Just Started it, more to come soon:
Sanctium's (Hitsuzen's) Shadow Priest guide!
Topics Discussed:
A. Stats for a Spriest
A1. Hit Rating
A2. Spell Damage
A3. Haste
A4. Other stats
B. Speccing a Spriest
B1. PvE raiding
B2. Farming/Instance grinding
B3. PvP
C. Gearing a SPriest
D. DPSing
D1. Rotation
D2. Upping your damage
D3. I need mana! (Popping your mana cooldowns)
E. Professions
F. Possible macroes
Introduction:
As a shadow priest, as many of you have noticed, you are undermined for your abilities and talents because you are not "top DPS." However, you can laugh at those classes when they realize that you are replacing them in 10 and 25 mans because of your unique capabilities. Typically, as a shadow priest, in terms of usefullness:
25 man> 10 man> 5man
This is due to our usefullness in raids. As a shadow priest, you have 3 main objectives in raids. First is to provide mana for other mana users, resulting in a sustained overall dps in a raid. Secondly is to provide buffs to the entire raid; 10% damage to all shadow users from Shadow weaving, and additional 5% spell damage to all casters, and not to mention a stam buff for the entire raid. Also, last and not least is to provide your dps! The more you dps, the quicker a boss dies, and also the more mana (and health) you restore to your fellow party members.
In this faq I'll be discussing the usefulness of shadow priests and of course how to fully utilize your class
A.Stats
As for any class it's important for you to choose your stats carefully to maximize your overall output. Here I'll discuss what stats you should choose and why.
1.Hit Rating
It is easily attainable for a shadow priest to reach their hit cap in little gear, due to the talent points you can put into Shadow Focus. The hit cap is as follows with the respective amount of Talent points in Shadow Focus:
5/5 Shadow Focus 76 Hit Rating
4/5 Shadow Focus 101 Hit Rating
3/5 Shadow Focus 126 Hit Rating
2/5 Shadow Focus 152 Hit Rating
1/5 Shadow Focus 177 Hit Rating
0/5 Shadow Focus 202 Hit Rating
Easy fixes for this are items such as the "Scyer's Bloodgem" that have a lot of hit rating on them to easiy attain your cap.
2. Spell Damage
While gearing out your priest, until you reach 1300 shadow spell damage raid buffed, it is most important to stack spell damage after you reach hit cap. The reason you do this is because only 2/5 of your main shadow spells can crit, therefore crit is an unimportant stat and both are on cooldown timers. Thus, like an affliciton lock, it is more important for you to stack spell damage to get the most you can out of your dots.
3. Haste Rating
Once you reach 1300 shadow damage unbuffed, it becomes more important to start socketting Haste instead of spell damage. I Haven't researched much into haste, but I will add it at a further time.
4. Other Stats
When looking at your gear, it is most important to remember:
Hit Rating>Spell Damage>Haste Rating>Crit Rating> other stats
as long as it applies to the afore mentioned conditions. However, sometimes when choosing gear, it is important to weigh each peice of gear. Fore example if you have a peice of gear giving you 2 spell damage, but sacrifices 12 stam, then you should keep the gear for hte extra stam even if you gain a mere 2 spell damage. Use your disgression
B. Speccing your SPriest
1.PvE raiding spec
www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?5002300130000000000000000000000000000000000053250410240103051551 Please not that as you get more hit rating on your gear, you can swap out talent points in Shadow Focus for other things. Also, you can take the points that are in blackout, and put them towards Spirit Tap instead.
2. PvE instance or grinding spec
www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?tal=5002300130000000000000000000000000000000000053252410241123051051 Notice the slight change in the spec...same as before its up to preference if you want Blackout or Spirit Tap
3. PvP spec
www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?tal=5002223100020000000000000000000000000000000050232310241103051551 I rarely PvP so correct me if I'm wrong using this spec...
C. Gearing a Spriest:
Tailoring is your best friend when gearing a spriest, because of all the possible upgrades you can get from just making your gear!
