Aethelwulf

It's possible to go Holy/Shadow and stack Shadow Weaving while using Smite instead of Mind Flay to do DPS. If you do that you will consume less debuff slots (which can be used for more DoTs) and inflict more damage while maintaining Shadow Weaving. It's probably the best way to play a DPS priest and one of the few builds that is viable for both raids and PvP. For PvP this would be a Shadow Priest who can drop out of Shadowform to heal and DPS vs spellcasters while maintaining the usual arsenal of Shadow Priest tricks. It would be something like a 0/17/34 build I guess? If all you care about is holy DPS then you could go 25 deep into holy for a bit more spell damage, but this is not a build that stacks spirit. Instead, it needs mana/5 and mana-recovering consumables (mana pots, Night Dragon's Breath, Demonic Runes) to sustain spellcasting. And if you go 25 holy for spelldmg from spirit, you would lose the +10% shadow damage on your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Blast (and Shadowguard, if playing a Troll). Even though you would be spamming a direct damage spell, crit is still not a very good stat for you since your crits only do 150% instead of 200%. You would mostly rely on +hit and +dmg for DPS. However, Disc/Holy DPS is not an option. Really, the only reason you would be tolerated as a DPS is the raid benefiting from Shadow Weaving. Otherwise your DPS contribution to the raid would only be inferior to actual DPS classes. A maxed crusader judgement (3/3 imp SotC and libram of fervor for +199 holy dmg taken debuff) and Sanctity aura from a retri Paladin would certainly help, but raids tend not to like retribution paladins or judgement of the crusader unless they have a lot of DPS priests somehow, which is generally not happening.

Ele is mostly a PvP build. That said, with AQ40, it becomes possible to gear enough nature penetration to raid as Elemental (especially if your tanks have Thunderfury for the nature pen debuff). Shamans actually have extremely powerful spell DPS scaling on their lightning bolts and chain lightning. (You can obtain +50% DPS from the 1sec cast time reduction, +11% crit chance, +5% damage, and +3% hit chance on your lightning from your talent build.) The two main problems for Shamans are mana consumption and the presence of nature resistance on nearly everything (there is also the lack of threat reduction, but that's no different from Warlocks), but with the right gear, consumables, and maybe some friendly mana tides, it is actually possible to raid late AQ40 and Naxx as Ele and do DPS comparable to Warlocks. However, before AQ, there just isn't enough spell penetration to go around for Shamans and a lot of raids even have nature immune mobs. It is also possible to go up and melee enemies and time your spellcasts between your autoattacks just right so you can cast and auto-attack simultaneously. If you do this right, your DPS can reach such absurd heights that you will be in serious danger of stealing aggro and dying. You might able to raid as a DPS sooner if you master this.

Yes, the main drawback of a spriest using VE is the heavy use of debuff slots. Shadow Priests aren't really viable until the amount of debuffs is raised to 16. Shadow Word: Pain is superior to a Warlock's Corruption (once you can spare those slots) for damage though so that is still an improvement. Shadow Weaving is definitely worthwhile if your raid has enough Warlocks as well. So I guess you are correct in that you are saving 2 slots while in exchange you would have group healing and DPS in one role. When it comes to a Shadow Weaving build, I would generally recommend 13/18/20 over a 0/31/20 spec. Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing are nice but healing without Meditation can be painful. That said if you can muster the mana/5, have 3piece Transcendence, and are using all the mana recovery consumables you could probably make it work. Haitharn, what what's the off-hand you're speaking of?

Right, I deleted that advice now that I checked old Thottbot and Allakhazam comments. According to those, it procced off of DoT debuff placement (not damage) until 1.10 at which point they seemed to have created a whitelist of "approved Wrath of Cenarius triggering spells" (which they incompetently and dishonestly labeled in Patch 1.10 as "Wrath of Cenarius will now trigger off all damaging spells") thus causing all sorts of stupid behaviors with all kinds of overlooked damaging spells now failing to trigger Wrath of Cenarius. It did trigger off of damage with Arcane Explosion pre-1.10 and Arcane Missiles (per hit). In 1.12 they made Arcane Missiles trigger Wrath of Cenarius again. Overall Wrath of Cenarius is most likely not worth a Shadow Priest's time. My apologies for the misinformation.

