Shadow Negativity

[veiledy0]

You tear him to pieces using the evidence of the Best of the Best, the Best SP versus the Best Everyone Else. How is that fair?

How is that not fair?

How many people actually play at that level?

Quality > quantity.

[Dierdre]

How is that fair? How many people actually play at that level? It's a ridiculous standard to set and expect it to mean anything on the discussion. The play at the level of the world first guilds and the world-wide chart toppers is *as different* to most of us as the experiences of the OP leveling are to us at 90.

My guild is VERY far from world first. Not even realm first. Still, it is not a ridiculous standard; people like Drye are the obvious and most reasonable standard of what a shadow priest can in fact do.

That said, shadow's single target damage has never been the best, but I've mained shadow since WotLK and it had never felt so low compared to other classes as it has been in 5.0-5.3 (MAYBE in the mana battery days, I honestly can't remember). In fights like Feng I could outdps my main with my hunter alt, ~20 ilvls below (which I found so easy mode I stopped playing). As Drye pointed out (an opinion I and many others have shared repeatedly since 5.2 PTR), ToF is the only gimmick that has kept us within top dps (and even then, par with mage/lock). Take ToF away and shadow would only be above average in council-type fights where you can roll dots for their full duration on multiple targets.

[veiledy0]

ToF is the only gimmick that has kept us within top dps (and even then, par with mage/lock). Take ToF away and shadow would only be above average in council-type fights where you can roll dots for their full duration on multiple targets.

It's not ToF, it's the amount of extra orbs that we can generate on fights that favor ToF.

ToF should just be made baseline for Shadow, and some new talent added instead. Some Dream of Cenarius type of talent, "Each time your Prayer of Mending jumps to a new target you gain Why Did I Just Waste a Global Cooldown, which increases effectiveness of your next orb consuming ability by 3%, stacking up to 5 times".

[reckoner04]

All class forums are always full of negativity. I can very well understand GC not reading class forums, most of it is crying for buffs (regardless whether the class/spec is actually weak or not).

[Drye]

It's not ToF, it's the amount of extra orbs that we can generate on fights that favor ToF.

its like 80% ToF, 20% extra orb generation.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm a bit astounded that the moderator chastised someone for trolling when he was giving an honest opinion.

STOP FEEDING IT. HELLO....embarassing

[Deleted]

Ignoring the fact that you didn't even read the post above yours, why wouldn't we balance the game according to what can be put out by good players? Are you telling me you want to balance classes based on what a random retard does in LFD?

I was under the impression that's how classes ARE balanced. If it's not then I'm even more confused at what Blizzard balancing involves than before.

[Volitar]

Also It's been a while but in t14 we could achieve some serious off healing with Dstar. I only managed to kill 4 bosses in t15 before my guild went kerspat so I'm not sure how many if any fights would warrant using it this tier.

[veiledy0]

Also It's been a while but in t14 we could achieve some serious off healing with Dstar. I only managed to kill 4 bosses in t15 before my guild went kerspat so I'm not sure how many if any fights would warrant using it this tier.

Ra Den carried by Divine Star.

[Deleted]

I was under the impression that's how classes ARE balanced. If it's not then I'm even more confused at what Blizzard balancing involves than before.

Huh? Classes are probably balanced by what can be achieved, yes. What's your point?

[veiledy0]

its like 80% ToF, 20% extra orb generation.

I just don't like seeung all the blame beeing placed on ToF, and I honestly can't imagine playing ToF fights without it. Hence the suggestion to make it baseline, 'cause if we were to loose ToF we'd become the only "niche-less" class in the game, alongside WW Monks.

Huh? Classes are probably balanced by what can be achieved, yes. What's your point?

I think he just repeated what you said, but in a less agressive manner, which is quite a silly way to try and put someone in their place.

[Deleted]

No, I was saying that Blizzard does largely take into account what the random retard in LFD does when balancing classes. They've shown before that they're not happy with specs being balanced at the top if the average player from 1 spec isn't able to meet the numbers of an equivalently average player of another spec.

Which imo has lead to the reduced 'skill cap' of pretty much every spec in the game. There are very few 'tricks' that make any meaningful difference to DPS - even if it's something the top players will still do in order to maximize, the difference will be substantially less than gear, or other factors out of that players control.

