Shadow Priest place in the world... of classic

[heartless8604]

Spoken like every true casual who didn't make it into Naxx ever.

The number of mechanics to a fight isn't the be-all end-all of raid difficulty. And not every raid had half of their playerbase AFK. Perhaps some random 2 year MC-only guilds.

I personally wouldn't mind an Spriest in the raid, unless I was pushing for hardcore progression, which I certainly won't be. But if I was actually interested in that sorta thing these days, I just wouldn't bring one. As half the people in this thread have noted, an (annoyed) healing priest can spec into SW and keep the 'locks happy.

A Spriest alone is just a wasted slot, in comparison to what you could bring instead (i.e another Rogue/Mage/Warlock/Warrior).

Oh shut the fuck up, you didn't make it to Naxx either. You're another nerd who watched a fucking youtube video of how it was but didn't actually play during vanilla wow.

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It's not that I disagree, because certainly managing 40 people is a whole different challenge, but I wouldn't bet on most players allowing any amount of Shadow Priests in their raids (literally 1 is enough), especially during the first months when everyone will be pushing MC and obviously past MC as well.

Look who never played MC. YOU! You never set foot in MC apart from soloing it.

MC is stupid easy. Every part of it was. MC was the shit easiest raid ever invented. You know it wasn't even balanced for 40 people? It was balanced for like 10 or something like that. 40 was just the cap number of people the game allowed to be in one instance at a time.

[Misuteri]

I am going to guess there will be a ton of raids looking for bodies and a reliable person will be taken regardless of spec because 40 slots is just so many. But the better raid groups on each server will be selective because they can.

Vanilla raiding was 20 people that knew what they were doing and spam fillers. People have to realize that 40 man raids weren’t as micro-managed as they are now.

Benediction/Anathema is MC level and the game will “never” go beyond vanilla. You will see T1 and T2 geared shadow priests and that weapon will not be uncommon.

It won’t be long before stuff is on farm and within a year raid geared alts won’t be uncommon. Hell I remember running Kara, Gruul and Mag farming 3rd and 4th alts for people.

[Constraint]

Oh shut the fuck up, you didn't make it to Naxx either. You're another nerd who watched a fucking youtube video of how it was but didn't actually play during vanilla wow.

I really enjoy your compelling, stimulating arguments. Do you have any counter-points at all, or are you openly admitting you have no idea what you're talking about?

[Razzako]

Look who never played MC. YOU! You never set foot in MC apart from soloing it.

MC is stupid easy. Every part of it was. MC was the shit easiest raid ever invented. You know it wasn't even balanced for 40 people? It was balanced for like 10 or something like that. 40 was just the cap number of people the game allowed to be in one instance at a time.

Can you stay on topic instead of bringing the stupidest points ever? What does that have to do with anything regarding people bringing in SP's?

[Khrabanas]

Shadow priests are not good. It's a flawed spec that has a viability niche limited to duels against a few classes. Anywhere else, it's really bad.

The spec ekes out a marginal existence in PvE by supplying a debuff that's worthwhile if the raid has four or more warlocks, but even this has been surpassed by a modern trend of simply having one of the healing priests spec into it. Contrary to what that one content creator tried to prove with a very questionable video, shadow priest DPS is low and comes with severe mana problems. To DPS properly, the raid also needs to reserve three debuff slots for the priest, which is absurd. If no healing priests are interested in speccing into Shadow Weaving, and the raid has 4+ warlocks, it's worth taking one spriest along; but due to the debuff slot economy, it's actually mathematically impossible for the priest himself to do good DPS. If you reserve three debuff slots for the priest, you lose more DPS that way than the priest deals. Raid DPS would be higher if the priest just did nothing but maintain Shadow Weaving and the other two debuff slots were used for something better, like Nightfall and Annihilator.

PvP is supposed to be where shadow priests shine, but experienced PvPers know better. Aside from mana issues and the barely-existing itemization for spriests, the spec is just not that good. It'll win duels against certain classes because it has a few rare tools like silence and universal damage reduction, but it has huge, glaring weaknesses that skilled PvPers will exploit with ease. The first is the fact that half of the damage comes from Mind Flay, a channelled spell with a base range of 20. It's got a huge visual component that alerts everyone that this is the perfect time to interrupt you. It can be outranged with ease, and once someone is outside its underwhelming range, there's absolutely nothing whatsoever that a priest can do. When not confined to the permitted area of a duel, it's trivial to kite a spriest. If you can stay at 30-40ish yars, the only thing the priest can do to you is keep up SW:P and tickle you with the occasional Mind Blast. Half their damage comes from that channelled spell with the 20 yard range.

