This is the idea: Assume you are not the only shadow priest in the raid, and that you want to be able to heal as well. How would you talent and gear?

This of course is something I think I will be trying. I've got my primal mooncloth set and a pretty decent set of healing gear, and since I don't know that going shadow will be permanent, I'm looking for a cheap way to try it out.

It's motivated by the Gruul fight. I just feel dang useless at the beginning, trying to dps with DoT and wand, yet I see mages stuck outside the shadow priest group that end up oom on a fight that is pretty much just a straight up DPS check. A holy/disc priest's best role on this fight is to buff the raid, and then sit out of the fight . Let the druids handle shatter damage, and the pallies keep up the tanks. But I've got a lot of investment and interest in healing... so here is the plan. Keep as much healing as possible while still being capable of being a mana battery and decent DPS in fights where that is better.

Improved Fort? Nah, bring candles to donate.

Shadow weaving? Ok it'll stack faster if I take it... but the other shadow priest(s) can stack it up soon enough for a fight that matters that I'd rather save those talent points.

Misery? Let the other guy keep it up.

This frees me up for 20 points in holy. I also assume I can leech Divine Spirit off of someone. Over a typical raiding spriest build, I'm not losing hardly anything in a raid situation. Over a healing priest build, I am losing spiritual guidance, spiritual healing, and holy concentration. I do, howver, retain a lot of healing goodies, most importantly the 2.5s cast time for GH and 15% reduced mana cost.

Here is my planned talent distribution:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=rZfLxccZxGxtM0Rhtxo

Comments and feedback? My main concern is gearing. I've got a smattering of decent damage gear, but it's been skewed towards a smiter build for non-boss fights -- it lacks hit and has too much crit. Capping hit (my first priority) is looking a little bit painful, I'll have to go track down some specific drops. Not having Frozen Shadoweave puts me in a bit of a gear hole. But I'm basically treating this as a utility build, I don't expect to top the DPS charts.

Considering the raid compositions we frequently have, I think this could work out very well for you. Hopefully it'll bring back some of the fun for you.

You've got your improved renew, resist pushback on healing, quicker cast time for the heals and the crit/inspiration which is so very nice in raids. I really don't think you'll miss holy concentration that much. Depending on your gear, you'll probably notice not having spiritual guidance anymore. I know when Taiza lost spiritual guidance, I noticed a drop of 100-150 damage from her DPS gear, but VT is too important for the role you're looking at playing to worry about it. You'll definitely notice the smaller size heals if we need you to heal, but eh, it'll just take some time to get adjust to that.

I'd wonder about taking a point away from Holy Specialization and slapping it in Spirit of Redemption. You lose 1% crit but gain Improved Dying, and while it's fun to laugh at the spell, the 5% bonus spirit (which stacks) and the utility of getting a free 15 seconds of healing after you die is actually pretty nice sometimes. I think it's worth losing 1% crit for. The spirit bonus won't do you much good in Shadow while DPSing, but then again neither would the 1% holy crit. And you've got Shamans like teh Treesh giving armor buffs anyway.

How many shadow Priests do you have raiding on Terenas? What a luxury to have a few of them. But I like your build, in that it's useful for guilds which may have fluctuating numbers of healers/dps on given fights and know that they can swap you around mid-raid to different roles. And when Gruul pwns the MT at 2% and he's running around one-shotting everyone and people on Teamspeak are yelling "KILL IT! KILL IT! KILLLLLLLLLLLL ITTTTTTTT!" you can swap into Shadow and melt face.

-Bolty

Edit: never mind, I clearly can't count to 20 and see that Spirit of Redemption would require 21 points in Holy.

We have two. If both of them were in the raid I'd be less likely to be shadowing it up, but much of the time it seems we just have one of them.




You know, once you hit 30, you start to lose some things...

I am pwned.

-Bolty

Currently only 2 shadow Priests. Vorlord would make 3. Blizzard has removed most/all of the spirit from our (mage) gear at our current T4 level. I am oom in ~4 minutes of spamming my damage spells. With tricks (pot/gem/evocation) add another minute or two. Alternatively I could lower my dps and go more mana efficient. Shadow priests are the battery to keep the mages dps'ing. I believe as your shadow priest's gear gets better, so too does the incoming mana which leads to mages climbing back up the damage charts. All your mages sitting oom at the end of Gruul wanding to get some mana back is really a problem.

