[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Kharum]

People are concerned about aoe, I'm actually more concerned about our single target. Im doing great in bosses with adds, was top 3 on dragons and Cenarius, also did good in Il'gynoth and Xavius. But on single target bosses I'm always among the bottom of the dps list.

[2about]

People are concerned about aoe, I'm actually more concerned about our single target. Im doing great in bosses with adds, was top 3 on dragons and Cenarius, also did good in Il'gynoth and Xavius. But on single target bosses I'm always among the bottom of the dps list.

Then you're doing something terribly wrong.

[l33t]

Then you're doing something terribly wrong.

Or maybe, it all depends on raid's composition. If he has no hunters or DHs, suddenly an Il'gynoth fight looks not so bad for him when there is no 500+k dps hunter roflstomping everything with mindless lolbarrage.
Me, for example, felt like absolute shit when killed a pure single target boss - Ursoc.

[2about]

Or maybe, it all depends on raid's composition. If he has no hunters or DHs, suddenly an Il'gynoth fight looks not so bad for him when there is no 500+k dps hunter roflstomping everything with mindless lolbarrage.
Me, for example, felt like absolute shit when killed a pure single target boss - Ursoc.

Perhaps you should read the post I replied to before you respond.

[l33t]

Perhaps you should read the post I replied to before you respond.

Why, I've read it. The dude says his aoe damage is better than a single target one, and you advice him to git gud, while I mention that gittin gud is not always THE answer, since he could have had absurdly bad raid composition in aoe damage department, and also I gave some examples of such compositions. Why, what's wrong with that?

[2about]

Why, I've read it. The dude says his aoe damage is better than a single target one, and you advice him to git gud, while I mention that gittin gud is not always THE answer, since he could have had absurdly bad raid composition in aoe damage department, and also I gave some examples of such compositions. Why, what's wrong with that?

I didn't tell him to get good. I simply said he was doing something wrong if he's at the bottom of the dps charts, on ST fights... here you come talking about raid composition and how he wouldn't look so bad if it wasn't for that on AE which wasn't what we were talking about. lolbarrage made me chuckle, I'll give you that.

[Deleted]

I dont know why blizzard dosnt just increase the insanity drain much more once you reach 100 stacks. So you will not stay much longer in voidform then 110 sec max. ? This way outliner can be catched and you wont have that much of difference between a average shadow and the best of the shadows. This would also make it much better to calculate the dps gain since you will always have around 100 second uptime and we wont scale to crazy with haste! It would also help people with high latency and lags. I think it would make things way better exspecialy once people get acess to more haste then now.

[Dawnrage]

I dont know why blizzard dosnt just increase the insanity drain much more once you reach 100 stacks. So you will not stay much longer in voidform then 110 sec max. ? This way outliner can be catched and you wont have that much of difference between a average shadow and the best of the shadows. This would also make it much better to calculate the dps gain since you will always have around 100 second uptime and we wont scale to crazy with haste! It would also help people with high latency and lags. I think it would make things way better exspecialy once people get acess to more haste then now.

Sorry I don't agree. Why should an average shadowpriest match a "best of the best" shadowpriest? If that was the case, I would not play shadow.

Latency is a thing, sure, but there is a skill factor involved in getting to high stacks as well. Just chalking it up to latency constantly is wrong.

[Deleted]

Sorry I don't agree. Why should an average shadowpriest match a "best of the best" shadowpriest? If that was the case, I would not play shadow.

Latency is a thing, sure, but there is a skill factor involved in getting to high stacks as well. Just chalking it up to latency constantly is wrong.

An average shadow priest will never match the best of the best, no matter what, not even close. Even a mediocre fire mage (or hunter or lock) will be still far away from an imba one. I honestly totally disagree with this "eliteness" that to play a SP you either need to be an elite player or you get crappy results... and actually this might be why we always have so many problems. SP should be appealing to everyone, and even if you are not a good player you should still get the results you would get by playing another class.
No wonder Blizzard pisses on us if we're the first to actually pretend we dont want the average wow player to play one.

