Shadow priest

[DiscoGhost]

my main is a spriest and i make melees cry. a rogue w/o cloak is a dead rogue. a dk w/o ams is a dead dk. warriors=nomnomnom.

[Device]

With all the rogue and feral stuns I dont have time to run away im already dead

This, and when a warrior charges me I can just stop trying and surrender

[Donya]

I got 2.7k resilience and I still get easily raped if the opponent knows what to do

Then you shouldnt die during a stunlock, which was my point and aimed for the OP

[hambaby]

my main is a spriest and i make melees cry. a rogue w/o cloak is a dead rogue. a dk w/o ams is a dead dk. warriors=nomnomnom.

Doubt it, Spriest are in a situation wheres theres nothing you can do about warriors/ferals/dks

[wiIdi]

Interesting to see you didn't mention your experience or even attempt to answer the OPs questions..

Shadow can't escape from melee in world of stun and snarecraft. My experience with shadow priests in BGs is that dots take too long to kill someone (apply dots, wait for dots to do damage) while melee can kill you pretty fast, so you end up spamming Mind Spikes and Mind Blast like a mage until you go oom, except you dont have blink and frost nova. Wasting gcds to absorb 7k dmg or to dispel something while you have melee in your face does not help much either.

[Rofos]

Oh my god... you all just got trolled, dont you see?
the guy with only 2posts on his mmo-champ acc posts that spriests can't escape from any meele... and you all started to response
i see you all flaming thread about frost mages where written:
"OMG frost mages are so underpowered! i do silly damage and cant protect myself from any mele! T_T"

[Kokolums]

The thing about priest is you wear cloth and shouldn't be standing toe to toe with a guy carrying a huge sword. When you engage a melee, its from max distance and hopefully with a terrain advantage like across water or on a cliff. Ideally, they don't even know where you are because you're hiding behind something. Dot them up, then run away. Line of sight them. Tick, tickticktickticktick. If they give chase, keep running. If they don't chase, you can't die. Win-win.

If I'm at the blacksmith in AB, I drop down the cliffside to the west of the flag and tab dot people. If I'm in Battle for Gilneas, I'm in the river underwater. If I'm in WSG, I'm on the roof. In EOTS, I'm by the flag spawn down below where I can tab-dot and mind sear.

Range is a shadow priests strength, arguably morseo for them than any other class. When a melee gets on top of you, and your cooldowns aren't up, yeah you're kinda supposed to die. Its the price shadow priest pays for awesome range abilities.

The best race for priest is night elf, because of shadowmeld. You can do things like dot someone up from range and then shadowmeld before they see you, and they go running around with dots burning them down and can't find you.

[Deleted]

And while playing that way, you will contribute almost NOTHING to winning a battleground or arena match. Congratulations, you win at being bad at pvp even though you might not die that much.

[Noxia]

Spriests are probably the best caster pvp class. Just look at what you get:

- absorb: PWS. Does not cause Shadowform to drop. Amount affected by your spellpower and glyph.
- low cd anti-snare (melee or mages, lol): Fade. Can be glyphed to reduce cd.
- disarm: Psychic Horror. Can be glyphed to reduce cd.
- silence: nice easily accessible talent.
- low cd aoe CC (Fear): Psychic Scream. Ok, its affected by diminishing returns in standard way, but still useful.
- CC: Mind Control. The most fun CC in the game by some margin (even more satisfying than shaman's Thunderstorm). Make other players do what you want! Superb when there are cliffs/high places around
- CC: Shackle Undead. DK have a ghoul out trying to stun me, no problem!
- slow: Mind Flay. Standard part of spriest's damage rotation. Nice damage and superb group utility. Can't tell you number of times slowing down a flag carrier or someone hitting on a team mate has saved the group or player!
- slow: Paralysis. Talent for slow on crit with a primary spell.
- remove magic: Dispel Magic. Can do this without losing Shadowform. Mages, locks and balance druids don't even get this!
- remove diseases: Cure Disease. Ok, this one drops Shadowform (seems to count as healing). But still useful to ensure you don't die at low health to DK diseases, unlike most classes.
- mana return: Hymn of Hope. Superb mana return if you need it and are not being focussed.
- mana return: SWD. Bit of mana return if you need it and are being focussed. Can be glyphed to reset if doesn't kill target.
- dispel enrages: Mind Soothe. See a warrior pop an enrage, keeeeel it!
- self-healing: Vampiric Embrace. You heal from damage a bit like a lock's dots. But on top of that you have access to all baseline priests heals!
- anti-fear: the best anti-Fear tool in the game, Fear Ward (lasts 3-min).
- anti-polymorph: SWD counts as a 1-tick dot, so with perfect timing can be used to kick you out of a Mage's sheep.
- anti-fall: the best anti-fall damage tool in the game, Levitate.
- resistance to magic: huge resistance to shadow magic (the highest).
- pet: Shadowfiend. A temporary pet that really hurts and returns mana to its user! Can be glyphed to increase mana. Can be talented to reduce cd.