IMHO they have made the shadow priest spec one of the most valueable for raiding just because of the game changing behavoir of VT. Two shadow priests plus three frost mages can run a long time and put out a crazy amount of sustained dps. VT to power the water elementals/mages and cold snap to get you 3 cycles of elementals for a battle. It's like powering 8 dps'ers to not have to worry about going oom and doesn't really take any extra skill to make it happen.

I think it could work. While as mentioned you don't have the gearing you want, since you aren't getting some of the "traditional" shadow spec talents from the discipline tree I like that you grabbed some of the lesser used shadow talents from the shadow tree as a trade off for not getting some of the stuff that the other shadow priest have. I know your crit levels will go down as you get more spell hit, but planning the build around crit MB's and shadow word deaths (that you get VE'd back up or healed by a paladin spammer that isn't paying attention to who they are healing) with the flay in there looks effective.

The only worry is that from our mains we'll only have the one other priest in the guild that has imp divine spirit now. We only really have 4 priests as mains, the 2 shadow, and the 2 holy (we have a lot of priest alts at L70 but only the 4 mains). But as has been beaten to death in other places, priest healing in raids often gets outclassed by other healers. Paladins are designed to spam heals on a single target if you assuming blessing of light is up, and you can if you have 3 pallies and you are talking about the tanks, then a holy spec paladin has the most mana efficient heal in Flash of Light, and from what I can tell if they are spec'd to get the 2 second holy light (OK the first is still 2.5) they will end up with the best healing per second heal as well, and it isn't going to be that mana ineffiecient either. Tree druids are designed to keep a HoT stack on one or two targets and/or whip out big HoTs all over the place for folks that won't be taking damage again for awhile. Chain heal is way more effective of an AoE in raids because of the range issues on priest AoE heals and sometimes the group restrictions as well as the discipline talents you need to give up to get circle of healing. If circle of healing just healed the 4 closest people that needed healing to the person you targeted it on, it would make more priests consider giving up imp divine spirit. Of course then the shaman would feel marginalized even more because why bother with chain heal, oh joy I get to be a mana tide and earth shield bot because that priest instant cast AoE heal will land before my chain can.

This also addresses the design issues where you there are times you need 9 healers and times you only need 2. Who do you not have heal? You become the first choice to go a DPS route. You could even be slotted in as primarily DPS who gets swapped to a healing roll if we need more. We've done that with our Healing Touch spec'd druids who could go moonkin. You are just doing what looks to be the priest version of that build and bringing a different type of utility to the raid.

So I don't really see an issue with it. I think you'll have some fun with it as well. I actually had some similar thoughts when I went survival with the hunter. We had a couple new beast hunters coming up and while beast hunters stack we didn't have a survival hunter. I finally had the gearing to support the build (much harder to get survival gear than marks/beast gear in my opinion) I seemed to be the best choice of hunters to switch, besides while I've been beast 90% of my raiding career and nearly 100% of my leveling career (including a lot of pre TBC) I had also done survival and marks before to help provide what helped the raiding group the most I was comfortable having to get used to the new play style and use survival does play differently enough from beast that I needed an adjustment period to help maximize my DPS. Providing 200-240 AP for all our physical damage dealers depending on state of buffs, seemed like a good thing to do at this stage. Of course my survival build still isn't DPS optimized. I still hold a lot of talents that provide PvP, grinding, and 5 man (especially heroics) utility. Even with not being perfect on my shot rotations I'm still able to hit over 700 DPS between me and the pet. I'd say I'm still only running at 80-85% effectiveness based on my auto/steady ratios and the number of arcane or multi's worked in as well. That is certainly good enough though I'm really wanting to be in the 90-95% range, I think my gear and spec should be able to get me to 775-800 DPS if I play perfect.

