[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Ilir]

The only fight shadow was weak at in Highmaul was Tectus, the rest of the fights shadow was top tier because of the encounter design. Single target was one of the best and priority target damage was arguably the best (which was really important in Highmaul). Even on a cleave fight like Twin Ogron we weren't awful (though nowhere close to a windwalker monk obviously!).

I loved Highmaul.

I hated twins because i always had issue with the target switching on this fight for some reason and the freaking fire -.- I swear the fire were like : Nope let's do a 90 degree turn to screw Ilir over !
Tectus I was perma targeted by the spell that requires you to move but I didn't really mind since I knew that it'd be better for me to be targeted by such a spell rather than another class.

[Deleted]

P3 of mythic Tectus was "press random buttons while trying to damage stuff, it doesn't really matter what you do because its the warrior's job to kill it now".

Shadow's niche in highmaul was stacking mastery and being great at ST damage, which wasn't alwasy relevant or easy to pull off. Unfortunately it was a very high level of skill required to pull it off without being a DPS loss over trying to keep your stats balanced, and most people blindly copying what people in Paragon/Method were doing couldn't pull it off. In BRF we were amazing at priority target damage with lots of adds up due to AS, our boss damage on beastlord and blackhand P2 was insane. In HFC (although I stopped playing before it was properly known) we were great at ST through RoW and the odd fight where adds were allowed to live (e.g. gorefiend with SWP on all the ghosts, glorious).

We don't have to be amazing at everything in Legion. It seems like our ST is good enough, if not the most interesting spec or choices in the world. Our AoE seems pretty bad, which while annoying, won't make a difference for people being taken to a raid for 99+% of people. Multidot will be strong as always, and our execute will be top class. We won't be the class stacked for anything, and yes we have a few annoying issues which it would be brilliant to get sorted, but overall I think we're not in a terrible place.

[Ilir]

Mmh... Our aoe isn't pretty bad, it's non existant.

Our ST is not good enough.

[Isentropy]

Regarding our single target, it's really hard to predict where shadow ends up in raids because fights will last so much longer than dungeon fights. While I don't think we're even close to where we were in the alpha, I do think we're in the upper regions still - also bear Surrender to Madness in mind. Its cooldown now resets in raids (at least it does in old raids, so one would assume it would do so in new raids as well) so expect that to be tested a lot next time raid testing comes around.

Raids aren't the only thing to balance the game around but... if you're worried about not doing well there, I'd say don't worry about it too much for now. Granted, a lot can still change numerically for us, and also for other specs, but shadow's toolkit fits raids far better than it does dungeons or outdoor content and the fights that have been tested so far - which is every fight except for Gul'dan I think? - mostly seem good for us.

[Biomega]

Raids aren't the only thing to balance the game around but... if you're worried about not doing well there, I'd say don't worry about it too much for now.

This would be fine for any other expansion, but this one is supposed to add 5-man content as ACTUAL RELEVANT PROGRESSION. It is absolutely a thing to worry about if there's a huge performance gap.

[Isentropy]

I know, which is why I added the first sentence. My post was mostly talking about how you probably shouldn't worry about doing bad in raids for now. It's valid to worry about 5 man content as of right now.

[Valkaneer]

P3 of mythic Tectus was "press random buttons while trying to damage stuff, it doesn't really matter what you do because its the warrior's job to kill it now".

Shadow's niche in highmaul was stacking mastery and being great at ST damage, which wasn't alwasy relevant or easy to pull off. Unfortunately it was a very high level of skill required to pull it off without being a DPS loss over trying to keep your stats balanced, and most people blindly copying what people in Paragon/Method were doing couldn't pull it off. In BRF we were amazing at priority target damage with lots of adds up due to AS, our boss damage on beastlord and blackhand P2 was insane. In HFC (although I stopped playing before it was properly known) we were great at ST through RoW and the odd fight where adds were allowed to live (e.g. gorefiend with SWP on all the ghosts, glorious).

We don't have to be amazing at everything in Legion. It seems like our ST is good enough, if not the most interesting spec or choices in the world. Our AoE seems pretty bad, which while annoying, won't make a difference for people being taken to a raid for 99+% of people. Multidot will be strong as always, and our execute will be top class. We won't be the class stacked for anything, and yes we have a few annoying issues which it would be brilliant to get sorted, but overall I think we're not in a terrible place.

Not with fights like HC (short lived adds). They gave us Mind Sear Insanity for a reason. It was because we lagged so badly behind in burst AoE or AoE where the adds /trash die quickly. If you got thrown up in the stand per say on Kargath your dps was in the tank. What I was getting at was how bad Spriest were at AoE in Highmaul. Dungeons especially were terrible back then.

