[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[l33t]

I really don't think that adds any value at all other than to be a bit clunky. It reduces the fantasy of the frantic pace of the talent leading to death while still removing you from combat for 3 minutes.

I don't think anyone is ever going to complain that they have to rez for a few seconds after a fight. I get shadow priests saying that dying is annoying, but as far as raids are concerned it really isn't that bad imo....

Surprise surprise, but different people react differently to the idea they have to res people because of the talent mechanics. My guild holy pala, for example, already whispered me to "go and f*ck yourself" when we discussed StM talent in guild chat. Other healer simply said that he won't waste 10 seconds of his time for casting resurrect at people who are dying because they can't choose right talents. Yes, I told them it is a dps increase before that.

So, I am sorry to burst through your rainbow bubble of neverending happiness (sic), but death talent definitely is an issue.

I like the talent, I really do, just its death part is wrong at many levels - losing food buffs, a lot of time lost over extra resurrect and food eating to regain that buff, having to rely on people resurrecting you or wasting even more time running from gy/entrance/etc... Seriously, Aeriel's idea is much, much better, gameplay-wise. And no, I don't believe that we have to drool over "class fantasy", remember that gameplay always > lore, that was Blizzard's own motto.

[Kretan]

Surprise surprise, but different people react differently to the idea they have to res people because of the talent mechanics. My guild holy pala, for example, already whispered me to "go and f*ck yourself" when we discussed StM talent in guild chat. Other healer simply said that he won't waste 10 seconds of his time for casting resurrect at people who are dying because they can't choose right talents. Yes, I told them it is a dps increase before that.

Dear god you know some drama queens LOL. I'm truly sorry for that haha. I guess ridiculous and unreasonable people still exist. Not sure why we would want to design a talent around these people though. I'd imagine they are quite the minority. 95% of cases the person rezzing won't have any idea what madness is or why people are surrendering to it to be honest.

So, I am sorry to burst through your rainbow bubble of neverending happiness (sic), but death talent definitely is an issue.

I like the talent, I really do, just its death part is wrong at many levels - losing food buffs, a lot of time lost over extra resurrect and food eating to regain that buff, having to rely on people resurrecting you or wasting even more time running from gy/entrance/etc... Seriously, Aeriel's idea is much, much better, gameplay-wise. And no, I don't believe that we have to drool over "class fantasy", remember that gameplay always > lore, that was Blizzard's own motto.

I get those concerns. The food buff thing is definitely annoying, but in the end food is really cheap to me. I personally think the death part is cool, but I get not everyone is going to like it. *RAINBOW OF HAPPINESS* ^.^ have a wonderful day.

[Deleted]

oi gits, whisper ta yer papa's ear some nasty secrets: what be shadow's hidden effect?

[Aeriel]

I have come across conversations on this site where people people go "no one will take that talent. The Shadows in my guild won't because it doesn't do enough damage to counter the downtime. When I tell them it is enough damage "well, no one wants it because you die." The stigma on the talent is HUGE. And once people find out how much damgae that it can really do: the screams for nerfs will be like the destruction of Alderaan. /hyperbole

But seriously, StM is probably the most stigmatized talent in the game.

- - - Updated - - -

oi gits, whisper ta yer papa's ear some nasty secrets: what be shadow's hidden effect?

So far only the whispers from the dagger. I doubt all of the actives are in game yet.

[Kretan]

I have come across conversations on this site where people people go "no one will take that talent. The Shadows in my guild won't because it doesn't do enough damage to counter the downtime. When I tell them it is enough damage "well, no one wants it because you die." The stigma on the talent is HUGE. And once people find out how much damgae that it can really do: the screams for nerfs will be like the destruction of Alderaan. /hyperbole

But seriously, StM is probably the most stigmatized talent in the game.

Yeah I can agree.....although the downtime thing was actually real under the old legacy of the void. This is a radically new talent, and I think people are just going to need time to get used to it. We will be amazing on super short farm fight though lol.

[Isentropy]

Surprise surprise, but different people react differently to the idea they have to res people because of the talent mechanics. My guild holy pala, for example, already whispered me to "go and f*ck yourself" when we discussed StM talent in guild chat. Other healer simply said that he won't waste 10 seconds of his time for casting resurrect at people who are dying because they can't choose right talents. Yes, I told them it is a dps increase before that.

So, I am sorry to burst through your rainbow bubble of neverending happiness (sic), but death talent definitely is an issue.

I like the talent, I really do, just its death part is wrong at many levels - losing food buffs, a lot of time lost over extra resurrect and food eating to regain that buff, having to rely on people resurrecting you or wasting even more time running from gy/entrance/etc... Seriously, Aeriel's idea is much, much better, gameplay-wise. And no, I don't believe that we have to drool over "class fantasy", remember that gameplay always > lore, that was Blizzard's own motto.