People really want shadow priests to be powerful because it's such a cool and interesting spec, which is why everyone's always asking about it and coming up with reasons it might be viable. We've got these cherrypicked videos of spriests with double trinket uptime and Berserker doing what looks like good damage. Nobody's going to post videos of spriests doing shit DPS because of mana issues, or getting helplessly kited by hunters, mages and warlocks who can easily outrange Mind Flay. If the class was really that good in PvP, it would be played much more. Over the years, people on private servers gradually discovered the power of elemental shamans, and it became a fairly popular spec in PvP as a result, even though it's absolutely worthless for literally everything else. The same would have happened to shadow priests if they really were competitive, but they aren't. There's just so much misinformation about them precisely because so few play the spec that many haven't experienced its weaknesses.

[Xemioza]

NOT true. TBC guilds had 2 or even 3 SPs per raid as mana batteries.

I know, but it wasnt worth it to be honest, maybe 1 for healers group, it was better to take a warlock who did twice as much dps, and sps had only 20yards range for mindflay

[Tasttey]

I know, but it wasnt worth it to be honest, maybe 1 for healers group, it was better to take a warlock who did twice as much dps, and sps had only 20yards range for mindflay

Interestingly enough as the lone shadow priest in my TBC guild I was usually put with the warlocks, more mana for them meant fewer life taps and the VE healing meant fewer heals needed when they did tap. GCD's saved all around.

[Razzako]

I know, but it wasnt worth it to be honest, maybe 1 for healers group, it was better to take a warlock who did twice as much dps, and sps had only 20yards range for mindflay

It was totally worth it IMO at least up until Sunwell by the end of the expansion, 1 shadow priest would most likely be placed in the healers, and would buff the Warlocks' damage. Another one was usually coupled with the spell DPS to regen their mana as well. I'd 3 is just stretching it though.

[Thunderball]

Typical ignorant response. My Vanilla guild finished ranked Top20 World, and we ran 3 Shadow Priests.

Classic is not vanilla. People arent ok with carrying anymore.

[Gorgodeus]

Classic is not vanilla. People arent ok with carrying anymore.

No one was being carried. Not in a top 20 world guild.

[SinR]

Shadow Priest place in the World of Classic...

Bench.

[PavelGolub]

His place is in PVP most probably and very very rare on PVE because everything they can do a lock/mage can do better .

[kamuimac]

Aparently the ideal thing to do is to:
1. screw over your locks, and not bring the shadow weaving debuff
or
2. bring a disc priest that can keep up the shadow weaving debuff and is speced into a bit of shadow talents.

People talk on the forms about min maxing to the point where it makes you sick. Then others turn around and point out how easy classic is. What is the point of running a totally optimized raid when its unnessisary? Are raid leaders really going to not bring ANY suboptimal classes to raid, even if they are consistent dedicated players? I think the answer to both of those questions is obvious, and might slightly change in later content if naxx realy turns out to be hard, but i think the more likely situation is a guild would just not raid naxx.

Players are going to naturaly gravitate to more powerful classes anyway, so i think it will sort of work itself out. But i think its a good asumption that no raid is going to want to have 3 shadow priests in it in classic.

and one last thing, im farily sure the primary reason shadow isn't that great is beacuse they have extream mana issues, so for long fights you might find yourself casting rank one mind flay to keep up your debuff and nothing else.

the answer to this is pretty simple.

yes you will have "feeders" guilds which will be desperate enough to bring in anything but the same guilds will be loosing bis spec players imidiately as they will get attuned by clearing MC/BWL and get a bit off gear .

there was real reasons why attunements got removed from game. people just forgot them blaming it all on QoL

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Shadow Priest place in the World of Classic...

Bench.

why ? why would you bench a potential holy priest you just make him respec or gtfo

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

Mana-mana

i've never seen that. the ending with the warrior rogue is great lmao

[socialmaker]

Molten Core is pretty retarded in itself but you can't really do it with 10 ppl unless like tier2+++ geared. From what I saw and I cleared MC quite recently on a server you need a good fire resistance warrior, some locks for Garr, decent core of mages/rogues for deeps so anything above 20 players that dont' afk are quite welcome. This means there is room for shadow priests even if they are wanding rather than not having people.

PS I was an oddly geared holy paladin specced into sanctuary buff LUL

[Askyl]

I'd say that if you're a guild that REALLY want to compete to killing bosses first in the world, then maybe chill with random fun specs until you've cleared the raid. But you can do all raiding content with 40 good players, doesn't matter if you have a mix of shadow priests, retri paladins, boomkins etc.

[Gungnir]

I'd say that if you're a guild that REALLY want to compete to killing bosses first in the world, then maybe chill with random fun specs until you've cleared the raid. But you can do all raiding content with 40 good players, doesn't matter if you have a mix of shadow priests, retri paladins, boomkins etc.

That's.. not exactly true.
If you ONLY have a mix of priests, paladins and druids then you're going to hit a brick wall real fast. Even if you somehow, by some miracle manage to make it to Naxx, you'll be straight stuck at 4 Horseman because it will be impossible.

