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Shadow or Disc for duo'ing w/ mage?Follow
Long story short, my wife has 2 weeks left on her Recruit a friend account and has decided she wants a mage to 60 before it runs out...and furthermore has decided I need a Priest(wtf??). Anywho, I pulled her through instances and now we basically have 2 lv.45 characters and I am instanced-out, so time to start questing. Question is, she will probably be nuking/AoE'ing everything while I spectate, so what will be better to level with, Disc for the damage reduction stuff or shadow so I can help with some damage on bosses or whatever? Have any of you duo'ed with a mage before? How is it? Any recommendations on making this as pain free/easy as possible. After getting her a lv.60 Hunter/pally/shaman and now soon to be mage..I hope to god I never see a pre-BC instance ever again...
I'd go Disc to duo with a mage. You can keep the mage and yourself shielded, which will greatly improve survivability. You can also do damage when not shielding or healing, and you will be ready to go in instance groups.
I duo'd with a mage and my warlock on several named elites for quests last night. It's a similar situation, since both of us were damage dealing castors. It was a dps race, and we survived. But, it would have been much easier if one of us had been a disc priest.
Of course, you could try both and see what works best for you. If you plan to stick with your priest, dual spec is a great way to go. I was disc and shadow, but have found it incredibly helpful to have disc and holy available. I love disc, but on a boss like Lotheb, it's great to switch to holy and start PoH 2 seconds before the 3 second heal window, followed by CoH.
Edited, Jun 10th 2009 8:20am by dadanox
I duo'd with a mage and my warlock on several named elites for quests last night. It's a similar situation, since both of us were damage dealing castors. It was a dps race, and we survived. But, it would have been much easier if one of us had been a disc priest.
Of course, you could try both and see what works best for you. If you plan to stick with your priest, dual spec is a great way to go. I was disc and shadow, but have found it incredibly helpful to have disc and holy available. I love disc, but on a boss like Lotheb, it's great to switch to holy and start PoH 2 seconds before the 3 second heal window, followed by CoH.
Edited, Jun 10th 2009 8:20am by dadanox
Disc, aye. We get loads of "what works well together" questions and the answer's almost always "everything", but in the case of a mage I'd definitely go disc. Shadow only increases your DPS which will be pointless for most fights (you'll have serious amounts of overkill because a mage alone can 3 or 4-shot most mobs) and holy is specialized in raid healing which simply has no place while leveling. Aside from the fact that disc allows you to AOE grind a lot more easily you also have Power Infusion at your disposal to give your mage a boost when needed.
I'll go the other way and say spec shadow. Assuming she is going frost she will take essentially no damage at all. Disc is obviously more advantageous in setting up an instance group but it sounds like you're not too interested in that atm. Frost mage is a questing grinding machine and you will be able to lighten the burden on her mana pool by chipping in damage on either spec. Disc is the more conservative choice while shadow will probably speed things up a bit more.
After grinding to 80 as a frost mage I can say healing is hardly ever required so you may find yourself sitting there with your thumb up your, or her, butt.
After grinding to 80 as a frost mage I can say healing is hardly ever required so you may find yourself sitting there with your thumb up your, or her, butt.
Thanks for the replies, i was leaning disc myself. I chatted with a guy in game last night and he told me to go shadow until Mind Flay(??) then go full out disc. Not quite sure the reasoning for getting mind flay other than having more slowing effects on a mob(as the wife is spec'ed frost). You guys think that idea flies?
It was a long time ago now, but I levelled my priest with a mage. Went for some mixed-up mostly disc build, then later filled talents for holy smiting - but we did alot of instances with me as healer and talent builds have changed a huge amount since then. The mage went for a max-dps build fire/arcane - their survivability relied on me, not their crowd control, so frost talents would've been wasted (I assume frost is still their 'survival' tree, but I've no idea how things have changed for mages). Its a nice levelling combo - plenty of advantage from each others buffs, enjoy their crowd control taking mobs down together or shield them up and let them AoE-nuke everything in sight. Only disadvantage I can remember is that at lower level we wanted the same gear drops!
Seems to me disc priests are very slow to kill mobs solo, using a mixed build with some damage talents from another tree might make sense for levelling especially if the wife wants to stay frost. I'm sure some of the shadow priests can advise.
Seems to me disc priests are very slow to kill mobs solo, using a mixed build with some damage talents from another tree might make sense for levelling especially if the wife wants to stay frost. I'm sure some of the shadow priests can advise.
The awesome spell for disc is Penance. If it was me, as disc, I'd do what ever I could to get Penance as soon as possible.
If I was going to walk down the shadow tree for anything other than spirit tap for leveling, I'd just go all shadow. Spirit tap while duoing with a mage would probably only benefit you, if you are using holy nova (unglyphed) to contribute to aoe damage. Other than that, you don't have much chance against the mage to get the killing blow. You could also get a trinket that returns mana when using holy nova, and just get comfortable with the idea that healing priests need to carry water.
While a frost mage can crowd control mobs and aoe grind, a frost mage with pw:shield is even better.
Going disc will work, but remember that going shadow in your duo would also work. You can still PW:Shield as shadow. You simply won't have as good a shields and won't be able to throw shields on multiple people quickly. You won't have your focus as healing. That is something I would want if I had plans to heal as an 80 (which for you wont be too far off).
Edited, Jun 11th 2009 8:20am by dadanox
If I was going to walk down the shadow tree for anything other than spirit tap for leveling, I'd just go all shadow. Spirit tap while duoing with a mage would probably only benefit you, if you are using holy nova (unglyphed) to contribute to aoe damage. Other than that, you don't have much chance against the mage to get the killing blow. You could also get a trinket that returns mana when using holy nova, and just get comfortable with the idea that healing priests need to carry water.
While a frost mage can crowd control mobs and aoe grind, a frost mage with pw:shield is even better.
Going disc will work, but remember that going shadow in your duo would also work. You can still PW:Shield as shadow. You simply won't have as good a shields and won't be able to throw shields on multiple people quickly. You won't have your focus as healing. That is something I would want if I had plans to heal as an 80 (which for you wont be too far off).
Edited, Jun 11th 2009 8:20am by dadanox
Quote:
Thanks for the replies, i was leaning disc myself. I chatted with a guy in game last night and he told me to go shadow until Mind Flay(??) then go full out disc. Not quite sure the reasoning for getting mind flay other than having more slowing effects on a mob(as the wife is spec'ed frost). You guys think that idea flies?
No. Because you don't need Mind Flay at all and going shadow first means you give up 5% crit from Holy Specialization in the holy tree and delay all sorts of nice disc stuff needlessly.
Mozared wrote:
Quote:
Thanks for the replies, i was leaning disc myself. I chatted with a guy in game last night and he told me to go shadow until Mind Flay(??) then go full out disc. Not quite sure the reasoning for getting mind flay other than having more slowing effects on a mob(as the wife is spec'ed frost). You guys think that idea flies?
No. Because you don't need Mind Flay at all and going shadow first means you give up 5% crit from Holy Specialization in the holy tree and delay all sorts of nice disc stuff needlessly.
This. It's either Mostly Disc, with a little dabbling in Holy towards the end, or Shadow with a bit of dabbling in Disc to get Meditation and maybe Inner Focus.
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