Do you bring a shadowpriest to naxx? Most guilds dont want them?! why?
they buff locks.
They increase the shadow damage made by the Warlocks (and whatever else does Shadow damage) with 15%.
So, depending on how good that Shadow Priest is + the amount of Warlocks in the raid, it can be worth bringing it over another Warlocks (or something that does equal damage to a Warlock, but less than a Spriest) - in order to boost the Warlocks - in order to (theoretically) boost the overall damage of the raid.
High end numbers show Spriests doing about 500-650 DPS at most during bossfights in Naxxramas. Warlocks do about 900-1100 DPS. (Warriors do around 1500-1700 for reference).
So a Spriest might boost the damage of the individual Warlocks in any given scenario, but only boost the overall damage of the raid if they brought more than 4 “perfect” Warlocks and had no other class that outdps these Warlocks/Spriest available.
(Napkin math inc).
Example with 4 Warlocks (numbers from above, taken from Classic Logs):
Warlock 1-4 do 1100 DPS each, thats a total of 4400 DPS.
4400 DPS x 1.15 (Shadow Weaving) = 5060 DPS
5060 + 600 (The DPS of the Spriest) = 5660 DPS
4 Warlocks + Spriest = 5660 DPS
5 Warlocks = 5500 DPS
Example with 3 Warlocks:
Warlock 1-3 do 1100 DPS each, thats a total of 3300 DPS.
3300 DPS x 1.15 (Shadow Weaving) = 3795 DPS
3795 + 600 (The DPS of the Spriest) = 4395 DPS
3 Warlocks + Spriest = 4395 DPS
4 Warlocks = 4400 DPS
However, I guess that the top Warlock DPS (on logs) is often based on Warlocks that were allowed to throw Curse of Agony over any other Curse, along with already having Shadow Weaving applied (and CoS by another Warlock).
With that in mind, only 1 out of the potential 4 Warlocks would be able to do that high DPS, meaning one has to have something closer to 5 Warlocks in the raid in order to justify bringing a Spriest to boost their numbers instead of another Warlock (but not instead of any other DPS that does more damage than a Warlock, e.g Warrior, Rogue, Mage etc).
Any guild that brings 5 Warlocks in that scenario probably isnt out to min/max to begin with, so it wouldnt matter anyway.
TL;DR
Some guilds bring them to Naxx. Most guilds bring them to fill spots more than to increase the raids performance (aka not to min/max) and the reason for it is either the GM is a Warlock or the GMs girlfriend is a Spriest (J/K).
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One does not need a “real” shadow priest to buff the shadowdmg of the warlocks in the raid. There is a preist spec that includes this shadowdmg buff but overall it’s more a disci priest with PI. Having this spec with some healgear might be overall more usefull than a dps-shadowpriest.
Maybe only for Loathep it would be usefull to have some passive healing on the main tank from shadowpriests because these passive heals don’t count for the 1min healing blockade debuff.
I refered to a “strict” Shadowpriest. Holy Weaving has it’s place in some comps for some clears, specially as the raid requires less healing the better it gets
Vampiric Embrace does put you on the 1min CD tho and Loatheb reguarly cleanses himself of that debuff too so you gotta work around the debuff timer and his dispell timer to keep a decent uptime on it.
But if you do that you can pump just as much if not more total healing than the healers on that encounter, however it’ll be spread on your entire (5man) group, so only some of it is actual tank healing.
In Short, they don’t do enough dmg and naxx require plenty of healers.
You can still do Naxx with a shadow priest, I’m one and I’m 15/15 so it’s not like it isn’t possible if your guild isn’t so bad it literally needs every last bit of DPS to down the bosses.
Yeah, he asked why MOST guild don’t bring one.
Same reasons as before Naxx - suboptimal DPS and questionable utility at cost of debuff slots. Plus many guilds struggle with healing in Naxx, which makes it harder to justify a non-healing priest.
In naxx locks damage falls behind …
Because you can take another class that does 2x more damage.
Unless you’re stacking with locks, it’s not really worth it.
We can bring another warrior/mage that does 1k+ dps over a shadow priest that does on average 400-500dps.
It just depends whether you’re lacking spots or what not, we’d rather have our priests as healers instead.
Shadow Priests aren’t that great in Classic PvE, only place they really shine is in PvP where they’re absolute monsters.
TBC is where they become relevant in PvE, they’re both free to deal all the damage they want AND hand out mana by the bucketload.
nice post dude, respect 
Shadow Priest scales poorly with gear. Most of their strength comes from talents.
The main damaging ability, Mind Flay, has a 45% spell damage coefficient. Compare that to other classes main spells that have 80-100%.
A bad geared Shadow Priest can outperform a bad geared any other DPS class, but when gear is added they fall behind.
And fights have become longer in AQ and Naxx, which causes Shadow to struggle with mana.
Some guilds like to use Shadow Priest on Loatheb for the passive healing from VE, but that’s just one niche.
It’s certainly possible, we cleared one night 15/15 this reset with a spriest and a boomie (and feral + pala! offtanks), but it’s certainly far from optimal. If I could turn that priest and boomie into 5th and 6th mage, there would be massive benefit in dps and ignite uptime, and no drawback. Spriest is literally only there to fill the spot.
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