all. You play drastically different (at least you should) depending on who you are fighting.
That’s generally true but the least true in the case of the shadow priest. It’s such a non-interactive spec that relies on passive mitigation and throughput to be a commanding PvP force.
That’s not true though lol. You have a spells you have to utilize and perfect for every interaction. Yeah you generally only have damaging abilities, but how you use your utility is what makes you a bad priest or a good one.
Generally bad pvpers just see the 3 offensive abilities and instantly assume it’s low skill. You have to work on juggling in and out of shadow form, or whether to not even leave it at all, when to cast your self heals, which heals to cast when, when to dispel, or when to go full offensive, how to juke, and if you have eng then it can get even more interesting.
Sure other classes can have higher skill ceilings, such as hunter or mage, but I wouldn’t call it boring by any means… But I guess that part is subjective. The rotation part is just silly though.
You’re talking about a game with minimal health and mana pools, dropping form to heal is going to occur like clockwork in your robot fear rotation and the sheer power of shadowform, for mind blast mind flay is going to eclipse that the majority of the time.
Ok maybe you’re playing against like terrible players, but rarely does your fear ever just stick and you can free cast heals like a bot, especially as alliance.
Every time you’re commenting I just get the impression that you are at a different level of understand pvp than most are lol
Every time you type I get the impression that you’re on a different level of English composition than most are, so that’s always a questionable sign.
So you concede that you should probably not comment on anything regarding pvp then? Hopefully! It’s fairly clear you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Oh, and btw, some people like to type on their phones which like to autocorrect words, if you had some critical thinking you might have picked up on this, but judging by your other posts I understand why you didn’t. 
PVE is a long term choice. Once the BGs come out, the action will be booming in there, and it’ll be without all the nonsense out in the world on PVP gank realms. So while they might be boring right now, they will become great once BGs open up. If you’re rolling PVP right now because there is no BGs, you may regret your decision later.
As for shadows, they are a prime 1vs1 class, and fantastic out in the world. The place they actually don’t shine is in BGs, due to constantly running out of mana and getting sucked dry by viper stings every time they turn around. But combat is so fast paced in matches that dots are of little use. You can spam blast/flay, but you just run out even faster. A mage is much better at nuking people (hence why they are the most popular caster).
I don’t like to gank priests at all in the open world, would be differnt if I were undead though.
Extremely strong 1v1 if both combatants are full HP and had time to buff. The issue is that:
your buffs take a ton of mana and you have many necessary ones
you will be respawning at half mana/hp