Fisher

Hahaha. Okay, so you've got one niche fight where holy DPS priest is viable. Neat. Good for you and your guild, I guess? Because there are a couple of folks in here whom are dead set on proving that holy can feasibly be DPS in raids, and the rest of us are trying to explain the many reasons that simply isn't the case. Oh, but I guess it's viable on Twin Emperors, so quick: Go respec!

Unless any of those stacks are wasted by said Shadow Bolt then critting and reapplying the buff, and Lupos's ability to more frequently consume the charges of the debuff would result in more overall damage for the raid. You also have to consider the amount of DPS that a hunter would gain from having their pet totally ignore armor. Just food for thought.

Were you looking at the same things as me? He wasn't topping DPS meters. He wasn't even topping damage meters. That's a pretty big "if" just to make a strange holy DPS priest competitive and viable. You're sacrificing a lot of raid-wide DPS by bringing that many ret paladins and wasting that many debuff slots just to boost the damage of a spec that is only feasible on a few niche fights and brings nothing beneficial to the group beyond that mediocre damage at a horribly inefficient rate of DPM. Not to mention that makes the entire premise of the build reliant on being Alliance, which is a pretty terrible way to present the build: "Only works as Alliance." In addition, the scarcity of decent ret paladins will make it quite the challenge to form a group of any such description. To top it all off, good luck finding a group of people willing to test such a group. I stand with cryofsorrow; show me some proof this spec is capable of doing 700+ DPS "easily." Oh, and I'd consider needing 6 retribution paladins for JotC, 1+ more paladins for JoW, and a mass of mana potions and runes to be not an easy way to reach 700+ DPS. However, by all means, prove us wrong. I'm sure it's possible... at a massive loss of raid-wide DPS, but hey, at least the one priest looks cool, right?

You showed damage done, not DPS. The argument made was "no practical proof of your claim of 700 Holy DPS Priest." That point still stands. Show a screenshot of you doing 700 DPS. Granted, it's interesting to see a priest (especially one that isn't shadow) that high on the damage meters.

I wouldn't purport to know for sure one way or the other, but by reading the talent, it seems to me it would make sense if Lupos's attacks did consume Improved Shadow Bolt. The talent specifically says "Increases Shadow damage dealt to the target by X% until 4 non-periodic damage sources are applied." I'd think that would include Lupos. Now here's the real question: does it really matter?

I suppose you didn't bother to read my other posts, or failed to understand the context of what I said. I never said you should ninja loot, so don't twist my words around like some conniving little snake. Everything I said was about taming rare pets and tagging quest mobs. As you can see, initially I said a hunter should do what they need to if they want a pet that every other hunter wants, e.g. Broken Tooth. Notice how in my second post, again I was speaking about rare pets, but further explained my stance on the issue by including quest mobs to describe the similarities between the two scenarios. Both are named NPCs with longer respawn times than "normal" mobs, and I personally do not believe it is a bad thing for someone to do what they have to in order to get the tag. Third post, repeating the same thing; never once said to ninja. However, it's at this point I can understand why you might get my words twisted. I said the reason you shouldn't do the honorable thing is because it's entirely at your detriment. I figured anyone who understands English would understand I didn't mean this logic should be applied in every scenario. Instead, I was suggesting that hunters should not bother "doing the honorable thing," i.e. let another hunter tame the pet you were waiting for. If you sit around waiting for Broken Tooth and some other hunter runs up to tame it, you should do what you need to do to ensure you get the tame, his feelings be damned. If you come up and some other hunter is waiting there for the same spawn, there is no reason you should be nice and let him tame it first. "Steal" it from him. Tag the mob first. Taunt it off him with Distracting Shot. Broken Tooth is a resource that many hunters will compete over, and you should treat him as such, the same way you'd treat a quest mob, quest item, etc. Take it for yourself. WOW! What's that? The exact quote where I specifically mentioned ninjaing epics, and that I'm not saying you should do that? Whoo, that's a doozy. So when you say this: You can kindly cram it where the Sun doesn't shine, because the behavior I suggested related exclusively to TAMING PETS, NOT NINJAING LOOT.

