Calm down Spriests, we're not getting ignored.

[Toroc]

This was due to factors outside of our class. Namely, The AP buff melee got, too many DTRs going out (thus, having to buff melee and Hunters who couldn't get DTRs, leaving non-DTR casters out in the cold), and our less than stellar single target damage (which usually is made up for by multidotting but not in DS because most of the fights are single target). They fuddled with the proc system with Gurth'alak and that combined with broken Rage scaling turned Warriors into juggernauts of DPS. Rogues had their class-only legendary (its not as good as it sounds but still pretty nice) and bladeflurry was terribly OP.

My...tits...are quite geared and I still get beaten by pretty decent Warriors and Rogues. I'm competitive with other casters, and if they even give me a hint of AOE or multidotting I'm right back up there. If I had DTR I'd be competitive much more often.

The problems with Shadow Priest competitiveness has nothing to do with the spec. The spec itself is very smooth and well-designed. Most of the balance problems in DS can be traced back to the stupid Legendary staff.

I'm pretty sure the DI nerf we'll either be compensated for, or it will have its niche whenever we need to multidot. That's how talents are supposed to work - all those folks trying to find the "best" are (for the most part) wasting their time. You won't find a talent that's *always* the best, just ones that are best in certain situations. You might use one talent *most* of the time, you won't use it *all* the time.

I very much agree with this post. This is probably what you should read OP.

It's the same song and dance every time.. "OMG blizzard hates us!" then content is released and things are fine.

Omg Veiled I miss you haha
<3 Riddance

[Deleted]

I do think there is some merit to learning your class so much better than everyone else that you excel within the confines of the group, even though the limitations of the class are worse than the others. In general, every guild I've ever been in only has a handful of players who are even coming close to reaching their class potential. In my last guild we had a couple hunters, a ret pally, and one rogue who were approaching their simcraft values. Everyone else was far below what they should have been able to do. In my current guild, I'm almost an entire iLevel group below the rest of the raid, and outdpsing everyone in it even though I shouldn't be able to.

So I think that's what Dragon is saying..... However, I think what Joyful is saying is that there are some guilds out there where everyone is playing to their potential. And if you find yourself in a guild like that, and playing a class that "can't hang", you just end up being dead weight, no matter how good a player you are. I've never been in or seen a guild like that.... but I'm sure there are some out there....

I personally have 6 85s, of all different varieties of classes, and I can definately say there's a divide in how quickly each class scales and how much DPS they can dish out at each gear level. I can think of many fights where I could swap out one character for another and do 5k more dps immediately. So I suppose if I found myself in a guild that was like that, the notion of "this one character is my main" would have to get thrown out the window. You would have to bring the class the guild told you to, and let go of any attachements you had for one class only... all this to say, if you're that kind of person, does the worry about how much DPS a single class does really affect you? If priests end up being on the low end of the scale, you just don't bring them, and move on with your game. I'm reminded of guilds who got the Nefarion first kill by bringing 17 druids or something stupid like that - that's the kind if guild I imagine when I think of things like "class potentials" actually mattering to a guild... for every other guild out there, who cares, really? The skill of the individual player probably matters far more.

However, I imagine shadow will always have its niche, no matter how bad it gets. That is - multi-target dotting. There's only a few classes that work the same in that regard, and it's usually good to have a few players who can do it well. If I were in a more competitive raiding guild, I'd probably learn to multi-dot like a bad-ass, if nothing else, if my priority was making sure my shadowpriest was desired for the the raid...

You are correct, I've been around a lot and have raided in guilds where people just play to their own potential like you said. After leaving that guild and joining a ranked 380 guild the difference in skill level was massive. It isn't just knowing your own class its about: Key binds, fast target switching, making sure you aren't moving to much, knowledge of the fight and knowing when your CDs will be up for burn phases, along with other things.
Only time will tell, you know what blizz is like changing things around last minute...

[mindp]

It's the same song and dance every time.. "OMG blizzard hates us!" then content is released and things are fine.

Blizzard hates me, and only me. Why does Blizzard hate me? They seem to love you.

[Deleted]

Kilee's point is that, unless you're in basically a top 100 world first guild, your player skill matters more than class. A OP class makes things easier, definitely, but nothing you can't overcome with enough skill.

If the guy *who writes the guide to playing your class* says he's got room to improve, I'm sure we all do.

Ohh I know exactly what he meant, but if his solution to a problem is too "Play better" then I simply find it stupid.

