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World of Warcraft Guide: Shadow Priest Raiding
MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Siji Ibikunle writes this look at effectively speccing your Shadow Priest for raiding in Blizzard's hit MMO.
By Siji Ibikunle on November 19, 2009
My last article was about raiding in general, but this time around I am going to talk about my favorite spec in the game: the Shadow Priest; with an emphasis on raiding. I have played a Shadow Priest since Day One of my WoW career (there is actually a pretty funny story behind it, as I wanted to be a mage, but my friends tricked me into being a priest because they wanted a healer), have always played shadow - NEVER holy or disc - and have raided extensively with the spec. More experienced players, let me warn you now - this guide is going to be more for new players or raiders, as there are extensive resources out there for those who already know how their way around the spec. This first part will tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of the spec, the utility one brings to a raid as a Shadow Priest, and the talent and glyph choices you should be making.
Before I start, I just want to say that Shadow Priests have a reputation for being one of the hardest spec to learn to play well. If you do not want to be dependent on add-ons to perform decently well in raids, or to have to be on your "A" game all the time to do good damage, then you should probably stay away from the spec. Shadow Priests are considered to be a DoT damage dealer, meaning that the bulk of our damage comes from Damage over time spells. About 50-60% of our damage on a single target boss fight comes from our three damage over time spells, and the rest comes from our nuke and channeled spells. What this means is that Shadow Priests have a lot of ramp up time before our damage goes into full swing, but once it gets going, it can be well sustained.
Shadow Priests have two major advantages over other damage dealing specs. One is mobility. Due to the fact that about 50-60% or so of our damage comes from DoTs, that means that we can move around a lot without taking a huge hit to our DPS due to lost casting time. Plus we have an instant cast nuke that can be used while running - but it is on a cooldown, does recoil damage, and provides such negligible damage that it is generally ignored unless moving or if there is nothing better to cast. The other advantage is high survivability. We have a debuff that can heal for 15%, 20%, or 25% of our health depending on your talent choices. Our Shadowform provides both a 15% damage increase and a 15% reduction to all damage taken. Inner Fire, a self only buff available to all priests, provides us with higher armor than any other cloth wearer in the game, and a bit of spell power to boot. And finally, we have Dispersion, a six second defensive spell that reduces any damage we take by 90%, and restores 6% of our mana per second for its six second duration. The only down side to this spell is that it pacifies you for its duration, but you can still switch in and out of Shadowform while it is active and it can be used while mounted without dismounting you.
Now, let's talk about the utility that Shadow Priests bring to a raid. Besides the raid buffs provided by all Priests, a Shadow Priest's main form of utility is the Replenishment buff. It restores 1% of 10 members of your raid's mana every five seconds for 15 seconds. This used to be provided only by Shadow Priests in The Burning Crusade, but now it is provided by many other classes. So, although it is considered a mandatory raid buff, it is not enough to guarantee you easy admittance into a raid. Our second, more unique form of utility comes in the form of the Misery talent. This talent provides a debuff that grants a 3% increase to the hit chance of all spells cast on the mob affected. This is also considered a mandatory buff, but can also be provided by Balance Druids in the form of Improved Faerie Fire; so if you lose out to a Moonkin for a raid spot, then too bad.
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On to talent choices! Talent choices for raiding Shadow Priests tend not to be very varied. However, there are a few nuances that can affect your performance depending on your gear level, experience, etc. The first talent spec that I am going to show you is the most basic cookie cutter spec that you should probably stick to at entry level. I will provide two variations of the spec, although the differences are only slight.
