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Boys and Girls, I'd like to talk to you today about something different you might have been experiencing around the soda fountain and in gym class. I'm talking about Shadow Priests.
You may think that Shadow Priests are just normal priests that are misguided. Instead of wanting to heal and cure diseases, they think that they should be doing damage and "dropping a big steaming pile of whupass on the face of that boss." You're probably asking yourself "Why do these priests go against God's design and shun their healing duties?" and "What is wrong with them in the head?"
Well, boys and girls, I'm here today to tell you that there is nothing wrong with Shadow Priests in the head, and that they are really just here to make your raid experience better! Let's look at what they have to offer.
Shadow Priests are unlike any other ranged DPS class in the game, although they share some similarities with Warlocks. Where little Jimmy the Mage and fat Susie the Hunter do most of their damage with large single shot attacks, Timmy the Shadow Priest performs most of his dark work as damage over time. Timmy's damage also means wonderful things for the rest of the raid! His Shadow Weaving and Misery talents add an additional 20% shadow damage for Warlocks and 5% spell damage for mages, hunters, priests, druids, paladins and shamans. Besides that boost, for every 100 points of damage Timmy does, his group gains 30 health and 5 mana.
"But I thought Shadow Priests were Sissies!"
Well hold on there Johnny, you myopic little piece of shit! Shadow Priests can actually do a pretty sizable chunk of damage! Let's take a look at their primary spells's base damage with just talents.
Mind Flay: 539 damage for 174 mana over 3 seconds
Vampiric Touch: 759 damage for 400 mana over 15 seconds
Shadow Word Pain: 1433 damage for 470 mana over 24 seconds
Mind Blast: 671 damage for 298 mana.
"That looks like a sissy's damage to me!"
Now Johnny, what did I tell you about being a retard? I haven't included spell damage and debuff effects!
"Sorry Mister."
You're damn right you're sorry. Don't let it happen again or I'll give you something else to be sorry about. You see, for every shadow damage spell that lands on a target, two rebuffs get added or refreshed. The first is shadow weaving, which adds 3% shadow damage vulnerability to the enemy and stacks up to 5 times, and the second is Misery, which adds an additional 5% spell damage vulnerability to the target as long as a Shadow Priest DoT is ticking. Once you add on these vulnerabilities and any bonus spell damage the Shadow Priest has, they can do some serious damage!
With just 200 spell damage and 5/5 Shadow Weaving and Misery up on the target, here's what the damage looks like.
Mind flay, 790 damage for 174 mana over 3 seconds.
Vampiric Touch, 1159 damage for 400 mana over 15 seconds
Shadow Word Pain, 2116 damage for 470 mana over 24 seconds
Mind blast, 915 damage for 298 mana.
All things said and done, just keeping vampiric touch, pain, and mind flay up on a target means 429 damage per second for only 104 mana per second! And I'm not even including extra damage caused thanks to Curse of Shadows and Shadow Vulnerability from Improved Shadow Bolt effects added by Warlocks, but we'll just ignore those so we can focus on just what the Shadow Priest by himself brings to a group.
"Wow, mister!"
Now you're starting to sound less like a retard! You know the funny thing is that we haven't even started considering what Timmy the Shadow Priest will be returning to his group while doing this damage. Timmy's 429 damage per second means 128.6 health per second and 21.43 mana per second gained by all 5 members of his group! That's the equivalent of 643 hp5 AND 107 mp5s worth of equipment on each and every member, and with Vampiric touch off-setting his mana expense, that 104 mana per second cost is more like 83 mana.
"You've got to be fucking shitting me."
No Johnny, I'm not, and you've got to watch that dirty mouth of yours. It goes beyond that too. If the members of the shadow priest's party have pets, they get healing and mana back as well. Potentially that 643 health and 107 mana for each member and their pets could mean 5144 extra health and 856 extra mana being poured into the raid every 5 seconds, for only 83 mana per second. It's a hard benefit to ignore.
So what does that mean for Shadow Priests in raids?
Shadow Priests are going to provide the most real benefit in two conditions
1) Several or all members of the group they are in are taking damage.
2) Several or all members of the group they are in are mana users.