They really shouldn't be scaling with spell damage at all. We've been over this point before and there is no evidence from vanilla proving they stacked and there is even evidence in the case of Storm Gauntlets that they didn't. The only evidence pointing to spell damage applying is from after Burning Crusade, which systematically revamped the spell damage formulas. To get back to the topic at hand, the best Reckoning weapon is indeed the slowest weapon you can find (because they get more from attack power), high attack power and crit preferred. Arcanite Reaper works very well here. But The Nicker from LBRS is also good, being even slower at 4.00 speed and having a damaging proc. You might also want to use the Elemental Sharpening Stone for the extra 2% crit.

I'll have to agree that while Res thought he was being clever with his generalized statements, he failed to pay attention to the specifics points Undertanker was making about item availability and competition. It's very true that Warlocks and Mages value hit and crit more highly than just raw spell damage so I could see a decent guild passing those items to the SP, not to mention that most of the items that Undertanker listed were noncompetitive.

It's bad. The main draw of 31 Disc is PI, which is useful, but nowhere near as useful as a proper healer would be. Sitting around spamming PoH when you could just have the whole group heal with VE while you do damage instead doesn't improve your raid contribution and having badly scaling heals and a PI whiling keeping up weaving is not fruitful either. You can call it a support build but that doesn't mean you are suddenly contributing to the raid more than you would have been as a proper healer. What you want is meditation from disc and the basic heal cast time and mana cost reduction talents from Holy while getting shadow weaving. That's the ideal non-SP support build that keeps weaving up.

Yes. In fact the Manual Crowd Pummeler from Gnomeregan is one of the best weapons to boost feral DPS thanks to its activated ability, the Barbaric Belt is leather specifically so that druids can also use it in bear form, and so forth. Druids can activate use abilities on gear while shapeshifted.

Well hopefully Elysium has better node generation than Nost did. Back in nost I found myself grinding mobs for ore instead of mining because the mining nodes wouldn't spawn, so... that was bad. The downside of it is the money problem you mentioned. You can always level an alt for money to support your main or you can just try to grind up money the normal way. Engineering does have a little bit of a market in engineers selling to other engineers and you could also sell bars of metal. If you're going engineer you're looking at a endgame of Tailoring+Engineering most likely and depending on an alt or AH for the bars because those professions provide some very powerful gear, especiially for PvE where the tailoring bloodvine set + engineering bloodvine goggles are recommended raid gear.

Hm. You only need 340 spell damage to total 1K damage per casting of shadowguard, though. How much spelldmg did people use on the PTR?

People underestimate the power of Troll racial spells. Hex of Weakness reduces all healing received by 20% and Shadowguard ultimately scales at 145.475% of your spelldmg. The sheer DPS from Shadowguard at high spell damage cannot be underestimated and Shadow Priests normally suffer from atrocious spelldmg scaling. That said, it still sucks going without Will of the Forsaken and Berserking is just negligible. 2 actually. Paladin and Priest. 3 if you count a Frost Mage's Ice Block. But Dwarves can also remove it with their Stone Form racial. Other than that it can only be removed with Restorative Potion, Purification Potion, or a Flask of Petrification. Technically Shamans can remove Devouring Plague too, but Shamans and Undead Priests are both Horde so they aren't going to PvP each other unless they are in a FFA arena or one of them got mind controlled (but the UD priest can WotF out of MC). Not a bug. Shadowguard just has monstrous scaling. It's treated as a 3 hit DoT, so it receives 100% spelldmg and divides it across 3 rather fast hits, and then all the multipliers get multiplied on top of its damage resulting in a 48.5% (rounded very slightly) coefficient per orb. This is completely blizzlike and it is the main selling point of Troll Priests (along with the 20% heal reduction that Hex of Weakness inflicts). Devouring Plague on the other hand only receives 50% of spelldmg as a draining DoT and divides it across 24 seconds of duration, so the DPS scales rather badly even post-multiplier, plus it's a 3min cooldown with a very high mana cost.

