Is Shadow Priest supposed to be this miserable?

[Rhyseh]

Honestly considering rerolling at this point. Shadow looks fun in raids, however with Mythic+ and other elements of the game I just don't see our class being anywhere near useful. Running 5 mans with Monks and DH's just makes me want to /cry.

Also unless they allow STM to be top tier DPS (which I don't think they will allow) shadow is going to be sub-standard across the board....

[Rumex]

Im actually feeling great about shadow. I can see we have a problem on lesser hp mob on aoe, but we abosolutely shine on trash mobs with 10m health. I can easily pull 300k+ dps with just doting everything up and just go in voidform and try and keep the dots rolling. On bosses the trick is to always try to have 100 insanity otherwise it takes too long to gain enough insanity to keep up, unless you got haste stacks.

Sitting at 23% haste and 23% crit atm, 837 ilvl. And in some dungeons ive seen people with 860+ ilvl weapon do only a bit more dps on bosses than me, dunno if they are bad or not. But i only got 829 ilvl weap, and i know how well shadow scale with gear, so i got good feeling about it when i get my 3rd relic slot. Also people forget how strong mind bomb and shadow mend can be. Mind bombs is insane for controlling adds, and ive saved a tanks ass with shadow mend when the healer died. Its not all about doing top dps on every mob pull :-)

But i will still agree with shadow could use a buff to the mind sear aoe. But im also pretty sure dh's and monks will get nerfed somehow :P

[Fang7986]

And here after 8 years of my shadow priest sitting at the mid 60's level wise I finally leveled her with invasions and I was having the f-ing time of my life playing her. Had never had fun with her until now, I really enjoy the voidform playstyle. To each their own I guess.

[Gilgameshh]

Im actually feeling great about shadow. I can see we have a problem on lesser hp mob on aoe, but we abosolutely shine on trash mobs with 10m health. I can easily pull 300k+ dps with just doting everything up and just go in voidform and try and keep the dots rolling. On bosses the trick is to always try to have 100 insanity otherwise it takes too long to gain enough insanity to keep up, unless you got haste stacks.

Sitting at 23% haste and 23% crit atm, 837 ilvl. And in some dungeons ive seen people with 860+ ilvl weapon do only a bit more dps on bosses than me, dunno if they are bad or not. But i only got 829 ilvl weap, and i know how well shadow scale with gear, so i got good feeling about it when i get my 3rd relic slot. Also people forget how strong mind bomb and shadow mend can be. Mind bombs is insane for controlling adds, and ive saved a tanks ass with shadow mend when the healer died. Its not all about doing top dps on every mob pull :-)

But i will still agree with shadow could use a buff to the mind sear aoe. But im also pretty sure dh's and monks will get nerfed somehow :P

I'm not feeling great, but I am feeling optimistic. I love the playstyle and the amount of decision making that goes into the spec.

I'd like Shadow Mend to grant at least a little insanity, Mass Dispel to cost about half as much mana (I think it's 145k of our 220k mana pool?), Vampiric Embrace seems like it could be a big stronger in a raid/dungeon setting, Mind Sear is absolute garbage... there are definitely changes I'd like to see made.

That being said, I love that I can toss out heals in tough spots, Mass Dispel is cool utility, speed burst from PW:S is cool utility, 2-3 target sustained cleave is incredible, single target is great, and StM seems like it's going to be a lot of fun mastering in raids. The playstyle reminds me of last expansion as a blood DK trying to keep Breath of Sindragosa up as long as humanly possible, so getting back to a playstyle where good decisions are heavily rewarded feels great.

All in all, I think spriest has a hell of a lot of potential and I find it to be a blast to play compared to a lot of other specs in the game. Interested to see how they tweak the spec within the next few months.

[Jullyx]

Im actually feeling great about shadow.

I feel amazing every dungeon I run with 2 bad dpsers. Then I run with people from my guild and no one would notice if I went afk on trash. And we all do the exact same dps on bosses. So yeah, it feels pretty shitty.

[Jimjam38]

Even as a disc with no intention to play shadow I still find this disheartening to hear.

The funny thing about surrender to madness is I'm not even convinced it's that strong of an execute. With the class order hall upgrades I chose the 'alters' one, and happened to get the voidform potion one - 10 min of insanity not draining. I used it to smash through the quest to obtain the darkmoon card recipe for inscription. Sitting at 100 stacks of voidform, my damage was capping at around 200k, and that was with me able to use just the dots and mindflay and only void bolting to refresh dots (which at 100 stacks of voidform, given all that haste, does waaay more dps than using voidbolt and mindbast on cooldown), which wouldn't be possible with surrender to madness since you'd need those for keeping up the insanity.