If either one of these conditions are not true, then all that potential healing and mana gain is just going to waste. Having your shadow priest in a group with Magi, Warlocks, and Hunters will mean increased effective healing and more dps from having a constant influx of mana. Having your shadow priest in a group with Paladins, Druids and Priests will mean your healing squad has more staying power. And let's not forget the significant DPS that a Shadow Priest can add!
So make sure you've got your Shadow Priest in the right group! It could make all the difference in the world!
If your class has the ability to heal, expect to do healing on raids. Unless the raid has more than enough healers AND you specifically signed up/joined to fill a DPS role and it is known in advance that you won't be healing due to Shadowform (unless in dire emergencies), then you have no right to bitch about being expected to heal 
If you're taking up a healer spot in the raid balance and still going "omg I'm a shadow priest, I do damage while helping a little bit with mana and hp regen!" then woe be unto you, sir.
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Get the soap! Bajah just said:
As a shadow priest myself, allow me to retort.If your class has the ability to heal, expect to do healing on raids. Unless the raid has more than enough healers AND you specifically signed up/joined to fill a DPS role and it is known in advance that you won't be healing due to Shadowform (unless in dire emergencies), then you have no right to bitch about being expected to heal
If you're taking up a healer spot in the raid balance and still going "omg I'm a shadow priest, I do damage while helping a little bit with mana and hp regen!" then woe be unto you, sir.
I main heal when we are short on healers and dps/heal when we've got just enough healers. I'll do shadowform on trash pulls and drop out to heal on bosses. I generally end up at #2 on the healing meter when I'm main healing. We've got this paladin in the guild that is on point every raid, I don't know how he does it. But we've usually got enough healers, especially now that renews stack. It's about 1/5 raids that I need to main heal.
This is more around the group placement. My guild leader never puts me in a group where VE and VT will actually help- like groups with casters and dps's that will get nailed every now and then. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 12-08-2006 at 11:01 AM.
Oddly enough before the mass exodus that came with character transfer we whooped ass.
Since my leaving I'm hearing that they're back to whipping the same amounts of ass with the same type of setup.
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At least I'm not Naimah
A shadowpriest in a group of 4 warlocks is stupidly good.
Retardedly good, in fact. A few of them came tearing up through the Crossroads awhile ago.
Thankfully, a squad of four Hunters is a match.
But I do see your points... the trick isn't convincing others, it's convincing the rest of the raid, where priest==healer.
My point is that if you join a raid without the express prementioned notation that you will not be acting as a healer, then expect to be assumed as a healer and treated as such. The downside of this is that they may want to save that DPS slot for another class.
That's all 
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Mightion Defensor enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
I'm a retnoob paladin (17/0/34); but even I know to stand with the healers and chain Holy Light Rank 4 on the MTs, unless its Strat or Scholo.
If you want to be a lazy, horrible healer, please reroll a Druid.
Alternatively give up and go 51 Retribution so you can pretend to deal damage.
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Mightion Defensor had this to say about the Spice Girls:
I'm a retnoob paladin (17/0/34); but even I know to stand with the healers and chain Holy Light Rank 4 on the MTs, unless its Strat or Scholo.But I do see your points... the trick isn't convincing others, it's convincing the rest of the raid, where priest==healer.
Why the hell would you chain such a low level crappy heal?
Didn't they nerf +healing and +damage for lower than max rank spells?
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So quoth Greenlit:
If you want to be a lazy, horrible healer, please reroll a Druid.
hey fuck you man okay
Well, I'm mangle spec right now so I suppose I don't really have any room to talk
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From the Book of Armaments, Willias did read;
Why the hell would you chain such a low level crappy heal?Didn't they nerf +healing and +damage for lower than max rank spells?
I did it before all for mana efficiency - it did like 800-900 a pop with Blessing of Light on the tanks.
I haven't raided yet since 2.0.1, so I imagine I'll have to use a higher level heal next time.
Now that HoT's stack, it's almost unnecessary to have a large number of dedicated healers in any case. In spider wing last night we were tanking through an enraged maexxna without shield wall (a feat previously utterly impossible) with two fewer healers than we normally have, and the ones we had were having an easy time of it.
This is not to say that healers aren't necessary, but rather that it's no longer reasonable to chastize priests (or druids, for that matter) for wanting to benefit the raid in other ways. Shadow priests are orgasmic when used properly, and represent an immense boost to DPS and ranged damage group stability.
