Do Priests actually like Surrender to Madness?

[Caladia]

As a raid leader, I'm not a fan. It gets to the point in late StM that I'm unable to effectively play and communicate.

[valky94]

I liked the concept when i first saw it, thats the reason why i used my 100 boost on my priest, but when i started raiding HFC it just became boring after a week or 2 and i havent touched my priest since then, i only did the shadow artifact quest and thats it, there was even a time when i was considering rerolling to a priest, good that i decided to stay on my warlock

[Deleted]

Dislike STM, mostly because of the spec being shit everywhere except for raids thanks to it. Like you know, mythic+ - nobody wants a shadowpriest, and even with guild group I constantly feel like I am dragging my group down. Also, dem $$ bills... 1 pull of farm boss = over 1000 extra gold for me, because of rune and food costs.

You're using runes and expensive food on farmbosses...?

[BobAwesome]

Nope, That's why after playing a shadow priest for 12 years, I switched to a Warrior this expansion.

[Warlen]

I was really surprised to see Ion raving about how cool StM was and that it had great class fantasy etc etc. In the Q&A last night, as I'm personally not a big fan of it, and I don't think I've met anyone who is. Over on the Warlock forums obviously there's some animosity that SPriests got the attention first, but there's enough of us Alting SPriest to basically defend that on the premise that StM really is that bad.

Just curious to know what you guys actually thought about it?

I think S2M is extremely fun. I've always been a competitive player, and this ability truly distinguishes the players of the class. With that said, majority of the players of either end of the spectrum would be biased to the ability (read: the top end would enjoy it, while the bottom end would not, and mixed for the average player). However, we must keep in mind that the intention of Blizzard is to have "more robust alternatives" to S2M. Which I believe is the most reasonable approach. I'm willing to wager that majority of the people that have issues with S2M stems from the significant gap between S2M and LoTV's performance. Which is what they're focusing on (read: LOTV buffs).

Personally, I believed that capping Mass Hysteria would have been the least disruptive balance move on Blizzard's end. But they clearly don't believe that to be the case. And quite frankly, I have more faith on Blizzard as a whole to balance this class (as well as game) than I or practically every person that frequents these forums. They have the quantitative team to back up their ideas and changes that none of us have.

[anon5123]

Nope, I hate how it once more pidgeonholed Shadow into being great on long single-target fights but shit on everything else, including dungeons/questing.

I also hate the stupid fucking death mechanic. "Class fantasy" should be fun and interesting things, not frustrating annoyances. This isn't vanilla. Hell, even vanilla's class hindrances and such, weren't as annoying as this.

[Deleted]

I think Surrender to Madness is the main reason I took a break from this game.
I've mained a Shadow Priest since I started playing, what I liked about the spec was the consistency and not being reliant on CDs. That went out of the window with StM: your dps only depends on how you'll play when it's active, you can't talent out of it you want to be anywhere near competitive and the whole "can't miss a GCD for 2 minutes straight or you'll die" introduces a lot of stress, which frankly I wasn't looking forward to deal with every raid night.

i totally agree.Why would i play a game which puts me at a high stress lvl if i can already have enough stress at work for free? It just doesnt feel right to have this pressure on you. I called it out on the forum with no changes so i quit the game with a note on the acount setting while i cancled my account. S2M can be fun and i played it for 2 month but i dont see point in getting rushing home getting ready for raiding with all those extra efort and then have an unplesent raidnight if i missplay once or have lags/low frame rates. It just can be frustrating. If everything goes well you dont get feared , mindcontrolled or targeted by some boss mechanics it can be a high reward but it´s just not worth it for the uncomfordable feeling sometimes when you missplay or die ealy and the raid wipes because of you. In the End as i play softcore ofc i want to play a strong spec but thier are just to many downsides.

BTW i dont like the alt unfriendly Game WoW has turned into. Changes to Artefakt Power gains are way to late with patch 7.1.5. This Legendarys are also a bad game design in my eyes. They are way to important and some were/are way to good with no control gaining the OP legendarys. Combined with poor item Design were haste> 20+ item lvls on neck for example blizzard turned this game down quit a bit. It´s still good and i like it but much potential gets wasted.

[SirBeef]

I was really surprised to see Ion raving about how cool StM was and that it had great class fantasy etc etc. In the Q&A last night, as I'm personally not a big fan of it, and I don't think I've met anyone who is. Over on the Warlock forums obviously there's some animosity that SPriests got the attention first, but there's enough of us Alting SPriest to basically defend that on the premise that StM really is that bad.

Just curious to know what you guys actually thought about it?

My wife has never liked it due to and only due the dying aspect of it. The extra food, runes, and wasted time to res and re eat after every kill. She stopped using it a long time ago despite the huge DPS increase.

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BTW i dont like the alt unfriendly Game WoW has turned into. Changes to Artefakt Power gains are way to late with patch 7.1.5. This Legendarys are also a bad game design in my eyes. They are way to important and some were/are way to good with no control gaining the OP legendarys. Combined with poor item Design were haste> 20+ item lvls on neck for example blizzard turned this game down quit a bit. It´s still good and i like it but much potential gets wasted.

Not sure why people say that. My alts are not that far behind my main in terms of AK and total AP levels, at least the few I try to maintain. I have never had an easier time leveling and gearing alts since Cata. Funny that two of what people consider the most unfriendly expansions I found it easier to have alts in.

[Deleted]

My wife has never liked it due to and only due the dying aspect of it. The extra food, runes, and wasted time to res and re eat after every kill. She stopped using it a long time ago despite the huge DPS increase.

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Not sure why people say that. My alts are not that far behind my main in terms of AK and total AP levels, at least the few I try to maintain. I have never had an easier time leveling and gearing alts since Cata. Funny that two of what people consider the most unfriendly expansions I found it easier to have alts in.

