The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Which Spec is Better, Shadow or…That Other One?
by Vonya
First off, let’s point out the different “sub-games” within the World of Warcraft game umbrella, shall we?
- PVP
- Soloing
- Group Questing
- Instancing
- Raiding
- Roleplaying
I will go ahead and cross the first and last items off the list of things I’m going to discuss.
I do not enjoy and never intend to participate in PVP on my priest. If I ever do a post about PVP priesting, you can bet your best talbuk that I’ll have done an insane amount of research for it.
Roleplaying, by its very nature, doesn’t care what spec you are. Never place a talent point, and you’re just as viable at roleplaying as the long-lost half-dragon daughter of Elune standing next to you.
So we’re left with a goodly chunk of interesting playstyles in the middle.
Soloing
Can you solo as holy/disc? Sure, but it’s a huge and unnecessary pain in the tookus, and is an exercise in masochism that normal people scorn.
If you’re going to be spending the majority of your time soloing, go shadow spec. Period. Trust me on this one.
Quick answer : Shadow
Group Questing
Let’s say you spend the majority of your time out in the world questing with a small group of friends and fellow adventurers. While you quaff another tankard of ale, you drunkenly evaluate your options.
Fear not, it’s pretty much impossible to get this one wrong. Both healery and shadow specs are perfectly viable for casual group work.
If you run with a group that scatters at the first sign of mobs, everyone picking a target willy-nilly and getting attacked, then you’re in a situation where a shadow priest shines. The shadowform shadow priest heals everyone in the group for a percentage of the shadow damage that they do.
That means that while TankMaster is getting healed, so is FidoPet, OverzealousMage, and DeathIncarnate, the warlock that’s already killed five mobs, and is wondering what’s taking the rest of you so long.
If everyone is taking small, steady damage, shadow spec healing excels.
Additionally, the healing needs of a questing group tend to be pretty minimal. I would recommend shadow spec for this just so you’re not bored off your rocker, and can toss out some damage to help pass the time.
Quick Answer : Shadow
Instancing
This is a tough one, and is pretty highly contested across the boards.
In my opinion, you should be holy/disc - the healery combination that gives you more powerful, faster, and cheaper heals.
If you’re doing instances late - meaning, you head into Uldaman when your group is 47 or higher, for example, then you probably won’t have many problems healing a group with shadow spec.
However, once you hit Blackrock Depths, you’re going to see yourself straining to keep your group alive with a shadow spec. Especially if you don’t have a backup healer in your pocket for emergencies.
I have had great success with a healery build, and with a good tank, we rip through instances a few levels BEFORE the recommended level. Sometimes as a three-man group.
Yes, I’m bragging. That’s a brag-worthy accomplishment, and when you manage to take down Archaedus with a group of three as soon as your tank hits 44, you can brag too. I’ll let you. Go ahead.
There are a ton of people who say shadow spec is fine for instance healing. I say those people are probably doing the instance at a more “reasonable” level, and are likely to be in a group that’s making heavy use of crowd control and offtanking.
If you are spending the bulk of your time in five man instances, spec holy/disc. That’s my opinion, and I think you’ll have an easy time of it.
Quick Answer : Healery
Raiding
Again we delve into territory that I’m not super-familiar with. Judging from the commotion on the boards, it seems that most of the top raid guilds stock up on shadow priests, keeping one with some points in Discipline for Improved Divine Spirit. The priests do a passive raid-wide heal with their shadow damage and contribute face-melting. Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids are strategically placed to do the heavy healing.
And no, the irony of the “masters of healing and preservation” being shunted into a nonhealing role for extreme endgame play is not lost on me.
Whatever guild/group you end up raiding with will, of course, determine what spec is needed. But for general purposes, you’ll probably be asked to shadow priest for raiding.
Quick answer : Shadow
Summary
Boy, that sure seems to lean in favor of Shadow, doesn’t it?
Hold your horses, don’t start tearing your clothes and gnashing your teeth just yet.
Some of us actually rolled a priest to heal, and I am most definitely not telling you that spending talent points in healing is a waste of time.
What I -am- saying is that there is no “best” spec.
You can thumb your nose at all of these rash generalizations, solo all the way to 70 with a healery build and then send me furious emails about how my advice is as useless as a flaming sack of unpleasantness on the doorstep.
