Unusual (Valid) Priest Builds

[Professor Frink]

The idea in MC [...] increase the damage of the warlocks and other priests SW:P as well. 

This seems particularly underutilized, I was looking over the shoulder of a warlock freind of mine doing an MC fight with some unreasonable number of locks -- 6 i think -- and not a shadow weaving on the boss in sight. One shadowpriest -- either replacing a dpsser or as a slightly feebled healer doing dispels and casting 25 mana rank 1 sw:p on the boss to keep up weaving -- would have greatly improved that party's DPS. Another priest in a regular MC running guild on that same server told me that until he went shadow for PVP purposes they'd never used shadowpriests in MC either.

Though I've thought about dropping Darkness and just letting shadow weaving up the damage and getting focused casting to help with soloing as well as in situation where you need to heal and fade didn't shed aggro or is in the 10 seconds of cooldown it would have with the improved talent (lasts for 20 seconds and has 30 sec cooldown so if it drops aggro and keeps it off you should only have 10 seconds of it not in cooldown).  But I've never really played with focused casting yet so I'm not sure the value of it.  It's cheaper than shield and you don't always need the damage mitigation of shield which is nice.

Anyway more feedback on that template would be appreciated.
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I respecced away from focused casting a long time ago and never particularly missed it soloing -- If you want to save the mana and don't need the damage mitigation, just melee until your mind blast cools down (or smite if the enemy's about to die). Otherwise just pop the PW:S and flay. Similarly, PW:S is much more useful than focus cast for making sure that emergency heal gets off.

Both PW:S and focused casting can be removed by dispel magic/devour magic/purge, so there's no particular pvp advantage either (aside from devour, if you're dispelled once you're likely to be hit by several rapidfire dispells, so having a second chance skill isn't likely to help much either)

Without reach you're going to have to stand a whole lot closer to the baddie than you may have been used to--flay at 20 yds from the hotspot of the boss instead of healing at 40 yds from the hotspot of the MT.

Also, if you're getting Mental strength for 5-man healer utility, you might want to consider swapping it for spirit tap--triggering spi tap isn't too hard then, pretty much only a problem at the one-big-boss part (in my less than massive experience, wipes from healer oom mostly happen in the chaotic multiple-enemy parts of late game 5-mans anyway). I was doing pretty well healing fully shadow-spec by switching into tons of spirit gear, although unless your tank has damage mitigation or health bowl of massive proportions you'll need a backup healer to take over for a few seconds while you charge up for a second burst of healing.

If you could pull it off, ditching blackout (iirc virtually everything in MC is immune to it, doesn't do anything while you're healing, though you'll miss it solo and in pvp if that's your thing) for spi tap and mental strength for the last 2 shadow affinity, darkness and a shadowform would greatly boost your dps and vamp embrace hps, while keeping your threat-reduction on par. Shadowform in particular is going to be a big win (vs MS) for dps and damage-till-oom in everything but the straight-healer role, the damage reduction is great for soloing, and people seem to overstate the cost of not being able to heal--it only takes a global-cooldown cycle to drop it in midfight.

-- frink