Being denied PW:S as a shadow priest

[Deleted]

Hello everyone,

While we were doing iron reaver mythic progress my raid leader has denied me the use of PW:S for all raids during boss fights.
This is because our Disc priest cant respond with anything while trying to keep me up. This was the reason given to me.

They basically are taking a small personal and damage increase away from me. Is there anything i can say to them that would cause them to stop this bullshit or should i just accept my fate and unglyph reflective shields?

please help

[wrynil]

I hate, as a former disc, when shadow pw:s themselves. The visuals i use that makes my brain know that the cast goes off is getting messed up by it. Luckily i was the RL so the Shadow priest could whine all she wanted. :b Also huge shield > little shield imo.

[Pearl1717]

As a disc priest that raids with 2 shadow priests, the spriest shielding themselves is large inconsequential. Spriests should be allowed to shield themselves as they need because it does act as a small defensive while adding some dps. The only time you shouldn't shield yourself is if you know you are about to take a spike in damage because you have some specific job for the fight, in which cause you should let the disc shield you since his shield will be 3 times bigger than your own (like soaking a black hole on Xhul'horac).

But, does your disc priest not have penance or FH? If he did his job right, he would shield you himself before any damage went out, not after. And even so, there are 19 other people in the raid that he could be shielding anyway. In all reality, you shielding yourself before pounding is actually helping the raid because it allows him to shield other people, and you still have some sort of damage mitigation up. This results in more people in the raid being shielded before any large aoe goes out, making it easier for your throughput healers to keep everyone up.

If you're shielding yourself in response to taking a spike in damage, then your disc priest should be pouring a penance into you and not shielding you anyway.

So does spriests shielding themselves bother me? Sometimes, like when they know they're going to be one of the only people taking spike damage. But in the long run? No, not really, and it shouldn't bother your RL either.

[Nzete]

The disc priest's job is to keep shields up to keep people's health from dipping dangerously. Shadow priests shielding themselves are a seriously liability as far as discipline priests are concerned. The way I look at it is "if he shields himself, he is denying me my very best and generally only worth casting healing ability: he better hope someone else can help him when his puny shield pops because I can't".

This is going to be a point of serious contention until such a time as weakened soul from a shadow on themselves doesn't affect a discipline priest shielding the shadow. I'd recommend putting a suggestion in to blizzard that they try to make discipline priests and shadow priests not hate each other in raids.

[Kilee25]

I agree with everything Pearl said, and believe that if a disc priest whines about this, it's because they cannot adapt or see the benefits of allowing a shield to go to another location.

Having said that...

Unglyph it and take shield off your bar. It's not worth fighting over.

Your other options for damage reduction:

1. Fade (glyphed) - use on every stomp.
2. Desperate Prayer or Angelic Bulwark.
3. Dispersion.
4. Play "loose" with your rotation, in such a way that you can save orbs and spend them when healing is needed most. You can do this in a few different ways, either by banking orbs and only spending them when capped, or by learning the "dance pattern" of the fight and building up a stack of orbs to spend when required.
5. Drop out of shadowform and chain-cast Flash Heal on yourself until the raid is steady.

6. Keep in mind that you have VE and Health Potions. Although they cannot be used often, you should start to get a feel when they are needed most.

Shadowpriests are still very hearty classes, and we at least have the option of healing ourselves where other classes must simply take it and die.

Generally speaking, when a raid leader hands down a "mandate" like this, I conform to their wishes and focus on what I can do.

Also - in regardes to Reflective Glyph being a DPS increase. Enh... this is a flimsy argument. It's nice, but it's not required. It's main use is to prevent damage, and if that is already happening from another source, you shouldn't even give it a second thought. Your raid leader (or healer) is asking you to trust them to do their job, so trust them.

[Tygerlily177]

I don't mind if our shadow priest PW:S himself. However, he's not using reflective shield glyph, so his casts are not frequent. I always encourage our DPS members to heal themselves if they're about to die, and PW:S is part of a shadow priests' options. That said, if you're casting PW:S on yourself as soon as the weakened soul debuff falls off just for a DPS gain, I could see how that could be problematic, especially in a situation where the Disc priest wants to shield an entire group before a massive AoE hit. Are you even sure it's a DPS gain?

