Spriest is a competitive class on pvp?

[simply]

Hello everyone...
Spriest is a competitive class on pvp?

[Huike]

Yes...............

[Deleted]

Yes...............

/10characters

[Archmage Alodi]

sp pwns if u know how to play

[Woofwerx]

I was wanted to finish off my shadow priest but several people have told me just to roll a hunter if I wanted to dps or pvp. So is a hunter worth it versus a shadow priest?

[hikamiro]

I was wanted to finish off my shadow priest but several people have told me just to roll a hunter if I wanted to dps or pvp. So is a hunter worth it versus a shadow priest?

Hunter is a little less comp- dependent in PvP (Not by much)

In PvE Shadow is a bit ahead of hunters if i recall correctly.

The thing about shadow priests is that you need your other dps to be extremely threatening like a mage or hunter, something that can put loads of pressure out if they aren't trained, so that it forces the other team to be on them and not you. Something that peels extremely well can work as well, like a DK or rogue.

[Woofwerx]

Hunter is a little less comp- dependent in PvP (Not by much)

In PvE Shadow is a bit ahead of hunters if i recall correctly.

The thing about shadow priests is that you need your other dps to be extremely threatening like a mage or hunter, something that can put loads of pressure out if they aren't trained, so that it forces the other team to be on them and not you. Something that peels extremely well can work as well, like a DK or rogue.

Thank you for the response, In the long run if played right do you think a warlock would be more effective than either of those?

[anaxie]

I was wanted to finish off my shadow priest but several people have told me just to roll a hunter if I wanted to dps or pvp. So is a hunter worth it versus a shadow priest?

And now Hunters struggle to break 40k in DSH raids irony.

[Woofwerx]

And now Hunters struggle to break 40k in DSH raids irony.

Hunters are struggling?

[hikamiro]

Thank you for the response, In the long run if played right do you think a warlock would be more effective than either of those?

Warlock is an entirely different playstyle in pvp. Warlock is a low single target, high multi-target dps that does spread damage and gets everyone low enough for a burst class to finish them off.

Spriest is a burst class, middle ish damage with multi-dot and high single target burst with archangel up. Works well with another burst class, or with a heavy CC class (anything besides a warlock cause fear DR).

[Woofwerx]

Warlock is an entirely different playstyle in pvp. Warlock is a low single target, high multi-target dps that does spread damage and gets everyone low enough for a burst class to finish them off.

Spriest is a burst class, middle ish damage with multi-dot and high single target burst with archangel up. Works well with another burst class, or with a heavy CC class (anything besides a warlock cause fear DR).

I shall try my spriest for awhile and finish off my hunters leveling. No harm in leveling other characters to try them out.

[Andyclan]

Spriest is a very fun, satisfying class to play in pvp. you can dish out tremendous amounts of damage in a short period of time, you have great kiting skills and survivability. It takes a loooong time to master, and has a high skill cap. Also you have a lot of utility as far as amazing off healing, your aoe fear, ur disarm, and silence. Who ever told u to play a hunter instead doesnt know how different the play styles are i guess. i have both a hunter and an spriest and i can say i enjoy my priest more.

Also along the lines on warlock, it is a different play style. Theyre quite OP in 3s, they can do ridiculous damage to a whole party while having control of the play field. I wanted to play one, just because of the over the top damage they can do and all the control, self healing, and mitigation they have, but i didnt feel like leveling another class lol. Also whoever said a warlock and spriest dont go together is completely wrong. they make an amazing 3s team coupled with a healer. The damage and control they have is crazy.

But yes if u were to play an spriest in arena, i would go with shatterplay (frost mage, spriest, healer preferably a resto shaman). its probably the best comp for an spriest. other good ones include spriest rogue healer, spriest warlock healer. and honestly thats about it if youre looking at advancing to a high level in arena.

