SPs really that viable in groups?Follow

So, are SPs really that good for groups? This may seem like a silly question, but outside of PvP I don't see too much use for SPs. (VE doesnt seem all that great.) Please, prove me wrong :)

- Jemac

Think of the whole group being healed for the damage spriests do. ANd your mana users getting mana too for their damage.

Spriests are loved in raids. Arcane mages become uber with them around.

Have 2 for a 10man and you sorta stop worrying about mana managment.

they make peoples lives more comfortable.

People don't take Spriests for the healing from VE, in fact that's usually just extra threat you're better off without in raids.

They're really there for the VT. Vamp touch is incredibly sexy.

What he said.

Maybe it's from playing a shadow priest for as long as I did, and dealing with the stigma that used to be associated with them, but I personally do not like referring to shadow priests as a "dps class." Perhaps you misunderstood my original post and read it as me saying that shadow priests can't dps, which was never my point at all.

As I said, it's just a pet peeve.

Sorry Kattoo but i'm going to have to side with the others, Shadow Priests are an extremely good DPS class. I say that they are "extremely good" because aside from the fact that they are pumping out dps equal to other dps classes,(sometimes even greater then other dps classes!) they are topping off their partys life AND mana!

Shadow Priest "is" DPS/Utility. The more damage you do, the more utility use you add to the group.

Vampiric Touch + Symbol of Hope = Overpowered (ban all Dreanai SP...HAHA)

As far as I'm concerned shadow priests should be considered DPS. We are quite capable of keeping up with warlocks, mages, hunters and shaman. Of course, as with all of these things it depends on the fight and so on. The reason we're considered a support class is VT, which is fine. At the end of the day however, you have to do a certain amount of damage to kill a boss, and if the person you take as a damage dealer is incapable of that then no amount of group buffing will make up for it. My stance is that on a single target fight, assuming no resistance issues a shadow priest should perform as any other DPS class, and if they can't keep up with at least the mages then they're doing something wrong. All mana returned as a byproduct should be considered as a bonus.

There's actually a huge QQ thread on the WoW boards about shadow priest dps.

A shadowpriest in full tier 6 with the best gear/gems/enchants available to them will be doing about 1500 dps tops.

A fully geared ret pally or moonkin will be doing 2000 dps, to make an example.

Our dps scales horribly endgame.

So, after kara/gruul's, we're there for utility.

thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3547666397&sid=1&pageNo=1

The two shadow priests posting in it from <TG> have the best endgame PVE gear available.

The numbers are correct from looking at boss fight reports.

I'll admit my experience is limited, I was only shadow in kara, Ihave a full frozen shadoweave set and a natherezim mindblade with soulfrost sitting in my bank.

I heal in SSC/The Eye.


http://wowwebstats.com/zvfowm33esabs?s=13370-14038

Shows the damage breakdown of the group.

1 warlock is going about 600 more dps. The two shadowpriests struggle to break 1200. Illidan fight.

Hoorah.

edit: added Illidan fight stats.

Edited, Jan 9th 2008 7:41pm by churler

They're still hitting top 5 in most of the fights, and are approaching closer to their ideal damage cap than any of the other classes. On top of that, despite their drastically lower DPS, they're placing higher on the damage meters than people with higher dps. Most shadow priests I've talked to do the same. QQ about priest from a DPS standpoint, rather than damage output, is missing the point.

And on a completely unrelated note, looking at their other parses, they're lacking in terms of Blast/Death usage and DoT uptime - not terrible by any means, but still room for improvement. They're also, apparently, not put to their strong points on some fights - multi-dotting on Akama, for instance.

EDIT: Not saying it isn't a problem, it's just not as big a one as some people make it out to be. Could we scale better? Yes, but we're pretty close to on-target, a little below. Either that or all the spriests I've talked to are raiding with idiots for other DPS, which I kind of doubt, considering some of them are in the best guilds in the world.

Edited, Jan 10th 2008 12:59am by lsfreak

From the thread, I gathered that their scaling wasn't what was on target, it was what they were given was too powerful at the beginning and neglected at the end.

The problems/solutions of the "QQ" on that thread revolved around three things:

-The kind of spells
-The stats on items
-The flat-chested scaling curve with gear

These all linked with each other.

Frozen Shadoweave and the rest of the shadow priest gear was greater than Tier 4 for other classes and dominated all the early content.
As Shadow Priests have 10% of their Spell Hit talent-able, they don't worry about getting Spell Hit upgrades from gear as much as other classes.
Shadow priests are a one-stat class. Everything comes from spell damage, as the only two crittable Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death are both on long cooldowns.
Aside from Tier Gear and Frozen Shadoweave, many shadow priests upgrades throughout raid progression was mage/warlock gear, which come with amounts of crit and hit that shadow priests simply can not take full advantage of, because Mind Flay, the main nuke, works off of 19% of spell damage and cannot crit. (It's specifically coded for 19%, not following the 3.5 second cast time rules.)

This is an SSC/TK shadow priest in 3 parts raiding gear.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Korialstrasz&n=Racia

This is a BT/Hyjal T6 shadow priest.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Arthas&n=Norroth

1249 shadow damage on the first one.
1318 shadow damage on the second one.

Not as big a difference as one would expect.

As a one-stat class with not too much difference between that one stat in those difference environments...



Edited, Jan 10th 2008 7:51pm by Raglu