[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Fleckens]

Publik has this to say: https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10100

I'm a bit surprised how much the neck lost value and cloak/belt gained as there haven't been any changes that should have affected that. I guess they just got better at doing the simming or what? Overall it's looking pretty good though, seems it's very likely we will use different legendaries for different bosses.

[Sxq]

I've been having fun swapping between legendaries since the patch.

Cloak and belt make single target rotation so much more involved, and are a great boost in damage

Sephuz is OP if you can proc it even occasionally

Healing buff of helm is super underrated, you can spike to >>1m hps for the 15s of vamp embrace and your crits will heal for like 2-3m lol. Becomes an actual raid cooldown again.

Neck and shoulders still solid.

Don't have wrists.

Ring got shafted by sear changes.

[Deleted]

VE with helm is mostly overhealing in raid. Throwing 3m heal in random injured target usually results in something like 1M heal +2 M overheal. And healers are spamming AoE heals anyway, so having 1 target on 100% hp and another 15 on 50% results in healer's overhealing.

Healing one target once per second doesn't feel well in 20man raid, it needs to heal more frequently to be usefull this way. It may be usefull if some fight like Sha of Fear appears, where you send only group of 5 people to some platform, SP could be used instead of healer, there.

[Deleted]

I just got the Cloak. And having a random proc for some good damage and insanity makes playing it quite a bit more fun. Belt + Cloak, make spriest feel smooth as fuck.

[Apero]

We only did a few trys on elisande mythic because of the bugged rings. But did anyone else notice that the speedbuff from the red add seem to speed up your insanity decay too?
Before 7.2 i had atleast 10 more vf stacks average whenever i had the speed buff. But my sample size is to small. So, anyone else experienced this? Would be a serious nerf for us on this boss if this is intended.

[Fleckens]

We only did a few trys on elisande mythic because of the bugged rings. But did anyone else notice that the speedbuff from the red add seem to speed up your insanity decay too?
Before 7.2 i had atleast 10 more vf stacks average whenever i had the speed buff. But my sample size is to small. So, anyone else experienced this? Would be a serious nerf for us on this boss if this is intended.

Oh crap it's doing that there as well? It was doing it with the guldan buff, where I normally would drop out of void form at the start on guldan at around 45-49 stacks I would now drop out around 30 stacks if I used the buff despite having PI up.

I sure hope it's a bug and not intentional.

[Deleted]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11

As I expected, shadow drops to the bottom half of the dps chart. Wrists clearly needed a nerf because we were too OP with it. Dunno you guys, but after 2 months of NH (and with ONLY 80 guilds that downed guldan so in the middle of the progress game for the huge majority of the mythic players) what I see is the usual classes (locks warriors mages bla bla) totally out of hand with dps.

[Deleted]

We only did a few trys on elisande mythic because of the bugged rings. But did anyone else notice that the speedbuff from the red add seem to speed up your insanity decay too?
Before 7.2 i had atleast 10 more vf stacks average whenever i had the speed buff. But my sample size is to small. So, anyone else experienced this? Would be a serious nerf for us on this boss if this is intended.

Yes... with the buff and PI used at 20 stacks I drop voidform at 37 stacks thanks to increased insanity drain(usually don't have problem to get between 40-50 stacks.) This seems like bigger nerf then it should be

[Jullyx]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11

As I expected, shadow drops to the bottom half of the dps chart. Wrists clearly needed a nerf because we were too OP with it. Dunno you guys, but after 2 months of NH (and with ONLY 80 guilds that downed guldan so in the middle of the progress game for the huge majority of the mythic players) what I see is the usual classes (locks warriors mages bla bla) totally out of hand with dps.

Because you are so obsessed with the 25% nerf to the effect of one legendary, how much do you think we would have been higher on rankings if they didn't nerf it? Still top 4?
Shouldn't you instead just equip sephuz which now (according to h2p) is a shitton stronger than wrists were in 7.1.5 and be happy? Belt is also apparently better than bracers were in 7.1.5 in terms of % dmg increase. In 95% bracket we are within 10% of top5, which isn't amazing, but we are not the first class to be complaining here.

