So Spiritual guidance had a piece on the basis of Shadow Priest Pvp today and is correct in that the ‘randomness’ of Pvp it’s hard to tell people what to do, especially on the scale of a BG. I realized that for someone who does an awful lot of battlegrounds and shares I guess general experiences in BG’s – I don’t actually say many things useful for a person wanting to know what a Shadow Priest, can or should do in a BG
There is lots of difficulty in explaining how to pvp – and there is how I do stuff, and there is how they do stuff, so it’s very much open to criticism, or interpretation, it’s also very circumstantial and it’s a forced team sport. The less people in the BG contributing to the success in a meaningful manner mean the less likely you will win, and if you have 10 or more people running with multiple ideas of ‘what they think is right’ it’s not easy.
I was hoping there would be more stuff around on rated BG’s but there doesn’t seem to be. I had envisaged people reading the great military generals, the classic strategists and applying them to rateds. My own experience in rateds have been restricted to trade pugs and random gatherings and given I have resisted the call of raiding I think if I found a stable Pvp Guild that did rateds seriously and with more regularity in my peak playing times then just for the points I would jump ship/server
Because I’ve never talked about what I do in a Bg, I plan on breaking this down into individual posts one for each BG . It’s a discussion, it’s what I do – and I may not always be right.
I’m starting WSG because it’s the BG I played the most.
Initial Zerg
Both sides like to zerg, or run together to the other teams flag room. Most of the time though 10 people don’t make it to the other end. Some people go ramp, some tunnel, some wander off midfield, or get stopped or killed along the way.
If we are in semi premade ( 5 grouped party members or less ) we will cut the horde’s zerg off – best case we wipe them/split them up over rez timers so we don’t have a concentrated assault for any future offense.
They usually don’t expect to have their zerg interrupted, so like lost deer they will stand mid field hesitating on their mounts blinking in shock.
By the time they have recovered we have targeted the healers and are taking them down one by one, and pushing them back towards their rez point.
People also get tunnel vision, present them with a target and they will forget that their real aim should have been to ride/sneak past us and head to the flag room and instead they dismount engage in combat.
We break up their Zerg because It’s demoralizing, and it makes sense to delay their first flag grab, while the rest of your team grabs theirs . When you all run out of the starting room together, your united, your a Team. GO TEAM! Break up that team, and have people rezing in different 30 sec rez time means that their team of 10 becomes 4 or 5 and are much easier to deal with and contain, and your less likely to have larger groups chasing after your flag carrier.
( Ideally because the Horde have committed themselves to offense the rest of our team has already grabbed the flag and are running towards mid field to ‘us the defenders’ who can assist by cleaning up an attacking horde and giving the flag carrier an escort)
If I am Solo, and If I feel like being a pain – I’ll head them off on my own. This is a suicide mission, and the aim is to delay them/break them up or even just pee them off.
Try to drop a Fear in the middle of their Zerg. Some will dismount to kill you Trinket out of their initial stuns, Psychic horror a melee, Silence a caster, Shield, and when about 40k health I then disperse, and jump around for 6 secs making the melee chase me, hoping that my fear is off cool down so I can get one last fear bomb off before I collapse and die. Why do it?, if I get can get them to dismount then I have succeeded in breaking their zerg.
Chasing Flag Carriers
When your flag does get picked up by the opposing team As a Shadow Priest you can /tar the flag carrier and Mind vision them to see where they are at. (I Like Mind Vision in BG’s ) Report their location, Ping the map/tell Bg/ and the defence crew can clean them up. My Mindvision will fail if they are in the tunnel and I am mid field, once they become in line of site in the tunnel ( stand in front of tunnel) , I can then target them. If they run up top I can report that they are going Ramp or GY. Sometimes the Flag carrier seeing his is being Mind V’d starts doing stupid things, stops mid tunnel, runs back, or will hesitate and forget that they are supposed to getting that flag to their base and will run off into all sorts of weird side directions to hide.
Flag carriers can be pesky things if they can blink, or have a speed boost. It’s all very well to kill the healer first, but sometimes you need to make sure the flag carrier doesn’t out run you, and their healer. It can be hard to get out of combat in time to mount up and chase ( and they don’t need heals if you can’t run after them fast enough to hit them) Fear/Psychic horror to get them to stop running in a straight line. Then if you have team members around you, keep them slowed by spamming Mindflay – as long as you have that channeled on them it gives the rest of your team time to dps them down, and can more useful than if you were doing normal dps rotation on them.
Don’t forget your fiend. He hits reasonably hard, and can be annoying when he is wailing on the flag carrier is also something you can throw at them while your running to get close enough to stand and cast.
Spell wise, Devouring plague has a damage on application affect, so if you can’t stop and cast Mindblast or Mindflay then chasing them while keeping SWP on them, Shadow word deathing on Cool down, fiending, and spamming DP on them for the intial damage I find helps get their health down.