Best Shaman race is hands down Tauren. Orcs are a bad pick: Blood Fury's -50% to heals you receive is suicide for a healing class and the 25% AP bonus only counts base AP, not total AP. The #1 reason to go Orc is Hardiness, which would be good, but your Shaman trinket already breaks a stun (and a Living Action Potion can break a second stun), which is much more dependable than a 25% resist chance. Axe specialization is mostly good for PvE as Enhance where hit chance and glancing blows are much larger issues unlike PvP where glancing blows are not a thing and capping hit chance is a cinch, and seeing as enhance is not a raid-capable spec, no one cares about the PvE benefits, not to mention if you're just focusing on weapon DPS odds are you will find yourself equipping weapons that aren't axes while leveling. So just to recap: Blood Fury = suicide Hardiness = unnecessary Axe spec = irrelevant Tauren on the other hand contributes two very valuable things. One is Endurance, a racial +5% health, which is always good, especially in PvP. And the other is a racial aoe 2sec stun which does not GCD (giving you time to cast trinket Lesser Healing Wave for instance, or lightning if you're Elemental spec) on a class that has zero crowd control. The ability to guarantee a Lesser Healing Wave (or lightning, if ele) in a pinch is extremely powerful and should not be underestimated. War Stomp is simply amazing for Shamans and it is the reason why every good Shaman should play Tauren. Troll is just bad. The only thing worth mentioning is Berserking and even if you manage to get the full 30% cast speed bonus from a low health activation, you will only get 3 seconds' worth of extra casts if you are somehow casting without any interruptions for the full 10 seconds of duration without dying. If you can do that, you were probably winning the fight already anyway. So Berserking is a trap because it looks good but in reality it wont change anything, unlike War Stomp which (as long as your are in melee range) can guarantee you 2 seconds of your enemy being stunned for you to cast a clutch heal or (if ele) start a lightning burst combo and wait for that autoattack swing timer to go down. War Stomp turns around fights. Berserking and Blood Fury do not. No, this is very, very wrong. Racials are very significant during vanilla for both PvE and PvP. The biggest example of racial disparity is on Alliance for Night Elf Priest vs Dwarf Priest. The former will typically get rejected outright by high-end raiding guilds and get told to reroll a Dwarf. The latter will get guild invites long before he ever reaches 60. For PvP, the difference between playing a Troll Mage and Undead Mage will also determine fights against Priests or Warlocks because Will of the Forsaken is just that powerful. For Shamans, the difference between having War Stomp and not having War Stomp is also immense in PvP. Sure, you can play without War Stomp, but then you're just playing with a handicap.

1. If this is your concern, just spec SM/Ruin. It's the cookiecutter Warlock spec which is good in all circumstances from raiding to farming to PvPing. It's the most popular spec and it is very strong at all of them. Strictly speaking 7/21/21(+2) DS/Ruin is the hard raid spec but even hardcore raids tend to have at least 1 or 2 SM/Ruin warlocks for imp stamina buffs on their tank and the DPS falloff between SM/Ruin and DS/Ruin is fairly minor (and in fights with adds SM/Ruin can actually out-DPS DS/Ruin on bosses thanks to Nightfall). 2. I think it should, but I don't know. All enslaved demons are typically weakened when enslaved (Improved Enslave Demon reduces the penalties). As far as I recall there should not be a special nerf for elite enslaves, or that would be a bug. 3. If it does, that should be a bug. The Demonic Sacrifice buff only vanishes when you summon a new pet, not when you enslave demons. 4. Divided across all the ticks. Therefore it is trash with hellfire and okay with Rain of Fire. It's typically a talent you reserve for mass PvP.

