Theorycrafting, bear with me (Talent Spec)Follow

4) missing surge of light. Move a point out of holy nova and spirit of redemption to get 2/2 surge.

You're still crazy, but meh. No damage, no utility of shadow priest, definately not the best. Grinding spec+healing I guess.

- healing focus is very good
- surge of light is good
- inspiration and holy reach are not that good if you wanna do damage
- you may not need 5/5 in Silent Resolve. I can get away with 4 points.
- keep Spirit of Redemption

3. You are reinventing the wheel... :P

If you're in a group of DPS, and you die, something went wrong. More than likely, that means the little extra healing could be used. Plus, a 5% increase in spirit helps out your +dmg via Spiritual Guidance (albeit not a lot).

You apparently don't know much about other DPS classes, because all of them have threat reduction available and almost all good builds incorporate them.

And actually, a lot of gear that has spirit also has crit. Almost without exception. Those that don't usually have sockets. Spirit-and-crit gear isn't that hard to find at all (of course, whether or not it's the best gear you can get is another matter entirely).

if you can't find your discs im not sure about original wow but you can install burning crusade from worldofwarcraft.com in the account management section

Use a threat meter. You are wasting talent points when you can control your dps before you even pull the agro off the tank. If your threat gets high? Fade, stop dps-ing for 1.5 seconds... whatever.



Wow. 1) So you agree that all classes do not have threat reduction in their talents?

2) Shamans - The enhancement shaman threat reduction is a joke. By the time you parry, you are dead. Spirit Weapons is necessary to get to dual-wielding. Period. The Elemental Precision gives you 6% chance to hit with your spells. Coupled with Nature's Guidance, you can have 9% chance to hit (10% if you are Draeni) before you even look at spell hit rating. Threat reduction is a bonus.

Mages and Warlocks - as with Elemental Precision, each threat reducing talent is bundled with another appealing talent bonus: mana cost reduction, spell reach, etc. It becomes worth pursuing... especially when its only 2 or 3 points.

Both Silent Resolve and Subtlety (Druid Resto talent) Reduce threat and the chance that your spells will be dispelled. Both are 5 points to max. Its too much for basically threat reduction. On a smite priest Decreasing the chance to have spells dispelled is only really helpful with shackle (assuming you are not cursing). I know plenty of Balance druids that do not use Subtlety because they learned to control their agro before Subtlety affected all spells. Why can't smite priests do the same? The other options for points aren't great (though I think you are wrong about Power Word: Shield), but 5 points is lot to waste on threat reduction when you can learn to dps around it.

3)Rogues have threat reduction in their talent trees.



K, items with spirt and sockets... you added 5 items pre-Kara... and one if Aldor only. Are you looking before you type?

As for Isfreak and ArcandCB's little feud -

I don't think I've ever seen a shadow build without shadow affinity, so why would it be so unreasonable for a holy DPSer to have a similar talent in the their build? The less aggro you're generating, the more damage you can spit out.

Anyone who argues for fade certainly hasn't ventured into the realm of doing high DPS. With the +1027 unbuffed spell dam I have (which is only slightly above average for a raiding shadow priest), fade won't even get rid of the aggro of one mind flay. Not to mention, after fade has expired, you get all that aggro back anyway.

While I do agree that aggro management on the part of the priest is key (thus not pulling aggro), fade won't ever save you, and you'd be better off generating less aggro from the onset. This way you won't be sitting around during the middle of a fight waiting for the tank to build more aggro.

First of all, Smiter Priests' damage sucks. Even at its best it's one of the few builds that can actually compete with a Retribution Paladin for worst sustained DPS in a group situation. So how much threat you're not generating really shouldn't be any issue if your tank is worth his salt.

Now, secondly. You all seem to be slightly misinformed to various degrees concerning threat.

There is more to threat than just click-to-reduce-threat spells and abilities, flat threat percent reduction talents, or restraint on the part of the player. Most DPS classes have naturally built in threat reduction modifiers that allow them to pour on more damage without holding back. I don't have the exact numbers on me and I'm too lazy to look them up, but consider this hypothetical example:

First, let's assume 1 DPS = 1 Threat.

A tanking Warrior is never going to be able to match the DPS output of a Rogue and taunt can only do so much. So how does he hold aggro? Well, in Defensive Stance Warriors generate 30% additional threat. That means the Warrior now has a threat multiplier of 1.30. So in the case of a Warrior, 1 DPS = 1.30 Threat. A Warrior doing roughly 100 DPS is actually generating threat equal to 130 DPS, not counting his extra threat generating abilities.

Rogues, even without talents, have a lower base threat multiplier. I think they're at something like .80 threat per point of DPS. So for Rogues, 1 DPS = .80 threat. A Rogue can put out 100 DPS and only generate threat equal to 80 DPS.

So a Rogue with 200 DPS x .80 Threat = 160 (let's call this Actual Threat Level or ATL).

A Warrior with 125 DPS x 1.30 Threat = 162.5 ATL.

That's a difference of 75 DPS, yet the Warrior can hold the mobs' attention over the Rogue in defensive stance because of the modifiers on their actual threat levels. Now... Why is this important?

Priests, as I understand it, lack any sort of threat-lowering modifiers on their Shadow spells outside of talents. Shaman lack this as well, which is why it's nearly impossible to keep hate off of them when they're Enhancement and going all out, not because of their damage. Of course, their damage is really high anyways, much like a Shadow Priest, and the 15% reduction from Spirit Weapons just doesn't cut it most of the time which is why they still have to hold back.

Some of the classes you listed, Isfreak, do, in fact, have threat reduction. It's just naturally built in instead of more obvious from talents and abilities. Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors in Berserker Stance are all at natural threat modifiers under 1.00 before talents ever come into play. Not sure about Cat Form Druids. I know Balance Druids don't have any without talents.

Anyways... just something for you all to consider.

Edited, Jul 27th 2007 11:46am by Gaudion

Uh huh... Well, that's awfully convenient for you.

Try actually reading my posts before you try to take them apart.


If you'll note, I did say:

Learn to read the posts you critique.

Also, have you ever actually played a Prot Warrior? If you're not intimately familiar with them then you might be surprised just how much of their threat actually comes straight from their DPS. They don't hit for much, sure, but at a 1.30 modifier, it's still a substantial amount of threat generated over time.

EDIT: Actually, I should say just "Warrior" here. Prot Warriors can actually achieve a modifier even higher than 1.30 through talents, but my point still remains the same as I'm only talking about natural non-talented threat modifiers.


I'm sorry, did you somehow miss me clearly and concisely stating that everything I was about to write was a hypothetical example? I wasn't trying to run a play-by-play here, I was just trying to explain how threat modifiers work. Learn to read the posts you critique.


Really? I didn't? That's funny... I'm pretty sure I did. Let's see...

Yup. Like I said... I didn't have the exact numbers on me and I was too lazy to look them up at the time, but I don't see how I could have any more obviously stated that Rogues are using a modifier under the 1.00. Learn to read the posts you critique.

Edited, Jul 27th 2007 1:18am by Gaudion

Well, you know... I'm just saying. I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

guess what! SP's put the last 3 points in shadow affinity as they level. So those points will be filled by the time she gets to 70.