What happened to shadow DPS?

[Deleted]

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

Just looking at the link it shows us last of the dps classes, not last on all specs combined but shadow has no chance to respec to another spec. I think the biggest problem is that there isn't much talent diversity to compensate the fact that we have no other spec to go for if a fight requires it, especially now when its easy to have offspec close to the main in AP.

Another thing i have personally struggled with is that even though the bis trinket combination + 4 set makes us do good dps, having the 4th and 5th best trinket put me way behind (now after getting them the difference is quite huge). 4-set really limits gearing too imo. If i equip the highest non tier i get over 5 item levels to my total average and the 4-set still beats it.

Personally i feel like twist of fate is the main culprit from pure mechanical stand point, and should prolly be just extra damage on low hp targets rather than a buff. The difference between having something to proc it off through the fight vs bosses where you cant is huge.

[niil945]

Just looking at the link it shows us last of the dps classes, not last on all specs combined but shadow has no chance to respec to another spec. I think the biggest problem is that there isn't much talent diversity to compensate the fact that we have no other spec to go for if a fight requires it, especially now when its easy to have offspec close to the main in AP.

Another thing i have personally struggled with is that even though the bis trinket combination + 4 set makes us do good dps, having the 4th and 5th best trinket put me way behind (now after getting them the difference is quite huge). 4-set really limits gearing too imo. If i equip the highest non tier i get over 5 item levels to my total average and the 4-set still beats it.

Personally i feel like twist of fate is the main culprit from pure mechanical stand point, and should prolly be just extra damage on low hp targets rather than a buff. The difference between having something to proc it off through the fight vs bosses where you cant is huge.

Yeah, generally speaking the scaling between a fresh 110 and a bis is insane right now. It blows my mind that they felt they had to introduce ilvl mob scaling to compensate for how insignificant world trash is to people in comparison to when they were fresh 110's. They've never had to do this to make world content relevant and it's entirely due to the huge power gap between level cap and bis, and we're only halfway through the expansion.

If I could change the spec there are two things I'd focus on. The first being twist of fate is too black and white right now. It's amazing when we can use it and it sucks when we can't. I'd love for it to have competitive options on the tier, buffing the other two choices so that they're situationally better which would allow us to have options for fights where Twist isn't going to have much of an impact. The second being how our aoe is reliant upon SW:P being up on a target first and so much of the trash dies before we can do any meaningful aoe damage. I'd love to have the old mind sear back that aoe's around our target instead of the passive garbage we have now. But that's me, I'm sure others would have different suggestions.

[Deleted]

Btw is it confirmed that the increase in insanity drain is intended on Chorno, Elisande and Gul'dan, or is it just a bug ?

[Relapses]

Btw is it confirmed that the increase in insanity drain is intended on Chorno, Elisande and Gul'dan, or is it just a bug ?

I'd guess intended since the change also lowers insanity drain (read: buffs) when we're "slowed" as well (ie, on Chromatic Anomaly).

[Deja Thoris]

We should have an option to exclude anyone who has the two bis legendaries from conversations about spec damage, and that goes for about every single dps spec in the game. Legendaries skew the results so much it's idiotic.

So people with bis legendaries can't contribute to discussion or are you just jealous and want to exclude them out of spite? Either way, your suggestion is retarded.

[Deleted]

So people with bis legendaries can't contribute to discussion or are you just jealous and want to exclude them out of spite? Either way, your suggestion is retarded.

Pretty sure he means that pointing to people with perfect gear as an example of spec doing well is not healthy for the discussion when they are a minority.

[niil945]

Pretty sure he means that pointing to people with perfect gear as an example of spec doing well is not healthy for the discussion when they are a minority.

Thanks. Some people want to engage in a pissing contest instead of actual dialogue. I get that folks who have BiS legendaries feel they're fine. And that's great, I'm glad they're having a good time feeling competitive. We all want to feel competitive. We're actually really good on other types of fights, but we're certainly not good on single target. At least have the testicular fortitude to be honest and admit that if you have BiS legendaries (which prior to this patch was the waist and the shoulders) that your damage is highly inflated on a single target only fight in comparison to folks without those legendaries specifically because of that, then also consider the tier set being VB spam which also inflates our single target damage significantly. We're nowhere near close to being good on single target without those. Hell, I pull better single target numbers on my alt BM hunter that I stopped playing 3 months ago that is sitting at ~860 ilvl and it doesn't matter if I have to move or run circles the entire fight.

[davesignal]

Our damage has mostly stayed the same. Other specs are getting buffed, or aren't having their BIS legendaries nerfed every fucking patch.

After 7.2 I went from near the top of the chart in my raid to middle of the pack; I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what happened, then I realized that so many DPS in my raid (mostly melee, almost all of the ranged quit or rerolled) were doing significantly more DPS and I was around the same level I was in 7.1.5.

