Do we have any old raiders that used a SP in vanilla for 40 man raids? If so , i assume grouped with Locks or perhaps melee for the small amount of heals provided. Just looking for input , I am considering rolling a SP for vanilla/classic.
Since there will be 16 debuff slots 1 spriest is fine to debuff for the warlocks
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Play BFA or quit
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People played shadow priests and raided with them in original WoW, don’t let anyone tell you different.
You will need to find a guild that isn’t locked into “only the Holy Trinity raids,” of course.
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SPriest probably has it the best of any of the healer DPS specs because of Shadow Weaving giving +15% shadow damage taken to the target. Raids will often take one just to buff up their warlock DPS.
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shadow priests wee the one dps other than hunters who got taken to raids as a dps even though their dps was low
for hunters, its because they have tranq shot and can kite, and because they can pull for the tanks with a rank 1 arcane shot and can feign death every 30 seconds to have an extremely high chance to wipe their threat each time, essentially meaning that they can’t pull aggro off of the tanks no matter how hard they hit, which is especially useful for fights where the tank is rage-starved
for shadow priests, it it solely because of their talent called shadow weaving
however, if people start running a 13/18/20 priest who starts each fight with a single SW:P, then raid heals while throwing in a rank 1 mind blast every 8-12 seconds or so, then shadow priests are gonna get phased out
a simple solution to that would be to swap the positions of darkness and shadow weaving in the shadow talent tree, forcing healing priests to lose out on either 15% less cost for single-target heals or both 15% in-combat mana regen AND 20% threat reduction to get 5/5 shadow weaving… but they said that they won’t be doing class balance, so oh well, too bad
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We usually had 4-5 Warlocks in the raid, so we had a dedicated Shadow Priest to buff our shadow damage.
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Yes, they were viable. One shadow priest per raid was ideal and even hardcore raiders will want one as they optimize raid DPS.
However, the absolute most optimal shadow priest would actually still focus on healing and only spec into shadow to pick up shadow weaving to keep it up with a rank 1 mind flay.
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no, not with mind flay; that takes up an extra debuff slot
If I remember correctly, rank 1 mind flay was a super low priority debuff and gets knocked off really quick. I believe it also had the smallest mana cost of any damaging shadow spell.
So I thought it was the thing to use to keep shadow weaving up. At least that’s what the vanilla shadow priest guides said that I read.
Looking at it, Shadow Word: Pain is the lowest at 25 mana for rank 1 but that’s a DoT.
Mind Flay rank 1 is 45 mana and Mind Blast rank 1 is 50 mana, so there isn’t a huge difference in which one you use.
Probably rank 1 mind blast. You get it such a low level it would make sense
I’m pretty sure they are extremely mana inefficient and don’t really compare with the other classes, even in really good gear. That said there is room for a lot in a 40 man raid. You can have some bads in there but you would be getting carried.
Perhaps mind blast rank 1 is the way to go then.
Not exactly a carry when shadow weaving increases every Warlocks damage by 15%. It may be bottom tier damage but that utility is very useful.
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Lots of people are locked into retail’s “if you’re not a dedicated tank or a dedicated healer then all that matters is your personal numbers on a damage meter” mindset.
It doesn’t work for any Classic class really, but it’s perhaps worst of all for shadow priests, who were always about making the group/raid more powerful, not about individually cranking out mage/rogue level dee pee ess.
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Like others have said, there is room in every raid for exactly one shadow priest.
Not gonna lie. We had 2 shadow priests and we made 1 re-spec.
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This is something that I imagine will happen a decent amount. What hybrids bring in place of full DPS is utility, and more of the same utility always has diminishing returns.
Shadow Weaving is great, but two Shadow Weavings? That has no additional benefit. Even things like Lay on Hands or Rebirth will start to matter less and less as you get more and more of them.
I raided as a primary healer with more points in shadow than holy. Something like 0/18ish/33ish. I did not have shadow form. I tried shadow form but re-specced out of it because I felt it was annoying to have to come out of shadow form to heal, even in PvP.
Shadow form’s Improved Fade makes it easier for tanks too (that is, as long as Bliz doesn’t get rid of the need for threat management… I believe patch 1.11 did this?) This was part of my justification for having so many points in shadow yet being in a leading progression raid guild.
We were server 2nd to kill Rag. Around June 2005. Blackhand server. I PvP’ed a lot after MC was defeated and quit before year end. A lot changed by the time 1.12 rolled around so I can only speak for 1.6 and prior.
IMO, you can put points into shadow and still be a great healer in raids. As long as you are not in shadow form obviously.