Hi I'm a shadow priest and I'm a manaholic.

[Deleted]

The only problem shadow priests have at the moment is that we can't compete with survival hunters, feral druids and unholy death knights. That and the fact that a discipline priest can basically screw up your mana cooldown timing.

[Zohlomg]

Otherwise..I own everything in 3 buttons. please fix this asap.

[Zorat]

Single target DPS is fine.

AoE is terrible and I would expect Blizzard to do some balancing in this area. I wish they would redesign Mind Sear, it's such a terrible spell.

You do also realize that unless there is a boomkin in the raid (which is fairly unlikely in a raid setting) you are also bringing the caster haste buff yes? 5% haste for all the casters is in fact a big deal.

[dway72]

This thread makes my eyes bleed.

[Cellion]

While mana may not be a problem for most like myself and others, the point being made here is that the class requires a lot of mana to keep it going, not that you're always oom. Most of the thread has been a sorta help thread on ways to stay away from being oom as opposed to going oom.

While many have mentioned it is a player issue (well known fact), the fact that opening all your dots on a target bringing you to 75% is kinda shocking for many, but a simple Archangel will top you back off. Again the main point is that the spells require lots of mana, but there's many more ways to obtain it back during the fight and discussing how we and others do this helps every get better by even the slightest bit.

As for your post personally, I think I know what you're trying to make out by saying Archangel restores up to 15% mana (per cast), the best return is from 2 casts to gain 25% mana. Why waste that 10% on a free cd that you're going to press anyways for the damage reduction, and in doing so early will also reduce your damage output as well. If you don't have the mana for two mind flays, you've not managed your mana well enough in the first place and (rightfully) will be hampered in your dps abilities.

Sassle provides examples of points where to use you're cd's intelligently. You choose to just say "with this, you win" which has been said by many before you.

With that I must say I do miss Arcane Torrent at points, but the static 1% haste and other benefits from being goblin has proved useful to myself in more than purely a dps output. For those belves out there, using Arcane torrent on CD is a great way to keep mana higher. At this point I'm probably beating a dead horse, but I cannot leave out how useful Hymn of Hope is for keeping mana up for not only yourself, but the rest of your raid. I have a power aura set up to show when that sucker procs on me so that if a mana cd is coming off I'm sure to press it as opposed to saving it for a few seconds to see where it's most beneficial to me (seen spriests pop their fiends in dreamwalker when all adds are down >.> i promptly questioned their logic).
6% of 115 is greater than 6% of 100 no matter how small the difference may be.

All very good points, and I'll try doing some runs with popping Arch for 10% instead of 15 and see what that does for my dps.

[Oopsmezedya]

shadow aoe being buffed

everyone else being nerfed

shadow going back to being true gods of pvp, guess im sticking to sp after all

when you go oom after using some dots on 3 mobs, whill everyone else is doing 20k aoe dmg with crappy gear, and the only way to get mana back is burn all your cooldowns something is wrong

stop trying to deny it

[allaiva]

Yes Shadow Priests are broken, I see the number of players in this thread are claiming that it is a player issue and I realise how much of our playerbase really does not understand the class or where we are in raid performance.

1. Unless you SWD, ANY multidotting will send you oom.
2. Divine Hymm is a terrible raid cooldown atm.
3. Empowered Shadows in ludicrously RNG and keeping it up in a raid situation is anything but skilled.
4. Our Highest DPS spell removes our dots and isnt useful as a 'trash killer'.
5. Alot of classes have scaling issues right now, Fury needs Hit, Mages need Crit... etc..etc..
Shadow priests dont have this issue and when the time comes, we'll fall even further behind.

Spriests ARE NOT BROKEN. Learn to manage your resourse. Our damage is competitive and managing your mana is the big key atm. My guild raids, I'm 8/12 atm (took the week off for Christmas), I'm top 5 in our dps most of the time along with our other spriest.

1. SWD with the talent was put in to be used as a pseudo lifetap. Use it. At least we put out about 4k (above 25% enemy health) while a lock puts out 0. Below 25% a good crit can hit upwards of 40k for an instant cast. Use it, trust me. I multidot where possible on all fights. It boosts damage output and raid performance by killing adds faster so we can punch down the boss.

2. Divine Hymn is a healing spell. It isn't meant to be "our" spell, but It's still useful for helping our friendly healers with their job. Raiding is a group effort. If you're talking about Hymn of Hope it's not great (never has been) but it's better than nothing and when chained effectively helps boost other mana regen forces.

3. Empowered Shadow can be easily kept up for 90%+ of a fight by watching your orbs and casting MB as soon as possible when those stacks come up. All it takes is one crit from MF and that's the spell being cast most often it's not too hard to get orbs. Another point is that if ES falls off, it's not a big deal if you aren't at the point where you have to recast VT/DP before you can get the buff back up. As long as ES was up when you cast either of those dots you're fine until you have to recast in which that buff better be up again.

4. Mind spike was put in for adds. Blizz has said this. Don't use it on a boss, it's not a dps increase then. If an add has to die fast and is about 100-300k in health (depending on the group/raid) it's great. If you have to cast it more than 2-3 times for an add to die, casting SWP and MF is more beneficial to benefit from the slow and cheaper mana cost.

5. Blue posts have made mention they're "watching our output." They aren't going to let us fall well behind, I think they even sorta like us being competitive even with all our utility. (don't drop a hammer on my head for saying this other classes >.< )

Please stop making these claims when most of these "points" are easily fixed by paying attention to the classes skills and spells to best use them. I will say this again. The spells cost a lot and without monitoring your mana you can run out easily. If you watch it and use your mana returns efficiently the class is a breeze and mana no longer becomes you're limit to output.

[zenkai]

When I first dinged 85 I had mana issues bad, I could survive most heroic fights but only with using SWD in my rotation, it was the fights where I had to help burn down adds that really screwed me over. However what ever they did to fix healing priest mana, fixed SPriest mana as well I hardly ever have to put SWD in my rotation anymore, mana overall is usually fine.

There might be a couple of fights I have mana issues but it's usually heroic boss fights with mass adds and I am having to carry bad DPS. Such as the (sorry forget his name, wolf in DM) in pugs I have to MSP the adds down. And if the DPS is horrible I have to try to keep SWD on CD and usually Disperse during the rope phase.

In raids I never have any mana issues, overall I am satisfied with SPriest regen, just make sure you pick up spirit for hit when you can and try to avoid hit