As Bobtri noted, you have to get the killing blow in order to benefit. This makes it less reliable in groups. For this reason, when grouping, you should be extra conservative with your mana. Use your wand regularly, don't use Shadow Word: Pain on all trash mobs, etc. A method of ensuring you get Spirit Tap would be to Mind Blast mobs when they are low HP, as it's a very hard hitting spell. However, be mindful that doing so and missing the killing blow will severely cripple your mana pool. Best of luck to you.

Not really. Your raid leader isn't going to say "Okay here, looks like you're in full T2, have a decent pet, have logs showing you do great DPS... OH! Wait... says here you tamed Broken Tooth by pulling it off another hunter. Sorry, we can't have you in our group." They're going to care about things that matter, like ninjaing epics you can't use, or weren't supposed to get, like rolling Need when everyone else agreed to roll Greed.

Cool story, bro. In all seriousness, congratulations. Well done not complaining that someone tried to ruin it for you and well done doing what was necessary to get it for yourself. Need more folks who don't whine every time something negative happens. Need more folks who suck it up and deal with it.

Things raid leaders care about: Are you good at your role? Are you geared/talented correctly? Are you a ninja? Broken Tooth and other rare pets do not relate to those issues whatsoever. You could make the very flimsy connection between being a ninja and taming a pet, but honestly, I don't think any raid leader is going to refuse to take you because you "stole" Broken Tooth from another hunter. If your raid leader cares about that, you're probably in a guild that can't even clear Deadmines, in which case I'm not concerned about not being in their raid group.

Indeed. I forgot to mention that, but I did mention it in my guide. It's easily saved my life more than once on my priest, and watching people struggle to kill you because you just do so much damage and healing at the same time is great. Save for the absurdly high mana cost, it's a great spell. Nope. I'm actually not sure any DoT does that in vanilla.

No problem. A lot of people are quick to rush to say "play Dwarf" without ever explaining why. Shadowguard requires you to be hit. I'm actually not sure if it procs even when you don't take damage. I'm fairly certain it does. If I'm not mistaken, its DPM is only 1.39, and its DPS is unquantifiable because of its Lightning Shield style mechanics. In terms of efficiency, it's not worth the mana to cast it during a fight, except, as you mention, perhaps in PvP, particularly if you have Blackout. In PvE, both while leveling and in raids, it's simply not worth keeping up. Apply it before the fight starts, then ignore it. I'd say Dwarf > Troll > Undead >= Human > Night Elf Dwarf is the clear winner in just about everyone's list, for what I hope are obvious reasons. Fear Ward is great. Stoneform is great. Troll (in my opinion) is the best horde race for many reasons. Increased health regen and regen that works in combat allows you to save some mana not needing to heal. Berserking is good for casting and attacking faster (good for leveling and end-game!), and improves the closer you are to death. Hex of Weakness is great for PvP. Shadowguard is pretty lame, but Undead just has great racials, especially for PvP and leveling. While Devouring Plague isn't that great DPS or DPM wise, it is an extra bit of damage you can toss out instantly (no cast or channel, that is), making it good for PvP. You won't get to use Devouring Plague in most raid scenarios, which sort of makes Undead less useful there, but they're so undeniably good for soloing, and considering Will of the Forsaken, it's hard to rank them any lower. Human is arguably of equal strength to Undead. Perception is great in PvP, occasionally useful in PvE. Desperate Prayer saves a great deal of mana on self-healing, which is great for end-game raiding, PvP, and leveling. The added spirit from their racial is great for end-game content (getting the most spell power as holy) and great for leveling. However, Feedback is such an underwhelming ability, and the insanely long cooldown on Desperate Prayer makes them so "meh" to me. Night Elf's racials are underwhelming all around. Starshards is great for leveling, but horrible for end-game content. With Shadowform, Starshards loses most of its allure. It isn't very useful for a healer, and isn't very useful for a damage dealer. Elune's Grace is a subpar cooldown, like a ghetto wannabe version of Evasion. Shadowmeld is situationally useful; useful for camping long spawns or preparing for an ambush in PvP, etc. Overall, Night Elves are just... meh.