Any other questions feel free to ask! and good luck shadow priesting =)

[Itisamuh]

I was wanted to finish off my shadow priest but several people have told me just to roll a hunter if I wanted to dps or pvp. So is a hunter worth it versus a shadow priest?

Shadow priests are great. Easy to play well and dominating if you do. The only trick really is knowing when to nuke and when to dot. Hunter requires a lot more skill to play well, and are really no better even then. Spriest is better than warlock in all areas except arguably 3v3, so never listen to the people who say locks are better. Yes, a lock in 3v3 has a pretty good niche with the dispel protection and portal, but in general pvp, a shadow priest is much more dangerous and effective.

[Purpleisbetter]

LOL

Actually are somehow good. Let's say middle of the pack.

Survivability is low anyway, don't get fooled by people will say "u got shields and u can heal yourself". Mana is tight, our dispel protection is a joke, and beaside somone may call us a bursty class, don't expect to thorw out numbers that can't be outhealded.

And our burst is not made by instant casts, its made by 1.3sec around casts that can be easily school-locked out.
Played at higher rating will may be even more dramatic if u're the designed target of enemy focus: try to build your goddamn 5x evangelism stacks while kicked / locked every f* global, and of course, try to survive with the sole dispersion and weak bubbles. Won't do.

Is that enough? no. Let's talk about our mana and dots that get dispelled. Our dots damage rely a lot in empowered shadow, wich at 8 mastery will hit for almost nothing. Let's say you want to put up pressure on three targets at immense mana cost. Result? All your efforts got dispelled. Do that again, again, a third time and u're OOM.
Problem, just to add another, is that we're bursty if we have shadow orbs. Lol. Follow me: ur sw p got dispelled at ridicolous speed rate, you can hardly cast any mind flay because u'll be under heavy focus and yet you've to hard cast MS and MBs to deal significent damage. Wich will hit for like 8k and 10k with no orbs.
See where is this going?
Very good CC chain, problem is that your chain has long CD, so means that in a 2v2 you have a very shor window to get the kill. 3v3 not much of a problem because for sure u'll team up with somone who can help that, else good luck getting a kill when a rogue or a warrior is on you. Better, good luck casting anything.

Spot heals, mass dispels and a decent mate/class good at peeling will greatly improve your experience, but yet doesn't really worth the trouble to learn it from scratch.Too much dependant on somoneelse. For both damage and survivability. If its just for Bgs and the occasional arenas with friends, you can skip over these issues.

PvE wise is a wonderfull class, top notch damage wise. Dispersion is probabily one of the best 5 personal CDs for raiding purposes. You can cover all kind of roles: Burst damage, multi target, aoeing (weak on single target department, without dark intent and a full set of buff)spot heals.Hymns are precious. Priority/rotation is damn fun. Its satisfying in pve enviroment, really.




p.s.: No, locks are not good just in 3v3. They don't do "low-mid" damage. They do HUGE damage. Its not "bursty", but try to hold those Dots when casted with Haunt up + 3x Shadow weaving. Try to survive it when hitting the execute zone while you can't afford to dispell ANYTHING. Lock is not just portals, lol. The self healing and the ability to soak damage is impressive.The scale rate of your self healing is scary, to be honest. Huge amount of controls because of the spammable fear.PVP wise only a fool would say otherwise. Last invitational tourney proved that already. So many RMP, but guess what, the P stands for DISICIPLINE priest. Not shadow one.

p.p.s: Spriest good at kiting? since when?. And yeah, try to get close to a Lock and a Spriest when they're close together with a melee class. LOL.
Dark Intent, Lock and Spriests are best friends!

[Andyclan]

LOL

Actually are somehow good. Let's say middle of the pack.

Survivability is low anyway, don't get fooled by people will say "u got shields and u can heal yourself". Mana is tight, our dispel protection is a joke, and beaside somone may call us a bursty class, don't expect to thorw out numbers that can't be outhealded.

