Created this Shadow Priest Raid Tactics guide for our WOW guild (Semper Fi on the EU Hellfire realm) forum, but it’s not accessible to non-guild members so posting it here as well for other Shadow Priests.
My Shadow Priest: Trelp on the EU Hellfire Realm, is my first and only level 70 WOW character and so I learnt near enough everything I know about the World of Warcraft whilst playing Trelp. I knew nothing about shadow priests when I created my priest (planned to be a healer) and wasn’t until level 45 (5 talent points in wand and I didn’t want to re spec :-)) the shadow priests shadowy world opened to me.buy wow gold here.
When I reached level 70 I had a mixture of healing and DPS gear, my first steps into Karazan (days after reaching level 70, raiding shadow priests are in short supply) was in gear with ~500 bonus healing and ~350 bonus damage (laughable now)! I didn’t have a clue what I was doing since 99.99% of groups I’d leveled in I’d healed (which in hindsight does not make a lot of sense). Fortunately I’d kept a lot of DPS gear in the bank and so within a week or two of Kara runs (couple of lucky drops from early bosses) was up to around 700 bonus damage.
I learn quickly and soon found my feet as a raiding shadow priest and a couple of months later with around 800-900 bonus shadow damage found my way to Semper Fi a serious raiding guild who was badly in need of raiding shadow priests (at the time had one regular raiding shadow priest).
Over night went from a guild that could barely attempt Gruul to one that had Gruul on farm and was at the early stages of Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC, taken down Hydross the Unstable and The Lurker Below once if I recall correctly, perfect time to join). As I type this introduction we have cleared Serpentshrine Cavern and on the last boss of The Eye Kael (not had our first try yet, Christmas break) and expect to be in MH early next year (can’t wait).
Below you’ll find a selection of tactics (in no particular order) I use whilst raiding, enjoy.
Macros to Attack Multiple Adds or Bosses
You have two main jobs as a raiding shadow priest, DPS and creating mana (creating health is low priority since most will be over healing) for the members of your group (normally healers and DPS classes like Mages that go through mana like it’s going out of fashion!). When there are multiple ads or bosses with a lot of health it can be a great opportunity to excel at both. Dot up the main target and select a secondary target that’s being tanked and dot that up as well, switch back to the first target and attack it all out until the ShadowWord: Pain of the second target has faded and switch. By doing this you create extra mana and health (if you use Vampiric Embrace on both) for your group, but at the expense of your mana (you’ll burn your mana pool much faster this way).buy wow gold here.
I have a set of macros primarily for Arena, but I can also use it for raiding. Basically you focus one of the targets and have a second set of buttons that attack the focused target.
For example:
showtooltip Mind Flay
/cast [target=focus] Mind Flay
Basically create a macro like the one above for each of your main spells (Vampiric Touch, Vampiric Embrace, ShadowWord: Pain, Mind Flay) and you can attack two mobs at once without switching targets. Takes a while to get used to fighting this way, but creates more mana for your group mainly due to the Vampiric Touch and ShadowWord: Pain on the extra mob.
I use an addon called FocusFrame which gives you a movable portrait (identical to a standard main target portrait) that shows your dots, it’s health etc… Useful for when your using this technique (and for shackling).buy wow gold here.