Satin Shadow Priest PVP Guide
WOTLK Shadow PVP- Play with Satin Gear
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Why?
2. Dispelling the Myth of Mooncloth
3. The Typical Argument
4. Shadow Priest Design and Where Crit Fits in (with video examples)
5. Talents
6. Interesting Bonus
7. Off healing with crit is much easier
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1. WHY?
I'm sure many of you have made a shadow priest, followed the popular guide on our forums here, entered a battleground, and discovered how "weak" the class is. You got run over, people killed you faster than your dots mattered, you didn't really have any cooldowns to protect yourself, offhealing felt like a dead-end road to death... it just felt like the class was missing something. It sucked.
I want to help you find shadow again- to give it another shot, and see what the class is really capable of. I want to show you what it was built for, how the spec REALLY plays, and finally, that you can be the destructive shadow priest that you first dreamed of.
To do this I'm going to do what a lot of people have already done.
"uh, ahem, maybe we shouldn't skip crit rating?"
But then again, most of the time that is just an inkling from a noob; some little tidbit of intuition that shadow priests get when they pick up the class. They expect a damage dealer, they want their dots to hurt, they want to be that Dark Wizard who sears and flays his opponents with crippling shadow power- noob stuff. I'm going to explain what's behind that suspicion and make it clear why Satin is great.
But first, let's look at how most people become familiar with the class and spec:
<le google.com>
"shadow priest guide warmane"
1 result: Shadow Priest Advanced Guide
*click*
Woah! There's colour coordinated pictures and everything! This must really be the good stuff. Let's do it!
: Hi, I'm terry and this is your shadow priest guide.
: Here's what you need! Stack haste offparts and get mooncloth gear. Skip the crit talents. Why, you ask?
: Hah! Don't even ask, you noob.
: Don't you see the top ranked arena priests? EVERYONE plays mooncloth. That's why it's good.
*builds shadow priest with mooncloth and haste offparts*
"Damn, this feels nice. Look at how fa--
Charged by a warrior. You fear him and he berserker rages it in nanoseconds and charges you again. Your character grunts as a freshly purchased Shadowmourne tears 35% of your hp in three globals. You threw on your two instant cast dots ASAP, like a good priest. Wait what? He's only taken 10% damage this whole time? But I'm dying here?! You leave shadowform and cast prayer of mending, it heals you for 7% of your hp. You finally press dispersion- even with a renew currently active. Wow, you're smart- in shock, as you watch Shadowmourne swing at your hp bar with terrible anxiety.
Whew! Finally! Some relief!
Dispersion ends. You look over to the chump warrior whose been ticking away from your dots this whole time. You blink a few times to clear your eyes. Does he still have 80% hp? "Well what's my hp," you say, and look over to see a crippling 40%. Now you're at a tough spot. Do you try to heal again? It kind of only made the situation worse last time. You throw on a renew, enter shadow form, and jump to face the warrior. Re-applying your dots without ever losing any uptime, you have done well, young chap. Renew ticks for 2% hp twice, he executes you for 7k, and you die. He doesn't even have to eat food before charging the next person.
2. DISPELLING THE MYTH OF MOONCLOTH:
Mooncloth is the generally accepted and promoted build. Why? Because that's what the best players do. But these are the players who are on voice chat with a competitively synchronized teammate. These are the ones whose rogue teammate shadowstep-shiv's crippling poison to peel the warrior while they fade around the pillar and off-heal.
For the casual player who queues bgs and maybe tries his luck in the arenas, MOONCLOTH IS A MEME. You don't need the promise of 5 minutes of combat mana. The dynamics are constantly changing. You are not in a controlled environment where you can count on someone to peel for you, so that your specialization into long-term fights and repeat offense/defense shifting is useful. The reality of BG's and random arena queues is that you get tunneled by everyone, and no one peels for you. Your promise of long term mana is wasted on fast deaths. Your specialization to shift between support and damaging is wasted, fights are not coordinated, and you're offhealing someone who is tanking executes. These sceanarios are what the shadow priest was built around. It was designed so that it was INDEPENDENTLY competitive against other independent classes. The class was designed, with it's Satin gear, to perform competitively against other classes. And what, do you think, is a cornerstone of it's balance in these 1v1 situations? CRITICAL STRIKES.
There is a reason that, when you look around Shadow's talent tree, it's like a broken record: you just keep seeing damage talents. There's a reason by Shadowform enables all dots to critical strike. There's a reason why critical strikes scale all the other bonuses again by another 100%. It's because the shadow priest LIVES AND DIES on damage. And critical strikes are the crux of it.