We obviously need a big single target buff, especially considering which other classes got buffed this patch. Also, as farm content becomes more "farm" we suffer on multi target fights. Thats just how it is.

Edit: Bracers are still used on every single r1 parse this patch, so I'd say they weren't overnerfed

[Deleted]

Because you are so obsessed with the 25% nerf to the effect of one legendary, how much do you think we would have been higher on rankings if they didn't nerf it? Still top 4?
Shouldn't you instead just equip sephuz which now (according to h2p) is a shitton stronger than wrists were in 7.1.5 and be happy? Belt is also apparently better than bracers were in 7.1.5 in terms of % dmg increase. In 95% bracket we are within 10% of top5, which isn't amazing, but we are not the first class to be complaining here.

We obviously need a big single target buff, especially considering which other classes got buffed this patch. Also, as farm content becomes more "farm" we suffer on multi target fights. Thats just how it is.

Edit: Bracers are still used on every single r1 parse this patch, so I'd say they weren't overnerfed

Obviously i dont think old bracers would've put us in top 4, im annoyed because they didnt deserve a nerf at this point, not with the state shadow is at (definately middle of the pack at best, imagine those priests that only have wrists and got screwed even more by this nerf), and its really retarded how you nerf bracers and then buff sephuz to a point that, as you said, now is even a more powerful legendary overall than bracers were before. I'm annoyed at how blizzard makes these changes, they really never ever learn.

They probably will buff our st dmg thru pet and t20 set (and i wonder how soon they'll nerf the belt then). We'll see what kind of changes they make on ptr they announced them yesterday.

[Deleted]

Yes... with the buff and PI used at 20 stacks I drop voidform at 37 stacks thanks to increased insanity drain(usually don't have problem to get between 40-50 stacks.) This seems like bigger nerf then it should be

Same with chronomatic. We were already shit in slow phase due to dropping VF early, now we're shit in both phases.

[Deleted]

I just got a 880 chrono shard thanks to nethershards at Broken Shore. Before I had my 850 haste stat stick, and this seems like a neat upgrade. Now I wanted to ask: is it worth to go for the Strand of the Stars (I have a 875 Talisman of the Shal'dorei) especially now that M+ ilvl got buffed?

On an unrelated note, how much worth is is the 4pc bonus from Nighthold, and how much haste should I aim for? I know 10k is the usual concensus, but it seems impossible to achieve with my current item set, and I have so many items that improve my stats and ilvl but that break my tier bonus, I don't know how to focus my gear.

[Isentropy]

Same with chronomatic. We were already shit in slow phase due to dropping VF early, now we're shit in both phases.

Both slow and fast time affect our Insanity drain now, so this is actually a buff in the slow phase. You guys are also glossing over the fact that you gain Voidform stacks faster or slower depending on whether it's slow or fast time. Though I don't quite understand why Blizzard bothered to fix it after all this time, they didn't do it in an unfair way. The mechanic just works the exact same for us now as it does for everyone else, and shadow really isn't bad at Chronomatic Anomaly to begin with like you suggest so I'm not sure what you're on about there.

[Fleckens]

Both slow and fast time affect our Insanity drain now, so this is actually a buff in the slow phase. You guys are also glossing over the fact that you gain Voidform stacks faster or slower depending on whether it's slow or fast time. Though I don't quite understand why Blizzard bothered to fix it after all this time, they didn't do it in an unfair way. The mechanic just works the exact same for us now as it does for everyone else, and shadow really isn't bad at Chronomatic Anomaly to begin with like you suggest so I'm not sure what you're on about there.

Most other classes don't lose dps by using the guldan buff during their cooldowns though. I do understand the change but I don't think it's a good thing simply due to the way our voidform works, being unable to go past 30 even with power infusion is pretty bad.

