ShadowformFollow

Am I the only one who dont like shadowform? I've just converted to shadow priest but I see more downsides then advantages to go all the way to shadowform.

I love being a shadow priest in a bubble!

Hard to belive I am defending shadowfrom, mr Holy Pants here.

Firstly nobody plays excusivly in parties so a tallent to make solo go faster/beter is a good one. If you are playing solo, realy all you need is your sheild(Disc spell), Healing can be done Via Vampiric embrace(still a shadow spell). The dammage reduction and dammage boost are perfect for a priest who is runnign the solo grind. Sheding SF is eazy, click of a mouse, dosent even start a global cooldown to shift out, so it is not realy a hindrance at all.


Remember a Shadow priest can heal "Just fine", for me though, thats not good enough, i will stick Dics/Holy and dont plan on a difrent spec.

Buwhahahahah "Not too bad" , wheew let me catch my breath.

OK so we are going to start treding on thin ice, some folks don't like where this convertaion leads, and take it the wrong way, or only see there own way of things, and precive this is a attack.

Warcraft has a saying you may have heard, it revolves arround a post on the offical forums, the term is "Melt Faces" and it was a refrence to shadow priests. The poster was agnry that a healer class did such awsum dammage, and was totaly unstopable. the point elebroated that with a simple change of gear and droping out of shadowfrom, theese same "Face Melters" could act as healers with a capacity to keep a few folks up and running no matter what.

This had a side effect that diffrent folks took diffrent ways there became a devide, those who thought a priest was a support role(theese players still used Shadowform when relevent, and it is the most effecent leveling build)and those who read the posts,saw folks complainging about priest DPS and deceided to "Join the DPS group". The latteer of theese players oped to play a shadow priest essentaly to play a diffrent mage or a weird petless lock of some sort. A shadow priest is Soooo diffrent from a non shadow priest, that the presents of them can put the world topsy tervy. By defult I and obviously lazychewie as well as Gunstar see the class Priest as a support role, there to keep a party up, to dolop out a helthy helping of team play, yet a shadow priest dosent do that(By there design). sure you get players that have a shadwo spec, and they will sheild a buddy, or even drop out of SF to heal but those are rare.

To Somebody who chose the Shadow Priest to play DPS, My words may sound sacrelous, deticating there precous Damamge dealing mana for sub task like Healing! It is best to think of SOME shadow preist as mages, or locks, for those shadow priest you cannot think of them as a healer. REMEMBERING THAT NOT ALL PRIEST WITH SHADOWFORM ARE EXCLUSIVE DPS. The irony of the whole thing is that the plaers taht started complaing about shadow preist were not complaing about the "I sheild only myself" and "Look at my DPS" type of shadow priest, but the kind with shadow form who could shed it and play a healer role when they recoginsed it was best to swich out of shadow form, and start healing.

But a preist who only wants to do damamge is just as welcome IMHO as any other player, I first came to terms with this with Druids, Post feral buff patch, to me it seemed so meny of the new driuds wanted to be rogues, they clearly stated that they "HATED" to heal and that it was boring. My first impression was that of amazment, how could they roll a healer and not like healing. It took months but finlay i decided they are entitled to there choices as they would never see the full spectrem of class utility, i fell the same of the priest who "Hates to heal", and "Will never give up shadowform no matter what my guild needs". let them play the game as they choose.

But the Biggest point i have to make is that a shadow priest is a Insaly compentent healer, and usualy are better preist, since they dont have tallents to help fix any mistakes they make.

I am a raid shadowpriest :D

my spec is set up for me to stay in shadow form for the duration for the extra damage and subsequent extra healing via VE for an entire group, as well as damage mitigation for the (oh so rare) occasion where i end up tanking :D). put simply, if you are in shadowform, you are not expecting to have to heal. if a pull goes bad or a healer goes down early, you can pop out and cast your heals. i think it DOES trigger the global cooldown, but still, it's only a 1s delay.


i always carry a healing set with me for when i do need to main heal, but i'm finding i spend a lot more time in shadowform these days. last night on a guild UBRS, we had myself and one paladin (1 warr, 3 hunters, 4 rogues). i was prepared to heal, but i found i never had the opportunity to throw up anything more than a renew - the pally was doing a great job. so, into shadowform and dps gear i go for some VE healing for the rogues.

after that, i had one pull where the paladin got swarmed and killed, i had to drop shadowform and kept the group alive. the other occasion was on drak where i had gone into my healing gear anyway, the kite went bad and so we had to fight all 3 mobs at the same time - so my healing was needed there. shadowform was great for the rest of it.

I shadowed ZG the night before also. in the last week i've done the same for DM and scholo runs. it should not be employed as main healing, but if the other healer(s) have it well in hand, or if the group healing simply doesn't require much effort, there is no reason for you to waste your time sitting around doing nothing.

Which is where that beautiful spell vampiric embrace comes into play! If I'm not mistaken, it should heal about as much as that renew, and can be cast on more than one mob.

In the PvP aspect, at least in BG's. You cast it on more than one player running around and then pick your target. You have decreased damage taken, inc shadow damage given, and your ticking off a couple players? Melt much?

K, hijacking thread time. I come from the good old days of shadow = damage. Add that to the fact that I play a Warlock, and you end up with me knowing nothing about a holy dmg build. Now im not trying to turn this into a talent build ******** thread, just if someone wants to link me a build in a private msg or something like that. Much thanks.

With Inner Fire and the reduction of damage taken from Shadowform you'll be taking damage equal to a Warrior/Paladin.

The difference is that you deal a crapload more damage than the Paladin and you can heal which the Warrior can't.

Win/win situation, no?

And this is why i so prefer my Holy DPS build over shadow any day of the week. Although i would be lying to say it is a faster or more effecent build than shadow, it is the king of solo builds.

"Holy is the king of solo builds"
Capitolg you make me snicker,
Holy damage builds are better then shadow damage builds because you can heal the party too, thus your not solo.
As a damage build your looking at a 3 sec cast time for Holy Fire and that as farst as it gets.