Concerning Shadow in WoD PvP...

[Yvaelle]

Actually, Dominate Mind is the best spell in the game for CC'ing yourself. Who else has this sweet ass mechanic?

Maybe that's the solution to Mage PvP, Polymorph is now a 40 yard range, 1.5s cast, 8 second duration, channeled spell

[Theed]

Shadow Orb generation especially in Ashran with multiple targets feels too high thanks to Glyph of Mind Harvest and Auspicious Spirits. The new 4pc bonus is cool but i really hope they rethink the 2pc set bonus. 100 versality is like 2% damage and linking it to Dispersion is just bad.

Spriest is #1 target in almost every skirmish played, because we take so much damage and "only" have dispersion. It is actually fun to fool melees who mindlessly chase me and try to get me while my partner kills them. Spectral Guise and Angelic Feather are doing a good job but when a melee is on you while youre stunned you have to disperse. Tanking the damage is impossible. Especially Warriors are insane right now. 110k Mortal Strikes and Executes (like 35% of my health in one hit).

Might do a little pvp movie with some skirmish/ashran action.

[Alanar]

Hey all!

So I have been playing for 3 days in the beta right now and this got me to the point to make a thread
to atleast show my opinion in he current sate of Shadow. Shadow is fun right now because we have an actual option on what we want to do with our orbs, since we can save them up for double plague or 8 sec stun and instant mindblast DP combo.

Still I am realy skeptical, so I did my best to show what I think of it! : http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/11268746849

[Yvaelle]

Apparently it's actually possible for warriors to MS for 200k crits currently, without cooldowns - and they're doing about double the damage of all other specs in pve. So... I would say they are going to get nerfed... but the expansion is called Warriors of Draenor, the entire dev team is warrior mains now, and the story of the expansion consists entirely of warrior characters..... something tells me they are "broken as intended" :/

[Blackmorgrim]

One thing I'd suggest to all you pvp priests, try out Glyph of weakened soul on your lvl 100s. That's a PWS every 8 seconds. A Body and Soul every 8 seconds. Want to make it a little better for when you're being locked down? Add in reflective shield.

I've had rogues try to gank me in Ashran as well as many other melee... and unless its a paladin with their ability to take me from 80% to dead in a gcd... many times the melee will have a hard time breaking through your shields before you can put the next one up. (Although haven't really faced a good warrior since before they got buffed)

Combine it with Auspicious spirits, and you'll have some really consistant orb generation even when locked down, especially with SWP on 3+ targets. SWP can also be spammed nonstop without needing to face a target (particularly useful for melee adept at staying out of your front fire arc). The upfront damage can still proc SAs, for when you really need those orbs coming in.

Keep in mind, Auspicious spirits scales very well with crit and multistrike, which is also the same for PW:S, since it's absorb can crit and multistrike baseline for all priests now. This means a PWS can absorb anywhere between 100% and 320% of its normal value.

[Deleted]

Stuff that is usable while stunned,silenced or passive stuff that procs when those happen are pretty meh. Always thought active defenses should be the way to go to make "skill" count in this game.

Diffuse
Consumes up to 3 shadow orbs, giving 10% damage reduction per orb consumed for 10seconds.
2 1.5 Minute cooldown

other idea would be to make shadow priests just avoid dmg by making them immune to snares and slows and actually being able to kite melee ( which is the main problem anyways ) due to being all shadowy and stuff.

[Blackmorgrim]

Stuff that is usable while stunned,silenced or passive stuff that procs when those happen are pretty meh. Always thought active defenses should be the way to go to make "skill" count in this game.

Diffuse
Consumes up to 3 shadow orbs, giving 10% damage reduction per orb consumed for 10seconds.
2 1.5 Minute cooldown

other idea would be to make shadow priests just avoid dmg by making them immune to snares and slows and actually being able to kite melee ( which is the main problem anyways ) due to being all shadowy and stuff.

Why use that when... fade 30 sec cooldown... Glyph of Fade- your fade now reduces damage taken by 10%.

Otherwise, we've also been given a few more mobility options this time around. Although DKs are still the bane of our existence with deathgrip+silence.

[Annesh]

Speaking of, I think if they increased the Fade glyph DR to like 20% or more it would help a lot. After that, fix Guise so dots can't break it early and we're golden.

[Yvaelle]

Stuff that is usable while stunned,silenced or passive stuff that procs when those happen are pretty meh. Always thought active defenses should be the way to go to make "skill" count in this game.

Diffuse
Consumes up to 3 shadow orbs, giving 10% damage reduction per orb consumed for 10seconds.
2 1.5 Minute cooldown

other idea would be to make shadow priests just avoid dmg by making them immune to snares and slows and actually being able to kite melee ( which is the main problem anyways ) due to being all shadowy and stuff.

That seems like a pretty terrible cooldown to me - high cost, long cooldown, low reduction.

[Deleted]

That seems like a pretty terrible cooldown to me - high cost, long cooldown, low reduction.

remember when we had it all at the start of Mop?
- Guise while stunned
- Life swap ( even worked on your fiend )

If sp survivability ever goes too high they are god status. + we can tune those numbers #blizzard. Need to come up with reasonable ideas rather than "shadow priests are nothing but shadows thus immune to all melee while in shadow form".

[Yvaelle]

With the exception of the end of Cataclysm maybe - after the 5.0 patch - I don't think we have ever really been "god status". There were about a dozen other nerfs on top of guise and void shift - but even still - the first half of MoP's first season we weren't even on the radar until Stampede got nerfed and Taste For Blood was removed in 5.1: only then did Shatreeplay truly rise. Even within 5.1 Shatreeplay, druids were imbalanced (15s second Displacer Beast that exits combat), and Fmages were reliably globaling people until they redesigned Fmage mastery.