This is the first entry level raiding spec, and the one that I recommend the most. Shadow priests have some of the most expensive spells in the game in terms of mana cost, so it is a good idea to spec into Focused Mind to reduce some of the cost, especially since you will likely have a hard time with resource management when you are new to raiding as Shadow. I also put points into Improved Vampiric Embrace. When you start raiding as a Shadow Priest, half of the game is watching your User Interface. Unless you have perfect memory and reaction time, you are going to be watching your DoT timer as much as you are watching what is going on around you. Therefore, you may end up taking some damage that could have been avoided were you paying better attention to your environment. Imp. VE will provide you with substantial enough healing to cover you until a healer can save your ass, or sometimes if a healer doesn't heal you at all. It may prove especially useful if you choose to use Shadow Word: Death at any point, too.
Now you may look at this spec and say, "What's the difference?" It looks exactly the same!" but it's not. I took the two points that were in Imp. VE and moved them to Veiled Shadows. As you get better at playing a Shadow Priest, your damage should obviously increase and therefore you are likely both producing more threat and using more mana by attacking more often due to greater efficiency or increased haste rating. Once you get better, Imp. VE isn't really a necessity, and Veiled Shadows should serve you better for two reasons. Reason Number One: Since you may be producing more threat, which could lead to you pulling aggro, - which isn't likely due to the massive amount of threat tanks now produce - you may want to use the Fade ability more often to reduce your threat. This talent lowers the cooldown of Fade by 6 seconds. With your threat lowered, you can go ahead and blow your trinkets or AoE that pack of trash mobs without worry. Now, for the second more important reason: a two minute cooldown reduction on your Shadowfiend. This will not only allow you to gain more mana more often, but it also provides a DPS increase that cannot be discounted if used correctly. With the cooldown reduction, you can use your Shadowfiend twice in most boss fights now. Just make sure to use the first one really early to guarantee that you can use it twice, even if your mana bar is still high. The DPS increase comes in the form of the Shadowfiend's Shadowcrawl ability, which teleports the Fiend to your target and increases its damage done by 15% for 6 secs, with a six second cooldown. You should make a macro for this ability, so that you can press one button to both summon the Shadowfiend and use the Shadowcrawl ability:
"Shadowfiend"#showtooltip Shadowfiend/cast Shadowfiend/cast [pet, nomodifier] Shadowcrawl
Here is the third and last spec, the one that I use currently. I wouldn't recommend this spec until you are geared enough to have about 18k-20k mana unbuffed. There are no points in Focused Mind, and both Imp. VE and Veiled Shadows are maxed for optimum survivability and damage. That extra lingering point has been moved to the Discipline tree and put into Inner Focus. I would recommend using this buff with DP because it is the highest cost spell, and a crit from the frontload damage would prove to be a real DPS boost. However, if you want to minimize your micromanagement, you can go ahead and leave that point in Focused Mind, as Inner Focus is RNG based and isn't a guaranteed DPS increase. You may have also noted that my glyphs for all the specs are the same. For the Major Glyphs, there really are no choices at the moment, so you should stick with the Glyphs of Shadow, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Flay, as they provide the highest DPS increase. However, in patch 3.3, the Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain will be changed to restore 1% of your base mana on each tick. Since we already have so many sources for mana, I will be switching that glyph out for any of the following: Glyph of Dispersion, Glyph of Shadow Word: Death, or Glyph of Mind Sear. The choice is yours. However please hold on to the Shadow Word: Pain glyph until then. For the minor glyphs, I would say Glyph of Shadowfiend and Glyph of Levitate are mandatory Minor Glyphs, but for the third glyph, pick whatever you want.
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So now you know a little bit about the Shadow Priest, and how you should pick your talents if you want to raid. Next time around, I will be talking about raid preparation and addons, itemization, and finally damage dealing! So if you're interested in learning how to raid as a Shadow Priest, check out the next half to find out all you need to know to get started.
I played Priest from day one and always went Shadow too, it's just the best class/spec in the game for PVP when I was playing in 2005. However no groups ever wanted me and that turned me away from doing any PVE so I just used Mind Control to take control of elites and send them into the groups of people waiting outside the shitty battlegrounds.
I quit the game soon after that.
