How To: Shadow Priest in Karazhan

I've been looking over the traffic reports for this blog, and it seems that many people get here because they are looking for advice on what Shadow Priests should do in Kara. This one's for all of you.

First things first: remember that Shadow Priests (and Frost Mages and Warlocks) have the potential to significantly outgear most other classes at a Kara level. This includes tanks especially. Because we can complete our FSW set at 70, we're sitting on 3 purples the moment we step through the door to Kara. Many tanks won't be geared this well — there are a ton of tank drops in Kara that will help them catch up, but they may not be there just yet.

Because of this gear imbalance, a Shadow Priest will generally have to be extremely careful with their threat when running Kara with a fresh group. When you start to get Kara on farm it won't be so much of an issue, but it definitely is when you are just starting out. Keep an eye on your threat meter (you cannot run as a Shadow Priest without one) and make sure you are never at the top of the list.

Here are some Shadow Priest tips for each fight:

Attumen

Do what all of the other ranged DPS are doing. That is, give the tanks a few moments to build threat, then go to town and make sure you don't out-threat them. You probably won't need to keep up VE during Attumen, as it should be just the tanks that are taking damage, and they probably aren't in your group.

When Attumen and Midnight join, make sure you stack up on their rear with everyone else. Their charge is nasty and you're squishy.

Moroes

Priests, Shadow and Holy, can turn Moroes from a nightmare into a breeze. You have exactly one job in the Moroes fight: keep your target shackled. You've got the focus shackle macro, right?

#showtooltip Shackle Undead
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead][target=focus,help][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead

Generally, I find that if you reapply your shackle as each of the other mobs go down, you are probably okay. Or, if the rest of the DPS is going slowly, just count out 3 Mind Blasts between reapplications of your shackle. It's better to reapply the shackle far too soon than even a little too late. Your DPS for this fight is almost unimportant — always interrupt your spells to reshackle if you need to.

VE can be useful here to counteract the bleed effect from Garrote, but do be careful that you don't use it too soon and pull agrro from one of the mobs.

Most of the time, I don't SWD for this fight. It's not just the Garotte, but there is also and the potential for a long fight if the DPS is on the low side, meaning you need to be mana-conscious. If you run out of mana, you can't reapply your shackle.

Maiden

Priests and Paladins are crucial for Maiden. If you are the only one, you are going to have a rough time of things. The DOT that Maiden applies must be dispelled. Again, that means that if you have to interrupt your DPS to dispel, that's okay. It helps to have an addon like Decursive so that you can see and dispel with a single click.

Other than that, just stand with your back to a pillar and go nuts.

VE is useful here, as you aren't worried about threat.

SWD is a double-edged sword: if you can time it right, it will get you out of the silence phase. But if you mistime it, especially if you happen to get DOTted at the same time, you can one-shot yourself. Use it with extreme caution.

Opera: Wizard of Oz

There isn't much for a Shadow Priest beyond DPS here. You might be asked to fear Tito when he comes out, if there are no Warlocks in your party. I don't normally throw in VE or SWD until after Dorothy goes down. (She may not have an aggro table, but the others certainly do, and remember that your VE draws aggro from every single mob, not just one one you are targeting.)

Opera: Big Bad Wolf

You may want to use your focused chain-shield macro here to help the transformed player stay up. Beyond that, do your best to stay away from the Wolf and DPS him down. If everyone can stay away from the Wolf you don't need to be worried about aggro, so VE and SWD as much as you would like.

Opera: Romulo and Julianne

Tank-n-spank. If you know that you aren't going to have mana issues, and have a pair of good tanks, you can DOT up both of them to help get them down faster.

Curator

Ignore everything going on around you except Curator. No matter what the RL tells the other ranged DPS to do (kill the sparks), you need to focus on Curator. If the other DPS is slow, you may need to shield yourself if you get a spark, but you shouldn't have to switch targets.

Keep up VE at all times, as there's going to be a fair amount of raid damage. You can SWD for most of the fight, but you may want to drop it towards the end when Curator begins to evocate. At that point you will be doing massive DPS, and you don't want to one-shot yourself.

Shade of Aran

Do not move during Flame Wreath!

Beyond that, do what everyone else is doing. When you see yourself get targeted by Shade, shield immediately — you're about to take a bunch of damage. Don't bother trying to Fade. You can try to fear the elementals when they pop, but don't count on it working 100% of the time.

You probably want to keep up VE for most of the fight, but be careful with it as it comes time for elementals to pop. You have the potential to draw immediate aggro from every one of them if VE is up, they pop, and you SWD crit. It should go without saying that if you see yourself get targeted, that would not be the best time to SWD.

Illhoof

Unlike Curator, for Illhoof you must switch targets to the chains whenever they come up. Yeah, your DPS is going to probably drop significantly for this fight. Beyond that, do what ranged DPS is doing.

Netherspite

Make sure you get a rotation in the blue beam, that you have VE up, and that you DO NOT use SWD when you are in it. Never stack higher than 30 or 35 stacks of the buff before stepping out of it. Give your tank time to get aggro when the banish phase is over — don't do anything dumb before the red beam comes back up.