The point of that last tangent? It's very important to feel useful and like you are doing the best you can do in a raid. I know many of our healers aren't feeling that way because of the design of many of the raid encounters and because we stayed in Kara too long because we didn't quite have critical mass to consisently get 25 man raids going so we were getting more and more overgeared for the encounters we were seeing, even if some folks still weren't getting any gear at all. I also know how fast a healer can get utterly bored. There is a reason that Satura was always one of my favorite fights to heal on. DPS used to face this problem in the old raids, I'll push one button. Now, at least for some of the DPS classes (hunters are quite possibly too far on the other end of the spectrum with too much to do all the time to just stay competitive) this has changed, well it started to change in AQ40 and ocntinued to change in Naxx and TBC. It could still get boring, but most DPS classes on most fights have to deal with constant movement while keeping high performance, they have to watch interrupts or disarms a lot more than they used, hunters have to pay attention to shot rotations, keeping up stings on some bosses (though on Gruul I don't worry about it until the 8th or so growth), misdirections during the fights (makes Gruul and Nightbane sooo much easier if you do the MD's right). Some fights we even get to provide CC. I know with our group hunters are the prefered CC on Moroes it seems because you don't want to distract the healers if you can help it and a practiced hunter doesn't lose much, if any DPS while trapping. But I never get bored on the hunter. I used to get bored on the healer, because healing doesn't change. You anticipate the damage and you get your heal ready to land right after the damage comes in. Some of the fight designs even encourage you to just spam a heal regardless of if it is needed or not. That isn't really fun. Ask mages in Molten Core. There is no art to it. There is no need to decide which heal to use. You take shatter damage you using a binding heal. If you don't take shatter damage you flash or greater.

If you were a good healer from the start, healing has always been the most fun and challenging when you see content for the first few times as that is likely the only times where you will be level appropriate and or geared appropriately. Groups that started TBC in Naxx gear didn't get that on 5 mans till the later Auch instances because the Naxx/BWL gear in many cases has you over geared for the 5 mans and too many people run 5 mans when they are even level to the end boss not -3. Steamvaults with a bunch of L68 toons in greens and a few blues is way way more fun than steamvaults with 5 L70 toons in end game blues. But for a healer it just gets continually worse. The tank gets more mitigation/avoidance/stamina so there are fewer oh crap moments. The healer gets more healing so that you recover from those moments faster, and the DPS does more damage so you have fewer chances of those moments ever happening. This is of course why healers are sometimes the hardest pushers for new content, it's the only stuff that provides them any real challenge. If they are just there for the social aspects then healing anybody will keep you mostly happy (this is part of the reason why I will often volunteer to heal with my enhancement shaman, at his 1053 +healing and 106 MP/5 in his healing gear healing a normal 5 man is pretty much never a challenge, but I play the game for the people more than I play it to progess my toon, that's another reason for my altitis).


So yeah I had to babble again about some of the design flaws in the game and I saw a crack to anchor another wall of text in.

But agian I think you will enjoy the build, I think it will be effective and I think that is good.

Sounds like a great idea for Necrali. Besides, if you're losing the 'fun' factor, it's time to change something!

I'm all for it. You can come melt face in my group anytime. I'll even give you 3% hit, 3% crit and 121 spelldam to sweeten the deal!

Looking at the build, there is one thing I would change, skip shadow power and go with 2 points in Imp PS, 1 point in Silence, and 2 points in Fade (since you have no threat reduction from Silent Resolve). While the additional 15% crit would be nice on Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, you're majority of damage is going to come through Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Mind Flay (and these spells are less of a threat jump than Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death can be). There are also enough mobs around to warrant the use of Silence on occasion as a backup for the Shaman and Mages.

I don't believe silent resolve affects shadow priests? At least that's what I had been led to believe. I've never had it, even in the more "cookie-cutter" 11/0/50.

Edit: ohhhhh did you mean while healing? I think the fact that you're underspecced for healing will keep your threat down below at least a few tree druids, nothing more than a usual fade can handle Still, something to consider, good point!

That said, to vor, I'd consider looking at a shadow priest spreadsheet for a spell rotation - for my latency, anything more than 3 points in improved mind blast is a waste. Good luck with the concept, seems neat

I can see possibly trying to go for silence, but we generally have enough shaman, mages, rogues and DPS warriors that we usually don't have our shadow priests silencing as well. Especially with so many bosses immune to silence, but not to interrupts.