On top of that is superb single target damage!

Seriously, in the right hands and timing, all these abilities are lethal, if not borderline OP for a caster.

The only hole in an spriest's game, pve and pvp, is aoe. Their aoe really sucks and multitarget dotting is pretty damn expensive.

I highlighted the abilities which are specifically anti-melee.

I'm guessing the OP is a new spriest. It takes a long time to get good with this spec. Just take your time, read around and learn from others.

Mostly bullshit.

-absorbs: Our shield absordbs what, 8k dmg? Which is basically 1 autoattack from warrior. No, you can't increase the amount absorbed by a glyph.
-low cd anti-snare: usable once in a 15 seconds, too bad pretty much every class that has a snare can instantly re-apply it. Don't get me wrong, it has it's uses, but it won't really let you escape anyone who's focusing you.
-disarm: this one is pretty useful against warriors dk's and rogues, you get like 5 seconds extra time before you die. Doesn't help much against ferals.
-silence: Thank god for silence. Though the cooldown is rather long on this one, I'd take counterspell over it any day.
-low cd aoe CC (fear): It's ok'ish, too bad the classes we have biggest issues against (warriors and ferals) are have cd's that break it and make them immune to it. Against ranged, well you need to get to melee range which can be a problem especially against mages and shit.
-CC: Mind Control. You hardly ever get to cast it unless you're hiding in a dark corner in some BG and nobody notices you. Breaks all the time and interruptable at any point.
-CC: Shackle Undead. Has some uses against a DK yup, but that's pretty much it.
-slow: Mind Flay. Makes you pretty damn vulnerable to interrupts and it's a 3 second CHANNELED slow goddamnit, you can't escape anyone by slowing them with mindflay lol.
slow: Paralysis. It has some uses, but you sacrifice other talents to get this one. Also definately not our main spell and requires moderate setting up before you can reliably use it (2, preferably 3 mind spikes on the target you intend to root).
-remove magic: This is really good.
-remove disease: You will never use this one if you're being focused since it drops you from shadowform
-mana return: hymn of hope is shit. It gives back mana enough to cast what, 3 spells at best?
-mana return: SWD, you have to talent for it, which means you're sacrificing other talents you list here as a benefit.
-dispel enrages: Do you even play a shadow priest?
-self-healing: Vampiric Embrace. VE is total crap since cata. Try playing an affli lock.
- anti-fear: Definately not the best anti-fear tool in game. It's dispellable and has a 3 minute cooldown. Locks and other priests can dispel it, warriors too if they get lucky as prot spec.
- anti-polymorph: SWD to break a sheep is pro indeed, still a mage could just fakecast it or pre-silence you
-anti-fall: Levitate definately is not the best anti-fall damage tool in the game, it breaks on damage where as slowfall doesn't.
-resistance to magic: all classes that do shadow damage can dispel our shadow protection
-pet: Shadowfiend is a nice dps cooldown that gives back some mana too. It can be snared however. Also can't be glyphed to increase mana, the glyph gives you 5% total mana if it dies from damage, which it usually doesn't, and if it does, you still probably end with less mana if it didn't.

Bottomline is, all priests are underpowered. Our talents are broken and we deal shit damage because our dots are so easily dispelled. You can't even scratch a healer by spamming mindspike alone, they can all dispel these days.

[Kokolums]

And while playing that way, you will contribute almost NOTHING to winning a battleground or arena match. Congratulations, you win at being bad at pvp even though you might not die that much.

You have no idea what you are talking about. I've led BGs in damage done and killing blows with this playstyle. Maybe you are a frustrated melee that can't get close to me tho.

[Shamygandof]

Ok, all casters. Running lapse around poles or whatever is your best bet against melee, especially since your a dotter. If you aint a plate wearer, mage, or feral stay away from open spaces. The only other caster other than a mage (who have crazy control) I know that can avoid that currently are demo locks, and only briefly. In meta with felG they can go toe to toe with any melee and win. For the rest of us stay out of los.

[Deleo]

It's all 3 trees of priest class not just shadow. Shadow is actually having a better time than the other two.