[PosPosPos]

I don't care until the spriest keeps dying with WS up - then I tell the spriest to never self-shield again or face the fury when I QQ to the raid lead when he asks me why people are dying "to a lack of heals".

[Pearl1717]

The disc priest's job is to keep shields up to keep people's health from dipping dangerously. Shadow priests shielding themselves are a seriously liability as far as discipline priests are concerned. The way I look at it is "if he shields himself, he is denying me my very best and generally only worth casting healing ability: he better hope someone else can help him when his puny shield pops because I can't".

Except there are 19 other people in the raid, and it is impossible to put a shield on all 20 people. Therefore, the raid as a whole can have 1 extra shield on everyone, thus smoothing out the damage taken curve, making it easier for the rest of the healers to keep everyone up. This is especially true for a fight like Iron Reaver where there is always someone else you can shield.

Is it optimal for the shadow priest to shield himself? No. But to have a RL come out and say NEVER do it or else is just silly. That is never going to be the reason why you wipe cause the spriest wanted to put a 35k shield on himself vs the 80k one from the disc.

[Atharaxie]

Not much you can say because, to quote the dude, "He is not wrong he is just being an..... antipathic disc"
Yes, your shield is debuffing you with Weakened Soul preventing him from shielding you. But he probably isn't the only raid healer so if you aren't taking heavy damage, you should survive. I would say that as long as you don't die, it's fine.
A disc can't cover whole 20 raid members with PW:S in 15s.
Maybe you should negociate with him that you will only pw:s during regular raid damage and not on specific targeted nukes.

[Java]

Is that tiny reflective damage worth messing up your disc priest? No. It is jarring to the priest and prevents them from saving your char when large damage goes out, in effect increases the chance of a raid wipe.

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That is never going to be the reason why you wipe cause the spriest wanted to put a 35k shield on himself vs the 80k one from the disc.

You don't understand the problem at all. It isn't about when the priest needs to buff everyone, it is about when the priest needs to heal the lowest health player but can't. I have seen shadow priest die from self shielding several times. And yes I have even seen it cause a wipe once.

[Pearl1717]

You don't understand the problem at all. It isn't about when the priest needs to buff everyone, it is about when the priest needs to heal the lowest health player but can't. I have seen shadow priest die from self shielding several times. And yes I have even seen it cause a wipe once.

Is the disc priest solo healing? In a mythic raid? That is never going to happen. Since he is not solo healing, there are going to be 3-4 other healers in the raid. All of which can spot heal that spriest much more efficiently (assuming penance is on cd). And if the spriest is that close to dying where he needs an immediate pws to save him, then more than likely he did something wrong in the first place (i.e. standing in fire) in which case he deserves to die.

Like I said, its not optimal to have the spriest shield himself. But to have your RL come out and say to never use it because its hampering your discs healing is just silly.

[Kilee25]

Are you even sure it's a DPS gain?

PW: Shield is a higher DPET, when fully popped, than the following spells:

Mind Spike, Insanity, Mind Flay, the first tick of cascade.

It basically fits just below Mind Blast in terms of "filler", and could be considered a fairly decent dps increase, when used liberally on fights where the bubble can be reliably popped every time it is used.

Having said that, like I said, it's roughly inconsequential, because in places where you would have used it, you are instead casting another spell that also does damage, so the comparison is only against the difference between what you would have cast instead, not what it does overall.

Hopefully I worded that correctly.

[Deleted]

6. Keep in mind that you have VE and Health Potions. Although they cannot be used often, you should start to get a feel when they are needed most.

unfortunately i cant use VE since my raid leader uses it in combination with other CD in certain points in most fights.

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. Are you even sure it's a DPS gain?

I dont see it as a dps increase but rather as a damage increase at a point where avoiding damage is usefull. PW:S in itself can ofc reflect a decent amount of damage but i dont use it off cooldown i only use it to respond to big aoe effect to help out healers where possible.

And to respond to the guy that said i should respond to blizzard. Someone already did that and gave the idea that a shadow version of the shield MUST be implemented to avoid further issues with this. This shadow shield would be completely personal and a bit stronger than PW:S currently for Spriests. this would also give us a slight boost in survivability

[Kilee25]

Well, that's probably a good thing. In my guild I'm basically just told to use my best judgement. Although VE doesn't heal me personally, what it does do is lighten the load to the point that other healers can appropriate direct healing to me instead of other raiders. If I pop VE, I can usually expect a direct heal 4-5 seconds later, so if you're using it in that method it's best to pop it early rather than last moment. It's not an "emergency self heal", that's for sure, just more of a "let everyone catch up".