Oh, and remember to check out your DPS while standing in the blue beam. You won't see that again until Sunwell.

Prince Malchezzar

You may have to help dispel DOTs on the MT — this is especially crucial at the 63% range before Phase 2 is started, as you don't want the tank going into Phase 2 with anything less than full health. If you get the axes on you, shield and ignore them.

VE is normally not really useful until after Phase 1 is over, at which point you should keep it up until the end of the fight. Watch the SWD — if you mistime it and SWD as an enfeeble hits, you're down.

Nightbane

Watch your aggro during the air phases and do not DOT Nightbane during this time. Keep VE up the entire fight. SWD should be timed so that you know you won't be standing in the fire when the backlash hits. That is, it's safer right after a charred earth has just popped and you aren't in it.

Magtheridon is now officially on farm

Got an invite last night to do Magtheridon with We Raid Naked. They were very well-organized, and were able to two-shot Mags after a 1% wipe. You might want to glance over the WWS reports for the encounter. Why? Because ...

Yours truly was #1 for damage both for the night and for the kill.

No, I am not quite sure how it happened, either. Sexy though, eh?

I had done my second respec the night before, going to a raiding build instead of a flat PvE build. I reconfigured to put 4/5 points into Improved Mind Blast, reducing its cooldown by 2 seconds, and 5/5 into Shadow Power, increasing the crit chance of my big spells by 15%. The loss of Silence is going to take some getting used to.

I took some time earlier in the night to run out to Dr Boom to practice with the new talents, as the ImpMB changes my rotation completely. But, the time paid off. I managed to out-DPS the other SPriest at Mags by a fair margin, even though he outgears me by roughly 100 +Shadow. Holy practice-makes-perfect, Batman!

The increased crit on the SWD apparently gave a few of the healers heart palpatations, however. I spoke with two of them, independently, and each brought up that they spent a significant amount of their time healing me. It doesn't help that I apparently stood in the falling debris a little too often. (Spell Detail video setting on Low FTL.) Looking at the WWS, I need to figure out how to convince them to ignore healing me directly and just let the raid heals get me.

I think I should have all of my Trial of the Naaru quests done before next week's Mags, which would be the awesomest of the awesome.

Apanthrope, a definition

I'm a word snob. A linguaphile, if you will. I don't apologize for it, but I do apologize that I forget that not everyone else is.

So, for the record:

Apanthrope (AH-pan-throwp): A person who does not feel any compulsion, positive or negative, toward other people and does not actively seek out their company.
See also apathy.
Contrast with misanthrope (a person who wishes other people harm) and philanthropist (a person who helps other people).

Now you know.

As far as pronouncing it ... the last part is one solid syllable. The stress is on the first syllable. If I can get Blogger to embed a Flash Audio clip of me saying it, I'll do that. If it's easier for you, think of it as AHP-ahn-throwp. It's NOT:

• ah-PAN-throwp (should be first, not second syllable stressed)
• ah-pan-thro-pee (pseudo-Latin?)
• ah-pan-thro-pay (French?)
• AY-pan-throwp (should be a short "ah", not long "ay")

So you can see why my blog is titled "Apanthrope, Shadow Priest". The "Apanthrope" is both my character name, as well as a description.

Update: Well, I can't include an MP3, but it will do video. Goofy, but there you go.

Magtheridon, round 2, fight!

Tonight was Magtheridon with Origin.

Long story short: we totally win at the WoW.

I got #5 overall for damage done, and #7 for damage on the final try. I might have taunted the other SPriest, Casprin, a bit too much about not mashing his buttons hard enough. After beating him squarely on the initial attempts, he got me by 3k damage, or about 0.7%. Still, I'm extremely pleased with my performance. I still need to work on my rotation under pressure, but I'm getting noticeably better.

Also, I am now completely convinced that SWD is uber for raids. WWS says that I did 31k self-inflicted damage, but healed myself for 61k. If I'm reading it right, I also gave each of my party just about 20k in mana, or the equivalent of 7 Super Mana Potions each, or 160 MP5. Win!

Practice: Black Morass

We ran regular Black Morass again twice for some more people that needed the Kara key quests. This time, I was pure DPS and tried to work in SWD as much as I could. My rotation wasn't perfect, but it seemed pretty good.

I feel like I've learned something and maybe progressed a little ... but I would also like to hear from someone who has more experience reading WWS reports. How did I do?

The first run with the Paladin tank was rough. He just couldn't regen mana fast enough to hold aggro in the beginning, so was doing a low-mana rotation, which was in turn making it harder for him to outpace my threat. (With Salv and no damage buffs.) Around the fourth portal I told him that the conservative route just wasn't cutting it (I was spending more time /dancing than doing damage), and told him to go all out. That enabled me to put up VE, which got him heals and thus mana, and everything moved on quite a bit faster. Threat was still a problem, and I ended up pulling aggro in the last 10% more than once, but we had the DPS to burn them down.