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Mightion Defensor was naked while typing this:
I did it before all for mana efficiency - it did like 800-900 a pop with Blessing of Light on the tanks.I haven't raided yet since 2.0.1, so I imagine I'll have to use a higher level heal next time.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Every time I see you post about your paladin you slide farther into the zone of poeple I have to yell at every raid. You realize that your "mana efficency" is pretty much shit with holy light, right? The higher coefficent you get from the second longer cast time doesn't mean jack when the level 60 version of Flash of light casts almost twice as fast, for 50 less mana, for more healing.
Plus, in that extra second of casting Holy Light it's fairly likely that a non retard healer will have gotten a heal off first, making you overheal and even further ruining your efficency.
Given your self proclaimed 'ret spec', I'm going to guess that you refuse to wear anything but plate, which has a woefully small supply of healing gear, and instead are using a collection of warrior DPS gear to try and eek out a little more damage. Guess what. Without a good chunk of +healing you're at most going to equal the level 58 FoL efficency with your AWESOME holy light rank 4 hax.
Also, with 17/0/34 you A) Don't have Crusader Strike, destroying any chance of you actually doing damage comparable to anything but maybe a protection paladin with only one mob, and B) don't have illumination, the best talent possible for being a paladin healer. You either need to respec and choose a role other than buff bitch (Because people won't care that you have improved blessings, unless you're in a 40 man where there will be enough paladins to have them anyways.) or just quit while you're far, far behind.
l2p nub
Greenlit fucked around with this message on 12-08-2006 at 08:12 PM.
I'll keep that in mind.
EDIT: Oh, and I made a mistake, I'm 19/0/32. The guild I'm applying to doesn't demand people spec a certain way, and I've never been yelled at for my spec, or gear. Not that it's worth defending, because no matter what I said, you'd probably only reply with "Retnoob lawl" or whatever. When you pay my sub or put a guild tag under my name THEN you can bitch about my spec. Not before. Mightion Defensor fucked around with this message on 12-09-2006 at 12:05 AM.
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Mightion Defensor had this to say about Cuba:
The guild I'm applying to doesn't demand people spec a certain way, and I've never been yelled at for my spec, or gear.
You'll change your spec like 10 times before the app process is over.
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From the Book of Armaments, Falaanla Marr did read;
You'll change your spec like 10 times before the app process is over.
Haven't been asked yet. * shrug *
And, in our professional opinions, your talent spec and your raid performance both suck. So you're 19 holy instead of 17, oh great. That gets you Imp BoW at (probably) the cost of (in 2.0.1) an actual useful raiding talent. (Sanctified Crusader)
I can't even find a way to spend 19 talents in Holy and be satisfied with it. Do I get Imp BoW and have no Illumination at all, or do I get 4/5 Illumination and still have that 20% shot I won't get mana refunded? There's nothing else earlier in the trees worth getting once you've come to Tier 4 in Holy, God help you if you've spent more than 15 before reaching it.
Let's take a look at Retribution, shall we?
32 points, okay, I can deal with that. Shit, no, I can't, and here's why: Everything after Vengeance (which in of itself is not worth getting) worth getting costs three points to max out. And even early in the tree, I'm willing to bet you passed on raid-viable talents for soloability. Imp BoMight or Benediction? Either way you lose. Might is a good raid talent, Benediction is a required Retribution talent. Imp Judgement/SoC are no-brainers for tier two. Tier 3 should be another no-brainer: Command and Conviction, passing up Pursuit of Justice and Vindication which are both entirely worthless.
Tier 4 Retribution is a hard one. This is where a Retribution pally makes or breaks himself. Does he selfishly take Crusade and leave a one-point wiggle room, or does he pass it up entirely and spend 4 or 5 points to pick up the Blessing of Might he left so far behind? I think you got Crusade and spent the extra point in Vindication, but that's just my guess.
Tier 5's another tricky one, but I think you made the right choice here. 2/3 Two-Hand Spec and fill out 3/3 Sanc Aura talents. Tier 6, who knows. Probably Vengeance instead of the incredible mana efficiency of Sanctified Judgement.
Tier 7 is where you run out of points. You've got two left, and I know you can't pass up Repentance. So where does the last one go, Mightion? It doesn't matter, you can't salvage it at this point. You're out of points and you've fallen well shy of the most useful talent in the tree, Crusader Strike.