It is the highest damage per mana spell a priest has before Shadow Weaving. This makes it incredibly good for leveling (where DPM > DPS, typically). On its own, it's quite decent, but compared to other racial priest spells, it isn't that great. In terms of usefulness overall, I'd have to rank the racials as follows: Fear Ward Hex of Weakness Devouring Plague Desperate Prayer Starshards Touch of Weakness Feedback Shadowguard This pretty much puts Dwarf at the top. Troll is best for Horde because of the racials they get in addition to the better priest racial, but playing Undead is acceptable. Human is fine for PvP and solo play. Starshards is decent, but it has little use at higher levels, is channeled (and thus isn't that useful in PvP), doesn't do as much DPS as other shadow spells, doesn't help your healing or your group in any way, etc. Shadowmeld doesn't really make up for the poor priest racial, either. Shadowmeld is... meh. Okay for hunters, maybe, arguably has some use in PvP, but it's nothing amazing. Mind Flay - 142 DPS and 2.08 DPM before talents; 204.1 DPS and 2.99 DPM after talents Starshards - 156 DPS and 2.67 DPM; talents do not affect the spell's DPS or DPM Starshards' channel time is twice the duration of Mind Flay's and deals a little more than twice the damage before talents for a little less than twice the cost. It's a somewhat decent spell (very good before you get Shadow Form), but its usefulness falls off once you hit level 40 and gain access to talents that tremendously increase the damage of Mind Flay and other shadow spells. At max level, it's practically worthless. A healer should probably never use it (as the mana is better spent on heals), and a shadow priest should be using better DPS spells like Mind Flay, Mind Blast, etc. If you were practically out of mana and needed to do some damage, it might be useful. No. In short fights you care WAY more about DPS than you do about DPM. DPM is about efficiency, which is important for long fights or strings of fights with little or no rest in between. In short fights, you care more about doing as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. In a short fight where you can't stack Shadow Weaving, you'd definitely ignore Starshards. In a longer fight where you need to be doing consistent damage over long periods of time (or while leveling), you could use Starshards to save some mana and maintain your damage output. While I appreciate the sentiment, the context of that quote is important. That's for leveling, not raiding. While leveling, damage per mana is more important than DPS. In end-game content, the opposite is typically true, except in incredibly lengthy fights. If you're a shadow priest in the raid, you want to be maintaining the Shadow Weaving debuff and doing as much DPS as possible to justify your presence in the raid. This is an interesting point, but it doesn't actually change the DPM of the spell. The DPM totally ignores regeneration. DPM is about how much damage the spell will do for the amount of mana spent. Just because you regenerate some mana while casting it does not mean it dealt more damage per mana spent. Long story short, Night Elf is... meh out of 10. Play whatever you want. Your race choice won't make a significant enough difference to notice in most cases. If you don't already know what the absolute best is, you probably aren't doing any content difficult enough that your race choice would make a difference.

This. You're a hunter, not a warrior. Your melee weapon(s), beyond the stats on it (them), mean nothing to you. Use your ranged weapon. Of course, level up the melee weapon so you don't miss with melee abilities, but it's not nearly as important.

