The many uses of Shadowmeld

The newly revamped Shadowmeld is an incredibly useful talent for Alliance feral druids. It's basically like giving every Night Elf Feign Death with a stealth component added in. I feel bad for our beefy brothers. What's it good for?

• Dumping aggro when you're DPSing. Shadowmeld is a 100% threat wipe against all mobs. If you string a bunch of kitty crits early in a pull or are in a fight with weird aggro mechanics like Malygos or Noth, it's a big help to be able to start over at 0 threat.
• Handing aggro to another tank. I'm using Shadowmeld a fair amount when tanking. It's useful on fights where you have to hand-off aggro to another tank, like on Gluth. Sure the tank can just taunt off you, but if the taunt misses or they're not paying attention you can just hand the other tank aggro. I also shadowmeld trash on to my fellow tanks when I'm done bear AoEing and want to go kitty. You want to be very sure that another tank is #2 on aggro before you do it and don't shadowmeld a lot of damage onto another tank if your healers aren't ready to switch.
• Avoiding crap you don't want to fight. Pick up a train of mobs as you ride through the countryside? Just shadowmeld when you stop and they all go away.
• Harassing people. It's rude, but sometimes it's amusing to train a mob to someone and shadowmeld. Mostly the mob will just turn around and ignore people (Blizzard has anti-griefing code). But sometimes it works. Why, just today I brought a dragon up into the Naxx summoning area, got it to breathe on a bunch of people, then melded away. Petty, but a little amusing.
• Changing gear. Shadowmeld drops you out of combat and lets you change clothes. It seems like Outfitter or the like can swap your entire outfit the moment you press Shadowmeld. I haven't tried this extensively but it seems to work.
• Cheap battle rez. You can Shadowmeld to get out of combat and start casting Revive. The 10 second cast time makes this not terribly useful, but sometimes I do it to get a jump start on rezzing someone who died on trash.
• Wipe recovery. If the raid is about to wipe it occasionally works to Shadowmeld in a quiet corner, let the boss reset, then rez people.
• Flying. Resto4life had a blog post just after I wrote this one that reminded me: you can use Shadowmeld to take you out of combat so you can then shift to flight form. Particularly useful in world PvP and as a way to escape a thicket of mobs.

The one wrinkle is some of these actions require you stay out of combat for awhile. Shadowmelding in a raid drops you out of combat, but you're often brought right back into combat a moment later. Either ambient damage hits you or (I think) you get pulled into combat just for standing too close to a hostile mob. You can still reset a boss if you're in combat, I think what matters is if you're on the boss' aggro table. But it's rare you'll be able to cast Revive without being interrupted.

Anyone have another creative use for Shadowmeld?

Comments

[Bullroar]

O to the friggan P

[Nelson]

Consider it revenge for years of our delicate Night Elf bones being War Stomped by big, mean moo-cows. (Seriously, it is overpowered. They should remove the threat wipe and drop from combat, just make it a temporary stealth effect.)

[Simon]

Correct me if im wrong but "any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancelleation of the effect"

How is this a threat wipe? Yes, you will temporarily drop aggro upon shadowmelding but as soon as you pop out you get all that threat back unless the mob is dead. You basically trade zero aggro for a time but can do no damage.

To me it sounds like its only use in raids would be to lose aggro temporarily to allow a tank to catch up or to catch a heal before you die.

Am I missing something?

[Nelson]

Simon: I know it says "threat is restored" in the tooltip but that doesn't seem to be how it actually works. Omen3 clearly shows your threat goes to zero and when I have 200% threat over anyone and shadowmeld I don't get aggro back when I resume attacking. Maybe it's a bug they'll fix? Who knows.

[Kyl]

I've had trouble staying alive during boss wipes with Shadowmeld, but last night I did better by waiting until I was top threat for the boss before shadowmelding (this was Patchwerk). I remember it rarely worked on Illidari Council because of all that aoe damage. And yes, annoying teammates can intentially kite the boss near a vanished or shadowmelded person to kill them.

I've heard it resets the potion cooldown? I haven't tested this, has anyone else?

[Vakfaroosh]

It use to reset the potion cooldown, that has now been fixed.

It does wipe aggro, I am not sure if this was intended or not but it does help a great deal when I am fury, 2-3 5-10k crits in a row really push the threat.

[Vull (EU Aggamaggan)]

Shadow meld is also great for a 'Vanish' type abilty. For instance if you are fighting in cat form and you want to get out of there and re-open on the dude then you cast shadow meld ( i have binded mine to Shift Q) then cast cat form ( mine binded to G ) then prowl. If you practise you can get into prowl from combat very quickly, obviously its not as fast as rogue's 'Vanish' ability but it is VERY nice you can win a lot of duels and arena from this. Happy gaming my hairy friends :)