T15 2 and 4 PC Bonus' :| {Shadow}

[Twintop]

Not going to lie, I kind of smiled when I saw you reply to that.

I had a stupidly large grin on my face when his Tweet popped up that a rework was coming. A little "Thank you!" response is the least I could do. ^^

Who says Blizzard doesn't pay attention to the community when they give feedback? This is a prime example, IMO, of a talent that a lot of unskilled/uninformed players take because it sounds great but ends up failing in every major way. They've acknowledged it and are fixing it. A giant thumbs up from me. :-D

[Cerbz]

Ty, Burk, for bringing up these numbers. There are numerous complaints about shadow scaling over several threads in this forum, but no one ever presented any data to back up this claim (or presented irrelevant data, like comparing normalized scale factors of different specs (and, therefore, normalized by different values)). My personal experience was quite the opposite, my dps during the first weeks (~467 ilvl) was terrible, but has increased more than the dps of the other classes.

Another thing that bothers me is how people intentionally compares us to the overpowered classes (namely affliction and arcane) and then conclude that we need buffs when we are, as a matter of fact, above average. Actually, we'd be the top dps in 10-man if they nerfed the outliers (Link) and still close to the top in 25-man (Link).



He never said that the ilvl increase lead to a linear increase in dps, and the way dps increases with ilvl is irrelevant in his model.
If we had the equations for dps of every class we could just derivate the scale factors, but since we don't (no one has), we estimate the dps increase we had in the past and them extrapolate to the gear levels that don't yet exist in the game, it's not perfect, since we don't have the same scale factors over every point of the gear level axis, but you can't claim to have a better estimate as you don't have the equation to our dps.

Raidbot numbers can be useful, but only if you know what you're looking for. Spec score doesn't mean a thing however.

If you look at raidbots and sort it by DPS instead of spec score, and all parses for 10 and 25 man, you'll see that Shadow is much lower on these lists and we are below average, especially when you narrow it down to most single target fights.

I would have linked it myself but I can't yet.

[Taradenha]

Raidbot numbers can be useful, but only if you know what you're looking for. Spec score doesn't mean a thing however.

If you look at raidbots and sort it by DPS instead of spec score, and all parses for 10 and 25 man, you'll see that Shadow is much lower on these lists and we are below average, especially when you narrow it down to most single target fights.

I would have linked it myself but I can't yet.

I know exactly what spec score is. Claiming that dps is better than spec score is completely ridiculous, spec score exists solely to avoid the bias that the dps sorting will create on fights with dps increase mechanics. Let's see how shadow fares on a single target fight: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_the_...14/60/default/
If we exclude the outliers we have rogues with 116.3k dps and shadowpriests with 112.2k dps which is just a little more than 3.5% delta on our worse fight. So even on our worse fight we're still above DKs, monks, both balance and feral, enh shamans, pallies and the less used specs of pures. How can you justify shadow being buffed with this data? And we're actually getting buffed, improving the shadowy apparitions cap will increase our dps by about 2%, if you check logs you'll see the numbers of apparitions is around 70% of the number of SW:P crits and with the new cap we'll see this number close to 100%.
If you have data that justifies shadow buffs i'm eager to see it.

[Kaesebrezen]

Let's see how shadow fares on a single target fight:

Feng HC is not really a single target fight... Also looking at Top 100 isn't such a good move either. Those logs are outliers. It's still better to look at all parses.

And then do what blizzard does - look at each fight itself. Not overall dps or specscore. Taking "all parses", 1 month timeframe, and checking each fight for itself. Then you'll get to "shadow is low on single target fights".

[Taradenha]

If you don't consider Feng a single target then you have maybe 1 single target fight per tier. I could have used Blade Lord, but shadow is ranked better on blade lord than on Feng (and it's easier to analyze the Feng logs, where you have two clear outliers and the rest of the specs close to each other, while on blade lord you have one outlier with 95.2k dps, then one small group at ~90k dps and them a big group at ~80k dps which is leaded by shadow with 82.5k dps and down there monks with 74.6k dps (http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Blade_Lord_Ta'yak/10H/100/14/60/default/)).

I do agree that looking at fights separately is the correct analysis, but we have to look at all fights and then we'll see that shadow is above average, even if shadow is low on some fight someone has to be under the average (unless the std dev = 0).