I already know. I’m telling you what the current trends are, and giving you an idea of what to expect. For those newbies in the audience, I want you to realize that specs are situational, and have some sort of idea about which of the talent trees is useful in the different situations.
When you first roll a priest, all those talents are a bunch of gibberish, and no one path seems to make sense.
This is for you, newbie. Think about how you want to spend your time in this game. Shadow priests can still heal, just not as quickly, or quite as powerfully. Holy priests can still dps, it’s just trickier and nowhere near as facemelty.
If you don’t understand some of the terms I have so flippantly used, feel free to email me and ask about them - I’m enough of an old hat at this game that I tend to forget about the feeling of intense revelation that came over me when I realized that CLOTH only dropped from HUMANOIDS.
Yes, I too was once a newb.
July 25th, 2007
I’d like to qualify the solo grinding thing - I’m a lvl 50 disc/holf nelf and grinding is slightly less painful than it would otherwise appear. Provided you have spirit tap, you can cruise greens and early yellows without ever stopping or dieing. After key trainer visits, with most spells fresh, I’m capable of soloing stuff 3-4 levels above me, or fear kiting 3-4 even level mobs. Admittedly, this is dependent on three things - the much maligned but hugely mana efficient starshards, high level alchemy and +dam gear, lots of it. Which brings me to my second point, PVP.
BG PVP is not for everyone, and if you’re alliance it will give you a chilling insight into the literacy & skill levels of the player base - but if you do like it, disc/holy is a very viable spec. Shadow priests can rock the damage meter as well as any other DPS class, but by and large they are just that - another DPS class, and thanks to lack of CC, a soft target, too. If you take key PVP disc talents (martyrdom, imp shield, unbreakable will, imp inner fire) and a scattering of appropriate holy and shadow, you become the one thing most BGs lack - a fulltime healer with respectable survivability. In WSG, especially, you can punch a tank FC through 3-4 defenders with chain fear, heals, shields and CC dispels; yep, the other team will waste you, but only because they can’t touch the FC. You’re even capable of running the flag against a disorganized team; with trinket, self heal spam and fear it takes 2-3 enemies to stop you. I’m poor at def - although sw:p + starshards again shines against cheeky solos - but overall, am above 50% win rate on WSG, and routinely top the healing charts (for both teams) with respectable damage and a flag or two run in. We’ll not talk about AB.
What’s the point? Well, if you grind the BGs diligently - and I’m of the opinion this is fun; YMMV - you DO get some excellent solo gear for the non-shadow priest. Since I use long cast spells from holy, shadow and arcane, +150 odd unbuffed spell damage (with more from buffs and divine spirit) is a big help; what’s more, since it also applies to healing, I can switch in key healing pieces knowing that the rest of my gear is also contributing.
Anyway, a long post; I like the blog, so thought I’d add a pvp viewpoint. For clarification, all of the above is only true until level 50; I have no experience of the end game. My current spec is disc 24/holy 10/Shadow 7; I agree it’s a little masochistic for grinding, but more light slaps then heavy whipping, and in PUGs (which I do a lot) the extra healing/buffing/regen is essential. Good luck with Stage 5.
July 26th, 2007
I think it definitely takes a lot of patience, but it makes gearing up a lot easier if you intend to be healery at the end of the road.
Plenty of the ending quests in BC make you choose between healer and caster gear, so you’d better have a pretty good idea of what you’d like to accomplish before you start gearing up, otherwise you’ll end up at level 70 with some green, nearly-useless bracers because you didn’t get the upgrade from the Zangarmarsh quest.
Not…Not that I would know anything about that. <.<
August 21st, 2007
First off, I love your blog. Second I have a 70 level Priest on Sen’jin (Hamacus). I recently respeced to Shadow after finally getting fed up with others people ignorance. If it was not “Disc/Holy can’t DPS” (PROVEN WRONG…did it), Holy/Disc can’t raid heal (WRONG AGAIN…did it) or “Shadow Priest have no place in end game” this from a Holy Priest that was losing his slot to Shadow Priest (Just an idiot). All that combined with the “BEST HEALER rhetoric has me almost ready to give up my Priest. Gonna give it a rest and just melt faces for a while.
