I've been toying with this idea for a while. Shadowform has a damage debuff which causes us to take 15% damage. This is in addition to other abilities to minimize damage such as inner fire (pathetic as it may be), sheild, and for NE priests like me Elune's grace. With VE it would be very easy for us to grab a mob attacking the healer and hold it until the real tank arrived.

I have found that I can easily tank and solo an add or two in green dungeons. I have a slightly harder time in yellow dungeons but can survive until the tank comes. I also know that warlocks can OT with drain life, however they have a talent that negates spell interruption. Depending on dps and Elune's grace I think a NE shadowpriest could still conceviably generate enough health to stay alive and hold off a single mob for a period of time.

Has anyone ever done this?

This is potentially doable in some of the lower level dungeons, as I did it when I was leveling as shadow.  But the problem is, the difference in armor, even when taking 15% less damage, grows wider as you get higher in level.  You also can only generate good threat while doing damage.  The DOTS won't do it alone, and your other damage spells will either be shortened, making them very mana inefficient, of very slow, making them produce less threat.

In my gear, as holy, I have around 32% (I think) damage reduction fully raid buffed, so even if I were shadow, I'd only reduce damage by 42% (it's multiplicative, not additive).  Meanwhile, our MT has something more like 64% (I think), but also has a something like 30% dodge (compared to my 4%), and whatever parry and block which also helps.  Our Druid has about 20k health, about 46% dodge, and reduces damage by something like 72-73%.

I think the point of the damage reduction is simply to make soloing as shadow easier since leaving shadow form to heal sucks.

Bottom line, a Shadow Priest is better of being hit than a Holy Priest, but when you get to the higher dungeons and raids, any place a Holy Priest is in trouble, chances are, the Shadow Priest would die just about as quickly.

shadowpriests:
30-40% physical damage redox - (Shadowform+armor+inner focus)

tank:
62-75% physical redox from armor + (def stance, imp. righteous fury)
50-70% avoidance
0% spell pushback
10-45% stam bonus from talents

Right, because main tanking is the same thing as off-tanking right?


This is the answer I was looking for. I'm wondering though, does this stand for all elite mobs in higher level dungeons? Obviously, unless you're wearing plate, off-tanking just about any Outlands boss would be a bad idea.

I ask this because I think part of a shadow priest's role in a group should be protecting the healer. I often use my sheild on the healer when they're taking damage and, if the situation is dire, I will leave shadow form and start healing to keep them alive. It seems to me that in most situations the dps should sacrafice themselves, but only if neccessary to keep the healer alive.

[quote]
Right, because main tanking is the same thing as off-tanking right?[/quote]

Well, the point is, those are numbers that are typical for an MT.  Often in raids, an OT is a Prot specced Warrior/Paladin or a Feral Druid.  Sometimes, we do use other specs to OT, but when we do, it's at worst a Fury Warrior (in Prot gear) or a Holy Paladin (in PVP gear, usually).  They will be lacking a lot of avoidance, but they'll still have a large amount of Stamina and, by virtue of their gear, still have some Block, Parry, and Dodge that just doesn't exist on non-plate than isn't Feral gear.

So, it's not quite the same to OT, but even a well geared Shadow Priest OT would still only have about 40-45% damage reduction, about 5-6% dodge, NO Blocking, Spell Pushback, and low Stamina.  Worst of all, even for OTs, they HAVE to reach the Defense cap (or possibly use some Resilience) to avoid being Crit, this just isn't possible for a Shadow Priest, so Shadow Priests would be susceptable to Crits and Crushing blows as well.  This just won't work in a raid situation.


[quote]
This is the answer I was looking for. I'm wondering though, does this stand for all elite mobs in higher level dungeons? Obviously, unless you're wearing plate, off-tanking just about any Outlands boss would be a bad idea.[/quote]

What I mean is, it may work for an elite mob in a 50ish Dungeon.  But even in the lower dungeons, unless you have it out-leveled or out-geared, you still won't be able to do anything with an actual boss.  You have to remember that for all intents and purposes, a Boss is 2-3 levels higher, so you need that much more hit, defense, dodge, etc.


Yes, part of the job of any hybrid class that can heal is that they need to be ready to heal if anything happens to the main healer.  Sometimes bad things happen, like a Hunter's trap is resisted, a sheep gets broken accidentally, an unexpected patrol comes in, and the Healer eats it.

That said, it's not always prudent to drop form and heal.  You have to take into account how many mobs are level and where their health is at.  Sometimes, it makes more sense to simply continue to DPS and burn down the adds because they're almost dead.  Sometimes, it's a lost cause because you just don't have the healing to keep up, so you can burn down one or two adds that won't respawn to make the pull easier when you try it again.

In most situations, the healer really should be self-sufficient at keeping himself healed and free of aggro.  Obviously, there's some pulls and some bosses where this is always a problem (third boss in Magister's Terrace is an excellent example), but these are situations of which you all are probably well aware and, if not, he should make a point of explaining what he needs.

Either way, while off-healing may sometimes be a Shadow Priest's responsibility, his ability to effectively off-tank is quite short lived.

Pretty much every non-cloth class can offtank better then a spriest:

rogues have huge dodge, similar physical damage reduc (can stun and kite)
druid all have bear form
hunters have huge dodge, aspect of the monkey, more physical damage reduc (can wing clip/trap and kite)
shaman have more physical damage reduc w/ shield (earthbind/frost shock and kite)
pallies... 62% armor unbuffed (my HOLY pally in healing gear) - gear available itemized for tanking
warriors... same deal as pally

In heriocs when I'm on my holy pally and a spriest MC's a target I almost always stun/taunt it when it breaks... since the spriest would get 2 shotted typically.

PiruBunny, I agree.  I wasn't making a comment on who can do it better, only that it can be done, but pretty much limited to instances like Zul'Farrak and possibly as high as Sunken Temple (though, that's really pushing it).  Either way, you're still going to take more damage than almost any other class, but it's not beyond reason that it can be done there.

But still, as a Holy Priest, I can "off-tank" if you consider me being able to live for about 10-15s when I pull aggro by spamming FH on myself and hoping for a crit (to proc inspiration).  But seriously, the game is designed in such a way that the earlier instances don't put a lot of emphasis on a good spec or even class roles.  In the same way that a Shadow Priest slowly becomes less viable as a main healer in an instance.  Hell, in the early instances, you could probably pull off a hunter or rogue as MT.

Yeah, I've done both razor fens using an all squishy groups, within the lvl requirements, no tanks.  Of course there was also a lock and a mage and a priest... so cc + void + ice nova was really powerful.