On the top 100 vs all parses: Shadow ranks worse on "all parses" than on "top 100" on every fight; I agree the top 100 are outliers and some people will say they are RNG outliers, which is not true. You'll find the same people ranking on every fight, which means the top 100 is biased by skill and gear, and since there's a big gap between top 100 and all parses we can conclude that shadow has a higher skill cap than other specs or we scale better with gear (or a combination of both), my personal opinion is that our skill cap is low (my main point of comparison is shadow past rotations), therefore we scale nicely with gear, which adds to my argument that shadow will be fine comes 5.2.

[Meaks]

Or that all the good/geared/smart shadowpriests went disc in 10man
Why play a crappy dps when you can play a great healer?
Which one of those is better for your raid?

Edit: And based on PTR, if you think they will actually fix apparitions I think you will be sorely disappointed when 5.2 hits.

[Taradenha]

Or that all the good/geared/smart shadowpriests went disc in 10man
Why play a crappy dps when you can play a great healer?
Which one of those is better for your raid?

That doesn't even make sense, how does that relate to the data provided?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Basically what those number mean is the following. Lets say you are doing 100k dps now and a Warlock with the same gear is doing 110k dps. Then at some point in the future you are gonna do 150k dps and the warlock is gonna do 165k dps. The relative difference is the same, so its not a scaling issue. This relative difference of 10% could be overcome by giving SPriest a flat 10% dmg modifier.

No offense, but SPs scaling as good as Aff Locks? That really wins the prize for most stupid comment of all time.

Let's see, Shadow scales with Int, Haste to some degree (nowhere close to the lvl of Aff Locks). After that we need to stack Crit, which is fucking shit for us, but still our best 2ndary stat. Mastery is useless.

Aff, PERFECT synergy between Haste and Mastery. Crit does the same for an Aff Lock as it does for a Priest, simply adds better RNG, and yet it's their worst stat by faaar.

Also, it's pretty obvious that classes with higher Dmg (Arcane/Aff) scale better than others, that's why they are OP... High base dmg = better scaling.

I agree, simulationcraft doesnt deliver 100% accurate results. But u deliver no proof whatsoever for your statement.

Proof? Anyone with the ability to think logically who have been raiding this Tier with semi competent players can see that Shadow scaling is in fact, shit, and not "close to the top".

OP = good scaling. There is no such thing as an OP spec with bad scaling, cus then it's not an OP spec.

[Meaks]

You presented data that was skewed right
Smaller sample size of heavily geared priests (relative to other classes) would skew the data right.

So we can ask ourselves what makes more sense:
- Something is going on with the data/samples to skew it right, like lots of priests swapping to disc for example
- Or that contrary to basically everyone's personal experiences and mathematical models (simcraft) - we will catch up with gear


I dunno. Guess it's possible.

[Purpleisbetter]

From personal experience, you really can't understand how impressive is stat scaling on affliction locks untill u play one.

Mastery & Haste so tied together that when u raise one stat, you rise by a lot the other...and the more u get the more the stronger they become.

That was us spriest few monthes ago; its silly our golden era happend in the worst WoW expansion ever.

[Deleted]

Most ranks come from a cheesy or different strat, ie aoe on unsok/windlord for 24/7or shek zeer during p2.
No 100parses is definitely not the best way to see SP true color, especially when we are only saying SP SINGLE target dps is low. So if you decide to pick the overall spec score, you are not considering the problem, just avoiding it.
Pick all parses on single target fight, in both 10's and 25's, and see where SP really are.
SP do need some targeted buff, we are just too far behind everyone but esham when it comes to single target dps, and last when we actually need to burst.
Its extremely easy to give us some tools that will just affect this problem, our old archangel would fit in nicely. But this change needs to be done baseline, not with SWI since MB is also a single target boost(or aoe), and the 3 talents should be comparable, I don't see them buffing the 3 talents.
And maybe a little love for our secondary resource, at pull or during fights, would seem legit to get more orb/minutes with the more haste you get, or mastery, or even crit.

[Deleted]

10m: on the first 4 bosses in HoF you use on some 3 healers. Shadow is shit there. 1+1=2. Shadow priests go disc on the first 4 fights in HoF. Which skews your data.

