[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Shraug]

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

Any good results? From what I've tried, MS seems like poop.

[Djriff]

Any good results? From what I've tried, MS seems like poop.

Yeah typo on my part my bad. And ms is performing better for me st right now. If you sim yourself with some different talents you'd be surprised what is better.

[justflayin]

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.

Lots of high level spriests on stream have talked about the issues with the current iteration with shadow. Lots of high level players in general have. Lots of higher level players in this very forum has. The community in general sees how our class is and has responded with being apprehensive about inviting spriests to dungeon groups. It's kind of telling when someone will ask for 825 and not invite someone 845 right? The issues are well known and have been discussed a lot. From alpha, on to beta, and now.

I don't think people dislike other people enjoying COP it just honestly wasn't traditional dot management playstyle that SPriests were used to playing. Mind Spike has always been quite the odd addition to spriest tool kit and it's always seem to wind up as a part of our toolkit some how. A lot of people like playing what produces the best numbers and what's most optimal so having COP be that in WOD felt 'wrong' to a lot of players. I myself didn't enjoy it because it reminded me a lot of Wrath arcane mage ABlast spam. It just was not fun gameplay for me and I'm sure many people shared that same feeling about it.

"High end" raiders mostly like the new spriest playstyle but are unhappy with the tuning and the lack of choice in talent selection. It's also pretty evident that we're being tuned around a singlular talent. Although fun, the results of it in current content are not so hot. Especially considering how important dungeon and solo content are to this expansion.

[davesignal]

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

I remember Binkenstein saying priests have a horrible community when discussing which class to reroll off elemental to.

[Naga Coatl]

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.

While this doesn't represent what exactly might be happened, GC pretty much implies/confirms that it was difficult to make changes to a dominant spec because many developers were knowledgeable/biased in a way that favoured that spec. We can't say if this happens even with shadow, but I think that at least shows that Blizzard is (was?) not beyond this kind of behaviour/way to operate.

[Djriff]

I remember Binkenstein saying priests have a horrible community when discussing which class to reroll off elemental to.

There's also that bunny person that pops on the discord every now and again.

[Kilee25]

Before I continue, just know that I am playing "devil's advocate" at this point. I want shadow to have all the things too. However, I am trying to offer what I feel is plausible explanation for why shadow turned out the way it did besides, "Bliz didn't listen to us, and we aren't yelling loud enough."

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.

We've never had much utility to begin with. The addition of a ranged stun was pretty big, and I think our ability to heal is a utility that many other classes don't have. This is often overlooked imo.

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.

I have no explanation for this other than to state that I have always felt PVP is an afterthought when it comes to WoW.

[qoute]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.[/quote]

I think this lies somewhere in the middle between sacrificing weaknesses for strengths, and "learn to play". Shadow is not meant to AE, or burst, and to give them this ability would imbalance them (i.e. Make them too good). Whether we agree or not on this, I suspect it is the reason for why we are designed as we are. To buff us in any of thos areas would necessitate a nerf in some other.

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.

It's a temporary problem, and "Someone has to be last."

[Djriff]

Before I continue, just know that I am playing "devil's advocate" at this point. I want shadow to have all the things too. However, I am trying to offer what I feel is plausible explanation for why shadow turned out the way it did besides, "Bliz didn't listen to us, and we aren't yelling loud enough."

Understood, however i'll continue to argue against you :P

We've never had much utility to begin with. The addition of a ranged stun was pretty big, and I think our ability to heal is a utility that many other classes don't have. This is often overlooked imo.

Well they gutted VE so bad that all we have baseline is MC, Shackle Undead, Dispel, and Mass Dispel. Realisitically you'll use MD in very few niche situations same with MC.

The ranged stun would be pretty big, if other classes with better utility didn't bring more to the table.

We do have shadowmend which can be some nice spot healing which has been brought up before, but that doesn't excuse poor performance in other content.

I have no explanation for this other than to state that I have always felt PVP is an afterthought when it comes to WoW.

Fair point, @Theed I'm sure would have a lot more input as that is their forte and not mine.

I think this lies somewhere in the middle between sacrificing weaknesses for strengths, and "learn to play". Shadow is not meant to AE, or burst, and to give them this ability would imbalance them (i.e. Make them too good). Whether we agree or not on this, I suspect it is the reason for why we are designed as we are. To buff us in any of thos areas would necessitate a nerf in some other.