The problem is if i want to change my alt to my main which just did hit lv 110 i would be just sooo far behind. No legendarys no bonus AP with 3 days reseach time while everyone else is at stage 20 ? It would take 60 days to reach the AP reseach people have now. By that time The old chars would be on reseach lvl 32 and have gaigantic more legendarys + AP. So i dont change my main and just quit. It feels that unfreindly for me.

[Leekspin]

The problem is if i want to change my alt to my main which just did hit lv 110 i would be just sooo far behind. No legendarys no bonus AP with 3 days reseach time while everyone else is at stage 20 ? It would take 60 days to reach the AP reseach people have now. By that time The old chars would be on reseach lvl 32 and have gaigantic more legendarys + AP. So i dont change my main and just quit. It feels that unfreindly for me.

Artifact Knowledge is capped at 25, no one will be researching level 32

I was really surprised to see Ion raving about how cool StM was and that it had great class fantasy etc etc. In the Q&A last night, as I'm personally not a big fan of it, and I don't think I've met anyone who is. Over on the Warlock forums obviously there's some animosity that SPriests got the attention first, but there's enough of us Alting SPriest to basically defend that on the premise that StM really is that bad.

Just curious to know what you guys actually thought about it?

Personally I hate StM as it can't possibly be balanced or no one would take it. Also taking the talent locks you in to certain talents and not running it makes people think you don't know how to play shadow priest

[l33t]

You're using runes and expensive food on farmbosses...?

Yes. How else do you get into high rankings?

[Tradu]

It's the one thing that takes the rather boring baseline Shadow spec and turns it into one of my favorite specs. It obviously causes balance issues,and capping Mass Hysteria would be the easiest fix to it, probably, but they refuse for no good reason(saying "capping it would feel artificial" is bullshit when it's already capped and when they capped Quickening for Arcane as well)

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My wife has never liked it due to and only due the dying aspect of it. The extra food, runes, and wasted time to res and re eat after every kill. She stopped using it a long time ago despite the huge DPS increase.

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Not sure why people say that. My alts are not that far behind my main in terms of AK and total AP levels, at least the few I try to maintain. I have never had an easier time leveling and gearing alts since Cata. Funny that two of what people consider the most unfriendly expansions I found it easier to have alts in.

It's "easy" to have alts if you levelled them early, but currently when you hit 110, you can gear them up insanely quickly, but then you're still stuck with a trash artifact for over a month.

[Forsay]

StM made me quit shadow, so no
should be a poll

[Jessicka]

It's "easy" to have alts if you levelled them early, but currently when you hit 110, you can gear them up insanely quickly, but then you're still stuck with a trash artifact for over a month.

Yeah, I saw this coming which is why I levelled my Mage and Warlock together at the start of the expansion, catching up with my Priest later was rather less efficient.

StM made me quit shadow, so no
should be a poll

I did consider making a poll, but I was more interested in context than numbers, too late now but no harm in making one.

Does seem to be a fairly divisive talent, and I can see some of you definitely enjoy it, others, I get the impression you like the numbers more than the playstyle.

[Shoat]

Coolness-wise: Cool.
Game-design-wise: A fucking nightmare that should have never survived long enough to be put into the live game.

Not only is this YET ANOTHER spec where the design promise of "avoiding cookie-cutter builds" has failed because one talent somewhere is clearly way too powerful in the optimal circumstances, but this is something that was intended to be a cutting-edge-player risk-reward bonus option and was turned into what the community expects to be "the bar" any shadowpriest has to meet (not only in terms of mechanically executing it perfectly despite boss-encounter mechanics, but also knowing perfectly which exact second to activate it for every bossfight in the game), and that's slightly unfair when you look at the joke of a rotation that many other classes have.

And then there's the huge amount of extra dev attention that this talent now requires, which is a large amount of wasted resources considering it is conceptually unsalvagable and toxic, even if it wasn't an optional talent that two other talents had to compete against.

[Mikah]

Hate it.


The game right now has 2 main things where you need to be competitive: Raids and Mythic+.

The problem is not that S2M is not competitive in raids, it is performing extremely well.

Problem is that shadow spec in general is performing poorly in M+ compared to other specs, and thus most groups will/should not take you in meaningful runs.

And S2M is not adding any value to the rest of your day to day gaming. Its not like you will S2M while questing!

[rizzenx]

STM makes a slow boring spec exciting. I wouldn't be playing a Shadow Priest without it.

[kaid]

This. The constant tweaking and balancing of everything around it is sad. The problem really is that any talent that causes you to die due to a slight fuck up has to be the top performer across all the classes, otherwise if it wasn't doing the top DPS, why would you play it?

This is my problem with it. Any talent that kills you if you mess it up at all or miss time it is going to have to be overpowered by design or nobody in their right mind would chose it. And if it is over powered even those who don't want to use it will have to to stay competitive.

[Woop Woop]

I do and I don't. I enjoy the way it plays, and like the risk / reward it gives. However the fact the the whole spec suffers because of one talent is a shame.

This x 1000

[Raxz]

As a raid leader, I'm not a fan. It gets to the point in late StM that I'm unable to effectively play and communicate.

I'm pretty sure there's a reason my main raid leader plays Beast Mastery and the backup one is Ret. They only have to focus on communicating that way.

Jokes aside I know what you mean. Shadow Priest doesn't exactly have the hardest rotation in a vacuum but trying to not die of StM while there's Odyn balls flying all over the place makes spriest quickly feel like one of the hardest classes in the game. I have an easier time playing Holy, personally, but then again, Holy is arguably one of the easiest healers to play.