[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Darth-Piekus]

Indeed it's as you said Leet. Those Elite Shadowpriests are really becoming annoying. I was one of those people getting ridiculed for pointing the obvious weaknesses of the class and what they should do to fix it. I personally am a veteran Shadowpriest from Vanilla. I haven't played another spec at all. It's my only class. I have seen all the Shadowpriest specs of the game and knew how to min max everything. I believe compared to those elitists (who some of them might not be Shadowpriests trully) I tend to know something more about the class. I am not mentioning weaknesses and fixes for fun.

[snaxattax]

most of them aren't even that good. overwhelmingly, the crowd that scream 'it's fine' have raided at most one tier in a guild filled with mediocre/bad dps.

I mean jesus Christ it's not uncommon to have someone incoherently screaming about how shadow is fine l2p and talk about how there are all these obscure shadow mechanics and how they constantly 'outplay' people in their groups/raids and you armory them and it looks like this http://imgur.com/y0TVDQA

I'm not saying you have to raid to have an opinion or do theorycraft, but when you don't raid, and you can't do basic arithmetic (especially regarding things as basic as 'is mastery going to be good'), and your insights make no sense... makes me actually wistful for the days of elitist jerks when they would get put in the shitpost gulag.

it's not 'opinion' or whatever to say that if shadow ships with as awful aoe tools (and commensurate cmode usefulness when compared to every other spec's kit) it will probably see even less use than the spec saw in WoD. the fundamental issue is: why play a spec that requires twice as much effort (since you can't gear in cmodes as easily as random_rdps due to shit aoe) for half the results when I can play any other spec? I can't speak to pvp, but it doesn't seem promising and I'd take theeds word over rando-with-no-rated-pvp-in-years screaming that you just need to build some 4healer comp for 5's and say it also looks bad there, as well.

[l33t]

I can't speak to pvp, but it doesn't seem promising and I'd take theeds word over rando-with-no-rated-pvp-in-years screaming that you just need to build some 4healer comp for 5's and say it also looks bad there, as well.

Why, I bet we will be more than awesome in RBGs. We should forget about any serious arena playing as a shadow priests, that's for sure - unless Blizz seriously nerf melees, which is not happening, I bet.

[Kilee25]

The direction shadow has been heading hasn't really excited me. But an average player like me and you do not really have any say in it, so I just don't see the point in complaining. It's fun to discuss possibilities and potential strats, but in the end we get what we get. Legion's design in general confuses me a little, but I think the overall theme has been "re-envisioning" and rebooting the classes. The heavy trimming of abilities. The drastic changes in traditional specs. As a whole I think the effort is good and noble. My worry mostly is that in some cases - like shadowpriest- it feels like "change for the sake of change". In other words it just feels like they forced something new because they had to, whether or not it was creatively inspired or good. I am thinking that, for shadow and for quite a few other classes, this expac is just going to be one great big science experiment...

[Ilir]

The direction shadow has been heading hasn't really excited me. But an average player like me and you do not really have any say in it, so I just don't see the point in complaining. It's fun to discuss possibilities and potential strats, but in the end we get what we get. Legion's design in general confuses me a little, but I think the overall theme has been "re-envisioning" and rebooting the classes. The heavy trimming of abilities. The drastic changes in traditional specs. As a whole I think the effort is good and noble. My worry mostly is that in some cases - like shadowpriest- it feels like "change for the sake of change". In other words it just feels like they forced something new because they had to, whether or not it was creatively inspired or good. I am thinking that, for shadow and for quite a few other classes, this expac is just going to be one great big science experiment...

I agree.

Tho, I do like the new SP more than current SP. I guess I'm used to having useless talents/little to no aoe (tho we do have better aoe in wod).

But I'm also one of those guys that love changes in video games (well MMORPGs/RPGs).

[Djriff]

It's OK guys, we level poorly on our own because we have great group utility!

Our levelling is balanced around having a healer, so when you do level make sure you have one in your back pocket. No other class can Mass Dispel a teammate while levelling, so use that to your advantage!

#kappa

FYI, this is why we can't have nice things.

Well we do get our faithful follower.

[l33t]

Yeah well, if you want my thought on the matter, I think Blizzard keep repeating same mistake over and over and over again. While trying to make people who left years ago come back, they shit on people who were playing for all these years - ironically, making more people leave. This tactics had already bitten Blizzard's ass in WoD, and it looks like the story continues in Legion.

[Ilir]

One priest on the beta forum suggested to increase PW:Shield power and increase its CD... NO. Just no. ITS OUR ONLY mobility tool, do not ask for the CD to be increased, just don't.

[l33t]

One priest on the beta forum suggested to increase PW:Shield power and increase its CD... NO. Just no. ITS OUR ONLY mobility tool, do not ask for the CD to be increased, just don't.

I'd love to have shadowmend being instant, healing more with 15 sec cd, though.

[davesignal]

15 second CD would be kind of useless; the amount it would have to be buffed would mean you'd need to be essentially dead before you could cast it (without significant overhealing).

Now, maybe a six second CD and a commensurate healing buff? That'd be great.

[l33t]

15 second CD would be kind of useless; the amount it would have to be buffed would mean you'd need to be essentially dead before you could cast it (without significant overhealing).

Now, maybe a six second CD and a commensurate healing buff? That'd be great.

The number is just a number, of course. Main point here is shadowmend being instant and healing more at a cost of not being spammable.

Would absolutely love it to generate small number of insanity as well.

