Shadow Weaving without Shadow Priests (Support Priest)

[Res 0]

This is a "Healing" build, not a DPS build (Think Support in MOBA games)

 

Mages and warlocks love Power Infusion.
Warlocks especially love Shadow Weaving.

When you outgear content as a priest, you usually respec into Power Infusion to improve clear times because your healing output doesnt matter as much. One priest could spec into shadow weaving on top of Power Infusion to help improve raid DPS further, without a shadow priest taking up a DPS spot.

Example of Build:


Example of Improved Raid DPS over a traditional Shadow Priest:

                  Shadow Priest:                                                  Support Priest:
       

As you can see, it opens up a new DPS spot where the shadow priest were before, increasing raid DPS.
(The Raid setup is just an example to demonstrate what I mean by clearing up a DPS spot, dont get hung up over classes, grouping etc.)

Problems:
Biggest problem is probably that you dont get the "Divine Fury" Talent, which gimps the casting time of your heals a lot, other than that I can't see any major problems for a guild wanting to clear content fast.

What do you think? Could a guild run a Support Priest instead of a Shadow Priest? I think it could be viable.

Or is this a non-issue and that one healing priest should just spec Shadow instead?

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Res

[gotmilk0112 10]

I'd be fine with playing a "Support" Priest like this, just throwing out a Mind Flay every 12 seconds and hitting bubbles/dispels in between. Whether or not it's viable or an improvement, not particularly sure, but I'd certainly be open to playing it, as opposed to trying to DPS full time.

 

Plus make some gold by selling power infusion to the highest bidder

Edited December 4, 2016 by gotmilk0112

[Docholy 4]

Not going to work.  The healing aspect is to gimped to be effective as a healer. The dps shadow seems like it can work but thats alot of mana to cast making the healer even less effective.

[gotmilk0112 10]

Not going to work.  The healing aspect is to gimped to be effective as a healer. The dps shadow seems like it can work but thats alot of mana to cast making the healer even less effective.

The idea is not to be a full-time dps or healer, but a support.

 

You don't DPS, you just keep up Shadow Weaving with rank1 Mind Flay and throw some heals/dispels/bubbles in between. And using Power Infusion to boost the mages/warlocks.

Edited December 4, 2016 by gotmilk0112

[Res 0]

Not going to work.  The healing aspect is to gimped to be effective as a healer. The dps shadow seems like it can work but thats alot of mana to cast making the healer even less effective.

Compared to a normal Power Infusion build you will have 15% more expensive heals and 0.5 longer casting times, 5% less crit chance with your heals, and no armor buff on crit heals from inspiration, (only one priest will have this build so that's not a big problem). The others things are negligible, but obviously not optimal.

 

You become a gimped healer - no question about that, but you will probably still be able to preform as a normal healer in let's say Molten Core, Onyxia, ZG etc. when you have T2+ gear while making room for another DPS.

 

 

About throwing bubbles around... I wouldn't do it.  My thoughts behind this was actually it being a serious spec. PW:S only scales with 10% of spellpower.

I was thinking you would fill the role of a normal healer during speedruns and genrally just plowing through farmed content (Yes - you would have considerably longer casting times for normal heals), just keeping shadow weaving up and throwing Power Infusion on DPS as added responsibilities.

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Res

[Maxvla 0]

Who raids with 11 mages???

 

And dps shadow is truly a support spec. If your raid puts you with 4 warlocks, and you keep up an efficient MF/SWP rotation, you can last a long time and do 250-300 dps (and be responsible for another 200-300 dps from warlocks) while also doing 500-600 healing per sec with VE, if raid allows you 1 of the 16 slots. It's a pretty strong support spec if you think about it from that perspective. 400-600 dps and 500-600 hps at the same time. no other class can touch that for support.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Maxvla

[Drain 19]

So instead of excelling at either role, you want to be фекал at both? If you're getting Shadow Weaving, then you may as well go all the way and get Shadowform too. If your guild is stomping the content, and can dump a Priest, then just switch the entire build to Shadow. -1 Holy +1 Shadow makes far more sense than a shitty mixed build trying to do both.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Drain

[Haitharn 2]

You're playing this spec wrong. Put the 31/0/20 priest into the group with the warlocks, and their job is to PI/Shadow Weaving the warlocks while PoH spamming them when they life tap. My locks never had to drink between trash because I would PoH them, then drink while people killed the trash. While the locks were full HP I'd just raid heal.