There is absolutely no excuse for the shoddy damage that mind sear does. If it wasn't worth casting at 3+ targets for insanity generation, then I wouldn't even have it on my bars. Shadow Crash is a talent, that is clunky, has a long CD, and has even more awkwardness due to never wanting to cast it outside of VF. Personally I don't think it's damage should be effected by VF and should just do a lot of damage as is to justify it's CD and slowness.

I don't think it would throw us out of balance if we had a baseline mechanic to spread our dots. Look at aff locks as an example, they are a dot class like us but have seed of corruption for that stacked aoe. I don't necessarily want seed of corruption but someway to spread our dots to all targets on a 1m CD would be a good start.

It's a temporary problem, and "Someone has to be last."

There's a difference to being last and being dead last.

[Ocedic]

I think Shadow needs a few adjustments, but it's not in a horrible spot. The biggest thing is AoE on small trash, which will be a bigger issue once Mythic+ hits and trash clearing becomes important.

I don't like our level 100 talents - they just aren't exciting or interesting. Mind Spike does not have enough output nor is it that interesting mechanically. Legacy of the Void is a little bland and doesn't feel like I'm picking up a big powerful level 100 talent (and in practice it offers a nominal DPS increase.) S2M is problematic because it's so Feast or Famine, and as others have mentioned it seems to limit design space and hamstring the possibilities of the class. That said, it's a lot of fun.

Overall, I'm not particularly worried, but it was a bumpy and uneven road to get to this point. I will say that keeping up dots is not really 'fun' anymore, which is a shame because that's what attracted me to the class years ago. It feels like a chore and I groan every time I hit void form but SWP falls off before void bolt comes off of cooldown. When the stars align and you're pumping out huge damage and rotating dots on 2-3 mobs, it feels great. But it's also hilarious that I might as well be afk when 8 tiny spiders are pulled or something and I just sit there Mind searing after putting up a few VT's.

[Dawnrage]

PTR notes are out, seems like they changed our 2 PC T19.

"Priest T19 Shadow 2P Bonus - Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch generate 1 Insanity each time they deal damage." changed to "Vampiric Touch generates 1 Insanity each time it deals damage."

[DejaDeux]

So the ptr datamined tooltips are up and I'm as confused as anything.

Holy
Holy Nova Discipline, Shadow: Causes an explosion of holy light around you, dealing [ 180% of Spell Power ] Holy damage to all enemies within 12 yds. Holy: Causes an explosion of holy light around you, dealing [ 180% of Spell Power ] Holy damage to all enemies within 12 yds. Has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Holy Fire if any targets are hit. Can't be cast in Shadowform. Priest - Holy Spec. 1.6% of Base Mana. Instant.

Shadow
Void Bolt For the duration of Voidform, your Void Eruption ability is replaced by Voidbolt: Sends a bolt of pure void energy at the enemy, causing [ 1 + 220% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage and refreshing Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to their original duration. Requires Voidform. Generates 16 Insanity. Priest - Shadow Spec.


Are more specs getting holy nova? Will void bolt not refresh dots? *confused*

[Dawnrage]

So the ptr datamined tooltips are up and I'm as confused as anything.

Holy
Holy Nova Discipline, Shadow: Causes an explosion of holy light around you, dealing [ 180% of Spell Power ] Holy damage to all enemies within 12 yds. Holy: Causes an explosion of holy light around you, dealing [ 180% of Spell Power ] Holy damage to all enemies within 12 yds. Has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Holy Fire if any targets are hit. Can't be cast in Shadowform. Priest - Holy Spec. 1.6% of Base Mana. Instant.

Shadow
Void Bolt For the duration of Voidform, your Void Eruption ability is replaced by Voidbolt: Sends a bolt of pure void energy at the enemy, causing [ 1 + 220% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage and refreshing Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to their original duration. Requires Voidform. Generates 16 Insanity. Priest - Shadow Spec.


Are more specs getting holy nova? Will void bolt not refresh dots? *confused*

Nah, those are just tooltip changes. Shadow has no changes (yet). Voidbolt has a new seperate effect that says "Void Bolt refreshes Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to their original duration. Priest - Shadow Spec.", so they are just splitting up the text I guess.

[Theed]

We've never had much utility to begin with. The addition of a ranged stun was pretty big, and I think our ability to heal is a utility that many other classes don't have. This is often overlooked imo.

We always had decent utlity. More than now. Don't get me wrong we still have decent utility and i think no one is complaining about it. I think our healing power has been massivly cut back. Healing now feels very limited but the casts are more powerful.

As for the stun, I prefer Psychic Horror. It was not on a stun DR, could not be dispelled before it stunned and didn't replace Psychic Scream. Psychic Bomb can not be used on a healer without an additional CC. Almost any healer i met in recent skirmishes managed to dispel it, before it detonated.

