Shadow Buffs.. lol

[bambule]

why do people dislike the "die at the end" part so much?

[Lulbalance]

why do people dislike the "die at the end" part so much?

Because.. your character dies at the end. If you sit quietly for a while and think about it, you'll probably come up with a few reasons yourself on why that can be a negative stipulation in some situations.

[Naga Coatl]

I think it's mainly because

- It makes it useless in PvP and an unnecessary hassle in outdoor content and dungeons (in addition to the fact that it has a ramp up on its own and an unreasonable CD)
- It's a heavy kind of compromise that the spec doesn't really need, it's only irrelevant in raid
- Dying is not fun
- Dying consumes temporary buffs like food, adding a manteinance cost that doesn't feel good no matter how relevant or not those buffs are
- It carries a 'social stigma' of sort and as much we can say 'It's their fault for not knowing how we work' we all know this doesn't solve the issue
- The fact that the most 'class fantasy defining' and strongest talent is an ability that makes you 'surrender and die' with a powerlust phase speaks a lot about the design process of the spec

Or at least these are mine reasons combined with those that are written often on the forums.

[hikamiro]

You're right, but Deja isnt wrong.



Going from nerfing S2M/MH by 15% to buffing mindflay/mindspike/mindsear is sheer incompetence.

It doesn't defy belief, blizz have not been able to put a solid spriest on paper since 3.0, that's roughly 8 years.

It is insane that all throughout the dev cycle they refused to look at spriest numbers, it was obvious where S2M/MH was going, they were too stupid to figure it out and have been knee jerk buffing/nerfing since then.

Then you have celestion who is the most under qualified idiot trying to call everything that happens 'class fantasy'.

WoW is a big ticket item for blizzard... and they don't hire qualified people? its really quite pathetic

I doubt they WANTED to buff mind flay / mind spike. But they can't buff mindsear by 80% and not buff those abilities or they will be dropped from rotation.

[l33t]

why do people dislike the "die at the end" part so much?

Why? Because it is a CD you:

- cannot use while soloing stuff (or, more precisely, you can, but it slows you down, which is ridiculous, cosidering it is a CD);
- cannot use in all forms of pvp;
- cannot use in mythic dungeons without making your group angry at you;
- cannot use basically everywhere except for raids, and even in raids you can use it only if there is no downtime - any boss which periodically turns on immunity of any sort is a no-no.
- can use only once per fight, aside of broken Xavius.

Not to mention that for a "die in the end" this CD is too weak on itself. Like, in my humble opinion, if a penalty for using CD is death, then you should be VERY strong while having effects of this CD. Like, really, really strong (imagine millions of dps!). Being able to run while casting and synergy with MH is not strong enough for "die in the end". IMO, current effects of this CD aren't worth dying for. It could be just a five minutes CD with no "die in the end" part and it will still be weak and unimpressive (Xavius aside ofc). I really don't understand why people are enjoying it.

[Djriff]

- It makes it useless in PvP and an unnecessary hassle in outdoor content and dungeons (in addition to the fact that it has a ramp up on its own and an unreasonable CD)

CD is perfectly reasonable considering the massive damage output you do. The dying part? Not so much. Might at as well just silence the player.

It's a heavy kind of compromise that the spec doesn't really need, it's only irrelevant in raid

It's an optional compromise. You only have to use StM if you want to min/max in a raid. You can take the DPS hit in a casual group setting if you wanted to. Outside of raids, what do you need StM for? Other talents are better suited there.

- Dying is not fun

Agreed, especially so on non wipes.

- Dying consumes temporary buffs like food, adding a manteinance cost that doesn't feel good no matter how relevant or not those buffs are

It takes approximately 10 minutes to farm enough to make a 40 stack of 375 haste food. Food isn't the issue, runes are. It's still annoying, but they need to add a non loss of temp buffs by dying.

- It carries a 'social stigma' of sort and as much we can say 'It's their fault for not knowing how we work' we all know this doesn't solve the issue

What social stigma are you referring to?

- The fact that the most 'class fantasy defining' and strongest talent is an ability that makes you 'surrender and die' with a powerlust phase speaks a lot about the design process of the spec

I feel like your misinterpreting the class fantasy of giving into the madness. We are literally becoming a conduit for the old gods to channel their power through us. When you factor that in, makes sense that we die at the end.

All that aside, StM does have other issues, mainly balance.