Before even setting foot in karazhan, you can have some of your best gear until Tier 5/6 raiding from tailoring epics, or other craftable gear. However, if there are other options before reaching kara. (For purposes of this being too long, I'm going to limit this to epic gear attained from 10 mans and other prekara gear, including craftables.) Remember the stats section when it comes to looking for a ceratin stat in your gear. (The following is for PvE gear only)
1.Helm
Some of the easiest (and best) shadow priest gear comes form craftables for this slot. The first of these is the Holo-gogs that you get from engineering. Additionally is the Spellstrike hood attained from tailoring is one of the best helms in the game on the T4 level and you dont even have to be tailoring to use it! However probably THE best helm you can get as a priest pre-T5/T6 is the Hood of Hexing from ZA. I'm not even including T4 helm because of all of your other possible options out there.
2. Neck
Easy neck piece: SSO badge loot. Also if you are aldor, the proc (220 extra spelldamage) is insane. Other notable neck peices are obviously Rintyn's lost Pendant (sp?) from Karazhan.
3. Back
The cloak of Subjugated Power off of badge rewards is probablyone of the best PvP and PvE cloaks you'll get for awhile, however the cloaks off prince and morose are also good options
4. Shoulders
Shadoweave Shoulders are comprable to T5 shoulders, so thats your best bet if you're a tailor. If your not, you're gonna have to wait till T4 shoulders off HKM in Gruuls lair to get a GOOD set of shoulders. (I'm not counting the terribad shoulders you ca get off Shade of Aran)
5. Chest
Again the Frozen shadoweave set is your best bet for this slot, although you can try to get the robes from heroic MgT instead.
6.Bracers
There are a lot of choices for this slot, though the best two are the haste bracers from badge rewards or the bracers of the bear boss in ZA (called Fury of the Ursine). Also, as much as i hate to say it, a viable option are PvP bracers.
7. Hands
Best bet are either of the badge hands. Also, if not you can easily get the hands off of Attunemen.
8. Belt
Belt of Blasting. Its a craftalbe BoE item, just farm the mats and get 30 badges for the nether vortexes and you have no excuse. But if you can't, then get the Belt off of Ilhoof in Karazhan.
9. Pants.
Either the craftable pants (Spellstrike pants), the badge pants from SSO, or the pants that drop off of the Opera event in Karazhan
10. Feet
Tbh i dont know any decent boots aside form FSW (Frozen Shadowweave) Boots and some epic boots from Karazhan (dont remember who from)
11. Rings
Lotsa choices here... exhalted with Scryer, one off of attunemen, one off of chess, exhalted with Violet Eye, and of course, badge loot.
12. Weapon
GO for one handed weapons. PVP weapons are perfectly acceptable. Also, Mace off of Kael in H. MgT, Mace off bird boss in ZA, Naz MB off prince, or the insane badge weapon.
13. Offhand
Either fettish of the primal gods or orb of the soul eater from badge loot, pending on your spell damage.
14.Wand
Badge wand or the one off Shade in Karazhan.
15. Trinkets
Some of my favorites:
Quag's eye from hero SP
Icon of the Silver Cresent from badges
Hex Shrunken Head from ZA
BLessings Deck
Scryer;s Blood Gem
D. DPSing
1. Possible rotations
When talking about a shadowpriest, it's wrong to call our dps a rotation. More acurately, be have a priority order of what spells to use. For max dps:
VT>MB>SW:P>MF>VE
You can insert SW:D there although realize that it is a situational spell, used only when you know that people are not going to be taking heavy damage. However, I do have an opening rotation that I always do:
VT, SW:P, MB, SWD, MF, MF, MB, VT
this usually is how I start off a fight and just insert a VE after a few VT rotations. Also, when you have VE up, it is wise to use SW:D adn tehn MB so that you get a decent amount of health back. However when you mana is low, priority switched to sustaining VT and MFing the rest till mana gets under control, or you have time to use a pot.
2. Maximizing DPS
In order to maximize your DPS, there are a few simple things that you can do. One, is you can macro your Trinkets to your VT, so that you know ull get to pop your trinkets everytime its up. Another is to macro other cooldowns that you have to spells. Like coupling inner focus with MB or DP for UD SPriests. I'll discuss these macroes later on...
3. I'm OOM!
It's very easy for a Spriest to go oom in a fight, so there are a few simple rules you should follow:
1. Pop shadow fiend IMMEDIATELY once u hit 50% mana, so that you can possible reuse it later on
2. Pop mana potion everytime you can.
3. If you're BE use your racial CD's as a last resort.
E. Professions (To be added at a later date)
F. Macroes
Refer to
www.wowwiki.com/Useful_macros_for_priests(It explains them better that I can)