I have no explanation for this other than to state that I have always felt PVP is an afterthought when it comes to WoW.

I still think the design of the spec doesn't work well in pvp. It is insanely fun and feels fluid but there is so much wrong about it in a pvp environment.
It feels like the designer(s) who worked on the priest tree either don't play pvp at all or just hate it. Here is why i think so:

1. Voidform and Insanity: PvP involves a lot of movement, interrupts and CC. Keeping the Insanity flow up is the core of the spec but it is 100x times harder to do so in pvp. Making Void Torrent interruptable and nerfing Driven to Madness to not work inside Voidform in beta worked against this issue. It's actually hard to believe someone at blizzard ever tested the spec in a real pvp environment.

2. Another reason why i think the designers put little thought in pvp, when designing the spec are talents. Two of the talents are unusable in pvp and some are very bad picks for pvp. The honor talents don't solve much of the problems we have in pvp, except Void Origins. Talents like Psychic Link, Last Word, Mind Trauma and Edge of Insanity need a redesign. Psyfiend has 10 HP and sometimes dies in less than 1 second making it unable to be shielded. Psyfiend should act like a totem and not be affected by every AoE aura and passive cleave there is. For about 2 days last week it was bugged to slow and reduce healing for over 100000%. It was broken obviously, but just the fact that it rooted made the spec so much more fun to play against melee.

3. Because of the amount of melee interrupts, some of them are even ranged now, we are forced to pick Void Origins. Playing Shadow Priest in pvp without this talent feels incredibly frustrating and bad.

4. The Survivability design is completly build around self healing. It can be reduced or negated by Mortal Strike effects, Absorbs, immunities, dispels, interrupts and other forms of crowd control. Even Dispersion heals less with Mortal Strike up. Shadowform armor and Spectral Guise provided survivability but were removed.

Shadow is one of the hardest specs to play and master in pvp right now and we are good in 3s without question. But some players play pvp casualy or just for fun and not rating. Some players are not as good as the suddenly super skilled leather wearing overlords. Blizzard destroyed the spec for these players.


My suggestions and wishes to fix the issues:

- Reimplement Shadowform
Allows the caster to gain insanity and increases armor by 150%.
~Fixes one of the major aesthetic complaints of the spec and increases survivability against melee slightly

- Dominant Mind now has a 60 second cooldown (works against players for 5 seconds) but the target deals 75% less damage and healing for the duration

- Mania replaced with Diagonal Slide as used by the Black Bishop NPC.
Caster instantly teleports to the target location as a shadowy bolt

alternative suggestion:
- Mania replaced with Spectral Guise

- Shadow Crash cooldown is reduced for each Mind Spike and Mind Flay critical hit.

- Legacy of the Void now makes Voidform instant cast in addition to the current effect

- Mind Spike is now instant cast, has 3 charges and replaces Mind Sear. It requires 3 Stacks to detonate. In addition to its current effect Mind Spike detonation now spreads Shadow Word: Pain to each target hit.

alternative suggestion:
- Void empowerment (instead of mind spike)
You instantly gain 100 insanity and spread Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word Pain to every target within 20 yards range.
2 min cooldown

PVP Talents:
Psyfiend now acts like a totem and has 10% of the casters health.
Last word: Silence now also disarms the target for the duration
Psychic Link: 20% of the damage you take is shared with every enemy afflicted by Shadow Word: Pain.
Mind Trauma: Mind blast now reduces damage done by the target by 20% for 6 seconds.
Void Origins makes Void Torrent uninterruptable.
Edge of Insanity now stops insanity drain while stunned, feared or silenced.

Some of these changes are too good. I just wanted to share some ideas. I love the spec but i think blizzard could have done a better job on some of these talents.

[Yvaelle]

@Theed

Sounds good, I made a post with some similar ideas the other day: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...e=53#post-1059

The 3 biggest issues with Shadow right now are:
1. AOE damage is terrible / not interesting
2. Survivability is poor / not interesting
3. L100 talents are all badly designed

My recommendations for solutions:
1. AOE
* Mind Sear Removed
* Shadow Crash is now baseline for Shadow, has a 20 second cooldown
* Shadow Crash talent change, now grants 2 additional charges, charges replenish every 20 seconds (60 seconds for all 3 charges)

This gives Shadow a unique AOE style that both gives us some true AOE (Shadow Crash), and still encourages us to multi-DoT (in the 20 seconds between each Crash). The talent gives us really great burst AOE damage, but at the cost of any sustained AOE in the subsequent 60 seconds. I think that's more than fair to other classes, while putting Shadow in a good and fairly unique niche for mythic dungeons and the like: Shadow would be great at big, short-lived pulls, and useless at sustained AOE.