The second run with the Druid tank was a 4-man effort, but was actually a little easier. The tank had a much easier time holding agrro, so I was really able to go all out on all of the portals.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Imba?

I just realized that I've been sustaining a rolling 300 +Shadow gain per month pretty much since I started the game. If I was a naive idiot, I would say that means that I only have 6 or so weeks until I down Kil'jaeden.

Yeah, right.

Seriously, though, thanks to my be.imba.hu profile, the gear threads on shadowpriest.com, and my own data mining, I can see that 1100 +Shadow is realistically attainable. At this point, all it would take is gold for enchant mats and gems.

But here's the thing: I have the raw power, but not the control.

That 1100 number might get me a spot in a TK raid, but quite frankly my skills aren't up to it just yet. I need to practice. Not just practice going all out (Dr. Boom), but also practice running around and dealing damage when I can. Kara runs are good for that, as there is a nice variety between the boss fights — stand-n-spam for Maiden, run-n-dot for Nightbane and Shade, back-n-forth for Prince, multitask for Moroes.

Problem being, it's a week before you can do them again. And how well is your party going to take it if you ask “hey, can you all just stop DPSing and wipe, because I really need the practice”?

I haven't set foot in ZA yet, but maybe it's the same?

Actually ... as I type this out, a thought occurs to me. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, as it is kindof a “duh”: I really just need to PUG (or, preferably, guild-assist) every frickin' thing I can. Kara, ZA, Mags, Gruul, and any Heroic I can get into. Is that the answer? Brute force it?

Not that I mind, of course. I've yet to run into any content that I am tired of doing. Heck, I still do 15-25 dailies every single day. I'm even looking forward to revisiting BRD for Brewfest, and I hated BRD when I was leveling.

I don't know where I'm going with this little self-deprecating diatribe. Just still feeling like I've fast-tracked myself to stuff that I'm not ready for. Worried that people are going to figure out that I don't actually have a clue what I am doing.

So ...

Enchants to get me past 1100:

Enchant/Item	Dmg	Gold	SPS 10g	LPS 25g	GPE 11g	Fi 27g	Wa 25g	Ma 17g	Sh 25g	Ne 50g
Runic Spellthread	15/+10	220g						10		1
Bracers, Spellpower	15	462g		6		6	6
Gloves, Spellpower	15	318g		6	6			6
Cloak, Subtlety	-	262g	4		2				8
Runed Crimson Spinel x2	18/+8	185g
Total:	+48	1447g	4	12	8	6	6	16	8	1

That would drop me at 1106. No, I am not including Soulfrost for now — the mats are ridiculous for the extra spell damage, and I'd rather wait until I got my Badge or Arena (ha!) blade.

From there, assuming no gear upgrades, it'd be 300g for each of 12 Runed Crimson Spinel and +3 damage. Oh, yay. I can't express how much fun 3600g is going to be to farm, all in the name of getting to 1142. And along the way, I'll hopefully be getting new dropped gear.

Oy.

But it's good to at least have a plan, right? It's worked out well this far.

Oh, and I've noticed that I'm getting dead less and less in BGs lately. To the point where it's kindof creepy, actually. In the last couple of days I've managed to take down several Warriors, Rogues, Druids, and Mages much faster and easier than I was expecting. I've had a few zero-death runs. When my Prot Warrior guildmate and I run BGs it's sick how well we work together and the path of carnage we create. Sure, I hit quite a bit harder than I used to, but maybe I'm actually getting better at it?

Kara on Crack

I got an invite this evening to do a badge run in Kara with some guys from Gank This. A scant two and a half hours later I had 22 badges in my bag and my new Handwraps of Flowing Thought.

Yeah, two and a half hours later. W. T. F?

I'm sure it's probably not a world record, but it's certainly a new one for me. The group was, obviously, wicked OP. The Druid tank had 22k health and didn't stop for anything. People went AFK and then had to run to catch up because the rest of us kept moving. The healers were bored, and only one of them ported out with less than 77 Mana Biscuits on him ... and he had 76.

With the exception of my Shackle and the Hunter's Freeze Trap on Moroes, we didn't use any other CC at any point.

I died a few times, but not excessively. Sometimes from my own stupidity (like not waiting for the red beam to hit the tank on Netherspite), sometimes from bad luck (on the trash before the Opera). I uploaded the WWS for the entire run if you'd like. No, I still didn't use any SWD, but based on recent comments, I certainly will now.

Oh, and after the gear upgrade and some more regemming, I am now sitting on 1058 +Shadow. In theory, I could get into TK right now. I don't see that as likely, but it is possible.

Again, I say: W. T. F? How did I get here?

I honestly never thought I'd make it this far before Wrath. And yet ... I keep progressing. It's awesome, albeit very surprising.

Personal WWS Reports

For better or for worse, I've decided to start uploading and making public my WWS reports. Given my limited raiding experience, I'm hoping to use them to see how I could improve.

First item of business: use more Shadow Word: Death. I know, I know. It's hard, healing my way through to 70, then switching to Shadow and expecting healers to keep up with me as I periodically hit myself upside the head. Especially on fights where we're not sure if the healers are going to go /oom before the end.