The thing about priest is you wear cloth and shouldn't be standing toe to toe with a guy carrying a huge sword. When you engage a melee, its from max distance and hopefully with a terrain advantage like across water or on a cliff. Ideally, they don't even know where you are because you're hiding behind something. Dot them up, then run away. Line of sight them. Tick, tickticktickticktick. If they give chase, keep running. If they don't chase, you can't die. Win-win.

If I'm at the blacksmith in AB, I drop down the cliffside to the west of the flag and tab dot people. If I'm in Battle for Gilneas, I'm in the river underwater. If I'm in WSG, I'm on the roof. In EOTS, I'm by the flag spawn down below where I can tab-dot and mind sear.

Range is a shadow priests strength, arguably morseo for them than any other class. When a melee gets on top of you, and your cooldowns aren't up, yeah you're kinda supposed to die. Its the price shadow priest pays for awesome range abilities.

The best race for priest is night elf, because of shadowmeld. You can do things like dot someone up from range and then shadowmeld before they see you, and they go running around with dots burning them down and can't find you.

So you're saying shadow priests should be fighting target dummies? Tab DoTing will get you OOM in seconds and it doesn't do any serious damage. And seriously you cast Mind Sear in PvP in its current estate?

[Lushious]

The thing about priest is you wear cloth and shouldn't be standing toe to toe with a guy carrying a huge sword. When you engage a melee, its from max distance and hopefully with a terrain advantage like across water or on a cliff. Ideally, they don't even know where you are because you're hiding behind something. Dot them up, then run away. Line of sight them. Tick, tickticktickticktick. If they give chase, keep running. If they don't chase, you can't die. Win-win.

If I'm at the blacksmith in AB, I drop down the cliffside to the west of the flag and tab dot people. If I'm in Battle for Gilneas, I'm in the river underwater. If I'm in WSG, I'm on the roof. In EOTS, I'm by the flag spawn down below where I can tab-dot and mind sear.

Range is a shadow priests strength, arguably morseo for them than any other class. When a melee gets on top of you, and your cooldowns aren't up, yeah you're kinda supposed to die. Its the price shadow priest pays for awesome range abilities.

The best race for priest is night elf, because of shadowmeld. You can do things like dot someone up from range and then shadowmeld before they see you, and they go running around with dots burning them down and can't find you.

I fully agree that range is one of our stronger points, but I am afraid that Dots just doesn't cut it anymore, it might have done in WOTLK, but since Blizzard wanted to make PvP more of a skill-play instead of a 3 second fight, it simply doesn't work.
Even with Mind Spike + Mind Blast nuking it still takes time to bring the enemy down, if I were your target I would simply run away, or Charge/Grip/Shadowstep or whatever gap closer the melee classes have in their arsenal to get close to you.

I don't know about you people, but even though we are not the strongest class in PvP I am still enjoying it.

[pickley]

Well dispells are great vs a DK, Off healing while the melee is feared is not that bad too

Not anymore, dispelling a DK's diseases would boot you out of shadowform, its not worth it.
Also, chances are if you are fearing it now it has a dot on it, Fear breaks instantly when you are damaged.

[eErike]

Spriests are probably the best caster pvp class. Just look at what you get:

- absorb: PWS. Does not cause Shadowform to drop. Amount affected by your spellpower and glyph.
- silence: nice easily accessible talent.
- CC: Mind Control. The most fun CC in the game by some margin (even more satisfying than shaman's Thunderstorm). Make other players do what you want! Superb when there are cliffs/high places around
- CC: Shackle Undead. DK have a ghoul out trying to stun me, no problem!
- slow: Mind Flay. Standard part of spriest's damage rotation. Nice damage and superb group utility. Can't tell you number of times slowing down a flag carrier or someone hitting on a team mate has saved the group or player!
- slow: Paralysis. Talent for slow on crit with a primary spell.
- remove magic: Dispel Magic. Can do this without losing Shadowform. Mages, locks and balance druids don't even get this!
- mana return: Hymn of Hope. Superb mana return if you need it and are not being focussed.
- mana return: SWD. Bit of mana return if you need it and are being focussed. Can be glyphed to reset if doesn't kill target.
- dispel enrages: Mind Soothe. See a warrior pop an enrage, keeeeel it!
- self-healing: Vampiric Embrace. You heal from damage a bit like a lock's dots. But on top of that you have access to all baseline priests heals!
- anti-fear: the best anti-Fear tool in the game, Fear Ward (lasts 3-min).
- anti-polymorph: SWD counts as a 1-tick dot, so with perfect timing can be used to kick you out of a Mage's sheep.
- anti-fall: the best anti-fall damage tool in the game, Levitate.
- resistance to magic: huge resistance to shadow magic (the highest).
- pet: Shadowfiend. A temporary pet that really hurts and returns mana to its user! Can be glyphed to increase mana. Can be talented to reduce cd.