Also leveling up a Mage and a Lock. Having fun and experiencing old content as a different class. I Love casters. I will continue to gear up my Shadow Priesty as I have maxed out my Healing gear attainable pre-Kara. Hope to get our guildies set to run Kara on a regular basis in the near future. Until then let the faces melt as they may and enough with the best spec trash talk.
Ham
August 22nd, 2007
Hamacus
The best spec is the one you enjoy playing. Always.
But for people who hate being told “Just play what you want to play” and want to know the easiest, most efficient, or most accepted way to accomplish certain things…this is the list.
September 11th, 2007
my main is a prot pally so i am used to the slow grind to solo level and quest. i have a 64 priest that i mostly solo leveled all the way, i just recently changed over to shadow to get ready to raid(group has enough holy specced already) but i think i miss the holy leveling, shadow is just so boring- shield, vt, ve, mb, swp, mf till dead. but it is alot less stressfull since i the only thing i have to worry about is my threat
October 10th, 2007
“There are a ton of people who say shadow spec is fine for instance healing. I say those people are probably doing the instance at a more “reasonable” level, and are likely to be in a group that’s making heavy use of crowd control and offtanking.”
It is fine for instance healing up until you pass into outland. If by “reasonable level” you mean “appropriate level” then yes, I’d agree. The last part of this quote sounds like a snarky stab at people that use tactics. Might wanna check yourself there. ; )
Just because people do instances at the appropriate level, use tactics and don’t follow your doctrine of “healery-ness” doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong–which your tone implies btw.
-D
October 15th, 2007
Why be a shadow priest ? Unless your just using shadow to level before you respec to holy theres no point. If you like bein a shadow priest to do damage and melt faces… Go be a warlock or a mage. If you like to have have people depending on you to keep the group alive then stay a priest. —- TAKE NOTE —- If you wanna be a holy priest for your party and your not bored then one of two things is happening.. 1) Your party stinks or 2) Your doing too much… I would confidently say thast Im one of the best priests on my server. Having been compared to 70 priest while at level 53 Im a master at NOT pulling agro and Not overhealing… As a holy priest you have tons to pay attention to… Its NOT an easy class or spec.
October 15th, 2007
@Azillion
Actually, there’s plenty of reason to be a shadow priest. The raid utility alone is astounding, for a good player.
If you want to be the BEST at magic-based dps, then perhaps priesting isn’t for you. But a properly played shadow priest can contribute both dps and raid utility.
Also, if you’re not pulling aggro or overhealing, I’d say you’ve got an excellent tank there. Being a good healer isn’t a solo job.
You’re right, there’s definitely a lot to pay attention to, it’s not easy. I wouldn’t call it boring though. If the goal of priesting is to get to the point where you’re bored, then it would be a class/spec nobody would go for.
October 21st, 2007
A shadow priest is more for returning Mana to casters,enabling them to last longer in longer fights and returning of health points to players thru spells (Mind Flay and Mind Blast).
Whereas a healery type priestress is more of healing things to death =D
December 3rd, 2007
Im leveling up a priest with my boyfriend, who is a warlock, im not concerned with what spec i should level with, but more interested in your opinion of what spec i could do arena with…maybe just all around..i wanted to heal, cause i knew it would be easy to get into group, and i havent played a healing class yet.but shadow is so tempting. ^_^ ..if you could pair up with a warlock in everything..what would be your personal preference and why?? (maybe ill just respec every week back and forth.lol) TY !
December 3rd, 2007
Steffani
From what I understand (bear in mind, I’ve not pvp’d as a priest myself - discipline is the spec of choice for pvp priests - there are a lot of “don’t kill me” talents, and team pvp goes by very quickly.
If you’re talking AV runs, that may be different.
And for general questing/running around with a warlock, I’d definitely go shadow. Shadow heals very well up until you hit Burning Crusade instances, when a holy priest will heal better.
=] Any spec can do anything, it just depends on how easy you want it to be.
January 4th, 2008
What about just speccing up Discipline - instead of holy or Shadow?
What is the resultant of that? Anyone try?
Share!!
