Pugging Heroic KJ as a Shadow Priest

[hikamiro]

Has anyone had any luck? I'm 925 equipped (931 un-equipped) and I keep getting booted from groups due to "low DPS". This fight is awful for us especially the first two minutes where groups are failing.

I'm thinking about just playing holy to get a kill because pugging it as shadow is unbearable.

[bladeson]

I did have to pug it as holy for my first kill (as a shadow main). After that I guess it gets easier to get into "curve" groups as shadow, who tend to wipe less on p1/p2.

I was 920 equipped (919 weapon) as holy for the first kill (with no holy legendaries).

[ThrashMetalFtw]

I did get kicked on two different occations when we wiped on the 1st Armaggedon, because of "low Dps" (despite never failing a single mechanic while being with those grps).

Those grps usually have very low chances of success anyway, when the RL is that retarded and has no clue how different classes work.

Other than that, it's been fine, pugged KJ HC these past 2 resets, and had a a 5% wipe the reset before that. Sure, you aren't going to be competing with any competent burst Dps classes on that fight, but you should still be able to carry your own weight, especially concerning Dps at the end of the fight, since we are quite strong in p3.

[Deleted]

The main problem is that if people try to avoid armageddons (like the 2nd one that happens before it flies up if dps is low), the first thing they check is the dps, and boot the lowest one unless its a key class to soak/kite stuff. Sadly, we cant do that, so yeah its easy to boot one in the beginning.
My advice? BE SELFISH, for once. You can easily check dpsmeter, its much harder to actually check who didnt soak at a particular time. At least till he flies up, just dont soak unless its really few steps, focus on dpsing and keeping void stacks up, and stay in the group. If something isnt soaked that way, no one will blame you, but they'll blame the mages/druids that didnt blink, hunters, dhs. With vantus, food, flask and everything at around 920 you shuld be able to pull over 1mil dps when he flies up and its much hardet to get kicked from raid when you do 1mil dps.
You can pay more attention to mechanics after intermission, but still try to soak what is close to you so you dont risk losing voidform uptime.
I know that in a perfect world you shouldnt be punished when you actually do mechanics and just because you have no aoe/burst like everyone else, but since blizzard is ran by a bunch of fucking morons that cant fix classes after years, all you can do is limit the damage and be a little selfish yourself.

[Spicymemer]

But the members of Howtopriest say that spriests are good on progression? this is confusing information

[Deleted]

But the members of Howtopriest say that spriests are good on progression? this is confusing information

On h2p they mostly talk about mythic, and shadow was good in mythic NH and TOS progression. The problem is that by progression we mean the first 2-2 half months, and only the best guilds clear everything in that time. Most guilds still progress after 4 months and in NH after the new traits shadow became pretty shit in progression as well even in mythic, i dont know if things will change with TOS when we'll have new traits (more than likely) in 2-3 months.
That said, shadow right now is even good in hc, it's just weak on KJ (which is disappointing since its the end boss after all).

Also, I really think too many people in the h2p community are a bit delusional considering they are pretty much always fine with shadow. I wonder what would they say if they played a warrior, a lock, a mage, a DK, all classes easier to play and that are overall much better than shadow.

[hikamiro]

But the members of Howtopriest say that spriests are good on progression? this is confusing information

Most fights don't have an immunity phase 1 minute into the fight. When we normally would be playing catch up going into second voidform with 50+ stacks of LI. Instead everyone else gets to run around for a full minute when all their cooldowns have a chance to come back up.

I think generally Spriests are good at progression. This fight in general just screws that.

[BobAwesome]

It's most likely futile, but try explaining to the raid lead that because of the 99% damage reduction a minute into the fight, that while our extended dots keep ticking on KJ, it causes the meters to continue to calculate our dps as "active" thus dropping to absurdly low amounts. That in conjunction to us being a class that requires extensive ramp up time for our dps to actually kick in, makes it look like we're garbo. As soon as the group starts to do the mechanics properly, ie soak the fucking Armageddons, which isn't something that will magically be fixed by kicking dps, and they progress into phase 2 and 3, our dps starts to look normal.

If they don't want to listen or consider, they're just looking to get carried like the shitters they are.

[satori sartori]

It's most likely futile, but try explaining to the raid lead that because of the 99% damage reduction a minute into the fight, that while our extended dots keep ticking on KJ, it causes the meters to continue to calculate our dps as "active" thus dropping to absurdly low amounts.

I don't think that's how it works anymore (mostly), most meters and warcraft logs use effective time to track dps, which means it uses the elapsed combat time to measure DPS/HPS and hitting the boss when he takes 99% less dmg is not hurting you per se, everyone's dps will go down slowly during this phase even if they don't have a single dot and never attack the boss during this phase.
I think you're describing Activity measuring.

[anon5123]

Those grps usually have very low chances of success anyway, when the RL is that retarded and has no clue how different classes work.

Yep, there are still people who perpetuate the "Disc is 50% heal 50% DPS" meme, despite that having been not true at all for....the entire expansion, so far.

[rogoth]

my heroic parse was 19% because on my guilds kill, i was basically a soak bot and couldn't actually do any meaningful damage outside of burst windows, and even then i was forced to ice block on a couple of occasions on apoc wasting almost an entire icy veins window, it sucks as many classes, however it's the fault of the people making these groups who don't understand that this fight on heroic and above is not about how much dps someone does, it's purely about executing the fight properly, and if that means you have some ppl doing less on paper than they otherwise should yet are helping in other ways, then so be it, not your fault they are ignorant asshats.

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On h2p they mostly talk about mythic, and shadow was good in mythic NH and TOS progression. The problem is that by progression we mean the first 2-2 half months, and only the best guilds clear everything in that time. Most guilds still progress after 4 months and in NH after the new traits shadow became pretty shit in progression as well even in mythic, i dont know if things will change with TOS when we'll have new traits (more than likely) in 2-3 months.
That said, shadow right now is even good in hc, it's just weak on KJ (which is disappointing since its the end boss after all).

Also, I really think too many people in the h2p community are a bit delusional considering they are pretty much always fine with shadow. I wonder what would they say if they played a warrior, a lock, a mage, a DK, all classes easier to play and that are overall much better than shadow.

lol, mage better and easier than priest, good joke mate, keep em coming made me laugh.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

my heroic parse was 19% because on my guilds kill, i was basically a soak bot and couldn't actually do any meaningful damage outside of burst windows, and even then i was forced to ice block on a couple of occasions on apoc wasting almost an entire icy veins window, it sucks as many classes, however it's the fault of the people making these groups who don't understand that this fight on heroic and above is not about how much dps someone does, it's purely about executing the fight properly, and if that means you have some ppl doing less on paper than they otherwise should yet are helping in other ways, then so be it, not your fault they are ignorant asshats.

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lol, mage better and easier than priest, good joke mate, keep em coming made me laugh.

Frost Mages are already destroying Shadow Priests on anything that's not Inquisition, Mistress or Host, and they will keep catching up every reset as raid Dps gets higher and multidotting gets worse (while pulling further ahead on all of the other bosses).

I mean, everybody usually "roots" for their own class in these kind of discussion, but anybody who thinks Mage is harder to play well than Shadow, really needs a reality check. Mages are one of the most mobile casters, with Blink/IB for mechanic cheesing, and a rotation that if you fuck up, simply means that you lose the dmg from that cast. If you fuck up as Shadow (or have to move for more than what can be done with stutterstepping), you will drop out of Voidform too early, causing your Dps to drop like a sack of shit.

Top3 difficult specs in Legion are: Feral, Demo and Shadow, in no specific order. Imo there's no competition, these 3 specs are miles above anything else in terms of complexity and how hard you are punished if you fuck up (the latter part is more important than the actual complexity for Shadow).

[BobAwesome]

I don't think that's how it works anymore (mostly), most meters and warcraft logs use effective time to track dps, which means it uses the elapsed combat time to measure DPS/HPS and hitting the boss when he takes 99% less dmg is not hurting you per se, everyone's dps will go down slowly during this phase even if they don't have a single dot and never attack the boss during this phase.
I think you're describing Activity measuring.

Yes, you're absolutely right, BUT, most folks, in pugs at least, ARE running Activity measuring.

[rogoth]

Frost Mages are already destroying Shadow Priests on anything that's not Inquisition, Mistress or Host, and they will keep catching up every reset as raid Dps gets higher and multidotting gets worse (while pulling further ahead on all of the other bosses).

I mean, everybody usually "roots" for their own class in these kind of discussion, but anybody who thinks Mage is harder to play well than Shadow, really needs a reality check. Mages are one of the most mobile casters, with Blink/IB for mechanic cheesing, and a rotation that if you fuck up, simply means that you lose the dmg from that cast. If you fuck up as Shadow (or have to move for more than what can be done with stutterstepping), you will drop out of Voidform too early, causing your Dps to drop like a sack of shit.

Top3 difficult specs in Legion are: Feral, Demo and Shadow, in no specific order. Imo there's no competition, these 3 specs are miles above anything else in terms of complexity and how hard you are punished if you fuck up (the latter part is more important than the actual complexity for Shadow).

as a hybrid class, priests have it much easier than a pure dps, looking just at mages since that's the example you want to go for, we have a spec that has been dead all expansion and even with the absolute best possible legendary/gear setup is still one of the absolute worst dps specs in game by a huge margin, fire wasn't even a top dps spec at legion release yet due to meter padding and 'trade chat/forum spam' influencing morons aka developers, it was nerfed into the ground and is only slightly making up for it now with higher ilvl gear and better stat budgets, frost was never seen eacly expansion due to just how complex thermal void frost was and is, GS frost was a meme spec for cheesing high burst dmg windows with external dmg buffs,not a legitimate spec choice as seen in the latest 'balancing' of the talent nerfing it hugely and the small buff it got as compensation is laughable, at least you have the option to play another very much raid viable spec if you choose, i don't have that luxury, certain aspects of my main class are easier to play yes, but overall the class itself is a steaming pile of shite thanks to the clueless devs and sheer lack of any coherent vision.

[BobAwesome]

as a hybrid class, priests have it much easier than a pure dps, looking just at mages since that's the example you want to go for, we have a spec that has been dead all expansion and even with the absolute best possible legendary/gear setup is still one of the absolute worst dps specs in game by a huge margin, fire wasn't even a top dps spec at legion release yet due to meter padding and 'trade chat/forum spam' influencing morons aka developers, it was nerfed into the ground and is only slightly making up for it now with higher ilvl gear and better stat budgets, frost was never seen eacly expansion due to just how complex thermal void frost was and is, GS frost was a meme spec for cheesing high burst dmg windows with external dmg buffs,not a legitimate spec choice as seen in the latest 'balancing' of the talent nerfing it hugely and the small buff it got as compensation is laughable, at least you have the option to play another very much raid viable spec if you choose, i don't have that luxury, certain aspects of my main class are easier to play yes, but overall the class itself is a steaming pile of shite thanks to the clueless devs and sheer lack of any coherent vision.

Lol, this is a thread about Shadow Priest, yet like a typical Mage, you have to come in here and try to make it about you. GTFO, no one wants to hear another Mage crying because all three of their specs aren't doing double the dps of the next below them.

[Fleckens]

lol, mage better and easier than priest, good joke mate, keep em coming made me laugh.

As someone who plays both mage and shadow at about the same level(mage is my split alt but we did split NH mythic runs and my mage was pretty much as geared as my priest when tomb started) I can safely say that mage is much easier to play and especially do mechanics on, it's not even comparable, mage mobility and simple rotation makes it really easy to play and deal with mechanics.

Just saw your other post, saying frost didn't work early because of how "complex" thermal void is pretty wrong, it just wasn't tuned properly. When it got buffed in 7.1.5 and got viable it really wasn't hard to play double ice lance and now where it's not really a thing outside of shimmer tricks(which you really don't need to do outside of maybe your opening as most of the time you're better off saving shimmer for other things) it's even easier to play, frost pretty much plays itself and due to the way shimmer works you really shouldn't lose much dps from doing mechanics, even soaking you just ice block for 1-2 sec and then cancelaura it.

[Deleted]

So far this expansion I've cleared every mythic endboss (in time) with my priest and my mage (fire in EN/TOV, frost in NH) and I find it amusing that a mage here comes saying such bullshit. TV complex? If TV was complex, then I dont know what shadow is... impossible i guess. Frost now is pretty much a joke to play and pulls great numbers, and before it was just a little harder for the double ice lance thing, which was still a joke to achieve compared to shadow playstyle.

[rogoth]

Lol, this is a thread about Shadow Priest, yet like a typical Mage, you have to come in here and try to make it about you. GTFO, no one wants to hear another Mage crying because all three of their specs aren't doing double the dps of the next below them.

do yourself a favour and read my first post, don't be a fuckwit and spew this crap, you just make yourself look like a butthurt special snowflake.

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As someone who plays both mage and shadow at about the same level(mage is my split alt but we did split NH mythic runs and my mage was pretty much as geared as my priest when tomb started) I can safely say that mage is much easier to play and especially do mechanics on, it's not even comparable, mage mobility and simple rotation makes it really easy to play and deal with mechanics.

Just saw your other post, saying frost didn't work early because of how "complex" thermal void is pretty wrong, it just wasn't tuned properly. When it got buffed in 7.1.5 and got viable it really wasn't hard to play double ice lance and now where it's not really a thing outside of shimmer tricks(which you really don't need to do outside of maybe your opening as most of the time you're better off saving shimmer for other things) it's even easier to play, frost pretty much plays itself and due to the way shimmer works you really shouldn't lose much dps from doing mechanics, even soaking you just ice block for 1-2 sec and then cancelaura it.

i was talking specifically about heroic kil'jaeden, since that's what the OP was referencing, and on the numerous pulls we had, i was very regularly hit by focussed dreadflame/bursting dreadflame while having to also soak multiple large and small apoc explosions, which meant i was forced to use IB early to avoid taking the dmg from bursting/focussed dreadflame while still being able to soak the big apoc, on one pull i got targeted by shadow reflections, focussed dreadflame then right after a bursting dreadflame, and it happened a few times on the same pull.

as far as difficulty of playing the spec, i never said it was harder to play mage over priest, my point was that as a hybrid, you have the option of changing to another role and still be viable, if i can't put out the numbers needed with my main spec (which is the best spec i have at the time) then no amount of respeccing is gonna change that and i just won't be able to raid, and that also plays into the fact that priest is a hybrid, the reason that it is hard to play is because if it wasn't, there would be way too many ppl playing hybrid classes due to easy dps spec rotations that there wouldn't be any point to bring a pure dps outside of extremely niche class abilities to make mechanics easier to manage.

[Fleckens]

i was talking specifically about heroic kil'jaeden, since that's what the OP was referencing, and on the numerous pulls we had, i was very regularly hit by focussed dreadflame/bursting dreadflame while having to also soak multiple large and small apoc explosions, which meant i was forced to use IB early to avoid taking the dmg from bursting/focussed dreadflame while still being able to soak the big apoc, on one pull i got targeted by shadow reflections, focussed dreadflame then right after a bursting dreadflame, and it happened a few times on the same pull.

as far as difficulty of playing the spec, i never said it was harder to play mage over priest, my point was that as a hybrid, you have the option of changing to another role and still be viable, if i can't put out the numbers needed with my main spec (which is the best spec i have at the time) then no amount of respeccing is gonna change that and i just won't be able to raid, and that also plays into the fact that priest is a hybrid, the reason that it is hard to play is because if it wasn't, there would be way too many ppl playing hybrid classes due to easy dps spec rotations that there wouldn't be any point to bring a pure dps outside of extremely niche class abilities to make mechanics easier to manage.

While I don't agree with your opinion on hybrid vs pure it's true that it is easier if you're pugging to play a hybrid class so if that's just you were talking about then that's fine. Remember though as a pure you have the advantage that you will almost certainly always have a viable spec, not always the case for hybrid's with just 1 dps spec, if it's shit then you're fucked as a dps.

Also you should be doing those things as a mage, I always do that as well as it's so easy to blink and turn around midcast, soaking mechanics while not losing any dps. Compared to on priest where I can't just react to things if I want to keep my dps going as doing anything but void bolt stuttersteps at high voidform will make you drop out so you have to plan it out. Although I obviously haven't tried it on mage yet something like mythic mistress is just hell as shadow due to all the movement and mechanics you have to deal with.

[BobAwesome]

do yourself a favour and read my first post, don't be a fuckwit and spew this crap, you just make yourself look like a butthurt special snowflake.

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i was talking specifically about heroic kil'jaeden, since that's what the OP was referencing, and on the numerous pulls we had, i was very regularly hit by focussed dreadflame/bursting dreadflame while having to also soak multiple large and small apoc explosions, which meant i was forced to use IB early to avoid taking the dmg from bursting/focussed dreadflame while still being able to soak the big apoc, on one pull i got targeted by shadow reflections, focussed dreadflame then right after a bursting dreadflame, and it happened a few times on the same pull.

as far as difficulty of playing the spec, i never said it was harder to play mage over priest, my point was that as a hybrid, you have the option of changing to another role and still be viable, if i can't put out the numbers needed with my main spec (which is the best spec i have at the time) then no amount of respeccing is gonna change that and i just won't be able to raid, and that also plays into the fact that priest is a hybrid, the reason that it is hard to play is because if it wasn't, there would be way too many ppl playing hybrid classes due to easy dps spec rotations that there wouldn't be any point to bring a pure dps outside of extremely niche class abilities to make mechanics easier to manage.

This post?

lol, mage better and easier than priest, good joke mate, keep em coming made me laugh.

That post, where you're very clearly the butthurt special snowflake. "b-b-but muh mage takes skillz 2 play" That's how you sound. Go cry on the mage forums crybaby.

And fyi "my point was that as a hybrid, you have the option of changing to another role and still be viable" is an absolute BULLSHIT argument. As a Hybrid, if our dps sucks, we don't have the ability to swap to another dps spec we just deal with it. You have 3 dps specs. Again, stop crying.