My experience in Shadow PvP so far

[zsuper]

Just dueling because finding a competent Rogue partner is impossible. I have 905 resilience, 22530 health, and I'm hit capped against everything but Mage.

vs. full Deadly Death Knight, I started by putting my DoTs on it, it immediately Lichbornes and grips me. Great. It's immune to fear for 15 seconds and I can't shackle it. I put a renew and ProM up, then disperse. After that, I continued putting my DoTs on the DK. When the 15 seconds of Lichborne was up, I feared it and began casting a Flash Heal in an attempt to fake it out. It instantly uses WoTF on my fear, I cancel my Flash Heal, but the DK doesn't fall for it. I then use Psychic Horror and begin another Flash Heal, it trinkets the Horror, counterspells this Flash Heal, chains it to Strangulate, and I die.

vs. PvE geared Mage, my highest DoT tick is like 500; my Shadow Word: Pain is ticking for 370. My gear is mixed pre-Ulduar best in slots (for hit cap), one piece of Hateful, two pieces of Furious, and the rest is Deadly (include off pieces). I spend the whole match spamming heals, trying to fake out a counterspell, and running around while renewing my DoTs on it. It resists my first Psychic Scream, two Silences, and my Psychic Horror. It WoTFs my second Psychic Scream and trinkets the third. It's nowhere near dead when it kills me.

vs. Deadly Gladiator Rogue, I figure I can survive his first stunlock and save my trinket/dispersion for a more important moment. He drops me to 7600 by the time Kidney Shot wears off, I throw a Shadow Word: Pain on him and fear, which he breaks with WoTF, then he cloaks and vanishes. And then I'm dead.
My only damage was my one SW:P tick. I think he was using his PvE gear, which is all pre-Ulduar best in slots, though.


tl;dr damage is actually much worse than it was pre-patch. Survivability isn't much better than it used to be. No class in battlegrounds or skirmishes has even flinched at dispelling my Vampiric Touch. Mana is still completely terrible, I usually OOM within the first minute of the match. Not much fun.

On the other hand, I am able to kill bad/badly geared Rogues now. That's a plus!

[AetherMcLoud]

vs. full Deadly Death Knight, I started by putting my DoTs on it, it immediately Lichbornes and grips me. Great. It's immune to fear for 15 seconds and I can't shackle it.

How about psychic horror'ing "it"?

[Deleted]

What about all that flash heal going on against the dk? I don't quite understand it. Seems like it could be a bit better trying to do as much damage as possible during that time instead.

[syanid]

I tried to duel too, I'm really bad at pvping but this is how it looked like:

vs deadly / hateful geared rogue (he was at 1900 in 2v2 so nothing extra) - if I miss a single cooldown, I die. 5:1 for the rogue. A better sp player would probably win all of the games.

vs fully deadly holy paladin: in pvp gear it was a nightmare, I barely won. In pve gear I was left with 80% of my mana when paladin died.

vs fully deadly ret paladin: I won barely, only because mass dispel dispeled the bubble in the first hit.

vs fully hateful mm hunter: I won without a scratch, literally. Disarm - dots, ve, disperse, get in, fear, kill. The guy was awful tho.

vs disc priest - I win no matter what the gear is, I win the mana fight every time.

vs warlock - I save all of the cooldowns for getting out of his fear. When I do get feared eventually, I cast the pet prior to it. Lock dies.

vs frost mage - freakin' impossible, I dueled a really really good frost mage and I literally didn't scratch him.

Haven't dueled any death knights yet or feral druids.

[Rymezz]

SP vs SP is fun requires some real skills

[Dominada]

I find if I use my "defensive" skills a little more offensively it really helps.

I try to open with fear to get it on cool down sooner, so I can use it again sooner. If I'm against caster DPS I'll often open with silence because it lets me get some damage out there.

Killing a healer I chain all interrupts on their heals to bring them down.

Melee I Psychic Horror when they go for their burst combo, or if I really need to get some dmg out uninterrupted.

kite kite kite. Fade with improved shadow form, and dispersion really help with this.

[zsuper]

Forgot to mention the Death Knight popped Anti-Magic Shell after the grip. I just assumed I couldn't Psychic Horror through it, but can I? By the time it wore off, I had already taken a lot of damage, and decided to just spam heals on myself and save it for a more critical moment. Though it didn't do much.

In high PvP brackets, you can't kill a healer in a 1v1 situation, ever. You lack the damage to bring down someone in ~900 resilience in an interrupt chain, and they won't let themselves get low enough that they can be finished off. The only exception is if you can mana burn, which you basically never can do in a 1v1, since the target can LoS you 100% of the time without worrying about it's partner.

The only class I can see being successfully is Retadins. All other melee classes won't let the match go on long enough for you to have multiple fear and fade combos and/or have short cooldown abilities that let them reach you if you try to kite.
Retadins only have Repentance to give them time to catch up. They do move faster than you, but you can at least get some time to cast, unlike every other melee which has some way to almost instantly reach you if you get out of range.
Warriors can spam Hamstring as well as their Charge abilities.
Rogues can spam Crippling Poison, they also have Sprint and Vanish.
Feral Druids have Feral Charge and Sprint.
Death Knights have Death Grip, Icy Clutch, and Chains of Ice; as well as Lichborne and Anti-Magic Shiell, which nullify our only 'get away from me' ability. Also Unholy Aura, if they spec into it.

The Death Knight was doing massive amounts of damage to me and taking completely crap damage from my DoTs (~560 from SW:P), with my critical chance being reduced to almost 0%. It also had roughly 24.5k health. There was absolutely no way in hell I could out-damage it. It's healing was also very high, and that's not including if it had brought up a ghoul and used Death Pact. It's criticals were averaging 4.5k (not sure what ability).

I also dueled a Deadly Gladiator Frost Mage. It was a joke. I couldn't touch him. My SW:P was ticking for 300. He mixes in PvE gear with his Deadly and stacks haste. His Frostbolt cast time is under 2 seconds. He didn't even try. He sheeped me at the start, I SW it, he sheeps me again, and then he spams Frostbolt until I die; he killed me with a Fireball, just for fun. I put him in a Silence -> Horror -> Fear chain, and he didn't break out of any of them because the duel was just that dumb. I could just barely keep up with his damage by spamming Flash Heal; again, he didn't even try to interrupt me. Every time I dispelled to prevent him from shattering me, I fell behind on health.

I was able to (easily) kill a less geared/skilled Frost Mage, but like I said.. The Deadly Gladiator one didn't even have to try. There's absolutely nothing I could have done to beat it.

[AetherMcLoud]

Forgot to mention the Death Knight popped Anti-Magic Shell after the grip. I just assumed I couldn't Psychic Horror through it, but can I? By the time it wore off, I had already taken a lot of damage, and decided to just spam heals on myself and save it for a more critical moment. Though it didn't do much.

Yeah damn AMS. Can't even dispell it (and I think even mass dispell fails there, although I only ever tried that in BGs). While the horror would surely fail, I think the disarm effect may go through because it is physical instead of magical.

[fibre]

My main PvP spec was shadow in BC, it was fun. Now I just play disc and holy, despite trying it out again every patch.