2. Survivability
* Shadow has a new passive, Spectral Guise
* Spectral Guise (passive), using Fade causes the Spriest to leave an apparition of themselves behind and enter temporary stealth for 4 seconds, in addition to the threat drop (from Fade)
* Spiritual Cleansing (PvP Talent) removed
* New PvP Talent - Phantasmal - For four seconds after using Fade, the Shadowpriest takes 50% reduced physical damage

3. L100 Talents
* All 3 talents deleted
* New * Whispers of Oblivion - You instantly enter Voidform upon reaching 100 Insanity (we lose Void Eruption and Void Bolt) but Mind Blast is instant cast, Shadow Word: Death is also usable on targets above 80% health, and Mind Flay deals quad damage during Void Form

* New * Legacy of the Void - Maximum Insanity is increased to 200, Insanity decay is reduced by 50%, and upon entering Voidform, your Lingering Insanity is consumed to grant additional stacks of Voidform (half lingering insanity stacks = new voidform stacks, ex. 30 Lingering Insanity = 15 starting Voidform stacks).

* New * Into The Void - You gain 3 Insanity per second (even out of combat), and Void Eruption is instant cast.

So the first talent gives us less control over Voidform, makes us less reliant on execute phase fights, and puts greater emphasis on Mind Flay uptime (even with quad damage it might still suck, but I'll leave that to the devs).

The second talent lets us stay in Voidform longer, giving us a very long but effective ramp-up on long raid fights (ex. Patchwerk), where having more Voidform stacks enables more on each subsequent voidform - making each a bit stronger over the course of ~10 minutes ramp-up that gets progressively crazier. It also (200 cap) gives us more control to delay Voidforms due to raid fight mechanics.

The third talent is great for dungeons, letting people start with Voidform (out of combat insanity regen), enter it instantly, and always be ready with a fresh voidform during the long boss RP in every dungeon encounter, where instead of wasting every voidform to RP, we regenerate back to 100 Insanity and begin with voidform the moment the RP ends (like other classes with short cooldowns / energy / focus / etc).

All three are interesting in PvP. The first and last for arenas mostly, the second for RBG rot comps. Also, I convienently named them all after the Starcraft prologue/expansion/epilogues, and I also made their names make sense for the things that they do.

I have a lot more ideas of what I would have done, if I were a dev, but I try to keep the ideas simple and direct for the devs, since I'm pretty sure they only see them as a couple bullet points from an intern every week.

[Kilee25]

@Djriff I was going to send a pm, but will just say it publicly. Thank you for putting up with me, and I am sorry and I'm not trying to be a jerk. I do feel that there's an explanation for what is happening with shadow and I'm frustrated because I think people should be considering that this is on purpose and that there's some internal balancing that we aren't seeing. I see so many complaints but I can't help but feel that we may need to move past it and just start making lemonade. The whole, "Warlocks got it we didn't," triggered me today for some reason. I will shut up now.

[Djriff]

@Djriff I was going to send a pm, but will just say it publicly. Thank you for putting up with me, and I am sorry and I'm not trying to be a jerk. I do feel that there's an explanation for what is happening with shadow and I'm frustrated because I think people should be considering that this is on purpose and that there's some internal balancing that we aren't seeing. I see so many complaints but I can't help but feel that we may need to move past it and just start making lemonade. The whole, "Warlocks got it we didn't," triggered me today for some reason. I will shut up now.

Ah, the bit about seed of corruption or more the out of combat soul shard generation?

Either way, no worries. Everyone gets to a point of frustration, myself included, no harm no foul.

We have plenty to complain about and rightfully so, i'll be ok with what we have, but I'm not happy with shadow as a whole.

[Dawnrage]

@Djriff I was going to send a pm, but will just say it publicly. Thank you for putting up with me, and I am sorry and I'm not trying to be a jerk. I do feel that there's an explanation for what is happening with shadow and I'm frustrated because I think people should be considering that this is on purpose and that there's some internal balancing that we aren't seeing. I see so many complaints but I can't help but feel that we may need to move past it and just start making lemonade. The whole, "Warlocks got it we didn't," triggered me today for some reason. I will shut up now.

