[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Kaesebrezen]

@illr, you can bring up the past 1 billion times, its not gonna change the now at this point. The game itself has a new vision and new mindsets and every spec is different. Much different. Im not saying this from my opinion, look at the game.

And the new vision is anything but "raid or die".

Shadow right now is a pretty shitty spot in anything expect raids - and we don't even know how we actually perform in raids since no testing has happened after several rounds of nerfs hit.

[Kretan]

We really need more bad data. Maybe they can just import the entire Gallywix server into beta realms.

I swear just because something 'does damage' doesn't mean it's good. You have to compare it to some sort of baseline, such as what Kaese brought up with comparing Msp damage to mindsear insanity generation (since they're both 'aoe fillers' in our rotation), and then look at the marginal increases of our other options (not is mindspike more effective than doing nothing, but is it more effective than LOTV with mindsear as a filler).

Let's not attack people who are at least trying to provide some hard data at a time when we have pretty much nothing. :/

[Djriff]

Mind Spike is not better than Legacy of the Void in single target at the moment, your PvP premade character with crap stats is not an accurate way to test these kinds of things. Void Lord + Mind Spike is even doing better for me on single target than Void Ray + Mind Spike, which goes to show once more how shit Void Ray truly is. Try and actually think of how this would translate to any fight with movement, other targets and an execute phase. Mind Spike does not provide good cleave, it does not provide good AoE except for the 1 in 100 chance you'll be able to set it up properly, in which case you're still not doing good AoE compared to most other specs, and it does not provide good single target. It's the very definition of a bad talent, both in the playstyle it forces you into as well as numerically. Mind Spike has no business existing at the moment.

I agree. With Mind Spike it's a straight turret spec. I actually plan on doing more/longer tests today if I have time. Mind Spike really forces us into a turret like stance and honestly I hate it. I also found that Void Ray is a horrible horrible talent. Once I pop Void Torrent it's basically bye bye buff and I have to restart again. I would never take it on any type of movement fight. I also understand that the premade character has crap stats, the whole point of using a premade was to have a maxxed out artifact weapon and to take advantage of those, which please correct me if I'm wrong, you can't max it out if you just level to 110 on the beta. I still want to test mindsear vs mindspike in terms of aoe damage. Voidform also throws a huge wrench into anything and everything since I constantly need to cast Void bolt and Mind Blast. Usually I can get 1 tick of Mind Flay between these casts at around 20-22 stacks of Void Form which was translating to 50% haste, usually it was 1 cast of Mind Spike. I'll have to double check but that's probably 2 ticks of Mind Sear right?

What playstyle are you referring to? There's no reason except for split second burst to save up the stacks from Mind Spike. It'll do the same amount of damage per stack regardless of the number. If you're talking about saving stacks on a target and funneling Mind blasts into something else, that just feels horrible.

Can you provide some proof for that (video, logs) since it did not the last time I checked? I am tired of testing it over and over again just to see that it was just an assumption made by someone and it somehow spread around as misinformation.

See below

I just did a few tests, and it still doesn't snapshot.

I also went on the PvP realm, made a character and tested Mind Spike and it's not doing better than Legacy of the Void. I'm really not sure how you managed to find that Mind Spike is better, not to mention the fact that Mind Spike's very design restricts its use significantly even on single target, therefore even if it did do better on a dummy it should be doing significantly more than Legacy of the Void if it were to ever be taken for single target. This is far from the case.

You're running short, inaccurate tests that don't reflect real situations and you're frankly just giving the devs mixed messages like this. I've been trying to give Mind Spike a chance the past few days, I never specced out of it and did a ton of dungeons with it, but it's not. good. at. all. The playstyle is aids, the results are bad. Please don't spread misinformation like this.

I'll double check, it appeared to be snap shotting. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do a detailed breakdown as wcl was not cooperating with my combat logs. I'll comb through some stuff I did manage to record and double check. It should snap shot though, it would make sense. It would be the only channeled skill in the game that doesn't.

Like I said above, i'll do more tests. The lengths that I did are the average fight length for a dungeon boss. I'll do some 5-7m tests tonight with the same setup and see the different results.

