08-25-2007, 07:51 AM
So for those interested, I've now tried this out as a lone shadow priest in Kara doing DPS, one of four (!!!) shadow priests for Gruul, and healing heroic UB with a shadow priest using VE as my backup healing.
Lone shadow priest DPS:
Let's face it. You lose 15% straight up damage due to the loss of Misery and shadow weaving. But I pulled my weight and played mana battery just fine. It did take us two attempts on Prince due to an unfortunate healer death right at the start of phase 2. A tanking paladin and myself in DPS gear kept him up for all of phase 2. But we eventually went oom. Still, the faster cast on GH is huge in such a situation, and 15% more mana efficiency too.
Sidekick shadow priest DPS:
For Attumen another shadow priest joined me, and I did very well on the damage charts. I also did reasonably well on HKM, especially since I am still a n00b at raid dpsing in general and shadow in particular.
Gruul:
We were a little worried about our healing, so I replaced my blue dps items with epic healing items. Then I did dot + flay (mana conservative DPS) for 8 growths, then dropped SF and healed for the remainder of the fight. It worked very nicely, just as I had intended. I was put in the hunter group with their pet shammy Mav so I served as their mana battery.
(Kind of a funny grouping, with 4 priests (all shadow) and 5 shamans (3 elemental)).
Solo healing heroic UB:
Pretty much a total cakewalk, at least with Geld tanking. The Black Stalker is always amusing, I've yet to live through that fight.
In short, this build seems to be a success. Given proper gearing, in a 25 man I don't believe I lose hardly any damage output. For healing, I definitely feel it. That's the thing about healing though... just enough is enough. Too much more doesn't help you at all. DPS doesn't have that kind of diminishing returns.
Lone shadow priest DPS:
Let's face it. You lose 15% straight up damage due to the loss of Misery and shadow weaving. But I pulled my weight and played mana battery just fine. It did take us two attempts on Prince due to an unfortunate healer death right at the start of phase 2. A tanking paladin and myself in DPS gear kept him up for all of phase 2. But we eventually went oom. Still, the faster cast on GH is huge in such a situation, and 15% more mana efficiency too.
Sidekick shadow priest DPS:
For Attumen another shadow priest joined me, and I did very well on the damage charts. I also did reasonably well on HKM, especially since I am still a n00b at raid dpsing in general and shadow in particular.
Gruul:
We were a little worried about our healing, so I replaced my blue dps items with epic healing items. Then I did dot + flay (mana conservative DPS) for 8 growths, then dropped SF and healed for the remainder of the fight. It worked very nicely, just as I had intended. I was put in the hunter group with their pet shammy Mav so I served as their mana battery.
(Kind of a funny grouping, with 4 priests (all shadow) and 5 shamans (3 elemental)).
Solo healing heroic UB:
Pretty much a total cakewalk, at least with Geld tanking. The Black Stalker is always amusing, I've yet to live through that fight.
In short, this build seems to be a success. Given proper gearing, in a 25 man I don't believe I lose hardly any damage output. For healing, I definitely feel it. That's the thing about healing though... just enough is enough. Too much more doesn't help you at all. DPS doesn't have that kind of diminishing returns.