I tried this on both low health mobs and massive hp eliets with over 20mil health which I was able to dps for over a minute before they died. My dps didn't go much higher than 220k in either case. However this was in around 800 ilvl gear, not particularly optimized for shadow, and with no artifact traits.

By the time i was in heroics I was seeing mages, dks and hunters doing a solid 150k dps on boss fights. Lets not even talk about the "allahu akbar zombie trait" spec Unholy Dk doing 700k burst AoE on trash.

If it only takes an increase of 10-15 ilvl for other dps to do 75% of what I could do sitting at 100 stacks of voidform for 10 min, I'm feeling very sad about what meagre dps gain you could get from, at very best, 3 minutes of StM at the end of a boss fight...

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Well you are all crazy. Was selling your soul to the void supposed to be a cheerful experience?

jk

JK!

I don't know from shadow priests, but hope it gets better some which way or another.

[Deleted]

I'm a holy priest main but used shadow for leveling and it was a really fucking bad experience. Does anyone else think survivability for shadow is just horrible during quests? Without the holy elemental guy from class hall you could easily die from pulling three mobs if you don't use all your cds (died a few times during leveling to just normal mobs lol). And you have to stop to heal yourself all the time since they removed devouring plague and vampiric touch isn't healing nearly enough. But yeah, it's a lot better by now thanks to the holy elemental who is healing for pretty good amounts, otherwise I would've rerolled I guess.

[Deleted]

@Atonement
You forgot about Mass Hysteria trait - 2% stronger DoTs for every second in Void Form.

@Domi1294
Shadow priest solo questing experience is miserable. But all we need is to have a body guard and you can use Fade to make mobs attack him. So for leveling priest I recommend taking a body guard from Class halls when available and also use old 2set bonus for Mindbender. Sol is only max lvl guard, but once you get him you don't have to care how many mobs you pull (Except when these are 20 tiny spiders that most classes one shots by AoE, but you would have to channel Mind Sear for 1 minute )

[Deleted]

I feel like people are exaggerating here. Yeah, shadow sucks at big aoe, but proper play is rewarded by good dps, especially on single-target and long-lived groups of 2-4 mobs. I certainly disagree that shadow sucks for soloing, proper use of dotting, voidform and fear means you can take down groups of 3-4 mobs easily and quickly.

It's a hard spec to play well, but that also makes it more fun. Compare it to retribution paladin for example, slamming your fist repeatedly on your number keys is only fun for so long.

[Deleted]

Shadow priest is actually easier to level with than mage. With mage you need to blink, nova all the time to start your dps, shadowpriest needs to multidot, shield when available and just blast the targets away, with execute its even easier.

If you want bad, look at elemental shaman leveling

[Deleted]

The most obvious issue people have with shadow is the questing experience at 110. With 890 ilvl you are in most cases unable to kill 3 mobs at the same time without every cd and some serious skill while classes like tanks or dhs kill them in 3 seconds flat.

Dungeons we are very strong on high health trash packs where our dots can tick. It has always been like this except for the introduction of mindsear on wotlk ice crown citadel.

Im in 830 gear pulling between 150-200k single target and 200-350k trash packs including 3-5 high health targets. We scale extremely well with haste, get the top right golden trait first it's a substantial increase in dungeons.

[Deleted]

@Domi1294
Shadow priest solo questing experience is miserable. But all we need is to have a body guard and you can use Fade to make mobs attack him. So for leveling priest I recommend taking a body guard from Class halls when available and also use old 2set bonus for Mindbender. Sol is only max lvl guard, but once you get him you don't have to care how many mobs you pull (Except when these are 20 tiny spiders that most classes one shots by AoE, but you would have to channel Mind Sear for 1 minute )

yeah, that's basically what I'm doing right now and fuck those spiders, AoE sucks dick, I can cast Holy Nova as Holy once and do far more damage than a full channel of Mind Sear, blizz pls?

The most obvious issue people have with shadow is the questing experience at 110. With 890 ilvl you are in most cases unable to kill 3 mobs at the same time without every cd and some serious skill while classes like tanks or dhs kill them in 3 seconds flat.

