Shadow Priest in Classic

[dewd]

if shadow dps was so insane so long they had mana, why did nobody ever get the idea to put 5 in one group so they can sustain themselves

[NightElfMohawk]

I saw quite a few SPriests doing good dps in 20 man raids back in Vanilla, I even lost the roll for the Staff of the Ruins to one on my warlock.

[Heathy]

priests are just the best at healing or they have the most longevity. I preferred tbc a lot more because our specs were kinda boring in classic there wasn't a great amount of difference between holy and disc, holy had talents that increased the amount you heal, while disc just increased the amount of mana you had. this changed and mana pools are normalised today probably because int stacking became very powerful in classic, 1 int = 10 mana when the majority of the encounters are all endurance based 5-10 minute tank and spank burns, being able to last as long as possible beats having bigger heals in nearly every scenario.

I remember using a build like this toward the end.

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#bxgGsVVoofe0cb

the only good talent in holy was inspiration. so you get that, get the talents in disc that give you 10% more mana, mental strength, then have the biggest mana pool out of everyone and require less innervates than your holy counter parts. don't need to down rank as much, maybe 1 or 2 ranks of flash heal.

i didn't play shadow in classic I was too good of a healer to want to dps.

in tbc our talent trees became better and had more fun hybrid capability although there was one build that was overpowered
35% spirit to + healing. I think i may have played that for a while but switched to holy for t5/t6 as some other priest brought spirit so i changed to CoH. (seems the online 3rd party caculators don't like to be linked to) never the less.

you bring so much more to a raid as a healer than simply doing mediocre dps, if you already have a whole bunch of healing priests and 3-4 warlocks then having a shadow priest is probably worth it but if you only have 5-6 priests they should probably just all heal. and let the pures do dps. looking back at my old surviving screenshots we had 1 priest per group which is probably why I remember it being relatively easy, because you were mainly supposed to focus on healing your group rather than trying to spot heal the whole raid like you do today. its just way slower.

I think the TLDR is that you go shadow if you already have enough priests healing and depending on how many locks you have, i'd say the break point is 3 or 4 so you can have a lock/lock/lock/s: priest/boomkin, group.. I don't think there is much benefit to stacking beyond that, but it really comes down to who you have, you're always going to be stuck picking from a varied list like, how many druids and palas/shaman you have healing besides your 5-7 priest backbone.

I would not like to try getting into a guild as a shadow priest, when the majority of the healing was done by us, not to shit on palas and druids, they were good too for their own type of healing HoTs and top up FoL's, but not good enough to not have any priests. if you play a priest you should expect that your going to need to heal. while doing dps is going to have to be something you work out with your guild/class leader. its likely that you wouldn't get to dps every raid, only those raids where more than enough healers signed up.

[Deleted]

Yes one mage taking credit for other mage's dps seem totally like "intended" gameplay mechanics, please...

Just because blizzard didn't admit to it being a bug doesn't mean it wasn't, like rogue's vanish being partially invulnerable for half a second, or stealth spawning completely recreating characters from scratch, a lot of things that players thought were intended were in fact, not.

it was no bug, it is just a display thing, makes no difference if one Mage gets all the credit or not.

[AeneasBK]

it was no bug, it is just a display thing, makes no difference if one Mage gets all the credit or not.

I thought the original intent was that each mage would have their own ignite debuff (you know, how every other spell in the game works), which in theory could mean each mage having yuge ignite ticks. . . as long as they crit enough to not let it drop off. By having all mages pool into one ignite, it pretty much ensures it won't drop off. I think that was the bug that people (and devs have) talked about, that they all can feed into the one debuff.

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if shadow dps was so insane so long they had mana, why did nobody ever get the idea to put 5 in one group so they can sustain themselves

Because the mana regen debuff didn't exist until TBC. It's a common misconception.

[Frolk]

Not to mention Shadow Weaving that would increase Warlock DPS that the SP can take credit for.

Shame that warlock dmg is dumpster tier in the beginning, +15% dmg to 0 is still 0 ^^

[AeneasBK]

Shame that warlock dmg is dumpster tier in the beginning, +15% dmg to 0 is still 0 ^^

Lol. Yeah. Right.

