New 7.1 Shadow notes.

[RsinRC]

The real problem is Mind Spike.

If you nerf MH the whole spec goes to shit. It is the bread and butter to Shadow.

LotV is good but def needs flair. I propose Void Lord and LotV to be combined. Though I suspect it to be op, Void Lord isn't worth a talent spot.

Void Lord should be replaced by Mind Spike if they decide to keep MS.

I feel that StM should def stay as a talent. The one talent that should become baseline is Shadow Crash. If SC does stay as a talent it should no doubt scale with haste even if it means nerfing it's damage. Why? When I first leveled, SC was strong because almost everytime I re-entered VF, SC was off cd. It went with the rotation. Now I'm barely outside of Void Form with 40s+ (with LotV) VF's. Anything that lets you stay in VF the longest and allows you less time outside of VF is king. In it's current form Shadow Crash cannot keep up or compete anymore.

StM should stay as is as it still has a 10m cd. The only acceptable nerf would be if they lower the CD but at that point it will lose all of it's glory. Dont touch StM.

In PvP, the scrapped talent Oblivion should make a return and should not be able to be used while already in Void Form. If still too powerful the alternative to some how instantly apply your dot on a cd should be helpful.

[Maues]

I'm at work atm, so I can't really. That's interesting though. I wonder what's the issue with the datamining then.

"Misleading datamining", which is the exact phrase used by Celestalon used, could also mean that despite the changes(nerfs) being real our overall damage will stay the same(due to shadowform bonus dmg).

So there might not be an issue with datamining, just people not considering that we also get a 10% dmg buff.

[Djriff]

That's just it though, isn't it? What people really want is all the weaknesses shored up with as little change as possible where we are strong.

There's a lot of difference in being viable and having StM be the only viable thing by a land slide. Personally I wouldn't mind it if StM went away or at least the death mechanic so that if I happen to have to sneeze or have a lag spike I won't just keel over >>

And yet, people refer to S2M in almost every single SP nerf discussion, scroll up to see it. Is it worth the risk of butchering one fun talent in the hope that they will make the other two viable? When they have absolutely built the entire class around one talent, it just seems worrying that they would do any radical changes to it, a flat nerf to MH while keeping it's cap at 100 stacks will be reasonable. On top of that, we had prepatch, beta, alpha, lots of youtube videos on the new SP and if people hadn't figured it out by then that the whole class is tailored to one mode of damage and STILL rolled a SP, before complaining about it... it does not make sense.

StM itself isn't a problem though, if you take away Mass Hysteria it's no where near as OP. The only reason people say StM is an issue is because it's such a potent combination that anything else that we can choose to take doesn't even come close. As Ilir said right below your post, tons of people brought up the issue during alpha/beta and said "Hey you should address this before it goes live" and everyone got ignored :/

I don't see why it wouldn't, hurting our haste hurts our ability to maintain voidform and thus everything that comes with it, the legendaries are making insanity generation so trivial and that should not be the case, it should be harder. The only nerf I could see coming to MH while keeping with their promise of "maintaining VF for a long time to feel rewarding" is to keep it's cap at 100 stacks, and again this is absolutely fine.

When they changed fire mages they changed it so that they don't scale as well with crit but can still do well yeah? If they did that with shadow we would just go find more haste stuff and it wouldn't change a whole lot. With more haste in Nighthold ilvl gear we'd be right back here to begin with. Besides the fact I think it's a bad idea since our class entirely revolves around haste and changing the scaling on it would set the community on fire imo.

Block out the leveling experience? Not sure what you mean here, we will be out gearing the current trash mobs rather quickly (not including the surarmar city stuff), but for leveling? If you're fighting something that lasts 8secs, chances are you're probably fighting more than one of them, and if you're not pull more to make the most of VF? I didn't find myself not popping VF during my leveling experience.

I find that interesting, I came into Legion fully geared from Mythic HFC and if I pulled more than 2-3 mobs to take advantage of Voidform I would need to heal myself, kits, etc etc rather than just take advantage of my damage boost. You can't say it wasn't a problem since I distinctly remember people complaining about it.