And our burst is not made by instant casts, its made by 1.3sec around casts that can be easily school-locked out.
Played at higher rating will may be even more dramatic if u're the designed target of enemy focus: try to build your goddamn 5x evangelism stacks while kicked / locked every f* global, and of course, try to survive with the sole dispersion and weak bubbles. Won't do.

Is that enough? no. Let's talk about our mana and dots that get dispelled. Our dots damage rely a lot in empowered shadow, wich at 8 mastery will hit for almost nothing. Let's say you want to put up pressure on three targets at immense mana cost. Result? All your efforts got dispelled. Do that again, again, a third time and u're OOM.
Problem, just to add another, is that we're bursty if we have shadow orbs. Lol. Follow me: ur sw p got dispelled at ridicolous speed rate, you can hardly cast any mind flay because u'll be under heavy focus and yet you've to hard cast MS and MBs to deal significent damage. Wich will hit for like 8k and 10k with no orbs.
See where is this going?
Very good CC chain, problem is that your chain has long CD, so means that in a 2v2 you have a very shor window to get the kill. 3v3 not much of a problem because for sure u'll team up with somone who can help that, else good luck getting a kill when a rogue or a warrior is on you. Better, good luck casting anything.

Spot heals, mass dispels and a decent mate/class good at peeling will greatly improve your experience, but yet doesn't really worth the trouble to learn it from scratch.Too much dependant on somoneelse. For both damage and survivability. If its just for Bgs and the occasional arenas with friends, you can skip over these issues.

PvE wise is a wonderfull class, top notch damage wise. Dispersion is probabily one of the best 5 personal CDs for raiding purposes. You can cover all kind of roles: Burst damage, multi target, aoeing (weak on single target department, without dark intent and a full set of buff)spot heals.Hymns are precious. Priority/rotation is damn fun. Its satisfying in pve enviroment, really.




p.s.: No, locks are not good just in 3v3. They don't do "low-mid" damage. They do HUGE damage. Its not "bursty", but try to hold those Dots when casted with Haunt up + 3x Shadow weaving. Try to survive it when hitting the execute zone while you can't afford to dispell ANYTHING. Lock is not just portals, lol. The self healing and the ability to soak damage is impressive.The scale rate of your self healing is scary, to be honest. Huge amount of controls because of the spammable fear.PVP wise only a fool would say otherwise. Last invitational tourney proved that already. So many RMP, but guess what, the P stands for DISICIPLINE priest. Not shadow one.

p.p.s: Spriest good at kiting? since when?. And yeah, try to get close to a Lock and a Spriest when they're close together with a melee class. LOL.
Dark Intent, Lock and Spriests are best friends!

WOW... do NOT listen to this guy. PLEASE. He has no idea what hes talking about.

Im not gonna make this long, at all.

1) FAKE CAST for christ sake. its not hard.
2) yea your dots dont do too much damage, and when u burst its called SET-UP. dont expect to get a kill with any class without setup. learn-to-setup.
3) mass dispel is one of the best abilities in the game, learning to anticipate it is key to playing a priest and can help land kills and/or CC chains.
4) Mana is NOT an issue unless ur team is doing something horribly wrong to where u have to spam heals. all u have to do is SW: D on CD. you will be fine.
5) Kiting. phantasm, holy walk with bubble (yes for the people who dont know, shadow uses discs 4 piece for the holy walk for KITING) and fear, not to mention mind control. something many priests dont use. silence. and disarm for peels.
6) Dispersion is absolutely amazing in arena. it can save ur life but u need to learn to use it as a last resort and dont just pop it willy-nilly
7) Plan CC chains and have great communication with ur partners.


What else do u need to know? spriest is a very good class, anyone who says otherwise has no idea how to play a priest.

Oh btw, you can spot a noob from a mile away when they bring 2s into a convo... just saying.

[Woofwerx]

WOW... do NOT listen to this guy. PLEASE. He has no idea what hes talking about.

Im not gonna make this long, at all.