 

Easy peasy

[Deathlace 2]

This is what my raid group ran before Nost shut down. It works fine. The other option is to skip PI and get plenty of healing talents, except you get Shadow Weaving too (I think we found this was better actually, PI is good but not THAT good).

[cryofsorrow 5]

The spec looks good and should work nicely, at least on paper. But doesn't it mean that you are gimping a healer so you can bring additional DPS, whereas you could have full-time healers and a below average DPS with standart spriest. Don't be so dismissive on Spriest DPS, it's not THAT bad.
Could any Priest running this spec post raidstats so we can compare?

Edited December 5, 2016 by cryofsorrow

[Res 0]

Who raids with 11 mages???

You're playing this spec wrong. Put the 31/0/20 priest into the group with the warlocks, and their job is to PI/Shadow Weaving the warlocks while PoH spamming them when they life tap.

 

Like I said in the OP, don't get hung up on the groups and classes, the only point I was trying to make by showing the raid set-up is that you "merge" a shadow priest and a healing priest into one raid spot instead of taking up two. Which makes room for another DPS.

 

You'd definitely want a priest in the warlock group no matter if it's a shadow or healing priest, but that wasn't the point I was trying to get across.

 

---

And the other comments about it being a spec that is just bad at two things instead of being meh at DPSing or good at healing, this is not meant as an entry-level spec, it's for farming old content which you severely outgear - which makes up for not picking optimal healing talents while still being able to preform your duty as a healer while being able to support DPS with buffs.

 

The point is that this spot would be taken up by a healer, if you can replace a healer with a dps, then that healer wasn't needed in the first place.

 

That being said, I don't know how much worse/better it would be than having a plain old shadow priest. right now it's just purely theoretical, you guys might be right. I just thought that since shadow priests have mana problems from the start, they are not optimal for speed-running and grinding old content since you usually take way fewer breaks - if any. So they probably couldn't sustain the theoretical DPS/healing pointed out in this thread throughout chain-pulling, and half their "DPS" comes from the debuff they apply anyway.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Res

[killerduki 54]

@Res , nice alternative buddy , keep going.

(would recommend Mind Blast (don't get confused with max rank) over Mind Flay since it have higher Range, no pushback , can time it for kill on trash mobs and get spirit tap, also "CD" will allow you to get regen from "idle spirit" + You can Macro it (max rank) with Inner Focus to save Mana and do some nice Crit)

 

Problem is few folks like Cryofsorrow,Docholy and Maxvla (with their alternative new accounts either) that are strong believers in their "Spell Damage" Shadow Priest and expect your Guide to get Bashed/Trashed completely like they did on my Theorycraft thread.

 

/Kind regards Killerduki

Edited December 5, 2016 by killerduki

[Haitharn 2]

@Res , nice alternative buddy , keep going.

(would recommend Mind Blast (don't get confused with max rank) over Mind Flay since it have higher Range, no pushback , can time it for kill on trash mobs and get spirit tap, also "CD" will allow you to get regen from "idle spirit" + You can Macro it (max rank) with Inner Focus to save Mana and do some nice Crit)

 

Problem is few folks like Cryofsorrow,Docholy and Maxvla (with their alternative new accounts either) that are strong believers in their "Spell Damage" Shadow Priest and expect your Guide to get Bashed/Trashed completely like they did on my Theorycraft thread.

 

/Kind regards Killerduki

You know mind blast has pushback right? 

[killerduki 54]

You know mind blast has pushback right? 

Next time remind me that mind blast is 1.5 second cast and mind flay have even greater pushback that looses even dps.

 

/Kind regards Killerduki

[Chill 0]

People like to be lazy farming old content. This doesn't make the cut imo.

 

If you want to do something weird, start with core. A Tri-Spec with Shadow Weaving is good enough to see progression, so use that instead. PI isn't good enough to compare to core. It just isn't.

 

14/17/20 should be the build of choice. Those are the magic numbers for a SW Support Priest. Go 4/5 Holy Specialization, 3/3 Inspiration and 2/3 Improved Healing.

 

Don't skip Inspiration. It's too useful to be passed up for other things.