When I leveled a fresh 680 on beta it was a much worse experience since mobs lived from 14-18 seconds which still wasn't enough time to get Voidform up before they died.

Why should we have something every other class can do? I thought the idea of shadow priest was powerful damage over time on 2-3 targets and ST. You can weave your VF stacks between packs in dungeon's since lingering persists for 60secs, which results in incredible damage on the next pack and so on through a quicker VF transition, the only thing we lack is damage on large trash packs in comparison to DH/DK's etc and that's OK as those are few and far between. There needs to be a line drawn on what classes/specs are tailored for, having every class good at everything just dilutes the experience.

I'm not saying we need to be OP, but there should be something talent wise that we can use to tailor our AoE while sacrificing our ST. Shadow Crash is suppose to be that answer, but honestly you'll get better DPS out of PI and dotting than you would with SC and dots and that's just not good. What's wrong with wanting something that actually makes us not a pariah in lower mythic + where several people have said it's difficult to find groups as shadow?

The real problem is Mind Spike.

MSp is actually a ST gain over LotV, but you'll never run into that situation. So it's still a problem.

If you nerf MH the whole spec goes to shit. It is the bread and butter to Shadow.

Therein lies the issue that was brought up several times on Beta.

LotV is good but def needs flair. I propose Void Lord and LotV to be combined. Though I suspect it to be op, Void Lord isn't worth a talent spot.

Void Lord is actually quite good in dungeons with the Legendary Shoulders.

I feel that StM should def stay as a talent. The one talent that should become baseline is Shadow Crash. If SC does stay as a talent it should no doubt scale with haste even if it means nerfing it's damage. Why? When I first leveled, SC was strong because almost everytime I re-entered VF, SC was off cd. It went with the rotation. Now I'm barely outside of Void Form with 40s+ (with LotV) VF's. Anything that lets you stay in VF the longest and allows you less time outside of VF is king. In it's current form Shadow Crash cannot keep up or compete anymore.

It definitely needs a buff as it's dead last in the row. StM is a nice talent, but honestly I feel it should be baseline so that way the lvl 100 row can actually be balanced.

StM should stay as is as it still has a 10m cd. The only acceptable nerf would be if they lower the CD but at that point it will lose all of it's glory. Dont touch StM.

Lowering the CD on StM would actually be great for dungeons, so that would be a gain.

[Woop Woop]

A bandaid fix for shadow in dungeons could be a StM cd buff indeed, maybe increase the debuff timer you get so it can't be abused (probably can't anyway though)

[davesignal]

I hope 7.2 kill S2M dead. Fucking consign that thing to the dustbin of history, stop trying to be 'clever' when designing Shadow and just make an effective, straight-forward dot spec with some sort of buff management mechanic.

Shit, bring back snap-shotting for Shadow only if you need some gimmick.

[Wyviner]

An important thing to keep in mind with regards to shadow priests topping the meters in most fights is whether we should be or not. Does it really make any sense at all that we are? I've played a shadow priest since TBC as my main, but never at any point did I expect to be the top DPS class. I know everyone wants to be the best, and that's fine, but at some point you have to accept your role.

Every class in this game can be categorized by how many DPS specs they have. Priest is one of the few classes that only has 1 DPS spec. The other three classes are Paladin with Retribution, and Demon Hunter with Havoc, and Monk with Windwalker. In the case of the latter 3, all of them have a tanking off specs, which could be considered a 0.5 DPS spec, which could make them a 1.5 DPS. Technically in this expansion, you can now look at priest as being a 1.5 as well with Disc, but not previously to this expansion.

Anyways. The point is, depending on how you cut it, priest could be considered THE class with the least amount of DPSing experience, and yet, we're number 1 right now. If you were a mage, warlock, hunter or rogue with 3 specs purely devoted to DPSing, how would you feel knowing a priest is beating you every time, at the only thing you can do?

