1. #1
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    [Shadow Priest Guide] Heroic Gara'jal the Spiritbinder 25

    Introduction

    I hope to help the Shadow Priest community with progressing through the heroic modes of Mogu'shan Vaults by sharing thing I found useful during my progression. In this guide I will give tips and tricks I found useful for maximizing DPS on Gara'jal the Spiritbinder on 25 man heroic mode. I am not saying that everything I recommend is good or optimal and I am open to suggestions. They do, however, work and took me through heroic modes. Some tips may not work for you due to your guild using a different strategy but I will try to keep it as general as possible and mention if the tips I give are specific for a special tactic. This guide assumes that you know how the fight works.

    Glyphs

    Glyph of Mind Spike
    I use this glyph for all fights where I use FDCL.

    Glyph of Mind Flay
    Good for when you move to totems.

    Glyph of Fade
    When you get Voodoo Doll, you can use this to reduce damage from minions. Use this with Phantasm to make you immune to ranged attacks for three seconds.

    Talents

    Phantasm
    This is used to avoid damage from minions when you have Voodoo Doll and during sub-20%.

    From Darkness, Comes Light or Mindbender
    Personally I prefer From Darkness, Comes Light. It feels much more versatile than Mindbender and helps to burst down adds in other realm. Mindbender is more consistent damage on boss and I have heard that it lines up nicely with when you are leaving the other realm and have the damage buff up.

    Desperate Prayer
    Use this as soon as you enter with a totem. This will make it easier for healers as everyone is low when you first enter.

    Twist of Fate
    You will have insane uptime on this due to the adds downstairs and the totems.

    Halo or Cascade
    I think Halo wins out during progression. It does more damage on boss and it does very nice damage on adds downstairs. Cascade is easier to use and does more damage downstairs because you can use it twice if you pop it as soon as you enter with your totem. I would pick Halo for progression, Cascade for cheesing damage.

    General Tips and Tricks

    Opening rotation

    This depends on if your guild uses Bloodlust/Heroism at start or not but if they do, I usually open like this:
    Potion
    Mind Blast
    Shadowfiend
    Halo
    Vampiric Touch
    Shadow Word: Pain
    What I like about this opener is that you will get a lusted Shadowfiend, your trinkets will probably proc before you throw dots up and you will get lusted dots too. Ideally, you should try to get your three orb Devouring Plague before trinket procs fall off and Shadow Word: Pain should be about to expire as your procs fall off so refresh that before they do.

    Totems

    I really recommend dotting totems as soon as they spawn. I do not care if I am not on the totem, I still dot it. It will help you proc Twist of Fate and it will help you proc From Darkness, Comes Light. It will boost your damage on boss. Also, make sure you are casting a Mind Flay when the totem is about to hit 20% and spam Shadow Word: Death on the totem. This will give you extra orbs and proc Twist of Fate in case your dots do not. The reason for casting Mind Flay before totem drops below 20% is to not get GCD locked because the totem will die very quickly in most cases and if you are GCD locked when it hits 20% you are probably not going to get your Shadow Word Death off.

    Maximizing damage in Shadow Realm

    I think most people just forget about their spell priority when they need to multi dot a lot of targets. You must remember to use Mind Blast on cooldown. Shadow Word Death is insanely strong here. It will give you Twist of Fate and orb. Use it whenever you can on low HP adds. If you took Halo, use it when it is ready. If you took Cascade, make sure you have it ready when you are about to enter Shadow Realm.

    If you are not casting Mind Blast, Halo/Cascade or Shadow Word Death, just throw Shadow Word Pain up on high health Shadowy Minions. Do not waste dots on adds you think are going to die or who are at like 60%. Shadow Word Pain is only strong if it can tick for its full duration, else Vampiric Touch is probably better. Now, depending on how much you struggle on Enrage, you can save your Shadow Orbs for when you get to the normal realm and use it on boss. Else, use it on high health adds downstairs. As you are about to leave Shadow Realm, try to get some Shadow Word Pain on adds that are at like 20-40% health. Twist of Fate will still proc when you are in normal realm if the adds in Shadow Realm drop below 20% and your Shadow Word Pain is still on them.

    Severer of Souls are highest priority. Put both Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word Pain on them. By putting Vampiric Touch you should not have any mana issues during the fight.

    Shadowfiend usage

    You can only use Shadowfiend twice on this fight, once on the pull and one more later on in the fight. I recommend using it when you are using your second potion, which should be when your trinket procs when boss is under 20% or about to hit 20%. This is also usually the point where a second Bloodlust/Heroism is used for people that died during the encounter.

    Recommended Addons

    Gnosis (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/gnosis)
    Best cast bar for Shadow Priest. Gnosis is the only cast bar being able to show ticks of your Mind Flay properly. There is no excuse for using any other cast bar.

    Tidy Plates (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/tidy-plates)
    Extremely useful for cleaning up your nameplates and makes it easier to track dots on many targets.

    Buff and debuff timer(s)
    Use whatever you feel comfortable with. I personally use WeakAuras but most addons work as good.

    Video
    This is a video where you can see me using most of the tips I outlined in this guide. There are mistakes as expected from a first kill but I hope you can look past them. Do not take the damage meter for anything regarding raid DPS, it does not work on this fight due to phasing.



    Conclusion

    I hope you found the guide useful and that it will help you with your progression. If you do not agree with any of the things I mentioned, I am open for discussion. Please do leave feedback on how I can improve the guide and if you wish to see more guides like these.
    Last edited by mmoc9f3c8526e6; 2012-10-31 at 02:28 AM.