[Aethelwulf 12]

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.

Edited January 17, 2017 by Aethelwulf

[Haitharn 2]

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.

You have completely missed the point of the spec if you believe you should just use VE. The entire point of the spec, is to be used when a server has 8 debuff slots. Do you really want to task your guild if you can take up 3 or 4 of the 8 debuff slots? No, of course not. This spec is to quickly apply shadow weaving for the warlocks, while still being able to heal. Due to already gimping yourself with 20 points in shadow, may as well get PI. I'm curious how a 0/31/20 spec would fare, however. The disc tree has some pretty big points 

[Prancinglid 4]

I was doing a 31/0/20 for a couple months leading up to ZG, and it was fun and effective. Obviously, there is no downside to speccing this way if your raid is competent and geared enough to keep everyone up for the fights.

Generally, the boss fights would go something like this:

1. Cast r1 mindflay and cancel it as soon as it connects to apply the shadow weaving debuff.

2. Repeat step 1 4 times to apply 5 stacks of shadow weaving.

3. Spot heal raid, bubble DPS, fear ward or dispel where needed.

4. Cast r1 mindflay and cancel once every 12 seconds to keep up the 5 stacks of shadow weaving.

5. PI your most geared caster, being sure to coordinate with the caster on WHEN to give them PI so it doesn't conflict with spell and other CD rotations.

6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the boss fight ends.

[Haitharn 2]

I was doing a 31/0/20 for a couple months leading up to ZG, and it was fun and effective. Obviously, there is no downside to speccing this way if your raid is competent and geared enough to keep everyone up for the fights.

Generally, the boss fights would go something like this:

1. Cast r1 mindflay and cancel it as soon as it connects to apply the shadow weaving debuff.

2. Repeat step 1 4 times to apply 5 stacks of shadow weaving.

3. Spot heal raid, bubble DPS, fear ward or dispel where needed.

4. Cast r1 mindflay and cancel once every 12 seconds to keep up the 5 stacks of shadow weaving.

5. PI your most geared caster, being sure to coordinate with the caster on WHEN to give them PI so it doesn't conflict with spell and other CD rotations.

6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the boss fight ends.

I would just use r1 SW:P for multiple reasons.

 

1. 22 mana, less than rank 1 mindflay.

2. With the OH from the Un'Goro questline, it was actually 0 cost (OH took 25 mana off all casts). 

3. Instant cast, could use it while moving.

4. Instantly taken off by higher tier debuffs (iirc even deep wounds took rank 1 SW:P off).

[Aethelwulf 12]

You have completely missed the point of the spec if you believe you should just use VE. The entire point of the spec, is to be used when a server has 8 debuff slots. Do you really want to task your guild if you can take up 3 or 4 of the 8 debuff slots? No, of course not. This spec is to quickly apply shadow weaving for the warlocks, while still being able to heal. Due to already gimping yourself with 20 points in shadow, may as well get PI. I'm curious how a 0/31/20 spec would fare, however. The disc tree has some pretty big points

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?

Edited December 25, 2016 by Aethelwulf

[Haitharn 2]

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 or 3 slots. 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?

If you have t2 available no point in even thinking about this spec, just go shadow.

 

And I am talking about this. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=11904 also http://wow.gamepedia.com/Spirit_of_Aquementas says it changes in 1.3 (dire maul). I can't find the source atm (typing this fast) but the item removes 25 mana from each spell cast. SW:P is a 22 mana cost spell at rank 1, so 22-25= -3. It can't give you mana, so it literally costs 0 mana.

[Res 0]

If you have t2 available no point in even thinking about this spec, just go shadow.

 

And I am talking about this. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=11904 also http://wow.gamepedia.com/Spirit_of_Aquementas says it changes in 1.3 (dire maul). I can't find the source atm (typing this fast) but the item removes 25 mana from each spell cast. SW:P is a 22 mana cost spell at rank 1, so 22-25= -3. It can't give you mana, so it literally costs 0 mana.

Here you go:

Spirit of Aquementas

 

 

 

Good to see some discussion here, going holy instead of Disc would benefit healing more and provide less support, I think they are both solid in different circumstances/guilds/content.

 

This thread opened up my eyes to how wide the horizons are as a priest, and I hope other people get something out of it as well.