[Drye]

I just don't like seeing all the blame beeing placed on ToF

It's sad but its true. Whenever we say we do poor dmg or our class stinks, they bring up the fights we do good on elegon or horridon. Both fights that can easily exploit ToF. Which basically makes us balanced around it.

[Annesh]

This. We are the middle of the pack. We do nothing poor but nothing well.

To be more specific but less succinct, 4-5 other specs outperform us (in certain cases, by a LOT) even in situations where we're designed to shine (pretty much just multidotting these days), and we are either dead last or close to it when it comes to situations where we're designed to be weak - singletarget, movement-heavy, and even 8+ target aoe. The only fights this tier where we rose to the top 5 were gimmick fights where we cheese-multidotted for a bunch of empty extra damage, making us look better than we really were. So while our overall stack DPS rank was around "middle of the pack" I would put forward that if there were some way to track "meaningful" damage we'd be even lower than that.

[Dierdre]

So while our overall stack DPS rank was around "middle of the pack" I would put forward that if there were some way to track "meaningful" damage we'd be even lower than that.

There is. For instance Skada shows you "Enemy damage taken" logs, so you can see for example, that while damage done shows you're around average or maybe even topping on Primordius, once you filter T90 damage on blob thingies you kinda suck. Same goes for vampire damage on Tortos (our group kites them), extra heads on Megaera, etc.

Our useful damage potential is one of the worst as of 5.3. While multidotting helps useful damage because we can fish for procs to use on a target where our damage won't be wasted, a large portion of our overall damage (the one that makes them go "zomfg multidot stronger than mages nerf all the things now!") is indeed empty.

[soulyouth]

Ra Den carried by Divine Star.

Think you mean Essence of Anima damage carried by DP/sw:i

[Sinnoh]

While leveling, Shadow Priests are hands down one of the strongest, if not the strongest/fastest leveler in the game. They have infinite survivability, can pull a dozen mobs at once and good burst for questing. Majority of people who get realm firsts (in WotLK, Cata and MoP- can't remember back in BC, I was only new then) do it on a Shadow Priest, for the sole reason that they are unparallelled in the leveling scene.

HOWEVER, once you reach level 90, you will notice significant changes in the strength of your class at this current stage. Shadow Priests hold 3 top positions out of the 240 DPS positions available in heroic mode raiding on World of Logs. That means only about 1.2% of top DPS competitive players in heroic raiding are Shadow Priests. In almost every parse, we are put as one of the lowest DPS classes in best in slot gear, and almost as low in average gear. This is not just for this patch, this has been going on since MoP release. With the changes next patch, we should expect to be very competitive on multi-target fights, but still in the low-medium range for single target. Better than where we were at though.

Our main weakness is that we now provide far less utility than we used to, so we are absolutely no use in a heroic raiding team (in exception to 25-man perhaps due to Vampiric Embrace & Tier 6 talent CD). Along with this, we are, on average based on most parses, a solid 18~20% below mages and about 10~12% behind Warlocks in single target situations. They provide more utility and more damage, that's why we are not good right now.

[Dierdre]

While leveling, Shadow Priests are hands down one of the strongest, if not the strongest/fastest leveler in the game. They have infinite survivability, can pull a dozen mobs at once and good burst for questing. Majority of people who get realm firsts (in WotLK, Cata and MoP- can't remember back in BC, I was only new then) do it on a Shadow Priest, for the sole reason that they are unparallelled in the leveling scene.

Have you ever leveled in god mode? I mean paladin.

[Deleted]

Blizzard doesn't tune classes or specs of classes for leveling. Your leveling experience during solo, 5m, dueling, BG may very well not reflect your end-game experience during solo, 5m, LFR, 10/25 raid, dueling, BG, arena, RBG. Heck, theres specs of classes which are completely broken till a certain level due to finally getting a certain spec, talent, or spell.

[Yvaelle]

Have you ever leveled in god mode? I mean paladin.

Me and a priest-friend leveled as Disc+Prot Paladin on RAF. 1-85 in 22 hours.

[Dierdre]

Shadow Priests hold 3 top positions out of the 240 DPS positions available in heroic mode raiding on World of Logs. That means only about 1.2% of top DPS competitive players in heroic raiding are Shadow Priests.

What that actually means (which is quite different) is that only 1.2% of the people able to cheese an encounter to the point that they break it while having an uncanny proc streak are priests.

That's what top dps WoL logs are good for.