And the two points in Fade is a complete waste for him. The only time any of our priests have to fade (including shadow priests, iirc. Xar, Azzlea, chime in here please), is when things have gone horribly wrong. And usually, if they do end up having to use fade, they don't have to fade again before the cooldown is up. Missing the points in silent resolve won't be an issue either. I've never had threat reduction talents on my characters and the only time I pull heal aggro is when we get an incoming add and I try to be the first heal the add sees so it doesn't go squish a squishier healer than I. If I don't get it through heal aggro off the other healers, I've got my frost shock. For him, I really don't see those points as worthwhile, knowing how raiding goes for us on Terenas.

I appreciate the feedback, folks. I'll look at some spell rotations. While I don't think improved fade is worth anything, silence is very handy for smaller groups and soloing. If I can get it without giving up anything (i.e. if I find that my full points into imp. MB aren't worthwhile) then I might consider that.

I do know some shadowpriests take some silent resolve to reduce threat on the heal aggro from VE. If it affected threat for VT that would make it more attractive, but I believe it doesn't. Even if it does, with our preponderance of pallies I'll be running with salv whenever I want.

Mostly, if you don't need imp fort, the disc tree for a shadowpriest just doesn't offer much. I'll definitely miss inner focus, but having five total junk points in the first tier has always bugged me anyway.

I think your build looks solid. If you are planning on dpsing more often than healing, especially in a raid, I think you'll be fine. Where I think you might struggle would be solo healing a long fight (heroics, for example). I'm sure it's do-able, it will just be a bit tougher.

It's interesting that you're looking at this build. I've seen a drastic decrease in the viability of healbot priests since TBC so far. I often wonder if I'd serve the guild better as a mana battery myself. I think there's probably a place for healbot priests...I'm just not sure where. It's really easy to find a place for a shadow priest, however. Priests used to be "the" premier healers (when played correctly, anyway) so it made the price of being gimped for everything else ok. If mana regen didn't exist through shadow spec, I'm fairly sure we could drop the class altogether at this point and not miss much The state of the class really saddens me since TBC. I love healing, always have, probably always will. As it stands now, I can still keep the people I'm healing up (which is what counts), but at the cost of the raid being down a paladin, druid, or shaman : /

1) fade is temporary reduction, so there's rarely an occasion to use it ever, especially as a shadow priest. When I was shadow I'd fade and it generally wouldn't even drop aggro because DOTs are running. Fade is totally useless as shadow, at least as far as I'm concerned.

2) Silent Resolve doesn't do anything in shadow form.

3) Pure raiding, silence completely unnecessary. Anything important that you want to interrupt is immune to silence but not interrupts... silence isn't an interrupt, so they're immune.

There is no question that for heroics that I will definitely notice the difference. Every time I heal I will notice it. I'll be seeing whether the loss of healing capability will be worse than feeling like a waste of a raid slot in 25 man raids.

A healing priest is excellent for heroics. But he's the least useful in a 25 man raid of all the healing specs. Resto shammies also have some struggles when compared to healing with paladins, but their buffs are fantastic, especially when keeping them up is a priority for the shaman. Don't forget that we keep gearing up, and they keep nerfing heroics. Soon they will not be much more difficult than a regular five man at this rate. Some of them already I bet I could heal as shadow/holy without help.

It just takes one healing priest to offer the raid divine spirit.

I agree with your comments about the priest class. I really would prefer to be a true healer. But it's far easier to gear (and play) as a paladin, plus they stack at least up to three. Healing priests don't stack. Shadow priests do, at least up to two and often 3.



Well as I said I still think the healbot priest is excellent in a heroic. But in 25 man raids? Optimally, just bring one. And soon that's going to be you

I'm told there is more AoE healing needed in SSC and beyond. I guess we'll see. Personally, that means more shaman healers and druid healers unless the fight is in a static position. Those just don't seem to be that common so I'm not holding my breath.

Anyone who is raiding much further than our casual Terenas lurkers care to comment on that?

I obviously don't qualify as some-one from much further in the raiding scheme, but as someone who studies and researches these things and as someone who has come under focus fire for saying things about the content we're about to approach, I feel it might be time to throw down.