Its a well known fact people who get ranked are (while good players, it requires skill to do this!) more often than not skewing the data in one way or another.

If you want to compare you need to analyse what happened in the raid, and in particular what the player exactly did, and even look how well did the player respond to procs and such. Or you need a bigger, average sample size and discount the exceptions (which would actually be the top parses as the ones you're quoting!!)

No, warlock do not generate resources out of combat, its more like:

Destruction: i'm full ember, please pull quickly

Demo: 1000/1000 fury pull naaaaaoooooo!

Affly: would u please wait a bit longer? i forgot to DS the last trash and now i'm out of shards





...or do i really missed that? its not like i would need it, i'm 24/7 affly i always inc full shards oO

Correct.

With the notion that warlocks used to have to farm shards before Cata.

With the notion that boomkins had to damage critters etc to get 3 orbs in Cata.

With the notion that hunters needed quiver/bullets before Cata.

The destro/demo mechanic is a bit like our old shadow orb decay although ours didn't decay over time; it decayed 1 min flat. After the first wipe though, the warlock (barring affli!) has a problem getting their power bar to full whereas the boomkin doesn't. Now, I'm happy for boomkins they can get into the right eclipse. It was rather cumbersome (I played a bit of boomkin in Cata on alt). But why did they solve this problem for boomkin, overhaul our orb system, and then not give shadow priests a similar spell? What's the logic behind this?

[Hesp]

Basically what those number mean is the following. Lets say you are doing 100k dps now and a Warlock with the same gear is doing 110k dps. Then at some point in the future you are gonna do 150k dps and the warlock is gonna do 165k dps. The relative difference is the same, so its not a scaling issue. This relative difference of 10% could be overcome by giving SPriest a flat 10% dmg modifier.

Now those numbers are completely made up and dont reflect the actual difference. Its just an example to display what those scaling values mean.

EDIT: On the other hand it means that in this scenario a Rogue would be doing 90k dps now but 170k in the same future scenario, thus actually overtaking the other two classes. (again numbers are made up just to make a point)

I'm not convinced by your analysis. Simcraft is a great tool for comparing stats to each other, but its ability to realistically predict raid dps has always been lacking. Comparing simc's output raid dps for each class isn't the best way of reaching any valid conclusions since the profiles and action lists for each class vary wildly in accuracy. For this reason, while I'm sure your upgraded vs non-upgraded sims are accurate in the context of simc, I don't think they hold any real authority since they directly contradict simcraft's stat weights determined for each class. If you sim out each of the bis profiles, you get a set of data which implies a very different result from the one you've gathered.

I'll relist the specs in your previous post as well as some other notables to compare results. Primary stat is listed in its raw dps form as a base; secondary stats are listed as percentages of this base so you can compare secondary values easily between specs:

Shadow - 3.82 Int, .79 SP, .42 Crit, .44 Haste, .41 Mastery

Aff - 4.98 Int, .81 SP, .42 Crit, .48 Haste, .55 Mastery
Demo - 4.47 Int, .8 SP, .46 Crit, .36 Haste, .46 Mastery
Destro - 4.43 Int, .8 SP, .47 Crit, .40 Haste, .51 Mastery
Arcane - 5.09 Int, .81 SP, .41 Crit, .49 Haste, .55 Mastery
Frost - 4.54 Int, .8 SP,.44 Crit, .49 Haste, .42 Mastery

Mut - 4.9 Agi, .9 Wdps, .35 Crit, .39 Haste, .42 Mastery
Combat - 4.17 Agi, 1.66 Wdps, .36 Crit, .58 Haste, .43 Mastery
SMF Fury - 3.33 Str, 2.35 Wdps, .95 Crit, .33 Haste, .55 Mastery
Arms - 2.59 Str, 3.78 Wdps, .6 Crit, .35 Haste, .28 Mastery

As you can see, shadow is behind on stat scaling by a fairly large margin compared to most of these classes. The only spec worse off than shadow is arms, which is arguably the worst dps spec in the game atm. The big thing to take away here is that not only does shadow scale poorly with their primary stat relative to other classes, but our secondaries don't scale particularly well to compensate either (as in the case of Fury). The specs with the highest combination of primary and secondary stat weights are the ones you expect since they're the specs topping the meters: affliction, arcane, fury. So not only are these specs top dogs, but the margin between them and us will only increase with time. With how secondaries work on gems in mop, not having any stat over the .5 weight threshold means we're losing a good bit of dps relative to specs which do have a desirable secondary. Having neither sufficient primary stat scaling nor any secondary stat worth mentioning means we're going to be awaiting sweeping "Shadowform now increases damage by +X%" buffs each patch in order to keep us alive. The problem with these buffs is that they're always intended to level us off at the normal mode ilvl, which leaves us lacking for heroics. Without a significant rework of multiple abilities to make them interact better and thus improve stat weights, we're just going to lag behind as gear progresses.