[Deleted]

Personally we're getting close to the point when the basic mechanics will be set in stone and only number tweaking, so if there are certain things we are still unhappy about, now would be the time to speak up before that train has run past. I'm more concerned about the removal of the critical increase from mindspike on mindblast (was fun casting 3 spikes then mblast for burst) and single target dps mode being only keeping vt and swp up, mblast on cd and occasionally firing up dplague , rest mindflay (which is the same on live, but without waiting for 3 orb for dev plague). Kind of lacking burst on demand for short period of time (read: as in where you cannot have your dots up on it. no evang for shadow, PI has a two minute cd) and the orb resource system doesnt seem that interesting as for now as only devp plague and horror uses that (which should be costing no orbs for initial cast, and more will prolong. A long cd with orb req to cast is rather cumbersome mechanic)

[Sodia]

LOL whot in hell ?? SP is in TOP DPS In CATA and not that bad in MOP whots your problem ppl ?? you want to be Special or whot ?? Sp comunit whine that orbs ar to Random ,they change it, then you whine that SP is to complicatet ,they change it whot else you want a 100% bust or whot ???

[Felade]

Personally we're getting close to the point when the basic mechanics will be set in stone and only number tweaking, so if there are certain things we are still unhappy about, now would be the time to speak up before that train has run past. I'm more concerned about the removal of the critical increase from mindspike on mindblast (was fun casting 3 spikes then mblast for burst) and single target dps mode being only keeping vt and swp up, mblast on cd and occasionally firing up dplague , rest mindflay (which is the same on live, but without waiting for 3 orb for dev plague). Kind of lacking burst on demand for short period of time (read: as in where you cannot have your dots up on it. no evang for shadow, PI has a two minute cd) and the orb resource system doesnt seem that interesting as for now as only devp plague and horror uses that (which should be costing no orbs for initial cast, and more will prolong. A long cd with orb req to cast is rather cumbersome mechanic)

The mind spike mechanic is being preserved, somewhat, by a glyph. It no longer buffs the crit chance of MB (and MB doesn't hit nearly as hard thanks to it becoming an orb generator instead of a spender), but you can still make your MB instant (and it only takes 2 casts, not 3).

I also feel like having a DOT be our orb spender feels weak (although I hear it hits pretty hard on beta). I'll miss that feeling of having my MB slam into the faces of enemies.

Psychic Horror (at least on the tooltip) has no cost. Orbs increase the duration of the horror. but the disarm lasts for 10 seconds, even if you have no orbs.

[Viridis]

Psychic Horror (at least on the tooltip) has no cost. Orbs increase the duration of the horror. but the disarm lasts for 10 seconds, even if you have no orbs.

On Beta, at the moment, you can not use Psychic Horror without shadow orbs. You need atleast one

Lets hope its a bug.

[Deleted]

The mind spike mechanic is being preserved, somewhat, by a glyph. It no longer buffs the crit chance of MB (and MB doesn't hit nearly as hard thanks to it becoming an orb generator instead of a spender), but you can still make your MB instant (and it only takes 2 casts, not 3).

I also feel like having a DOT be our orb spender feels weak (although I hear it hits pretty hard on beta). I'll miss that feeling of having my MB slam into the faces of enemies.

Psychic Horror (at least on the tooltip) has no cost. Orbs increase the duration of the horror. but the disarm lasts for 10 seconds, even if you have no orbs.

Oh but its the crit that I miss, not the mblast instantcast. The feeling of having a shotgun mode where you spike spike then blast your enemy to smithereens is gone without the crit componement. And as some said, on beta there is an orb cost

[Aleaa]

but you can still make your MB instant .

and lose DI proc some times

[Venaliter]

As of this moment, Shadow is pushover in PvP. and DPS in the lower end of the spectrum. There's due cause to be concerned, especially with Spectral Guise sucking as much as it does. Melee once again will ride a Spriest like the town bicycle.

Priests generally are one of the weakest classes in PvP, and so far MoP hasn't changed that.

[sugarfree]

As of this moment, Shadow is pushover in PvP. and DPS in the lower end of the spectrum. There's due cause to be concerned, especially with Spectral Guise sucking as much as it does. Melee once again will ride a Spriest like the town bicycle.

Priests generally are one of the weakest classes in PvP, and so far MoP hasn't changed that.

If the current self-healing Spriests get persists, you shouldn't worry about being the "weakest". To tell you the truth, most specs have huge issues. My priest will always be shadow, and I still think they are viable except for the Psychic Horror thing being dependable on Orbs for the horror effect.

Specs have issues, I mean Destruction for warlocks is pretty much worse than Arcane at this point in the Beta and PTR, and Arcane is not viable in PvP at all.


And please don't worry about DPS numbers, because that definitely will be addressed. Mechanics won't, but numbers will certainly be looked up.

