TL;DR Shadow Priest 7.1.5

[Wenoxar]

Hi

I can't really find myself in this countless information about 7.1.5.

I'm just asking - how is shadow priest looking in 7.1.5 compared to now? In terms of an overall PvE performance: do you predict that spriest will be better / stay the same or nerfed?

Thanks

[Tjo106]

Tough to say, PTR sims show shadow middle of the pack in tier 19 but the tuning isn't final so things can change. As a whole, the changes to the spec look like they can be promising but most likely s2m will not be a very popular choice outside of quick fights from the players who participated in ptr

[Poeseidon]

yes, let us hope that thinks play out well for shadow in the coming patch.

[GT4]

Tough to say, PTR sims show shadow middle of the pack in tier 19 but the tuning isn't final so things can change. As a whole, the changes to the spec look like they can be promising but most likely s2m will not be a very popular choice outside of quick fights from the players who participated in ptr

Gotta love how 5th (or barely 6th with optimal elemental single target talents) out of 26 DPS specs is considered "middle of the pack". If you include the two best legendaries for each spec (belt/shoulders for shadow), shadow is ranking even better than that.

[Onyd]

Gotta love how 5th (or barely 6th with optimal elemental single target talents) out of 26 DPS specs is considered "middle of the pack". If you include the two best legendaries for each spec (belt/shoulders for shadow), shadow is ranking even better than that.

Don't you know, unless you're the best at WoW you're an utter failure.

[skitzin]

As it currently stands shadow is in a good place damage wise. We are still quite strong in ST whilst gaining a decent boost to AoE. The main change is that we now have a choice regarding S2M or not which is nice.

Others will no doubt raise differ QoL issues they have woth the spec but overall i find it works out fine for me personally.

[danieltang34]

Gotta love how 5th (or barely 6th with optimal elemental single target talents) out of 26 DPS specs is considered "middle of the pack". If you include the two best legendaries for each spec (belt/shoulders for shadow), shadow is ranking even better than that.

Which sims says we're 5th on ptr?

edit: found it, looks okay but NH is pretty add heavy so we might have to see how it actually works out in NH

[tiptopmemer]

Spriest has gone from ~10% ahead of top end DPS to just below top end of DPS.
If multidotting occurs, we push up
If movement occurs, we push down
We're still quite survivable with Mental Fortitude/VT healing.

Base damage up
Insanity gen very slightly up
LoTV up
Mindspike replaced by Shadow crash
Lingering insanity is a talent
Mind Flaying a target that has SWP on it makes it pulse (replacing mindsear)
S2M down
Void Bolt refresh nerfed to 4-5-6? second dot extension.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/shadow/cp5z

This is your typical boss fight spec, PI is better for multidotting, Misery is quite worthless outside of dungeons.
You spec S2M when you go on farm or boss fights are fast.
Reaching two torrents (without S2M) is possible with heroism/multidotting/execute (Cenarius/Xavius type of fight/adds)

TLDR;
AoE is super clunky
Spec LotV
Nighthold tier bonuses are super important.


Statweights;
Int = 1
Haste/Crit = 1.2
Mastery = 0.9
Verse = 0.8

Shoulders/Belt/Cloak are best legendaries.
Trinket, Bracers, Sephuz (if you can proc it consistently) are tier 2
Hat/Neck/Ring are situational.

Lastly, don't trust h2p, they're all uncle koticks over there, blizzard can do no wrong.

[Isentropy]

I urge people not to take Tiptopmemer's post too seriously. Lots of misinformation there that doesn't seem to be based on anything at all. Disguising shitposting as trying to be factual is clever isn't it?

[Tjo106]

Gotta love how 5th (or barely 6th with optimal elemental single target talents) out of 26 DPS specs is considered "middle of the pack". If you include the two best legendaries for each spec (belt/shoulders for shadow), shadow is ranking even better than that.

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

I was looking at the latest sims, I know what middle is

[Syld]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

I was looking at the latest sims, I know what middle is

Do you realize that sim is 840 ilvl and shadow scales a lot better than most of these specs?

[GT4]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19P.html

I was looking at the latest sims, I know what middle is

If you're still in 840 gear with 19 traits, I have bad news for you. Ignoring that Blizzard doesn't balance around gear and traits that were outdated when EN was released, do you realize nobody is even keeping pre-raid profiles updated?

