Ana wrote:No, the idea was to skip fearing but not have to deal with the fact that PWS is much more expensive by the way of, well, using the less expensive version.
Then yes, as long as the shield isn't breaking so soon that you end up reapplying buffs too often, it is worth downranking your shield.
Ana wrote:With what? Do you spend gold on engineering while leveling? Otherwise you have no CC save fear. And yes, they'll break your fear instantly.
Against my better judgement, I'll go ahead and continue the PvP discussion with you, Ana...Well, if it's a caster, after they trinket a fear, you can silence them. If it's an undead or a warrior, just focus on doing damage instead of controlling. Not every player is going to have their trinket. Not every player is going to be undead. Not every player is going to be a warrior. And even in any of those cases, or combinations thereof, you're not immediately doomed. Psychic Scream is one ability in your toolkit, and if your DPS is high enough, not an entirely necessary one.
Ana wrote:- any undead opens on you
- you fear
- WotF
- 30 seconds later: you fear
- trinket (majority of gankers are rogues and mages so their trinket removes fear)
- 30 seconds later: fear finally sticks
- meanwhile: you wanna dps them? get a kick / pummel / CS / whatever, enjoy sitting there watching the tide
I'm going to introduce you to the idea of fake-casting. It's where you start to cast a spell, and depending on your latency, cancel the spell either very quickly, or maybe half-way through the cast, causing the player to waste their interrupt on nothing. Most gankers are pretty bad, which is why they are ganking in the first place, and you can easily trick them into doing this.
Even if you fail to fake-cast... remember that really,
really important slot you should be upgrading? 'The wand?' Yes! The wand is capable of doing great damage that is unavoidable, cannot be interrupted, and generally unmitigated damage! Combine that with the
instant cast spells Power Word: Shield and Shadow Word: Pain, and you're good to go!
Ana wrote:As I see it the best thing that can happen is if they indeed interrupt your Shadow school, because you instantly drop Shadowform, heal up + Renew and destroy them once the interrupt cooldown is over. However you won't heal up because you don't have healing focus.
This is the worst thing that could happen and that is the worst thing you could do to respond to that happening. If your Shadow school gets interrupted, it's usually best to stay in Shadow Form and just wand the target down, or kite them (run away and LoS) while Shadow Word: Pain ticks down. Swapping out of Shadow Form means you'll die faster, and if you live long enough to go back into Shadow Form, you're going to waste a lot of mana doing so. In addition, while you're healing, you're still taking just as much damage as you're healing, if not more, but the enemy is taking none (or only the DPS of Shadow Word: Pain).
Ana wrote:90% was of course an exaggeration but not by much. Iirc roughly 50-60% of Horde playerbase is undead, and we are talking about ganking here, most angsty neckbeards pick UD rogue or something similar for ganking because they want to feel mighty.
An exaggeration nonetheless. I find it hard to believe Undead make up that high of a percentage of the Horde player base. Granted, I'm Horde, so I'm not getting ganked by Horde to be able to provide personal statistics; And Undead rogues seem to be when you're afraid of, so I'm not able to provide any personal experience with fighting them outside of duels.
Ana wrote:Two side notes:
1. I only noticed just now that you went for Silence instead of Shadow Reach. This does help a tremendous amount. Incidentally, it also explains your issues with MF breaking when doing my fear-on-mob strat. 24 yards of range makes the trick MUCH more reliable. Just to wrap up that thing.
2. PvP considerations make excessive use of MF in grinding favorable. That's because you're generally better off spending as little time as possible with a mob on you, should a ganker show up. You may have less mana to use on the enemy player but you don't have to worry as much about your shield getting eaten in 5 seconds, or pushback on flaying or whatever.
Shadow Reach isn't as useful while leveling because most mobs are melee. Being able to pull mobs 20% further away is not a significant increase to leveling speed, and I picked up Silence because it's far more useful in both PvP and PvE while leveling. I'm not going to go into the Psychic Scream/Power Word: Shield discussion with you again. There were 8 reasons not to use Psychic Scream instead of Power Word: Shield, and the mob running out of range was only one of them. There were 6 reasons to use Power Word: Shield instead of Psychic Scream. Being able to Mind Flay a mob while it runs away is not worth giving up Silence, especially on a PvP server.