Let's flip this a bit. What if shadow priests didn't exist, and instead priests had a third healing spec. Essentially being a pure healing class. Then you went into a raid, and a holy pally, who could also have picked to DPS or tank, beats you on the healing meters every fight. Your first thought would be, "Why the **** am I playing a priest if healing is the only thing I can do, and am I losing to a holy pally who has the variety of multiple roles?" It's the same concept.

Priest should never, ever, be topping any list for DPS. That's a fact. It's a fact that a person playing a priest should just accept. I'm not saying a shadow priest needs to be the worst, not at all. But whether you like it or not, a pure DPS class should always be topping the meters, all other things being equal, and if that's not the case, something is wrong with the design of the game. You'd be embarrassing yourself to think otherwise.

[davesignal]

You're arguing in favor of the hybrid tax, which is a universally panned concept among anyone who isn't a pure DPS.

Fly back to the mage forums at your earliest convenience.

[Wyviner]

You're arguing in favor of the hybrid tax, which is a universally panned concept among anyone who isn't a pure DPS.

Fly back to the mage forums at your earliest convenience.

I said...

I've played a shadow priest since TBC as my main, but...

You'd be embarrassing yourself to think otherwise.

I did warn you, but stop embarrassing yourself.

Hybrid tax sounds extreme. I'm not saying the differences have to be drastic, but to think the game is okay with a shadow priest sitting at the top is embarrassing, seriously. Like, really embarrassing.

[hablix]

If we're mad about spriests being top DPS, then we should be outraged that holy priests are not the undisputed masters of healing.

[Clrg]

An important thing to keep in mind with regards to shadow priests topping the meters in most fights is whether we should be or not. Does it really make any sense at all that we are? I've played a shadow priest since TBC as my main, but never at any point did I expect to be the top DPS class. I know everyone wants to be the best, and that's fine, but at some point you have to accept your role.

Every class in this game can be categorized by how many DPS specs they have. Priest is one of the few classes that only has 1 DPS spec. The other three classes are Paladin with Retribution, and Demon Hunter with Havoc, and Monk with Windwalker. In the case of the latter 3, all of them have a tanking off specs, which could be considered a 0.5 DPS spec, which could make them a 1.5 DPS. Technically in this expansion, you can now look at priest as being a 1.5 as well with Disc, but not previously to this expansion.

Anyways. The point is, depending on how you cut it, priest could be considered THE class with the least amount of DPSing experience, and yet, we're number 1 right now. If you were a mage, warlock, hunter or rogue with 3 specs purely devoted to DPSing, how would you feel knowing a priest is beating you every time, at the only thing you can do?

Let's flip this a bit. What if shadow priests didn't exist, and instead priests had a third healing spec. Essentially being a pure healing class. Then you went into a raid, and a holy pally, who could also have picked to DPS or tank, beats you on the healing meters every fight. Your first thought would be, "Why the **** am I playing a priest if healing is the only thing I can do, and am I losing to a holy pally who has the variety of multiple roles?" It's the same concept.

Priest should never, ever, be topping any list for DPS. That's a fact. It's a fact that a person playing a priest should just accept. I'm not saying a shadow priest needs to be the worst, not at all. But whether you like it or not, a pure DPS class should always be topping the meters, all other things being equal, and if that's not the case, something is wrong with the design of the game. You'd be embarrassing yourself to think otherwise.

notabaitatall.jpeg

[davesignal]

I said...




I did warn you, but stop embarrassing yourself.

Hybrid tax sounds extreme. I'm not saying the differences have to be drastic, but to think the game is okay with a shadow priest sitting at the top is embarrassing, seriously. Like, really embarrassing.

You did indeed say that. You're either lying, or arguing against your own self interest as a priest.

Why is it embarrassing? You simply stating it is does not make it thus; expand on precisely what is so seemingly self-evidently embarrassing.

