The Naked Fear

Note: Guide will continually be updated and edited with new information

Malf has charged the officers with developing class guides for their specific classes. I'm going to take it a step further and develop a spec guide for shadow priests in endgame of patch 3.3.

First off, why roll a shadow priest? Lots of reasons, some of which include:

- mana regen for mana classes
- hit buff for raid
- aoe dmg in larger mob pulls
- priest buffs (stamina, spirit, shadow protection)
- damage dealer as opposed to healer

I've played a shadow priest since I started playing wow. They are a unique and fun class to play and are easy to recognize in the landscape of WoW with their purple hue in shadowform. I honestly did not understand how to play my class until I came back to wow in wotlk. Before LK, shadow dps was so poor that our focus was on raid viability and keeping vampiric touch up at all times. Times have changed, and now shadow priests are one of the most viable hybrid classes in game.

Talent Tree:

Cookie cutter talent build is 14/0/57. This build does not have points in it for focused mind, which will decrease the mana cost of mind blast, mind flay, and mind sear. I personally put points into this, especially with the large mob pulls in ICC. This cookie cutter build also puts points into improved vampiric embrace and focused mind. Mana regen is not a huge issue at the moment, so I do not see a need for focused mind, and the returns on healing from vampiric embrace are negligible.

I recommend folks play around with a build that suits them. I used to have a pvp/pve mixed tree with silence and psychic horror, but dropped it for ICC. Any shadow ability that increases spell power, hit rating, mana regen, crit should be used.

Glyphs:

Major
Glyph of shadow - THE must have glyph for shadow priests.
Glyph of mind flay

Third one is a toss up between glyph of shadow word pain and glyph of dispersion. I use shadow word pain because my current build is mana efficient and I'm not having to disperse as often. I've been told algalon, yogg, and the LK encounter are fights where glyph of dispersion is preferred.

Minor
Nothing earth shattering here. Main minor glyph is glyph of shadowfiend. Most others will pick glyph of fortitude, levitate, shadow protection, etc.

Gems:

Haste is your friend. Get to 293 hit cap and start gemming for the following in order of priority: spell power, haste, crit, spirit. If a socket bonus is +7 spellpower or higher, socket for the bonus. If the bonus is odd or for +5 spell power, you can gem for something other than the socket bonus.

Preferred meta is chaotic skyflare. You will need two blue gems to activate it. Preferred blue gem is purified dreadstone. It provides 12 spell power and 10 spirit.

For yellow gems - reckless ametrine is the best option.

To be continued...

Man, I just can't figure out my priest lol....

Sometimes I can do 9k on a boss. Next week I might be lucky to pull of 6-7k... Doing exact same thing. I've thought for a long time Blizz just hates priests. Lead programmer might have had unpleasant experiences as a child in a catholic school or something. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong....

Aside from keeping dots up I usually only MB after doing VT. In fights where I can I try to drop VT and SW:P on multiple targets. Just want to know if there is something else I can do to increase dps. In aoe fights on mobs I usually am top of the dps charts no problem. In single target fights sometimes I rule, sometimes I don't.

Is your shadowfiend part of your rotation? My dps was insignificant until I put my shadowfiend into the rotation.

Movement hurts us as well. I have noticed that tuskarr's vitality does help because we can get back into position faster.

I wouldn't say we're disliked by the programmer's either. Our dps was terrible in BC, and honestly we've not had much to complain about in wotlk. If anything, we're probably one of the best hybrid dps classes in game at the moment. You can look at the dps meters on world of logs for verification.

How much haste do you have? If your haste isn't significant enough to drop MB, I'd suggest keeping it in your rotation.

I'm sitting at 813 haste and 30% crit. My base SP is 3400.

Yeah, I use the Shadow Fiend. Admittedly my opening rotation doesn't include him anymore. Now I just use him after my mana drops down to about 50%. I could up the dps by throwing him out early.

Fights are still fairly long and with the proper spec mana shouldn't be an issue. I usually start out with vt, dp, shadowfiend and then go into the rest of my rotation.

Do you have the 4pc t10 bonus? The speedier tick on MF does make a difference.

Raid buffs!

You should see Preach without a boomkin. His dps is rofl-able. Spriests provide 0 buffs to themselves. (/waits for preach to say 'WE GIVE HIT MALF!') Which means, they rely quite a bit on other casters to provide the buffs they need to do decent damage.

Good point Malf.

Demo locks and boomkins provide us amazing buffs.

I think I need 4 piece T10 bonus. I am a god AOE'ing but on single target fights I'm sometimes lacking. Certainly noticed that if there are only melee buffs up my dps seemed to be down lol. Increased MF damage would help a lot in the right fights. I just hate to have lvl 251 gear on him hah hah.. Can't seem to win drops in VOA 25 for it either.