I doubt they WANTED to buff mind flay / mind spike. But they can't buff mindsear by 80% and not buff those abilities or they will be dropped from rotation.

As long as they generate insanity they'll never be dropped from the rotation.

[Deleted]

- cannot use while soloing stuff (or, more precisely, you can, but it slows you down, which is ridiculous, cosidering it is a CD);
Then use LotV.

- cannot use in all forms of pvp;

Agreed, shadow needs some serious rethinking in terms of pvp.

- cannot use in mythic dungeons without making your group angry at you;

You use S2M on the first boss and last, the extra damage will be more than enough to accumulate for the -5 seconds, for example, using it on Helya might just net you enough dps to no trigger the RP Phase.

- cannot use basically everywhere except for raids, and even in raids you can use it only if there is no downtime - any boss which periodically turns on immunity of any sort is a no-no.

Atleast in EN, no boss has a downtime longer than 5 seconds. Also, immunity is fine, since you still generate insanity.

- can use only once per fight, aside of broken Xavius.

Which makes this ability so special, you wan't to time it absolutely perfectly in order to get the maximum duration out of it.

Not to mention that for a "die in the end" this CD is too weak on itself. Like, in my humble opinion, if a penalty for using CD is death, then you should be VERY strong while having effects of this CD. Like, really, really strong (imagine millions of dps!). Being able to run while casting and synergy with MH is not strong enough for "die in the end". IMO, current effects of this CD aren't worth dying for. It could be just a five minutes CD with no "die in the end" part and it will still be weak and unimpressive (Xavius aside ofc).

It outclasses (by far) the other two talents and without it, Shadow would be in a worse spot than Elemental.

I really don't understand why people are enjoying it.

Risk/Reward. No other spell in the game comes even close to the amount of sweat/joy produced in an encounter.

[Naga Coatl]

CD is perfectly reasonable considering the massive damage output you do.

In my opinion is reasonable only in the sense that it makes it not possibile to use it more than once during a boss fight. I would prefer a much shorter CD with the clause 'once per combat' or something. 10 minutes too much when you want to swap talents, when you want to practice at the dummies - and it's one of the reasons why it's so useless in outdoor content: you can't enjoy it for example when you farm WQ elites unless you are slow or plan you route around it, etc.

It's an optional compromise. You only have to use StM if you want to min/max in a raid. You can take the DPS hit in a casual group setting if you wanted to. Outside of raids, what do you need StM for? Other talents are better suited there.

Well, I'd like to use my most powerful option in mythics and mythics+ for example. When the class is balanced around such a problematic talent I don't think it's really a matter of 'optional compromise'. Other lv100 talents are better outside of raids because StM it's not really an option, not because they are powerful and exciting I think.

It takes approximately 10 minutes to farm enough to make a 40 stack of 375 haste food. Food isn't the issue, runes are. It's still annoying, but they need to add a non loss of temp buffs by dying.

As I said, for me it's not about how difficult is to farm something, it's the fact that it add a 'maintenance cost'. Not a really big deal in many cases, but it still make me wonder 'Why?'.

What social stigma are you referring to?

Maybe I've used the wrong term, what I mean is that for many, even 'outsiders', dying is bad. When someone dies, he's bad. Players become disgruntled because there is that priest to ress, and so on. Little things maybe, but I remember players angry and worried about these kind of problems.

I feel like your misinterpreting the class fantasy of giving into the madness. We are literally becoming a conduit for the old gods to channel their power through us. When you factor that in, makes sense that we die at the end.

Didn't the ability tooltip say that the priest 'surrenders his soul to the old gods' during alpha/beta? For many, the priest should be a class based on a strong force of will, that lets us stay on the verge of madness (a concept that by the way doesn't appeal to me - why madness = machinegun power?), and this talents sound like 'fuck that, I let go'. If you interpretation is correct, why should we 'let the old gods use us'? In my opinion the SP concept is a bit confused right now and StM doesn't sound like something that makes our characters strong, but puppets.

As I said many months ago, I would really like if spells/effects of shadow priest didn't require us to find an interpretation and to imagine what's happening.

[Ocedic]

It's an optional compromise. You only have to use StM if you want to min/max in a raid. You can take the DPS hit in a casual group setting if you wanted to. Outside of raids, what do you need StM for? Other talents are better suited there.

If that's the case then it shouldn't take up a 100 talent slot if it only fits into such a specific slot of content.

