Gearing for a shadow offspecas holy

[Lazare 3]

I'm a holy priest, but my guild tends to run a lot of healers.  And being the 6th healer in a 22 or 23 man raid on Beastlord or Maidens tends to be really, really boring.

 

An option I'm exploring is trying to get a viable shadow offspec so I can DPS on the easier fights.  Unfortunately, it seems like stat priorities between holy and shadow are very different.  I'm currently gemmed/enchanted for Holy 100% for haste, but it seems like shadow wants mastery for CoP, or crit for AS.

 

Obviously the answer is to have 2 (or even 3) sets of gear, so I can switch between Holy, CoP, and AS as needed.  But my guild has a lot of cloth wearers, so getting gear is going to be a bit slow.  So if I was going to try and focus on using a single set of gear as much as possible, what sort of gearing strategy would make sense?  And which spec should I focus on if, as seems likely, I'm going to have a bunch of haste no matter what I do?

 

My armory is here.  My plan right now is:

 

1. Ditch the spririt trinkets...somehow.  Run highmaul, LFR, whatever it takes to get some throughput trinkets.
2. I've got an old tier 3 crafted staff.  I can upgrade it to 670, and reroll/enchant it however seems appropriate.
3. Get a throughput version of Khadgar's ring, and again enchant it for whatever I end up speccing.
4. Get a throughput ring/cloak to replace my Smoldering Signet and Flame Infusion Drape...somehow.  (This one probably won't happen quicky...if at all.)

If I manage that, my stats should still be very haste heavy, but I think I should be okay-ish.

 

Does this seem like it'll work?  And if so, should I try and pick up crit gear and go AS, or mastery gear and go CoP?

 

Thanks for any input!

Edited March 11, 2015 by Lazare

[Fisperne 3]

Go crit.  Mastery is not worth going at all.  Full crit even for CoP is more beneficial overall because mastery is not very high on stat priority, even for pure single target CoP.  Haste is good for both CoP and AS, although not as much as crit, so your current gear, besides gear with haste, should be fine.  Once you replace rings/neck/cloak, I'd enchant them crit if i were you as it's going to be the most beneficial. Overall, this has been me just restating crit crit crit haha. Hope this helps!

Also, you're gonna be switching between AS and CoP in brf quite a bit.  Half the fights CoP is more beneficial, and the other half AS is more beneficial.  So you cant solely go for one, which is why crit is going to be better.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Fisperne

[Coussin 7]

Hiya, disc/shadow here, used to be holy/shadow, I feel your pain.

 

As Fisperne says, go for crit on your off pieces (for trinkets, Sandman's Pouch is solid for starters), but bear in mind that Intellect will always be your top stat for dps.

 

I see your gear is already pretty good (you're 675ish in shadow on armory atm), I'd say keep the highest ilvl gear that has int on it for raw throughput, and as such, even if you don't swap out your spirit pieces, you should do good dps.

 

Though, better to take this with a grain of salt, for sure, you won't be competition for a fully optimized shadow priest, but you can give one a run for their money if they're vacation-dpsing (or don't know the fights and mechanics well).

[Brutalpriest 60]

You should be going AS for some fights and CoP for others. 

 

Go crit when you can.  You'll want to ditch spirit gear, so good luck on your rolls.  Haste enchants aren't bad, but the haste weapon enchant is definitely bad.  Haste is a good stat for spriests in general but haste procs are of almost zero use for CoP shadow priests, due to the nature of their rotation.  If you can switch to crit weapon enchant you'd be better off when shadowing.

[Fisperne 3]

What brutapriest said is very true.  If you dont need the spirit enchant for healing, I'd definitely recommend mark of the thunderlord, unless you have a same ilvl weapon and can enchant each with your preferred enchant.  Crit is just so beneficial for for shadow priests at the moment that if you wind up playing shadow in any situation, youre going to want to capitalize on having as much crit as possible.  No matter what situation I personally am in i always opt for more critical strike, no matter what.  Overall, critical strike is going to be your most beneficial stat in BRF.  And i will continue to support crit until someone backs another stat as being better than crit in all situations, in which case i myself will re- enchant and re-gem to go toward whatever they have proven is greater than critical strike.  Good luck, and I sincerely hope this makes sense! if you need anymore help or have any questions please feel free to message me or respond to this I want help to improve my spirestiness as much as you do :) !!!!