Learn to Peel, Mcing the healer is one way to shut them up/interrupt their casting/ Slow or CC the flag carriers support crew so it makes it harder for them to help the FC, but don’t get distracted and end up having epic mid field battles.
I am also glyphed for a faster casting Mass dispel, great for getting team mates out of hungering cold, or mage circles, and removing buffs from the enemy.
Being the Flag carrier.
I wrote this test Post a while back. It’s not ideal to be the flag carrier. It doesn’t matter how much resilience you have, if you’re getting attacked stunned, feared silenced your going to need help.
I don’t take the flag if I’m in the Zerg – other people want to fight over the privilege, and you often have no idea if just because they are in Pvp gear, are plate wearers or have large health pools, that they won’t do stupid things like get into a bike as a passenger and drop the flag, or vanish, or shadow Meld, or try to hop on their mount, you can try to support the person who is flag carrying ( until they prove that they are bad at flag carrying)
This may mean that you need to help heal/shield. That post pretty much covers all the things we can do to keep ourselves alive.
This may mean that you need to help heal/shield. That post pretty much covers all the things we can do to keep ourselves alive.
If no one else is going for the flag and no one is near then I will pick it up and try and carry it. Be sneaky, wait in the doorway up top until a rez wave happens and they aren’t looking back at their own base, I favor going up the sides. Not everyone has distance enabled on their views, and may have difficulty seeing you on screen. When they do catch up do your best to keep them off you, aim to cc by fearing/horror then stopping and killing. Dot up enemy’s that are following you so you get your trickle of healing return from Vampiric embrace, and save your trinket/dispersion for when you really need it, but also don’t die having not used them.
Healing as a Shadow Priest in the BG
I will break out of Shadow form to heal if I HAVE to, we take additional damage, lose spell damage bonuses, and it costs mana to return back to Shadow form. You are crippling us by assuming we will break form every time someone needs a top up. We do not have the mana regen out of shadow form to be great healers. We can help you, but eventually we will go oom, and then we get targeted and die anyway( and yelling “Heal me you B*tch priest isn’t going to make me heal you)
I have a healing bar set up ‘under’ my shadow form bar. When I drop form my bars change, and I have set up things like fear/shield and some heals on my main buttons and I use VuhDu the healing mod, so I can cast a healing spell by clicking on the frames to get me out of shadow and heal on the target. I will drop my form if I can see that I will help you. If you have no resilience, and getting attacked by 6 horde. your written off as a lost cause. But there are Shadow Priests that absolutely refuse to drop form. Me it really depends.
If you can keep the flag carrier alive long enough for the real healer to catch up or even top the FC up if it’s too much for the healer to handle then it might be a good idea to do it. We are utility – and if we can be productively flexible and contribute to the success then we all win ( but don’t do it too often because it will gimp you)
I know that hasn’t covered everything, but I guess depending on how this post is received I will do one for each BG.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I suggest you check out the stradegy guides that Wowpedia puts out for the bgs. Gevlon linked one yesterday for Arathi Basin and they seem very complete.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Warsong_Gulch_strategy
http://www.wowpedia.org/Arathi_Basin_strategy
http://www.wowpedia.org/Eye_of_the_Storm
http://www.wowpedia.org/Alterac_Valley
http://www.wowpedia.org/Strand_of_the_Ancients
http://www.wowpedia.org/Isle_of_Conquest
http://www.wowpedia.org/Battle_for_Gilneas
http://www.wowpedia.org/Twin_Peaks
The Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks seems rather unfinished but the older Bgs have some very good info on them.
As for shadow priests I’m surprised you didn’t mention fear bombing a turtle in the flag room. Almost always forces a trinket so that the FC isn’t burst down by your allies.
Good Hunting Kelindia
I disable vampiric embrace to stop the hhtd users from mobbing me. I’ve noticed a little bit of increase in my kivkuehood that way. I used to /tar flag carriers and would stumble on the complicated names. I’ve since discovered that I can just click the name next to the flag carrier at the top of my screen and auto target them using one click. I should also mention that the priest is the last class that I’ve yet to fully learn and truthfully it’s a very fun class.
All very useful stuff, but the most awesome thing a shadow priest can do is… MC people out of cliffs!
Wonder how that would be IRL!
Arybeth, if we could do that in RL people would be very afraid 🙂 Imagine what fun would could have with someone
This was super useful to me on taking my new pvp toon, a shadow priest, into WSG. While there are *many* guides for BG strategy, especially Cynwise’s, it was great to see a shadow priest’s perspective.
I would love to see more posts from you on this.
Thanks!
Thanks for the great article. I hope to see others soon. Shadow Priest do alot of sacrificing of themselves so haveing something that makes the other side think that you are a healer and focusing on you instead of the real healers helps the team. You have given me a bunch of things to do in WS that can also be done in other BG too.