[Greatpippon]

So is there something in your opinion that can be done to make MindSpike viable? I mean, devs have already stated that we cannot expect huge talent changes at this point, but just tweaks. Maybe good feedback now is to suggest how to tweak (not reinvent, mind you) the existing weak talents. What precisely is not good with MindSpike, (except for its damage, which obviously can be retuned with zero efforts)?
One thing that has been suggested already is to buff VR duration up to, say, 6 seconds. Will this be enough to make MindSpike+VR a choice?
What else?

[RsinRC]

/ Offtopic ^ Over the past 100+ pages all I've read form you, RsinRC, is non constructive, no proof disagreement with every single " complaint/feedback " that has been posted.

And your reaction to almost every single thing is to claim it as hyperbole. Kudos on learning a new word, but it isn't feedback, or anything, it just sounds like a kid who wants to show himself off as an adult.

---

Not true in the slightest. I do my fair share of posting what i find bad with the class, my opinion on how it can improve and even make new ability suggestions. The one thing I do differently that only a few in these forums do is defend what works even if someone disagrees with it.

- - - Updated - - -

And the new vision is anything but "raid or die".

Shadow right now is a pretty shitty spot in anything expect raids - and we don't even know how we actually perform in raids since no testing has happened after several rounds of nerfs hit.

Before the nerf we was out performing almost every other class. Do you disagree with that? Overtuned for the majority of the time means nerfs. Lets just hope we arent nerfed to the ground.

[Djriff]

So is there something in your opinion that can be done to make MindSpike viable? I mean, devs have already stated that we cannot expect huge talent changes at this point, but just tweaks. Maybe good feedback now is to suggest how to tweak (not reinvent, mind you) the existing weak talents. What precisely is not good with MindSpike, (except for its damage, which obviously can be retuned with zero efforts)?
One thing that has been suggested already is to buff VR duration up to, say, 6 seconds. Will this be enough to make MindSpike+VR a choice?
What else?

I think 8 seconds would be a good duration. Gives you a bit of leeway room for movement and VB, MB, Void Torrent casts.

- - - Updated - - -

Has anyone testing Surrender to Madness on a target dummy been able to get past 1m 30s? The best I was able to get was 1m 31s before I died. Makes it hard to test it outside of execute range.

[Kilee25]

So is there something in your opinion that can be done to make MindSpike viable? I mean, devs have already stated that we cannot expect huge talent changes at this point, but just tweaks. Maybe good feedback now is to suggest how to tweak (not reinvent, mind you) the existing weak talents. What precisely is not good with MindSpike, (except for its damage, which obviously can be retuned with zero efforts)?
One thing that has been suggested already is to buff VR duration up to, say, 6 seconds. Will this be enough to make MindSpike+VR a choice?
What else?

The inherent problem is the debuff and the limitations that puts on you. It goes against the initial theme of that spell, which was designed to rapidly switch targets and power down short-lived adds. The current version isn't a good fit for the spell.

[Aeriel]

Before the nerf we was out performing almost every other class. Do you disagree with that? Overtuned for the majority of the time means nerfs. Lets just hope we arent nerfed to the ground.

We all expected downtuning. What we did not expect is the degree. Predictions were 5-10%, but it was an across the board 15% plus the Insanity nerf. That culminated in a much higher nerf, which was basically "to the ground". We have heard no word on why damage, more specifically Insanity, was decreased to that degree. Moreso, the last we heard was that Insanity generation and VF uptime was where the Devs wanted it. That is where a lot of the disgruntlement seems to come from. We went from slightly (~5%) high on ST (our niche as you point out) to middle to low on ST. Being ST oriented is fine, if we did well at it. However, currently we do not. We should be in the top 3-5 SPECS at ST if that is our niche, simce most of those have either cleave or AoE.

That is where you seem to disagree with everyone. You are ok with middle of the road ST dps, since you see us as support. You can say that is putting words in your mouth, but trust that what you are saying blatantly is equivalent to everyone else. Honestly, you sound more and more like Celestalon with every post.

[l33t]

We all expected downtuning. What we did not expect is the degree. Predictions were 5-10%, but it was an across the board 15% plus the Insanity nerf. That culminated in a much higher nerf, which was basically "to the ground". We have heard no word on why damage, more specifically Insanity, was decreased to that degree. Moreso, the last we heard was that Insanity generation and VF uptime was where the Devs wanted it. That is where a lot of the disgruntlement seems to come from. We went from slightly (~5%) high on ST (our niche as you point out) to middle to low on ST. Being ST oriented is fine, if we did well at it. However, currently we do not. We should be in the top 3-5 SPECS at ST if that is our niche, simce most of those have either cleave or AoE.

