The Raiding Shadowpriest

I see same post all over again. What specc should I use for PvE raiding? What rotation shall I use? Then people show their specc, say how they do, many of them are very confusing.
So I'm writing this for the last time.

Why Shadowpriest in the raid? (Introduction)
Vampirit Touch – Causes 650 Shadow damage over 15sec to your target and couses all party members to gain mana equal to 5% of any shadow spell damage you deal

Shadow Weaving – Your Shadow damage spells have x % chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Shadow damage. This vulnerability increases the Shadow damage dealt to your target by 2% and last 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Misery
Your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch spells also cause the target to take an additional 5% spell damage.

So...
Mana battery, increase shadow damage taken, increase all spell damage taken.
But the Shadow Priest is more than just a tool to buff up the raid, the shadow priest is also a huge damage dealer itself, top 3 on damage meters isnt uncommon in many guilds.

The Raiding Specc:
As a new Shadow Priest you cant look at other high end raiding shadow priest and copy their specc totally. Your specc is depending on your gear.

What shall I think about then?
First of all, your amount of spell damage. I usually take a margin on 1k spelldamage.
If you have under 1k spelldamage you have to use a diffrent type of rotation. You should base your damage on your DoTs and only Mind Flay. This might sound pathetic but this is because your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death cost too much mana and the mana back is too small.You will go out of mana in no time.
When you get over 1k spell damage you should be able to use Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death in your rotation without any problems.

Second, your hit rating.
Why this is so important is because it decides how many points you need to spend in Shadow Focus. If you have ot rating on your gear you dont need to specc 5/5 in Shadow Focus and can therefore use those point someone else in your talent tree.

Use this template (Me and others have posting it on the forum before)
76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow Focus

All numbers rounded up to the next whole number.

1% hit = 12.6 hit rating at level 70.

Personally I go for having 3 points in Shadow Focus. Then I have a specc I want. And can fill the rest with crit rating.

I suggest you use this specc and a base. When you get more hit rating just move points from Shadow Focus over to Impoved Mind Blast.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?500230013000000000000000000000000000000000503250310250103051551

Shall I explain this? I can do a few that have been talked about.
Unbreakable will – I am alliance, we have fear ward, and by looking on horde shadow priests they seem to choose Unbreakable Will over wand specc so I don think they have any problems with fears. And, you never use wands in raids anyway.You need to keep casting to keep the mana regain to your party up. (Or mages will whine ^^). This is also an anti silence effect, which is useful on many bosses with AoE silence. (Gruul, Azgalor for example)
Meditation – As a shadow priest you will have mana problems. Any mana regain is needed.
Inner Focus – Same goes with this spell. Free spell with 25% more crit chance.

Spirit Tap – Some priests might think this is useless, but its not! Many bosses have adds, adds will low amount of health. Time your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death on these adds to trigger your Spirit Tap. A good example on low hp adds are the water elementals on Lady Vashj.


Talents you should NOT take:
Improved Fade: This talent is the most useless talent in the tree.
Improved Vampiric Embrace: This talent will only cause your threat to top the threatmeter. And let the healers do the raidhealing. See the health back with VE as a bonus. Dont rely on it.

The Rotation:
Im not gonna post a rotation you should use. Its also situational.
The things you should think about generally is too always keep your DoTs and debuffs up. Have a DoT timer to help you with that. Always have cooldown on Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death. Mind Flay between cooldowns for maximized dps.

Link:
http://www.shadowpriest.com/index.php – Our own forum! Some stuff might be old, but have loads of useful topics.


Feel free to add stuff I missed or things you disagree with.
Might have some misspelling. Can be word blind sometimes. English isnt my tougue.

Juubo
<My Littel Pwny>

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Q u o t e:
Hey, nice guide, offering to add this for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbgi2e9gKYU

Cheers and <3

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When did you use Inner Focus?

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Not sure, think at the start with plague.

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No it's shaded in the middle of the video right in the cut if you didn't change the icon for it. :)

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Ah I think that was prayer of fort.