[Aeriel]

The number is just a number, of course. Main point here is shadowmend being instant and healing more at a cost of not being spammable.

Would absolutely love it to generate small number of insanity as well.

Making it Instant with the (de)buff lasting as long as the cooldown would kill Masochism, unless the base healing was effectively doubled.

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The direction shadow has been heading hasn't really excited me. But an average player like me and you do not really have any say in it, so I just don't see the point in complaining. It's fun to discuss possibilities and potential strats, but in the end we get what we get. Legion's design in general confuses me a little, but I think the overall theme has been "re-envisioning" and rebooting the classes. The heavy trimming of abilities. The drastic changes in traditional specs. As a whole I think the effort is good and noble. My worry mostly is that in some cases - like shadowpriest- it feels like "change for the sake of change". In other words it just feels like they forced something new because they had to, whether or not it was creatively inspired or good. I am thinking that, for shadow and for quite a few other classes, this expac is just going to be one great big science experiment...

I wish they had stuck with the original version of VF where it improved existing spells. That would have gone to an improved version of the pre-Shadow Orbs model. If VF improved our healing too, then it would have been almost TBC model.

[l33t]

Making it Instant with the (de)buff lasting as long as the cooldown would kill Masochism, unless the base healing was effectively doubled.

That talent anyways is DoA, no need to worry about it. Instant healing skill would help with a survivability, though. A lot.

[Aeriel]

I see it being useful in solo/leveling, but mainly because B&S is so short that you will not have PWS available when you want the speed boost. In group play: B&S is definitely better and Mania is that tier's useless talent. They all have to have one.

[l33t]

I see it being useful in solo/leveling, but mainly because B&S is so short that you will not have PWS available when you want the speed boost. In group play: B&S is definitely better and Mania is that tier's useless talent. They all have to have one.

Oh, my bad. I thought you're about the talent which increases movement speed based on insanity we have.

Anyways, a better healing talent should definitely not be in a mobility talent tier, amirite?

[Djriff]

Did some more testing today in dungeons with logs.

Today i tried out Twist of Fate, Void Lord, Auspicious Spirits, Mindbender, and Legacy of the Void.

Overall the game play felt a lot smoother and Void Lord opened up some interesting opportunities for Void Torrent bursting which felt pretty decent.

There's also some holy logs in there, but don't worry about those.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/7Kj9AHTvLQmt8pd1/

I see it being useful in solo/leveling, but mainly because B&S is so short that you will not have PWS available when you want the speed boost. In group play: B&S is definitely better and Mania is that tier's useless talent. They all have to have one.

Might be a bug but the CD for PW: S is scaling with haste. There's a point if I fight something and get 20-22 stacks of Void Form i'll only have a 1.2s gap on the speed boost.

[Aeriel]

Oh, my bad. I thought you're about the talent which increases movement speed based on insanity we have.

Anyways, a better healing talent should definitely not be in a mobility talent tier, amirite?

You mean like an execute talent on an Insanity generation row?

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Might be a bug but the CD for PW: S is scaling with haste. There's a point if I fight something and get 20-22 stacks of Void Form i'll only have a 1.2s gap on the speed boost.

SHHHHH! Don't tell anyone that!

[l33t]

You mean like an execute talent on an Insanity generation row?

Exactly. Which is asked to become baseline for years. And it really should. And Mindbender should replace it there.

[snaxattax]

it feels like "change for the sake of change".

what actually pisses me off is how going into legion shadow was more or less mechanically okay (outside of numerical bullshit due to rowcop) except it had bad on-pull/pure single target dps, and had pretty bad aoe/cleave outside of super spread out multidot. then they showed that they could make our pure ST decent via RoW and filler buffs. then they decided to instead make our multitarget schizophrenic asscancer by shortening our dots and making our dot refresh (which was a positive) tied to a super awkward missile speed (the fuck? the old dot extension didn't even have this fucking problem so afaik they actually went through and deliberately made it mechanically worse).

then on top of it they took an already weak aoe spec and removed the only functioning spell in that category from our spec.

it's like, your average rdps has to be able to do the following:

1. single target sustain
2. 'priority' target burst/targetswap
3. aoe (use different spells against a high number of targets to get much more damage)
4. cleave (use mostly your single target rotation against 1 or 2 extra targets to get significant damage on those added targets)
5. multidot (targets are spread out so 3 and 4 don't apply - this is generally the least important type of multitarget since it generally involves the largest dps losses to what would otherwise be your priority target)

most classes can do at least 4 of the 5. right now shadow has an insanely awkward and targetcapped multidot. other than that, we don't really do anything else. in order to keep up dots on multiple targets, we have to spread one of our highest dpct spells around these targets (which makes our multitarget more paddy instead of more focused - like that was the only thing you could argue that made AS better than mage/warlock cleave specs, and we're losing that in the new shadowpriest design as well).

we basically just have 1 & 2, and a lot of our focus damage comes down to our tier bonus, which based on experience might not even make it to live.

and this doesn't even touch on the extra shit that exacerbates these problems like how dumb our artifact layout is, and how we have a keystone tied to an ability which we never want to use. it'd be like if the firemage artifact trait that requires them to cast 6 consecutive scorches were made into a keystone.

[Aeriel]

Exactly. Which is asked to become baseline for years. And it really should. And Mindbender should replace it there.

Personally I think LotV would work well there. Then it becomes "how to enter VF". Lower threshold vs over time generation vs burst generation. But that is me. I would rather see RoS baseline, since that functionality has, in some form, almost always been on SWD.