Legion seems back to the Highmaul Time frame, where we do good in long fights with adds that live a long time (Hellfire High Council), and fail on fights Like Norushen, Sha of Pride, Hellbreach, Kromrok, Xhul'horac etc. Because you never will have enough time on the target before it dies to do enough dps compared to high damage nukes and AoE like Frozen Orb.

[Isentropy]

Not with fights like HC (short lived adds). They gave us Mind Sear Insanity for a reason. It was because we lagged so badly behind in burst AoE or AoE where the adds /trash die quickly. If you got thrown up in the stand per say on Kargath your dps was in the tank. What I was getting at was how bad Spriest were at AoE in Highmaul. Dungeons especially were terrible back then.

Legion seems back to the Highmaul Time frame, where we do good in long fights with adds that live a long time (Hellfire High Council), and fail on fights Like Norushen, Sha of Pride, Hellbreach, Kromrok, Xhul'horac etc. Because you never will have enough time on the target before it dies to do enough dps compared to high damage nukes and AoE like Frozen Orb.

HC? Not sure what you're getting at there. Shadow was really good at bursting priority targets in Highmaul, and that was something highly valued because of the encounter design. In addition, our single target damage was just really good, period, so the only fight where you could really say shadow was bad was Tectus because our AoE was so bad. Nobody's arguing that we didn't need Searing Insanity, but we didn't need it to be really good in Highmaul. You could choose who got thrown into the stands on Kargath, so why would you ever pick shadow to go up? It's only in LFR that it's random.

"Adds that live a long time" and then you give as an example... a council fight. What do you even mean by adds? Are you solely talking adds that need to be killed quickly with AoE, or priority adds that need to be killed through single target? Because the latter shadow will probably be pretty good at in Legion, the former not so much. I can't really speak for how shadow performed in those SoO fights as I didn't seriously play my priest at that time, but shadow was really good at Hellfire Assault in the first few weeks (who cares about this anyway?), before speedkill times got absurd shadow was pretty good at Kormrok because of being able to game Halo, shadow was amazing at Xhul'horac (not sure why you name this as an example).

[Djriff]

IRT aoe while questing, i was able to live with 2-3 mobs alright, although I did take dominant mind and just used fade basically on CD and made w/e i had MC'd tank stuff for me. I just put up dots and focused down one target at a time. Once I got void form, i just maintained the rotation while looking around for the next mob. Often I would just use dispersion while moving mob to mob so I could just melt it with Void Torrent then start it over again and that worked quite well. Sometimes shit did hit the fan, but popping VE, Fear into Shadowmend Spam, or The bodyguard skill (lay on hands every 5 mins essentially) worked out great for keeping myself up. We did feel very squishy, but we also have tools to handle it. Just messing around and not trying to speed through it, it took me roughly 20 hours to hit 110 with mainly questing.

[snaxattax]

Void Bolt, something affliction and moonkins can't do

warlocks get permanent corruption and instant agony refreshes. I don't see how this isn't apples to apples superior to voidbolt refresh due to target cap and travel time bullshit, which segues into

short cast spells with low cooldowns which means that priority target damage is probably going to be better

except half of our 'low cooldown' nukes are reserved for dot refreshes. unless shadow's released numerically overtuned or they significantly increase our dot durations, I don't see where shadow is going to have a niche that makes them worth carrying through 5man content to gear for.

[Valkaneer]

HC? Not sure what you're getting at there. Shadow was really good at bursting priority targets in Highmaul,

Wrong wrong wrong. Spriest AoE as terrible on SHORT LIVED MOBS. What game were you playing, cuz Spriest AoE rotation was.... Oh that's right the Single Target rotation, cuz AoE was so bad that your ST rotation did better damage than AoE. Spriest only did good in Mutiple add fights if the adds lasted a long time. We don't have Mind Sear Insanity in Legion so were back to Highmaul type AoE, which means no AoE cuz your AoE rotation will be your ST rotation.

Your not running CoP in Legion so when a mobs only last for 5 to 10 seconds in a fight like in the Raid bosses I'v mentioned how much damage are you going to do? Cuz you can't cast your dots fast enough SW:P takes 14 seconds VT: Cast time + 18 sec duration and a nice big Cast time for MB. How is that to help you when the mobs die in under 10 seconds? By the time you get done dotting the mobs is half dead. You need something Like Mind Sear Insanity, which is why MSI exist.

[Djriff]

Not seeing where Isentrophy said priority targets were AoE.

Searing Insanity was terrible for AoE and honestly was pitiful damage. Add to the fact the class trinket did nothing for it, made it even worse.