[Deleted]

Does anyone have a good WA for Whispers trinket? One that would show time left for both Green and Red buffs when they are up.

[Isentropy]

Most other classes don't lose dps by using the guldan buff during their cooldowns though. I do understand the change but I don't think it's a good thing simply due to the way our voidform works, being unable to go past 30 even with power infusion is pretty bad.

Shadow doesn't lose DPS during the buff now either though, if you can't go past 30 stacks with Power Infusion now that has nothing to do with the change. During fast time our insanity now drains faster, we get Voidform stacks faster and we cast faster. The net result should be the same as you would get during normal time, except things just happen faster. It's like looking at a video and just speeding it up. Before, fast time was a big advantage for us and it was basically just a haste buff that made it so you could stay in Voidform longer than you normally would (read: we could get more Voidform stacks). Considering that it's supposed to be affecting relative time, this made no sense. It's not like we got absurd results from this compared to other specs despite this, which is why I again don't quite see why Blizzard felt like they bothered after all this time, but they did not implement this in an unfair way for us.

[Fleckens]

Shadow doesn't lose DPS during the buff now either though, if you can't go past 30 stacks with Power Infusion now that has nothing to do with the change. During fast time our insanity now drains faster, we get Voidform stacks faster and we cast faster. The net result should be the same as you would get during normal time, except things just happen faster. It's like looking at a video and just speeding it up. Before, fast time was a big advantage for us and it was basically just a haste buff that made it so you could stay in Voidform longer than you normally would (read: we could get more Voidform stacks). Considering that it's supposed to be affecting relative time, this made no sense. It's not like we got absurd results from this compared to other specs despite this, which is why I again don't quite see why Blizzard felt like they bothered after all this time, but they did not implement this in an unfair way for us.

Admittedly I didn't give it many tries, after a couple of tries where both the other shadowpriest and I would drop out of voidform far quicker than we normally would with PI we just switched to using it as soon as we dropped out of the first void form. This did mean we having to skip out on soaking first set of bonds and having a slightly shorter duration on the buff due to the hellfire impact, but it still seemed to give more dps than dropping out too early.

It is however possible that it wasn't the only cause and could have been caused by other things such as the gcd thing they had to hotfix, but something was definitely wrong. If I was dropping out a few stacks earlier than before then sure It could just be me not doing something properly but dropping out 10-12 stacks earlier I can't see just being me fucking up, as well as the other shadowpriest in my raid. I will try it out again next week though.

[Jullyx]

I haven't really logged much on my priest since the patch and just did a quick guldan hc. Having that buff increase insanity drain really felt aweful. I read that this is the same for chronomatic and elisande. So we can expect this to stay as it is now?

[Dontrike]

Anyone tried that Mage Tower quest? For some reason the gateways have 25% more hp and cast twice as fast as boomkins and frost mages. I don't know about anyone else but at 903 7 million hp in 7 seconds (for boomkins it's 5.5 million in 15 seconds), else you're hit with 4 million damage, seems rather improbable. That's not to mention the 15+ mobs chasing you with one hitting you for 3 million if it ever catches you.

[Haikus]

Anyone tried that Mage Tower quest? For some reason the gateways have 25% more hp and cast twice as fast as boomkins and frost mages. I don't know about anyone else but at 903 7 million hp in 7 seconds (for boomkins it's 5.5 million in 15 seconds), else you're hit with 4 million damage, seems rather improbable. That's not to mention the 15+ mobs chasing you with one hitting you for 3 million if it ever catches you.

I did it with TOF/B&S/mind bomb/lingering/AS/PI/S2m. Used augment rune+bear tartare+flask. Dotted the sfiend adds with swp/fury of burning sky trinket to kill. Mind bomb the melee brother when you need to tunnel a hand. Silence first cast, and then rotate disp/living with like 200k hp with pws+vt shield+3.7m hp. In last phase i popped drums+pot+s2m and just went ham.