Dungeons we are very strong on high health trash packs where our dots can tick. It has always been like this except for the introduction of mindsear on wotlk ice crown citadel.

Im in 830 gear pulling between 150-200k single target and 200-350k trash packs including 3-5 high health targets. We scale extremely well with haste, get the top right golden trait first it's a substantial increase in dungeons.

The problem is, I'm never gonna do Dungeons/Raids as Shadow since I pretty much only play Healers in Dungeons/Raids/PvP and only use DPS specs for solo questing and Shadow doesn't feel that good at it + Shadow stat priority is Holy priority in reversed order which kinda sucks (I think Disc has similiar or even same as Shadow?)

[CptEgo]

That's weird I've heard nothing but positive opinions about Shadow, like 90% say it's better than ever. And then this thread. Whining about mobs not dying fast enough and bad AoE :-D

[Micronetic]

That's weird I've heard nothing but positive opinions about Shadow, like 90% say it's better than ever. And then this thread.

So you didn't see all the threads in the US-, EU- and mmo-champion forums how bad shadow is?

[CptEgo]

So you didn't see all the threads in the US-, EU- and mmo-champion forums how bad shadow is?

Shadow is not bad, it's more interesting than it's ever been.

[l33t]

That's weird I've heard nothing but positive opinions about Shadow, like 90% say it's better than ever. And then this thread. Whining about mobs not dying fast enough and bad AoE :-D

Well, the experience is like this (anecdotal evidence):

I (shadow priest 820 ilvl, 23% haste, 20% crit) happened to engage a demon and two casters patrol in Suramar. Oh okay, I blast demon, then swp+vt two casters, use two shadowmend at myself, blast, pws, swp+vt a demon, two shadowmends at myself, shield, blast, refresh dots on casters, two shadowmends on myself, use shadowfiend on demon, fade, pws, blast demon, swd at first caser, shield, two shadowmends at myself, blast at demon, kill first caster with swd, use void eruption cos I finally have enough insanity to move into VF, blast and void bold second caster, immediately followed by swd (second caster died), use shadowmend, use void torrent, pws, demon finally died and I have a full pants of shit, 1/5 of my hitpoints, 1/3 of my mana, and trembling hands after a two minutes of insane fighting for my life.

Now, the same experience as a BM hunter 15 ilvls lower. Lolmisdirect @ pet, bestial wrath, barrage, kill command. Three bodies to loot seven seconds after fight starts.

IMO, we terribly lack insanity generation, mobility and cleave powers. Being a king of raid execute with StM is not enough pros to justify all these terrible cons. If dots would generate insanity per tick, everything would go million times better.

[Deja Thoris]

Shadow is not bad, it's more interesting than it's ever been.

Interesting = good somehow?

[CptEgo]

Interesting = good somehow?

I just feel like people want one button that kills everything and if they don't have that, they whine like shit about it. I'm not main Shadow myself, but it looks like people are doing just fine on bosses compared to other classes.

[Deleted]

Well, the experience is like this (anecdotal evidence):

I (shadow priest 820 ilvl, 23% haste, 20% crit) happened to engage a demon and two casters patrol in Suramar. Oh okay, I blast demon, then swp+vt two casters, use two shadowmend at myself, blast, pws, swp+vt a demon, two shadowmends at myself, shield, blast, refresh dots on casters, two shadowmends on myself, use shadowfiend on demon, fade, pws, blast demon, swd at first caser, shield, two shadowmends at myself, blast at demon, kill first caster with swd, use void eruption cos I finally have enough insanity to move into VF, blast and void bold second caster, immediately followed by swd (second caster died), use shadowmend, use void torrent, pws, demon finally died and I have a full pants of shit, 1/5 of my hitpoints, 1/3 of my mana, and trembling hands after a two minutes of insane fighting for my life.

Now, the same experience as a BM hunter 15 ilvls lower. Lolmisdirect @ pet, bestial wrath, barrage, kill command. Three bodies to loot seven seconds after fight starts.

Can't say I have the same experience, and I haven't even put any artifact power into my dagger. Shield, put dots on all targets, MB, SW:V until insanity max, void explosion. If they break shield without me being able to put it back up and get me low in hp, fear and shadowmend, otherwise don't waste time healing, just kill enemies.

Yeah, being speced into shadow word: void helps, but then again, I would generally not engage 3 strong mobs at the same time unless I already have close to a full insanity meter.