[Deleted]

S2M probly needs some balancing and they will reduce some power of it since it´s too good. The question is which way will they take. With an increased insanity drain after 100+ seconds you bring the talent down in line as it otherwise scales too good with gear. It´s basically a 100 dps CD, which gets better while gear progresses. It would be also a nice way to help out poor performing shadow priest with this talent at the same time. But the cap reduction with MH aktually works a similar way. i would have just prefered the other way around.

- - - Updated - - -

An average shadow priest will never match the best of the best, no matter what, not even close. Even a mediocre fire mage (or hunter or lock) will be still far away from an imba one. I honestly totally disagree with this "eliteness" that to play a SP you either need to be an elite player or you get crappy results... and actually this might be why we always have so many problems. SP should be appealing to everyone, and even if you are not a good player you should still get the results you would get by playing another class.
No wonder Blizzard pisses on us if we're the first to actually pretend we dont want the average wow player to play one.

i totally agree. shadow is already one of the hardest specs to pull of with a a lot of punishment if you mess up even for a few global CD´s. There is no need to spread the dps even further. Have you seen the worst 10% of a class players and the top 5% in warcraftlogs ? Shadow is pritty much lowest on the 10% and on the Top when you are looking for the best performence players. This is in my opinion not good class design. Even the not so much talented players should be able to play the spec with a satisfied feeling.

[Deleted]

Yea thats something I saw as well the other day... top logs show SP incredibly high, average/bad logs show it really low. That's a horrible class design in my opinion as well and no doubt S2M is the way this is happening. A bad SP should be on par with a bad mage or lock.

[Deleted]

With the VoiT changes, am I right in thinking that it will be best to delay the ability for as long as possible and cast it on our last legs of Voidform? So as to get most benefit from the haste? Seems way less interesting.

[Deleted]

Some spot-on criticism towards the nerfs in this thread, however how can we be sure that this reaches the eyes of the developers?

The main point I would like to highlight is that SP right now is one of the few specs that really shines in the hands of a GREAT player. A specialization that requires a bit more dexterity and finesse on the part of the player should yield higher results. Should these nerfs go live, however, a great deal of depth and fun will be removed from my personal experience.

[Dahti]

Shadow (if these nerfs go live) loses the only thing it was really good at. Why bring one to your raid now?

[Byrogan]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

Dear god it's horrible...

[dmfg]

The reports for STM look really weird. Why are there 2 DPS peaks instead of a bell curve? And the lower one seems to match DPS with no talents.

My guess is that there's a bug in the STM code that means it never gets cast on some fights (looks like about a third).

[Deleted]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

Dear god it's horrible...

Someone has to be the worst spec. even thought 32% is quit a lot of a difference compared to Warlocks. I really hope that they put the damag they took away from S2M into other spells otherwise its looking grim if simulation holds true. maybe we get a pasiv insanity regenetaion if out of combat so we can start at 100 Insanity instead and burst in the start instead a bit more . I really hope they compensate for S2M nerf otherwise.

[Deleted]

What about if Mass Hysteria started at 50% and was decreasing 1% per second ? Better ramp up, better dungeon dps. Void form uptime still matter because of haste, but having very high stacks doesnt bring so insane numbers.

[Ilir]

What about if Mass Hysteria started at 50% and was decreasing 1% per second ? Better ramp up, better dungeon dps. Void form uptime still matter because of haste, but having very high stacks doesnt bring so insane numbers.

that would be terrible. no one would want to stay in VF after it reaches 0%.

The MH nerf is fine, it was needed because STM was too powerful with it.

The rest of the changes are stupid and just show that the no one in the dev team is playing SP. (Ghostcrawler said it himself that the reason why mages seemed to be immune to nerfs/likely to get buffed was because most of the devs team played mages.)

[Deleted]

(sim link i cant quote)

that looks like about the right dps difference between S2M and non S2M considering the potential skill cap of S2M, just our baseline damage needs a boost to bring both up in the rankings abit