The PvE "Sidekick" Shadow Priest build

[Kevin]

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.

Yeah, I don't get shadow priest that often, but then again I don't need a shadow priest that often. I've tested and I can go full bore DPS for around 10 minutes just using the PvP mana pots with no outside assistance at all on mana regen (and being horde I have marks to spare to buy them). With 3 paladins I have kings, might and wisdom so I gain a fair bit of regen that way. I can also slap a mana oil on the weapon for more regen (since the small amount of crit I can get from a sharpening stone isn't that valuable). Judgements of wisdom or the little mana spring totems of course help out as well, the guardian elixir spot (if I'm not flasking) can be easily used for a mana regen elixir since there isn't much else that helps. I've yet to see a fight in the game where I can't self sustain or where I will need more than 1 or 2 mana pots anyway. So I can live easily without the shadow priest.

But that all requires use of consumables and loss of a global cooldown to drink the potions and even though I can carry 40 of the PvP pots (since AB token purchased pots are treated differently than EotS purchased pots, etc) I generally don't I generally only have 10. So if we wipe I can run out or have to have some supers made or what not. It's very nice to not use consumables at all.

With Gruul, we didn't kill him as fast as I want, it was at 12 growths, but I was still over 60% mana when he died and I was burning a fair bit on mend pet since there were a some bad cave in spots. I didn't even have to think about drinking a mana pot, it was easy to see with where my mana bar was and where his health was that there was no point in drinking one ever. I even lost the totem farm several times (got thrown and had to run away from it) and while a hunter can do some movement without losing DPS (take a step or two after steady is done and before auto goes off or while firing arcane if it's time for that) I couldn't always get back in range before the next shatter for the totems.

So I thought it worked great. It helps hunters to have a shadow priest, no doubts about that, but we get less out of if than locks, shammies, or mages from what I can tell. So the side kick works very well. Doing DPS and mana battery duties at the start of the fight providing a weaker regen and some healing to the pets and then going healing and cutting out the regen was great for us since we could easily sustain without consumables for the time left. I quite liked it.

I would also like to thank Mav for providing us, as best he could, with GoA instead of getting wrath of air for himself. And I would like to thank poor miss Treesh for getting no benefits to herself by being the buffer for the tank group (the enh shammy being in with warriors was getting battle shout back at least). I still don't have all the gear I want for the build I'm doing but with elixirs and raid buffs and just a GoA totem it's nice to break 1K agility (I wasn't in SSC since I was using a flask and not the 35 agi elixir) and over 2600 AP (don't remember just where that was) and 33% (again not positive on that) crit. If only I could get more than 10 FPS during the Gruul fight and more than 5 FPS for most of the SSC fights (dang old video card). I know I'm losing DPS due to some of that poor system performance.

But I like my side kick as a hunter