Yeah, I get that more DPS == more mana for healers, but I'd need to see some pretty definitive numbers showing that there wasn't a net loss in mana due to extra healing before I'd be okay with it. For fights like Lurker where I am guaranteed to not get aggro, sure, maybe. But other new stuff? I'll need to work up the courage, first.

Primal Priest

A comment on yesterday's entry struck home:

"I can see no end in sight to the endless farming for primals"

Yeah. Pretty much.

Gear	Fire	Water	Shadow	Mana	Earth	Air	Total
FSW Shoulders	2	10	2				14
FSW Boots	4	12	4				20
FSW Robe	7	16	7				30
Belt of Blasting	15						15
SS Hood	15	5		15	5	5	45
SS Legs	15	5		15	5	5	45
Black Void			3	3			6
Nimble Thought	4			12			16
Total	62	48	16	45	10	10	191

191 Primals. Yeah, that's a ridiculous number. Don't try to figure out how much that would cost you on the AH—it would only depress you.

That 191 number assumes Shadowcloth specialty and making your own Spellcloth. If you can find a Spellcloth Tailor that will make it for you for only the mats, you lower your cost for the Spellstrike set by 28 Primals.

In theory, if you are proactive enough, you could specialize in Spellcloth first, before you can even wear the FSW gear. You'd make the 24 Spellcloth you need (12 trips), then respec to make Shadowcloth. The 150g respec cost would almost certainly be cheaper than the 28 Primals you'd save. But if you do that, then you need to not make any Shadowcloth during that time, as you'll be losing the Shadowcloth bonus. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it is a theoretical possibility.

Unfortunately, I can't really offer any comforting words here. It is what it is. What I can say is that you probably won't farm all 191 of them. Instead, farm enough to get your FSW pieces as they become available to you. Once you hit 70, do dailies instead. Even as a fresh 70, you can pull in 75g+ per hour doing dailies. You won't have to buy all of your Primals, as you'll get a few motes as you do the dailies:

• Fire: The Throne of Kil'Jaeden quests involve killing Fire elementals.
• Shadow: The Multiphase quest puts you by Oshu'gun and all of the Void Reavers around there.
• Water: When you do the Fishing quest, make sure you fish out any pools of fish, especially the Pure Water ones.
• Mana: The Mana Wyrms in Bash'ir Landing drop these while you are collecting Mana Cells. Or, when you go up to Netherstorm to get your Sunfury Attack Plans, stop by the Violet Tower and kill a few elementals in the area.
• Earth and Air: Grab these from the elementals in Nagrand when you are doing your Skinning and/or Cooking quests.

At each stop, make yourself hang around for an additional 10 minutes and farm a few more motes. They'll add up over time.

Don't get frustrated with another SPriest or Lock comes along and says something dumb like "omg you can get more primals/gold if you do ...". Ignore them. Almost invariably, people with that attitude have forgotten what it was like to be a fresh 70 with only 500-600 +Shadow. Farming sucks. Period. It doesn't get "easy mode" for SPriests until roughly T5-level, right about the time you don't need to farm Primals any more.

Yeah. /sigh.

There is one exception. Before I started this blog, I made a short 1-minute video showing how Shadow Priests can farm motes of water with a surprising efficiency. Even before level 70, you'll be good enough at it that the spawn rate of the mobs will be the limiting factor, not your skill.

Oh, and as a general rule:

it is very worth it to take the time to make Primal Mooncloth while you are making your Shadowcloth and Spellcloth.

Healers and bag-makers will trade you straight up for it. The primals to make it are almost always cheaper than buying the Shadowcloth or Spellcloth off the AH. As you pass through Shattrath, do a quick advert in /Trade: "WTT your Spellcloth or Shadowcloth for my Primal Mooncloth". If you get a bite, take a few minutes to complete the trade. If not, no harm done and no time wasted.

(Edit: Updated to include Bracers of Nimble Thought.)

Exalted, two new areas, one long night

Thanks to running the SSO dailies for the past two weeks, last night I got this nice message:
Which also means that I now get these goofy messages from the NPCs:
But that's not even the big news. Last night, thanks to knowing people who know people, I made it into some new content.

I was literally one minute away from logging out for the night when Udevil got on vent and said that Origin was running a Lurker raid (SSC) and had several open slots due to a scheduling snafu. (They had both Kara and SSC down for the same night.) I glanced at my whiteboard and saw that the Spell Damage requirement for SSC was 900. I just got my [Spellstrike Pants] the day before and hadn't had a chance to properly gem them, but I was standing at 856. I had just finished a boatload of dailies and had some 350g and 20 Badges on me. It was a theoretical possibility that I might get close to 900. I asked Udevil to confirm that 900 was the requirement, which he did, and the guys thought I should go for it.

Ranii stepped up and offered to cut some gems for me, as the selection on the AH was pretty thin for reds. 300g got me one [Crimson Spinel], and 15 Badges got me a second. Slons offered to whip up some [Mystic Spellthread], and Ranii had the [Primal Mana] for it.