[Djriff]

In my opinion is reasonable only in the sense that it makes it not possibile to use it more than once during a boss fight. I would prefer a much shorter CD with the clause 'once per combat' or something. 10 minutes too much when you want to swap talents, when you want to practice at the dummies - and it's one of the reasons why it's so useless in outdoor content: you can't enjoy it for example when you farm WQ elites unless you are slow or plan you route around it, etc.

Sure, but then it would become the default talent literally everywhere and that's not something we really want. I'm fine with it being fantastic in raids, we've needed a real CD ever since they took away Dark Archangel. I don't think StM was really the answer though.

Well, I'd like to use my most powerful option in mythics and mythics+ for example. When the class is balanced around such a problematic talent I don't think it's really a matter of 'optional compromise'. Other lv100 talents are better outside of raids because StM it's not really an option, not because they are powerful and exciting I think.

Let's think about your most powerful option.

You run StM and do 300k on the boss, then die. In mythic+ this means -5 on the timer, and you're doing less DPS on the trash packs as you don't have a juicy LI buff from the boss. Additionally because you're running StM, you can't run talents like Void Ray or Shadow Crash to assist with AoE. That sounds more powerful in a dungeon environment than just doing a bunch of damage to the boss and doing super crappy on trash, granted there are some occasions where this can be an increase and your dungeon group comp will be a factor as well.

As for WQ, sure you can pop StM on a 40m+ HP elite, but when they start trucking you and Sol can't keep up and you have to stop and Shadowmend yourself, you're dead. That's the main reason I avoid StM outside of raids, you can't afford to cast anything else to keep up the DPS.

As I said, for me it's not about how difficult is to farm something, it's the fact that it add a 'maintenance cost'. Not a really big deal in many cases, but it still make me wonder 'Why?'.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind a QoL change for that as part of the talent. Would make killing a boss with a rune on less expensive for sure.

Maybe I've used the wrong term, what I mean is that for many, even 'outsiders', dying is bad. When someone dies, he's bad. Players become disgruntled because there is that priest to ress, and so on. Little things maybe, but I remember players angry and worried about these kind of problems.

Well, most groups I've run in pug wise where I've used StM understand why I die. If they don't i'll explain, if they kick, meh new group time. Usually i'll just ask when I join a group if they understand how StM works and that it kills me and majority of the time I get a yes in response.

Didn't the ability tooltip say that the priest 'surrenders his soul to the old gods' during alpha/beta? For many, the priest should be a class based on a strong force of will, that lets us stay on the verge of madness (a concept that by the way doesn't appeal to me - why madness = machinegun power?), and this talents sound like 'fuck that, I let go'. If you interpretation is correct, why should we 'let the old gods use us'? In my opinion the SP concept is a bit confused right now and StM doesn't sound like something that makes our characters strong, but puppets.


As I said many months ago, I would really like if spells/effects of shadow priest didn't require us to find an interpretation and to imagine what's happening.

Well you have to remember the devs shoved this new class fantasy design down our throats. I think you're thinking as surrender as a term of weakness. A shadow priest is constantly toeing the edge of insanity by channeling the power of the old gods. Something our dagger mentions quite often is how the power of the old gods corrupts those who use it, but not us...yet. With StM we're not exactly saying "fuck that, I let go", but more of I'm giving my body to the old gods as a conduit of their power. The price of which is most likely death as it takes an extreme toll on the body. We aren't letting the old god's use us necessarily, but we're opening the flood gates in terms of channeling their power.

At least that's how I see it.

[Naga Coatl]

Sure, but then it would become the default talent literally everywhere and that's not something we really want. I'm fine with it being fantastic in raids, we've needed a real CD ever since they took away Dark Archangel. I don't think StM was really the answer though.

Eh, that's an issue for me. A cd that must have such a long cd to be balanced (and again, this makes it useful in only specific settings) for me is badly designed. I agree with you, StM is not the answer - I'd say it's the problem, now.

Let's think about your most powerful option.

You run StM and do 300k on the boss, then die. In mythic+ this means -5 on the timer, and you're doing less DPS on the trash packs as you don't have a juicy LI buff from the boss. Additionally because you're running StM, you can't run talents like Void Ray or Shadow Crash to assist with AoE. That sounds more powerful in a dungeon environment than just doing a bunch of damage to the boss and doing super crappy on trash, granted there are some occasions where this can be an increase and your dungeon group comp will be a factor as well.

