[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Isentropy]

I wish people would stop linking to that fucking sim list that, without looking at the proper context, means fuck all. Patchwerk sims are not in any way representative of how a spec actually performs in mythic raiding, because there's a whole lot more fighttypes than patchwerk in a raid. Spec viability and fight type go hand in hand.

Unless you want to come across as an idiot that doesn't understand how sims work or what their function is, just stop trying to mention them at all. You're not doing anyone any favors by referencing them like this.

[Deleted]

Cant compare apples with bananas.

Im not saying you should compare them, more like you shouldn't be looking at the sims because they aren't properly compiled together to get a good veiw of what is the best. Looking at that other sim chart is like comparing choclate with apples because how unfinished some of them are.

[Djriff]

I've always taken sims with a grain of salt, main reason I use sims is for stat weights and not DPS metrics. Hell trying to figure out stat weights alone is a nightmare as one piece of gear shifting your stats in one direction can change everything.

[Twintop]

Well this isnt the first simdps I have seen and I somehow doubt all these are wrong (and all of them have shadow without s2m pretty much on bottom).

Also the Twintop link that Jep3 posted above is somehow fishy... it puts us over 300k dps even without s2m (and about 330k with s2m). I dont know how that was was calculated, but I really doubt it uses the same data of the other simdps charts ive seen... we all know no way in hell shadow is top (only below feral and outlaw, yea right) single target with mind spike, and thats what you would get if you compare twintop's sim with other sims.

Cant compare apples with bananas.

That image stack is for T19P (840, less complete artifacts) whereas mine is Heroic EN (865, all 3 major traits but not completed artifacts).

This highlights why we have the "post it, get banned" policy in H2P Discord: if you didn't create it you don't know, and can't provide, all of the details to others to know what they are looking at in any context.

Don't use these things in a vacuum. Be smarter than that.

[Deleted]

I wish people would stop linking to that fucking sim list that, without looking at the proper context, means fuck all. Patchwerk sims are not in any way representative of how a spec actually performs in mythic raiding, because there's a whole lot more fighttypes than patchwerk in a raid. Spec viability and fight type go hand in hand.

Unless you want to come across as an idiot that doesn't understand how sims work or what their function is, just stop trying to mention them at all. You're not doing anyone any favors by referencing them like this.

From my post: " I know simdps is everything but perfect and in real raiding things are almost always different".
So next time before you call other idiots learn to fucking read since you clearly cant.

[Isentropy]

From my post: " I know simdps is everything but perfect and in real raiding things are almost always different".
So next time before you call other idiots learn to fucking read since you clearly cant.

I never directly called you an idiot, that remark was directed at everyone that goes "hey my friend just sent me this cool sim list with fancy graphs check it out it must mean something right" without providing any context at all. There's a lot of people that do this, because they either don't know or don't understand that Simcraft is more than just a patchwerk simulator, and simming one fight type does not give you anything to work with. You seem to be in the group that doesn't know that Simcraft is more than that, considering this remark:

Obviously simdps is a single target test

But maybe I'm just not reading properly here. Still learning. You also don't appear to understand that just because it's a fancy graph doesn't mean that it's accurate. See:

Well this isnt the first simdps I have seen and I somehow doubt all these are wrong

This is the wrong approach when looking at sims. If you don't know the details of how a sim list came to be (were the APLs accurate? what item level? how many artifact traits? etc) then you need to assume it's wrong, or at least, don't assume that they're right. As a result of these initial sim lists coming to light about a week ago, many class discords made fake versions and sure enough, those were shared around as well ("Hey is this list accurate guys?"). You're part of the problem here. You fully knew the implications of linking this list here, and your initial post indicates that you're just using it to confirm your own bias - 'person X said shadow was good without StM but gosh, look at what this list says, sure doesn't look like it to me am I right guys?' And thus, the negative echo chamber begins to manifest. Sadly, this is how things work in this community.

