[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[aemaet]

Oh come on, we've already been called "one of the most toxic community of all the specs", and if you look through the posts about shadow, 90% are people getting upset about every aspect of it. It's just for some reason blizzard does not want hybrid classes to excel at everything. Seriously, rets cried for like 1kk posts on beta and all they got is their shiny mount baseline, boomkins are shit, feral has the same issues as we do, enh and ele are trash. WW monks are fine afaik, though.

[l33t]

Oh come on, we've already been called "one of the most toxic community of all the specs", and if you look through the posts about shadow, 90% are people getting upset about every aspect of it. It's just for some reason blizzard does not want hybrid classes to excel at everything. Seriously, rets cried for like 1kk posts on beta and all they got is their shiny mount baseline, boomkins are shit, feral has the same issues as we do, enh and ele are trash. WW monks are fine afaik, though.

Yep, it looks like Blizzard just can't get over Vanilla days. "Go heal you shadow noob, you should've rolled mage if you wanted to dps!"

I wouldn't call Enh trash, tho. Surely its not as uber as it was in glory days of WoD, with absurd aoe and stuff, but it has a very nice and fluid gameplay with nice potential. Ele though... continues being typical Ele. I cry everytime I see Ele soloing 5mil elites

[Deleted]

I get salty when i read teh hotfixes from yesterday Shadow has the exact same problem !!!

Warlock

Soul Shards now regenerate to 3, while out of combat (up from 1).
Developers' Notes: As discussed in last week’s Developer Q&A, warlocks (and Demonology especially) needed to go through several spellcasts in order to generate the Soul Shards required to cast the spells needed for them to operate at peak efficiency. In outdoor gameplay and against packs of enemies in dungeons, this often meant that combat was ending just as the warlock was getting warmed up. Allowing warlocks to begin combat with 3 Soul Shards instead of 1 should let them bring more of their arsenal to bear in shorter encounters.

[Deleted]

Oh come on, we've already been called "one of the most toxic community of all the specs", and if you look through the posts about shadow, 90% are people getting upset about every aspect of it. It's just for some reason blizzard does not want hybrid classes to excel at everything. Seriously, rets cried for like 1kk posts on beta and all they got is their shiny mount baseline, boomkins are shit, feral has the same issues as we do, enh and ele are trash. WW monks are fine afaik, though.

Shrug, I dont agree with this kind of mindset. You are toxic if you complain too much for no reason. If we consider the whole history of WOW, shadow priests have more reasons to complain than mages, locks, balance druids and we are on par with elemental shamans, if we consider dps casters. It's easy to be nice and cute when you play an EASIER and more OP class like locks and mages that get fixed instantly. They hotfix locks shards yet we had to run out of instance every try to gather orbs. Honestly, I couldnt give a damn if we've been called "the most toxic community", considering how they've treated us.

[Kilee25]

For most of the history of wow, priests were considered to have one of the most helpful and informed fan communities of any of the classes. If we are now considered one of the most toxic, by wow's long life span this is a fairly recent label placed on us.

[Biomega]

One would be inclined to see some correlation between recent "toxicity" and recent changes to the class. Just sayin'.

[Ilir]

I'm still waiting to see who called us the most toxic because that's certainly not true.

[justflayin]

I'm still waiting to see who called us the most toxic because that's certainly not true.

Idk a lot of the banter on here could pass for toxic to the soft skinned. Some can be a little brash.

[Naga Coatl]

You've explained before that back in the days in WoW you wanted to nerf frost mages. How come frost mages were pretty much left untouched for such a long long time? What's the process behind getting something nerfed/buffed like and who has the final word when something gets nerfed/buffed (at Blizzard and Riot Games)?
Ghostcrawler: The less diplomatic answer is that there were a lot of WoW devs who played Frost mages, even though I wasn't one of them, so there were always a lot of people to point out your potential mistakes when you try to make a change.

From the front page

This seems to enforce the idea that at Blizzard very few developers play a SP, so there is no one knowledgeable (and/or biased) enough to defend the spec from 'uninformed' changes. :\

[Deleted]

For those on EU servers: http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17613373762

Feel free to post constructive and concise opinions there.

[Kilee25]

To me it just enforces the idea that there's always a "real story" behind every decision. I don't know if you can draw a direct correlation between what happened with frost mages and what happened with priests.

My guess as to what happened with shadow, and many other classes, was that the level 100 talents in WoD were a part of an ongoing internal "debate" about how to evolve priest game play. We were given a dot style, a direct damage style, and a "proc generator" style. The different tier sets were used to push players towards trying out the different play styles. Then they just sat back and waited for feedback, or blowback as the case may be.

What happened, at least in the innermost circles, was massive negativity towards CoP, bordering on resentment. The brf playstyle, by comparison was hailed as the most wonderful game play ever. I strongly believe this feedback permiated throughout the inner circles at bliz. AS became a core and staple talent, and the only true survivor of the l100 talents.

