Shadow Priest DPS too low

A thread on the forums that's hitting a bit close to home:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18601081821&sid=1

Particularly this post... Everything he says is EXACTLY where I am, and how I feel:
I never thought I'd be adding my voice to a laundry list of complaints about shadow priests... for a long time, my mantra was "I'm a hybrid class, I offer good raid utility, so I don't have to be at the top of the charts..." but for the last several months, I've watched my DPS plummet, relative to the other members of my guild. Comparatively speaking, my dps is getting worse and worse as my gear gets better and better, and where in Naxx I was sitting comfortably on the dps meters, just below the mages and rogues and more or less even with the other hybrids, I now find myself floundering on the charts, and every time I click on a WWS link, I pray that I did more dps than the tanks (because sometimes I don't).

I don't know how to explain it. I didn't suddenly forget how to play a spriest when Ulduar came out--I work hard to keep my dots ticking and Mind Blast on cooldown at all times, and I know my gear is gemmed and enchanted correctly for the most part (I have an orange gem in my pants that I need to switch for a red, and yes, there are three purple gems when I only need two, but in all three cases the socket bonus is spellpower).

I realize that the fights are more difficult than Lolnaxx, and some of the encounters are not caster friendly, and it also doesn't help that, particularly in our ten-man runs, I am often the only caster dps, which means I am missing out on some raid buffs, but this alone doesn't account for the rapid decline in comparative dps I've been experiencing.

Obviously, we are scaling very poorly with gear at the moment. Part of this is the large amount of haste on everything, since haste has always been more questionable for us than for any other class. As another poster mentioned, having haste translate some way into our dots would be a nice boost and a good place to start.

Spirit is another issue that needs to be looked at. We have to spend five talent points in Twisted Faith to get a measly 10% of our spirit as spellpower, while Holy priests get 25% of their spirit as spellpower for the same investment. At the very least, we need Twisted Faith to be brought up to 25%--I've always thought of speccing Shadow as "going to the Dark Side" for a priest, and the draw of the Dark Side is supposed to be more power, not less :-D At this point, even a 50% spirit to spellpower conversion would not be unreasonable--hell, even warlocks get 30% of spirit as spellpower, and they don't even have to spend any talent points to get it.

Oh, and the "raid utility" argument just doesn't hold water anymore either. There's always a retribution paladin or a survival hunter to provide Replenishment, and Balance druids bring not only 3% hit, but also 3% haste, 5% critical strike chance, +13% magic damage against the boss, and the famous "battle rez," all while crushing us on the dps meters. Even Vampiric Embrace is little more than a joke, except perhaps for keeping yourself alive and giving the healers one less target to worry about. The healing it does for the party is laughable at best--the ret pally in my guild that's always at the top of the dps meter is also beating me on the healing meter :-p

I love playing a priest. I love being able to switch specs and step in to heal when one of our regulars is out. I love being challenged--I switched mains from a mage to this character because I wanted something more dynamic and challenging than just pressing two buttons over and over again. But, the way things are now, every day as a shadow priest is less and less fun and more and more frustrating. I sincerely hope that Blizzard hears our voices and does something to help us out.

Tier 9

http://www.wow.com/2009/07/22/mighty-battle-paladin-and-priest-tier-9-sets/#continued

DUDE.
I saw the Alliance priest Tier 9 a while back, but this is the first I'm seeing the Horde priest Tier 9. It does not match a Holy or Disc priest AT ALL.

BUT WHO CARES! I'M SHADOW AND THAT SET WILL LOOK PRETTY SWEET IN SHADOW FORM :D

ARRPEE

I am on an RP server.
I never RP.

Maybe I should.

So I'll start working out stories or whatever for my characters here.

o hai thar

So it's been like two months since I updated.

For a while, raids were going really well. Then people started getting occupied with summer stuff, and stopped coming. The people who were coming got upset that we didn't have enough to raid. We tried raiding with a few people who were only kinda ready (gear-wise) for Ulduar. We had some people talking smack about a few other guild mates, and ended up kicking them from the guild. Some of their friends left too. We lost about 5 DPSers.

Things have just been discouraging overall.

And we still haven't got Thorim down.

We switched to a DKP system, because a LOT of people were getting fussy that people who show up once in a blue moon have been winning gear over those who have been attending constantly.
This is a plus and everyone who is in the guild seems to like it. I think maybe one person quit because of this change. And they were someone who rarely showed up to raids anyway.It's kinda sad to lose them, but if they're gonna quit cause they can't get gear because they never put in the hard work on progression bosses, well then that's the very reason we instituted this DKP system.

But yeah. With these changes, we're kind of building the guild back up again.

Not like we've had problems like this before. Last summer when we were progressing through SSC, we had the same issues. And we survived, and ended up being the first (and only) Horde guild on the server to down Illidan before WotLK.