Your ideal 25-man raid group

[Kevin]

Honestly, I would have rather had Shadow Mending than Vampiric Touch just for the utility in group play as well as the obvious PvP uses. However, Vampiric Touch does seem like it will be a good ability if you use it carefully.

Something I would add to this discussion is that when the expansion comes out, there's going to be a lot more focus on 5 and 10-man groups rather than 40-man groups. Therefore, you won't have quite as much to choose from as far as group building toward specialization. :)

However, the place that I imagine a shadow priest would be often be best might be in a main tank group that is arranged to take advantage of the healing of vampiric embrace as well as the mana generation of vampiric touch. Something like the following would probably work out well:

1. Shadow Priest
2. Main Tank (VE healing should usually be effective and would act as an extra HoT on the MT)
3. Warlock (gives the MT blood pact, warlocks always benefit from both VE and VT)
4. Paladin (gives the MT an aura and benefits primarily from VT. Also, due to the ability that gives back mana when someone else heals you, VE could also help a Paladin's mana bar if it is taking some damage)
5. Shaman (gives the MT totems and benefits primarily from VT. VE would also help if the Shaman is going for melee and there is periodic damage in the encounter)

I think a really interesting thing would be to take this group into a 5-man. Use the Warlock's pet as an OT (who also gets VE healing), either the Pally or Shaman as the main healer and the other as DPS and you've got a very, very durable group for any 5-man encounter. :)

Yeah that works well too. I always like having VE on the MT.

And that group would destroy a 5 man. Just like it does now. One of the best ways to do a 45 minute run is a to take a shadow priest as well because they cover most of the healing needs freeing the other people with heal spells for DPS and the occasional heal. Of course it's very likely the shaman would be the one freed up for DPS not the paladin. The paladin would have to be ret spec and the shaman would have to be resto spec for the paladin to be able to do more damage. The "inate" DPS of the shaman is just better than that of the paladin. Resto shammies should still be able to out DPS Holy or protection paladins. I don't see that getting any better in TBC.