[Deleted]

will it even matter what specs you bring? isn't classic raiding piss-easy compared to today's mythic difficulty? sure, gear will probably matter even more than now and classes are more limited in terms of abilities/roles, but...

[Deleted]

will it even matter what specs you bring? isn't classic raiding piss-easy compared to today's mythic difficulty? sure, gear will probably matter even more than now and classes are more limited in terms of abilities/roles, but...

mechanics are easy

but tuning was still tight on many bosses if it is true vanilla experience - probably not since they start with 1.12 talents they either have to tune the early raid bosses or the difficulty will be easy until Naxx.

[Echocho]

As a shadow priest you need to prioritize mp5 over spell damage, otherwise you'll pump out a lot of damage but be oom after 30 seconds. You still have to chug a lot of mana potions and demonic runes but it's perfectly doable. You won't do top damage but that's not why you're there, you're there to keep shadow weaving up in order to buff the warlocks and to do decent damage yourself.

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will it even matter what specs you bring? isn't classic raiding piss-easy compared to today's mythic difficulty? sure, gear will probably matter even more than now and classes are more limited in terms of abilities/roles, but...

Mechanics and rotations are piss easy, but the gear checks are a real thing. If you don't reach certain raid DPS levels you won't beat the encounters, simple as that.

[Deleted]

As a shadow priest you need to prioritize mp5 over spell damage, otherwise you'll pump out a lot of damage but be oom after 30 seconds. You still have to chug a lot of mana potions and demonic runes but it's perfectly doable. You won't do top damage but that's not why you're there, you're there to keep shadow weaving up in order to buff the warlocks and to do decent damage yourself.

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Mechanics and rotations are piss easy, but the gear checks are a real thing. If you don't reach certain raid DPS levels you won't beat the encounters, simple as that.

again why bring Shadow Priest for that? You can let a healer do that if it is even worth it at all which is questionable.

[Gaidax]

Shame that warlock dmg is dumpster tier in the beginning, +15% dmg to 0 is still 0 ^^

Depends on whether ZG will be open soon or not.

Though warlocks are still second rate damage dealers anyway. Not horrible, but far from top. Threat and mana issues were real, i don't think life tap scaled yet in Vanilla.

[wholol]

it was no bug, it is just a display thing, makes no difference if one Mage gets all the credit or not.

If what you're saying is true and blizz never anticipated dmg meters existing will they really keep it as is this time around? they might not have known enough back then but what about now ?

Wonder if its been tested on the demo.

[Heathy]

again why bring Shadow Priest for that? You can let a healer do that if it is even worth it at all which is questionable.

the first real difficulty will be killing vael, thats probably the first hard dps check in the game, by the time I killed him my guild had farmed so much tier 1 most of it was being disenchanted and he took us about 4 tries. if you want to push him with much less gear it might take many many many more tries.

not only do you need to beat that dps check you need like 5 ppl who can tank, so all your dps warriors need some level of tank gear so they don't get crushed. I don't think we had a shadow priest in our group, i know they became much more viable in tbc, but i don't actually remember us having a shadow priest but we may have had 1. but i'm pretty sure i didn't see a shadow priest in a raid until tbc.

I don't think group comp matters too much before bwl, its once you start doing bwl you need ppl to not fail and not be shit any more, specific ppl need to actually be good and not fail. you'll probably need every ounce of dps you can squeeze out of your guild to down vael without farming molten core for an entire year like we did. 4 ppl left out of a raid absolutely clad in t1 this was toward the end aswell so it would have been 1.12

group comp doesn't matter so much for molten core and even onyxia was killed by like 40 priests so you could take whoever the hell you want for mc and ony, but bwl starts actually requiring ppl to not be shit and a half decent group comp.

you've basically got 3 minutes? i think it was 3, to kill the boss before everyone dies from burning adrenaline. and he'll kill a tank like every 30 seconds or so. you can't really have dead weight specs there. mainly because all your dps warriors will be tanking. so they won't be doing much dps.

[Oneer]

the first real difficulty will be killing vael, thats probably the first hard dps check in the game, by the time I killed him my guild had farmed so much tier 1 most of it was being disenchanted and he took us about 4 tries. if you want to push him with much less gear it might take many many many more tries.