When you add to that the fact that Shadow's DPS always goes down as fights get shorter (i.e.: as other specs do more DPS) it's a recipe for disaster.

[Swalload]

What happened was Shadow finally became balanced.

None of this op STM bullshit.

Yes and no, STM was indeed extremely overpowered. But shadow is not balanced and never will be during this xpack. All blizzard is doing is turning on and off certain talents to prevent people from exploding either of frustration at the lack of balance or from overwhelming joy of destroying everybody on the meter while doing less.

This spec is a mess and unless they make STM baseline, or just delete it, the spec will stay shit. Blizzard has no idea what to do with Spriests and it needs a serious rework.

[Octa]

Btw is it confirmed that the increase in insanity drain is intended on Chorno, Elisande and Gul'dan, or is it just a bug ?

Intended. Insanity (and stacks of voidform) now scale with time altering effects of Chrono and Elisande.

[friedmudkipz]

Yes and no, STM was indeed extremely overpowered. But shadow is not balanced and never will be during this xpack. All blizzard is doing is turning on and off certain talents to prevent people from exploding either of frustration at the lack of balance or from overwhelming joy of destroying everybody on the meter while doing less.

This spec is a mess and unless they make STM baseline, or just delete it, the spec will stay shit. Blizzard has no idea what to do with Spriests and it needs a serious rework.

I'd be interested to hear why you think STM has any affect on how shadow is balanced atm.

[davesignal]

Intended. Insanity (and stacks of voidform) now scale with time altering effects of Chrono and Elisande.

I noticed my insanity draining faster, but it did not seem like my Voidform stacks were accruing faster.

[Onyd]

Yes and no, STM was indeed extremely overpowered. But shadow is not balanced and never will be during this xpack. All blizzard is doing is turning on and off certain talents to prevent people from exploding either of frustration at the lack of balance or from overwhelming joy of destroying everybody on the meter while doing less.

This spec is a mess and unless they make STM baseline, or just delete it, the spec will stay shit. Blizzard has no idea what to do with Spriests and it needs a serious rework.

That's a really interesting point of view. Why do you think Blizzard, the company that designed the spec, and has all the logs and performance data from every single shadow priest, has no idea what to do with shadow priests?

[l33t]

After 7.2 I went from near the top of the chart in my raid to middle of the pack; I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what happened, then I realized that so many DPS in my raid (mostly melee, almost all of the ranged quit or rerolled) were doing significantly more DPS and I was around the same level I was in 7.1.5.

Yeah, same here. While we're somewhat good compared to other caster specs, the damage melees and huntards do just makes our dps look like healers one.

That's a really interesting point of view. Why do you think Blizzard, the company that designed the spec, and has all the logs and performance data from every single shadow priest, has no idea what to do with shadow priests?

Ain't it obvious at this point that current dev team consists mostly of retards who has no idea what to do with the game itself? Just look at patch 7.2 and its changes, followed by cancelling those changes next day they go live...

[Onyd]

Ain't it obvious at this point that current dev team consists mostly of retards who has no idea what to do with the game itself? Just look at patch 7.2 and its changes, followed by cancelling those changes next day they go live...

It's not obvious or I wouldn't have asked.

What specifics, in your view, show that Blizzard has no idea what to do with shadow priests?

[davesignal]

I think the big issue is they've sort of lost the plot of what a caster is supposed to do with Shadow. We play like a ranged version of a GCD locked melee spec, except with horrific ramp-up time. We build insanity up like an Arms warrior, almost, but we can't just then dump it in a bunch of big executes; we have to drip feed it out over the course of 40 seconds.

Blizzard has become overly dependent on build/spend gameplay mechanics, to the point that they have to twist and torture the mechanics into weird shapes to keep it from all being too samey. Like, look at Elemental Shaman: that is a caster with a well executed build/spend system. You build up maelstrom using big, flashy spells, and then you get a nice big immediate pop of damage from Earth Shock. It's simple and effective (from a design perspective; their tuning might be garbage for all I know).

Shadow, meanwhile, has to ramp up their damage by building insanity.. to then ramp up again building Voidform stacks. It's convoluted, it's spammy, and it doesn't feel like a dot class should.

A dot class should be methodical plate-spinning, like keeping track of several pots you're bringing to a slow boil. Right now it's more like frantically pumping the bellows under an oil drum filled with canola oil, which then explodes when you drop a frozen turkey into it to deep fry. It's a huge fucking mess.

For some reason, Blizzard seems to think that despite having only two primarily-dot-based casters (Aff and Shadow), only one of them can be a methodical channeling class (Aff), and we have to be this weird DD/Dot hybrid bullshit.