[Isentropy]

warlocks get permanent corruption and instant agony refreshes. I don't see how this isn't apples to apples superior to voidbolt refresh due to target cap and travel time bullshit, which segues into

Affliction gets permanent Corruption if they choose to talent for it. Not baseline, so no that doesn't make it apples to apples. Corruption is also only one dot, shadow gets to refresh both of our dots. The Void Bolt refresh isn't perfect, but it's still something affliction and moonkins aren't able to do.

except half of our 'low cooldown' nukes are reserved for dot refreshes. unless shadow's released numerically overtuned or they significantly increase our dot durations, I don't see where shadow is going to have a niche that makes them worth carrying through 5man content to gear for.

'Reserved' implying that you're only allowed to use Void Bolt to refresh dots. If we're talking priority targets, odds are they won't even need your dots refreshed anyway, or there aren't enough targets where this is a problem anyway. It's not like you're unable to Void Bolt a target twice in a row, and if the situation demands it you'll mostly focus on one target. It's best to see Void Bolt's refresh as a potential bonus here, not as a necessity that will affect your DPS in a major way.

Good job repeating your statement again. Affliction and balance druids only have an edge in AoE at the moment, something that is not a necessity to have in order to be brought to raids. Shadow's spread multidotting is better, priority target damage is better and single target damage is better too at the moment. Tuning decides everything for every spec, regardless of how many tools you have available to you, and while balance and affliction have a way to spread their dots, that doesn't mean that shadow needs to be 'overtuned' to compensate for that. That's based on nothing but your own imagination and your hard on for AoE. All three are designed differently and all three have different ways to deal damage aside from their dots. There's different types of multidotting, and shadow will be better in some situations than balance or affliction, and balance and affliction will be better than shadow in some other situations.

@Valkaneer we're talking about different things here, maybe you should read my post again or just not bother responding at all. Thanks.

[Deleted]

except half of our 'low cooldown' nukes are reserved for dot refreshes. unless shadow's released numerically overtuned or they significantly increase our dot durations, I don't see where shadow is going to have a niche that makes them worth carrying through 5man content to gear for.

This also worries me. I can imagine a scenario where I have to choose between keeping my dots ticking on an offtarget, or hitting the priority target with VB. I guess its ok that we can choose which we want to do, but still feels bad to have our nuke baked into the dot refresh, similar to dispersion being a defensive and also a dps gain in fringe cases.

[davesignal]

Personally, I'd love it if we were just a dot spec and not some unholy science experiment combination of a direct damage spec and a dot spec. But maybe that's just me, looking at our class description and how little damage contribution VT and SW:P does in comparison to Mind Blast and Void Bolt..

'Especially damage-over-time spells', more like 'incidental damage-over-time spells'.

[Kretan]

Personally, I'd love it if we were just a dot spec and not some unholy science experiment combination of a direct damage spec and a dot spec. But maybe that's just me, looking at our class description and how little damage contribution VT and SW:P does in comparison to Mind Blast and Void Bolt..

'Especially damage-over-time spells', more like 'incidental damage-over-time spells'.

Except our dots actually do a lot of damage in Legion. Where are you getting that they don't do a lot of damage?

[davesignal]

Define 'a lot of damage'. If a class is billed as a 'DOT spec', I would like at least 65% of their damage to be from damage over time spells. Mind Flay barely counts as such, but for the sake of argument I'll include that.

[Ilir]

Except our dots actually do a lot of damage in Legion. Where are you getting that they don't do a lot of damage?

We spam so much direct damage spell with the low cd vb/mb/swd that it doesn't feel that our dots are our main source of damage.

we need Vb to be an aoe refresh.

[Deleted]

Define 'a lot of damage'. If a class is billed as a 'DOT spec', I would like at least 65% of their damage to be from damage over time spells. Mind Flay barely counts as such, but for the sake of argument I'll include that.

If we imagine VB refreshes not being a thing, we would refresh dots twice every ~10-15 GCDs, do you think it makes sense that less than 20% of our casts make up 65% of our damage?

[Kretan]

Define 'a lot of damage'. If a class is billed as a 'DOT spec', I would like at least 65% of their damage to be from damage over time spells. Mind Flay barely counts as such, but for the sake of argument I'll include that.

65% sure seems quite random and pulled out of thin air. On a single target, I'm pretty sure we are going to be about 30% from dots. More targets has it going up from there. This complaint just seems to be so random......

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If we imagine VB refreshes not being a thing, we would refresh dots twice every ~10-15 GCDs, do you think it makes sense that less than 20% of our casts make up 65% of our damage?

Or how our dps would EXXXXXPLOOOOOOOODEEE in council fights? DoTs are hard to balance when they are strong.....Heck even wth these dots we need to be limited to something like 3 targets....at 65% do you really want it to be limited to like 1?

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We spam so much direct damage spell with the low cd vb/mb/swd that it doesn't feel that our dots are our main source of damage.

we need Vb to be an aoe refresh.

So your complaint is you want to be spam hard casting dots?