Holy crap, this might actually happen.

Skipping to the good part, it did happen. I was summoned and within a minute had two [Runed Crimson Spinel] and my spellthread. I got off the second elevator in SSC with exactly +900 Spell Damage.
Hi, ma!Wicked cool, eh?

Unfortunately, 4 wipes later we still hadn't downed Lurker. On the first 3 wipes I was in the last 3 or 4 people to die (being the very last on the first wipe), so I felt pretty confident that I had it down. But then 90 seconds into our fourth attempt I was the first one down. I was falling into the water as the Spout hit me. I hadn't tried to cut it close -- I jumped as soon as I heard the call. But I hadn't been paying enough attention to DBM and thus didn't have enough warning, as I was only a few degrees off from the tank that bought it at roughly the same time. We were the only two down, but the truth is that we just didn't have enough DPS.

Eventually the RL called it, as the fish had respawned. Everyone ported to Shatt and was told to head up to Gruul's. Awesome!

Maulgar and his crew took three attempts. There was some confusion as to healers and tanks and Hunter misdirects, so the Mage tank kept going down. I macroed a PWS for my focus, set it to the Mage tank, and spammed it whenever the timer was up. I doubt it helped all that much, but every little bit, right?

On to Gruul!
Grr! Arrgh!

Gruul was a one-shot. We didn't have much time left on his Enrage timer, and the tank got to the point where he was being hit for almost 10k a shot, but the healers kept him up and the band played on. I managed to avoid most of the cave-ins, only missing the animation on two of them. I ran out of mana literally as Gruul went down: a Flay was cut short with an oom message (stupid bug), so I know I had exactly one left. Gruul dropped a second into it. That was just too cool for words.

I came out in DPS just behind the other Shadow Priest, Caspin, who was the raid leader. For it being my first time at Gruul and not being sure of myself, I'm not unhappy with that.

It was a long night, but it was fun. I honestly didn't think I'd make it into SSC any time soon. I'd been hoping for a Gruul PUG, but this worked out so much better.

Crafting Cooldowns FTL

I've been farming and saving for a week to get my mats for my Spellstrike set. Not being an Alchemist, I didn't know that Transmute: Primal Might has a 20-hour cooldown. D'oh!

wtb TEN Alchemists that can transmute Primal Might.

Long story short: when you start to work on your Spellstrike set, do the transmutes as you get the Primals. Don't save them all up for one big orgiastic transmute party. Because, you know, it won't be.

What (not) to wear, Public Beta 1

Here's the first semi-real version of the chart I mentioned last time. It is essentially a "how long am I going to wear this, and when can I expect to get it?" chart for SPriests. This image just shows the Feet for now so that you can get a feel for it.

• Horizontally along the bottom you can see the +Shadow damage of the character wearing the specific gear.
• The vertical orientation is meaningless—it's just an order to make a pretty layout.
• The width of each gear bar is the +Shadow range for which people are currently wearing that gear. There is at least one person at the very beginning of that range, and one at the very end of that range. (Except for the perfect squares, which mean that only one person has it equipped, but I didn't want a zero-width sliver.)
• The color theme tells you where you get the item. Bright yellow gear, for example, are quest rewards, while the darker gold are crafted.
• The color gradient shows you how the players are distributed within the range. In this example, you can see that the Footpads of Madness, while they cover a large range, really only have a few small clumps of players wearing them. On the other hand, FSW Boots are worn pretty much consistently across the range.

I have, for now, intentionally left out how many people are wearing the gear. I thought about scaling the bars vertically based on popularity, but I'm not sure what that would communicate. (And, really, I don't think I want to tackle the logic to wrangle a much more complicated layout.) In most cases you can infer how many people are wearing the gear by looking at the distribution gradient.

I'm hoping that this will help the "what gear should I go for next" and "should I swap out X for Y when they are basically the same" type questions over on shadowpriest.com. I'm sure it won't completely eliminate them, but it's bound to help someone other than just me.

I need more data. Many of these items are only equipped by a single person on our server, which doesn't make for a good statistical population. If anyone would like to drop a comment and suggest a particular server that I should include (this data is from Bleeding Hollow), I can do so.

Also, what do you think? Too much clown vomit? Not enough cowbell?

On Priest CC

I'm sure I am not the only person who has a lot of “if I could get others to understand just one thing about my class” moments. In fact, WowWiki has a whole series on it. This week's lesson that I want to shout from the hills is simple:

Mind Control and Shackle Undead work just like every other form of CC.

I know, it sounds like a duh kind of thing, so let me explain.

First, yes, I can pull with either. Just like a Polymorph or Hibernate pull, there are times when you want to take a mob out of the fight from the very first moment, not giving them a chance to do absolutely anything. And, just like both, some mobs are Immune. With Mind Control, I can probably even do a little extra with the abilities that I gain from the mob. It may be nuking or melee or healing, or in very rare cases buffing.

But that's not the problem. Everyone gets that part. The second part is what non-Priests seem to have the hardest time with.