> because they can't choose right talents

What does this mean? Is the talent that's giving you the most damage not considered the best? Is the drawback of dying at the end of the fight really a good enough reason to refuse to res them? This sounds like your healers are just being stuck up their own arse.

Surrender to Madness is not just a DPS cooldown you pop whenever you feel like it. You use it near the end of the fight, ideally timing it so that around the time the boss dies, you die shortly after. That could be kind of hard but there's a lot of leeway. As I've already said a bit before you can stay alive up to 2 minutes if played well. Losing food buffs happens anyway whenever you wipe. This is really semantics - the amount of food you'll 'lose' extra over the course of a raid night is literally going to be 7 max in Emerald Nightmare, assuming you use Surrender to Madness on every fight (which might not be the case). How is this even close to a big deal? About the resurrecting part... it's not like people never die on fights at all. Healers can press one button to resurrect everyone. Again, really making a big problem out of something incredibly minor. I'd like to not die either, but to act like the things you're saying are major disadvantages to the talent is hilarious. Complaining for the sake of complaining.

[Kretan]

> because they can't choose right talents

What does this mean? Is the talent that's giving you the most damage not considered the best? Is the drawback of dying at the end of the fight really a good enough reason to refuse to res them? This sounds like your healers are just being stuck up their own arse.

Surrender to Madness is not just a DPS cooldown you pop whenever you feel like it. You use it near the end of the fight, ideally timing it so that around the time the boss dies, you die shortly after. That could be kind of hard but there's a lot of leeway. As I've already said a bit before you can stay alive up to 2 minutes if played well. Losing food buffs happens anyway whenever you wipe. This is really semantics - the amount of food you'll 'lose' extra over the course of a raid night is literally going to be 7 max in Emerald Nightmare, assuming you use Surrender to Madness on every fight (which might not be the case). How is this even close to a big deal? About the resurrecting part... it's not like people never die on fights at all. Healers can press one button to resurrect everyone. Again, really making a big problem out of something incredibly minor. I'd like to not die either, but to act like the things you're saying are major disadvantages to the talent is hilarious. Complaining for the sake of complaining.

Exactly. Sure there are downsides and annoyances, but it isn't talent breaking. We shouldn't design classes around people who refuse to rez because they are ridiculous.

[Gnarilex]

Exactly. Sure there are downsides and annoyances, but it isn't talent breaking. We shouldn't design classes around people who refuse to rez because they are ridiculous.

I'm playing with a group of friends so that's not something I have to worry about. There's probably gonna be a few deaths per fight for awhile anyway so it's not like there won't be a mass rezz going out.

[Kretan]

I'm playing with a group of friends so that's not something I have to worry about. There's probably gonna be a few deaths per fight for awhile anyway so it's not like there won't be a mass rezz going out.

Yeah the only reason the rez would be a problem is if you are playing with the crowd that severely struggles with the silver proving grounds requirement haha.

[Deleted]

If something, StM is overpowered tool both for progress & farm. Early pulls you can use it to push phases to see more of the fight (overlaps of mechanics/patterns etc.) and it costs nothing since most attempts won't even last 2 min on end bosses. Let's take boss like Mythic Blackhand with super tight dps-check phase 1 and then more execution oriented phase 2. You could bring 2-3 sps using StM p1 to guarantee meeting dps check every time so you could work on demolisher pattern/raid positioning for marks/fire baiting/balcony groups, then after X pulls when everyone is more comfortable with p1 and you can push it safely without you switch StM for last phase etc.

For farm dying after killing bosses means nothing, you will lose half a stack of food per week, no big deal. Late farm you will be able to keep StM for most of the fights duration and permanent cast while moving + being able to reach 100+ stacks of voidform is well worth it (it will finally make a farm exciting for a dot-class that was falling behind on farm with short fights since forever). Latency might be a problem but there is no way around it. If you have really high ping and you feel it will make you die randomly more often than not, just don't spec it.

[Sxq]

I'm still sceptical of the tuning of STM. What are the chances it actually goes live in a state where it's so strong that the timing isn't super important? I've always thought of this as a talent where it'd win out if the timing is right, but in situations where you don't know exactly how long it'll take to finish the boss you'll usually end up losing out. Having it be universally strong is a less frustrating design for shadow players, certainly, but I don't see how that fits into the balance between other talents.

[Aeriel]

The problem with StM's tuning currently is not in its strength, but in the other talents on the row's weakness. LotV was changed to help VF uptime, but is now, at best, dps neutral due to how much time is spent in VF. This is something of a philosophical change after the current implementation. MSp is just plain DoA. There is no playstyle that would lead to build that many stacks between MB without being a dps loss. Even 3 stacks is a loss currently over ignoring the talent row.

StM as it stands is fine (barring tuning of our spells). The rest of the row needs work, since they are poorly implemented (LotV) or outright dps loss (MSp).

