[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[davesignal]

I honestly think the play at this point is complete radio silence on trying to make Shadow a cleave spec, because it is just entirely incompatible with the class from the ground up, and focusing our efforts on making sure Blizzard is ensuring we're strong on single target and multidot. Burst AOE is just never going to be a thing for dot classes.

[RsinRC]

I can see burst implemented by having mindsear not be channeled but making it a 3 sec cd and having your dots explode aoe style similar to ehancement aoe or something similar in that effect.

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Void ray should be a talent that replaces mind blast and has a strong ass mindflaay with a different animation and have it generate similar amounts of insanity like MB. And it having a ramp up mechanic so that it promotes strong use of MF.

I would rather mind spike make MBs cd shorter per cast and after 3-4 casts it gives MB a cleave effect.

[snaxattax]

Is it really necessary to bank stacks of mind spike in most cases though? Having a ten stack maximum just gives you the option for the once in a blue moon case where you do for whatever reason. I feel like most of the time you are supposed to just blow it up with 2 stacks or whatever.

the damage is so terrible that there's no way you'd ever take it otherwise, unless it's re-worked to do massively more damage than in the tooltip or trigger from something other than mindblast.

especially once tier is out, which both increases the value of LOTV and reduces the # of fillers we cast per fight. all the talents that mod our fillers are almost guaranteed to be trash-tier for this reason.

[RsinRC]

@Kretan MS on its own does ballsack damage. The explosion with 10 stacks is like half a mind blast. 2 stacks is equivalent to you sneezing next to someone and have boogers shoot out your nose and on to their neck.

[snaxattax]

Void ray should be a talent that replaces mind blast and has a strong ass mindflaay with a different animation and have it generate similar amounts of insanity like MB. And it having a ramp up mechanic so that it promotes strong use of MF

or just anything that increases the value of mindflay, or somehow gives us more filler gcds. any time we're using lots of mindflay gcds, the answer isn't to take talents that buff mindflay, it's to take a class that isn't a shadowpriest.

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MS on its own does ballsack damage. The explosion with 10 stacks is like half a mind blast. 2 stacks is equivalent to you sneezing next to someone and have boogers shoot out your nose and on to their neck.

yes, that's the thing. the only time it would ever make sense to use is if you can bank a 10 stack on something and then blow it up on gripped adds. it's too weak compared to lotv and stm under any other scenario.

[Kretan]

I can see burst implemented by having mindsear not be channeled but making it a 3 sec cd and having your dots explode aoe style similar to ehancement aoe or something similar in that effect.

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Void ray should be a talent that replaces mind blast and has a strong ass mindflaay with a different animation and have it generate similar amounts of insanity like MB. And it having a ramp up mechanic so that it promotes strong use of MF.

I would rather mind spike make MBs cd shorter per cast and after 3-4 casts it gives MB a cleave effect.

I like the void ray idea. I would enjoy that.

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@Kretan MS on its own does ballsack damage. The explosion with 10 stacks is like half a mind blast. 2 stacks is equivalent to you sneezing next to someone and have boogers shoot out your nose and on to their neck.

Yeah I'm worried that's it's so weak it can't even beat mind sear lol. I'd like to see some logs from dungeons once full artifacts and 110 is being tested.

[snaxattax]

at this point I wish they'd just combine mind spike, mind flay, and mind sear into some shitty-ish damage cleave (like what mindflay does atm) filler a-la arms whirlwind. replace mindspike talent with something which considerably increases the damage on secondary targets, with no retarded extra mechanics like current mindspike (is there enough aoe opportunities to make up for the lost mindblasts?). make shadowcrash do something to further increase the secondary target damage, and there you go the spec makes some level of mechanical sense. multidotting is enough of a pain in the ass to make multitarget engaging without having to worry about which awful damage punishment filler you want to use.

or they could realize the error of their ways and revert the class-killing shadowcrash/mindbender changes from this push.

[Deleted]

Remove Mind Spike and change with :

Mind Crash : Your Mind Blast has no CD, deals 50% damage to all targets within 10 yards.

Probably also reduce insanity gains via MB by 1/3rd I'd guess.

[Ilir]

my gosh, just get rid of freaking mind sear.

Give Void Ray the "turn mind flay into an aoeing badass spell".

Rework mind spike : everytime you use mind blast, you deal X damage around the target aswell.


it's not that fancy, but it actually flows with our current toolkit instead of making us turn into a target swapper.

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Also : Why didn't they freaking made it so Mind Sear triggers our artefact tentacle trait ? I can't even.