A lot has changed since then - and the WoD beta is very different than even the end of MoP (live).

I sometimes like the idea of Orb-based defensive cooldowns - but if we get one - they will balance around us having it: not always a good thing.

In which case, a 30% reduction is quite low - I'd much rather have something with very high reduction for just a couple seconds - like Evanesce (also clearly a Shadowpriest spell name, wtf).

Or something along the lines of Sacrificial Pact - a powerful personal shield (Black Shield?) that we can use to pre-emptively block burst damage (and potentially interact with Glyph of Reflective Shield).

30% reduction is too low to ensure that it will prevent a kill sometimes, and 10 seconds is longer than we need - so a 30% for 10 second cooldown can quickly block more overall damage than a shield - and they take the potential damage prevented into account when balancing I think. From that perspective - a shield reduces less potential damage, but is more useful (blocking raid mechanics and pvp burst cycles): even if it only lasts something like 5 seconds

[shamantime]

I always pictured Shadow being much stealthier and hard to get a hold, instead of gap closers they would have CD stealths , like Spectral Guise, that they can use on themselves or allies and also able to slip out of roots and slows like with Phantasm.

Receding Shadows
Instant
30 sec CD
Retreat into the shadows teleporting you forward 10 yds and stealthing you for 3 seconds.

Spectral Cloak
Instant
1.5 min CD
Wrap the target in shadows making them unseen for 5 seconds. During this time they cannot take damage nor receive healing.

[Deleted]

Yep, this is exactly what they need to do - table every CC and anti-CC, place a value on them, and add them up by class - then see if the difference between classes is compensated by some other benefit (higher damage, greater mobility/survivability/self-healing). If I worked at Blizzard, there would be an entire wall dedicated to it - so you have this big constant reminder of what everyone has and doesn't have - and then when you want to talk balance you can go stand in front of the wall and debate.

Edit: I have not received Empowered Psychic Horror yet, maybe it makes all the difference?

could you make this "wall" (visualisation, digital). I think it's a great idea.

[Sard]

Right now WoD pvp is useless because the balance of ranged cc/snares/escapes vs melee snare/cc/gap closer is off. Ranged classes have lost more ways to get away from melee than melee classes have lost ways of getting to ranged. It's pretty clear when you see something like warrior vs shadow priest - the warrior just has more ways to get to you than you have to get away from him. I expect all melee to have a mobility adjustment at some point.

[Blackmorgrim]

Gap closers is something I've commented on in feedback many times (although it seems to fall on deaf ears probably because I'm not an arena person). Creating a gap between a caster and a single melee takes real effort, much less multiple melee. However, especially for a class like a warrior that gap can be easily closed in 1/4 the time it took to create it in the first place. At the same time, the abilities to create that gap are on cooldowns 3-4 times the length of the gap closers available to melee.

Then there's the issue that almost all melee abilities are instant and can be used while moving. There's no such thing as interrupts for melee. CCs also tend to be tied together with attacks, whereas for casters they are normally separate/mutually exclusive abilities. However, for casters, all you need to do is force them to move to lower their dps output, and it order to do that, melee just need to get in range to threaten them with being hit. Then, if you manage to interrupt them, you also cut them out of offenses and sometimes defenses for 10 seconds.

This is the reason casters were made tankier in the first place... we needed it to survive the onslaught of melee attacks. It's probably most noticeable with shadow since we've been tanky since before every other caster was tanky (it was one of the reasons we were really good back in BC pvp). On live, we enjoy somewhere between 45% and 60% physical mitigation with available armor. With the new armor formula and the loss of inner fire, that has been more than halved.

[Yvaelle]

Ya, as it stands - next season is going to consist entirely of melee+melee+healer, or melee+hunter+healer.

Caster mobility and instants were nerfed, but melee(and hunters) are still operating at MoP levels.

[Dierdre]

something tells me they are "broken as intended" :/

Let's just wait for that fabled tuning pass... Maybe this time it'll come.

[XangXu]

Just looking at the changes it makes me think that Shadow is going to be pretty damned good in the next expac.


I'm sorry but you get Instant-Cast Mind Blast at level 100... that just... does soooooo much to the spec alone...

- - - Updated - - -

Also

Spectral Guise Redesign:
Phantasm has been removed.

Spectral Guise now replaces phantasm.


Spectral Guise:
30 Sec Cooldown

Leave a shadowy clone behind and teleport yourself backwards 8 yards, enter stealth for 6 seconds. As a shadow you remain stealthed but remain in combat. Lasts 6 seconds or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks. Removes all movement impairing effects.

[Deleted]

from my brief beta experience the following build works quite fine against melee mongoing you down. given i played with a resto druid but usually i didnt have to cast more than half a dozen cast time spells during 2v2s to kill stuff.

http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calcula...4NmEKWlbD_CqpX

with prioritizing haste and with power infusion you can push mindblast cooldown below 5 seconds + its instant with clarity. against casters i swap out FDCL for insanity. vampiric touch and swp are only used on non kill target to give procs and to ensure you do the extra 90% dmg mindspike instant cast on the kill target.

also tried some double dps with randoms and found auspicious spirits good for that for the amount of healing you get from spamming all those orbs into dp's.

Tl;dr: sp dmg seems great and clarity ensures you really dont have to get cast time spells off when double melee are mauling your face still being able to do dmg. control tools are great against casters specially the 20sec cd 3sec silence glyphed is great + the pvp set bonus giving you orbs back overtime after using them on a psychic horror is great. I feel shatterplay might be rather stronk in wod.