This is going to just be an example I'm pulling out of my ass, it's not (to the best of my knowledge) the primary or only examples, but rather a handy one.
Mogrim Tidewalker

I'm effectively only an alt-experienced raid healer, though I have healed for Avarice during the 60 cap and everything we've done so far on Tori. So, to my eyes that seems like a crap-ton of raid damage. PoM, PoH, Chain heal, Binding Heal all seem applicable.

Could I be wrong? Hell yes. If we want, I'll go through the T5 instances and pull up each and every single fight that appears to have a strong raid-healing component, including the trash pulls so the truly dedicated healer-types can pick them apart.

Regards,
~Frag

I do see a frontal arc attack. If folks are positioning correctly, only the tank gets hit. (Note, I don't know how the positioning goes so I could be wrong on that).

Watery grave, yeah, I can see that, but how often are those four going to be in the same group as the priest for PoH to be used? Chain heal is a better bet (as long as folks don't get too far spread out when it happens).

Earthquake, play time for shaman on the meleers, but unless there's a priest in there with them, really not much for PoH to be used. CoH really isn't worth losing DS and Imp DS for in a raiding environment unless you have some poor sacrificial lamb willing to do so.

The murlocs, yeah, possibly PoH fodder.

Watery Globules? Either a pally with their 2 second big heal (since Blizzard like to set things up as a spam heal fest with talents and encounter design, most pallies have the two second one up if they're specced for it) or a druid/shaman NS+heal (depending on what other damage is coming in on them at the same time.

Binding heal we already see use in Gruul, but that's something -all- priests have access to. Same with PoM. And really, PoM isn't that exciting. You cast it, making your tank think they've been hit ( ), then you watch it zoom off. Yeah, it's nice that they added graphics to it. It really does add in that something extra, but ultimately, you can't control who it jumps to without letting folks know "Don't stand so close to these folks getting hit if you generally don't take damage" (although it's great fun in PvP with classes with pets - pet on me, player on my heal target, we stand close, it just bounces around constantly ).

But, I may just be more negative than I should be. Damned pallies! Thanks Blizzard for promoting spam healing for them so much. Really appreciated.

Well there is no need to go and research everything. But this fight looks like Chain Heal will be awesome on watery grave. Beyond that...

PoM shines with predictable periodic damage. Curator, Netherspite come to mind. I don't see anything in this fight for it to be that useful.

This fight also seems like a motion fight. You can try and design your strategy around making PoH useful... but generally when people are moving around, PoH is spotty at best. Most of the damage here won't be taken by your group. The ranged damage (and remember, group synergies don't place priests in groups with melee so your benefit there must be very big to justify that switch) will be moving out of 35 yard range (I would guess, haven't read any strategies but that is what I would do).

For PoH to be better than Flash of Light for HPS, you need three targets to all take a heal. I haven't done the numbers, but my guess is that for it to be better for HPM you'd need all five. It's just so situational. The fact that it is dependent on group has nearly always killed PoH for raids.

Binding Heal is likely to be very nice, as it is on Gruul. It is mana inefficient though.

I've been trying out a circle of healing build for exactly the types of fights that would require 5-6 people in a group to be healed at once. I've seen times where it was needed, but not quite necessary...yet.

As it stands for me, I'll be staying healbot anyway just because I_love_healing and frankly if I'm going to spend time completely re-gearing a toon, it'll be my mage so I have a farming toon We'll see what we end up needing. The day may come where a holy priest is a wasted spot, but I don't feel we are quite there yet...not in progression content anyway.

I am disappointed that this thread isn't about how everyone can attract and keep a Sidekick priest.

You've already got yours, short and round though she is.

Don't you already have one?

-Bolty

I think a few of you are missing where I'm coming from. First off, Silent Resolve is useless to a Shadow Priest that doesn't Holy heal as VE healing is shadow based, thus Silent Resolve does nothing. The reasoning behind Fade is when Holy healing, not when DPSing/VEing.

Likewise, Silence does have uses as you get a little deeper into SSC and TE where you typically will be seeing packs that are 6 to 7 strong. Most of the mobs are CC'able and if you do not have enough CC to minimize some threats from casting mobs, you can fall back on silence to shut them down from casting and have a tank try to hold on to them.

