1. Outro
1.1. Okay everyone, that's it for this video. As always, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.
2. Priority 5: Using Silence To Live
2.1. Building upon the use of fear to stay alive, your other form of crowd control, silence, can also be used to stay alive. If you're low on health and don't want to use your dispersion, you can use silence on a magical damage dealer to prevent them from killing you. Your silence is also a great way of stopping casters from interrupting you if you need to cast mass dispel or heals.
2.1.1. AAab
2.1.1.1. This is an amazing example of Zunniyaki brining the last 2 pillars together, and building upon that with this 5th pillar. He uses fear on the rogue to prevent kick, silences the mage to prevent counter spell and uses mass dispel on his shaman, all at the same time. So even though he was heavily under pressure, he was able to recover without the risk of being interrupted.
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3. Priority 7: Holding And Using Dispersion
3.1. The final part of this guide will cover your best and most important defensive cooldown, dispersion. All you need to know about dispersion is that you should be trying to hold it for as long as possible. Whenever you use dispersion, it actually heals you for 50% over 6 seconds, which makes it really rewarded to disperse on low health as you're just going to get passively healed back up. In order to identify if you actually need to disperse, you need to be looking at two things. The first is how much longer your healer is going to be in cc, and the second is what sort of offensive cooldowns the enemy team has used. Each time you decide to use dispersion, you must quickly evaluate these two things and determine whether or not your dispersion is actually needed.
3.1.1. AAa
3.1.1.1. Here, Zunniyaki shows us exactly how you can identify when you should be using your dispersion. With his healer and him being locked down by the rogue, he has the option of dispersing immediately. Instead of doing that, he targets the mage and holds his dispersion. This forces their mage to use his combustion, which is their major offensive cooldown, in order to get Zunniyaki to use his dispersion. As soon as the mage uses combustion, Zunniyaki responds with his dispersion, and is able to survive their kill attempt. The main takeaway here is that, by holding our dispersion, Zunniyaki was able to force their mage to use his major offensive cooldown. An easy mistake he could of made here would of been to just use his dispersion early, which would of allowed their mage to hold onto his combustion for later, something that we definitely don't want happening.
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4. Priority 6: Knowing When To Cast Shadow Mend
4.1. After you've exhausted all of your other tools for staying alive, you can always fall back on simply healing yourself when you have no other way of staying alive. This means that you have to ensure you've attempted to cast a mass dispel on your healer to get them out of cc, if they're in cc, before attempting to heal yourself, on top of utilising everything else we've already covered in this video.
4.1.1. AAs
4.1.1.1. In this example, after attempting to cast our mass dispel and being kicked on cast, Zunniyaki ensures he utilises the other pillars before going for shadow mend casts. He shields himself and uses fear before finally falling back on shadow mend in order to stay alive.
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4.1.2. AAau
4.1.2.1. Here, Zunniyaki demonstrates why we dubbed this video, the art of survival. With the cheap shot about to end, our shaman is in cc and our dispersion is not ready which means he's going to have to utilise all of the pillars we covered in this video to survive. Zunniyaki starts by shielding himself and then silencing the mage. Moments later, his fear comes off cooldown, and he gets a double fear on both dps. Now that he's exhuated all of his other ways to survive, he attempts to go for a shadow mend because of how low he is. He's not casting mass dispel here because his healer isn't in cc. He then shields himself again as it comes off cooldown and goes back to casting shadow mend to ensure he won't die.
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5. Priority 1: Self Healing With Vampiric Touch
5.1. As most of you already know, Vampiric Touch is your main source of damage, which means you need to be keeping it up on as many targets as possible. However, VT is not only responsible for your damage, it also plays a huge part in your survival because of the self healing it provides. If you were to be trained throughout an entire game without ever getting a VT up, you would most likely die.
6. Intro
6.1. Hey everyone, and welcome to our guide on the art of survival as a shadow priest. Historically, shadow priests have been one of the squishiest targets in arena and not much has changed in Legion. This guide will provide you with the 7 pillars of shadow priest survival. We'll go through them in the order that you should be using them in order to live through the onslaught of damage you can expect to receive in almost every game you enter.