As for WQ, sure you can pop StM on a 40m+ HP elite, but when they start trucking you and Sol can't keep up and you have to stop and Shadowmend yourself, you're dead. That's the main reason I avoid StM outside of raids, you can't afford to cast anything else to keep up the DPS.

We agree here - What I meant was not 'I want to use StM always', but a generic 'I'd like to have strong options, and not being forced to use two subpar talents because the only very strong talent is raid-only'. That's one of the balancing problems StM brings, we are seemingly balanced around that, and in a specific portion of the game. I feel we shouldn't have to have that kind of compromise.

Well you have to remember the devs shoved this new class fantasy design down our throats. I think you're thinking as surrender as a term of weakness. A shadow priest is constantly toeing the edge of insanity by channeling the power of the old gods. Something our dagger mentions quite often is how the power of the old gods corrupts those who use it, but not us...yet. With StM we're not exactly saying "fuck that, I let go", but more of I'm giving my body to the old gods as a conduit of their power. The price of which is most likely death as it takes an extreme toll on the body. We aren't letting the old god's use us necessarily, but we're opening the flood gates in terms of channeling their power.

I still think that even with our rewor, they haven't been clear enough about what a SP 'is', what it does, and so on. We're not evil cultist, yet we fiddle with old gods, evil daggers, we surrender to the old gods, and we are based around a very (in my opinion) mage/warlock feeling mechanic of 'powerlust' while spamming spells. I love the idea of old gods, but I find it very unclear for now. We already had this conversation during alpha so I don't think it's useful to repeat everything, but I'm disappointed about we are mostly 'shadow mages' that spam damaging spells. When I read about old god, I imagined cool spells like manipulations, illusions, insanity on others, deception, eyes/tentacles... You know, the good ol' old god stuff we were used to. Not a old god powered machinegun that does stuff that the game doesn't explain/represent well - for example, why our plethora of 'mind' spells just do damage? Couldn't they be a bit more creative?

Sorry for the little 'rant', anyways.

[Djriff]

Eh, that's an issue for me. A cd that must have such a long cd to be balanced (and again, this makes it useful in only specific settings) for me is badly designed. I agree with you, StM is not the answer - I'd say it's the problem, now.

It's good design to not have all talents be absolutely viable everywhere, however it leads to cookie cutter builds and you don't really feel like you have a choice. This problem is mainly only for classes with 1 DPS spec and it's plagued shadow priests for years. We can't just swap specs for PvP if we want to damage, especially with this huge artifact wall now.

We agree here - What I meant was not 'I want to use StM always', but a generic 'I'd like to have strong options, and not being forced to use two subpar talents because the only very strong talent is raid-only'. That's one of the balancing problems StM brings, we are seemingly balanced around that, and in a specific portion of the game. I feel we shouldn't have to have that kind of compromise.

Adversely, I feel that melee AoE + Survivability is overtuned and shadow priests are actually how combat pacing should be. I know that sounds terrible, but you shouldn't be able to pull 8+ mobs and mow them down like the vast majority of classes can do. You should have to stop and heal if you're fighting an elite, and you should have to watch how much you pull, that's good design. They just need to bring the other classes to bear.

That aside, Mind Spike isn't a terrible talent outside of raids, hell you do comparable DPS until you actually pop StM.

I still think that even with our rewor, they haven't been clear enough about what a SP 'is', what it does, and so on. We're not evil cultist, yet we fiddle with old gods, evil daggers, we surrender to the old gods, and we are based around a very (in my opinion) mage/warlock feeling mechanic of 'powerlust' while spamming spells. I love the idea of old gods, but I find it very unclear for now. We already had this conversation during alpha so I don't think it's useful to repeat everything, but I'm disappointed about we are mostly 'shadow mages' that spam damaging spells. When I read about old god, I imagined cool spells like manipulations, illusions, insanity on others, deception, eyes/tentacles... You know, the good ol' old god stuff we were used to. Not a old god powered machinegun that does stuff that the game doesn't explain/represent well - for example, why our plethora of 'mind' spells just do damage? Couldn't they be a bit more creative?

Sorry for the little 'rant', anyways.

The problem mainly is that in terms of class fantasy, gameplay > lore. Sure it would make a lot more sense lorewise if we did all of that, but how the hell would you play that? How would a tank manage to control something if you're driving it insane and making it untauntable? Deception could work a lot, hell that's literally Spectral Guise (still upset about that). They gave us tentacles, then scaled them back (bad move imo). I honestly would love to be in the middle of combat with something and just have a crazy amount of tentacles spawning around me and someone to stop and say whoa wtf.

