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.

YEAHPVPIE

Oh man.
I got into a guild premade, and we went into Warsong Gulch... The match lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. It was the most awesome WSG I've ever been in. My DK tanky friend actually had his Fort buff WEAR OFF and I had to re-buff him with it. I got like 7k honor from it @_@

Then we did an Eye of the Storm... I got into a tussle with an elemental shaman at Draenei ruins. It was like that time our two tanks dualed back in the day outside of Mag's. The fight lasted like four minutes, no exaggeration. We just kept healing and damaging, and mana regening. Finally a troll mage came up as back-up for me and the shaman ran away... giving neither of us the kill.

You know what else is awesome? RENTING PVP GEAR. Use badges to get pvp gear, do your PVP stuff, and return it within two hours to get all the badges back. xD

shadowform

I know the icon for shadowform is supposed to be a, like, scary face with glowy green eyes... but to me, it always looked like a chick in shadowform wearing a neon green bikini top.

Good Golly Gosh, is Thorim a wacky fight.

Excellent.
Wednesday night, we head into Ulduar (with me along- yay!) and get down the first six bosses without much effort at all. I am pleased. I mean, for how much we have tarded out in the first couple weeks of this raid, I'm glad we finally are doing well.

Last night, we head in again. Get crazy cat lady (I can never remember her actual name) down in one shot, which I am REALLY pleased by, since that one Saturday two weeks ago we spent all of our raid time doing NOTHING but attempting to just get the pull right.

After that, we headed to Thorim. Golly Governor, is this fight a bitch. We tried it a few times last week after we first killed CCL late Thursday night, but due to crap attendance (AGAIN) we didn't go in on Friday or Saturday. So we got to Thorim at a decent hour this week.

So not only did I get to raid last night, but the other shadow priest in the guild (There's only two of us D: ) was finally finished with schoolwork and stuff so he was able to come along too.

Last night, the officers announced we have one new officer specifically for the healers, which is excellent because our GL is also our MT, three others are melee DPS (enh. shaman, rogue, DK,) two are tanks (paladin and DK,) and our last tank is on a bit of a WoW break since he and his wife just had their first baby (wow, we have a lot of officers. Is that normal?) Our second-in-command, and fiancee to our GL/MT, has a level 80 disc priest for PvP, but mains an enhancement shaman, and occasionally swaps specs and heals when needed. Now, I love her to death, but she can be a bit retarded at healing assignments. For example: putting holydins on raid heals, or just throwing me and the other spriest in with the group with other healers and then when DPS assignments come, forgetting to put us on anything cause we're in with the other holy and disc priests. And she seems to think that- even though she is a shaman healer for our raids- all healers can fade or PW:S themselves. So I am greatly pleased to see that our English professor by day resto shaman by night is now in charge of healers.

Anyway, the point of explaining all that was just to say that after all that, the other shadow priest and I declared ourselves co-presidents of all shadow priests in the guild.

The Thorim fight- which was supposed to be the main focus of this entry- was delicious for me and my shadow buddy. We were assigned to AOE on the little guys, while the other DPSers there were on the big elites. After the first couple tries, in which healers were tarded and stood next to the whirlwinders, My shadow buddy started to mind control the Warbringer adds. These give an aura that increases casting speed, which ended up being just plain silly fast. Like, constant bloodlust. Between him doing that, and my mind sear completely smashing everything, the arena held off really well in about 80% of our attempts. There were, of course, occasional problems, where a healer died, or a tank's taunt missed or he screwed up. But for the most part, it was tunnel that was taking their sweet ol' time in getting to Thorim. There's only so much we can handle before healers run out of mana, raid damage starts to build up, and more and more adds come in.

What I'd like to see is us with another shadow priest T_T If shadow buddy can Mind Control a warbringer for the haste buff, and then I could mind control a evoker to put up heals and that super bubble of theirs, and the other priest can mind sear.
Well, we might not even need another shadow. It could be a holy to MC, since they'd be using the mob's heals, which I've heard are really strong.
And who am I kidding anyway, I was in top 3 DPS on every attempt (even the ones where shadow buddy was mind searing too,) they need me on mind sear xD Save my mind controls for Razuvious (I love that fight.)

Some posts about SPriests in Thorim's Arena:
http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=21336
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8864926726&sid=16



Also, that freakin PUG mage that stole my Gothik's Cowl at Naxx last week is a potential new recruit for our guild. Not sure how I feel about this.