[Palaryel]

I never directly called you an idiot, that remark was directed at everyone that goes "hey my friend just sent me this cool sim list with fancy graphs check it out it must mean something right" without providing any context at all. There's a lot of people that do this, because they either don't know or don't understand that Simcraft is more than just a patchwerk simulator, and simming one fight type does not give you anything to work with. You seem to be in the group that doesn't know that Simcraft is more than that, considering this remark:



But maybe I'm just not reading properly here. Still learning. You also don't appear to understand that just because it's a fancy graph doesn't mean that it's accurate. See:



This is the wrong approach when looking at sims. If you don't know the details of how a sim list came to be (were the APLs accurate? what item level? how many artifact traits? etc) then you need to assume it's wrong, or at least, don't assume that they're right. As a result of these initial sim lists coming to light about a week ago, many class discords made fake versions and sure enough, those were shared around as well ("Hey is this list accurate guys?"). You're part of the problem here. You fully knew the implications of linking this list here, and your initial post indicates that you're just using it to confirm your own bias - 'person X said shadow was good without StM but gosh, look at what this list says, sure doesn't look like it to me am I right guys?' And thus, the negative echo chamber begins to manifest. Sadly, this is how things work in this community.

I was writing a similar reply and halfway through my phone notified me of a new post. So thanks for saving me from writing a wall of text.

Also, totally agree on every bit up there.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

[Deleted]

That image stack is for T19P (840, less complete artifacts) whereas mine is Heroic EN (865, all 3 major traits but not completed artifacts).

This highlights why we have the "post it, get banned" policy in H2P Discord: if you didn't create it you don't know, and can't provide, all of the details to others to know what they are looking at in any context.

Don't use these things in a vacuum. Be smarter than that.

Well as I said cant compare apples with bananas and you explained why your sim has different numbers.

Anyway I'm not a fan myself of simdps, that one i linked wasnt the first one ive seen around, but they are all pretty much similiar... s2m in top 6, no stm bottom 3, always pretty much. What i dont understand tho is why on your sim the difference between s2m and spike is about 10% (329 vs 305k if i remember well or something like that), other sims show the difference in the 20% range instead... any idea why?

[Djriff]

Mod Note: Let's keep it civil in here please.

[britishbubba]

Well as I said cant compare apples with bananas and you explained why your sim has different numbers.

Anyway I'm not a fan myself of simdps, that one i linked wasnt the first one ive seen around, but they are all pretty much similiar... s2m in top 6, no stm bottom 3, always pretty much. What i dont understand tho is why on your sim the difference between s2m and spike is about 10% (329 vs 305k if i remember well or something like that), other sims show the difference in the 20% range instead... any idea why?

Wasn't the 20% difference before they nerfed the insanity generation by 50% on STM?

[Twintop]

There are (or could be, due to unknown factors) a few reasons:

1) I'm not sure what fight length or iterations were used to generate that chart.
2) The talents used in the T19P for Shadow need to be updated. It currently uses ToF/VL/SL/PI/LotV when, according to the comparison of all DPS talents I did in the first wave here for Heroic (which, again, may not be the same at a lower level) [ https://www.beotorch.com/batch.php?r...c-008cfa070490 ] show that the best non-S2M talent combo is ToF/VR/AS/PI/MSp by about 3.3%.
3) Mass Hysteria affects S2M more than other L100s, and at a lower profile level you have fewer other artifact traits to balance this out (or reduce the overall impact).
4) Stat distributions, especially trinkets, are different between the two levels.
5) Running a sim with all actors that have execute (like 28 Shadow Priests) as opposed to a sim with only a few actors with an execute (like the stack rankings for a raid) mean that you'll have more time spent in execute range, which means higher uptimes on abilities used within that part of an encounter. There's not an easy way to correct for this, so I try to do my base sims with as wide of a basecase as possible. One flaw in this set of batches of mine is that I should have always included all 27 combinations of L15/L60/L100 and pivoted the batches off of a different L75+L90 combination to mitigate this as much as possible (I pivoted off of L60+L75 instead, so RoS isn't used in every sim run).

It is worth noting that while, in the chart linked, there is a ~22% DPS difference between S2M and what is likely the wrong talent combination for T19P, the delta between the top S2M and that same talent combination on my simset for Heroic is 10.6%. How much of this is attributed to each of the 5 points above? Impossible to tell, though my money is on #3 for a lot of it.

[Kilee25]

Realistically speaking, can't you eliminate most of the talent choices after a handful of sims and a few days of playing the game?

Also isn't the point of sims basically just to establish a set of reliable stat weights? Unless you're trying to figure out which class to play or balance a raid from a comp standpoint, the big mashup lists don't really provide useful info.

After the first round of sims and the a few weeks of play, I would think most of the focus would surround only 3-4 talent combos, if even that.

[davesignal]

You know, I would think if there's one area where all the different specs should be very close together, it's standing still and beating on an immobile target. I think if I were trying to balance a bunch of DPS specs, I'd want to get those as close together as possible. Once you have that baseline, core rotation roughly balanced for every spec, then you start testing them in more diverse fight profiles and implement targeted mechanics to bring up the classes who suffer in those specific areas, but not affect others.