1) FAKE CAST for christ sake. its not hard.
2) yea your dots dont do too much damage, and when u burst its called SET-UP. dont expect to get a kill with any class without setup. learn-to-setup.
3) mass dispel is one of the best abilities in the game, learning to anticipate it is key to playing a priest and can help land kills and/or CC chains.
4) Mana is NOT an issue unless ur team is doing something horribly wrong to where u have to spam heals. all u have to do is SW: D on CD. you will be fine.
5) Kiting. phantasm, holy walk with bubble (yes for the people who dont know, shadow uses discs 4 piece for the holy walk for KITING) and fear, not to mention mind control. something many priests dont use. silence. and disarm for peels.
6) Dispersion is absolutely amazing in arena. it can save ur life but u need to learn to use it as a last resort and dont just pop it willy-nilly
7) Plan CC chains and have great communication with ur partners.


What else do u need to know? spriest is a very good class, anyone who says otherwise has no idea how to play a priest.

Oh btw, you can spot a noob from a mile away when they bring 2s into a convo... just saying.

Im not at at max level yet but it gets easier against melee as you get resilience?

[Andyclan]

Im not at at max level yet but it gets easier against melee as you get resilience?

Yes it gets WAY easier. im not sure if u have a max character yet at all, but pvp at lvl cap compared to low lvl is night and day. If youre gonna play ur shadow priest stick with it and get plenty of practice, it will pay off. ( i guess thats really with any character =P). if u have any questions feel free to ask!

[Purpleisbetter]

1) Because loosing a GCD while your burst window is around 8 second every 120 is absolutley no issue. Because in a 1.2 around gcd sec a healer can hardly throw over 80K heal. And ofcourse, Rshamans and Hpala do not exists. Ofc i'm a noob.Just to throwing in some maths, lets say your facing a 6sec d kick rogue, and its 9000 source of stunning/blinding etc do not exist. Also your talking about beeing noob so let me assume the rogue gonna press the kick button as soon as he sees the casting bar filling (not that youll find ppl not smart enough to wait like a few instants more before landing the kick). You spend 0.3 sec to set up the kick and get around 1.2sec cd. He kicks and waste it. (you won't hit like 30% Haste so.. )You cast 1.3 sec cast +1.2GCD+1.3cast+1.2gcd. A plain 5 second windw where you landed the godly amount of 2 spikes. For a godly 18K around damage . What's next? Keep fake casting? Keep believing a melee won't do any kind of stun in the meanwhile? Keep believing your the only one with a brain in an arena?Going for the fake cast the whole time?


2) SET UP. Fine. True. Mana is not an issue, spending GCDs to keep up your pool of course won't dump ur playing. And with no Pains around generating orb is way easier (not that orbs matter that much ona shadow priest, right?).Relying on getting hit to get some of those isnt the best thing possible. Btw, i already said, as shadow,you rely too much on the others, don't give me something i already said. You may like this, i don't. Beeing part of a team is good, beeing THE part of a team that needs to be protected more then your own healer gets on my nerves.

3) Mass dispel is vry good, said that already. Actually, HoH can also be quite good to help your healer mana management if the fight strangley long, especially if your R Shaman is GHW bombing to keep your team alive. Spot heals you didn't mention, are quite godly, stuff i already said.Self dispels are precious as well.

4)Not an issue. Fine. Lets say you play a 3v3 and you want to keep up the pressure on all the target, wich sometimes IS REQUIRED (thing even a noob like me knows, thats strange) You ain't playing with a lock, what you gonna do? Keep going thru the dispel race not caring at all? I DON'T THINK SO. And as i said in point 2, you don't have 5 minutes out of a 7 minutes fight to get a kill. You talked about set up, so you know how is hard to hold back on ur mana, keeping high pressure and not wasting global CDs. Does not compute.

