Leveling as shadow

[Jaylan]

Hi guys.

I recently started playing wow casually again after a hiatus. ( I had deleted all my characters including a 80 lock, warrior and DK so took alot to get me playing again!!)

I've always wanted to be a priest but dreaded the leveling, but as I had no other character I thought why not! I read the solo leveling guide on the sticky thread above and decided to level a smite build to 40 then switcharoonie to shadow. So I'm currently level 45 and shadow speced. My problem is I cant seem to figure out what spell rotation I should be using.

At the moment I pull with mind blast, pop VE as its running to me, them MF, MF, MB etc

I read that SW:P, DP and PW:S werent worth casting in shadowform as mobs should die before the dot duration runs out and you shouldnt need the shield as you should be at full health most of the time.

I'm currently speced


http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bZZhxcVofzbfao:aqZM

My main concern is I seem to run out of hp and mana really fast compared to when I was Holy fire/ smiting things. Plus mobs are taking longer to kill, and if I get more than 1 mob I'm in trouble

So I must be doing something wrong. Any schooling you can give me would be great.

Sorry for the longevity of the post. On the upside, I am enjoying the disc healing aspect! Duel spec ftw

[Omgwtfbbq]

Go back to smite spec, up to surge of light in holy and than disci.
Thats how i leveled mine priest, and i must say i loved it.

[mirodin]

Heh i was about to sugest start leveling as disc, with the introduction of xp in bg's. You just need one rogue or warrior that knows what to do and you pretu much wont lose a battleground and you get like 4-5 bars easy from a bg win

[milctoast]

You don't need imp mindblast unless you are doing a lot of instancing.
I suggest you take imp SWain and silence.

Pull mob from max range with MB, dot with swain and dp, cast pw:shield on you and mind flay.
If it's still alive after that just wand it and let the dots kill it.

Try to take gear with intellect and spirit and ignore stamina so as to take advantage of Spirit Tab when the mob dies.

[torny]

Hi guys.

I recently started playing wow casually again after a hiatus. ( I had deleted all my characters including a 80 lock, warrior and DK so took alot to get me playing again!!)

I've always wanted to be a priest but dreaded the leveling, but as I had no other character I thought why not! I read the solo leveling guide on the sticky thread above and decided to level a smite build to 40 then switcharoonie to shadow. So I'm currently level 45 and shadow speced. My problem is I cant seem to figure out what spell rotation I should be using.

At the moment I pull with mind blast, pop VE as its running to me, them MF, MF, MB etc

I read that SW:P, DP and PW:S werent worth casting in shadowform as mobs should die before the dot duration runs out and you shouldnt need the shield as you should be at full health most of the time.

I'm currently speced


http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bZZhxcVofzbfao:aqZM

My main concern is I seem to run out of hp and mana really fast compared to when I was Holy fire/ smiting things. Plus mobs are taking longer to kill, and if I get more than 1 mob I'm in trouble

So I must be doing something wrong. Any schooling you can give me would be great.

Sorry for the longevity of the post. On the upside, I am enjoying the disc healing aspect! Duel spec ftw

If your still using the same account make a ticket get back your lvl 80 toons.. ???

Other than that as soon as you get Vampiric touch all you need to kill a mob is VT and shadow word pain...

[ksdfalevfhilvilug]

Take 2 points out of imp Mind Blast and put them in imp SW:P. Don't bother with DP but definitely cast SW:P. Once you get VT you shouldn't have to worry about mana and mobs will die super-fast. Just make sure to keep upgrading your gear as you level (or use heirloom if you can). Only use VE or DP when you need the health.

[Worshaka]

My suggested spec

1. AoE Fear CD reduction and silence is very nice utility for leveling, I wouldn't go without them.
2. Focused mind will reduce the cost of MF and MB by 15% and those 2 spells are probably 80% of your mana consumption while leveling (assuming you aren't dotting everything u find which you shouldn't be)
3. Imp DP isn't worth it, you shouldn't be using it for trash and your DPS in the occasional 5 man group means nothing.
4. Your critical strikes will also help you get some mana back, its not really that much of a deal but you mentioned having mana issues so why not take all the mana talents? If focused mind and casting less DoTs solves the issue you could spend the points elsewhere.
5. I dont think imp SW:P is much of a big deal, 6% of stuff all damage isn't going to change much. It's just a DPS talent required for groups/raiding.