7. Priority 2: Shielding Yourself On Cooldown
7.1. Second to the self healing from vampiric touch is the mitigation that power word shield provides you with. Not only does it help prevent some damage by absorbing it, but it will also provide you with an extra buff that makes all the damage you deal heal yourself for 33% of the damage that you do, similar to vampiric embrace. This is an ability you want to be using on cooldown, whenever you're taking damage.
7.1.1. AAaf
7.1.1.1. In this example, you can see our expert, Zunniyaki, using power word shield on cooldown in order to survive the relentless pressure being put out on him.
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8. Priority 3: Reactive And Preemptive Mass Dispels
8.1. Now that we're ensuring we keep vampiric touch up and shielding ourself on cooldown whenever we take damage, we need to start ensuring we're using mass dispel at the right time. For several years now, mass dispel has been one of the only ways for a damage dealer to dispel cc from their healer. Shadow priests have time and time again found themselves winning games just because they were able to use mass dispel on their healer to get them out of cc in order to stay alive. You should always attempt to cast a mass dispel everytime your healer gets put into any sort of long magical cc, even if you're going to be kicked because the end result will be that you either get your healer out of cc or you get an interrupt out of the way, to allow you to do other things, such as heal yourself with shadow mend, if it's needed.
8.1.1. AAm
8.1.1.1. Here, Zunniyaki attempts to go for a mass dispel, which forces the rogue to kick him. He's then able to free cast a few shadow mends to keep himself alive.
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8.1.2. AAas
8.1.2.1. And in this example, we successfully cast a mass dispel to get our shaman out of the polymorph.
8.1.2.1.1. Editing
8.2. In addition to reacting to your healer being put into magical cc and casting mass dispel, you're also able to preemptively cast mass dispel whenever your team is a window where it can be cc'd. Pre-casting an MD before cc lands can either allow you to dispel cc just as it lands or can cause the enemy team to forgo casting that cc because of the risk of you immediately dispelling it. In general, pre-emptively casting mass dispel is a great way to mind game your opponents. Let's take a look at a few examples to determine the situations in which you should be preemptively casting mass dispel.
8.2.1. AAg
8.2.1.1. This is a great example of preemptively casting a mass dispel. Their mage uses dragons breath on our shaman which means he's likely to attempt a follow up sheep. Zunniyaki immediately starts to cast a mass dispel, but actually fakes that cast because the mage isn't going for a polymorph. And because of the mind game behind preemptively casting a mass dispel, he's able to fake the rogues kick.
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9. Priority 4: Using Fear To Live
9.1. So, at this point you should have a good understand on what you should be doing to prevent yourself from dropping really low as well as how you can help keep yourself alive when you do drop low. The next two sections will discuss how you can use your cc to keep yourself alive. First, we'll look at psychic scream. If you're ever dropping low and you're ever able to get a fear on at least two targets, you should use it! Not only does it immediately stop the damage that you're taking, but it will also give you room to get a few casts off as well as stopping any casts the enemy team are attempting to cast. This is especially great when you're playing with a mage who can also cast polymorph on the dps, which means that even if the healer dispels, your team can still keep their dps in cc.
9.1.1. AAah
9.1.1.1. Here we zee Zunniyaki running towards the mage to get a fear on both the mage and the rogue while he's really low on health. And even though the rogue gets dispelled, the mage on Zunniyakis team is able to cast a polymorph on the rogue in order to keep him cc'd for a few more seconds.
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9.1.2. AAas
9.1.2.1. In this example from earlier, Zunniyaki actually uses his fear to get the dps off him, which then allowed him to cast the mass dispel to get his shaman out of cc.
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9.1.3. AAay
9.1.3.1. And in this example, even though Zunniyaki isn't in too much trouble, the enemy team is actually going for cc on his healer. By using his fear here, he's able to stop the polymorph that the mage is attempting to cast on his healer and prevent himself from dropping low in the first place.
9.1.3.1.1. Editing
9.2. Now, although we just said you want to try and fear at least two targets, there will be times where you're forced to fear just one person in order to stay alive. You should only do this when you're really low on health. More often then not, the fear will at least stick for a little while, potentially giving your team enough time to keep you alive.
9.2.1. AAq
9.2.1.1. In this example, Zunniyaki makes great use of the priority of our pillars of survival. He first goes for a mass dispel cast which gets interrupted. And while he's on that holy school lock out, he uses fear on the rogue to help keep himself alive while he's really low on health.
9.2.1.1.1. Editing