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man I love reading Isentropy's posts. /fangirl

[Elestia]

Is shadow word void useless ? That's a real question... I haven't taken it for like 2 months now and I don't feel like I need it. Is it just me or ?

Imo they should make it a third dot.

[Djriff]

Imo they should make it a third dot.

Shadow Word: Void into Void Entropy?

[Aeriel]

Imo they should make it a third dot.

The point of SWV is on-demand Insanity generation, which it does. It is just lackluster against ToF. A 3rd DoT would not accomplish this goal. Evena DP style dot would take longer for you to enter VF.

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Shadow Word: Void into Void Entropy?

Ironically, VEnt would actually work now with VB refresh. It woukd still be weak, but easy to maintain.

[Djriff]

Well honestly VEnt's main strength was it's length. It did a ton of damage over time, just had a reallllllllllllllly long ramp up time. I think on a 2-3 target fight it would be fun to take that and just maintain it with Void Bolt. It may not beat out ToF all the time, but it would be a playstyle choice you could make.

[Coffeh]

Just started looking into this spec and one talent looks really weird. Mind Spike. When or why would you ever get up to 10 stacks?

[Aeriel]

Well honestly VEnt's main strength was it's length. It did a ton of damage over time, just had a reallllllllllllllly long ramp up time. I think on a 2-3 target fight it would be fun to take that and just maintain it with Void Bolt. It may not beat out ToF all the time, but it would be a playstyle choice you could make.

Oh I agree. I see it as more of a replacement for PI actually. Give it a 30s duration, 3s/tick, and 1 Insanity/tick. That way Mindbender becomes the bursty option, and VEnt would be the steady option. On 3 targets VEnt would win on Insanity generation, so the damage would be relatively low. However, the purpose would be Insanity over time, not DPS.

This is theoretical of course. Blizz is into tuning phase, and VEnt would make people scream if it returned in any form.

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Just started looking into this spec and one talent looks really weird. Mind Spike. When or why would you ever get up to 10 stacks?

If you read the last 2-3 pages, that was the primary discussion. Short answer: the damage is linear, so it does not matter. Long answer: there are possible scenarios where you can target switch for burst. Either way. A better discussion is just a few clicks back.

[Romanticide]

Mind Spike should work exactly like Icicle. Damage we deal is stored as a Mind Spike and Mind Blast/Void Bolt detonates it in an okay radius.

[l33t]

I honestly think the play at this point is complete radio silence on trying to make Shadow a cleave spec, because it is just entirely incompatible with the class from the ground up, and focusing our efforts on making sure Blizzard is ensuring we're strong on single target and multidot. Burst AOE is just never going to be a thing for dot classes.

Actually, that's not true. Why? Because nothing stops Blizzard from making Legion's version of dotless CoP shadow priest. More gameplay options is good, less is bad.

Current Mind Spike is just idiotic, there should not be any of the abilities in the game which have such weird and counter-intuitive mechanics. It should be replaced with something like "Every cast of spike makes your Blast deal +25/50/75% of its damage to two nearby targets, stack to three, resets with blast"... Another valid option: Spike should just deal 50% of its damage to two nearby targets, giving us a cleave option which is not harder to execute than dancing on our hands while juggling bowls full of water with our feet while playing piccolo while singing Australian anthem at the same time - which current idiotic spike mechanics is.

Also: Blizzard please, just remove the fucking mind sear already, and tune our other damage accordingly.

[Ilir]

haha that's a good analogy L33t

[RsinRC]

I can even go with your Void Bolt detonates the stacks. At least there is a higher chance of getting higher stacks before entering VF.

[Ilir]

So mmh ...

I made a list of how much artifact power is required to unlock all 3 "Gold Dragon" abilities for each spec. This is taking the fastest way to get all 3 unlocked.
Here's how much AP you need for each spec:

330,910 Guardian, Shadow, Elemental
253,690 Discipline
195,210 Frost (DK), Mistweaver, Outlaw, Resto (Shaman)
150,530 Beast Mastery, Brewmaster, Retribution, Destruction
116,565 Arcane, Holy (Priest), Prot (Warrior)
90,715 Vengeance, Balance, Feral, Survival, Windwalker, Holy (Paladin), Prot (Paladin), Assassination, Enhancement, Demonology
71,115 Druid, Blood, Unholy, Resto (Druid), Marksman, Fire, Frost (Mage), Subtlety, Affliction, Arms, Fury
55,715 Havoc

source : http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20744944704

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