Every patch ruined something in WoW, it's like SWG or PS where it started off great and they ruined something for the retards who thought the game was too hard.
Stop QQing already, they changed it a bit and you thought it was a nerf, you weren't an overpowered mindmelter anymore in pvp. GET OVER IT HMKAY, shadowpriest is really wanted in raids now and in PVP they can be quiet good as well.... (I play a priest for 4 years now, i know what i'm talking about -.-')
Wow, Varny, the game has changed a lot since you quit. First of all, Shadow Priests aren't that great for PvP anymore. In fact, most of the time, they downright suck. You have to be up to your ears in resilience to be even slightly effective.
Second, Shadow Priests are now pretty much mandatory for raids, because you have to bring at least 2 other classes to cover the raid utility that we bring in one. However, like I said, our buffs can be covered by other classes, but there is at least motivation to bring at least one.
I'm sorry, I thought we were meant to be talking about the article here. Ignore the troll and lets have a nice chat about shadow priests. Personally I thought it was a nice intro although there was some points I don't agree on. first of all you said that shadow priests have an advantage because of mobility. I would consider this to be a curse myself because most boss fights require great mobility. this need for mobility messes up our timing and therefore decreases our dps output. this is why you will generally get a higher dps or damage output on fights like patchwork which are just tank and spank with no/little movement.
next, in the first build you said that you should watch your timers over the environment. this is bad practice, and then saying that VE is going to safe you is nonsense. just remember that if you die from the environment because you were too busy watching your timers you will do no dps. low dps is better than none.
veiled shadows is a waste of points in my opinion. if you are producing more threat than a tank by using DoTs then there is something very seriously wrong.
when will you submit the second part of the guide?
I was merely trying to dispel any illusions and outdated opinions Varny had about the spec. Now on your first point, mobility. Now, since about 50-60% of our damage comes from DoTs, when we are forced to move, we are only missing out on 40-50% of our damage. Plus, we can use a quick SW: D to mitigate that loss a little bit. I don't know exactly how much of a Mages damage comes from DoTs and instant casts, but let's assume it's something from 10-20% for Fire/FFB, and probably less for Arcane. When they are forced to move for extended periods of time, they are losing out on 80% or more of their damage, assuming the above percentages are accurate. I would say that DoTs confer us a bit of an advantage in heavy mobility fights, assuming that is the case. Generally, everyone would have higher DPS on a patchwerk-type fight - regardless of class or spec -, no doubt about it.
Now, about the timers, I say that they are important to the point of being vital, but I also throw in a cautionary word about watching them too much. However, it may not be stated explicitly enough to be immediately apparent. I state the fact that you should watch your environment more than timers or DPS meters when I cover the UI more extensively in the second part of the guide. Also, you discount VE a bit too much. It can provide some impressive healing fully talented if your DPS is high enough. If you are dealing 6k DPS, and you are being healed for 25% of that, you are getting 1.5k HPS. That is a huge load off of your healers, and I cannot tell you how many fights where I have been the last DPS standing at 1% or so and finished the fight because of a good combination use of VE, DoT damage, and Dispersion.
Addressing Veiled Shadows, the reason why I give so much credence to the Fade component of the talent is because this guide is aimed at newer people to the spec, who might actually need to use a bit of threat reduction depending on how good the people they are raiding with are. Even with the improved threat generation in WoTLK, I have grouped with some scrub tanks who couldn't hold threat for their life. But if you use Fade well, you can be top 5 on the DPS meters without ever pulling threat no matter how bad the tank is. The real substance in the talent though is in the reduced cooldown on the Shadowfiend. At lower gear levels, Imp. VE and Focused Mind are better investments, but once you get up there, drop Focused Mind, because if used correctly you can garner at least an extra 500 DPS from your Shadowfiend using this talent and the Shadowcrawl macro. Try using it during a Heroism/Bloodlust; the DPS jump is non-trivial, to say the least.
