Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

Its been interesting how my Guilds in Wrath have used their Shadow Priests
Guild 1 wanted me to heal 10 man – so they raided without a Shadow priest because the dps wasn’t as scalable to non hybrids so easier to sacrifice
Guild 2 wanted us to use our Divine Hymn on cool down to make the healing easier for the healers, and when duel specs come in we had to go healing offspec. As well as using our fear wards on cool down on a rogue on Cat lady.
and now in Guild 3 we are being used as the primary dispelers on Hodir and Yogg, as well as the Fusion punch dispel-er on Council

Shadow Priests were known in BC as an utility class – but they reduced our specialness by sharing around equivalents to our Vampiric Embrace, the heal by damage – and Vampiric Touch – the Mana return, but these things we could do while we dpsed.
They have made us into more of a tool by giving us the Hymns, and the Holy Nova, an Aoe healing/damage spell, – as well the fear ward and allowing us to stay in Shadow Form for dispelling disease, and what do you do with Tools – use them for everything they can do.

So we remain an utility class and never a real dps. I know mages, Shamans and pallys do also get called upon to spread some of that cure diseases, curses, poisons – love around – what ever ability they have regardless if they are dps or heals, but as a class we seem to be the most flexible tool. Each time we are used as a tool, we have to stop dps. A dot will fall off, our casting sequence gets stuffed up, and if required the shift back into Shadow form at great mana cost. Eg casting the Hymn costs over 3k mana if you are casting the spell and going back into Shadow form . This is  more of a concern because Mana seem to be getting more precious after 3.2 with the loss of 20% of replenishment.

My biggest complaint about being a dispel-er is I am not main spec’d for dispelling, and when I am dispelling something up to 50 times in a boss fight ( that’s disease and magic- and was one count when we got to Phase 3 on Yogg ) Its costing me a lot  of mana, in addition to dotting what I can ( or redotting) in between dispelling because the only time I get to dps without interruption is during a brain freeze. So I made up a off spec that is deeper into Disc to reduce the mana costs of dispelling without losing my dispersion. 3 points into Absolution and 2 into mental Agility. It has helped me manage my Mana more effectively. I am trying to use dispersion as much as possible in lulls because I had to lose my veiled shadows which reduced my cool down on my Fiend. The faster things are dispelled in my case, the less sanity they lose ( magic effect in fight) , or the less amount of time they spent stunned ( the disease affect in fight) ergo – the more use everyone else is to the raid for a greater period of time.

The Pattern seems to be is that while we are being used to our full utility – we are just not spec’d into places that will help us be a good tool as well as a Dpser.