question about respec'ing - big concernsFollow

Actually, a couple of concerns:

Last night...oh brother. I'm a 64 Shadow priest and was invited to a 20 man Molten Core party. I was up front about both my spec and about my trepidation, because 64 seems pretty lowish for that instance since I'm not spec'd Holy, but the raid leader was awesome and told me it would be a great learning experience. She even gave me an Onyxia Cape, which was so incredibly good of her, especially since I'm not in her guild.

The instance went well until we wiped on the third boss, mostly due to the tank getting cocky and cutesey, and then when it was time to rez everyone I aggroed the boss. I was more than a little humiliated, but most of the group took it in stride.

The leader had to go and the tank decided we should do AQ40. I knew ZERO about that instance so I said sure, I'd come for heals...and that was a terrible experience. Long story short: 50 people, no plan, flock of chickens with no heads, no one listening to leader, mages/healers left twisting in the wind...multiple wipes and dirty looks at the healers, even though we were too few, all of us woefully ill-equipped to deal with the number of people who evidently hadn't taken their ADD meds in days. (You know it's bad when a solid tanking Pally (level 70ish) is asked to do heals.)

So yeah, educational, to say the least.

I walked out of that instance with a stress headache. As I was leaving, another Priest, level 63, first character like myself, struck up a conversation. He's speced Holy. He asked me if it was a huge challenge to heal with my Shadow spec and I told him truthfully that it hadn't been a problem until that night. I also told him I feel that maybe I should go ahead and re-spec to Holy at 65 instead of my planned 80, just so I can adequately heal larger groups.

He then told me that he'd leveled to 40 as Holy and then got tired of it, so he re-spec'd to Shadow for a while. He said that his dps was miserable, and he thought that perhaps Blizzard imposes and actual penalty on spec changes. He soon switched BACK to Holy and said he noticed a significant drop in his healing ability when he shifted back!

So, my number one concern: is it true that respecing actually carries a damage/heal crit penalty, or was he just wrongly geared for each different spec?

Interestingly, the two of us wound up going directly to Ramps with some dps friends of mine to get that rotten AQ taste out of our mouths. Priest #2 healed and did so fairly well; I got to dps, which is always a joy (my crits with +spell power food/elixir buffs are hitting 2800 at times, which is a rush); and I once again wavered in my desire to be a pure healer.

My number two concern: is Shadow a viable spec in parties as pure dps? I mean, do Shadow priests ever get *invites* for raids? Last night at Ramparts was one of only two times I was given the opportunity to dps in an instance, and I gotta tell you I like it even more than healing (which I also enjoy).

Ideally I'd like to go Shadow all the way as dps and some backup healing...but will I be (wrongly) viewed as a gimp dps AND a gimp healer?

If any of you who have leveled Shadow all the way could advise, I'd be most grateful.

And have any of you respeced and noticed a difference, or was this priest off-base?

Thanks!

This is also my experience. I have swapped specs many times. Sometimes it can feel like you were nuked when you go back. I can't play shadow now as it feels nuked and wrong to me but it's because it is a totally different way to play and I can't get my head round it again after playing Holy. Nothing else changes.

On the contrary. Blizzard buffed the Shadow tree greatly. We are officially competative with other ranged casters.
Healing is easier as a Balance druid than a Shadow priest. Dont feel bad if it's difficult. I heard they may be looking at our mana issues and healing from certain spells, like our prayers.

I used Shadow for levelling and it's absolutely fine. Ina group, it's fine too: you do a very good dps, you bring utility, and you'll make the other healer's job that much easier. Back in the days, when I was a wee little lad, I used to raid MC, BWL, AQ and Naxx as a shadowpriest, and that was before we had any of the good stuff, like VT, and when our damage scaled horribly (MF was like 40%). If it was fine back then, it's more than fine now. My guild is serious about raiding, they got Sarth down with 3 drakes, and they always have a shadowpriest in the raid.

So dps'ing as a shadowpriest, either in instances or in raids, is perfectly fine if you know what you're doing. If you do stay shadow though, forget about healing in serious instances. You will be a gimp healer. I doubt you'll be able to run any heroic healing as a shadow priest. You have to make your choice.

And no, re-scpeccing makes no difference whatsoever. Back in the days, you had to re-buy all your spells when you repecced, so maybe that's what happened to your friend, he was using Rank 1 spells.

Shadow priests are very useful on raids, whether they are needed depends a lot on your server and who is organising the run (if you have a lack of healers you will generally find more openings for those in groups, also pug raids tend to be less selective about who they bring as dps whereas a guild raid will probably have some notion of class balance). In addition to dps the main thing a SP brings to raids is mana return, health return (for your party) and 3% hit for your casters (moonkin can also provide this, but it's a dps loss for them to do so). You can heal in a pinch, but only as an 'oh ****' last resort, don't expect to be able to cover for a proper healer for a prolonged period of time.

I'd leave off respeccing until 80 personally, unless you really love healing then it makes more sense to level as dps spec, even at 80 if dps is what you want to do then stick with that. I've not had much trouble finding groups (though I'll admit I haven't looked for many pugs) although generally you'll find healers are more in demand than dps (though my server had a weird period after BC where my holy pala would get invited to a group and be asked to dps as there was already a tank and two other healer-specced hybrids). From my personal experience SP can be a 'prefered' dps compared to other classes, but this may depend on server, I've certainly had more issues trying to find a group as another dps class than as SP. Also though I've healed my way through a fair few non-heroic (and sub-80) instances as shadow spec. Up until Northrend I found this really easy to do, but I struggled a bit healing Northrend instances due to the extra group damage (aoe healing is not my strong point unless I'm specced for it), it was still doable though - just needed a few apologies to the dps as I was ressing them :)