Shadow Priests in Kara necessary/desirable for progression?

[Big Guns]

I have pretty much asked this question in the priests forum but on reflection that was probably unwise as I am not likely to get an unbiased opinion.

A bit of background.

My guild now has two raiding shaman and I have just been told that it is most likely that the 10th spot will be going to a Shaman rather than to a Shadow Priest. That is, they are thinking of doing Kara without a Shadow Priest.

There will be a Holy Priest and Holy Paladin for heals with a druid who can off-heal. The priest officer is a Holy Priest. The Shaman officer has only recently dinged 70 and only just started raiding. Another 70 shaman has recently been recruited, who will presumably raid in the off week (we work on a two week cycle).

My impression from reading various forums is that having a Shadow Priest in the kara raid is pretty much a given. Not that it is absolutely necessary, but rather that it is a very good idea to have one. Agree? Disaggree?

If given the choice, would you take a elemental/restro shaman over a shadow priest? and if so, why?

[Arthengel]

Currently it takes us 5 hours to clear karazhan completely, so we dont bother much atm. But as we were starting karazhan for the first time with my previous guild, I must say that shackles will give you much easier time whle learning.

Also you cant compare the dps of any kind of shaman to a shadowpriest. Shadowpriests should be considered pure dps, not hybrids.

[lofta]

Who would not want dps, shackle, emergency heal, mana regen, shadow weaving?

[dwarfenhelm]

i would say unless your geared up well for kara then a shadow priest is a good bonus to a party. shackles on the undead make life so much easier the dps they put out is bloody stupid and i have to keep telling our shadow priest to watch the threat meter. also and vampiric touch (or what ever its called) to buff health and mana i would say a shadow priest is a welcome member to the party

[rgirty]

0 shadowpriest and 2 shaman? Balance is the key so far for our group into kara.

1 shadowpriest and 1 shaman sounds like a better fit.

Shackle, VT+VE and the dps of a sp outweigh the benefit of a second shaman I would think.

[DraedynLei]

While shadowpriests are quite handy with all the undead floating around kara they aren't essential. Pretty much no class is a given, only the roles they play are. We run two kara groups and only have one shadow priest, but the other group (my group) does fine without one.

Honestly if two players had the same role, my choice on who to take would come down to gear and skill, the 2nd being much more important.

[Telmar]

I have to agree. Theres no harm in going without one. Generally I get given the 'standard group' to look after, and the other officer gets the 'offspec group'. They have feral MT, shadow priests, enhance shaman, dps warriors etc while we have prot warrs, holy priests/pallys, resto druid, rogues, mages etc. Generally they stay slightly ahead until we get to Ilhoof, then we overtake and finish off Nightbane around 15 mins before them, but its really close.

[Valshenna]

The is a HUGE number of different class/spec combinations that can be thrown into a successful Karazhan raid! Lots of the possible combinations will include a shadow priest, and lots of them won't.

But whether or not you would ever want to take X class/spec over Y class/spec depends on a lot of factors in addition to what each characters' class/spec actually is. Other factors include the gear and skill of the players in question, the overall gear and skill of the rest of the raid, and definitely the classes and specs that make up the rest of the raid. You've also got to factor in the overall pool of available players who want to raid, when they're available, rotating people in and out from week to week, etc, etc.

My impression from reading various forums is that having a Shadow Priest in the kara raid is pretty much a given. Not that it is absolutely necessary, but rather that it is a very good idea to have one. Agree? Disaggree?

A given? Definitely not! Good idea to have one? That depends. Sometimes yes, sometimes maybe not.

If given the choice, would you take a elemental/restro shaman over a shadow priest? and if so, why?

Without more information that is an impossible question to answer. Any response would be based on arbitrary generalizations that may or may not apply to any actual decision between two specific characters.

To be completely honest though, I don't think your problem has nearly so much to do with whether a Shadow Priest is more desireable than an Elemental Shaman. Rather, my guess is that the real question is whether or not your have raid leads who are going to be fair and reasonable in making slotting decisions. There are lots of raid leads out there with prejudices, biases, faulty understandings of slotting strategy, or who like to play favorites.