[Naga Coatl]

Sure it would make a lot more sense lorewise if we did all of that, but how the hell would you play that? How would a tank manage to control something if you're driving it insane and making it untauntable?

It does not need to do something like that, it could also be something that only works with lesser mobs like the majority of CCs - or players. I don't think that it would be impossible by default, it just needs a bit of 'color'. Hell, warlocks drain and swapped souls, making someone go insane is almost like catching a cold in Azeroth! :P

[l33t]

The problem mainly is that in terms of class fantasy, gameplay > lore. Sure it would make a lot more sense lorewise if we did all of that, but how the hell would you play that? How would a tank manage to control something if you're driving it insane and making it untauntable? Deception could work a lot, hell that's literally Spectral Guise (still upset about that). They gave us tentacles, then scaled them back (bad move imo). I honestly would love to be in the middle of combat with something and just have a crazy amount of tentacles spawning around me and someone to stop and say whoa wtf.

Bah. Players give hundreds of propositions, surely a multibillion company with decades of experience in game development can think about something. Problem is, they just don't want to. Like, you know, one could look at Mesmer in Guild wars to see how a class based on mind manipulations can be made in games. Moreso, they could add flavor abilities, like for example druids have a toy to charm an animal critter - we could use a toy to drive a critter insane. We could definitely use more tentacles in our spell animations. Talented mind control should be baseline, and yes it should work in pvp, since if warlock can drain our soul, we should be able to break warlock's mind and control him. Etc, etc.

Me personally believe that Blizz secretly don't want to make shadow priests great to force people who play priests to play healers instead.

[Djriff]

The pacing of guild wars combat and mechanics is entirely different from wow, but I get your point. I loved guild wars and played it for years even after it died. While it would be cool to have something like that built in to our class, it would create a dozen other problems for us as well.

For example look at RoW, it increased damage on the target when you channeled mind flay. I would love something like that, but outside of ST fights, it was the bane of our existence. I wouldn't like mechanics that tie down a ST, however if we had something similar to say an AoE spread dot that functions like Devouring Plague use to, except on all mobs in a 10 yard radius, that would be a great talent.

MC works in PvP, but the talented portion that lets us make them our pet for 7 seconds would 1) be wayyy undertuned for a 5m CD, and 2) be OP as hell in arenas.

[l33t]

MC works in PvP, but the talented portion that lets us make them our pet for 7 seconds would 1) be wayyy undertuned for a 5m CD, and 2) be OP as hell in arenas.

Honestly, I think we deserved to be OP as fuck. It was our grand rework, dammit!

[Blackmorgrim]

StM's stack limit and torrent no longer increasing stacks will probably happen, but not until 7.1, when shadowform is introduced. Blizzard's current goal is to attempt to no longer have StM have such a dominating presence, and make both LotV and possibly Mind Spike competitive/viable choices for raiding.

Thus far the devs don't seem to be too concerned about mind sear effectively making mind spike obsolete at this point, which is making me hopeful that at some point, we may get a nice surprise like we did in MoP when shadow word: insanity was introduced.

[Deleted]

From mmo-champion.com/content/5995-Patch-7-1-PTR-Build-22685

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the notes, but are we getting an increase in buffs? I'm mainly thinking of:

Shadowform Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage dealt by 10%, and reducing your Physical damage taken by 10%. However, you may not cast any Holy spells while in this form. Priest - Shadow Spec. Instant. 1.5 sec cooldown. Priest - Shadow Spec. Instant.

Which is the 10% buff as previously announced. However:

Voidform (Shadow) Intensifies your Shadowform Twists your Shadowform with the powers of the Void, increasing all damage you deal by 20% 30%, reducing the cooldown on Mind Blast by 3 sec, and granting an additional 1% Haste every 1 sec.

This hints that VF will boost our damage by 30%, on top of the already 10% from Shadowform - will we get an increase from todays 20% to 40% (10% + 30%) in 7.1?
Sounds pretty insane tbh (although a welcome change).

[Djriff]

i think it's still only 30%, just updated tooltips. Not on PTR atm, but can anyone confirm?

[Drdoelloos]

What if instead of dying to S2M your soul is consumed by the old gods and you'r trapt in a void bubble. Where you are unable to move until the end of the fight / going out of combat.
Same effect but less costs for repairs and food/runes.

Or make S2M baseline and change the talent so you have the option not to die at the end.