You make the rest of us look bad.
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Mightion Defensor painfully thought these words up:
Haven't been asked yet. * shrug *
Not change because they will ask. They won't. Change because you'll get bored with one spec and change for some reason or something like that. gonna be a long app process is what I was getting at.
True story 
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Asha'man who doth quote:
Shadow priests are boring in PvE.True story
They can't possibly be more boring than any other priest can they?
Even i have to say that 19/0/32 seems to be one of the most retarded specs ive heard of. The paladin who told you to stop casting FoL was a retard. A paladin's main job in a traditional tank and spank boss is to bridge the gap between big heals with FoLs. Holy Light of any rank is a waste of time in raids unless you have Divine Favor. In the time it would take me to cast three Holy Lights, i could cast 6 FoLs that were healing for 600-900 a piece. And most of those FoLs aren't going to over heal my tank. If you are a "raiding" paladin, and thats all you are going to do with your character, go at least 41 Holy. If you want to be a "DPS-adin" you have to have Crusader Strike. It is the only way. Speaking on the Holy experience, before the patch, with my primarily ZG gear, i could spam FoL for almost 10 minutes before running out of mana.
In conclusion, Mightion, get with the fucking program, and either be a pretty good bitch healer, or go all the way down the tree, and pretend to be a warrior. All i know is if i still raided with my paladin, and i was serious about raiding, id fucking go Holy.
P.S. Holy light might be efficient with the new talents if you have about 14% spell crit base, and you get Illumination and all the crit talents, but chances are at that point you are going to be overhealing.
The Alliance always whines about Shamans being overpowered, but try taking down a Priest in plate armor with three lives.
It's all about knowing when they'll want to shield, and... having a silence ability
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Maradon! says po-ta-to, I say pa-ta-to:
For what it's worth I kill pallies pretty well.It's all about knowing when they'll want to shield, and... having a silence ability
Exactly. I lose in a duel with a pally about one time out of 10. Save the fear/silence until the bubble at 20% and burn them down with a mind blast. easy. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 12-10-2006 at 12:47 AM.
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Blindy.ing:
Exactly. I lose in a duel with a priest about one time out of 10. Save the fear/silence until the bubble at 20% and burn them down with a mind blast. easy.
As far as I know, I'm the only warlock in the world who takes spell lock off autocast and actually uses it tactically.
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Maradon! thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
As far as I know, I'm the only warlock in the world who takes spell lock off autocast and actually uses it tactically.
Nah there's me as well, those who keep it on autocast are morons.
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Greenlit had this to say about John Romero:
In unrelated news, the new BG Arenas are the best thing Blizzard's ever done.
Depends on your class
Druids don't really belong in there if the team intends to win
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Kegwen obviously shouldn't have said:
Depends on your classDruids don't really belong in there if the team intends to win
We lost to a few (one) teams that had druids.
Our team is a Warrior, Healadin and Hunter, with only the Hunter being raid equipped, but we still lost to a team of two mixed tier two/three Druids and a Rogue.
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We were all impressed when Mr. Parcelan wrote:
Holy Paladins are the biggest bitches to fight ever. They have all the healing power of a priest with half the mana cost.The Alliance always whines about Shamans being overpowered, but try taking down a Priest in plate armor with three lives.
And the offensive power of a priest with a big staff, I use to orgasm when I could throw an engineering bomb and holy shock for 800 damage at once :-/ Then got to chase around the little people with actual cool powers until my stun cooled down, or waiting till they ran out of mana trying to outdamage holy light with the occasional illuminate. (which was pretty funny)
Paladins have (at least) 3 lives, and it takes that many to kill anyone decent. People complain about shamens because... I dunno, they can't stop someone walking backwards and frost shocking them alot? People complain when windfury manages to proc 2-3 times in a row with some really slow 2 hander? Oh noes.
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Check out the big brain on Maradon!!
They can't possibly be more boring than any other priest can they?
They are. You can't seriously expect to be given a DPS slot in any decent raid, so you end up healing... But healing real bad compared to what someone can do with holy/disc specs. And if you do end up dedicated to DPS, well, expect to be outdamaged by any real DPS class.
The strength of shadow priests is the versatility of their spells, which is great in PvP, but useless in PvE.