Going off-topic slightly, but from your own experience should Blizzard decide to release BWL ~6 months after the launch of classic and give most guilds 3-4 months of farming current endgame content would that be sufficient time for a balanced comp (no stacking 8/8/8 rogue/warr/mage) to be geared to beat vael assuming correct play?

[Deleted]

When exactly did the term "Shadow priests melt faces" come about? I didn't play in vanilla but I remember the term being used in TBC onwards.
I was also thinking of rolling SP once classic hits but just for leveling / questing / dungeons.

How do they fare while leveling?
Can you pull 2 mobs and survive?
Is there a lot of downtime?

[Heathy]

personally if it was up to me they should have ZG in earlier than it was, I think the ability for ppl to form up 20 ppl that can raid, while you build to 40, could be a major factor in its player retention, ppl are going to want things to do at end game and i think without zg, there isn't going to be a whole lot to actually do, if it were there, you could get 20 ppl together relatively easier than you would getting 35 or so ppl and have a good chance at molten core, but perhaps getting 40 ppl together won't be a big deal.

its funny really because if bwl isn't there then t2 dropped in molten core which will make getting t2 probably too easy. so mc/bwl/ony should be in at launch but i think they should not hold off zg for too long as above, ppl are going to want something to run on a somewhat consistent basis.

overall the gearing up will be the time consuming part, you're only going to have limited loots per week so its going to take X number of weeks to gear up 40 ppl to the point that you can move on from bwl. its going to take several months to reach the dps check for vael, gearing up your dps warriors so they can tank, gearing up your other raiders so they can make up for the dps lost by your tanking warriors.

i loved running zg and i started raiding probably the week zg was added to the game, its where i started and i couldn't imagine only having molten core and onyxia for a year.

it'll be interesting seeing how they do the AQ event because that was one hell of a grind that was server wide, millions of resources needed to be farmed to trigger the event. on some servers that might take forever if its low pop. i can't even remember if the first event was battlegroup wide or just server wide, i remember they tracked the progress on their website but it was sooo many years ago now.

all in all i think its kinda silly getting ppl to form up a whole 40 or near 40 ppl to raid, and then a year later making a 20 man raid. if there are going to be 20 mans, just have them be what they were supposed to be, a way for a guild with less than 40 raiders to raid, and maybe, grow into a full 40.

in the end they both came in too late, zg lasted less than a year and aq20 came in like mid way through 2006, i think i only killed ossirian twice. i know for a fact that those 20 mans came in so late they didn't do shit to help ppl reach naxx. hell there wasn't enough time left in classic or enough raid lockouts to gear ppl up for aq40 if you only started raiding aq20 and zg in 2006.

I actually have hope that these instances will play the actual role they were supposed to play the second time around. I don't think aq20 will be an issue because aq will be locked behind the event but the gear in ZG there were only a couple items that were on par with t2, but if t2 exists right at the start, then it stands to reason that ZG should not come in over a year later. if it was meant to be a raid size to help struggling guilds gear ppl up for molten core, then let it be that.

[Oneer]

When exactly did the term "Shadow priests melt faces" come about?

It was a metaphorical phrase for their PvP performance and the interpretation of what mind flay did to the opponent.

[wysimdnwyg]

You'll be fine.
There will be very few guilds actually stacking 8 rogues, 8 warriors and 10 mages. Don't listen to the clowns telling you no guild is ever gonna take anything except those 3 classes in raids.
The beauty of 40 man raids is that there is always a spot for some exotism.

This. All other questions and comments aside, THIS is the answer. Unless you're in a top 10 guild on your server, 40 player raids had plenty of flexibility to allow people to play whatever spec they wanted (assuming you could find enough tanks and healers).

That said, my guild in Vanilla (second or third tier guild where our best were routinely recruited by the biggest guilds) never once had a Priest running as Shadow in a raid. Outside of the occasional Disc (for Power Infusion), every one of our Priests ran as Holy. That was more because we needed healers than having a problem with Shadow, though. (Although the early 8 debuff limit really precluded their presence.)

In PVP, Shadow was a dominant spec. There was a reason for the old "Mind Flay melts faces" meme.

[Echocho]

again why bring Shadow Priest for that? You can let a healer do that if it is even worth it at all which is questionable.

Because healers might not want to run around with a gimped spec.