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Ok. I tend to use it with MB; the second part of bonus from Inner Fire is 25% crit chance. Along with Shadow power 15% and you "natural" crit chance ~10% it's 50% crit on free MB. To bad it happens only once every 3 minutes. :)

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Q u o t e:


Ok. I tend to use it with MB; the second part of bonus from Inner Fire is 25% crit chance. Along with Shadow power 15% and you "natural" crit chance ~10% it's 50% crit on free MB. To bad it happens only once every 3 minutes. :)

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Seems rather silly to get a "free" MB imo.

Use it on SW:P (plague if ur undead), your saving yourself more mana and regening more "free" mana from the spell than you would with a MB crit. The damage gained from the 25% inc MB crit chance per 3 mins is laughable.

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Seems rather silly to get a "free" MB imo.

Use it on SW:P (plague if ur undead), your saving yourself more mana and regening more "free" mana from the spell than you would with a MB crit. The damage gained from the 25% inc MB crit chance per 3 mins is laughable.

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Use it with DP/Sw:P on bosses, use it with Mindblast on trash, as long as it'll be ready before next boss fight begins. Simple.

I have this spec to make it last during longer fights. If you want to go mind blast pew pew, you'll sometimes be forced to stop doing dps due to too much threat. If you got 2 pallys in the raid the mana-regen and the -threat blessing is preferable.

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Q u o t e:
In Theorycraft, mindblasting isn't great to use in bosses due to the extra threat.

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Since one of the later patrches MB no longer generates extra threat.

Anyway, great guide. Especially the guildeline for when MB and SW:D can be included in long fights. And eventually I might (my alt Im speaking about :D ) remo9ve the impr VE points, as I am already, while leveling, an agro magnet.

Leo

very nice guide, especially since its free of all the usual my-specc-rulz-u-R-all-n00z sillyness, thank you

reported for sticky

I was surprised that the SP actually ran out of mana on the Attumen fight though.

Remember my mana being fine during that fight when i was shadow =)

I find this build more viable for me. I see it as a raid (pve) and bg (pvp) combination shadowpriest. The support I give for the raid is far better than a full shadowpriest. Only problem is the spelldmg at the moment which I'm still working on:

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?500032313002000000000000000000000000000000053252010231123051051

Shadow weaving doesnt need to be 5/5. With a long fight ahead as a shadowpriest in raids you'll get the stacked buffs anyway. 3/5 on shadowweaving should be enough already. Add another shadowpriest to the raid and the stacking of shadowweaving will go sky high.

Improved Power Word Fortitude is in my opinion not needed either. In a raid having a holy priest casting Fortitude buffs is enough.

Improved Vampiric Embrace is needed in my opinion. A shadowpriest is not put in the same group as the maintank perse. And every bit of healing will be welcomed by players that normally dont receive that much healing. Rogues and mages for example. In raids ive been so far, the only time I aggro too much is when I mindlessly spam shadowdmg on mobs for fun. In a 25man raid I only do that when we're on mobs (not on bosses) to see how far i can get with my own dmg. Mindflay is my friend of course.

Too bad your build doesnt have silence or fear. In good controlled enviroments and mindflay, fear can be slick. Silence can help alot, mobs in Karazhan for example. Do consider that talents and skills is always situational. It cant cover everything, and its the combination of the people you're playing with and their skills that make a raid a succes. Also Blindeye the Seer the add that goes with King Maulgar (Gruul's Lair) can be silenced as well. So if the kicks, pummels whatever interrupts is on cooldown and Blindeye is casting on itself or his friends, voila! silence! and it can save a lot of trouble. Back to using fear on mobs and the combination of mindflay....i don't use fear on 5 mobs, mainly using it on one. Using fear on mobs unlike what people normally say: YOU NAB, i think being able to control a mob with fear using mindflay is pro.

Shadowpower is personal preference really. I dont have it anymore since critting, doesnt help when you want to get less aggro. Crit helps when you want mobs jumping on you, I'd rather have improved Vampiric Embrace over shadowpower. Also in raids I leave Shadow Word: Death out of my rotation cause unexpected AoE from bossfights or mobs including using this skill can kill you instantly. The other people in your raidgroup aren't waiting for you to die on them. Cons of shadowpower in my opinion: Mindblast crit=extra increase of the aggro, SW: death crit=also extra increase of aggro and killing yourself in the process.