[ksdfalevfhilvilug]

Worshaka I agree with most of that, but mobs die so fast that you should always have spirit tap up which doesn't stack with imp spirit tap so for soloing I think it's near useless. Why not bother putting those 2 points into Imp SW:P.

[Crazhr]

I have been leveling a priest for fun but in full heirloom gear so it might be a little diffrent.
1. Get used to running out of mana without VT, in with both mana return trinkets I still run oom if im killing yellow mobs. There is not a whole lot to do about it just buy get a mage to make you abit of water.
2. sw and dp are not realy worth it atleast they are not if you got some spellpower gear, they cost 2-3 times the amount of mf and mobs should die before they get to tick. I can see if you cant take mobs down in less then 18sec they might be worth it but if you can kill mobs in like 9sec then you are better off spending the mana on more mfs.
3. pw:s on the other hand I have found to be very much worth but then again I only use 1 shield every 2nd mob and they never get to break it.
4. And as you might have guess I dont use ve I find it a waste of gcd since Im always at 100% with a shield but it could be usefull if you are not using pw:s.

The only thing left is I have found spriest alot less fun to level then I thought they would be due to the fact that there in almost every zone is atleast 1 kind of creture with rediculess amounts of shadow res that is forcing you to smite them. But other then that I can only say try a few bgs, spriest are very op in the 40s and you can pretty much kill most target by sw and dp alone the only problem is you still have the whole: I run oom after killing 4 targets problem but since there is almost always a mage its much less of a problem. Just hold out untill you get VT and you can kill most quest mobs with VT->mb->1-2mf which makes sure you always got replenishment and that does wonders to your mana situation.

[arlenn]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZZGxfVRfzcfqfzAo

The spec above is what I'm leveling with (do all points in shadow first obviously). My priest is 71 currently.

Why are you people saying to forget dots and just mind blast mind flay? Granted my mana situation is pretty great with both heirloom trinkets but I still never run out of mana doing the following rotation.

1st mob I pull with VT, SW:P, DP, VE.... I then pull the 2nd mob again with VT, SW:P, VE, MB, MF if needed.
3rd mob repeats the cycle and I can chain pull forever rarely using Dispersion.

[ksdfalevfhilvilug]

At the higher levels, it's like that. I remember 60-70 was easy mana-wise too but that was before replenishment so I guess it's irrelevant.

I leveled from 70-80 as shadow in T6/Sunwell gear (mostly holy with some shadow pieces that had hit) and I never once had to drink or eat. I just used VT, SW:P, MB, MF, Next mob. Keep shield up which was easy because it was rarely broken through. If I ever got low on health I would toss up VE on a few mobs and maybe a DP. I always had at least 4 mobs dotted at a time. I only used DP on elites because it's pointless to use on anything else. I didn't even pick up dispersion for leveling.

At higher levels you will need to start putting up SW:P (if you're not already) if for no other reason than Twisted Faith.

[harky]

You could read the sticky. That's why it's there.

Going with Silence/Imp Psychic Scream is... odd. So is taking Imp. Spirit Tap. I wouldn't recommend either in the least. Psychic Scream is marginally useful purely as an 'oh shit' button and it will be there when you need it, improved or not. Silence isn't remotely needed for leveling. IST doesn't proc nearly enough to be remotely worthwhile while leveling.

Oh and no, you really should only bother with DoTs when pulling more than 1 mob, fighting an elite, in an instance, or otherwise doing something abnormal. VT, when you get it, is really good. It's shorter, cheaper, does more damage... etc. Also required for putting up Replenishment. SW:P and DP? Not so much. Low damage that takes too long to get through. The sticky has general advice and advice for both Shadow and Smite specs with leveling progression on where to put points and why.

[Worshaka]

Worshaka I agree with most of that, but mobs die so fast that you should always have spirit tap up which doesn't stack with imp spirit tap so for soloing I think it's near useless. Why not bother putting those 2 points into Imp SW:P.

As I said you could spend the points elsewhere, the above logic is a good reason why.