If the Priest is not pulling, then Priest CC is more like Hunter CC than Mage CC.

Wait, what?

Yet again, the Priest shows a bit of flexibility and versatility. Think for a moment about the difference between how a Mage does CC and how a Hunter does CC. For a Mage, gaining the mob's attention before CC is almost always a Very Bad Thing. For a Hunter, almost all of their CC relies on getting the mob's attention. If the Hunter cannot get the mob's attention, then traps become much harder to work, and we're back into Very Bad Thing territory.

Having said that, let me repeat: If the Priest is not pulling, then Priest CC is more like Hunter CC than Mage CC.

Let me break this down by spell. Shackle Undead is the easiest to explain:

Shackle Undead is the Priest's version of a Freeze Trap.

Just like you expect a Hunter to get the mob to rush them, you need to get used to the idea that a good Priest will do the exact same thing. We'll probably tap them on the shoulder with Mind Flay (the blue frickin' laser beam). Yo. What up? Can I talk to you over here for a second?

Wait, wait, I know: “But you're squishy!”. Very, very true. Unlike a Hunter, we don't have a pet for backup. We're definitely putting ourselves at extreme risk. But, that's just how it is done. We've got our bubble and we're smart enough not to bother channelling all 3 seconds of our Mind Flay. The Shackle will come. Just be patient.

We tap the mob for the same reason the Hunter does: when we Shackle, we want the mob to be as far from the action as possible. We want the Mages and Paladins to be able to AoE without fear of breaking the Shackle. We want people to be able to tab-target without accidentally hitting our trapped mob. We also want to be able to keep our eye on it. Unlike a Freeze Trap, we can preemptively re-Shackle our target. In fact, most of us have a beautiful macro that lets us re-Shackle without ever taking out eyes off of our DPS target. (Ever tried to do Moroes without a Shackling Priest? It's a much longer and trickier fight, I assure you.)

So when the mob you've marked for Shackling runs right past you because it's got a blue laser beam hitting it, don't panic. We've got it under control. Pretend it's heading for a Freeze Trap and that the blue laser beam is just a really, really pretty arrow.

Mind Control works almost the exact same: we need to tap the mob first.

In the case of Mind Control, we're tapping the mob for a different reason: range. See, Mind Control is tricksy. Every tick that goes by the mob has a chance to break the Mind Control early. That chance is increased by the range between the Mind Controlled mob and my Priest body. The first thing a good Priest will do after applying a successful Mind Control is run the mob back to stand next to his Priest body.

Yeah, I know. We're back to that whole squishy thing. But again, it's got to be done. It's better that we take that risk than the bigger risk of letting the mob out of Mind Control early.

Wait, there's something you might have missed. Think about the implications of the range problem with Mind Control.

If you want us to melee with a Mind Controlled mob, you need to kite your mob to our mob.

Yeah, sorry, you have to come to us. We can't come to you. If we're standing around at the back of the fight doing nothing, it's probably not because we're /afk. It's probably because our mob doesn't have any ranged abilities and you've got your target too far away for us to feel comfortable running to.

We know that we're supposed to help out by using the mob's abilities. Promise. You don't need to tell us. But help us help you. We'll come a little towards you, maybe 10 yards, but that's it.

Last thing. I'm almost done.

When you ask us to “chain MC”, expect to hear our teeth grinding and a bit of a sigh. Some Priests will do it, but some won't. You've essentially stepped up from asking us to put ourselves at extreme risk to asking us to tank in our squishy cloth. Yes, really. See, did I mention that Mind Control is tricksy?

Chaining Mind Control is more of a theoretical possibility than a proven reality.

Let's go slow-mo here for a moment and recap what needs to be done to chain Mind Control:

1. Walk the mob as far from us as we can without accidentally breaking the Mind Control as per the rules above.
2. Cancel existing Mind Control.
   We could wait for it to end on its own, but at the level you are probably asking us to chain, we'd rather be exactly sure when it will happen. If it breaks even a second too early, we could get turned into paste pretty quick.
   No amount of Fade will help us here. Mind Control creates more threat than Fade can deal with on its own, as we're probably the only one on the mob's threat list.
3. Bubble.
   We have to do this, as we know that we'll never get the next Mind Control off with the mob pounding on us.
4. Wait for the GCD.
5. Cast Mind Control.
6. Wait 3 seconds.

It's that last step that is, sometimes quite literally, the killer part. Mind Control has a 3 second cast time. Sure, in way, way endgame scenarios (Hyjal, Sunwell) we might be stacking enough Spell Haste to reduce that to as little as 2 seconds. But any time before then, probably not.

In most cases, the mob is free to beat on the Priest for a full 4½ seconds.

Yeah, maybe a little less if we've walked the mob far enough away, but not much. For caster mobs, that's 4½ seconds to nuke us, or sheep us, or whatever. For melee mobs, that's 4½ seconds to tear down our bubble and interrupt our casting. If the mob can Kick, Silence, or Counterspell us, it may well be Game Over.

But wait, it gets worse.