If you're absolutely dead set on playing an inferior spec, feel free. Discipline is a good supplementary spec, but it isn't a good spec on its own. If you're leveling by yourself (and you absolutely don't want to play shadow), you will need the most damage you can get out of your spells, because discipline and holy spells are horribly mana-inefficient. It costs nearly double the amount of mana to do the same damage. Although the DPS is somewhat comparable (before Shadow Weaving stacks, that is), DPS is not nearly as important as DPM and survivability, especially on a PvP server. 15% physical damage reduction while leveling is insanely good, as most mobs do physical damage. Reducing the cooldown of your only CC is important. Gaining a 5 second silence is important. Shadow Weaving and Shadowform increase the damage of shadow wands, meaning your wand (the most important part of leveling as a priest) will be better as shadow. Healing yourself by doing damage is something only shadow can do. Stunning your target (or a chance to) is something only shadow can do. Reducing the amount of hit you will need by 10% is something only shadow gets. Slowing your target is only something shadow can do. Increasing the damage of your groupmates is something only shadow can do (and discipline with Power Infusion, but that's only on one person for 15 seconds instead of the entire fight). PLAY SHADOW!

In terms of leveling speed, it's a waste of time to work on professions at all. The time invested on gathering materials and crafting detracts from your experience per hour. Once you are 60, you will have all the time in the world (and a far easier time, at that) for leveling professions. The only reason I suggest getting a gathering profession is because you don't have to go out of your way to level it (the nodes are right there as you're leveling, especially in the case of skinning and enchanting), and everything you gather can then be sold to give you the money you need for your mount and skills. It is far more efficient fwhile leveling to level gathering professions than it is to level crafting professions. You can pick up tailoring, but just sell the cloth, then buy it when you're 60 and have better ways of making money. It's not a matter of cost. Leveling tailoring is relatively cheap while leveling because the mats are readily available, but it also means you are spending money on more training and making less money by not selling the cloth. While the money spent is not very much, the money earned is far less. If you only spend 5 gold leveling tailoring, you may think you only spent 5 gold, which is technically true, but the 100 gold worth of materials you used leveling it instead of selling means you actually "spent" 100 gold. And make no mistake: you will make a lot of money selling the cloth while leveling. All I can say is good luck. In addition to the absolutely atrocious leveling speed of doing dungeons with people your level, you will have less money because you will be doing fewer quests; you will level literally half as quickly because of being in a group; you'll make less money because you're splitting loot; you'll spend longer on drop/gather quests; and you'll be pigeon-holed into waiting for your friend to play, meaning you are each only as effective at leveling as the other. That can be either really bad for you, or really bad for your friend, depending on which one of you plays less often. If you agree to each play on your own time, but level together when you're both online, one of you will inevitably outpace the other, and end up having to waste time doing quests they've already done to help their partner catch up. If you agree to only play those characters with the other online, you are going to take a very long time to level up (unless you both play all the time). Short answer is yes, I have leveled as holy before, and it is much worse than shadow. While not impossible to level on your own, your experience while leveling as holy will be far more insufferable than as shadow. Shadow is way more DPS; it is way more mana efficient; it has more damage reduction; it has better (and more) CC; it has the ability to heal while doing damage. Some things you will miss out on if you level as holy: Spirit Tap (unless you put 5 points in shadow. Presumably, you would) Longer duration on Shadow Word: Pain, which you will want to use Mind Flay and its slowing effect, making it take longer for melee mobs to reach you, reducing damage received Vampiric Embrace, which will heal you for a percentage of the spell damage you deal, negating the need to choose between spending mana on healing or damage Improved Psychic Scream, reducing the cooldown of your only CC Silence, which is incredibly strong in PvP and gives priests a great deal of damage reduction when fighting casters 25% damage