Engineering is the ideal profession for PvP. Bombs alone are an amazing contribution to your PvP capabilities. As for Alchemy, it is a good profession to get rich by selling potions on the auction house and not needing to buy them yourself. While Alchemy has a lot of amazing PvP potions, you can just buy them on the AH whereas Engineering items all require you to have the profession, so typically Engineering is the best PvP profession. It's not "mandatory" but it definitely gives you powerful advantages if you want to PvP.

SM/DS is typically considered the ultimate mob grinding build, and more Shadow Priest than the Shadow Priest. For PvPing, the loss of a pet is still liable to cripple you and Soul Link has the stronger defenses. You also went 3/3 improved Curse of Weakness (no one uses this), skipped 2/2 Grim Reach (range is invaluable to PvP), and didn't get Curse of Exhaustion (SM/DS excels in kiting people, please take the kiting curse). It's not really recommended for PvP and its specialty is wearing people down over time as opposed to burst. Warriors are liable to hit you with Mortal Strike which halves your healing and Berserker Rage out of your fears which makes demonic sacrifice on a voidwalker rather bad (on a Succubus you still get more damage though). You could instantly summon a voidwalker and sacrifice him for his shield (take 3/3 voidwalker for this) to rage-starve a warrior though. And Rogues are either burst damage (which makes your regen pointless) or stunlock (in which case your regen will help a bit). I guess if you carry Free Action Potions though you can mess up Rogues and Warriors well enough. Playing Orc for the stun resistance might help too. That said if you're looking for strong defenses, Soul Link is typically where people go.

I know some players when they play Warlocks try to solo mobs and end up disappointed by how slow the Warlock's grind speed is. So I thought I'd make a quick thread to share tips on grinding faster as a Warlock. First off, Warlocks shouldn't solo grind mobs. What you want to do is grind multiple mobs at the same time by letting your Imp tank one mob (which you DoT) and you tank a second mob (which you also DoT). Once you have Fear, you can DoT a third mob which you fear around. There is also a more advanced tactic of fear juggling where you rotate fears between two mobs so that one is running away while another is running to you and neither are hitting you while you DoT them. This lets you effectively have 2 mobs running around thanks to Fear instead of one. Once you have voidwalker your VW might tank two or three mobs at the same time instead of the 1 mob your imp was tanking. Alternatively if you have Siphon Life you might want to just run like a headless chicken and aggro everything behind you and use instant DoTs to kill them all while you keep running so they can't hit you. Grinding multiple mobs at the same time is how a Warlock's kill speed picks up. Another important tip I'd give Warlock players is to skill your First Aid skill. Warlocks have the benefit of Life Tap to turn hp into mana and bandaging up heals you faster than sitting down for food or drink. This reduces downtime between mobs. The best spec for leveling is typically affliction. 5/5 Improved Corruption is a must have and improved Life Tap and Improved Drain Soul help you keep going faster.

Correct. It's a fairly common noob mistake to try grinding mobs 1 by 1 plus taking food and water breaks, thus becoming frustrated with the slow kill speed overall. All Warlocks should skill First Aid, including alchemists. I don't doubt that troll's blood potions and the like will accelerate your grinding speed, but given how heavily a Warlock leans on his health pool, First Aid is too useful to overlook. Strictly speaking every class should improve First Aid to the max, but for Warlocks it is even more important.

People who warn you when you are making a serious mistake and take the effort to explain why? As I recall, killerduki made a lot of bold claims regarding my posting habits with absolutely nothing to back any of that up, and yet you rated him highly for it. Would you care to explain this curious standard of yours? As for Pottu's moderation habits, I'm not entirely certain how you expect me to obtain evidence, given that the boards which Pottu moderated are not a place where I can find open criticism of him for obvious reasons. Well, I suppose I may as well go digging through various threads where he intervened and see what turns up. This will take a while.

Vitaliy and Shenna, I've noticed both of you have done the discourtesy of rating down my post, while neglecting to offer any response to the points within it. I would kindly ask that you put substance to your disagreement and explain your reasons.

