Shadow Priest Farming

Today while carrying out my daily farming with the Air Elementals on Elemental Plat I decided to try a few new different rotations. What I ultimately came out with was a rotation where I never went out of mana. While the method I was using hurt the kill time on the mob, I was still able to down all mobs before another re-popping, and thus farming became a bit cheaper.

(Note that this guide assumes you are killing the Air Elementals on Elemental Plat)

Spec

First of all, I’m using the traditional PvE 14/0/47 talents with 5/5 Spirit Tap, improved 2/2 Vampric Embrace, Inner Focus, and of course Vampric Touch and Mind Flay. You can check out my talent tree here. A nice bonus would be to spec into wands if possible, but I currently am not due to raiding. The talents I’ve listed are required, and keeping up with the mob in terms of health and mana would be extremely hard without (and with some talents not plausible at all).

Damage & Gear

As of writing this guide, I am farming at 1104 Shadow Damage. I would say you need at least 1000+ spell damage to kill the Air Elementals efficiently, but nevertheless 1100+ is ideal. I’ve also 7.5k health with fort, and 7.3k mana. What’s also quite important is your wand’s damage. I myself am only using a green 105.6 damage per second wand, and most wands end game BC score higher, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Execution

• Open up with Vampric Touch – This is a 1.5 second cast, and thus used first in farming. If we were to open with VE or SW:P we would have a 1.5 second gap of the target moving towards us, time which could be used to slow the target (MF) or wand.
• SW:P or VE – I myself like to SW:P first as this mob usually does before the dot is over, thus meaning if I cast SW:P after VT the mob will die faster.
• VE – Regaining health is extremely important as you will be “tanking” the mob at times where you wand.
• Wand or Mind Flay – Here is the factor that will decide whether you go out of mana or not.

Walkthrough

Wanding or Mind Flaying is the key factor in deciding whether you go out of mana (refered to as oom from now on) or not. Should you constantly mind flay after throwing up dots, you will be going oom. Thus why we will first be wanding the Air Elemental. In doing so, you should start taking hits, or “tanking”, the mob, but do not fret; VE should be healing you to a certain extent, and while ultimately when the mob is dead you will be at a loss of mana and more-so health, we will be able to restore it. Now, in the time lapse between the mob is killed and your opening of a new VT on another mob, you should actually be regaining — through Spirit Tap — more mana than you’ve lost through the mob (you lost about 1050 mana through VE, VT, and SW:P). Continue this process on the next few mobs until your health reaches aproximately 50%.

At this point we’re pretty low on health, and so we must effectively make use of our talent Vampric Embrace. To do so, however, requires a loss of mana. So open up with your regular rotation, but replace wanding with Mind Flaying. You might also want to fear the mob, or throw a shield up so your health isn’t affected or your Mind Flay channel isn’t disrupted. This process should only take about two to three mobs before regaining max health, and at this point your mana should be low. Now repeat the wand rotation.

This farming technique can be extremely fragile being it focuses purely on balance in rotation and abilities. But don’t forget that we can make use of various other talents to save us in times where we screw up!

Whenever you are extremely low on mana, don’t be afraid to throw up dots on the mob and pull your Shadow Fiend out. In times where your health is extremely low and requires extensive mana to cure, nuke the Air Elemental(s) (in this case having VE up before SW:P) with your regular dot rotation and MB and SW:D, hurting your mana pool. Also try to make use of Inner Focus coupled with a nuke in times of low mana and health.

And that’s more or less it. Again, the technique overall is much slower than a consistent dot-MF rotation, but you’re saved the time drinking (as well as the gold!), and the rotation (at least with my spell damage) produces enough damage to clear all Air Elementals on Elemental Plat without any re-pops. Hope you’ve learned something new, and the importance of spell rotation and efficiency.

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