It’s been a slow week and I only level from 58 to 72 since my last post. The vast majority of which has been through Battle Grounds. For the most part leveling has been quite fun, but PVP wise I’m still a wee bit squishy against melee classes. I’m wearing virtually all Brutal PVP gear and my full assortment of heirloom gear, so I’m no stripling. But a well geared Warrior or Rogue can tear me up fairly quickly unless I can get fear them off and get some distance. Still, Shadow Priest is turning out to be everything I had hoped it would be when I decided to give it a go again. It’s a fun spec to play and especially fun in PVP. It’s, however, certainly not the flavor of the month any more as I see very few Shadow Priest in PVP these days. All the same I’m sticking with it and will be reporting more as I get up into the top brackets.
Where I think my mind has changed a little, is in the realm of PVE. When I started the Shadow Priest I had intended to keep it as a PVP toon, more or less. After a number of dungeon runs, however, I’ve changed my mind. I had thought it would be very cumbersome having to deal with all of the dot tracking and the main attack being a channeled spell. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only are the abilities engaging and interesting, I’ve found I actually like the channeled abilities. It makes for an interesting change from normal caster play style and I find it quite refreshing.
I don’t have Mind Sear yet, so the only real means of keeping up with the other DPS is to multi-dot on trash packs. Generally I hit each in turn with Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain, then start back on the initial target with Mind Flay. If the mobs have a particularly large health pool I’ll even throw in Devouring Plague. Perhaps there is a better way of handling trash packs now, but I can’t think of what it might be. And in any event I usually come out quite nicely on the DPS charts so I’m not exactly knocking things over looking for a better way right now either. besides, I get Mind Sear in two more levels and I’ll likely play around with it to see what works best again with that. It maybe that I’ll still multi-dot and Mind Sear.
All of these dungeon runs I’ve been doing the past couple of days has me thinking I may just do a little more with this character than I had originally intended.