Mind Control is subject to diminishing returns with many mobs, just like most other CC. Since we have little way of knowing when the second Mind Control will break, we're really hesitant to do it. So please, please appreciate why we're reluctant to chain Mind Control. It can work out okay, but the vast majority of the time it does not.

And, of course, just like a Freeze Trap, Polymorph, or other CC, the mob is going to come straight for the CCer when either Shackle or Mind Control is done. Please get the mob off of us. kthxbye.

Remember:

• Blue Beam → Pretty Arrow
• Don't Panic. Wait for it.
• Kite to the Mind Controlled mob.
• Chain Mind Control is almost always a Very Bad Idea.

What (not) to wear

The Quest Progression Chart was fun to do, and it taught me more about the game than I probably would have had the patience to scroll through in the tiny little quest window. When people say "I'm stuck on Zuluhed", I actually know wtf they are talking about.

I also learned a very key lesson: doing that kind of thing by hand completely sucks.

Since I've been working on doing data mining of our server's SPriest population, I thought I could put that to some use. To that end, here's a teaser of what I am working on now:



Of course, the final version will include all gear slots, not just feet.

This time it's completely automagically generated. But ... right now it's only seeing around 450 SPriests. I'd like to open it up to get a better sampling of the population, but that takes time.

We'll see how it turns out.

Magtheridon!

I managed to get into a Magtheridon PUG this weekend.



Seeing as how I wondered if I'd ever get into any 25-man content, I was pretty stoked. I did my best to read up and and not make a total n00b out of myself, and think I did a pretty good job. I helped take down the channelers in the correct order. I moved when the AoE hit. I kept up my DOTs. I even kept an eye on the cubes to do backup-clicking as people started to drop.

And I have to say a big Thank You to Ranii for the wicked heals. Every time I looked up, I was at full health and was Ranii's target. Thanks!

We wiped twice before the MT went all emo had computer problems and DCed, leaving his girlfriend on Vent to tell everyone that we were abandoning. Oh well. It was still cool to be there.



And, for the record, I was at roughly 850 +shadow, unbuffed, when I went. I felt just about appropriately geared for my first time. There were a few people that were geared significantly better, but there were also plenty of people that weren't. Unfortunately, I was the only SPriest, so I didn't have another to check out.

Fresh Frozen Shadoweave Gemming

I wanted to expand a bit on my last Frozen Shadoweave post, particularly on the gemming. I had said:

You've probably been reading quite a bit on shadowpriest.com about how your #1 stat is Spell Damage, right? And how if you are putting anything other than red gems in your gear then you are nerfing yourself? Ignore that advice for now. Come back to it later. The first thing you need to work on before you start worrying about Spell Damage is Spell Hit.

I stand by this 100%. Yes, long term you are going to put in a bunch of red gems and go for max damage. But you must hit-cap yourself first.

I'm not speaking from theorycraft — I'm coming at this from experience. There's nothing more frustrating then seeing a bunch RESIST messages flash by and watching your mana bar drain down. (No damage == useless VT.)

Think about the point at which you are putting together your FSW set. If you've been on the ball, you should already have your shoulders and boots by the time you hit 70. I did it, without a raiding guild to fund me, and it wasn't that much farming. (I am certainly not going to say it was fun — but the first few minutes of running around in my FSW completely made up for the hours of farming.)

But let's say you don't. Let's say that you ground your way to 70 without giving your FSW a thought. Where does that put you?

You've only run Hellfire, Coilfang, and Auchindoun, as Tempest Keep only just now became available to you. The gear in those first three sets of instances is okay, but it's nothing stellar. Certainly not when compared to FSW. As a fresh 70, you can't even look at Kara without keeling over and having to corpse run.

Odds are, you don't have any purples. Okay, maybe one or two, but almost certainly nothing with sockets. If you've been grinding your level instead of your FSW mats, you probably haven't been worried about your rep yet, either. That means no purples from rep rewards. (Who grinds rep before 70? Why?)

With that kind of history, there's only a slim chance that you are hit-capped. You might be, but it would be really odd. It's not like you're going to get hit-capping blues or greens while grinding the mats or gold.

Thus, your first gems in your FSW will probably be yellow, not red. Sure, the reds will come along soon enough. But for now, play by the rules and put the right gems in your FSW. When you do your first Kara run and only get a few resists instead of one after another, you'll know you did the right thing.

But, again, this comes with a disclaimer. Everyone is different. I'm speaking in wide generalities here. Maybe you have gotten some really lucky drops or have been consciously working on hit-capping yourself before getting your FSW. It's certainly possible. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the guy behind you that got to 70 and said "now what?".

My first respec

I may min-max a little when it comes to gear, but I don't when it comes to spec. I assume it comes from the comfort in the fact that I was able to heal my way through 70 even with full Shadow spec and gear. Your spec may be important, but your skill is more important.

So, as I leveled Shadow, I put points into what I thought would be useful, not necessarily what some cookie-cutter spec progression told me to. Yeah, I had points in [Improved Renew] and [Healing Focus]. I'm sorry, but no matter what anyone tells you, those two skills are far more useful to a leveling Priest than [Meditation] and [Inner Focus]. Don't get me wrong,Med and IF are great, but they just aren't that useful until raiding beyond 5-mans.