I don't know when the second part of my guide will be published, it's not up to me, but I have it written and just need to pick out the screenshots and should have it submitted before the end of the week, so stay tuned for it.
you seem to be contradicting yourself here a bit. you say that the guide is for new shadow priest raiders, but then say that VE is awsome with 6k dps. I have never seen a new level 80 raider pull out 6k dps. also, be careful with the whole "look at your timers thing", make it clear that watching the environment is as important as timers. I (as a healer) hate it when a raider concentrates too much on dps and forgets to move when they should, then complains that they never got healed when they die. like I said before, a dead dps'er = 0 dps.
Ok, even as a new DPSer, you should be pulling 3-4K DPS if you are raiding effectively, which still provides some substantial healing. I just used 6k since you appear to be a more experienced raider, and I wanted to use a figure that was more relevant to you. In entry level content, the 700-1k HPS you can get from a fully talented VE is plenty to help keep you alive.
And, once again, I acknowledged that I didn't explicitly state that you should be watching your environment here, and that it was merely a vague implication, but I also said in my last post that I address the issue in greater depth in my second part to the guide.
I still have never seen a new raider go over 2.5k dps but I see your point. the issue I have with the environment thing is that you are saying one thing, then changing it in the next article (potentially). to a newer player it might be confusing sending mixed messages.
As I do yours. I will try to use unambiguous language in the future, and thanks for pointing that out.
Get a room you two :P
Yea, a discussion on a forum that didn't devolve into insults and flaming? That is so not appropriate for a public discussion forum =P.
I play a priest and shadow spec is my favorite. My second spec is Holy but I rarely ever play it. My spec currently is your second 13/0/58. I do raid and find the VS very useful. My dps is not where I want it to be yet but gear has greatly improved that. I haven't been playing for as long as you as I got stuck playing DK/tank due to the guild I was in needing a tank and at the time I was playing around with the DK. Which has fell by the wayside as I returned to the Priest which I have always loved playing.
Your article is really great for someone just starting with a Priest/Shadow. I began with the first spec you showed and it is true the VE has saved me a few times. I was actually shaky about dropping it for VS but with better gear and more xp with my priest and a very helpful GL I gave it a try and have not been sorry. It is also true in the beginning you tend to watch your timers a bit too much but as you learn you learn not to. Moving in a fight is not near as much of problem for us as it is for a Mage. Most of the spells a Mage uses have a cast time so that means they need to be still where as we SP can cast our dots while moving and continue keeping dps up some. Sure it will not be as high as it would standing still but still there.
I can see where the last spec would be great but I think I need to work on getting my dps consistent before I give it a go.
The only glyph I use different is instead of the sp I went with the fort one.
There is couple of things you mentioned in using to help dps that I am going to work at getting more in my rotation to bring my dps up.
I loved this article and look forward to the next. I do hope you give some ideas on rotation of spells as I know that is also a big part of good dps.
Thanks
I don't PvP much in part because to really have a chance at survial you really need a lot of resil which means I would need to get yet another set of gear. I haven't finished getting my os of Holy gear yet. ;)
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Now, about the timers, I say that they are important to the point of being vital, but I also throw in a cautionary word about watching them too much. However, it may not be stated explicitly enough to be immediately apparent. I state the fact that you should watch your environment more than timers or DPS meters when I cover the UI more extensively in the second part of the guide. Also, you discount VE a bit too much. It can provide some impressive healing fully talented if your DPS is high enough. If you are dealing 6k DPS, and you are being healed for 25% of that, you are getting 1.5k HPS. That is a huge load off of your healers, and I cannot tell you how many fights where I have been the last DPS standing at 1% or so and finished the fight because of a good combination use of VE, DoT damage, and Dispersion.
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Agree about this a lot. Prevented also at least few times wipe because besides tank I was the only one left alive and was able to heal tank until we won. Also priest is much less burden for any healer i guess then any other healing class, so he can concentrate on rest of party.