[Kilee25]

Try a two-target scenerio, where Mind Blast is off-cast against the second target until MSp reaches 10 stacks, then do one cast against the main target, and restart the sequence. See if the stacking debuff creates a net gain over using MB immediately. Could also use that same trick while waiting for some buff/proc stacking. It seems odd to say, but it could be intended as a council talent in that way. If I were on Alpha, it would probably be the first thing I tested in regards to that talent. That's all I can come up with atm.

[Isentropy]

I'm still sceptical of the tuning of STM. What are the chances it actually goes live in a state where it's so strong that the timing isn't super important? I've always thought of this as a talent where it'd win out if the timing is right, but in situations where you don't know exactly how long it'll take to finish the boss you'll usually end up losing out. Having it be universally strong is a less frustrating design for shadow players, certainly, but I don't see how that fits into the balance between other talents.

The timing isn't super important because it's so strong, but because that's just the design of the talent. Surrender to Madness enables you to stay in Voidform for a really long time and that's the point - it's your last stand, you unleash all of your power before you die. That's the whole fantasy of the spell. You can put a cap on the amount of Voidform stacks you can get, but Mass Hysteria would continue to get stronger (which is the main reason Surrender to Madness is even so strong, by the way). You can put a cap on Mass Hysteria while using Surrender to Madness, but how do you get that across to people clearly in a tooltip? And besides that, Surrender to Madness is supposed to make you godlike when you use it. If you start messing with it like that the oh so beloved fantasy gets tainted and it also won't feel nearly as satisfying to press if restricted as such.

The problem largely lies with the other two talents on the row since they're both very small DPS increases. So let's say there's a 5 minute fight, and let's say you can live up to 2 minutes after using Surrender to Madness. The 3 minutes that you don't use Surrender to Madness have to be made up in the 2 minutes of Surrender to Madness, or at least make it so that there's a meaningful decision to be made whether or not using Surrender to Madness is worth losing the entire 5 minutes of a different level 100 talent (because of a really hard execute phase, for example). What you're seeing right now is that there's not really a decision to be made because losing LotV/Mind Spike hardly affects your overall DPS much - ergo, Surrender to Madness more than makes up for the already small difference once you do pop it. It's the only significant DPS increase the row offers. If Mind Spike and LotV were both better options it wouldn't be so clear-cut, and therefore Surrender to Madness would be able to fulfill the niche it's supposed to a lot better. You'd still be using Surrender to Madness a lot probably, especially during farm, but at least there'd be a much more significant tradeoff.

Try a two-target scenerio, where Mind Blast is off-cast against the second target until MSp reaches 10 stacks, then do one cast against the main target, and restart the sequence. See if the stacking debuff creates a net gain over using MB immediately. Could also use that same trick while waiting for some buff/proc stacking. It seems odd to say, but it could be intended as a council talent in that way. If I were on Alpha, it would probably be the first thing I tested in regards to that talent. That's all I can come up with atm.

This wouldn't end up as a net gain at all. The damage the detonation does is solely based on the Mind Spike damage, so it doesn't matter whether you detonate it at 3 or 10 stacks - there's no exponential ramping up or anything. The detonation doesn't double dip with damage buffs/trinket procs.

[Aeriel]

@Kilee25. That just sounds painful. I can understand the theory behind that idea, but it just hurts my head to think about it.

With the high haste levels that we can maintain, that would require almost as many APM as the 1-1.5min period of StM, but over a much longer period. You would constantly be tabbing between targets due to how quickly MB, VB, and SWD would come off cooldown. The row should have a cleave ability like you describe, but this iteration, as you describe it, just feels "clunky". Even making MSp a cleave spell and replace MF would work as well.

[Deleted]

I think the only way LotV is going to compete with StM in terms of being a dps increase talent is if they made it something like that you start voidform with 100 insanity while being able to activate voidform at 60 insanity effectively giving you 40 free insanity, problem is that if the other 2 talents do anywhere near StM dps then the overwhelming majority of people will go for LotV or ms because of the death mechanic.

[Deleted]

In that case, if you made a pvp video, I would close it instantly too

You don't want to watch a PvP video of mine because I do not like a mana bar for shadow priests in Legion? Okay then.

[Deleted]

How engaging is the rotation in alpha right now? Compared to that of Cataclysm (until t13 4set). Does it "flow" nicely? Is it intuitive and rewarding at the same time? Not the MoP-WoD type of stupor?

[Kretan]

How engaging is the rotation in alpha right now? Compared to that of Cataclysm (until t13 4set). Does it "flow" nicely? Is it intuitive and rewarding at the same time? Not the MoP-WoD type of stupor?

On one target it flows beautifully. When you add more targets it takes on a more and more frantic feeling. You have such a tiny gcd needing quick decisions, but at the same time you feel like you are capped hard against the gcd wall. I think as we get more experienced it will feel better, but multi target feels like you need to press 100 buttons when you only have the gcds for a fraction of that.

[davesignal]

Our order hall campaign is implemented this build. Let me be the first to say: post spoilers, please!