With all the current available 25-man content cleared and a surplus of very good healers, I seem to have switched almost completely to shadow in these hazy pre-Ulduar days. I’m finally hit-capped, I’ve got all the right glyphs, my keybindings are mostly set correctly, and more impressively my guildies have stopped giggling to themselves every time I go into shadow form. Really, though, I’m a 3-week old DPSer, so while I think I have a lot of the basics down now the experience and subtleties still elude me. Also, when flustered I have a tendency to stand there slack-jawed and mash on my Mind Blast — which is always on cooldown — until either it comes back up again or my brain kicks in and tells me what to do now.
Anyway, none of the below tips will help the experienced shadow priest, but if there are any other of my holy brethren exploring their dark sides some of this might be interesting:
1) Don’t rush the Shadow Word: Pain. It will stick on your target forever in most cases, assuming you’re using Mind Flay, so wait until you have a full five stacks of Shadow Weaving before unleashing the Pain. My usual single target boss opener is Vamp Touch – Devouring Plague – Shadow Word:Death – Mind Blast – Mind Flay – THEN SW:P.
2) Mind Searing herds of trash is almost illegally fun, but from my observations it only seems to be efficient with three or more mobs. When you’re dealing with two fairly resilient trash mobs, dot them both up and then do single target damage to the same one the rest of the raid is focused on. When pulling a pack of trash mobs with one big guy, throw VT on the big guy (why not, more mana and damage is good) and then Mind Sear to your heart’s content. I recommending giggling evilly to yourself at the same time.
3) This is going to sound stupid to any DPS person, but as a healer I didn’t know this: either use your tab key, or set up a tab macro. DPSers hit tab all the time to find their next target. I know, I was surprised too.
4) Shadow priests can dispel while in shadow form. This will most likely be taken care of by the healing priests and paladins on your run, but be prepared to help out when necessary. Resurrecting a player WILL knock you out of shadow form. Don’t be a Liore and end up DPSing two Naxx bosses in normal form. Also, you DO have healing spells, although god knows using one of the dirty things will seriously impact your spot on the charts, man. At least keep Flash Heal on your hotbar and be ready to use it if things get ugly or you’re about to die during a critical fight.
5) When examining the logs later (oh please, if you’ve read this far you know exactly what I’m talking about, you crazy min-maxer you) check and see how many times each of your three main dots ticked during a fight. They should be pretty similar numbers. If your SW:P is much higher than the other two, you need to watch your dot timer better.
6) Shadow priests are just going to kind of suck at some things, like the trash phase of Gothik. C’est la vie.
The thing I haven’t figured out yet: when is it optimal for me to stay on a target and not the add? Take Grobbulus — a lot of shadow priest damage takes a while to crank up, so when the blob add appears I am loathe to leave all my dots and cooldowns and switch to it, only to have to slowly build up damage on the add as well. Mind you, I know from running raids for years that getting DPS to stop casting/hitting the boss and focus on the add can be challenging, and I don’t want to be one of THOSE people. More research is needed!
Great post! Brought back memories and a smile to my face, coming from a recent switch myself. And yes Mind Sear is best done with an evil laugh, on vent if possible!!!
I noticed your last comment about knowing when it’s optimal for you to stay on the boss or help on adds. I can tell you from my experiences playing a dotting class and Caster Lead of my guild, a majority of the time I just have the rest of my casters take care of adds, keeping myself and any affliction Warlocks in raid on the boss. You just lose to much DPS switching back and forth, whereas the other classes do not.
Blessing’s last blog post..Some Holy Paladin Arena Specs
Oh nifty, thanks, Blessing! My instinct was that it made more sense to stick with the boss and ignore the add, but it’s nice to hear that confirmed by someone who knows what they’re doing.
Mmmm … the icing on my dual-spec cake!
Oriniwen’s last blog post..Ow! That Hammer Of Justice Hurts!
Consider Mind Sear your payback for years of raid healing despite constant nerfs by Blizzard. Giggling evilly is almost a requirement to it’s use.
Other classes handle adds better than we do. I will go for the spark on Malygos, because the timing is critical. Most of the time, it isn’t worthwhile to break the stacking of your DoTs.
Tab targeting is awesome; but you need to visually confirm what you have targeted. You can aggro mobs unintentionally this way (Never admit to this. If you pull them, it is always intentional). This is nice way to make Gothik more interesting, see if you can grab the targets before the tank. It keeps the tanks on their toes.