[Deleted]

PW: Shield is a higher DPET, when fully popped, than the following spells:

Mind Spike, Insanity, Mind Flay, the first tick of cascade.

It basically fits just below Mind Blast in terms of "filler", and could be considered a fairly decent dps increase, when used liberally on fights where the bubble can be reliably popped every time it is used.

Having said that, like I said, it's roughly inconsequential, because in places where you would have used it, you are instead casting another spell that also does damage, so the comparison is only against the difference between what you would have cast instead, not what it does overall.

Hopefully I worded that correctly.

you did and also perfectly worded my point. in a situation where my raid leader asks for a personal, i will respond with shield and gain a little bit of damage in the process.

there is a reason why reflective shield is a mandatory glyph in nearly every priest guide

[Tojara]

Does it really matter? Shadow heals themselves so much that they are unlikely to die anyway. In a mythic setting, let alone any setting you're only going to have 20 potential PW:Shield targets, which means you aren't going to be able to respond to everybody anyway. Our disc priest just prioritizes squishier targets, or those that tend to get themselves killed a lot.

Granted they aren't the same encounters, but on an encounter like Blast Furance on Mythic, you can DP enough that's it's unlikely you would need any external healing at all.

[BananaHandsB]

Let me guess, you keep dying over and over and are arguing for a small dps increase, instead of huge shields from your disc that could keep you alive. Your raid leader is concerned with progression, not a minimal dps increase from reflective shield. Stay alive and your raid leader wouldn't be forced to mandate this. He's probably just doing the only things he can to keep ur squishy butt from dying. Dead priests do no dps. In large, as a healer, I don't mind priests doing this, but if they're dying far more than others from raid dmg, then it's probably best to let the disc shield you and let the small dps increase go.

[Deleted]

Does it really matter? Shadow heals themselves so much that they are unlikely to die anyway.

As i stated in my post the issue came up on iron reaver where, in the later stages of the fight , the pounding starts doing pretty significant damage. This is why the issue came up

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Let me guess, you keep dying over and over and are arguing for a small dps increase, instead of huge shields from your disc that could keep you alive. Your raid leader is concerned with progression, not a minimal dps increase from reflective shield. Stay alive and your raid leader wouldn't be forced to mandate this. He's probably just doing the only things he can to keep ur squishy butt from dying. Dead priests do no dps. In large, as a healer, I don't mind priests doing this, but if they're dying far more than others from raid dmg, then it's probably best to let the disc shield you and let the small dps increase go.

No, actually. the reason it came up is because my raid leader put me in a group with a disc priest rather than a resto shaman or a paladin. This caused the disc priest to not be able to properly react to some damage (artillery and fire once because i derped) hence the solution from the raid leader to not use PW:S.
After this my first responce was that he is taking away one of my personals. And before you respond, yes i already had used dispersion/potion at that point. the damage portion of the PW:S is just a very nice bonus

[Azobank]

The shadow priest job is to do damage. By denying the shadow priest to do damage I'm 'messing up the shadow priest', as someone expressed it in this thread already.

Rerolled disc this tier. On Hellfire Assault I asked if the shadow priest have to PW himself cause it was annyoing that I couldn't shield howling axe. Response I got was that it's the only damage spell he can cast while moving. To me that's a good enough reason to not PW him. Same goes for Iron-Reaver, let the shadow priest shield itself while moving from barrage or whatever ability that force him/her to move. Me getting annoyed isn't a good reason to lower the shadow priests DPS.

Different abilities need different aproach, some abilities I would say my bigger shield have bigger prio then a tiny bit of damage. But in the case of raid-wide damage intake I can't PW everyone. Shouldn't result in lower healing if I not PW the SP. To that add that SP probably got the most self-heal of the DPS with devouring plague.

[Deleted]

As a disc priest I understand that it's essentially a shadow priests DPS button on the move, I won't avoid shielding them but I'm not going to get mad if they have weakened soul. So long as the shadow priest understands that if they die it's their own damn fault if they had WS up. Without WS up they can blame me all they want if it's it's lack of healing on them.