Immortality

Hey all, I'm a 60 Hunter/Priest from an Alliance guild on Doomhammer and I was curious about your opinions on using Shadow Priests in raiding environments.

The guild I'm a member of is fairly adament about their raiding priests being holy/discipline, for one reason or another, but for a while now I've been wondering how affective a shadow priest could be in a similar environment. Most of my guild's bias towards them has to do with debuff limits from what I can gather, but one could respec to cut down on that some.

My question for you all then would be do you have any shadow priests on your raids, and how do you utilize them most effectively? I haven't tried it personally, but I've been sketching up a tri-spec that I think would could make a decent hybrid raiding priest (something like 20-10-21).

I'd appreciate any feedback you all could give me, and thanks for you time.

Phar

Priests in raids should be healing, not dealing damage. Thru trial and error of my own, I have settled into 31/20. Discipline gives you a larger mana base, as well as faster regen. Personally, I prefer not to have shadow priests in MC and such because of this. While I'm not questioning their healing ability per sey, they just don't have the regen and large mana base as a disc/holy would.

I'm doubt there are very many shadow priests going on end game content raids with Immortality. In Vindictive, I have one. The other shadow or tri spec priests I have (or had) have since respecced (on their own) after they go to MC and have a difficult time keeping up with their heals.

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Not all priests can be this sexy. ~Roogin, Vindictive
IHWT

Hello Phar.

As far as priests are concerned there are a few ground rules in our guild...as long as you have those covered...your set.

A very good priest we have...Ander...is a tri spec priest with abotu 20 pts in shadow (built down to shadow reach) for extra range on mindflay in PvP. However, He is more than welcome on our molten core raids and such as He has the necessary pts in Holy and Disc to do so

What points?

well....at least up thru spiritual healing in holy (so minimum of 10 pts)
and at least up thru mental strength in disc (about 20 pts i think?)

These guildlines are set for the priests that raid. When BWL comes out, more than likely priests will respec to be more heavier disc and holy as we learn the new instance encounter. However, once the encounters are pretty solid...as the warriors in our guild started tweaking with non-protection hybrid specs....the priests will eventually try some shadow in there too.

Hope that answers your question!
Paladeus

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http://www.JonMenard.com (music website) - http://www.myspace.com/paladeus (WoW Tunes)

Yeah, I appreciate the comments so far and in response to Visuna's comments I think something like a tri-spec addresses the mana pool concerns (as long as you have enough points in Discipline for Mental Strength), but perhaps not some of the mana regen issues that may arise that can only be handled by stronger discipline builds.

Paladeus, as far as your shadow priest Ander is concerned, does he typically end up strictly healing, or does he get a fair amount of damage in there as well? I realize you won't push out the DPS of dedicated DDs, but I'd be interested to see numbers in how much damage and healing one priest could do in an instance.

Obviously the amount of mana a tri-spec priest would devote to damage would depend on the amount of healers already in the raid, but that would be a case-by-case basis.

I also have 5/5 into meditation so I can continue regenning mana while I'm heaing, the next step down in the tree. I LOVE inner focus as well, a nice little free heal/cast. The end bonus is divine spirit, which I use for mages, priests, etc (even the hunters ask for it). Personally, I'm not too interested in doing damage in instances. I wish I could do more then I do in pvp tho Maybe I'll respec on test and see how it goes just so I can have some fun! But really, I love healing too much and taking care of my grp and I'd be afraid I'd loose any edge I have right now. When I was changing from holy spec to more into disc, I went to gunsmoke and he helped guide me according to how I play. I'm really happy I took his advice as this spec suits me perfectly.

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Not all priests can be this sexy. ~Roogin, Vindictive
IHWT

Phar -

Anders is a primary healer...but liek with any priest..when theres down time we do some damage. He'll toss a mindflay or a mindblast on a target...just as I (40 disc spec) will use my wand in down time to deal damage.

As visuna said...priests should be more concerned with healing...not damage. You chose this class to heal so do it

-Paladeus

_________________
http://www.JonMenard.com (music website) - http://www.myspace.com/paladeus (WoW Tunes)

Good stuff guys, thanks again.

Phar