And you really don't need fade when holy healing. Silence, yes, I said before, I can see uses for him getting it, but improved fade is just going to be two wasted points.

This is good to know.



If Improved Fade increased the effectiveness of fade rather than its duration, it would be a bit more attractive. As a healing priest now, fade sees use in heroics (but less and less as time goes on).

I appreciate the feedback and I will keep it in mind. I've yet to determine whether all my points in Imp. MB are valuable. The shadow priest I most often would be the sidekick to would be Xarhud. He has 4/5, lives near me, and is on the same network. He indicates that the 5th point would be nice to have for his latency, as he often has to wait just a hitch after a flay for the MB cooldown.

I didn't have time right now to read through all the comments, so it may have been mentioned, but as far as +hit goes, you really only need to worry about getting +6%. Shadow Focus 5/5 is +10% to hit, leaving only +6% needed to hit level 73.

I like this idea, and might go for it on Shikigami, who I've recently reconverted to Shadow/Disc, though if I'm going that far into Holy, I'll definitely put take a point from Holy Spec. and get Holy Nova, which is great for topping up a raid quickly, if for nothing else.

Despite what VL may say about his overall performance last night, he proved his worth in spades on the Prince kill, which was positively gloriously easy.

Good idea, good execution, Cheers Vor.
~Frag

Now, if only Mogo could get benefit from the VT of a shadow priest ever, I wouldn't have to play the mana efficiency game constantly.

Personaly, i think that it's a good build, though i have 1 or 2 changes to suggest, though they may have been brought up already.

1. Spirit tap Vs Blackout
Ok, you have to have 5 pts in these to proceed, though Spirit Tap requires you to be the one to land the "killing blow" hense the problem, if your still Pveing then keep it, otherwise the 3 seconds that black out gives could be usefull for non boss fights. Depends on what you prefer realy.

2. I'd also drop Healing focus, it's good if your getting beaten on or have a boss that does constant Aoe damage but otherwise it shouldnt be needed. i'd put 1pt in Holy Nova and 1 in Holy reach, since the goal is to get the most out of your healing power.....no, having never played with Holy nova, "i'm Shadow on my 70", i have no idea on the casting time or cost, so take that into account.

Mist

I'll have to respectfully, politely, but strongly disagree with this. Healing Focus is one of the most vital, key healing talents in the game that it makes one wonder why it's at the top of the tree. Obviously why though is that it lets shadow priests get it.

There are countless fights in WoW where you will get hit, you will take damage, and without this spell every single one of those damages will stutter your heals.

Holy Nova costs far too much mana to ever be considered a serious healing spell. At max rank, it's 875 mana per cast (788 mana with Mental Agility) and heals for roughly 500-600 with raid healing gear. Unless you're fighting Vael, you're going to run out of mana in less than 30 seconds with this and I can't think of a time where I could say "wow, I saved a wipe with Holy Nova." It was sure fun to AoE Magmadar Core Hound packs with it, though...as long as I got an Innervate.

Holy Nova is a nice PvP spell, though.

-Bolty

So for those interested, I've now tried this out as a lone shadow priest in Kara doing DPS, one of four (!!!) shadow priests for Gruul, and healing heroic UB with a shadow priest using VE as my backup healing.

Lone shadow priest DPS:

Let's face it. You lose 15% straight up damage due to the loss of Misery and shadow weaving. But I pulled my weight and played mana battery just fine. It did take us two attempts on Prince due to an unfortunate healer death right at the start of phase 2. A tanking paladin and myself in DPS gear kept him up for all of phase 2. But we eventually went oom. Still, the faster cast on GH is huge in such a situation, and 15% more mana efficiency too.

Sidekick shadow priest DPS:
For Attumen another shadow priest joined me, and I did very well on the damage charts. I also did reasonably well on HKM, especially since I am still a n00b at raid dpsing in general and shadow in particular.

Gruul:
We were a little worried about our healing, so I replaced my blue dps items with epic healing items. Then I did dot + flay (mana conservative DPS) for 8 growths, then dropped SF and healed for the remainder of the fight. It worked very nicely, just as I had intended. I was put in the hunter group with their pet shammy Mav so I served as their mana battery.