Going forward, the evolution into Legion was to enhance the things that "worked" and prune the things that didn't. The higher end shadowpriest community views shadow as strictly a council and "finisher" dps spec. The spec was then given strength to deliver this niche gameplay and set up some weaknesses to make sure the class didn't dominate in every environment.

You see "normal players" complaining about shadowpriests but you don't see people like Twintop, Viklund, Hesp, etc complaining about the state of shadow. Why is that, do you think? For the most part, the high end raiders are very happy with where shadow is going, and they see shadow as being in a good position for being valuable in high end raiding. The current issues with leveling and casual play are seen as basically inconsequential, and mostly a "learn to play" problem. The growing pains of "weak" players who were softened by CoP's gameplay - those kinds of players should just move on because they don't "get" shadow.

I'm pretty sure I got that story about 80-90 % accurate.

[Djriff]

We must be seeing different things as I've seen Twintop and Viklund both express dissatisfaction with shadow.

[Kilee25]

Ah, I haven't seen that, any of that. I must be looking in the wrong places. In any case I still think I'm pretty close on the mark.

[Djriff]

I watch Viklund stream occasionally and he's expressed dissatisfaction there. As for Twintop, various conversations with him and on the priest discord.

Leveling and Casual play aside, there's a lot of problems with shadow baseline that should be addressed.

[Kilee25]

If you take those two things out, what's left really? It's pretty obvious that shadow is going to be very strong as far as raids go. And no class can ever really expect balanced options in their talent builds. Lack of ramp up and burst is a non issue in a team-based environment.

[Djriff]

If you take those two things out, what's left really? It's pretty obvious that shadow is going to be very strong as far as raids go. And no class can ever really expect balanced options in their talent builds. Lack of ramp up and burst is a non issue in a team-based environment.

Ramp up time and burst aside? Survivability, Utility, and CC.

Sure we have a ranged aoe stun, or our tried and true fear, other than that we don't have a whole lot.

Shadow will be very strong in raids, as an execute spec due to how absurdly powerful StM is.

As for other content, shadow is still crappy in PvP and the whole melee vs casters is completely out of hand and shadow is seriously getting the shaft due to our complete lack of escapes.

Mythic Dungeons are definitely not casual play, so we have ramp up issues there. I can live without massive aoe burst like DH and MW, but something needs to be done about our ramp up time, and a legendary item that spreads our dots is not the answer.

Solo content such as world quests are fairly casual, but a requirement by all none the less, so our poor survivability without Sol or a high ilvl is a definite issue when virtually ever other class can face tank 4+ mobs and mow them down like nothing.

[FrothyMug]

Questions on SPriest rotation.

I read the guide at the start of this thread and it seems like the rotation indicated is not entirely clear to me.

"Void Bolt -> Mind Blast -> Filler -> Void Bolt -> Filler -> Mind Blast -> Void Bolt -> Filler -> Repeat"

After the 2nd VB, the filler can either be a full-length Flay, or a reapplication of VT and SWP. At that point, VB is back up again at the same time as MB. I just repeat from the start at that point:

VB > MB > Filler > VB > MF or VT+SWP > VB > MB > Filler > VB ...and so on...

Am I doing it wrong?

This also brings up two questions: Aside from Mindbender, would it be more advantageous to recast SWP for the instant damage and insanity, or just wait for VB to come back off of cooldown? On cleave fights, I typically use this moment to reapply a dot to an unDoTed mob, if there are more than three or I let a DoT drop off. The other question is whether or not it's better to cast MB over VB if they are both up at the same time? This seems to be the case outlined in the guide.

Thanks.

[Djriff]

At the end of the day the rotation isn't set in stone, hence the priority list. Different levels of haste will change how you play.

You want to use the priority list in the guide when choosing a spell to cast. Also VB > MB always, instant cast spell that gives more insanity and refreshes your dots trumps it.

As for filling in with SW: P on mobs to apply dots, that would be ideal when you run with AS or SI. If you're running with San'layn you'll want to prioritize VT over SW: P in that situation.

For me right now my "rotation" in voidform looks like this:

Void Eruption -> MB -> Mind Spike -> VB -> PI + Vtor -> VB -> MB -> MS x2 -> VB -> MS -> MB -> repeat.

Yours will be different depending on talents + gear.

[Shraug]

For me right now my "rotation" in voidform looks like this:

Void Entropy -> MB -> Mind Spike -> VB -> PI + Vtor -> VB -> MB -> MS x2 -> VB -> MS -> MB -> repeat.

Yours will be different depending on talents + gear.

Wait what? VEnt and MS?

[Caladia]

I think he meant Void Eruption, but yes DJ is playing with MSpike right now.