Talk to me about vanilla Shadow Priests...

[Voodoom]

This is the best Vanilla database ever made : http://db.vanillagaming.org/
It's from another server but who cares anyway.

And AtlasLoot is the key to easily find your loots.

[ZanathKariashi]

Yes, in the lower levels, the damage you can do with a wand is ridiculous if you get one for your level and invest into its talent. Enchanters can make them, but not until they've already leveled past the point where it would have been useful. You have to buy them, or luck up and get one from a dungeon. A lot of dungeons have wand drops, but it's difficult to look up a list now since Cata changed everything. That expansion changed the entire 1-60 bracket, making sites now display updated information, which is no good for a Classic server that wants obsolete 2006 databases.

What you talkin' 'bout Willis!? You can make a greater magic wand at lvl 5 as a fresh character.

Tailor + Enchanting, collecting linen cloth while you're questing and stock pile them.

Make bolts till you run out and it stops giving xp, then make Brown linen robes.

DE brown linen robes, make a lesser magic wand (min lvl 5 to use) (you'll only be about 7 by the time you can first do this or less depending on luck with cloth drops). (lesser magic wand deals more damage then lvl 18 dropped green wands).

Spam cheap enchants till 70 skill while making sure to reserve 1 greater magic essence for the wand, make a greater magic wand (min lvl 13 to use. Still at lvl 6-7). (Deals way more damage then any dropped wand under lvl 20)

Keep or drop enchanting/tailoring at your leisure at this point.

And you're set for wands till around 22, at which point you NEED cookies stirring rod (same damage greater magic but twice as fast) or they simply won't have enough damage, and by 30 if you've kept enchanting, you'll be able to make a lesser mystic or greater mystic or have the gold to simply buy them from the bags you were probably selling if you kept tailoring.

Total cost for profession related materials and patterns: 6s, 22c

Rakemoore's Tiller is also a pretty solid wand for it's level (can get around 28 or so in Desolace from a relatively easy quest), but it's true value is as a Visidicus-bane, since it's a 1.3 speed frost wand so make sure to hold on to it unless you're a frost mage (r1 frostbolt is even faster and basically free at those gear levels).

[Sargath]

I played a shadowpriest in raids on another private server, and let me tell you it gets pretty boring pretty fast. Seeing everyone is getting their Tier1-2-3 items, and you get nothing. It's not even 100% you'll get the gear you want cause some of it is better than the current tier of that class. And don't get me started on mana. Well, it gets better, but once we started raiding MC, mana was a bitch. With the low raid dps and crap gear on my side, I went oom pretty fast, even with runes and mana pots.

But PvP? You'll love it. I played an undead shadowpriest and it was fucking awesome in pvp. Get some PvP gear (I got the rank10 gear) and you're good to go.

[ZanathKariashi]

Yeah, DS2 is about as good as it gets, set-wise for shadow priests. Aside from that you're mix/matching random gear.

Though in classic the shadow priest is a pure support class, instead of a dps, for raids. Your entire job is keep shadow-weaving on the boss (which massively boosts the effectiveness of the raid's locks (basically just take 15% of each lock's damage, and that's your raid contribution to dps, even if the damage meters don't give you credit), dispelling people (to save the healers some mana), occasionally throwing a shield or two to assist the healers, not being a burden on the healers yourself. R1 Mind Flay is basically free, due to the mana regen from meditation, and will easily keep SW on the targets. As your gear improves, you eventually get to a point where your spells do deal decent dps and you have the mana regen to sustain it and your other duties, though it's a rocky road, and it's still better to focus on the support aspect even once you reach that point.