[Kilee25]

When I first rolled a priest in vanilla, that was actually my thoughts. Priests had two healing specs from which to build from. I was actually frustrated when I discovered the other classes could heal. Likewise, I thought the dps tree was supposed to be just for quests and solo content. Ha...

Anyway, I don't agree that priests should always be behind other dps classes... Also the nature of their damage means you can't take too many because you wouldn't be able to get to execute range due to low dps during the rest of the fight. So even if they can technically do more damage, it doesn't render different types of other dps classes irrelevant, so (at least for now) I don't think there's a problem.

But if you fix the other areas that we are weak in, it would probably be a big deal. If there's no drawback to playing an spriest whatsoever, then yeah you'd just take as many as you can...

[blargh312]

I did warn you, but stop embarrassing yourself.

Hybrid tax sounds extreme. I'm not saying the differences have to be drastic, but to think the game is okay with a shadow priest sitting at the top is embarrassing, seriously. Like, really embarrassing.

"The game" isn't okay with it though, at least not to the extent that shadow is beating everyone else right now. Blizz has basically said shadow with STM is broken and they want to remove/rework it ASAP.

[Wyviner]

"The game" isn't okay with it though, at least not to the extent that shadow is beating everyone else right now. Blizz has basically said shadow with STM is broken and they want to remove/rework it ASAP.

Yeah I know. It just seems like there are a few misguided posters here who believe that priests topping the DPS meters is perfectly acceptable. Blizzard knows otherwise, most of us know otherwise, and I certainly know otherwise. So I was just sorting out the facts and the beliefs.

Look, I'm not saying priests should suck, but I'm realistic, they shouldn't be the best DPSers either. In a perfect world every class would be balanced perfectly against every other one, and all player skills aside, each class would perform exactly the same on the meters. This would be boring though, and obviously impossible to implement.

So someone has to be better, someone has to be worse. It makes far more sense for the classes that special in something to be better at that thing than classes that don't specialize in that thing. A warlock / mage / hunter / rogue specializes in damage. A priest does not.

And I am completely outraged that holy priests aren't the best healers in PvE, and that disc priests aren't at least marginally better than other healers in PvP. But I wasn't intending to get too far off topic, just stating the fact that priests shouldn't be occupying the top DPS spot.

[blargh312]

Yeah I know. It just seems like there are a few misguided posters here who believe that priests topping the DPS meters is perfectly acceptable. Blizzard knows otherwise, most of us know otherwise, and I certainly know otherwise. So I was just sorting out the facts and the beliefs.

I don't think Blizzard's problem is with shadow topping the meters, the problem is the fact that shadow is already ~10% better than the #2 spec, and that gap will likely only get bigger as we get better gear. As it stands right now, shadow is undeniably too strong, but acknowledging that doesn't mean you think the spec should never, ever be top DPS.

[Ocedic]

Yeah I know. It just seems like there are a few misguided posters here who believe that priests topping the DPS meters is perfectly acceptable. Blizzard knows otherwise, most of us know otherwise, and I certainly know otherwise. So I was just sorting out the facts and the beliefs.

Look, I'm not saying priests should suck, but I'm realistic, they shouldn't be the best DPSers either. In a perfect world every class would be balanced perfectly against every other one, and all player skills aside, each class would perform exactly the same on the meters. This would be boring though, and obviously impossible to implement.

So someone has to be better, someone has to be worse. It makes far more sense for the classes that special in something to be better at that thing than classes that don't specialize in that thing. A warlock / mage / hunter / rogue specializes in damage. A priest does not.

And I am completely outraged that holy priests aren't the best healers in PvE, and that disc priests aren't at least marginally better than other healers in PvP. But I wasn't intending to get too far off topic, just stating the fact that priests shouldn't be occupying the top DPS spot.

That's just your opinion and pretty much no one accepts it aside from childish mage/hunter mains. Blizzard has given no indication that they care about specifically a 'hybrid' class being at the top. The game is long past the point of hybrids, and we all have clearly defined roles. Hell, they gave Druids a fourth spec just to differentiate feral tanks and feral DPS. Shadowpriests have given up the light and embraced the void/insanity, which has been shown to be one of the most powerful forces in the lore. If anything, it'd be weird if Shadowpriests WEREN'T the top DPS.