Here's a fact: I almost never ran out of mana mid-fight in dungeons before 10-mans. Even when healing. And I almost never had to use mana pots. Yeah, it happened occasionally, but it was always a good sign that our strategy wasn't working. Med and IF would only have prolonged the agony.

Sorry, I'm a little bitter.

In a Heroic PUG this weekend I had a pair of people gang up on me and get up in my business about why I didn't have Med and IF. I explained, very politely, that I was still in my leveling spec and hadn't yet respecced for raiding. Instead of moving on, the two went all holier-than-thou on me talking about how they have SPriest alts and I am nerfing my spec if I don't have IF/Med, etc, etc, etc. I, again politely, told them that it wasn't like I was going to keep this spec forever, but that it had served me well thus far and I'm not the type to respec before every group. That wasn't good enough, and the verbal abuse continued for about 10 minutes.

And yet ... there I was. I was pulling my weight and getting it done, even with my nerfed spec. Go figure.

I keep coming back to the fact that I've been able to surprise people with my skill level, despite being a n00b when it comes to the content. It happened in Kara. It happened in Heroic Sethekk. If I can do that, does my nerfed spec invalidate that? Of course not.

I have an entire post brewing about how too many people in this game are looking for the “one true spec/gear” and forget that there's a progression involved.

But, eventually, I did end up respeccing. The truth is that I don't heal nearly as much as I used to, and [Improved Vampiric Embrace] was getting me into more trouble than it was worth. So, I am now a 14/0/47 cookie-cutter SPriest. Huzzah.

Maybe it's just bitterness, but I am not all that impressed with IF. It's one free spell every 3 minutes, maybe with a bit more crit to count it as a spell and a half. That's not going to make or break a fight. Med is arguably more useful, kicking me from something like 5 MP5 while casting up to 56. That's two free MF per minute, or a free SWP.

But for that, I gave up a 70% chance to get off a heal while getting beaten on. Is it worth it? I'm not entirely sure.

Quo Vadimus

Where are we going?

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm trying to see as much as I can before Wrath. To that end, what is the gear that I am working towards? Well, it starts with a few rules:

• 25-man loot doesn't count
• 10-man loot doesn't count (I'll do the 10-man content, but I can't rely on the drops)
• I won't be picking up Engineering
• Presume that I can farm an infinite number of Badges, mats, and gold

In other words: stick to stuff that I can pretty much guarantee. Given those rules, how far would I get?

For the following table: PD=Pseudodamage, Dmg=Actual bonus spell damage, Hit=Spell Hit, Sock=Socket, Ench=Enchant added damage.

EDIT: Table removed because I am an idiot. It will return.

Heroics have begun!

As I've alluded to in my past couple of posts, I did my first Heroic run last weekend. The Daily was for Slave Pens, and I'm still locked out of Kara until Wednesday, so I figured it would be worth a shot.

Heroics are actually easier than I expected. For a Shadowpriest, you really aren't doing anything different. In a nutshell, Heroics make the group coordinate and work together better than Regulars where you can get away with winging it. Thus, if you are an “always bring your A-game” kind of person anyway, Heroics won't give you any problems.

It's oh so nice that everyone gets badges every time. Badge gear is still wicked expensive — figure no less than 6 to 8 full Heroics before you get to the first gear, and weeks of farming before you get to the really awesome stuff. But I'll still take that over the drama and chance of farming for loot. (Even with as lucky as I have been with Kara.)

Just one piece of advice: Take the time to get all of the keys before you PUG any of the Heroics. The keys aren't hard to get, especially now with the lowered rep requirements. If you've been following normal progression, you probably already have enough rep to get all of them.

But when you go for that first Heroic PUG, you don't want to walk through the instance portal and not zone in. It's embarrassing. Trust me. Get all of the keys and you won't have to worry what the daily is or what groups are just looking for one more DPS/CC and if you can get in or not.

How do you know if you're ready? In case you missed it in my last post, you are “Heroic-geared” when you are greenless, hit-capped, and sitting on roughly 750-800 unbuffed spell damage. By the time you've gotten your keys and have run Kara a few times, you're probably ready.

Never settle. Ever.

Clicky-clicky for the larger version.  Or, just know that I hit 820 this morning and am now over my hit-cap, thanks to my brand spankin' new [Belt of Blasting].

After three straight days of 250g Daily farming and 15 badges, I was able to afford all of the mats.  I sent out the call on /Trade and Osiro, #10 SPriest on the server, answered.  Less than 5 minutes later I had my belt, and a few minutes after that I had my gems.

Not two weeks ago at my first Kara run I was at 653.  This morning I am at 820, hit-capped, and completely greenless.  I am sooo jazzed.

Oh, and Kara unlocks this afternoon.  Yay!

Gloves next, maybe?  I doubt I'll be lucky enough to snag some [Handwraps of Flowing Thought], but I can dream, right?