ZT
January 18th, 2008
I just hit lvl 52. My first points were in disc wand specialization and then improved shield. Then in shadow Spirit Tap (wonderful!), imp SW:P (couldnt live without it), up to mind flay and improved mind blast. The next points were back in holy to get healing focus and improved renew (great way to heal during normal damage in instances and conserve mana - prayer of healing when more people needs heals). Since then, it is back into disc up to divine spirit, although my last point was in improved fade 22/5/16 I intend to go disc until refelctive shield then probably back to shadow with remaining points (if any).
Some have suggested that disc is a slow leveller. That may be true. But I mostly solo. Yet I can heal instances no problem and I almost never die unless I am really pushing the envelope and pick up 2 mobs 3-4 levels above me. However, I tend to prefer durability over DPS. The imrpoved buffs I can give any groups I am with are always worthwhile and dropping an improved shield at a critical moment helps a great deal.
My grinding has seemed to slow down now that I am into the 50’s. Part of that is just that I need 130k XP to get to the next level and I have focused on mobs 2-4 levels above me. A number of griding guides suggest 1-2 levels *below* for fastest work. I will try that.
By the way, I am night elf and I use starshards all the time. I can pull 2 or 3 mobs, putting SW:P on all and dropping starshards on the third one of them. By the time the first one drops, I pop shield again, renew SW:P on the other two and by the time the second one drops the third one is just about dead. I use my wand for most of the damage along the way. Spirit tap, divine spirit and wand usage let me regenerate my mana for endurance.
When I grind one at a time (my level and 2-3 above me), I MB, SW:P, starshards, shield, and then wand until death with the ocassional extra mind blast or mind flay. At this rate, I drop 2 mobs a minute and I almost never stop for mana or food breaks.
So, I guess I vote for “the other one”
Caerroil
Guild: Aegis
Server: Shandris
great blog BTW
January 18th, 2008
I made a mistake on my one-mob-at-a-time order of spells
-i pull with holy fire (adding a DOT)
-mind blast while they run to me (1.5 cast time and chance for a stun)
-shadow word: pain (instant with 10% less mana usage)
-shield (same instant mana reduction)
-starshards (no mana)
-wand (no mana)
In this order, I have 3 DOTs on the mob, at least until holy fire drops off and I can start the 5 sec clock once the shield is up. Also, by hitting mind blast early, I start the cooldown period early in case they need a little touch up towards the end or they resisted something along the way. I can also use mind flay for CC or for a stream of damage (rather than the all-or-none damage of my other spells)
January 20th, 2008
I’ve managed to do a fair amount of instance healing (while leveling,) with a discipline build. While not the absolute pinnacle of healery, it is the absolute pinnacle of priest survivalry. I rarely happen to have the cohesive EVERYTHING (like the dream-team I read about in the comments,) to get a group from happening, so I have to make do with taking a few hits. While “taking a few hits” is entirely avoidable given even the less-than-ideal situation, I found it happening much too often with any group I found through LFG, so I figured, “Hey, it’s that… other tree. What’s it for?”
I took a good long look at the tree after the 2.3 patch came out and found some pretty viable PvE talents squirreled away in the tree that seemed almost perfectly suited for my situation. Well, during that good long look at the tree, its eyes met mine and we shared a calm moment; I could balance my already competent healing with some survivability against the soul-crushing harshness of never finding the ideal group. So, I went to work on the talent-builders looking for that perfect balance, and the best one I found and put to work was a full discipline spec with a bit of a holy “crutch”.
I did this to prolong my survivability with terrible groups. My situation is so astronomically different than what the normal environment that I had to reduce my overall effectiveness to work with the people that I’d become friends with. I hate having to adjust myself to others, but it really seemed like a choice when I decided to take the plunge and respec.
There’s one thing I noticed as soon as I got done choosing my talents: I had the mana pool of a GOD. This can be balanced out by the mana cost talents in the Holy tree to bring out the most in a priest’s sustained healing, stack that with the reduced cost of instants, inner focus, and mana regen from the heavens, and I’d outlast every encounter as long as I didn’t need to spam Greater Heals that whole fight. What I was missing was any sort of Clearcasting proc and seeing any unexpected AoE would strain me beyond my spec, and I don’t think it’s possible to really change this in the direction I was going.
I’m not exactly set on +healing now that I didn’t have the talents spread all through the Holy tree, but I ended up taking the time to really run instances especially for the gear from the earliest moment possible. I also managed to grab the extra stats from Divine Spirit, which added meagerly to my +damage and +healing.
