Mana for the Shadow Priest
Ego just got a question and gave some good answers, and then asked a question that is spurring my response. While I encourage you to go read, the fast summary is “how does an Spriest get mana?” – with a subquestion of “is Spirit Tap any good for the top level shadowpriest?”
My first recommendation is that you keep spirit tap. The concern is that you’ll never have it go off while you’re in the instance. The reality is… oh, yes you can. You may have to share, but if it’s a multi-mob crowd you can pretty well guarantee a proc.
Your magic tool is Power Shadow Word:Death. Know it, love it. Learn exactly how big it is – and more importantly what YOUR minimum damage is when using it. And hover your finger over the button as the first mob in the group is closing on his final instants. 1k health left, “BOOM”, and for the next 15 seconds you regenerate mana as though you were OFSR (double if you actually DO get OFSR).
You won’t get this during the boss fight, of course. But everyone suffers during the boss fights. So…
Learn to use your shadowfiend effectively. Go look through my posts, and those of all the priests over to the side, because I think we’ve all done good posts (often with slightly different viewpoints) on how and when to use the fiend. But the bottom line is that he’s a free Big Mana potion.
Buff food. Yesterday I mentioned in my I Hate Fishing what my favorite buff food is – and it should probably be yours as well. Blackened Sporefish. 20 stamina, sure, that’s nice. But +8 mp5.
And trinkets. And enchants. And… smart spellcasting and all the other little stuff.
OK, let me close with a reality. If you choose the dark side, you lose the opportunity to dance. You have the same joys and miseries of everyone else who is supposed to do near-constant damage. This means you have to learn the hard ways to regenerate mana. While you have some special abilities (Like spirit tap), do not hesitate to crawl through the pages of the dps casters – the warlocks, the mages, etc – looking for tricks THEY have picked up. If the problem is common, the solution may turn out to be shareable.
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power word death?
Right. Brain cramp – fixing now. SHADOW word death…
Something I do as a Guild Leader and most often the Raid Leader in 5mans/10mans/25mans is coordinate the shadow priests with their shadowfiend. I tell the shadowpriests when to pull theirs out, and then call for a bloodlust. Effectively this is 30% more mana returned from the little bugger.. which In most all cases.. is more than enough to fully top off the shadowpriest from 0% to 100%. Just my 2cents
A somewhat late remainder that a Spirit Tap boost when buffed with Improved Divine Spirit is also a rather nice + damage boost.
you also have dispersion if you are a deep specced priest since WoTLK. This little added bonus is double yummy because while you are dispersed regenerating mana nicely, you are taking %90 less damage.