So I hate when somebody use recount to put after every single fight only dps numbers on chat window ... because shadow priest contribute for raid is far from only dps, despite being dps class. Have demonstrated few times ... had one of the greatest dps in group ... yet we failed. Tried again, had worse dps ... but we won with enough safety margin. Of course, maybe with better healer, better tank, ... etc... could be different.
Good with priest is that +spell damage helps dps and healing. So despite being specced for dps, priest is always still very good healer. I'm only missing, being professional healer, ability for incombat ressurect.
However as i do not have money for dual spec i have distributed differently points ... I have invested in Silence and Psychic horror. Very good in pvp and also in pve.
I'm glad that the first part of my guide was helpful to you. The next part gets into a lot of detail about how to DPS, so I hope that that helps you out too. Unfortunately, 3.3 is coming out so close to when I wrote the guide, and it is going to change a lot. I was thinking about incorporating what you should be doing now and what you should be doing next patch into the same guide, but I thought that that would be confusing for a lot of people. Maybe I could do a revision in a couple of months.
About the last spec, you really shouldn't try it until you have mostly ilvl 226 and 232 gear, and when you have all 232 or higher, then it is the best spec by far. But until then, stick with one of the first two.
The reason I go with the SP one over the Fort one is because most priests usually go with the Fort one, so I just buff SP in a raid and it doesn't get overwritten when 3 priests are all buffing at the same time =P.
And regarding PvP, unfortunately, I really don't have enough experience in PvP to write a guide that would even be helpful to a new player. I think I am the only person I know who has been playing at the endgame for as long as I have with under 5k HKs =P. If I get a bit better, then maybe I will consider writing a Shadow PvP guide, but until then, I will stick to what I know.
Agree about this a lot. Prevented also at least few times wipe because besides tank I was the only one left alive and was able to heal tank until we won. Also priest is much less burden for any healer i guess then any other healing class, so he can concentrate on rest of party.
So I hate when somebody use recount to put after every single fight only dps numbers on chat window ... because shadow priest contribute for raid is far from only dps, despite being dps class. Have demonstrated few times ... had one of the greatest dps in group ... yet we failed. Tried again, had worse dps ... but we won with enough safety margin. Of course, maybe with better healer, better tank, ... etc... could be different.
Good with priest is that +spell damage helps dps and healing. So despite being specced for dps, priest is always still very good healer. I'm only missing, being professional healer, ability for incombat ressurect.
However as i do not have money for dual spec i have distributed differently points ... I have invested in Silence and Psychic horror. Very good in pvp and also in pve.
Yea, one of my favorite memories of a situation like this was when I was in a PuG during 3.0, right before Wrath came out. We were raiding Alar, and all the tanks and DPS had died. It was me and a healer left. He went for the healer, so I start DPSing like crazy, so he comes for me. Then I fade, and he goes for the healer again. I put all my DoTs on him before he kills the healer. Then he comes for me and I pop Dispersion, and my DoTs finished the kill. That is one of my favorite moments in terms of Shadow's raid survivability saving a wipe.
Some people need to realize that unless it is a DPS race or someone is doing horribly on the meters, it's more important to survive than to top the DPS chart.
Also, priests don't have an in combat rez, druids can rez people who have died in combat, and Shamans can rez themselves if they die. Priests have Spirit of Redemption though, which allows us to continue healing after we have died. Maybe that's what you are talking about. Also, you should save up for dual specs as quickly as possible, because while you need Silence and Psychic Horror for PvP, getting them in a PvE spec will seriously gimp your DPS, unless it is a gimmick fight. If you do 25 dailies every day for a while, you will be surprised how quickly you get the money even without doing anything with professions.
Thank you. I look forward to that one as well. I will stick with the spec I have until I gain the proper gear.
Putting it that way I can understand why you didn't go with fort. Makes perfect sense.