The PvE "Sidekick" Shadow Priest build

[Treesh]

I am disappointed that this thread isn't about how everyone can attract and keep a Sidekick priest.:(

You've already got yours, short and round though she is.;):D

[Bolty]

I am disappointed that this thread isn't about how everyone can attract and keep a Sidekick priest.:(

Don't you already have one? :)

-Bolty

[Lissa]

Looking at the build, there is one thing I would change, skip shadow power and go with 2 points in Imp PS, 1 point in Silence, and 2 points in Fade (since you have no threat reduction from Silent Resolve). While the additional 15% crit would be nice on Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, you're majority of damage is going to come through Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Mind Flay (and these spells are less of a threat jump than Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death can be). There are also enough mobs around to warrant the use of Silence on occasion as a backup for the Shaman and Mages.

I think a few of you are missing where I'm coming from. First off, Silent Resolve is useless to a Shadow Priest that doesn't Holy heal as VE healing is shadow based, thus Silent Resolve does nothing. The reasoning behind Fade is when Holy healing, not when DPSing/VEing.

Likewise, Silence does have uses as you get a little deeper into SSC and TE where you typically will be seeing packs that are 6 to 7 strong. Most of the mobs are CC'able and if you do not have enough CC to minimize some threats from casting mobs, you can fall back on silence to shut them down from casting and have a tank try to hold on to them.

[Treesh]

I think a few of you are missing where I'm coming from. First off, Silent Resolve is useless to a Shadow Priest that doesn't Holy heal as VE healing is shadow based, thus Silent Resolve does nothing. The reasoning behind Fade is when Holy healing, not when DPSing/VEing.

Likewise, Silence does have uses as you get a little deeper into SSC and TE where you typically will be seeing packs that are 6 to 7 strong. Most of the mobs are CC'able and if you do not have enough CC to minimize some threats from casting mobs, you can fall back on silence to shut them down from casting and have a tank try to hold on to them.

And you really don't need fade when holy healing. Silence, yes, I said before, I can see uses for him getting it, but improved fade is just going to be two wasted points.

[vor_lord]

I think a few of you are missing where I'm coming from. First off, Silent Resolve is useless to a Shadow Priest that doesn't Holy heal as VE healing is shadow based, thus Silent Resolve does nothing.

This is good to know.

The reasoning behind Fade is when Holy healing, not when DPSing/VEing.

If Improved Fade increased the effectiveness of fade rather than its duration, it would be a bit more attractive. As a healing priest now, fade sees use in heroics (but less and less as time goes on).

I appreciate the feedback and I will keep it in mind. I've yet to determine whether all my points in Imp. MB are valuable. The shadow priest I most often would be the sidekick to would be Xarhud. He has 4/5, lives near me, and is on the same network. He indicates that the 5th point would be nice to have for his latency, as he often has to wait just a hitch after a flay for the MB cooldown.

[mandydax]

Capping hit (my first priority) is looking a little bit painful, I'll have to go track down some specific drops.

I didn't have time right now to read through all the comments, so it may have been mentioned, but as far as +hit goes, you really only need to worry about getting +6%. Shadow Focus 5/5 is +10% to hit, leaving only +6% needed to hit level 73.

I like this idea, and might go for it on Shikigami, who I've recently reconverted to Shadow/Disc, though if I'm going that far into Holy, I'll definitely put take a point from Holy Spec. and get Holy Nova, which is great for topping up a raid quickly, if for nothing else.

[Frag]

Despite what VL may say about his overall performance last night, he proved his worth in spades on the Prince kill, which was positively gloriously easy.

Good idea, good execution, Cheers Vor.
~Frag B)

[Treesh]

Despite what VL may say about his overall performance last night, he proved his worth in spades on the Prince kill, which was positively gloriously easy.

Good idea, good execution, Cheers Vor.
~Frag B)

Now, if only Mogo could get benefit from the VT of a shadow priest ever, I wouldn't have to play the mana efficiency game constantly.:P;)

[mistique]

Personaly, i think that it's a good build, though i have 1 or 2 changes to suggest, though they may have been brought up already.

1. Spirit tap Vs Blackout
Ok, you have to have 5 pts in these to proceed, though Spirit Tap requires you to be the one to land the "killing blow" hense the problem, if your still Pveing then keep it, otherwise the 3 seconds that black out gives could be usefull for non boss fights. Depends on what you prefer realy.

2. I'd also drop Healing focus, it's good if your getting beaten on or have a boss that does constant Aoe damage but otherwise it shouldnt be needed. i'd put 1pt in Holy Nova and 1 in Holy reach, since the goal is to get the most out of your healing power.....no, having never played with Holy nova, "i'm Shadow on my 70", i have no idea on the casting time or cost, so take that into account.

Mist

[Bolty]

2. I'd also drop Healing focus, it's good if your getting beaten on or have a boss that does constant Aoe damage but otherwise it shouldnt be needed. i'd put 1pt in Holy Nova and 1 in Holy reach, since the goal is to get the most out of your healing power.....no, having never played with Holy nova, "i'm Shadow on my 70", i have no idea on the casting time or cost, so take that into account.

I'll have to respectfully, politely, but strongly disagree with this. Healing Focus is one of the most vital, key healing talents in the game that it makes one wonder why it's at the top of the tree. Obviously why though is that it lets shadow priests get it. :)

There are countless fights in WoW where you will get hit, you will take damage, and without this spell every single one of those damages will stutter your heals.

Holy Nova costs far too much mana to ever be considered a serious healing spell. At max rank, it's 875 mana per cast (788 mana with Mental Agility) and heals for roughly 500-600 with raid healing gear. Unless you're fighting Vael, you're going to run out of mana in less than 30 seconds with this and I can't think of a time where I could say "wow, I saved a wipe with Holy Nova." It was sure fun to AoE Magmadar Core Hound packs with it, though...as long as I got an Innervate. :)

Holy Nova is a nice PvP spell, though.

-Bolty

[vor_lord]

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.

[Treesh]

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.

GG was thrilled at how Gruul went. With you providing VT until 8 growths, the hunters barely had drops in their mana pools. When you switched off of shadowing and started healing, they had enough mana to last the rest of the fight easily without having to drink a mana pot at all and still keep up their DPS.

Honestly, I think your build has shown itself to be a success and will become stronger once you get used to the shadow part of it. Congrats. :)

[Mirajj]

One of four shadow priests??

Can you change the faction of two and send them our way? We're usually lucky if we field one, and as a hunter, I am quite fond of them in my group.;)

But with only one, that's a pipe dream.

[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

[Mavfin]

I would also like to thank Mav for providing us, as best he could, with GoA instead of getting wrath of air for himself.

I was happy to provide whatever was needed to get Gruul down a growth or two faster than we had before. A shammy in every group, and 4 shadow priests *really* turned up the heat, especially with Necrali turning to healbot after X growths. I'm not one of those that has to be in the top 5 on DPS all the time. I would suspect that GoA for 3 hunters > WoA for Necrali and I.

Now if I can just keep Treesh from running to hug me on a shatter... :w00t: :wub:

[Treesh]

Now if I can just keep Treesh from running to hug me on a shatter... :w00t: :wub:

Consider it repayment for the ankhs you bum off of me. :w00t: