What happened to shadow DPS?

[niil945]

You have this thing where you limit the scope of the discussion to suit whatever angle you're talking from at a given point. Show me where I've said I want all legendaries to be good in all situations. Did I say that or is that you trying to spin the conversation fallaciously? I'll give you a tip, it's not the former. We have two distinct conversations going on where apparently you don't understand the points being made. The discussion started by someone else talking about how we're not good at single target fights, to which someone replied that we are good on single target. I pointed out that having the best legendaries for a single target fight and then claiming the spec is good at single target is stupid because it's due to those legendaries and not the spec that we're not terrible at them.

Then you started a separate discussion about how the legendaries are nominal improvements over each other and that it's all skill that dictates the performance of the spec. Except now you're stating all the legendaries are not good and that there are vast fight specific differences and it's silly to expect them all to perform on a single target fight. Which one is it? Are all the legendaries balanced against each other with nominal differences or are the legendaries only good under specific scenarios which favors certain ones (you know, the ones that keep coming up now: shoulders, belt, wrist, and sephuz since the patch)? The reality is that the ones like twins don't even outperform the better ones on fights where they can be used to maximum effect. There's a vast difference between someone using the trinket and twins versus someone using the shoulders and the wrist. In every situation that currently exists in game, the latter set is going to far exceed the performance of the former one. And on single target the latter set is going to blow the former out of the water even though the latter set still wins out in any multi-target fight right now.

Edit: Ah, so we only talk about mythic progression, until you need to bring up mythic+ dungeons to make a point, but we're only talking about the top 20 parses, but the legendary list shows there's not a 7% difference between 2 different sets of legendaries since StM doesn't matter and we're only talking about mythic progression, but oh wait now you want to funnel the discussion a different direction to backpedal and cover your tracks about how the legendaries that don't show up in mythic progression raiding are still good! Laughable.

[Archaea3]

You have this thing where you limit the scope of the discussion to suit whatever angle you're talking from at a given point. Show me where I've said I want all legendaries to be good in all situations. Did I say that or is that you trying to spin the conversation fallaciously? I'll give you a tip, it's not the former.

You: "What would demonstrate to me that the legendaries are balanced? When every single legendary shows up on that list."

We have two distinct conversations going on where apparently you don't understand the points being made. The discussion started by someone else talking about how we're not good at single target fights, to which someone replied that we are good on single target. I pointed out that having the best legendaries for a single target fight and then claiming the spec is good at single target is stupid because it's due to those legendaries and not the spec that we're not terrible at them.

This is where I pointed out that the combined single target effect of legendaries is a maximum of 7%. That is far from being dependent on two specific BIS legendaries to do well. Then, I provided data for a fight that is largely single target showing that 7 out of 10 legendaries are represented in the top 5 parses. I repeat, if SEVEN legendaries are represented in the top 5 parses then we absolutely do not require the 2 BIS legendaries to do well in a single target fight.

Then you started a separate discussion about how the legendaries are nominal improvements over each other and that it's all skill that dictates the performance of the spec. Except now you're stating all the legendaries are not good and that there are vast fight specific differences and it's silly to expect them all to perform on a single target fight. Which one is it? Are all the legendaries balanced against each other with nominal differences or are the legendaries only good under specific scenarios which favors certain ones (you know, the ones that keep coming up now: shoulders, belt, wrist, and sephuz since the patch)?

Yes, 3 of the 10 legendaries are not going to show up in the top parses because they are specifically aoe legendaries. But 7 others do. 7, in my eyes, is good enough to show that we don't require the top 2 BIS to top parse. I would still argue that the reason you don't see those two in top parses is because top priests simply don't put them on. You are confusing "capable of top parsing with it on" and actually doing so. Any priest capable of top parsing with the twins ring on a single target fight has a better legendary. In no way am I arguing that some legendaries aren't situationally better than others. I am arguing skill plays a much bigger role.

The reality is that the ones like twins don't even outperform the better ones on fights where they can be used to maximum effect. There's a vast difference between someone using the trinket and twins versus someone using the shoulders and the wrist. In every situation that currently exists in game, the latter set is going to far exceed the performance of the former one. And on single target the latter set is going to blow the former out of the water even though the latter set still wins out in any multi-target fight right now.

Tichondrius and spellblade both have top parses that use the twins ring. They also have top parses that don't use it. There are a variety of legendary options no matter the fight.

[niil945]

You: "What would demonstrate to me that the legendaries are balanced? When every single legendary shows up on that list."

Do you actually not understand that my statement does not equivocate to me wanting all legendaries being good in all situations? You asked me how you could prove to me that all legendaries were balanced. My point is that skill does not have as large of an impact as you say it does and legendaries have a significantly larger impact than you claim it does. Your claim was that legendaries have only marginal differences and that skill matters more. Since we're talking about the most skilled players, the only way you could prove to me that what you were saying is true is to have all legendaries show up on the top 20. Because clearly skill matters so much more right? They don't. You're wrong. That was my point in the above. If you're not smart enough to understand the point I'm making, not my problem

Edit: Here's another way you can prove to me that your premise and arguments are correct. Show me a priest who's the number 1 parse at 75th percentile using none of those legendaries currently used in the top 20. If you can show me that, I'll agree with you that skill is so much more important than which legendary you're using. But you can't, because you're wrong. Because it's the legendaries that result in the damage that makes it possible for them to even be top 20 parses.

Tichondrius and spellblade both have top parses that use the twins ring. They also have top parses that don't use it. There are a variety of legendary options no matter the fight.

Since you seem to care so much about parses, are the parses on Tich and Spellblade using Twins the top parse?

[Archaea3]

Do you actually not understand that my statement does not equivocate to me wanting all legendaries being good in all situations? You asked me how you could prove to me that all legendaries were balanced. My point is that skill does not have as large of an impact as you say it does and legendaries have a significantly larger impact than you claim it does. Your claim was that legendaries have only marginal differences and that skill matters more. Since we're talking about the most skilled players, the only way you could prove to me that what you were saying is true is to have all legendaries show up on the top 20. Because clearly skill matters so much more right? They don't. You're wrong. That was my point in the above. If you're not smart enough to understand the point I'm making, not my problem

Why don't I make this real simple for you? What do you consider the BIS legendaries for single target?

[niil945]

Why don't I make this real simple for you? What do you consider the BIS legendaries for single target?

Point missed. Carry on.

[Archaea3]

Point missed. Carry on.

Here's your original statement that I called bullshit.

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 what do you consider the two BIS?

[niil945]

Here's your original statement that I called bullshit.

So what do you consider the two BIS?

And that one statement I made taken out of context doesn't mean diddly squat now. The initial post was a hyper summarized version of what I believe about this topic. It has since been expanded on numerous times. You know how I feel as I've explained it in detail numerous times now. I'm not one for semantic pissing contests, but by all means if you like pissing into the wind all over yourself have at it.

[Archaea3]

And that one statement I made taken out of context doesn't mean diddly squat now. The initial post was a hyper summarized version of what I believe about this topic. It has since been expanded on numerous times. You know how I feel as I've explained it in detail numerous times now. I'm not one for semantic pissing contests, but by all means if you like pissing into the wind all over yourself have at it.

The entirety of all of my posts has been trying to prove that shadow priests are not dependent on BIS legendaries to parse well. Theorycrafting suggests it. Logs prove it. The top parses do not use the same 2 legendaries, there are variety used. End of argument.

[niil945]

The entirety of all of my posts has been trying to prove that shadow priests are not dependent on BIS legendaries to parse well. Theorycrafting suggests it. Logs prove it. The top parses do not use the same 2 legendaries, there are variety used. End of argument.

Theorycrafting suggests this which is not using StM and is showing a potential disparity of ~6.5% from the top performing legendary with 12% uptime to the bottom performing legendary. Remember the shit Blizzard got for balancing classes that could heal or tank with a 5% dps penalty? Yeah, and legendaries are causing it within specs by themselves. And you think the disparity is negligible.



The parses support exactly what the theorycrafting says. The vast majority of top parses include the wrists, the shoulders, the belt, and now sephuz. Just because a legendary shows up one or two times in the top 20 doesn't mean jack in relation to whether it's balanced or not when the ones that consistently show up show up a hell of a lot more than one or two times. That said, Blizzard did a decent job of balancing the top 5, aside from making Sephuz ridiculous for us but hell I guess that's compensation for people shitting on it all expansion.

But you believe whatever you want pal. We're gone round and round here and you think you can win. You can't. This is a discussion about balance which is entirely subjective. In my opinion, unless the legendaries that are generically useful all the time get killed in performance by the dps legendaries that are only useful in specific situations (i.e. what you dubbed as the AoE legendaries) then I'm not going to buy that they are balanced. Right now it's way too weighted on the scale so that the ones that provide universal and easy to apply damage boosts win out. Which is exactly the point I was making when I asked you about twins on the fights that it's popping up on that you oh so deftly avoided answering because it would shoot your point in the face.

[Fleckens]

Theorycrafting suggests this which is not using StM and is showing a potential disparity of ~6.5% from the top performing legendary with 12% uptime to the bottom performing legendary. Remember the shit Blizzard got for balancing classes that could heal or tank with a 5% dps penalty? Yeah, and legendaries are causing it within specs by themselves. And you think the disparity is negligible.



The parses support exactly what the theorycrafting says. The vast majority of top parses include the wrists, the shoulders, the belt, and now sephuz. Just because a legendary shows up one or two times in the top 20 doesn't mean jack in relation to whether it's balanced or not when the ones that consistently show up show up a hell of a lot more than one or two times. That said, Blizzard did a decent job of balancing the top 5, aside from making Sephuz ridiculous for us but hell I guess that's compensation for people shitting on it all expansion.

But you believe whatever you want pal. We're gone round and round here and you think you can win. You can't. This is a discussion about balance which is entirely subjective. In my opinion, unless the legendaries that are generically useful all the time get killed in performance by the dps legendaries that are only useful in specific situations (i.e. what you dubbed as the AoE legendaries) then I'm not going to buy that they are balanced. Right now it's way too weighted on the scale so that the ones that provide universal and easy to apply damage boosts win out. Which is exactly the point I was making when I asked you about twins on the fights that it's popping up on that you oh so deftly avoided answering because it would shoot your point in the face.

To be fair it's a bit less than than 6.5%, taking the crafted legendary into account is not really fair and twins has the potential to be far better than that. Outside of when you can consistantly proc sephuz our legendaries are very close to eachother. Not perfect by any means though and I'd wish the legendary system wasn't like it is but compared to a lot of other classes we are very well off at the moment with how our legendaries are tuned.

[Kilee25]

Bullet points again...

* I don't personally want legendaries to be balanced. I prefer disparity between them. However I don't like the legendary system in general. This current iteration is my least favorite in all of wow.

* Using wow logs imo is the wrong way to go about proving your points because too many outside factors. Finding someone with a good log without legendaries and no other context proves nothing without looking at the rest of their gear, the rest of their raid, the way they kill the fight, what role they were doing, how much rng was in their favor, etc etc. Arguing back and forth using a parses as evidence is... inefficient. We should use sims, and if we use parses it should be only with comparable examples. For example someone who has the legendaries should track their parses one week with the legendaries on and off. That would reduce a lot of outside factors and give us a more realistic view of how important they are or aren't.

[niil945]

To be fair it's a bit less than than 6.5%, taking the crafted legendary into account is not really fair and twins has the potential to be far better than that. Outside of when you can consistantly proc sephuz our legendaries are very close to eachother. Not perfect by any means though and I'd wish the legendary system wasn't like it is but compared to a lot of other classes we are very well off at the moment with how our legendaries are tuned.

I was being fair. I said ~6.5% because being specific wasn't necessary to make my point, that point being that it was more than double the difference claimed by Arch using the method he pointed at to prove his point. Except it not only proves his point was wrong using his own method, it demonstrates that his point was wrong by over double and the gap only gets bigger if we use the 2 best versus the 2 worst. Hell, I don't even like using sims for discussions like this because they don't account for a myriad of real gameplay factors as Kilee pointed out above.

* I don't personally want legendaries to be balanced. I prefer disparity between them. However I don't like the legendary system in general. This current iteration is my least favorite in all of wow.

Balance is a vague term that's subjective and is going to be different depending upon who you talk to. One can't "prove" balance. If you could, then the legendaries would have exactly the same throughput for all legendaries all the time and there wouldn't actually be a debate about whether they're balanced at all. Let me say it this way: Using the current design, I don't see anything wrong with general throughput legendaries and legendaries that are good at aoe and not good at single target. In application that resulted in several legendaries that are just better than others at all times that vary in a ranked order depending upon spec, and the ones that are good at general throughput are better than the ones that are aoe specific even in aoe fights. The fact that those fights are aoe just pushes those aoe legendaries to competitive, it doesn't result in a large performance difference in favor of the aoe legendaries on aoe fights. The idea that, say, twins is bad on single target should result, in my opinion, in it doing phenomenally well in comparison to say, shoulders, on an aoe fight and that's just not what we actually have happening. This presumes that the player has the skill to capitalize on the different strengths of each legendary. I'd love for a different design that results in legendaries having a big impact on the way a spec plays depending upon which legendary one uses, akin to how talents are supposed to work. But we know that that goal isn't accomplished in the talent category either.

[girltoy26]

according to *snip*
Priest, is the last DPS class

01) Warlock
02) Death Knight
03) Warrior
04) Hunter
05) Paladin
06) Druid
07) Mage
08) Demon Hunter
09) Rogue
10) Shaman
11) Monk
12) Priest

I'm really surprised this isn't getting more attention. These parses are taking into account certain cheese fights like tich and botanist where we parse extremely well. Without those two fights, we're basically garbage. Our single target has taken such a nosedive because of ramp up and other classes becoming so bursty that we're falling behind by significant amounts. I guess we had our time in the spotlight during EN/ToV but I really would like to not feel like such garbage DPS when compared to warlocks and melee.

[Spicymemer]

Same thing happened that happened every other expansion.

Shadow has the same class designer as Holy/Disc, Shadow is always forgotten or left with a half thought out design.

[Tarien]

Didn't mean to abandon this thread, but honestly the state of shadow has made me stop logging in except to keep AK research ticking over.

Yes if you look at log sites with stats for boss fights we are 'middle of the pack'. But let's look at mage (for instance). Frost is parsing top overall, so let's remove the other two specs. Now extend that to the other classes.

What you are left with is the top DPS spec for each class and priests with shadow spec are sitting unhappily at the bottom, by some margin.

This wouldn't be such an issue if we were useful in some other way but the fact is we aren't. Only two fights really fit our play style, Botanist where S2M shines once again and Tichondrius where it's half being quick at DoTing adds and half padding the meters with bloods. Everything else we're getting destroyed, single target, small adds and burst we're garbage, bottom of every spec.

You'd think if a class had only one DPS spec you might at least make sure that it performed. Frankly I'd be happy if we were useful in some other way, supplying the raid with mana/healing as we did in TBC. Something to make spriest feel useful. Every expansion we're middle of the pack and have to work hard to stand out, finally we're top for half a tier and then it's snatched away as other classes are buffed or scale past us.

Compounding everything is the fact that the first 4-5 fights in NH Mythic range from 'not great' to 'fucking awful' for shadow.

And before anyone comments that I'm cherry picking the top specs for each class, just bare in mind that for most people it is a lot easier to switch spec catch up a your artifact weapon's AP in 7.2 than it is to level a character and gear it to the standard you're at now. And do we really all want to be affliction locks and frost mages?

Goddamnit, I just want to feel valuable.

[Deleted]

I think one important point, that you guys are missing is, that most of the logs you are looking at originate from farm kills and not actual progression. If you see shadow from a progression point of view it suddenly gets drastically better:

- we are on top of survivability regarding most dps, with insane selfhealing, absorbs and reduced physical damage
- we have decent movement compared to other casters
- in progress, fights last longer -> longer execute for us -> valuable in the hardest phases of the fight
- in progress adds live longer -> more add dps and at the same time more boss dps
- overall decent toolkit with stun, dispersion, VE, etc.

If you have a look at the progression logs/setups from the first 4 weeks of NH, there was rarely a fight not using shadow, most guilds used 1-4 on every fight. (Well Krosus is a bitch, no argument for that).

This discussion was pretty similar in HFC, the first weeks we were totally fine and actually pretty good, then farm started with the legendary ring and everybody started crying because we couldnt pad the meters like other classes do. That´s how SP is, get over it, I for my part want to do decent damage in progress and have an important role there rather than comparing my d*** on irrelevant fights.

Also I think skill indeed plays a much larger roll than legendaries, I for myself have Sephuz/Wrists and regularly get out-dpsed by our other shadow which has cloak/neck just because he had better timing than I did. So yes, there is a 6-7% gap between having the two worst and the two best legendaries (but honestly, how many of you ONLY have twins and the crafted?) but I would argue that skill difference makes up for anything between 10%-30% if not more.

Also, people act like this is something new in WoW, the class trinket from HFC was easily a 15% dps bonus and I didnt see anyone crying about that (well maybe mechanically but that´s another topic)

[friedmudkipz]

I think one important point, that you guys are missing is, that most of the logs you are looking at originate from farm kills and not actual progression. If you see shadow from a progression point of view it suddenly gets drastically better:

- we are on top of survivability regarding most dps, with insane selfhealing, absorbs and reduced physical damage
- we have decent movement compared to other casters
- in progress, fights last longer -> longer execute for us -> valuable in the hardest phases of the fight
- in progress adds live longer -> more add dps and at the same time more boss dps
- overall decent toolkit with stun, dispersion, VE, etc.

If you have a look at the progression logs/setups from the first 4 weeks of NH, there was rarely a fight not using shadow, most guilds used 1-4 on every fight. (Well Krosus is a bitch, no argument for that).

Yep. Shockingly, cutting multiple minutes off of encounters doesn't help spriest dps as much as it does literally every other class.

[Arainie]

If you have a look at the progression logs/setups from the first 4 weeks of NH, there was rarely a fight not using shadow, most guilds used 1-4 on every fight. (Well Krosus is a bitch, no argument for that).

The problem is that shadow was fine in early NH because we didn't have the new traits. Since the 7.2 traits were added shadow DPS has only marginally increased while most specs have skyrocketed. Shadow isn't even that great on Botanist anymore, especially not taken in to consideration that logs remove padded damage from P1 (mythic in focus). Our single target DPS is quite possibly the worst in the game together with balance druids and fire mages. Literally the only thing that makes shadow perform right now is long living adds, even if you were to go back to progress kill speed.

[Deleted]

just look at the 7.2.5 ptr notes

[Deleted]

just look at the 7.2.5 ptr notes

what do you mean in particular?