[Worshaka]

You could read the sticky. That's why it's there.

Going with Silence/Imp Psychic Scream is... odd. So is taking Imp. Spirit Tap. I wouldn't recommend either in the least. Psychic Scream is marginally useful purely as an 'oh shit' button and it will be there when you need it, improved or not. Silence isn't remotely needed for leveling. IST doesn't proc nearly enough to be remotely worthwhile while leveling.

Oh and no, you really should only bother with DoTs when pulling more than 1 mob, fighting an elite, in an instance, or otherwise doing something abnormal. VT, when you get it, is really good. It's shorter, cheaper, does more damage... etc. Also required for putting up Replenishment. SW:P and DP? Not so much. Low damage that takes too long to get through. The sticky has general advice and advice for both Shadow and Smite specs with leveling progression on where to put points and why.

You take Pyschic Scream and Silence for no other reason than you will get ganked leveling and running back to your corpse tends to slow down your experience gain. Perhaps you're on one of those care bear PvE servers, you may skip it but being able to silence mobs and fear them more regularly is at the worst helpful and you're going to find it difficult to find 3 other talent points that improves the leveling experience by a tangible margin.

[harky]

The OP made no reference to any PVP whatsoever. Why are talents that are at best marginally useful, even in PVP, being suggested over Imp. MB which can increase killing speed and will offer DPS gains if you run instances?

The OP did not ask, "Hi guys, I'm on a PVP server, what would be the safest spec to run when leveling?"

Even if he had the answer wouldn't be 'take Silence in a Shadow Spec' it would be to level with a modified Smite spec.

[Worshaka]

Because when you are leveling you invariably get PvP'd by others leveling... i'd suggest that PvP is the number 1 factor when analysing what slows your leveling process down.

Of course you can choose to take a spec that has you running back to your corpse more than you need. Personally i'd rather spend that time earning XP.

[leolol]

here is what you do. get as much SP as humanly possable. then go

PWshield >dot dot (new target)> dot dot dot (new target)> dot dot > run

your 80 in 3 weeks have fun facemelting =D

[GAfo]

For easy leveling and multidotting -> VT + SW:P adding MB for rep.
If you want endless mana -> VT - MB - MF - Wand, took me around 6 days played while leveling enchanting to 350 this way -> If you are in a pvp server, take psychic horror and Silence, they are a must.

[Samin]

Because when you are leveling you invariably get PvP'd by others leveling... i'd suggest that PvP is the number 1 factor when analysing what slows your leveling process down.

Of course you can choose to take a spec that has you running back to your corpse more than you need. Personally i'd rather spend that time earning XP.

Are all players on pvp realms like that? I read it so often, completly ignoring that pve realms exist where pvp is something you agree to explicit. Or deny the fact that a lot of players actually play on pve realms. "lolol only nubs play pve or allience (sic) lolol"...
At least ask what the problem may is and don't expect that you are right with your assumptions by default.

[prasejednomalo]

Ok, so I've leveled as shadow from level 0. Currently my tactics is the following:
- my spec and items are here: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...e&n=Helethanos
- way I do it is put SW:P and Devouring Plague on an enemy far away. Mind Flay them as they come to you.
- put PW:S on yourself as they come not to lose ticks of mind flay
- once 1st enemy is down, this should get your shadow weaving thingy to 5 stacks and kick in your spirit regen 15 seconds thingy
- SW:P 2nd enemy, mind flay them once as they come to you.
- SW:P 3rd enemy, go back to mind flaying 2nd enemy so they die or come close to dying
- recast PW:S now or just after SW:Ping 3rd enemy (depends on whether previous shield still holds)
- once 2nd enemy is down, mind flay once the 3rd enemy (the one with SW:P on him already)
- SW:P the 4th enemy, go back to mind flaying 3rd enemy so they die or come close to dying
- recast PW:S now or just after SW:Ping 4th enemy (depends on whether previous shield still holds)
- rinse, repeat.

I can kill 7-8 mobs easily in one application of this tactics without a single mana break. Usually there are never more than this number in near vicinity anyway. This is because DOTs + mind flay + PW:S are the most mana efficient combination to keep your spirit regen + shadow weaving temporary buffs up and running.