And there's also the issue that "off-specs" are still frowned on by lots of players, especially if they've been playing since the days when all raiding priests were healers, only warriors were tanks in raids, all raiding druids were healers, etc, etc. I completely disagree with restricting roles in that manner--especially in the Burning Crusade. But there are lots of players out there who are still stuck in their old habits--and old habits die hard :sad:

[liquidicem]

Having 2 priests in the raid (holy and shadow) will make learning kara much easier.

[Justinledwards]

We had 2 holy and 1 shadow last night up to moroes and the shackles made it very controllable.

[Big Guns]

0 shadowpriest and 2 shaman? Balance is the key so far for our group into kara.

1 shadowpriest and 1 shaman sounds like a better fit.

Shackle, VT+VE and the dps of a sp outweigh the benefit of a second shaman I would think.

Sorry but I obviously was not very clear in my first post. We run one week on, one week off and with 2 shaman there can now be one in each week. The suggestion has been that the last spot get filled by a Shaman instead of a SP.

I actually got a run last night to Moroes. 2 tanks and 1 from every other class. No holy priest. Every other time I have run kara we have had a holy priest along too, but not last night.

On the boss fights I was required to be in my healing gear. Now that is 1100+ healing (not bad for a shadow priest/alt gear) and I have 10 points in holy but I am still a gimped healer.

After two wipes on Moroes I managed to convince the raid leader that I would better serve the raid in shadow. Sadly, we didn't get to try it as the lock had to leave and the raid got called. Of course given recent comments on the guild website I fear the thought will now be, "it is useless to have a shadow priest along in kara"... *sighs*

[Oatmealsmurf]

You can go through Kara with any number of class combinations. It's my opinion that guilds who conform to some sort of strict class make up only end up stifling their progress because they don't learn how to adapt to differen't ways of doing things with different classes.

My guild would stack certain encounters when trying to make sure of stuff like people needing Nightbane's Signet and such... but if there isn't something special that needs to be accomplished for sure that night all that matters is we have 3 specced healers (actually done just two) and two specced tanks. The rest is up in the air... we've cleared kara with any number of different class combos... if your group knows what it's doing they'll be successful.

Oh and for the record... I'm sorry to say it but if your guild is going that route (barring shadowpriests) they haven't thought things through very well. We generally have 3 kara groups (non-static in make up) with one active shadow priest (2nd one on leave of absence)... and we practically compete for him in our group. All mana users will love having him in longer fights. Shadow priest gives you high dps, an extra shackle and constant mana regen... what's not to like?

[Schift]

I agree with everyone saying that it's more important to fill slots and skill/gear are more important than specific classes.

I have had the immense pleasure of trying to help the guild on forming their second Kara group and it's been quite an adventure. We've had all kinds of class combos as we're not overflowing with people available for the second raid. My favorite so far was one of every class and two paladins.

Last night we had a really interesting group: 4 druids, 3 priests, a ret pally, rogue, and hunter/warlock (hunter had to go after attumen so we subbed in a WL). Only had time to do Attumen and Moroes, but one shotted them both. This was a brand new group and most were quite new to Kara. Some were still using some greens, and our ret pally was 2nd on dps.:shocked: He was geared really well, but I've never seen a ret pally do that kind of damage... It was a fun experience anyways - I always like having off-specs as it makes the same old encounters more interesting.

[Valshenna]

We did the first half of Karazhan with all cloth and leather a few weeks back. No warriors, no pallys, no hunters, no shamans. Had to adapt a bit on a couple of the fights due to the odd class make-up and the fact that several of the players were pretty new to karazhan, but after a few hours we had downed everything up to and including the opera event.

Oh, and I can't recall for certain, but I would guess that at least one of the clothies was a shadow priest :wink:

[Stigg]

Having as 2 shackles for Moroes will make the fight a breeze. One is Manageable. None, I don't think I want to try.