I know this post isn't directed at me, but I disagree. Yeah, no one wants to see posts after posts complaining about how shadow sucks at this or that, but at the same time, simply accepting that this is the state we are in and nothing can or will change is a horrible choice as well. There are a lot of valid concerns among the layers and layers of complain, so I don't look at anyone's post and get "triggered" or anything. We have a right to be upset at the state shadow is in, considering this time around and unlike every other expansion, this is relevant to many people's progression (those who do not raid). There's also the issue of Blizzard being really bad at this stuff. Kudos to you or anyone who has faith in Blizzard to set things right or that they know something we don't and we should trust them - whatever it is you believe, I don't. I've been playing this game for so long and I can tell you (or really, anyone who has) that trusting Blizzard to do the right thing is never the right choice. If you have been as well and STILL trust Blizzard, man, you need to go ahead and loan me a million dollars because I will definitely pay you back :P

Anyway, for me personally, my main concern is raiding once raids are out, so you would think none of these things really matter to me, but I'm sure I share the same sentiments as many of the raiding shadowpriests as well - I'm not happy with how shadow is in 5 mans because they are something we have to take part in.

[Relapses]

In the last 5 years, I don't think the Shadow community has ever been completely happy with the design choices Blizzard has made with the class. (I rolled my SPriest in Cata and it's the last time I remember truly enjoying Shadow's playstyle.) MoP's Shadow iteration was inherently flawed due to the way Orbs worked then WoD's iteration was an extension of the same exact problems we had in MoP. Now we've had a complete overhaul and it's largely failed to resolve any of the concerns most SPriests had with the spec (in fact, it's arguably made them worse). They made us better at multi-dotting and single target fights (especially ones with extended execute phases) but removed nearly all of our frontend burst potential AE to compensate.

The devs write up page after page of how they're concerned with the playerbase's reaction to Warlocks yet barely even address the innumerable concerns we have as a community. But since we're a single spec of a class which has two healing specs, I feel we're seen almost like second-class citizens. As long as SPriests continue to get raid spots, they're okay with the design of the spec. And honestly, we're fine in raids. But I hate having to trade off nearly all usefulness in dungeons to excel at one single portion of the game. It sucks. I hate my gullibility, too, because every expansion I main my SPriest at the beginning then eventually get frustrated with the spec and roll something else. I'm begrudgingly optimistic things will improve throughout the expansion but the radio silence on Blizzard's part regarding our glaring weaknesses is extremely irritating.

[Yvaelle]

Yeah, no one wants to see posts after posts complaining about how shadow sucks at this or that, but at the same time, simply accepting that this is the state we are in and nothing can or will change is a horrible choice as well.

I vary my strategy every patch, but generally my approach has always been that Shadow needs loud advocates who are willing to take advantage of the Devs attention in whatever way we can best get it, as often as we can get it - and bring to them the specific, tangible, and immediate issues that the spec is facing.

I never know what format they prefer. Ghostcrawler used to respond all the time to Shadow tweets, but these devs have been dead silent on twitter since Ghostcrawler left. So I don't think it works anymore.

We need to alternate our tone too, so we don't become monotone - sometimes I'm hyperbolic, melodramatic, and provocative, other times rational, detached, and objective. Mix it up.

The devs claim they like long, reasonable, well-explained posts on the official forums - and many in the community do this actively hoping for a response - but we're typically lucky if one such post per expansion gets a blue response.

I've tracked down the personal info of some of the dev team before, and contacted them directly (always respectfully when I take this approach) - sometimes they don't respond at all, sometimes I get a decent (albeit never really satisfying) response: usually mostly telling me to use official channels to contact them, but still.

We've had secret forums before, where the devs were willing to talk with select prominent members of the community directly (they exempted me the last time, which is why I'm under no obligation to keep it secret) - but the Shadow community was well-represented, and yet those forums too went uncomfortably silent.

The history of interacting with WoW devs is basically a story of talking to a brick wall, and hoping that someone on the other side is listening. With that said, I would always advocate talking to the wall - because eventually they will respond to us - even if it's to bang on the wall and shout at us to keep the noise down. They may not always be listening, they're almost never willing to talk back to us - but I do believe they have always heard us.

Bizarrely, it's kind of like praying to Elune. It's mostly an act of faith, and I like to think that the sentient moon is listening to my concerns and watching out for us - but I'm probably just another lunatic

[Relapses]

Bizarrely, it's kind of like praying to Elune. It's mostly an act of faith, and I like to think that the sentient moon is listening to my concerns and watching out for us - but I'm probably just another lunatic

Would you say you've...

(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

...surrendered to madness?

^{I'll see myself out.}