The discipline talents I use next my shadow: Martyrdom, Absolution, Inner Focus, Mana Burn, Unbreakable Will, Imp Shield, Meditation.
I'll explain a few here:
Absolution: In fight like Maiden in Karazhan, dispel is needed when healers are focussing on healing the maintank. Mass dispel is awesome in pvp against Ice Block for example.
Inner Focus: There are times I need to drop out of shadowform to do some healing. I only happen to do that when something strange and unexpected occurs on healing side of the raid. Then I back them up till theyre out of the crisis. I hit Inner Focus to get back into Shadowform again. Shadowform has such a high manacost, Inner Focus is perfect.
Imp Shield: Shields of course on people in raids when theyre in trouble and when you know those people normally don't get heal that fast from healers anyway. Fighting Gruul when Gruul is using Ground Slam, people are randomly hit to a spot and shield can help yourself mainly not to get too much aoe dmg from other players. You dont have much time running away from eachother. Last night 3 holy priests died in the process. On our next try everyone used Shield =). Sometimes I use shield on maintank as well. Healers are casting heal and theres just no time for them to stop heal and shield them first.
Meditation: yes I need mana regeneration!
Mana burn: kill all holy palas! Use it only in battlegrounds. It also procs Blackout, so it could be a nice spell.

To end this I would like to add, I'm in no position to tell how people should set their talentpoints. I'm merely trying to give them a broader perspective on the different talents I use. Compared to my full shadowspecc build in the past. I think the one I have now is way better pvp and pve wise. pve being able to support raids when needed with the discipine talents I got. And pvp having more ways to resist stun and fear effects + proccing of Martyrdom some more resisting on interrupting from other people. clearcasting gives me 6 sec the time to cast an extra heal or 2 on myself awaiting the arrival of my ally mates. (I hope....)

Good luck people with playing. I barely ever have the time to write things on this forum. I enjoy reading it though.



"Talents, spells, skills and other people's talents, spells, skills.....very situational indeed"

Hi Waveforce.
Your specc is a combination or pve and pvp. My guide was written for pure PvE, since i dislike pvping as a shadowpriest.

5/5 shadow weaving might not be needed. All depends how many shadow priest you have in the raid. But at Keal'thas we accually split up the shadow priests to stack up debuffs on the adds. 1 on astromancer for the warlock tank, 1 on darkener for the rest of the casters. Then its good to stack up debuffs fast. If you need to take a point or two, take it from shadow weaving.

Imp Fort is indeed not needed. But in 25man instances we only have 1-2 holy priest in the raid and 2-3 shadowpriest. Letting the holy priests buff both fort and spirit can be alittle harsh.

I dont know how far you have gone into raiding but improved Vampiric Embrace will cause to much threat and you will need to hold back on dps. Having a shadowpriest in a MT grp is useless since you lose the mana regain to the party, while having a shadowpriest in a mage or healing group wil benefit so much more in the raid. The healing on the party should not be needed through VE, shamans chain heal, CoH (yes we have 1 priest so deep into holy) or the druids HoTs will cover most of the raidhealing.

As a pure PvE shadowpriest there is no need to have silence. Most mobs are immune to silence and its not a interuppt spell, so it cant be used like counterspell, kick, pummel or earthshock.

All those talents you put in disc are for PvP. As I said in the beginning, the guide was made for raiding. And I wrote this to help those who enjoy raiding as much as me.

But for people who want to mix, sure I recommed your specc for that :)


And thank you Salthem :)

Hello Juubo,

thank you for such positive feedback. I reckon a community where people share their opinions without taking people down is quite a hard feat nowadays. And I admire your way of trying to bring in some positive points where people can build upon.

At the moment as far as raiding is in my guild we're trying some attempts on Magtheridon. Like I said before, I'm still working on my spelldamage. When I get to 1000+ spelldamage I will probably implement your idea on leaving Improved Vampiric Embrace out. I guess my aggro isnt rocketing skyhigh yet for me to stop using it.

Thanks for everything!

Wave