Shadow Buffs.. lol

[pkusa]

Blizzard seems lost when it comes to Shadow.

-Mind Sear damage increased by 80% and Insanity generation increased by 50%.
-Mind Flay damage increased by 20%.
-Mind Spike damage increased by 28%.
-Void Ray maximum stacks reduced to 4.
Developers’ Notes: Given the damage increase to Mind Sear, Mind Flay, and Mind Spike, this still results in an overall increase to the value of the talent.

-Voidform stacks no longer increase while Dispersion is active.
Developers’ Notes: We would prefer that Surrender to Madness not be as dominant as it is, and that it can’t be extended for quite so long. However, addressing this further would require significant changes to the spec beyond what we want to do in a tuning pass at this time. We will look for an opportunity to take a more comprehensive look at this issue in a future patch.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/7...-september-26/

[blargh312]

Honestly, as a shadow priest I'm always happy to see buffs, but the Mass Hysteria nerf should have stayed. The damage STM is capable of <35% with 100 VF stacks is absurd and needed to be toned down. This is just kicking the nerf can down the road at best.

[Krazzorx]

They reverted nearly everything. Idk what more you can ask for.

[Fascinate]

They reverted nearly everything. Idk what more you can ask for.

Umm an actual aoe not a buff to the worst one in the game, and more insanity generation. Cant wait til they get rid of StM altogether, lets hope sooner than later.

[pkusa]

I'm not complaining, just saying they're going to go nerf-crazy with us after they see our DPS this week.

[Deleted]

Honestly, as a shadow priest I'm always happy to see buffs, but the Mass Hysteria nerf should have stayed. The damage STM is capable of <35% with 100 VF stacks is absurd and needed to be toned down. This is just kicking the nerf can down the road at best.

well yes the dmg is insane BUT the dmg >35% sucks really hard. i mean REALLY hard.

if they dont want stm to be that good they have to do alot of changes. it's not like shadow is SO good right now that it needs to be nerfed.

the old hotfix notes would have dumped shadow.

[Swizzington]

Why does StM even exist tho.

[kalaratic]

from the dev note it sounds like they are going to slam the fuck out of S2M when they have the time for it but i'm happy they went back on the MH change so we can have fun the next couple weeks. at least now when the RL calls for personals we don't have to be like "uhhh, PW:S?" and hope for the best

[blargh312]

well yes the dmg is insane BUT the dmg >35% sucks really hard. i mean REALLY hard.

if they dont want stm to be that good they have to do alot of changes. it's not like shadow is SO good right now that it needs to be nerfed.

the old hotfix notes would have dumped shadow.

I honestly think that was a good way of nerfing STM without affecting the other 100 talents, as well as a way to nerf without changing the way the spec plays. MH nerf + 20% MF buff would have helped to shift some (albeit a pretty small amount) of shadow's damage out of execute range.

[Deleted]

Nice buffs. All hail the Shadow DPS overlords.

Only Blizzard can be this clueless. They decide to destroy a spec, but after enough whine, they decide not to destroy it, but instead buff it. Like, how can you ping pong from one extreme to another within a couple of days? They're incompetent, that's how.

[Sxq]

Interesting.... lol. Well I'm happy that they reverted the nerfs. My intuition is that this still is a nerf to the very top end of StM priests (those pulling off double dispersion 2 min+ StM), but it's a decent buff to everyone else. Sounds like they want to nerf the hell out of StM in the next patch, but realized they were shitting all over our raid viability if they did it right now the way they planned (and without fixing other issues).

The new buffs should actually be quite nice for non-stm performance in dungeons and the early phase of a fight.

[Dawnrage]

I don't like the buffs without touching S2M. Don't get me wrong, I like everyone else LOVE buffs, but you guys know damn well that shadow is already strong in the right hands, and all this means is that the nerf bat is going to hit that much harder and probably put us into bottom tier level when it does.

We needed an AoE buff, but since they are so hell bent on making it in the form of mindsear, they had to buff up mindspike and mindflay or mindsear would have trumped them on single target situations. Blizzard is clueless man.

[Zephirdd]

Nice buffs. All hail the Shadow DPS overlords.

Only Blizzard can be this clueless. They decide to destroy a spec, but after enough whine, they decide not to destroy it, but instead buff it. Like, how can you ping pong from one extreme to another within a couple of days? They're incompetent, that's how.

Ooooooor they had a terrible idea and after the cry for attention they actually looked at the spec and realized the Mind spells were in need for a buff for a long time?

I'm glad they didn't nerf VTorrent and that they actually provided us with a substantial buff to mind sear. I do wonder how good Mind Spike will be now, I guess it'll be superior to LotV?

[Jacpierre]

Umm an actual aoe not a buff to the worst one in the game, and more insanity generation. Cant wait til they get rid of StM altogether, lets hope sooner than later.

If they buffed to the point it was the best in the game, then you'd have an actual aoe. I don't think you understand how arguments work.

[Someudontno]

Interesting.... lol. Well I'm happy that they reverted the nerfs. My intuition is that this still is a nerf to the very top end of StM priests (those pulling off double dispersion 2 min+ StM), but it's a decent buff to everyone else. Sounds like they want to nerf the hell out of StM in the next patch, but realized they were shitting all over our raid viability if they did it right now the way they planned (and without fixing other issues).

The new buffs should actually be quite nice for non-stm performance in dungeons and the early phase of a fight.

I completely agree with you. While I do think StM is a bit much right now and the nerf to MH was somewhat warranted, I do believe it shouldn't have been so severe. Cutting off the damage buff to dots at ~75 stacks sounds more reasonable to me, but I'm not a theorycrafter so I have no idea if that would be mathematically okay. I'm probably in the minority here when I say that I really enjoy using StM because of the relatively high skill cap associated with it. The general buffs to mind flay/sear are definitely welcomed and should improve our performance in dungeons for sure.

[valant]

What do people thing of this spec post-change ?

Fortress of the Mind
Void Ray
Shadowy Insight
Shadow Crash
Mind Spike

[Deleted]

I don't like the buffs without touching S2M. Don't get me wrong, I like everyone else LOVE buffs, but you guys know damn well that shadow is already strong in the right hands, and all this means is that the nerf bat is going to hit that much harder and probably put us into bottom tier level when it does.

yes you are right. The very best shadow's can compete with average mages right now, better nerf shadow right now.

What do people thing of this spec post-change ?

Fortress of the Mind
Void Ray
Shadowy Insight
Shadow Crash
Mind Spike

for what? raiding? absolut garbage. dungeons? might be descent? depens on grp though, if for example you have 2 dh's in your group you should just specc full ST.

[Annesh]

Um, it's my understanding that the previous nerfs stay in except Void Torrent:

The class changes listed in this hotfix update, as well as those from the previous update will be applied during weekly maintenance in each region.

[Deleted]

Um, it's my understanding that the previous nerfs stay in except Void Torrent:

The class changes listed in this hotfix update, as well as those from the previous update will be applied during weekly maintenance in each region.

Wrong. They have the strikethrough over them. See: blue post. All nerfs reverted. Only buffs now. Shadow wasn't good enough. Because reasons.

[Deleted]

Wrong. They have the strikethrough over them. See: blue post. All nerfs reverted. Only buffs now. Shadow wasn't good enough. Because reasons.

Honestly im fairly sure its just a side-effect of not having one set of consolidated hotfix notes yet. If it isnt then, fuck me, i don't even know what to think anymore.