Considering how much emphasis you put on swapping out of Shadow Form to heal yourself, I'm amazed you think having less mana is going to be worth killing a mob slightly faster. Your two strategies work against each other, whereas my two strategies work strongly with each other. You spend more mana to kill a mob faster, preparing for the inevitable gank, only to not have the mana to be able to heal yourself when the gank actually happens; Or you end up burning through mana so quickly and so often, that you end up drinking every 2-3 mobs because you were afraid of the big bad Undead rogues, and it turns out the boogeyman isn't under your bed, meaning you're leveling less efficiently. Either way, you've screwed yourself.
With my strategies combined, I have my Psychic Scream (and Silence, because Shadow Reach is a fucking joke of a talent for leveling) ready for any bad situation, whether it be PvP or PvE; I reliably have a full health bar, and I have enough mana to Power Word: Shield myself as many times as necessary, maintain Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast on cooldown, Dispel any important buffs, Psychic Scream at any rank necessary (generally 1 or 2, for 2 or 3 mobs, respectively), and Mind Flay spam in-between all that other goodness. And in the worst case scenario, or the best case scenario, I can save my mana by just wanding the poor fool down while Shadow Word: Pain eats away at their health bar and Power Word: Shield keeps me healthy.
smilkovpetko wrote:the most foolish ever i heard is to mindflay when you are questing :
1- mana inefficient due to shielding and fear
2- interrupted and wont do crap damage
3- good for pvp but sadly bugged with server lag
4- good for dungeon
for questing and leveling i have already pointed = spirit tap , mediation , wand spec, imp shield, impr 5/5 mb ,= gg
impossible to oom , you can multidot , your mana will regen like nerd , your shield will survive you long enough , you can time to time renew if you are too low hp after kill
spec for leveling/questing and pvp :
https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/pries ... 5100511251start with spirit tap , then switch to discipline (except inner focus and mediation) , then switch to shadow again , at very end go get inner focus and mediation.
mindlfay use only against gankers and for dungeons , never for questing.
enjoy
- Mind Flay is the most mana efficient DPS spell available to a priest, excluding Starshards.
- Power Word: Shield prevents spells from being knocked back.
- Mind Flay does damage similar to a Shadow Word: Pain tick, only it does it much faster. That's not "crap damage.
- Mind Flay applies stacks of Shadow Weaving, increasing the damage of Shadow Word: Pain, Shadow wands, Mind Blast, and Mind Flay.
- How does server lag cause a bug? Perhaps you are mistaking not compensating for your latency with the spell being "buggy."
- No set of talents will ever make it impossible to run out of mana. Your playstyle and rotation will determine that more than anything.
- Yes, you can multidot, but you will spend a lot of extra mana doing so consistently. It's better to avoid doing so if you can, and just fight one mob at a time.
- Renew is the most mana-inefficient healing spell available to a priest. If you're going to heal yourself, use Greater Heal. Renew is only useful for when you are constantly taking damage and need to improve your HPS (healing per second) by healing over time and by casting at the same time.
- Swapping out of Shadow Form to cast heals, then swapping back into Shadow Form is going to cost mana. It's cheaper and faster to just apply Vampiric Embrace and continue as normal.
- Improved Mind Blast is only useful for dedicated PvP or raiding, not leveling. Mind Blast is horribly mana-inefficient, and, therefore, horrible for leveling.
- Taking no points in Shadow Focus is a great way to waste your mana casting the same spells more than once when they get resisted.
- Blackout isn't as useful as the other talents available to you while leveling. Blackout is great, but it doesn't provide a constant benefit like the other options do. The talent has a pretty high chance (90%) of doing nothing.
- Martyrdom is nearly useless for leveling as it requires you to be crit, then only provides you with interrupt resistance and knockback immunity, the latter of which you already have via Power Word: Shield.
I don't mind you asking questions, or even making suggestions, but this is my guide, not yours, and I'm not very fond of the idea of you telling people how to play priest on my thread*. Please don't come into my guide acting like it's yours, and please don't go around making posts like you're tired of explaining to us how we're doing it wrong when you are actually the one doing it wrong. Before you post any further, just do yourself a favor and read through the thread a little bit. Read and learn.
*Ana is at least coherent and has, at the very least, a moderate understanding of how to play a priest. Ana and I argue back and forth quite a lot, but what Ana says has some merit. They make some feasible suggestions that are worth looking into, even if they aren't always right.