You evidently misremember, for I have not played a Druid there. My main was a Warlock. And my presence on the Nostalrius boards was primarily in the general mechanics board, the Warlock class forum, and the Shaman class forum. Seeing as you do not seem to have even noticed what I played or where I was active on the boards, I would have been curious how you managed to arrive at absurd claims like that I played a Druid or that 90% of the community must have ignored me (which is news to me), but I already know your history of spinning absurd accusations against any and all posters who disagree with you. I wish you would do less of that, but I have given up hope of your behavior improving sometime ago. I suppose the arguments concerning the infeasibility of paladins as main tanks in raids and lack of spell damage modifiers on items like Fiery Retributer, Blazefury Medallion, Fiery Plate Gauntlets, and Storm Gauntlets offended you that much? Frankly, don't you and Theloras have another thread to derail with outlandish claims how Paladins are the best DPS, the best tanks, the best healers, and the best class in all of WoW while dismissively accusing everyone who disagrees of being trolls and spammers? As I recall virtually any thread was a good thread for you, even if it had nothing to do with Paladins.

I shall have to strongly second the vote of NO CONFIDENCE in Pottu. This man is not qualified to be a moderator. Pottu's intervention as a moderator is frequently overbearing and inhibits the ability of forum users to resolve issues on their own and engage in frank discussions. He is the ideal sort of moderator for forum trolls, as they can freely derail and frustrate discourse and wait for Pottu to intervene and otherwise give everyone a "time out" and the like, thereby punishing constructive members of the community for having the misfortune of interacting with them. In addition Pottu can frequently be depended upon to intervene on behalf of whoever is latest engaging in histrionics to soothe their affronted conscience by intervening against anyone who disapproves of their arguments or behavior. This style of moderation does not clean up or improve a community. Rather, it rewards posters for emotionally unstable and histrionic behavior and creates a fertile ground for trolling and frustrating ordinary members of the community by aggravating normal posters and then painting them as disrespectful once they respond in unkind tones. As a result the health of the forum deteriorates under Pottu's misrule. Overzealous moderation both in the GM and moderation teams is something to be avoided. Yet I am afraid the Pottu is the sort of GM who volunteers because he wants to moderate undesirable elements out of the community and thus errs towards removing and punishing content he personally finds distasteful by assuming his personal distastes ought suffice for all "decent" persons. Thus regardless of whether or not he feels his heart is in the right place, he is the sort of moderator who ultimately demoralizes communities by requiring they walk on eggshells around him lest they incur his wrath and refrain from speaking frankly on what should not have become a difficult subject. I am worried that Pottu's interventions will result in a rise of forum misbehavior as people can simply troll and derail threads they do not like and be rewarded by moderators who will kill the thread. I am worried that these interventions will also result in an increase of fallacious reasoning in mechanical discussions as people can invoke Pottu as their ultimate defense against forum posters who rebuke them by claiming they are disrespectful and thus making it difficult to engage in calm analyses since problem posters are somehow to be treated with equal respect as well-reasoned posters even as they persist in derailing threads and seek "victory" by driving out contrary opinions. That is not to say that forum members should have an open right to pillory persons they disapprove of and start forum wars, but Pottu's intervention goes so far as to make it difficult to openly register one's disapproval of another poster's contents and explain why because mayhaps that would be singling someone out and thus warrant Pottu's overbearing censorious intervention. This ultimately rewards the nonconstructive members of the community and leaves newcomers ripe for confusion and suffering. I know from experience on Nostalrius that Pottu goes well and truly above and beyond the duties of any ordinary moderator and in doing so outright damages the community. He is, frankly, a disastrous, censorious, and dare I say cancerous moderator whose excesses have plagued Nostalrius. He has wearied me as he has wearied a great many others. I have heard people speak in hushed tones of the difficulty they have in engaging discussions while Pottu's intervention looms like a specter above them. And I have witnessed people tell of how they have simply given up and avoided the forums they would have liked to participate in because of disruptive problem posters whose interactions frequently sour and derail conversations and invariably lead to Pottu's overbearing moderation thus rendering engagement futile and draining. I must beg of you to reconsider his placement on the GM and/or moderation teams. Please save us from Pottu. Do NOT have him on your team.