[Purpleisbetter]

This was due to factors outside of our class. Namely, The AP buff melee got, too many DTRs going out (thus, having to buff melee and Hunters who couldn't get DTRs, leaving non-DTR casters out in the cold), and our less than stellar single target damage (which usually is made up for by multidotting but not in DS because most of the fights are single target). They fuddled with the proc system with Gurth'alak and that combined with broken Rage scaling turned Warriors into juggernauts of DPS. Rogues had their class-only legendary (its not as good as it sounds but still pretty nice) and bladeflurry was terribly OP.

My...tits...are quite geared and I still get beaten by pretty decent Warriors and Rogues. I'm competitive with other casters, and if they even give me a hint of AOE or multidotting I'm right back up there. If I had DTR I'd be competitive much more often.

The problems with Shadow Priest competitiveness has nothing to do with the spec. The spec itself is very smooth and well-designed. Most of the balance problems in DS can be traced back to the stupid Legendary staff.

I'm pretty sure the DI nerf we'll either be compensated for, or it will have its niche whenever we need to multidot. That's how talents are supposed to work - all those folks trying to find the "best" are (for the most part) wasting their time. You won't find a talent that's *always* the best, just ones that are best in certain situations. You might use one talent *most* of the time, you won't use it *all* the time.

Yeah, feel your pain: blizzard forgot that not the whole army of caster got the DTR. So we just suck it up in the a**.

[Rhylix]

I feel that Spriests are in a pretty good position, as Sugarfree stated, there is still a lot of number tweaking to be done between now and release, I would be rather surprised if they do not change any of the numbers around to bring shadow dps more in line with the rest of the casters, maybe not OP numbers but at least competitive.

I am not sure about both sides of the argument I have been seeing as far as PvP goes, I see a fair amount of people, both Spriests and other classes complaining that our glyph of dark binding is OP, which I do not agree with. It takes up a major glyph slot, and with the variety of fairly attractive pvp glyphs out there for shadow (spike, mass dispel, fade, VE, MF, inner fire, etc) having to sacrifice one of those slots to be able to do a bit of off healing without having to pop in and out of shadowform is a pretty even balance. All through cata you had hybrids that could bomb pretty significant heals without much sacrifice (WoG heals, Ele/Enhance popping some heals, and to a lesser degree, feral druids popping out and hotting/proccing a free+instant healing touch) Coupled with how much self-healing all of the melee classes had and still have, having to sacrifice that chunk of mana plus the GCD to come out of shadow, cast a few heals and then go back into shadow before you could dps again, was a pretty crappy situation.

While the nerf to DI is a pain for single target PvE dps, I, personally, am not too concerned because I don't really care much for pve anymore and I feel it will still be a strong talent in PvP, as the vast majority of arena PvP is in the 3v3 realm, you are going to have SW:P on at least 3 targets, and if there is a pet class or two, maybe up to 5 targets at a time, even at a 5% proc-rate I would imagine that will still be fairly beneficial (not on beta nor can I currently play wow, but it seems logical) and DI coupled with FDCL means that even when being tunneled you still have the opportunity to provide some fairly substantial pressure through instant procs.

I feel we are in a much better place cc wise, Scream + the psyfiend you can cast out at 25yrds means forcing healers out from behind pillars or instant fearing and forcing a trinket or creating a window to burn someone plus silence which we have always had. The only downfall I currently see is that having psychic horror on the orb system really blows, I can't really think of any realistic situation where I would think " I have 3 orbs, I should save them to stun someone instead of melting face with DP". Hopefully they fix it at least so you don't need an orb to utilize the disarm ability as that would still be useful.

Also, as far as I know, we are the only non-healers with a defensive dispel which adds a pretty significant amount of utility.

All-in-all I think priests are in a pretty strong place, especially PvP wise, and probably will be in PvE once all the dust settles from the numbers game prior to launch.

[Earthrot]

WTF, no it is. If you understand the Class, it is simple to play. [Insert class X] was never hard to play. Play [Insert class Y] this is hard to play, if u make dmg with her, than you can play.

I personally find [Insert class Y] to be a lot easier, but I'm having much more difficulty playing [Insert class X].

[Venaliter]

I feel we are in a much better place cc wise

Our CC is better, sure, but is it good enough? Not even close. There is absolutely NO WAY you'll ever be able to get warrior, rogue, dk etc off of you. None. Priests will be the #1 burn targets once again, at least for melee.

We have absolutely no dispel protection. None. Players are free to remove our dots with no penalty.

As you said, Psychic Horror is broken, requiring an orb to work.

These issues specific condemn the class to mediocrity at best.

[clevin]

Kilee's point is that, unless you're in basically a top 100 world first guild, your player skill matters more than class. A OP class makes things easier, definitely, but nothing you can't overcome with enough skill.