bonus, plus an additional 15% from Shadow Weaving at full stacks 15% physical damage reduction (most mobs deal physical damage while leveling, and most of priests' PvP counters are physical damage) What you gain if you level as holy: 5% critical strike chance with holy spells .5 second cast time reduction on Smite, Holy Fire, Heal, and Greater Heal Holy nova, which is admittedly one of the best things about holy, which would allow you to have some AoE, and a way to instantly tag mobs in an AoE 10% damage increase to Smite and Holy Fire Spell power equal to 25% of your spirit (which you will have a lot of while leveling as a priest) Some healing increases, which in any low level content is hardly necessary While leveling, healing is worthless. You have Power Word: Shield. You almost never take damage, even if you don't take Improved Power Word: Shield. All of the benefits you get from Holy are largely geared towards maximizing your healing per mana, which is far more important in raids and harder dungeons (like Blackrock Spire). In lower level content, especially questing content, healing for 110 instead of 100 is not going to help. What helps is maximizing your damage per mana so you can do kill mobs non-stop. You say you want to pick up the Smite talent. Okay, well, keep this in mind: Holy Fire (assuming it lasts its full duration) deals 2.15 damage per mana and 110.86 DPS without talents; 2.37 damage per mana and 139.15 DPS with talents Holy Nova deals 0.26*[# of enemies] damage per mana and 130*[# of enemies] DPS. Talents do not improve its damage Smite deals 1.33 damage per mana and 157.2 DPS without talents; 1.46 damage per mana and 216.15 DPS with talents Now to contrast with shadow spells: Mind Blast deals 1.48 damage per mana and 344.67 DPS without talents; 1.85 damage per mana and 430.84 DPS with talents (more with Shadow Weaving, but that's not always at 5 stacks, so I'll not include it) Mind Flay deals 2.08 damage per mana and 142 DPS without talents; 2.6 damage per mana and 177.5 DPS with talents Shadow Word: Pain (assuming it lasts its full duration) deals 1.81 damage per mana and 47.33 DPS without talents; 3.02 damage per mana and 59.16 DPS with talents I'm using max ranks for simplicity's sake here, but let's go through what the basic rotation for leveling would be while leveling as each spec. For the sake of simplicity, I'll exclude the mana cost of Power Word: Shield, since it's presumed both specs will maintain it. As holy: Holy Fire Smite x3 Wand In that time, you dealt 547 (Holy Fire) + 1179 (3 Smites) = 1726 damage at the cost of 1140 mana, averaging about 1.51 damage per mana, plus whatever DPS your wand pumps out, free of mana cost. As shadow, however: Mind Blast Shadow Word: Pain Mind Flay x2 Wand In that time, you dealt 646 (Mind Blast) + 1420 (Shadow Word: Pain) + 1065 (Mind Flay x2) = 3131 damage at the cost of 1230 mana, average about 2.55 damage per mana, plus whatever DPS your wand pumps out, free of mana cost. As you can clearly see, shadow's damage is far more mana efficient. At first glance, you might think "Smite does more DPS than Mind Flay, though, and Holy Fire does more DPS than Shadow Word: Pain!" Well, that may be true, until you start to consider the stacks of Shadow Weaving that will further boost the damage of shadow as the fight goes on, and the fact the DPS of Holy Fire is slightly misleading, because it's an initial burst of DPS, then very little DPS as it ticks. In fact, the DoT of Holy Fire is only 11.4 DPS, added onto the spam of Smite for 216.15 DPS, totaling 227.55 DPS, plus a little more to compensate for the initial cast of Holy Fire. Shadow, on the other hand, has the massive burst damage (and subsequent DPS) of Mind Blast, followed by the constant 59.16 DPS of Shadow Word: Pain, and 177.5 DPS of Mind Flay spam, for an average of 236.66 DPS. Not only is shadow more mana efficient (which is important for leveling quickly), it is better DPS. Granted, it doesn't seem like it's by much based on the numbers I just showed, but you have to consider the other incredible benefits and the added DPS from Shadow Weaving stacks. Long story short, level as shadow. It's better.

As far as I know, it doesn't change the tooltip of the spell. It probably didn't actually say 33%, you just thought it did.

Because most people are scum, regardless of class. There is a certain degree of allure for the hunter class, namely that the class is very easy to get into and level.

You are correct. There are modifiers for different species of pets. Cats, for example, get 10% (iirc) more DPS. However, all cats of the same level will have the same DPS. What was confusing me is this guy in the thread was saying that Broken Tooth had a higher base DPS, which hasn't been the case since before I can remember. There's no reason it should be the case here.

