02-02-2007, 02:41 AM
Quote:Any shadow priest that shifts out to heal, does any healing, and shifts back into shadowform has just spent a bucketload of mana and global cooldowns not doing any dps; that we have the versatility to do this -at the expense of both the damage we can do AND the healing power we provide- should not be a convincing argument.
That's a deliberate misinterpretation of what I'm saying. Obviously I'm not meaning that a priest can flip back and forth all the time and on every pull: that's stupid. ima_nerd summarized what I mean: between pulls, or depending on the encounter, shadow priests can switch and help where they're needed. Nowhere is the best illustrated than in the Arcatraz. There's a room there with two bosses, one with a lot of hit points but which deals relatively little damage, and the other which deals an extraordinary amount of damage. You fight them one at a time. In my groups there, the shadow priest simply swaps into heal gear and heals on the latter fight, then swaps back into DPS gear for the other. A couple of the trash pulls there are healing-intensive, a couple are DPS-sensitive. Wherever is required, the shadow priest goes healing or DPS.
Granted, it's not great healing. But you don't need great healing. You just need some, enough to push the team to a win. And that's what the shadow priest provides. I can't count the number of times that the main healer would go down to environmental damage or RSTS attacks, and the shadow priest would shift out and heal the tank through the last 20% of the boss' health. Again: compared to a holy priest, yeah, the healing is inefficient and of low intensity. But it's HEALING, and it's directly responsible for turning a loss into a win. Thorngrin the Tender; Terestrian Illhoof; Pathaleon - I can go all day listing encounters that temporarily disable a single player. If that's the healer, the shadow priest can shift out, sacrificing DPS, and keep the tank up long enough for the main healer to be active again. If the main healer dies early in a fight, the shadow priest can shift out, chug mana pots and main-heal: not well, but well enough.
I can't do that. Rogues can't do that. So please have some sympathy for DPS classes without a "save the day" button?
Quote:I'm not familiar with warlock trees, but I was under the impression that dps warlocks (and they do exist) were more destruction than affliction based.
Every warlock in my guild is all about maximizing their damage, and to a man, they are Affliction specced.