Hey Smaq, I have a question about shadow priests...

9

9er

Veteran X
From a shadow priest's perspective, what is the best way to quickly get up to par raiding wise? FSW and Spellstrike? How is hit rating for shadow priests--is it as important as it is for raiding mages? If FSW and Spellstrike, how should you socket? Straight +damage gems, or the +hit/damage?

Thanks in advance. :)
 
FSW and Spellstrike are great starting pieces, i think the FSW boots are still the best in the game for spriests because of the two sockets. go for pure dmg gems. you have 10% hit from talents so you only need 5% or whatever more and that is easy to get.

try to pick up the s3 dagger if you can, the s2 dagger is pretty nice as well. i think the s1 staff is better than the dagger because it has some hit on it but if you have plenty of hit elsewhere then take the dagger and get a good offhand for more dmg
 
9er said:
From a shadow priest's perspective, what is the best way to quickly get up to par raiding wise? FSW and Spellstrike? How is hit rating for shadow priests--is it as important as it is for raiding mages? If FSW and Spellstrike, how should you socket? Straight +damage gems, or the +hit/damage?

Thanks in advance. :)
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FSW is the best gear you'll see for those 3 slots til T5+. The boots are the best in the game for PVE DPS. Spellstrike is great placeholder gear but you can get comparable elsewhere if money is tight.

#1 priority is your hit rating. It won't matter really for most 10man content but for 25mans a missed spell = loss of mana and when you're below 1k or so +dmg everything counts if you don't want to go OOM before shit dies. Try getting it in gear and only use +hit gems if you absolutely have to. 5/5 Shadow focus is 10% right there, after that I think you only need 76 hit rating to get to max +hit. I raid with ~130hit rating so I shaved off 2 points there and picked up silence but pre-t6 gear isn't so loaded with hit.

Straight +dmg in every socket. Even spending only 2g on green +7dmg gems is better than doing anything else than dmg. Nothing before Tier6 content requires more than 7k hp so don't be fooled into thinking you need to enchant or socket for stam or int. 3/3 FSW + 2/2 SS, badge offhand and a decent weapon (arena or the mace from ZA) and you should be over 1k +dmg.

Things you can get besides FSW/SS:

- Badge Trinket (either one, I think one is 42dmg with on-use and the other is 47 static dmg)
- Badge Wand (best DPS wand in the game for us when socketed with +dmg or sta/dmg)
- Badge Gloves (best DPS gloves in the game for us if not for t6 bonus)
- Honor bracers (the dmg ones, not crit+dmg. best DPS bracers in the game pre-t6 quality bracers when socketed with +dmg)

ZA:
DPS ring (socket with +dmg and it's t6 quality). I think you must kill 3 bosses of the timed event to get a chest with a ring.
Bracers if you're short on honor are comparable
Caster mace (217dmg 20+hit with decent stam/int i think)

Karazhan:
Trial-fire Trousers (3x 9dmg gems, epic spellthread) - ones from heroic BM or SLabs are comparable
Rittsyn's Pendant (51dmg neck)
Assorted rings and necks, some with +hit.
 
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