  2. #2
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    If your raid's strat is to stick everyone in melee, Cascade is a great substitute for Halo, since whenever a new totem pops up, you can Cascade the totem, which will then bounce to Gara'jal for decent damage. Unless, of course, the totem is less than 10 yards from Gara'jal.
    {[( )]}

  3. #3
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    Been working on this boss this week, we couldn't figure out how the hell the spirit buff worked, our other shadowpriest was gaming it with flash heals, I was mostly ignoring it aside from healthstone / DP. We were doing similar dps (from what I could tell with split logs). Is it worth binding heals or such or best just ignored?

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Redsparrow View Post
    Been working on this boss this week, we couldn't figure out how the hell the spirit buff worked, our other shadowpriest was gaming it with flash heals, I was mostly ignoring it aside from healthstone / DP. We were doing similar dps (from what I could tell with split logs). Is it worth binding heals or such or best just ignored?
    We go down in groups of three, one healer and two DPS. The healer doesn't usually have problems giving us full stacks or near full so I never bother to heal. Our healers always stay full duration in Shadow Realm. Desperate Prayer is just nice to help healers out at the start when you are low on health. Healing Priests should use PoH I think to hit both targets. Unless your healers really struggle with giving you stacks, I don't see wasting globals on casting heals being a good thing.

  5. #5
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    I've mostly been coming out with 6-9 stacks depending on my healthstone CD etc.
    How do you assign going into the spirit realm (unable to watch the video right now). Prefering dot classes? Assigned on the fly or pre-assigned? 3 every time?

    At the moment I feel we're just not hitting the dps check right now because we aren't handling the spirit realm well enough. Either we're sending in too many or we aren't sending in enough and getting overwhelmed by adds - either way we aren't being consistent with stacking the buff.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Redsparrow View Post
    I've mostly been coming out with 6-9 stacks depending on my healthstone CD etc.
    How do you assign going into the spirit realm (unable to watch the video right now). Prefering dot classes? Assigned on the fly or pre-assigned? 3 every time?

    At the moment I feel we're just not hitting the dps check right now because we aren't handling the spirit realm well enough. Either we're sending in too many or we aren't sending in enough and getting overwhelmed by adds - either way we aren't being consistent with stacking the buff.

    Your healers are not doing their job properly if they can only give you 6-9 stacks, they are probably leaving the Shadow realm as soon as they give you the button. They should stay full duration and use fast heals to get as many stacks as possible. Mana should not be an issue for them.

    Yes, we prefer strong AoE such as Warlocks, Boomkins and Shadow Priests. We want strong single target classes to sit on boss for entire fight (rogues, hunters, mages). Our groups looked like this, pre-assigned:

    1. Elemental Shaman, Mage
    2. Shadow Priest, Warlock
    3. Warlock, Boomkin
    4. Shadow Priest, Warlock

    Then we had backups if someone got Voodoo Doll, one DK and one Hunter I think. We always make sure we have two DPS go down on every totem. The only exception being the very last totem where we send three DPS, in our case Shadow Priest, Warlock and Boomkin. The last totem is the one at around 20-30% health on boss when Severers spawn.
    Last edited by mmoc9f3c8526e6; 2012-10-31 at 02:30 AM.

  7. #7
    correct me if I miss anything. Since FDCL procc's off VT shouldn't we just VT everything before we leave shadowrealm instead of SW:P ?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elothie View Post
    correct me if I miss anything. Since FDCL procc's off VT shouldn't we just VT everything before we leave shadowrealm instead of SW:P ?
    Shadow Word Pain lasts longer, which probably will give you more uptime on Twist of Fate. I am not sure which oen gives more DPS overall.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Ariadne View Post
    Healing Priests should use PoH I think to hit both targets. Unless your healers really struggle with giving you stacks, I don't see wasting globals on casting heals being a good thing.
    Considering the healing Priest can Desperate Prayer/Healthstone up and then Binding Heal someone, PoH won't really have much use for two targets, especially due to party configuration restraints (PoH is still an awkward party-based heal). I typically Inner Focus + Gheal someone to near full then Binding Heal myself and the third target up fairly fast.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by meddle View Post
    Considering the healing Priest can Desperate Prayer/Healthstone up and then Binding Heal someone, PoH won't really have much use for two targets, especially due to party configuration restraints (PoH is still an awkward party-based heal). I typically Inner Focus + Gheal someone to near full then Binding Heal myself and the third target up fairly fast.
    Except that PoH hits both DPS if they are in same group, which they should be most of the times if you pre-assigned groups. You should prioritize stacking DPSers and not yourself. Greater Heal is useless in Shadow Realm, it is a slow cast.
    Last edited by mmoc9f3c8526e6; 2012-11-01 at 12:18 AM.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Ariadne View Post
    Except that PoH hits both DPS if they are in same group, which they should be most of the times if you pre-assigned groups. You should prioritize stacking DPSers and not yourself. Greater Heal is useless in Shadow Realm, it is a slow cast.
    Pre-assigned groups can't always go in together due to Voodoo Dolls...

    Also, Greater Heal has the same cast time as PoH and heals for more than twice a PoH per target.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by meddle View Post
    Pre-assigned groups can't always go in together due to Voodoo Dolls...

    Also, Greater Heal has the same cast time as PoH and heals for more than twice a PoH per target.
    I know, that I why I wrote most of the times. Does not matter if Greater Heal heals for more, it still only hits one target while PoH hits two. And Flash Heal is faster than Greater Heal and you gain more stacks my using Flash Heal/Binding Heal.

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