A day in the life of ..

[TheLuminaire]

I've got another really heavy shadow build that I use to PvP for most of the week, but it's a bad raiding spec if you get trigger happy on the Mind Blasts.

Lum's PvP build

There's no threat reduction here, since players asses threat like monsters do. =)

The two keys here are are the short MB cooldown, and Spirit Tap. Since I tend to cherry-pick a lot of kills around the 30-40% mark, I proc Spirit Tap off of almost every kill. Since us shadow priests tend to have such low mana pools(especially when loaded up on +dmg gear), I can't tell you what a life saver this is. It increased my survivability by leaps and bounds, especially if I get stuck with low mana after dumping a whole mana bar a big warrior or druid. Inevitably, there's a rogue waiting for me, and having the extra mana regen usually results in living another few seconds.

I've stuck with the longer SWP mostly for runners. I tend to get a lot of players that just run off after a big MB hit, and a Mind Flay or two. Since I can't really chase them down with any efficiency, this helps seal their fates, as long as they can't dispel. Best hope for a runner is either SWP, or a lucky Blackout proc.

The one big drawback to this build is the lack of Shadow Focus, which can be a real drag, if you get an unlucky streak, or if opposing team gets shadow buffs from other priests. Especially if you get Silence resisted on Mages and Warlocks; that's a real bad sign. If you drain your mana bar without killing your target(Holy/Disc Priests, Resto/Bear Druids), you're pretty much defenseless. I'm very tempted to dump Focused Casting, SPW, and Fade, and fill up on Shadow Focus.

Like I said at the top, this build I've found is great for killing things, both PvE, and PvP, but it's not a very controlled build.