Mooncloth is built for high level 2v2, 3v3 situations where independent sacrifices can be made and covered by other teammates, in order to prop up the strength of your team AS A WHOLE. No one is covering the losses you are taking by gearing mooncloth. And it's bonuses are not being exercised. It's a loss.
3. THE TYPICAL ARGUMENT
But satin has mana problems
Yes. Which is addressed and solved by two spells in Shadow's tree: Dispersion (1.25m cd with glyph), and Shadowfiend (3m cd with talent)
But crit is bad because people have resilience and we don't crit them as often
Yes. People have ~13% crit removal. My crit is 35%. And [Mind Melt] adds 6%. That's 41%. So after all the math is said and done, I still critical strike 28% of the time. That's great.
But crit is bad because resillience reduces the damage of crits
Yes. People have crit damage reduction. But shadow is one of the specs that increases crit damage by 100%. Crits are still valuable. Infact, they incredibly valuable- and they define how our PVP goes:
4. SHADOW PRIEST DESIGN AND WHERE CRIT FITS IN
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#1: The self defense of a shadowpriest is not cool abilities like other classes have: Deterrence, Sprint, Vanish, Cloak of Shadows, Bubble, Disengage. No, the self defense of the shadowpriest is found mainly in DAMAGE. How is this?
It is the old adage: a good offense is a good defense. This is particularly true of the shadowpriest because:
i.) we don't have many abilities to escape, disengage, gain mobility, or control opponent.
ii.) we have a shapeshift that is very important to keep active, but which we lose if we are forced to directly defend ourselves.
iii.) we have very high damage talents
Forcing the defensive action from the opponent REMOVES FROM US the threat that we can't prevent in many other ways. We are taking the many talents in shadow tree which directly give damage - most significant is our 100% bonus damage in critical strikes - and using it how it was designed: to maximize shadowform, and to defend through aggression. This is done by out-pressuring the opponent, forcing defensive actions- threatening them as much as they threaten us... while we hold in our back pocket the ability to quickly off-heal in key moments and leave them stranded. This is the design of shadow; how it succeeds.
example:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1113572146
#2 Shadow is built around the vampire mechanic. Our damage is our protection. If we double our damage, we double our self-healing.
A class with no escape mechanisms will take a lot of damage. The shadow priest is a punching bag. Passive self-heals is our relief.
We might not deflect damage away like hunters, but we get health back from the damage we do, thus "reducing damage we take." This is AN IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP for the shadow priest. We are vampires. We survive by our own damage. Critical strikes that do 100% more damage are incredibly important. They double our damage, thus they double our self-heals, thus they double our tankiness. That is what the spec is built around. We take a lot of damage, and we're supposed to do a lot of damage, and receive a lot of self healing.
Building satin works doubly, which is exactly what our spec was balanced around: we pressure opponents with massive damage, and we relieve pressure from ourselves by our refreshing life-steals.
If you invest in critical strikes as offense, you get twice the value. Because it also increases your defense. This means you can take more pressure before having to leave your shapeshift: shadowform. Which takes us to the very important next point.
example: Here, instead of leaving sform and casting flash of lights etc, I go on the offensive with a trinket proc, knowing it will sustain me against a ret pala.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1113556194
#3 Shadowform is very important to keep active. Being forced out of shadowform is a dead end road that not many return from. The more damage we can do, the less we have to leave shadowform.
Why? Because the more damage we can do, the more health we get back.
Why? Because the more damage we do, the less our opponents can tunnel DPS on us.
15% damage increase
15% less damage received
dots crit for 100% damage
dots can tick faster from haste
every time you leave shadowform, your dots tick slower, they can't crit, they do 15% less damage, and you take 15% more
damage. That is the main thing that makes mooncloth so weak: you are constantly leaving shadowform, because not only does your weak damage leave the opponent feeling comfortable to continue pressuring you, but your lifesteal is also weaker- so that you receive less health to keep yourself safely in shadowform. This dynamic often leads you to need off-heals, so you leave shadowform. But then you lose all four buffs: your dots do less damage, you take more damage, and you find yourself in defensive nightmares. Satin is different because it pushes shadowform as far as it can go. Your opponents suddenly worry about themselves, and in a race of HP, you are likely winning, or tied with the possibility to off-heal yourself at opportune times.
example: In this clip, using dispersion allows me to stay in shadowform. With mooncloth gear, my dots would tick on the hunter for insignificant damage, and I would come out of dispersion still in a terrible situation. With the hunter still alive and healthy, my only options would be die, or leave shadowform to try and heal, and die anyways. But with the crits spiking on the hunter while I disperse, I find myself in a situation where I can go for the kill on him, remove his threat from me, and continue the 2v1 without ever being forced out of shadowform.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1113572147
This is also a very important feature of the shadow priest in fights: we have very few cds and they only offer very short advantages; we need the 4 seconds of silence, or the 6 seconds of dispersion to MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the fight: mooncloth does not burst or make a change in the fight during our short cds: we need the burst and crits in order to synergize with our very few relief cds. Crits MAKE the difference, they pressure the oppoent while we are in dispersion, or they secure incredible pressure when we use our only cds: horror and silence.
bonus: Offheals are much stronger when they crit 1/3 of the time. When you're trying to get the most out of your 2 seconds offhealing, a critical strike on prayer of mending or flash of light plays MIGHTY smoothly.
