[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Deleted]

honestly the easiest way would probably have been to simply change the Mass Hysteria trait to something else entirely. It fixes the entire problem with StM without clunky caps or anything.
Then buff LotV and Mindspike to something competitive.

Or that, yes. Tho I rather have MH nerfed than having something completely new...I rather not have another meh major trait, seeing how deeply blizzard seems to be involved with shadow, we might get something that buffs shadow mend as major trait.

[l33t]

honestly the easiest way would probably have been to simply change the Mass Hysteria trait to something else entirely. It fixes the entire problem with StM without clunky caps or anything.
Then buff LotV and Mindspike to something competitive.

I hope you do realise that most damage we deal is because of Mass Hysteria trait, don't you? Remove that, and we quickly end where healers are in recount.

What really should be done is buffing LoTV and replacing the mind spike absurdity with real talent. I'd just give more passive damage increase for LoTV, like, extra 20% or 30%, and dot spreader instead of mind shike. This will give those of us who hate stm crap an actual choice. Unlike now @ ptr. If we deal as much damage as other specs as the result of these nerfs, then the die part of stm should fucking go away as well. I see very small logic in wasting hundreds of thousands of gold over extra repairs, foods and runes just to deal maybe as much damage as some pleb mage in the end.

[Gorsameth]

I hope you do realise that most damage we deal is because of Mass Hysteria trait, don't you? Remove that, and we quickly end where healers are in recount.

MH + StM breaks the game.
easiest way to fix it is to chance/remove MH since some people like the StM playstyle.

Obviously as with any mechanics change numbers will have to be tuned to arrive at the right balance.
So yes, by changings/removing MH the base numbers of shadow will probably have to go up.

2 minute long voidforms are not a problem in and of itself. Its only when you combine it with MH that is becomes insane damage.

[Segus1992]

long rant

You forgot to consider the fact that the new version scales with Mass Hysteria and Mastery, neither of which Mind Sear did, as far as I know.

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God am I glad I rerolled away from my Spriest.

The Mind spike change is Oo considering how heavily our spec is based around dots, we are trying to extend their duration, not blow them up.
Its entire niche is trash that dies slow enough so you can get a full round of dots in and have them tick down but fast enough that you don't want to re-apply them or extend them with voidforms.
GG

And after the complaints that 3 seconds was to short and killed the fun side of the spec where you keep a dot rolling throughout the entire fight they reduce it to 2...
Because casting dots is fun!

As expected and feared.
Blizzard does not have a clue how to play or balance Shadow.

"Not every talent boosts our baseline idea of Shadow! GG Blizz." Spoken like a true intellectual pioneer.

Mind Spike was, from the start, intended to give burst AoE damage. Now it's actually useful.

The spec is built around DoTs, though with enough haste (in the right situation) on Live, you only have to cast them for new targets. Doesn't sound like a DoT spec to me.

[Gorsameth]

The spec is built around DoTs, though with enough haste (in the right situation) on Live, you only have to cast them for new targets. Doesn't sound like a DoT spec to me.

Which is why Affliction warlocks, a dot spec, has a talent to make one of their dots permanent right?
Applying dots is not 'fun'.

[dude1903]

I wanted to try Sorrowsong trinket from Tolvir TW, so far it didn't proc at all. Anyone able to test it, did they somehow disable the proc ?

[l33t]

MH + StM breaks the game.
easiest way to fix it is to chance/remove MH since some people like the StM playstyle.

Obviously as with any mechanics change numbers will have to be tuned to arrive at the right balance.
So yes, by changings/removing MH the base numbers of shadow will probably have to go up.

2 minute long voidforms are not a problem in and of itself. Its only when you combine it with MH that is becomes insane damage.

MH greatly buffs the damage of LotV as well. Remove it, and we'll end in a healer's zone in recount. Actually, MH is the only one trait of our artifact which matters. Other gold traits could very well be nonexistent...

Also: should we have CoP back? I know a shitton of people who enjoyed that playstyle as well, you know.

[Gorsameth]

MH greatly buffs the damage of LotV as well. Remove it, and we'll end in a healer's zone in recount.

Also: should we have CoP back? I know a shitton of people who enjoyed that playstyle as well, you know.

I will highlight it for you since you seem to have problems with reading

MH + StM breaks the game.
easiest way to fix it is to chance/remove MH since some people like the StM playstyle.