Fortunately having a good toolkit can make up a lot of dps on most fights, and that's why you see shadow hanging in there on the non-single target fights. That was the story all through cata - lower single target, great tools to excel on every other type of fight. With our dots nerfed we've lost a lot of what put us ahead on those fights without really being compensated with single target dps. This also poses a different kind of problem in that buffing shadow becomes a very difficult balancing act. Since we're already competitive on certain fight types, any buff to shadow's weaknesses needs to be very carefully planned to not overexaggerate our strengths and then trigger a kneejerk nerf. All that can really be said at the end of the day is that the shadow devs have a lot of work to do, and a tier set bonus is not going to fix any of our faults the long run.

[Deleted]

I'm not convinced by your analysis. Simcraft is a great tool for comparing stats to each other, but its ability to realistically predict raid dps has always been lacking. Comparing simc's output raid dps for each class isn't the best way of reaching any valid conclusions since the profiles and action lists for each class vary wildly in accuracy. For this reason, while I'm sure your upgraded vs non-upgraded sims are accurate in the context of simc, I don't think they hold any real authority since they directly contradict simcraft's stat weights determined for each class. If you sim out each of the bis profiles, you get a set of data which implies a very different result from the one you've gathered.

I'll relist the specs in your previous post as well as some other notables to compare results. Primary stat is listed in its raw dps form as a base; secondary stats are listed as percentages of this base so you can compare secondary values easily between specs:

Shadow - 3.82 Int, .79 SP, .42 Crit, .44 Haste, .41 Mastery

Aff - 4.98 Int, .81 SP, .42 Crit, .48 Haste, .55 Mastery
Demo - 4.47 Int, .8 SP, .46 Crit, .36 Haste, .46 Mastery
Destro - 4.43 Int, .8 SP, .47 Crit, .40 Haste, .51 Mastery
Arcane - 5.09 Int, .81 SP, .41 Crit, .49 Haste, .55 Mastery
Frost - 4.54 Int, .8 SP,.44 Crit, .49 Haste, .42 Mastery

Mut - 4.9 Agi, .9 Wdps, .35 Crit, .39 Haste, .42 Mastery
Combat - 4.17 Agi, 1.66 Wdps, .36 Crit, .58 Haste, .43 Mastery
SMF Fury - 3.33 Str, 2.35 Wdps, .95 Crit, .33 Haste, .55 Mastery
Arms - 2.59 Str, 3.78 Wdps, .6 Crit, .35 Haste, .28 Mastery

As you can see, shadow is behind on stat scaling by a fairly large margin compared to most of these classes. The only spec worse off than shadow is arms, which is arguably the worst dps spec in the game atm. The big thing to take away here is that not only does shadow scale poorly with their primary stat relative to other classes, but our secondaries don't scale particularly well to compensate either (as in the case of Fury). The specs with the highest combination of primary and secondary stat weights are the ones you expect since they're the specs topping the meters: affliction, arcane, fury. So not only are these specs top dogs, but the margin between them and us will only increase with time. With how secondaries work on gems in mop, not having any stat over the .5 weight threshold means we're losing a good bit of dps relative to specs which do have a desirable secondary. Having neither sufficient primary stat scaling nor any secondary stat worth mentioning means we're going to be awaiting sweeping "Shadowform now increases damage by +X%" buffs each patch in order to keep us alive. The problem with these buffs is that they're always intended to level us off at the normal mode ilvl, which leaves us lacking for heroics. Without a significant rework of multiple abilities to make them interact better and thus improve stat weights, we're just going to lag behind as gear progresses.