On top of that is superb single target damage!

Seriously, in the right hands and timing, all these abilities are lethal, if not borderline OP for a caster.

The only hole in an spriest's game, pve and pvp, is aoe. Their aoe really sucks and multitarget dotting is pretty damn expensive.

I highlighted the abilities which are specifically anti-melee.

I'm guessing the OP is a new spriest. It takes a long time to get good with this spec. Just take your time, read around and learn from others.

Mc is worthless in PvP, takes ages to cast and breaks in about 1-2secs.
Good luck shackling a DKs pet with their mindfreeze, trying to shackle means that you'll go down 30% of your HP meanwhile.
Mind flay is good, but as soon as someone is in melee range, not to mentioning the fact that you allways have to cast mind flay to slow your target, no melee takes enough damage from that to die even with full dots up.
Hymn is also one of these spells that looks good but seriusly sucks, you'll take a shitload of damage while Hymning and the amount of mana it takes to reenter shadowform is round 40% of what you gained from your hymn.
Think you've gotten the wrong idea about Mind Soothe mate We are no druids, mind Soothe reduces the range of which others can attack you by ten yards, that is ofcourse good to, but not as good as your sugestion.
The self healing have been nerfed through the ground, from 15% to 6%.
Levitate beeing the best anti fall tool in the game? It breaks from damage, slow fall does not. You can not have it on you while mounted, slow fall can. Levitate is crap in comperision to Slow fall.
What's the name on the Glyph that increase the mana gained from Fiend?

We are lethal, no arguing there, but struggling with thinks like having to tank melee classes and Running low on mana each and evey seccond is often our big conserns in PvP, making us far from the OP line in withing the ranged classes.

[Natrii]

Our spriests take a beating from melee, though I have seen them do some really funny things when working with other classes.

Saw a Spriest in at a BG the other day Lifegrip a shaman friend of this and they shaman Tstormed( they had to be in vent or something) either way it gave me a good giggle.

Either way it does not seem spriest have anything in the way of escapes atm.

[ItachiZaku]

I did pretty well over the weekend... in TB... with 20 body guards. Admittedly, I haven't been good since BC but kinda switched mains along the way as well. Also, still gearing up.

[Deleted]

Sp needs buffs :/

[Devanox]

Me and a warrior friend in my PvP guild (both of us 2400+ in arena) fought in a duel.

This is Spriest vs. Warrior, the most one-sided duel in the history of WoW (in Spriests favor by a long shot).

First duel I only got him down to 80%...

Second duel i died from juking his pummels (he even said it , "I normally just dps hybrids that try healing themselves because I'll just burn through w.e they just healed for in a hit.")

Third duel i got him down to 20% and actually made him pop CD's. How? I literally popped everything on him and prayed for a victory (i was surprised by the amount of damage i actually did with DoT's and Sfiend up on him). Still died in the end because of a very costly mistake on my end.

(Disclaimer: Both of us have over 2500 resil, him having a little better gear than i do, and I know its 1v1 and whatnot and doesn't matter but its kind of interesting that a 5 sec stun and another gap closer turned the tables of this old rivalry. Yes, warriors are still easily kited by mages in arena and I thank the gods for my glad mage partner.)

Point being?
Every melee got more interrupts and some sort of way to get back on their target, along with several more stuns and whatnot. Spriests, on the other hand, lost most of the ability to off-heal, and now training said Spriest is x10 easier than in previous expansions. Why? because in reality, our escape tools stayed the same and our several niche playstyles were nerfed considerably in favor of more damage and some more utility. In an expansion where a large variety of comps are fairly viable, I shouldn't have to worry about having a mage or rogue on my team just so i can get enough of a window of time to do something. Just my personal opinion.

On another point, its so frustrating that Spriests have so many bugs atm, i feel as if the Priest bug reports were completely ignored in beta. Pretty sloppy job on the priest class all around, but things can only get better. I would rather play a class well now, then excel when we finally get brought up to were we belong when all these bugs get fixed.

[Gouca]

l when a melee is smashing you lol when even specced healers can barely do so? Fear, well that is okay I guess and disarm too.

Two great abilities? Or the dispersion? two + one = three? Oo