If the guy *who writes the guide to playing your class* says he's got room to improve, I'm sure we all do.

The counter to this is that some people can't improve much more even though they're not at the classes theoretical peak - they've reached their own skill level (or perhaps they have bad latency, etc). Or, perhaps, they don't want to try to time a DoT refresh to the closest 10ms - they COULD, but they're fine doing 85% of what the class can do because they're not in a World 100 guild. The problem here is that uf you can be playing another class that way and do way more DPS, why play or bring the spriest?

I did this with my hunter. I have an 85 spriest and boomkin, but I can more easily put out higher DPS on the SV hunter... so aside from stubbornness why would I bring either caster as DPS? Why would a RL take them when I'm OK with bringing the hunter (again, as DPS... yes the other classes can off heal, etc).

This focus on where classes fall in the DPS ranking is a direct result of the Wrath decision to spread buffs around and the infamous "bring the player, not the class" saying. When spriests were no longer the sole mana battery it became necessary to be closely competitive in DPS terms. If we weren't, then other classes who could provide Replenishment would be slotted for raids if they were equally well-played (setting aside people getting raid slots for reasons other than performance.)

[Kilee25]

Why would a RL take them when I'm OK with bringing the hunter (again, as DPS... yes the other classes can off heal, etc).

Because chances are, the raid leader is just as lazy, and there are 4 other DPS in the group who are also just as lazy, and your 85% of the class is better than the 4 other people's 60% that they are doing. I stress - if you are at a point where you seriously have to worry about this, you're not the guy who is doing 85% of your class in the first place. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to do normal modes in MoP with "scumbag steve" at the helm. Heroic Modes will be the place where you worry about this kind of thing - are you passing heroic modes doing 85% of your potential? If so, who is carrying you...?

This focus on where classes fall in the DPS ranking is a direct result of the Wrath decision to spread buffs around and the infamous "bring the player, not the class" saying. When spriests were no longer the sole mana battery it became necessary to be closely competitive in DPS terms. If we weren't, then other classes who could provide Replenishment would be slotted for raids if they were equally well-played (setting aside people getting raid slots for reasons other than performance.)

Spriests have notoriously been "buff sponges" in raid groups. I am curious if MoP will change that any.

[Kingradio]

Our CC is better, sure, but is it good enough? Not even close. There is absolutely NO WAY you'll ever be able to get warrior, rogue, dk etc off of you. None. Priests will be the #1 burn targets once again, at least for melee.

We have absolutely no dispel protection. None. Players are free to remove our dots with no penalty.

As you said, Psychic Horror is broken, requiring an orb to work.

These issues specific condemn the class to mediocrity at best.

Sure seems that way. If blizz is never going to address the eternal problem of priests having absolutely no way to get any distance from melee, they should give them some sort of interrupt and/or stun protection. It gets really, really old being stunned or interrupted at will by melee classes, but being unable to do anything at all to disrupt their attacks. (Psychic Horror is not so effective nowadays, and has a long cooldown)

[Felade]

Yeah, feel your pain: blizzard forgot that not the whole army of caster got the DTR. So we just suck it up in the a**.

Let me tell you how excited I am about the new multi tier legendary and quest chain.

Spriests have notoriously been "buff sponges" in raid groups. I am curious if MoP will change that any.

Looking at the buff matrix, we're going to be in a similar place to where we were in cata - bring a whole bunch of healer buffs, and our DPS will be highly dependent on group composition. In fact, one of our most important buff is brought by a melee class...the 8% spelldamage buff is just a problem. Yes, Hunters will bring it too - but they don't care about it either. Only warlocks care, and they'd rather have the GCD back, thank you very much. That 8% spelldamage buff is in a really awkward spot for 10 mans. It just seems silly to me that a heavy caster team can't bring this very important buff very easily.

Sure seems that way. If blizz is never going to address the eternal problem of priests having absolutely no way to get any distance from melee, they should give them some sort of interrupt and/or stun protection. It gets really, really old being stunned or interrupted at will by melee classes, but being unable to do anything at all to disrupt their attacks. (Psychic Horror is not so effective nowadays, and has a long cooldown)

But at least your playstyle is different from a Warlock or a Mage. Didn't you know "completely locked down by melee" was a feature? :P

Notice how a lot of hybrid specs of healers don't do so well in PVP - Ret Paladin, Shadow Priest, Ele Shaman, Balance Druid, and I'll bet Windwalker Monk will go on that list. They may be afraid to dilute the healer pool or just afraid if they give something to these specs the healers will become OP...or just that they focus on getting at least ONE spec of each class to work in PVP, and these folks should basically plan on healing in PVP (except for Druids who lucked out with feral).