[Archaea3]

Your position is laughable. A 7% difference is not a small difference and that's not accounting for the fact that we're not talking just one legendary, we're talking two. It's entirely possible for someone to get 2 good legendaries and someone to get 2 bad legendaries and have a ~10% difference between the two players even if they're exactly the same stats and player skill across the board. And that's all theorycrafting, which is great for getting a sense of relative power, but theorycrafting and actual play are entirely different beasts. Add to it that shadow as a spec is heavily dependent upon getting good damage phases in during void form that are easily disrupted by fight mechanics relative to other classes. The potential is there, if you have good legendaries and if you get good luck during a given single target or mostly single target fight to do okay. Not amazing, but okay. And if you have a particular job on a fight which requires you to stop dps'ing and move or you just get bad luck and have to move a lot that interrupts the heavier cycles in shadow dps, you're most likely not going to fare well in relation to other specs that aren't as impacted by a disruption to their rotation. The % difference in performance of the legendaries just amplifies that disparity regardless of whether we're comparing ourselves to other classes or whether we're comparing ourselves to other shadow priests.

What's laughable is your reading comprehension. The difference is ~3-4% per legendary, 7% combined difference. And that is the absolute max difference. Most priests raiding mythic have more than 2 legendaries and the difference is closer to ~3% max. I'm not sure what movement has anything to do with my point which was solely about dependence on legendaries.

[niil945]

What's laughable is your reading comprehension. The difference is ~3-4% per legendary, 7% combined difference. And that is the absolute max difference. Most priests raiding mythic have more than 2 legendaries and the difference is closer to ~3% max. I'm not sure what movement has anything to do with my point which was solely about dependence on legendaries.

I added up the top two legendaries versus the bottom two, wrote them out in a post, and pointed out that the resulting values at various points were greater than the value you list above, and then I decided there's no point. You believe your opinion is fact. We aren't actually having a dialogue because you took offense to the idea that people using the two best legendaries versus someone using none, one, or the two worst was in a significantly better spot. You're just out in lala land trying to personally attack me instead actually straight up acknowledging the point that everyone here knows who has gotten good legendaries on a toon versus getting the shitty ones. Blah blah. Keep talking, maybe you'll convince someone. But that someone isn't going to be me.

[Kilee25]

Small percentages of differences between items have always been a big deal when it comes to damage. Whoever is propagating the idea that pieces of gear, enchants, food, legendaries, etc etc don't make a difference really needs to stop. As a theory crafter for three expansions in WoW, I know there's no such thing as trivial differences. Small percentages added across your character, and across the entire raid, add up to big percentages. Anyone who didn't understand and believe that simple concept would have issues making it into most competitive raiding guilds. I'm sure there's 1 or 2 out there who believe in the snowflake mentality of everyone just playing their best and teamwork and skill is all you need, but in my experience that's a pretty lie... anyway bleh, feels like it should be a rhetorical subject imo...

On the subject of why Blizzard designed the class this way... I don't feel like typing a wall of text so I will bullet point.

1. All the classes were redesigned in Legion with a specific mind to eliminate any gameplay that was perceived as too simple or boring. We can't just have the old dot style back because it's perceived as simple, boring, repetitive. The new play style is more "engaging."
2. Shadowpriests as a general rule are not supposed to be top tier, easy-to-play spec. StM was admitted by them to be a mistake. They purposefully tuned the class down to keep it from doing too well. So it's not an accident or the result of incompetence, it's deliberate.
3. I truly believe there's a mission statement somewhere at Blizzard that describes the personality and psychological nature of players who gravitate towards shadowpriests, and describes them as people who want the class to be difficult to master and play well. There needs to be a clear distinction between skilled and non skilled players. I believe it is why we ended up with such a complex base design. I think that people complained loudly in the focus groups about gameplay like CoP, feeling that it attracted "scrub like" players. I think the redesign in Legion was a carefully planned response to players based upon the majority of feedback that made it back to them.
4. In summary the current design is viewed as fun, engaging, challenging, interesting, UNIQUE and difficult to master. It wards off entry-level players. It doesn't do top dps - rather it excels at specific fights and specific niche areas. It's not incompetence, shadow is right where they want it to be. And if you don't like it then it's just a difference in opinion.

My 2c.

[Relapses]

4. In summary the current design is viewed as fun, engaging, challenging, interesting, UNIQUE and difficult to master. It wards off entry-level players. It doesn't do top dps - rather it excels at specific fights and specific niche areas. It's not incompetence, shadow is right where they want it to be. And if you don't like it then it's just a difference in opinion.

I agree with your assessment but one of the things which I dislike strongly about Shadow's design in Legion is that latency -- something which was never a huge factor in Shadow's rotation before -- has more of an impact on how well you do than how well you play. Playing properly is still much more rewarding than ever but I had unstable internet for the entirety of EN and ToV and I literally had to quit the game because I couldn't play my toon. I like the idea of "easy to play and hard to master" but I dislike that there's a massive asterisk next to that which says, "as long as you have good internet."