(Kind of a funny grouping, with 4 priests (all shadow) and 5 shamans (3 elemental)).

Solo healing heroic UB:
Pretty much a total cakewalk, at least with Geld tanking. The Black Stalker is always amusing, I've yet to live through that fight.

In short, this build seems to be a success. Given proper gearing, in a 25 man I don't believe I lose hardly any damage output. For healing, I definitely feel it. That's the thing about healing though... just enough is enough. Too much more doesn't help you at all. DPS doesn't have that kind of diminishing returns.

GG was thrilled at how Gruul went. With you providing VT until 8 growths, the hunters barely had drops in their mana pools. When you switched off of shadowing and started healing, they had enough mana to last the rest of the fight easily without having to drink a mana pot at all and still keep up their DPS.

Honestly, I think your build has shown itself to be a success and will become stronger once you get used to the shadow part of it. Congrats.

One of four shadow priests??

Can you change the faction of two and send them our way? We're usually lucky if we field one, and as a hunter, I am quite fond of them in my group.

But with only one, that's a pipe dream.

Yeah, I don't get shadow priest that often, but then again I don't need a shadow priest that often. I've tested and I can go full bore DPS for around 10 minutes just using the PvP mana pots with no outside assistance at all on mana regen (and being horde I have marks to spare to buy them). With 3 paladins I have kings, might and wisdom so I gain a fair bit of regen that way. I can also slap a mana oil on the weapon for more regen (since the small amount of crit I can get from a sharpening stone isn't that valuable). Judgements of wisdom or the little mana spring totems of course help out as well, the guardian elixir spot (if I'm not flasking) can be easily used for a mana regen elixir since there isn't much else that helps. I've yet to see a fight in the game where I can't self sustain or where I will need more than 1 or 2 mana pots anyway. So I can live easily without the shadow priest.

But that all requires use of consumables and loss of a global cooldown to drink the potions and even though I can carry 40 of the PvP pots (since AB token purchased pots are treated differently than EotS purchased pots, etc) I generally don't I generally only have 10. So if we wipe I can run out or have to have some supers made or what not. It's very nice to not use consumables at all.

With Gruul, we didn't kill him as fast as I want, it was at 12 growths, but I was still over 60% mana when he died and I was burning a fair bit on mend pet since there were a some bad cave in spots. I didn't even have to think about drinking a mana pot, it was easy to see with where my mana bar was and where his health was that there was no point in drinking one ever. I even lost the totem farm several times (got thrown and had to run away from it) and while a hunter can do some movement without losing DPS (take a step or two after steady is done and before auto goes off or while firing arcane if it's time for that) I couldn't always get back in range before the next shatter for the totems.

So I thought it worked great. It helps hunters to have a shadow priest, no doubts about that, but we get less out of if than locks, shammies, or mages from what I can tell. So the side kick works very well. Doing DPS and mana battery duties at the start of the fight providing a weaker regen and some healing to the pets and then going healing and cutting out the regen was great for us since we could easily sustain without consumables for the time left. I quite liked it.

I would also like to thank Mav for providing us, as best he could, with GoA instead of getting wrath of air for himself. And I would like to thank poor miss Treesh for getting no benefits to herself by being the buffer for the tank group (the enh shammy being in with warriors was getting battle shout back at least). I still don't have all the gear I want for the build I'm doing but with elixirs and raid buffs and just a GoA totem it's nice to break 1K agility (I wasn't in SSC since I was using a flask and not the 35 agi elixir) and over 2600 AP (don't remember just where that was) and 33% (again not positive on that) crit. If only I could get more than 10 FPS during the Gruul fight and more than 5 FPS for most of the SSC fights (dang old video card). I know I'm losing DPS due to some of that poor system performance.

But I like my side kick as a hunter

I was happy to provide whatever was needed to get Gruul down a growth or two faster than we had before. A shammy in every group, and 4 shadow priests *really* turned up the heat, especially with Necrali turning to healbot after X growths. I'm not one of those that has to be in the top 5 on DPS all the time. I would suspect that GoA for 3 hunters > WoA for Necrali and I.

Now if I can just keep Treesh from running to hug me on a shatter...

Consider it repayment for the ankhs you bum off of me.