WoW newbie looking for advice

[Lissa]

Locking yourself into a spell rotation as a "habit" is bad, period. Flexibility is the key.

And people telling him to go with what is the most efficient now is going to get him into trouble in the future and lead to wasted damage and potentially other issues. Efficiency does not always equate with flexibility. You lay down DoTs first because before they even tick, you get the Shadow Weaving debuff going. You Mind Blast, SW:Death, or Mind Flay to begin with and you lower your potential DPS. This is not about efficiency, it's about learning what to do to maximize your effective damage output while also learning how to effectively control your threat level, this lends more to flexibility than efficiency does. Given threat doesn't matter in solo, but learning best practices in solo will also benefit you in group play.

Case in point, what happens when he uses one of these so call Alpha Strikes of dropping a Mind Blast first when he's nearing 70 and the damage the MB does after +shadow/+spell damage only takes the mob down 10% to 15% at most? How about the push back he gets from being hit while casting Mind Flay because Shadow Priests don't have an anti-push back talent thus making PW:S so valuable and why you cast it?