Disc or Shadow - World Questing

[Jervaise]

If you have warmode on, Disc is proper cheating.

Immortal; and great damage.

You can not only survive ganks, but get them running away - if not a kill.

[Debased]

It doesn't really matter once you're in epic gear, unless your set on picking PVP fights. Shadow is absolutely terrible for that, but slightly faster otherwise, and in epic gear I am not having issues surviving mobs. Basically I'll go disc if I'm spoiling for a fight or feeling lazy.

[Jinxz]

343 on my Priest. Shadow is destroying mobs in PvE now.

[Management]

I leveled up using Disc and I could pull massive groups and be basically immortal. It was a absolute cakewalk, I could solo all quest bosses without a problem as well. When I got to 120 I switched to Shadow since ultimately it's the spec I want to play. As shadow I can barely even pull 2 mobs without struggling to stay alive. Even with the slightly higher DPS as Shadow it doesn't make up for it since you'll have to stop in between every fight to heal up and drink. Disc is the best by a freaking mile (at least with bad gear).

[DarkAmbient]

Thought I'd bump this thread instead of making a new one: I intend to make a disc priest for solo play. For pure dps, is a balance of haste and crit ok or should I focus one more than the other?

Nvm. Found out myself: stack crit.

[gaymer77]

I've leveled as holy and quest as holy. Which is sad because I used to be shadow for the longest time but the last 2 expansions I've mainly been holy.

[Zka]

Shadow is better if you need to do large pulls, for short single pulls - like most WQ content - disc is roughly equal to shadow because it has brutal burst, while shadow has a long buildup time.

[Echoherb]

Shadow is a victim at poor player perception right now. It's actually very powerful in the open world at this point. Disc is near invincible, but shadow kills things WAY faster. Even with not so good gear, with the legacy of the void talent you can get into void form pretty quickly and overpower enemies. Sure they can't take on a bunch of enemies at once without great gear, but that's also true for most specs.

[Cauli]

You never die questing as disc unless you fight 3+ players.

[Nzete]

Pretty sure the latest patch changed open world scaling again such that shadow is again out for world questing. (Scaling changed to make mobs stronger vs. ilevel 400 gear). I'm going to have to save a some azerite pieces that I would have trashed for disc world questing again. I've been questing as holy, but discipline has the on demand instant cast without a cooldown to improve tagging.

[krl]

Shadow is still stronger by far. I understand being so risk-averse you want to quest as disc though, but if you want to minimize WQ time, shadow it is.

[Raiz]

Shadow is still stronger by far. I understand being so risk-averse you want to quest as disc though, but if you want to minimize WQ time, shadow it is.

How is it faster ? have you ever played a real levelling disc priest ? Because I fail to see how a shadow priest can dps at all when the enemies doesn't have enough HP to make Void bolts worth anything (or even transformation for that matter). Not to mention they suck so bad at surviving that you have to eat everytime you're aggroing more than 2 ennemies especially when your defensives CDs aren't up.

[krl]

How is it faster ? have you ever played a real levelling disc priest ? Because I fail to see how a shadow priest can dps at all when the enemies doesn't have enough HP to make Void bolts worth anything (or even transformation for that matter). Not to mention they suck so bad at surviving that you have to eat everytime you're aggroing more than 2 ennemies especially when your defensives CDs aren't up.

What's a "real levelling" disc priest ? Is that a twink thing or something, to play BGs ?

If you are dpsing mobs one by one, you'd better go disc during leveling/120 low ilvl. There were threads in this very forum asking how to grind as shadow during leveling, which involves rounding up mobs and using CDs. You need to understand the spec you play and how to use its tools.

And yes, I've leveled as shadow and as disc, and I've done WQs as both too.

[Raiz]

By real I meant when you have to kill for example 10 adds with full green/blue gear with barely any haste. I just don't know how you're doing when you don't eat between each pack. What do you mean by "rounding up" mobs and using CDs ?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

By real I meant when you have to kill for example 10 adds with full green/blue gear with barely any haste. I just don't know how you're doing when you don't eat between each pack. What do you mean by "rounding up" mobs and using CDs ?

VT everything in sight/range, DV when they are stacked on you, VoiEr, spam Mind Sear. Entire grp dead after a few GCDs, and you're still at 100% hp from the VT healing. Pop a Shield on yourself if you ever take dmg. Pop VE if you're ever close to dying (never happens unless you pull like 20 mobs and have DV on CD).

Even without any kind of efficiency or "planning", simply putting up a SW:P followed by your ST rotation on 1 and 1 mob, still kills mobs way faster than any Disc Priest can dream of coming close to.


Shadow was faster than Disc before Disc got nerfed, on my freshly dinged 280 iLvl Priest at BFA launch.

Shadow was faster than Disc with 340 iLvl first week of Uldir (there might have been an argument that the convenienve of Disc outweighed the speed of Shadow before this point, but once ppl got Uldir gear, Shadow was basically immortal in the world aswell).

Shadow was (also) faster than Disc with 385 iLvl in Uldir Mythic. Big surprise (not).

And if it wasn't obvious to everybody, Shadow is even faster now with 410+ iLvl, and Shadow will remain faster than Disc the entire expansion. The gap only increases with each new item you get.



Anybody who's saying that Disc is faster than Shadow, stop spreading missinformation please. The OP asked what's objectively the best, not for your personal opinion about what "feels better".


Anybody who's trying to tell you that Disc was EVER faster than Shadow for WQs, is objectively wrong. No ifs or buts, they are simply wrong. Period.

Now, it's true that Disc could pull 10 mobs and never die, while an equally geared SP would die to the same amount of mobs early in the expansion with shit gear levels. It's true that Disc was safer and more "relaxing", but it was NEVER faster. WQs requires you to kill the mobs aswell, not just pull them and tank them. Killing mobs is something Shadow always did way faster than Disc, even the first week of BFA.

[Zarithras]

How is it faster ? have you ever played a real levelling disc priest ? Because I fail to see how a shadow priest can dps at all when the enemies doesn't have enough HP to make Void bolts worth anything (or even transformation for that matter). Not to mention they suck so bad at surviving that you have to eat everytime you're aggroing more than 2 ennemies especially when your defensives CDs aren't up.

For single target, they're pretty even while leveling. However, that's not very efficient for shadow. Shadow excels at spread cleave, so what you really need to be doing is mluti-dotting 3+ mobs, mind sear to build insanity, Void Form, and Void Bolt in between mind sears. You can easily pull 5+ mobs at any point leveling 20-120 and only need a couple of shadow mends afterwards to keep going.

I just leveled a Nightborne spriest from 20-120 over the past month and am ~375 ilvl now. Shadow has been absolutely faster than disc at every step of the way.

To OP, shadow is far better than disc for world quests. Just make sure you're taking advantage of shadow's strength in multi-dotting and AoE.

[Vintersol]

I play disc only. I don't like the void crap shadow for world questing. Just get a separate set of azerite pieces with dps traits und have fun.

[Outofmana]

Pull 20 mobs as shadow-->vampiric embrace--->voidform dmg will heal you to full + almost kill all mobs. After leveling a mage, lock and spriest in bfa I found the spriest to be the easiest by a big margin by being able to basically do quests in 1 big pull. Doubt disc will be able to, which would feel more like a mage I guess.