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?
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.