I'd really love to look at, like, a codified, written document going over the methodology Blizzard uses when balancing specs. Just to see how much of their reasoning and their lines of thought are still rooted in the time frame WoW actually came out in.

[Gorsameth]

Last I checked Simcraft was still timing out because the priest dies before the boss and it cant handle that.
Plus its giving stat weights as Crit>Mastery>Int>Haste which is hilariously off.

I wouldn't trust anything it puts out.

[Isentropy]

You know, I would think if there's one area where all the different specs should be very close together, it's standing still and beating on an immobile target. I think if I were trying to balance a bunch of DPS specs, I'd want to get those as close together as possible. Once you have that baseline, core rotation roughly balanced for every spec, then you start testing them in more diverse fight profiles and implement targeted mechanics to bring up the classes who suffer in those specific areas, but not affect others.

I'd really love to look at, like, a codified, written document going over the methodology Blizzard uses when balancing specs. Just to see how much of their reasoning and their lines of thought are still rooted in the time frame WoW actually came out in.

Different specs have different strengths. A spec that is weak on single target likely has strengths in other areas. If everyone performed roughly the same on single target then that wouldn't leave a lot of room for actual niches in other areas. Very rarely do you see specs that can do everything the best (and there's more to it than just being good at single target/AoE/cleave), and if you do then that spec has a bullseye on its back for the rest of the tier, probably receiving nerfs in the next tier. Sometimes Blizzard messes this up, sometimes they don't - the problem in this case is that you are assuming that those patchwerk sims are accurate to begin with. How much of the details do you know about that particular list? There are so many nuances to make here but as Twintop said, people look at it in a vacuum far too often. It's important to note that these are preraid sims, for starters. By the time Emerald Nightmare mythic comes out, committed raiders will have a much higher item level and more artifact traits than in the sims. This is not just some tiny little detail, it matters quite a lot. And even then these lists are generally quite pointless because patchwerk fights simply don't occur often enough, certainly not in Emerald Nightmare. And the killtimes that the sim uses will vary quite a bit in practice as well.

[Twintop]

Last I checked Simcraft was still timing out because the priest dies before the boss and it cant handle that.
Plus its giving stat weights as Crit>Mastery>Int>Haste which is hilariously off.

I wouldn't trust anything it puts out.

You haven't checked very recently, then.

[Rumstein]

Except you can't last longer than 3 minutes, afaik. After the 3 minues, you die. (Unless they changed that.)

if with the nerf it is impossible to reach 3 minutes of StM, it just means that the talent is badly designed.

You don't put a limit if it's not meant to be achieved. Just like you don't put a freaking dumb as hell stacking mechanic on a filler spell (mind spike) because you will never stack those unless on some situation (but it's still really bad gameplay and design).

You don't make a talent that adds like NOTHING to the class, especially not as a level 100 talents. (lotv)

You don't go backwards back to vanilla wow pre alpha and release a spec with the shittiest animations ever (best mastery hunter literally shoots arrows out of nowhere because Kill Command and Dire Beast break the auto attack animation ...).

You don't overnerf a long cast time, ressource gated spell for it to deal no damage (chaos bolt).


A lot of things in Legion are beyond comprehension. "bla bla you're not a game designer" Well i'm a player and seeing stuff like that just kills any sense of fun/immersion i may have.

With that being said : I like Legion Shadow a lot, but it just makes me facepalm so bad when I see some of our talents.

Correct, after 3 minutes you die, whether you have exited VF or not (Though you can be instantly battle rezzed at that point).

[Kilee25]

@davesignal based on interviews with Blizzard developers over the years, their internal formula is built around NOT balancing classes. The classes are instead purposefully imbalanced, both in terms of potential and in terms of ease of play. People are diverse, and the classes each have small clusters of players who fit into certain demographics and stereotypes. Classes are geared more towards those micro-communities rather than balanced against each other as a whole.

This Extra Credits video explains it better than I can.



The short of it is that a well-balanced WoW would bore everyone.

Also shadowpriests, generally speaking, are try-hard masochists. The class' difficulty is purposely more difficult to master than most other classes, less reward for more effort. It's been that way for a pretty long time.

[Ilir]

(I just wanted to let @Isentropy know that I love your mog !)

[marathal]

after a read through the guide, it won't much matter to me. I will just be doing what I can outside of raiding. That is just way beyond me. Enjoy Legion All.