Obviously as with any mechanics change numbers will have to be tuned to arrive at the right balance.
So yes, by changings/removing MH the base numbers of shadow will probably have to go up.

2 minute long voidforms are not a problem in and of itself. Its only when you combine it with MH that is becomes insane damage.

and yes I would have no problem if they replaced Mind Spike with CoP. whats your point?

Edit:
And as an added bonus after a removed MH and number rebalance we will probably have more dps outside of voidform which is sorely needed.

[kalaratic]

it's actually pretty cool that blizzard gives us the opportunity to poke around with a dead corpse on the PTR. we have this glimpse of the future where we know we're gonna die but the scary part is we don't know the date

[Gorsameth]

it's actually pretty cool that blizzard gives us the opportunity to poke around with a dead corpse on the PTR. we have this glimpse of the future where we know we're gonna die but the scary part is we don't know the date

Considering that new PvP season is slated for the December 13e, I would expect 7.1.5 there aswell.

[GT4]

I bet you'll make up a not-insignificant amount of damage purely from the fact that you're not using the old Mind Sear. The old Mind Sear did not line up with our GCD-based rotation, and especially in Voidform this would result in a lot of dead space from clipping the channel in unfortunate places to cast higher priority spells. Mind Flay, obviously, jives with our GCD-based rotation and so you will very rarely clip Mind Flay poorly-- in fact, it's very difficult to clip Mind Flay channels anyone BUT immediately after a tick (the most ideal place to do so).

In any event, to the idea that the spec is becoming easier to play but performing worse at the very high end.. yeah, I kind of think that's the point. Shadow is very rewarding if you're an extremely high-end player (let's be frank: a high end raider), and very unrewarding if you're anything else. So rewarding, in fact, that it's breaking the game balance over it's knee with stuff like Surrender to Madness, creating a vast gulf between good players and great players. Vaster than any other class, perhaps at any point in the game.

Blizzard doesn't want that. Good players should get good results, great players should get great results. Right now, good players are getting shit results, great players are getting absolutely fucking insane results.

All these changes are clearly meant to reduce the variance.

You're completely missing the current state of SPs.

The changes to mind sear affect purely AoE (and to a lesser degree stacked cleave) where SPs are already extremely underperforming even when played by the best players in the world. This is a huge problem in lower M+ but also in higher ones depending on a lot of factors. At the same time, it can make solo play as a SP very punishing compared to other classes (it's already punishing to begin with given how void form works) because all those small adds that most classes can oneshot take ages for SPs to kill.

Not only is AoE affected negatively by the changes (which already makes no sense given how weak SP AoE is), it's actually suffering the most in scenarios where it was already the worst previously: Outside of void form (losing lingering insanity) and against very low HP enemies (now have to apply SW:P and cast on a target with SW:P to AoE).

So yeah, you're reducing the variance but since we're talking about AoE here you're reducing the variance from "quasi non-existant to horrible depending on skill" to "quasi non-existant to barely existant depending on skill".

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You forgot to consider the fact that the new version scales with Mass Hysteria and Mastery, neither of which Mind Sear did, as far as I know.

You forgot to check the actual PTR before calling my post filled with facts based on evidence a "rant" and replying with your made up bullshit. The current PTR version of mind sear scales with neither mastery nor mass hysteria and that's absolutely trivial to test as well (aside from being obvious from the tooltips).

Also, going by your comments about mind spike, it's obvious you have not even bothered checking out the PTR or the datamined changes and you're just blindly defending Blizzard in your fanboyism. The PTR version of mind spike is now very comparable to LotV: Rarely/barely useful at all, clunky to use and a significant DPS loss if used only slightly incorrectly. Compared to LotV, however, it's now basically useless for single target and for AoE it's still a joke compared to what even weaker AoE specs have.

[Nyel]

I will highlight it for you since you seem to have problems with reading

MH + StM breaks the game.
easiest way to fix it is to chance/remove MH since some people like the StM playstyle.

No. If you remove Mass Hysteria you need to give all the players that don't use StM something similar or better than that. StM is the problem, Mass Hysteria is just a symptom of the problem StM is. They could change MH to only 1% damage per second when using StM but would it solve our issues? Don't think so.

[methz]

The current PTR version of mind sear scales with neither mastery nor mass hysteria and that's absolutely trivial to test as well (aside from being obvious from the tooltips).