Agro: The biggest problem I faced in my situation. I consistently grouped with tanks that had no skill for keeping agro, no matter how hard I tried to stay below a certain level of threat. In come two talents that knock agro away with a machete, 20% agro reduction of Holy/Discipline spells and Pain Suppression. That immediate 5% agro reduction is strange for a talent buried at the end of the PvP tree.
So, theoretically, I could keep the heals coming, but when I land a heavy one that the tank wasn’t ready for, I could either wipe that agro off permanently or Fade and hope to the lord he knows what he’s doing. That heal land even harder than 5% agro reduction? No worries, I’m not taking 40% of that damage until the tank notices what’s happening. My heals need to land even harder? Power Infusion temporarily bumps me up to the power of a Holy priest. That boss need some burning down? Power Infusion the other caster in the group and pray to god you get some return-on-investment.
I had to lie to groups by saying I was holy/disc, but not one group ever noticed the difference, and I sure as hell noticed I wouldn’t die as fast, leaving only a tiny heap of frustration with PUG groups.
I do not recommend it. I don’t. It’ll gimp you beyond belief for anything else other than isntancing with terrible groups. They call it a specialization; you specialize in something.
February 27th, 2008
@ D
Shut up. This is supposed to be a forum about priests and this thread is about what specs Ego reccomends.
This is not a bitch and complain forum, go cry to your mom :’[
@ Ego
Thank you for the information! I run hunters with BM alot and I'm making my first priest tonight! Don't let whiny people get to you on threads. I'm an instance runner all the way. Gear, XP, and that group feeling of working together makes it the best thing in the game to me. This is the best WoW forum ever :] thanks.
@ Everyone defending Ego
Good job. your not assholes =]
Thanks!
March 18th, 2008
long time reader, first post.
I am looking for a little help choosing a spec once I hit 70. I rerolled from a 70 hunter because I wanted to do a good bit of instance healing, gathered healing gear on the way up, and should hit 70 within a day or 3. The problem I run into is that although I have the money in the bank for my flying mount I am going to have to do the questing and rep gathering to at least open up dailies and finish gearing up with a few quest rewards.
The question I have is will I be able to solo as a 23/38 holy/disc? I have seen several other builds such as 30 holy/ 31 shadow, 14/6/41 shadow, even my current build of 14/0/47 (14/0/46 till I ding).
what I am looking for is a build that will be a decent healer and yet still be able to solo without getting pounded flat.
Gear wise, i already have the primal mooncloth set sitting in the bank and am grinding the primals for the whitemend to finish out the last half of level 69. I will have something like 1500 +healing at about 370 or so spirit and about 75 Mp5 to go with it. When I put on my damage gear I should be somewhere around 600 or so +damage Just so you know where I sit gear wise.
any help would be most appreciated,
Dechion, Stormrage-us
March 18th, 2008
@Dechion
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that - I have never had to solo while still be expecting to heal. Those that instance with me always made sure I had help with any questing - we did the quests together.
All builds are possible solo - but I don’t think that any other than shadow is going to be a “fast” or “easy” solo. Skill and familiarity will take you a long way on that route, but as far as being good for soloing - probably neither heavy healing or heavy disc.
You can solo with any build and heal with any build - it’s just a question of how well you want to to any of it. And I don’t think that just anyone can pick up a healing priest and find a way to easily solo with it.
March 19th, 2008
Thanks for the advice,
After looking into it a bit I found a fury warrior in my guild that would be more than happy to have a healer along for dailies. Not sure why I didn’t think of it before, probably the old “hunter cant find a group, must solo everything” mentality showing through.
Now its just a matter of finishing out that last half a level and getting the quests and rep out of the way to get started on doing them.
July 9th, 2008
[...] reading her post on Shadow vs. Holy builds, I decided to re-spec Ali to Shadow. In particular, I’m using this build, with all my points [...]
October 12th, 2008
[...] [Source]. The part which made us laugh as hell, was the fact that just 2 days before we had to farm some Clefthooves, and so we did. While she was killing one mob I random DoTted 4-5 of them, and when she was finished killing her first I already started with the 6th. And, in addition, her brother who just stepped in called her useless, laughing at her DPS. [...]