That is where you seem to disagree with everyone. You are ok with middle of the road ST dps, since you see us as support. You can say that is putting words in your mouth, but trust that what you are saying blatantly is equivalent to everyone else. Honestly, you sound more and more like Celestalon with every post.

I seriously afraid that Legion will be like MoP 2.0 again for us. Being tuned to be in line with everyone on multidot fights leads to two awesome things, as we have seen: 1. in any non-multidot scenario its better to take BMs pet than us and 2. the overall number of multidot fights is usually so low that it is better to take that BM pet for multidot fights as well, just for convenience.

I really, like really really really hope its not a MoP 2.0 again.

[Kaesebrezen]

Before the nerf we was out performing almost every other class. Do you disagree with that? Overtuned for the majority of the time means nerfs. Lets just hope we arent nerfed to the ground.

Yes, everyone expected us to be nerfed...

... the thing just is that the nerfs hit us much harder in any content type outside of raids, i.e. where we aren't in Voidform all the time.
Damage on VT, SW:P and VB was nerfed.
Insanity generation on SW:V and MB was nerfed.
Legacy was nerfed.

Our primary source of damage out of Voidform and in dungeons - as "suprising" as it sounds - came from DoTs. Nerf DoTs, and you just kill off Shadow whenever your Voidform uptime is not optimal.
Nerf MB and SW:V Insanity generation? You just made our time outside of Voidform longer, in addition to nerfing the damage outside by a lot.
Nerf Legacy? You just made our time outside of Voidform longer, in addition to nerfing the damage outside by a lot.

At the same time it kind of gutted any value Mastery had...

[Theed]

..You need a special kind of brilliance to make nerfs that have a much deeper impact on the already weak areas ...

Well said, why did you edit it? I have some much more nasty words in my mind for the class design team.

Right now it feels like an intern is working on class changes for about 2 hours a week.

[RsinRC]

We all expected downtuning. What we did not expect is the degree. Predictions were 5-10%, but it was an across the board 15% plus the Insanity nerf. That culminated in a much higher nerf, which was basically "to the ground". We have heard no word on why damage, more specifically Insanity, was decreased to that degree. Moreso, the last we heard was that Insanity generation and VF uptime was where the Devs wanted it. That is where a lot of the disgruntlement seems to come from. We went from slightly (~5%) high on ST (our niche as you point out) to middle to low on ST. Being ST oriented is fine, if we did well at it. However, currently we do not. We should be in the top 3-5 SPECS at ST if that is our niche, simce most of those have either cleave or AoE.

That is where you seem to disagree with everyone. You are ok with middle of the road ST dps, since you see us as support. You can say that is putting words in your mouth, but trust that what you are saying blatantly is equivalent to everyone else. Honestly, you sound more and more like Celestalon with every post.

We got the nerf but we have no data ro say we are as bad as what youre saying. Or am i missing something?

[Tanned]

Can you provide some proof for that (video, logs) since it did not the last time I checked? I am tired of testing it over and over again just to see that it was just an assumption made by someone and it somehow spread around as misinformation.

Confirmed that Void Torrent does not snapshot haste in either this build or the last build.

[Kretan]

I think 8 seconds would be a good duration. Gives you a bit of leeway room for movement and VB, MB, Void Torrent casts.

- - - Updated - - -

Has anyone testing Surrender to Madness on a target dummy been able to get past 1m 30s? The best I was able to get was 1m 31s before I died. Makes it hard to test it outside of execute range.

is the 1 min 31s non execute exclusively? That's about as far as I think you can take it without using shadow word death. My record with shadow word death was like 2 min 6 sec. I didn't do much testing outside of execute because I knew most people would not even attempt that.

- - - Updated - - -

We got the nerf but we have no data ro say we are as bad as what youre saying. Or am i missing something?

Not that I am taking a position on either fine/not fine/nerfed to the ground, but like RsinRC says has there been any real data in raid testing showing where we ended up post nerfs?

[Djriff]

Confirmed that Void Torrent does not snapshot haste in either this build or the last build.

It should though right? Going by the behavior of every single other channeled spell in the game.

is the 1 min 31s non execute exclusively? That's about as far as I think you can take it without using shadow word death. My record with shadow word death was like 2 min 6 sec. I didn't do much testing outside of execute because I knew most people would not even attempt that.