Mind sear now effectively just radiates a portion of your dot damage, so the stronger your dots (mastery), the more damage radiates.

[GT4]

Mind sear now effectively just radiates a portion of your dot damage, so the stronger your dots (mastery), the more damage radiates.

It doesn't. For god's sake, can people who haven't even checked out the current PTR or the datamined changes not spread their bullshit?

This is the current iteration:
When Mind Flay deals damage, if the target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, it deals [ 40% of Spell Power ] damage to all nearby targets.

Generates 1 Insanity per target hit.

It's a passive in your spell book and has nothing to do with either mastery or mass hysteria.

[methz]

It doesn't. For god's sake, can people who haven't even checked out the current PTR or the datamined changes not spread their bullshit?

Okay, then I misread it. No need to be a cunt. It's a discussion forum, not the ten commandments.

[Segus1992]

Which is why Affliction warlocks, a dot spec, has a talent to make one of their dots permanent right?
Applying dots is not 'fun'.

One, out of their baseline three. One of the DoTs is even their resource spenders.

33% of their baseline DoTs via an optional talent vs 100% of their DoTs (baseline or not). Both are DoT specs. Surely even you see the problem here.

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You forgot to check the actual PTR before calling my post filled with facts based on evidence a "rant" and replying with your made up bullshit. The current PTR version of mind sear scales with neither mastery nor mass hysteria and that's absolutely trivial to test as well (aside from being obvious from the tooltips).

Also, going by your comments about mind spike, it's obvious you have not even bothered checking out the PTR or the datamined changes and you're just blindly defending Blizzard in your fanboyism. The PTR version of mind spike is now very comparable to LotV: Rarely/barely useful at all, clunky to use and a significant DPS loss if used only slightly incorrectly. Compared to LotV, however, it's now basically useless for single target and for AoE it's still a joke compared to what even weaker AoE specs have.

Unwedge the stick that's so far up your ass and calm down before you have an aneurysm. If it didn't scale with MH and Mastery prior to the latest PTR build, then at least the wording strongly implied it.

[Gorsameth]

No. If you remove Mass Hysteria you need to give all the players that don't use StM something similar or better than that. StM is the problem, Mass Hysteria is just a symptom of the problem StM is. They could change MH to only 1% damage per second when using StM but would it solve our issues? Don't think so.

Why does StM do the insane damage it does?

Because it allows the Mass Hysteria to stack to high and maintain those stacks for to long.

Just voidform itself it not the problem. And a long voidform from StM is not the problem. Its when you combine it with the stacking damage increase from MH that it gets out of control.
So you can nerf StM sofar that its not worth anything anymore (or it will remain OP/become OP again as gear increases) or you can attack the root cause. Mass Hysteria.

And yes ofcourse you need to replace it with something else worthy of being a gold trait. And ofcourse you need to balance the numbers around MH not existing.

If you think MH is not the problem but StM then I would love to hear your reasoning for this.

[Deleted]

Would we be totally fine if there was a clause in S2M that said:

'While S2M is active, MH is 1% not 2%'

Damage outside of S2M is untouched.
MSpike is still a blank but honestly at this point who cares.
Our AoE is a kinda bad but we are still good on packs of 5 mobs, just not 10-15.

A total rework of a spec mid expansion is such a kick in the nuts for the player base.

[GT4]

Unwedge the stick that's so far up your ass and calm down before you have an aneurysm. If it didn't scale with MH and Mastery prior to the latest PTR build, then at least the wording strongly implied it.

So you base your current statements on previous builds' mechanics combined with current build's numbers? Gotta love how you make even less sense with every post. I also really enjoy how people who call you out on your imagined bullshit have a "stick that's so far up [their] ass" because obviously nobody cares about facts in a discussion anyway.

[Segus1992]

So you base your current statements on previous builds' mechanics combined with current build's numbers? Gotta love how you make even less sense with every post. I also really enjoy how people who call you out on your imagined bullshit have a "stick that's so far up [their] ass" because obviously nobody cares about facts in a discussion anyway.

Nah, calling someone out on being wrong is fine. Doing it like you were a 5 year old with Tourette's is less so.

I hadn't seen the mechanical change to Mind Flay, I'd only figured it was a nerf but that it'd still work off SW:P's actual damage.