That's how RNG is. It's random. 50% chance doesn't mean you'll see 50% of ticks proccing the effect, it means there's a 50% chance it will happen. On average, you should see somewhere around 50% proc-rate, but that isn't guaranteed. It's not a bug, it's just bad luck.

For group/raid content, yes. For solo/PvP content, no.

Power Word: Shield prevents the knock-back, so yes, I am keeping PW:S up every fight. Which is it, buddy? The answer to "when should I stop wanding?" is never. A priest's wand is always useful. However, you should be using Mind Flay (albeit not exclusively) while leveling, and here's why: Vampiric Embrace will heal any damage you take (if you take any), and your wand will not trigger its effect. Shadow Weaving increases your damage several levels before you reach level 40 and gain Shadowform. If you want to argue that there's little reason to use Mind Flay before level 30, fine. That depends largely on your wand's DPS. If you are using a subpar wand, Mind Flay will supplement your DPS quite nicely. If you are using a great wand, you might find that using Mind Flay is entirely unnecessary. The need to use Mind Flay depends on the HP of the mobs you are fighting and your gear. Keep in mind that this is a guide, not an end-all-be-all answer to every hypothetical situation. It's meant to give people a general understanding of the class and its inner workings to know how to answer these questions themselves, while also setting them on the right track in the process. Like I said... I'm sorry it's too many words for your tiny brain. My guide is a little more in-depth than your average two paragraph garbage, and that's because there is more to talk about than just the spec, spell rotation, and when to change specs. There is also gearing, understanding stats, the best wands (which are critical to a priest's leveling speed), advice on how to play (not just a cast order for leveling), money-making and saving tips (because someone new will not have the gold to get their mount, and a mount is insanely important for leveling efficiently), etc. Leveling is a hefty time investment. Even if you're going hardcore and doing it as fast as possible, you can expect to spend a few days played time getting to level 60. This isn't something you can just breeze through like in retail. It's important to know how to level efficiently in vanilla. That means knowing a little more than "use these talents, cast these spells."

Yep, because this guide has had a history of really bad priests coming in and trying to lead up-and-coming priests astray with information like "never use Mind Flay." When all the dude has to say is "terrible advice," I don't particularly care about playing nice.

Maybe actually read my guide, you ding-dong. I know it's a lot of words for your tiny brain, but give it a shot before you say my advice is terrible. Mind Flay is better DPS than your wand, unless you have the absolute BiS wand and are 1 level before the next rank. Mind Flay has great DPM (damage per mana, for your ignorant, noob self, because I'm assuming you don't know), making it very good for use while leveling. It is fairly cheap mana-wise and does decent DPS. Mind Flay applies stacks of Shadow Weaving, which will increase the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, and subsequent casts of Mind Flay. I said to DoT and wand. I even specifically said "In general, you only care about keeping up Shadow Word: Pain (allowing it to do all or most of its damage), and wanding." Please learn to read, you nitwit. Now shut up, noob. Don't come in here and mislead the readers into doing something incredibly retarded.

I don't think it makes sense to take the damage gained from a buff from the one buffed and attribute it to the one buffing. I think most people are capable of recognizing how useful and how much DPS a buff/debuff will give the group/raid without needing to say "the collective 200 DPS gained from this buff is actually the hunter's DPS." The hunter wasn't the one doing the DPS, even if the hunter's buffs were responsible for that much DPS being added. The tank doesn't get all the DPS gained from Sunder Armor. The fury warrior doesn't get all the DPS gained from Battle Shout. The warlock doesn't get all the DPS gained from Curse of Elements, Curse of Recklessness, or Curse of Shadows. So on, and so forth. If you want to make the argument that hunters bring a decent chunk of DPS to their group/raid with their buffs, fine. However, suggesting that all that DPS is actually theirs doesn't make sense to me.