every single expansion it NEVER fails leveling a shadowpriest is THE WORST LEVELING EXPERIENCE probably closely followed by assassination rogue. you have almost no healing few defensive cooldowns your damage is mediocre and is based on a cooldown based rotation , it is VERY EASY to accidently pull multiple mobs as a shadowpriest because quite a few of your damage abilities are aoe attacks. ever since wod shadowpriests have been a nightmare for me to level. in legion i didn’t even bother leveling it past lvl 102 it was so bad. in shadowlands i’m running into much of the same issue. even with my npc help i still manage to die to stuff my other characters have little issue with. im halfway to lvl 60 and i already just want to quit.
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Because its a shady business, of course
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That’s why I level Holy, World quest as Holy and solo as Holy. SP damage just has too much ramp up time for anything outside raid bosses. I can Holy Fire and smite spam stuff to death faster or DoT everything in the vicinity and Nova it down. Extras showed up to join in? Whatever I’ll cast a heal.
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Guides: Level as the DPS spec! Level as the DPS spec! It’s definitely better!
My paladin, monk, and priest so far do not agree. Difference between DPS and Tank/Heal has been giving up survivability for a benefit to DPS that, if it’s even there, is too small for me to actually feel in practice.
Only trouble with leveling as a tank is that when I’m in the mood to que for a leveling dungeon I don’t want to que as a tank. 
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i manage to do decent damage as a ret paladin. dunno about monk haven’t leveled one yet. you used to be able to cast that aoe heal spell in shadowform but not anymore.
I haven’t really had any problems leveling as Shadow in the past. I like leveling as tank with Paladin, Druid, and Demon Hunter. Those you can chain pull mobs. For Spriests, bubble and DoT a bunch of mobs and run in a circle. They usually melt pretty quickly.
It’s preparing you for the misery that awaits you when you do get to max level playing this meme spec.
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Huh? What am I missing? My sole aoe option is mind sear while leveling. Our aoe and mobility is amongst the worst in the game.
Nevertheless I always level as shadow, switching to disc for a few attrition fights, and it’s fine
We need a shadow beast that comes out of the ground holding our enemies in place for awhile.
well anytime my character gets more than 2 mobs on her or the mini boss mobs from quests on her its a struggle for her to stay alive which is really easy to do in certain areas.
I didn’t have any particular problems leveling this character, provided I played it LIKE a rogue and not a leather clad warrior.
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my rogue had a rough time for the first 1/3 of shadowlands leveling until i completed bastion it seemed to get easier after i finished bastion.
I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t like leveling thru SL either. I’d rather go thru northrend, draenor ,pandaria, legion or BFA then set foot in SL again. Thankfully cromie time will be extended to 60 next expansion so my alts will be skipping that SL and pretending it never existed
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i’m talking class mechanics wise not the actual feel of the leveling.
squishy, damage has to ramp, no mobility…you get the picture.
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Shadow priest has the same problem as Outlaw rogue, the sound effects on the basic abilities are so annoyingly ear grating that I have to turn sounds off.
Whoever did shaman and warlock sounds did a great job.
Shadow Priest needs a whole re-work at this point. it needs to be faster and more dynamic. It just does not feel good to play right now.
Try levelling Threads of Fate via the Torghast daily; was melting faces in there as Shadow while levelling. Each run is 3/4 of a level and takes 15-20 mins.
I personally like shadow priests, like the idea of them, but have never really understood the concept behind them, mechanics wise.
came back to the game late last week and ran a torghast 12 in s1 pvp gear. I thought I should be OK since earlier in the expansion I was running through 12’s in 10 minutes, on a frost mage with dungeon blues, from leveling.
Level 2 alone (skoldus hall), took me 30min on sp. In 14 years of playing wow, I’ve never played a mage until a few months ago, meanwhile I’ve been playing shadow priest off and on since mop.
It could have been the PVP gear certainly, but our aoe is absolute garbage. It takes a little while to build up insanity, to drop a devouring plague, yet devouring plague is so weak, while for the same amount of time of buildup, and affliction lock triples that damage.
Shadow priest is great for single target or utility/support in arena, but not for any kind of solo play or dungeons
1 Like