Fortunately having a good toolkit can make up a lot of dps on most fights, and that's why you see shadow hanging in there on the non-single target fights. That was the story all through cata - lower single target, great tools to excel on every other type of fight. With our dots nerfed we've lost a lot of what put us ahead on those fights without really being compensated with single target dps. This also poses a different kind of problem in that buffing shadow becomes a very difficult balancing act. Since we're already competitive on certain fight types, any buff to shadow's weaknesses needs to be very carefully planned to not overexaggerate our strengths and then trigger a kneejerk nerf. All that can really be said at the end of the day is that the shadow devs have a lot of work to do, and a tier set bonus is not going to fix any of our faults the long run.

Your data seems quite correct on the first view. But that just proofs the point of what I was saying. Shadowpriest doesnt need a mechanic that promotes different stat scaling, shadow needs an additional modifier (maybe around 10% more dmg) to increase dmg overall to catch up to Affliction. The relative difference between Affliction and Shadow will always stay pretty much the same if nothing changes. Meaning if a Shadowpriest gets double the dps from gear upgrades a affliction warlock will also get double the dps from the same gear upgrades.

[Deleted]

[...]

The relative difference between Affliction and Shadow will always stay pretty much the same if nothing changes. Meaning if a Shadowpriest gets double the dps from gear upgrades a affliction warlock will also get double the dps from the same gear upgrades.

There's stuff like haste caps and such but in theory it should be true, because the base of the character and the gear is added up instead of multiplied.

Ie.

A = naked priest
B = gear
C = upgrade

A + B + C

If there's anything multiplied, it will cause the base difference to become higher, even though the relative base difference stays the same.

[Deleted]

There's stuff like haste caps and such but in theory it should be true, because the base of the character and the gear is added up instead of multiplied.

Ie.

A = naked priest
B = gear
C = upgrade

A + B + C

If there's anything multiplied, it will cause the base difference to become higher, even though the relative base difference stays the same.

Of course it's added. But the add is the gear stats MULTIPLIED by the stats weights. So the higher the stats, the bigger the difference between warlock's dps and SP's dps.

[espoire]

I'm over apparitions altogether, along with the rest of my raid !

I can't count the number of times I've been screamed at for doing something stupid before they realised it was actually just an app !

My raid has learned not to reprimand shadow priests. We're too durable to waste the breath on. We had some newbies in a run last night, and after the leader got done listing "things that will kill you" I vowed to stand in every single one in the same fight just to prove him wrong. And I did. Incidentally, one of them nearly killed me through Dispersion. 5M base hits are scary.

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:22 AM ----------

Actually, those T4 bonuses will be pretty good now as they are a direct dps buff to some of our top damage spells.

Assuming that shadow apparitions work flawlessly (yea right), the tier bonuses are still extremely underwhelming.

Anyone notice that a lot of our tier bonuses seem to involve extending our dot durations, so that we can uh, focus more attention on spamming filler mind flay. It just straight out seems like something that unskilled spriests will wish for in a tier bonus.

I liked the +6 sec VT we got in Wrath; it made it sync up much more nicely with the rest of the rotation, making the whole thing way more fluid. Also, longer DoTs are godmode for multi-DoT fights (or any situation where you wouldn't have had 100% uptime otherwise, like CC, heavy movement, etc).

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:26 AM ----------

I really hope they ditch both altogether. And get rid of shadowy apps while they are at it. Or make them fly at target boss super fast like evil ghost projectiles (in superman pose of'c)

Wishful thinking patch notes:

Shadow
Shadowy Apparations will now implode if they cannot find a path to their target, granting the summoning priest 1 shadow orb.

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:32 AM ----------

hey its like pre-cata again with regards to dot clipping! so good! while warlocks have pandemic! i am so excited !

Oh gods the horror. Remember trying to drop VT less than 100 ms after the old one wears off? At least our DPS was competitive then though; that made it worth the stress I think.

---------- Post added 2013-01-20 at 05:34 AM ----------

Honestly, a lot of the Priest community was kind of hoping SW:I would be one of the "underused talents" GC mentioned they'd be looking at in 5.2. I'm sure they realize by now that the general consensus is that it's a terrible talent which retroactively scales with gear. Any Priest worth their salt will stay away from the talent because it is, by a very large margin, one of the worst talents ever designed by Blizzard.

I donno, Wand Specialization will always hold a special place in my heart for misleading newbies.