[Tjo106]

Do you realize that sim is 840 ilvl and shadow scales a lot better than most of these specs?

I did not realize, but that's good news!
Number tuning still isn't complete though so any sims have to be taken with a grain of salt, plus thugs change in the real world compared to sims.

[Djriff]

Spriest has gone from ~10% ahead of top end DPS to just below top end of DPS.
If multidotting occurs, we push up
If movement occurs, we push down
We're still quite survivable with Mental Fortitude/VT healing.

Well until we see some actual logs i'm going to disagree with where exactly we're ending up on the charts.

Base damage up
Insanity gen very slightly up
LoTV up
Mindspike replaced by Shadow crash
Lingering insanity is a talent
Mind Flaying a target that has SWP on it makes it pulse (replacing mindsear)
S2M down
Void Bolt refresh nerfed to 4-5-6? second dot extension.

Insanity Gen was massively boosted across the board.
S2M was brought down slightly, belt is almost mandatory for longer StM's on ST fights.
Void Bolt now extends dots by 3 seconds instead of refreshing them.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/shadow/cp5z

This is your typical boss fight spec, PI is better for multidotting, Misery is quite worthless outside of dungeons.
You spec S2M when you go on farm or boss fights are fast.
Reaching two torrents (without S2M) is possible with heroism/multidotting/execute (Cenarius/Xavius type of fight/adds)

There are so many things wrong with this post.
PI and Misery are actually quite close for multi dotting, at the end of the day it'll be player choice. Misery tends to be better with more add spawns. MB is still not a choice at all..
Reaching 2 torrents without stm is possible in the live game given enough targets. With the changes to baseline insanity generation, this'll be even more likely.

TLDR;
AoE is super clunky
Spec LotV
Nighthold tier bonuses are super important.

AoE is not super clunky, it's not just 1 button.
I wouldn't be surprised to find SC better than LotV, especially on add fights/dungeons. It hits like a truck.
The tier bonus is meh.

Statweights;
Int = 1
Haste/Crit = 1.2
Mastery = 0.9
Verse = 0.8

What? Yeah i don't buy this for a second.

Shoulders/Belt/Cloak are best legendaries.
Trinket, Bracers, Sephuz (if you can proc it consistently) are tier 2
Hat/Neck/Ring are situational.

Cloak is pretty meh, Sephuz is going to be one of the better legendaries since you can proc it consistently.

Lastly, don't trust h2p, they're all uncle koticks over there, blizzard can do no wrong.

Considering i work with H2P quite closely i can tell you that your statement is patently false. Blizzard can certainly do plenty of wrong and the staff over there is well aware of it. Did you AMR fanboy too hard?

[Thaylen]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/shadow/cp5z

This is your typical boss fight spec, PI is better for multidotting, Misery is quite worthless outside of dungeons.
You spec S2M when you go on farm or boss fights are fast.

Omg I'd be so happy if this were true and S2M wasn't the talent of choice.

- - - Updated - - -

Did you AMR fanboy too hard?

Not sure that part was needed...

[danieltang34]

Omg I'd be so happy if this were true and S2M wasn't the talent of choice.

- - - Updated - - -



Not sure that part was needed...

Is s2m that bad in 7.1.5? The DPS boost from LotV is still rather minor after all (around 5~10% iirc)
S2m can easily double or even triple our dps on live, and it can't even beat lotv on ptr? O.o

[Ilir]

Not sure that part was needed...

He played too much League of Legends lately... he got tainted by its community !

[BellicoseAxe]

Great patch looking good.

[Deleted]

Is s2m that bad in 7.1.5? The DPS boost from LotV is still rather minor after all (around 5~10% iirc)
S2m can easily double or even triple our dps on live, and it can't even beat lotv on ptr? O.o

Sims are done on long fight.

In reality, S2M will probably beat LOTV as the fight start to shorten.

[Zoopercat]

Hey, I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. Just to fill you in a bit - while our theorycrafter has been working on getting our simulator ready for 7.1.5 for SP's, it's not quite ready - this week we are pounding out the details based on the latest PTR version and finishing our tests to make sure it's as bug free as possible.

The spell wiki is open source and you can adjust the SP stuff yourself, but if you wait just a bit, we'll have that ready for you. Then following 7.1.5's release, we'll have some new boss scripts ready for you as well.

Look for some interesting writeups of our findings as we get closer to 7.1.5 I'm sure other people will have interesting insights as well.