This is especially true now with Artifact Power. Committing to shadow is committing to damage. There's no way around it. Before you would sort of have a point if we could go respec to Holy in an instant and not be held back by AP (you would still be wrong, but you'd at least have ground to stand on.) Fact is a Balance or Ele or Feral or Shadow are all rightfully DPS now. We all queue as DPS same as a Mage or Rogue. That's just how it is, so you need to get over it.

[Wyviner]

Okay, explaining proper game design in these forums is like arguing with a religious person about science. Anyway, maybe we'll shift gears and focus more on what the talents should become to make the class more balanced in itself, and against other classes. My thoughts for the talents are this, while I haven't given a lot of thought to it, just a base point:

Surrender to Madness could become: Your lingering insanity persists for only 10 seconds after leaving void form, but is no longer reset by entering void form.

I'm not exactly sure about the timing, but it needs to be something that requires you to carefully plan your abilities in order to keep the buff going as the encounter continues. What ever amount of time it takes for the best shadow priest to exit void form and get back in, then add like 2 seconds or something. It needs to be a challenge to keep the buff up. As the fight progresses, you become more and more powerful, provided you make good decisions and don't fail to re-enter void form within the allowed time, otherwise you have to start over. While in void form you don't get any kind of additional bonuses. If need be, cap the stacking bonus at some value. It would probably require a rework of Void Lord.

Legacy of the Void: Void Form may be activated any time your insanity level is 70 or above, and makes Void Form an instant cast.

Obviously a buff, and there would need to be a new PvP talent to replace the one that already makes it an instant cast. This addresses another issue I feel is important, and that is shadow priests being too garbage in PvP without having that talent. It's a little too difficult to get into Void Form in PvP, especially world PvP if you get jumped by someone, and even if you do activate the Void Form, it's too easy to be CCed and waste it. Not having the damage boost from Void Form in PvP puts us at a disadvantage, so we need to have better access to it. All of this may not be a problem in high ranked competitive 3s, but in 2s and random world surprise PvP it would be awesome.

Mind Spike:

Last time I tried this I saw that it replaced Mind Flay, which is horrible. If anything, I feel it should be an additional spell, and one thing I thought could be really good, at least for PvP, is if the damage type was frost, so that if a shadow spell got interrupted you could still cast this. Maybe that's a little too much. Another idea would just be a totally new talent, and move Mind Spike to where Void Lord was, assuming my other talents were in place. But I haven't thought about what would be a good 3rd talent yet.

Perhaps a straight damage buff while in Void Form. One that would make this talent preferable in 5mans where the fight doesn't last long enough to benefit from my new S2M, but doesn't need instant cast Void Forms.

[Ocedic]

Okay, explaining proper game design in these forums is like arguing with a religious person about science.

I'm a professional game designer and as I mentioned Blizzard designers has given zero indication they agree with you. If anyone is being unreasonably tied to their own ideology like a religious fanatic it's you. If you can't understand why the game was broken down into 3 roles and why the design/strength of each spec should be independent of the class's other specs, you really should not be talking about 'proper game design' to anyone.

[Djriff]

Alright let's tone it down a bit in here.


@Wyviner you're basically saying hybrid tax should exist, which would piss off a lot of shadow priests if it did. Are we OP atm yes, should we be brought back in line a little bit? Yes. Should we be top3 DPS? Yes if you preform well, no reason there should be 20k gaps between players consistently on different fights.

[davesignal]

Let's remember that, by and large, your rank and file shadow priest is not OP. The very tippy-top end of shadow players, the ones who can fully abuse Surrender to Madness, are OP. People who lack the internet connection, frames, or physical capacity to capitalize on and abuse S2M are, emphatically, not.

The top ten parses on Mythic Ursoc are not representative of a vast majority of people playing the spec.