[faithbane]

Molten Core is pretty retarded in itself but you can't really do it with 10 ppl unless like tier2+++ geared. From what I saw and I cleared MC quite recently on a server you need a good fire resistance warrior, some locks for Garr, decent core of mages/rogues for deeps so anything above 20 players that dont' afk are quite welcome. This means there is room for shadow priests even if they are wanding rather than not having people.

PS I was an oddly geared holy paladin specced into sanctuary buff LUL

It is really ironic because there was someone earlier in the thread raging on another dude saying he never played MC and MC was tuned/could be cleared by 10 people but that is practically impossible... blabbering that shit out loud is just sad. I dont know which idiot private server tool created that myth or cleared MC after decking themselves in t3 with 10 people and idiots take that is proof? but in current gear no one is making a dent in MC with 10 people. I played vanilla from beginning to the end and we were actually racing with another guild for fun towards the end of the xpac for MC speed clear and got a couple runs in around 1 hour I think so yea its extremely easy compared to later raids.. HOWEVER with 10 people and MC lvl gear, you wont even get past the fucking core hounds or move fast enough to get to bosses before trash starts to respawn. Not only its numerically impossible, its mechanically impossible as well for many fucking fights.

1st boss - you need a constant stream of decursing that will overwhelm your mage and can easily wipe the raid or makes you go oom for fights taking too long with that few people.
2nd boss - very unlikely that you can kill it with 1 tranq shot + being have to have 2 shamans or dwarf priest in that limited group
3rd boss - doable actually
4th boss - good luck managing the boss + all the adds without banishes and keeping up with no buffs for the whole fight
5th boss - you will wipe to bomb damage alone with current gear, if you have to wear FR gear to prevent it, you will go oom and wipe lose/lose situation. We had OOC ressers for this fight at raid launch.
6th boss - you are wiping to blink aoe and magic amp debuff combo for sure
7th/8th boss - doable but will be tight
Domo - good luck with 8 adds and boss with 10 people...
Raggy - haha

[Cempa]

Shadow priests are not good. It's a flawed spec that has a viability niche limited to duels against a few classes. Anywhere else, it's really bad.

The spec ekes out a marginal existence in PvE by supplying a debuff that's worthwhile if the raid has four or more warlocks, but even this has been surpassed by a modern trend of simply having one of the healing priests spec into it. Contrary to what that one content creator tried to prove with a very questionable video, shadow priest DPS is low and comes with severe mana problems. To DPS properly, the raid also needs to reserve three debuff slots for the priest, which is absurd. If no healing priests are interested in speccing into Shadow Weaving, and the raid has 4+ warlocks, it's worth taking one spriest along; but due to the debuff slot economy, it's actually mathematically impossible for the priest himself to do good DPS. If you reserve three debuff slots for the priest, you lose more DPS that way than the priest deals. Raid DPS would be higher if the priest just did nothing but maintain Shadow Weaving and the other two debuff slots were used for something better, like Nightfall and Annihilator.

PvP is supposed to be where shadow priests shine, but experienced PvPers know better. Aside from mana issues and the barely-existing itemization for spriests, the spec is just not that good. It'll win duels against certain classes because it has a few rare tools like silence and universal damage reduction, but it has huge, glaring weaknesses that skilled PvPers will exploit with ease. The first is the fact that half of the damage comes from Mind Flay, a channelled spell with a base range of 20. It's got a huge visual component that alerts everyone that this is the perfect time to interrupt you. It can be outranged with ease, and once someone is outside its underwhelming range, there's absolutely nothing whatsoever that a priest can do. When not confined to the permitted area of a duel, it's trivial to kite a spriest. If you can stay at 30-40ish yars, the only thing the priest can do to you is keep up SW:P and tickle you with the occasional Mind Blast. Half their damage comes from that channelled spell with the 20 yard range.

People really want shadow priests to be powerful because it's such a cool and interesting spec, which is why everyone's always asking about it and coming up with reasons it might be viable. We've got these cherrypicked videos of spriests with double trinket uptime and Berserker doing what looks like good damage. Nobody's going to post videos of spriests doing shit DPS because of mana issues, or getting helplessly kited by hunters, mages and warlocks who can easily outrange Mind Flay. If the class was really that good in PvP, it would be played much more. Over the years, people on private servers gradually discovered the power of elemental shamans, and it became a fairly popular spec in PvP as a result, even though it's absolutely worthless for literally everything else. The same would have happened to shadow priests if they really were competitive, but they aren't. There's just so much misinformation about them precisely because so few play the spec that many haven't experienced its weaknesses.

PvP wise the spec is strong with utility and game changing potential via fear bomb/dispel/burst/ect

In terms of mana issues, it exists for every one, that's why we chug pots/consumables and always carry water/food.

You need to consider mana during Vanilla .. Think most of us know -personally- at least one r14 Shadow .. It is a beast of a PvP spec.

[Army Dreamer]

i've never seen that. the ending with the warrior rogue is great lmao

Man, that's classic! Pardon the pun.