5)Kiting is blink, frost nova and portals. Disengage is kiting. The hold speed of light from HPalas is kiting. Running and hoping a 4 sec PVP set bonus and a 2 minute disarm will be enough to stop, lets say, a shadow step rogue, death grip DK and also a charge+leap warrior ain't worth calling kiting. Fear is obviously usefull, pity it can break easily from damage or get as easily dispelled(self reactive ability/CD or because of the healer).Your "kiting" is somone else good at peeling. End of story.

6)Dispersion as i said is probabily top 5 31th talent. It's huge, and absurdly enough even more "spammable" then our disarm. That talent alone keeps the shadow priest to be usefull in arena. Is that enough to have the same appeal/efficency of a frost mage or affli lock? No, we all know that, but at least it makes us better then other lock or mage specs, WAY better then a b. druid and better then ele shams.

7)Well, that's obvious, its the very basic.

I never said its any good. Actually it is, played with a very strict array of comps. Never said it wasn't. But i also said if u want to learn it from scratch then i would never reccomend it, because there are few specs that are simply better. The result of invitiationals tournaments are pretty clear, right now is not top notch. Good but not the pinnacle of caster archetype.

And btw, you know, there's ppl having fun 2v2s and 5v5s. I don't recall the opener talking about going for the 3k+ rating. Pretty fail pointing there.

To Woof: lets say latley, the damage from Melees are growing faster then the damage resistance that resi offers. It helps as much as having more HP, but still melees are gonna be your worst enemy along with dispels. Oh, forgetting, actually thorns from R.Druid is probabily the best deterrence from keep getting tunneled. It doels a decent "free" damage wich can't be ignored.You should try F.Mages R Druid as setup. I guess its quite decent, even if the Druid ain't the very best healer out there.

[UunaPriest]

WOW... do NOT listen to this guy. PLEASE. He has no idea what hes talking about.

Im not gonna make this long, at all.

1) FAKE CAST for christ sake. its not hard.
2) yea your dots dont do too much damage, and when u burst its called SET-UP. dont expect to get a kill with any class without setup. learn-to-setup.
3) mass dispel is one of the best abilities in the game, learning to anticipate it is key to playing a priest and can help land kills and/or CC chains.
4) Mana is NOT an issue unless ur team is doing something horribly wrong to where u have to spam heals. all u have to do is SW: D on CD. you will be fine.
5) Kiting. phantasm, holy walk with bubble (yes for the people who dont know, shadow uses discs 4 piece for the holy walk for KITING) and fear, not to mention mind control. something many priests dont use. silence. and disarm for peels.
6) Dispersion is absolutely amazing in arena. it can save ur life but u need to learn to use it as a last resort and dont just pop it willy-nilly
7) Plan CC chains and have great communication with ur partners.


What else do u need to know? spriest is a very good class, anyone who says otherwise has no idea how to play a priest.

Oh btw, you can spot a noob from a mile away when they bring 2s into a convo... just saying.

You did not address the poor, almost non-existant, DOT dispel protection though. 3sec fear is meaningless, healers effectively spam dispel them with no consequences. It's hard to see any comp that doesn't have Spriest AND Lock that wouldn't be improved by a Lock over spriest.
And a good look at Arena Junkies reflects this. Not claiming to be a pro PvPer or anything, but the class balance for shadow seems exceptionally poor in this area.

[Elodeon]

I would side more so with Purpleisbetter in the above discussion - though Andyclan gives good information too, they just disagree on the conclusion.

Spriests are enjoyable in random battlegrounds, but against melee in arena, they are squishy and need peels. They are not a kiting class; you have no way to slow someone aside from standing still and Mind Flaying. When your fears are on cooldown, the only way you're getting rid of determined melee on your butt is by someone else peeling them (though you can use your disc 4-set to gain distance, if the melee are being slowed).

Your dispel protection is poor. You aren't going to keep your dots on the target against a dispeller, unless you run with a warlock.

Running with a warlock lets you keep your dots up more, and one can peel when the other is being focused.