5. TALENTS
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...1xqx11pc721pc4
Martydom: this talent secures the ability to either stay in shadowform after being kicked by its 20% reduction, or to quickly shift into off-healing while taking no casting reductions. It is a great talent built around this offensive-minded shadow priest play. When martydom is active, you can channel mind flay without any casting interruptions and have the confidence that if you get kicked it's not the biggest deal. Which is a good solution to a weakness of shadow: having only one spell school, and otherwise having to leave shadowform if you get kicked.
5/5 Shadow Power: this talent gets enabled by Martydom talent, where you are able to cast and not care about getting kicked, as well as having full casts that deal all their damage. This talent pairs well with Shadow Word: Death and Inner Focus. I have tested the Shadow Word: Death glyph and I get between 4k-9k crits on opponents depending on their resillience. As well, the 5/5 ensures mind flays and mind blasts that hit hard which is essential to the aggressive shadow priest play.
5/5 Mind Blast: 20% healing reduction is a 20% damage bonus against classes that heal. against classes that do not heal, it acts as a trash-debuff that blocks your dots from being dispelled. it also acts to increase the pressure we put out, which is paramount to pvp as shadow.
2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace: this is essential because we want to stay in shadowform as much as we can. We want as much self healing coming back to us- and with our crits, that self healing gets quite high. In the 400-800 range from dot crits, and 1200-2000 from mind blast/flay crits.
1/1 Inner Focus: Paired with Shadow Word: Death for a big crit that requires no casting. You do not risk getting kicked in tight situations, and if you crit, you can quickly turn the tides of the fight to offensive.
6. INTERESTING BONUS
As you may have gathered by now, I think damage is important on shadow priest. But just how important? Well...
I have been running double DPS trinkets ever since I first tried it. I did this because I found that trinket is not a very
valuable item in BG's or duels against most classes- more damage actually plays better.
Why is this?
Well, I think that the priest, as a pretty predictable class with few options for surprise maneuvering like a rogue, doesn't gain much from trinketing. Most of the time that you are stunned, all that you would gain from trinketing is a power word: shield, a fear that comes 2seconds earlier, or a mindflay/blast cast. These are small things to gain. Just think about it with this question: what is the biggest play that you can make on a priest after trinketing a cc? Well, in a 1v1.... casting vampiric touch? Disarming? Casting Mind Control? Silencing something that you can't stop from being cast again in 3 seconds? The priest is like a guy wearing a tee-shirt: we don't have anything up our sleeves. On the other hand, our crits do 100% increased damage. An offensive trinket proc for us is go-time. Two offensive trinket procs is... well, STRONG. And even if they spread out, it still plays very handily for you.
Being undead definitely adds to this, as I can still break warlock fears, warrior fears with no trinket equipped.
Rogues are the matchup I would necessitate having pvp trinket in. Paladins also seem that it would help you.
That is because paladins who use Avenging Wrath don't care about your dispersion. If you get hammer of justice and wings, you lose most of your health regardless of dispersion. And for that reason I think trinket becomes valuable against paladins.
If you're human, then.... good for you.
7. OFF HEALING WITH CRIT IS MUCH EASIER
The shadowpriest just wants to get back into shadowform as fast as possible to gain his bonuses. Critical strike makes that easier. The power of an off heal grows massively on a critical strike. When shadowpriest spends 5 seconds to leave shadowform and heal themselves, they want flash heal, or prayer of mending, to critical strike as much as possible. (I had my crit heals up to 30%) A 4k heal turns to 8k. This saves you time, and makes you recover faster in order to get back into shadowform. Renew does not crit.
Watch in this clip at 53 seconds. I go from 17% health to 55% health with one flash of light, renew tick and a prayer of mending bounce from me to teammate to me again. It does not look like these critical strike. If they critical strike, I am 17% to 70% in the same time. Also look how little time I have to heal. That is what shadowpriest life is like. You don't get chance to stand there and heal for 10 seconds ever, you need to maximize the value of the time you can get with crits.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1113572147