It was on the raider target dummy in the class order hall. I was testing it to see what kind of opening burst it could have. Something curious I found is that delaying StM until later into voidform doesn't make a difference. There's also a latency issue with Void bolt granting insanity. For example I have 19ms on the beta server (godly MS) and I had 6 Insanity when I cast void bolt. The insanity didn't generate in time and I died. It would have extended StM maybe 1-2 more seconds, which could make the difference, but it seems people are going to hit latency walls with this talent, which @Kilee25 mentioned earlier.

[snaxattax]

I seriously afraid that Legion will be like MoP 2.0 again for us. Being tuned to be in line with everyone on multidot fights leads to two awesome things, as we have seen: 1. in any non-multidot scenario its better to take BMs pet than us and 2. the overall number of multidot fights is usually so low that it is better to take that BM pet for multidot fights as well, just for convenience.

I really, like really really really hope its not a MoP 2.0 again.

shadow wasn't even in line in multidot in mop. at least, not after they nerfed DI procrate and 2nd SWD orb a few months before release...

and right now we don't even have amazing multidot, because our multitarget rotation is extremely unflexible and the damage per target is extremely spread. what made us somewhat strong on multitarget (though weaker than mages, warlocks, and depending on the tier moonkin) in mop was that we were able to turn damage from n-1 targets into increased damage on the nth target. having most of our multitarget damage tied to dots (as opposed to funnel-able procs) means our damage per target will be very similar, which is not usually actually useful. the fact that on top of this it's looking like we're going to be released undertuned makes me wonder what the reason will be to bring a shadowpriest.

there's no plausible fight design where shadow's toolkit is any better than any other spec, the multitarget mechanics are pure asscancer, and our best level 100 talent is seppuku memeform.

[Djriff]

Maintaining dots on 3 targets is a nightmare when I'm in turret mode, throwing in mechanics is just going to make it worse. Not to mention the travel time of void bolt. I found the optimal range to be about 15 yards from the target, which is not where we will be standing in any kind of fight. Admittedly SW: Void makes it easier to maintain but we lose ToF in taking that.

[Kretan]

It was on the raider target dummy in the class order hall. I was testing it to see what kind of opening burst it could have. Something curious I found is that delaying StM until later into voidform doesn't make a difference. There's also a latency issue with Void bolt granting insanity. For example I have 19ms on the beta server (godly MS) and I had 6 Insanity when I cast void bolt. The insanity didn't generate in time and I died. It would have extended StM maybe 1-2 more seconds, which could make the difference, but it seems people are going to hit latency walls with this talent, which @Kilee25 mentioned earlier.

Ah yeah in that case 90+ without shadow word death has to be pretty much the maximum I'd imagine. From my experience, it wasn't even that amazing on one target (still strong, but not crazy). It was when I kept up dots on 3 targets the entire 120 ish seconds that the damage got crazy for me. In addition to more targets ticking with dot damage, you also get more chances at shadowy insight procs....I found this was reallly helpful in pushing the stacks. More target = more insight procs = more stacks in addition to just more raw dot damage.

[snaxattax]

Maintaining dots on 3 targets is a nightmare when I'm in turret mode, throwing in mechanics is just going to make it worse. Not to mention the travel time of void bolt. I found the optimal range to be about 15 yards from the target, which is not where we will be standing in any kind of fight. Admittedly SW: Void makes it easier to maintain but we lose ToF in taking that.

I'm pretty sure spawning meteors on top of melee is part of our class fantasy. It makes up for losing lifegrip.

[Kretan]

Maintaining dots on 3 targets is a nightmare when I'm in turret mode, throwing in mechanics is just going to make it worse. Not to mention the travel time of void bolt. I found the optimal range to be about 15 yards from the target, which is not where we will be standing in any kind of fight. Admittedly SW: Void makes it easier to maintain but we lose ToF in taking that.

I imagine that shadow priests are going to have to get very good with setting and using focus macros. Focus casting will free up target swapping to extend dots much more freely. That's how I'm probably going to handle it at least.

Either way, higher haste from gear will make 3 targets much easier to maintain dots on...it's the abysmal low haste of the template that makes it so damn hard...not that it'll ever be easier but every bit of base haste will help.