Shadow priest single-target changes needed (suggestions inside)

[deistic]

So this whole Shadow-form increases damage from 20% to 25% buff was nice and all, but that just makes us better at what we already are good at, multi-target fights. The reason for this is that if you are correctly spec'd down the talent tree, the use of multiple dots will proc Mind Blast, and Mind Spike and make them instant cast spells, and in the case of MS it will increase MBlast casting time by 0.5s (stacking twice for an instant MBlast). Now I know simply buffing MBlast and MSpikes damage would offset Shadow in pvp, so here is my suggestion:


1. Increase EITHER MBlast damage, or MSpike damage. Single target, single-target spell, damage increase, dps increase, single target problem solved? This would have someone cry in PVP however so...

2. Increase EITHER MBlast or MSpike to do more damage when the matching dot is up only on ONE target. This will increase Single target DPS as well.

3. If both of the first two suck for PVP, then my next suggestion and probably my favourite would be to make Mind Flay proc MindSpike as well, just not instant cast however, but something like a shaman lavaburst, 100% crit, and it can stack with Surge of Darkness. The 100% chance however is only from Mind Flay. Or you can even make it you Mind Flay has a 5-15% chance to make your next MBlast or MSpike 100% chance. Something like that would be sweet.

4. Mind Spike can generate Shadow Orbs? Since DP is a single target dot. It would make sense to have a way to increase gaining Shadow Orbs so that you can apply the single target dot to the target more often and your mindflay benefiting more over time from have 3 dots up.


Something has to be changed because honestly the changes which there were barely any for the Shadow tree don't solve this problem. Single-target DPS is too damn low. A 10% damage increase buff (AHHH MAAAAA GAWDDD) is a joke. And the O-LA-LA insanity only works when you have all 3 dots up.


Thank you, let me know what you think guys. Just my opinion, I don't mean to make SPriest more OP, but something has to be done for single-target, they just suck.

[veiledy0]

All these changes would require FDCL to become baseline, which itself would be enough of a single target boost.

[stickyjam]

The 2 easiest ones tht dont effect pvp that much vs GOOD opponents would be mind flay dmg buff and mind blast haste scaling.

[espoire]

mind blast haste scaling

I see this a lot. Why does everyone insist on it as an avenue for damage buffing? IMO mind flay damage seems to be the simplest and least-likely to effect PvP. (Edit: Not to mention it makes Heroism have more oomph; we get primarily more mind flays from it.)

[Frmercury]

We're going to have ~36% Haste in BiS H T15 gear not counting LMG, Zerking, PI or Heroism.

MB Haste scaling could not be balanced realistically.

They essentially did buff MF damage with the Insanity changes.

As it stands on the PTR we're in a great place. That's what I've been hearing from Heroic 25man testing in the last week at least, and that was after the buff reversions.

[Magpai]

So this whole Shadow-form increases damage from 20% to 25% buff was nice and all, but that just makes us better at what we already are good at, multi-target fights.

Of course this is wrong. It doesn't "just make you better" at anything. It's a flat damage boost to every spell you cast in shadowform.

The reason for this is that if you are correctly spec'd down the talent tree, the use of multiple dots will proc Mind Blast, and Mind Spike and make them instant cast spells, and in the case of MS it will increase MBlast casting time by 0.5s (stacking twice for an instant MBlast).

I'm assuming you mean DEcreasing MBlast casting time. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that instant mind spikes will no longer reduce MBlast cast time come 5.2.

2. Increase EITHER MBlast or MSpike to do more damage when the matching dot is up only on ONE target. This will increase Single target DPS as well.

I don't understand this but I'm curious about it. Do you think you could reword it?

3. If both of the first two suck for PVP, then my next suggestion and probably my favourite would be to make Mind Flay proc MindSpike as well, just not instant cast however, but something like a shaman lavaburst, 100% crit, and it can stack with Surge of Darkness. The 100% chance however is only from Mind Flay. Or you can even make it you Mind Flay has a 5-15% chance to make your next MBlast or MSpike 100% chance. Something like that would be sweet.

How many mind flay ticks do you get between mind blasts on a purely single target fight? If you took neither the instant Blast or Spike talents, you'd have more Flays and less Blasts and would have almost every single Blast crit.

4. Mind Spike can generate Shadow Orbs? Since DP is a single target dot. It would make sense to have a way to increase gaining Shadow Orbs so that you can apply the single target dot to the target more often and your mindflay benefiting more over time from have 3 dots up.

What is this, a short-term rotation when dots are inefficient, or just an alternate rotation? If the latter, then yeck.

Something has to be changed because honestly the changes which there were barely any for the Shadow tree don't solve this problem. Single-target DPS is too damn low. A 10% damage increase buff (AHHH MAAAAA GAWDDD) is a joke. And the O-LA-LA insanity only works when you have all 3 dots up.

The shadowform buff is a single target buff as well. It's weird the logic you're using. You sound as if you want your single target damage to go up RELATIVE to multiple target. It's almost as if you'd be happy if they nerfed multi target and left single target alone AFTER the PTR changes were implemented. ANyway, Insanity "only working when you have all 3 dots up" is a conceptual thing. They can tune it so that the overall contribution to dps can be any amount they please. It's not an inherently flawed solution, it just depends on how they tune it.

---------- Post added 2013-03-02 at 11:09 AM ----------

MB Haste scaling could not be balanced realistically.

Mind blast's contribution to dps already scales at discrete haste breakpoints though, since your devouring plague can get extra ticks (right? I'm no expert). So more haste = more DP damage which your mind blast is the primary generator for. I know that's not very concrete though.

I have a better example though: with the instant cooldown reset talent, more haste already gives you more mind blasts. That doesn't scale linearly (in fact I'm not sure what kind of function it would be), but it scales.

I agree with the notion that not everything needs to scale with haste though.

[Frmercury]

DP scales with Haste, MB doesn't. Sure its value increases indirectly in theory but it's already #1 so it doesn't change anything.

[Yvaelle]

Suggestions I'd make to fix Spriest PvE without buffing Spriest PvP:

1. Remove the upfront damage of Devouring Plague and double the damage and scaling of the subsequent ticks (no burst, same damage). This improves haste and mastery scaling slightly.

2. Now that the risk of buffing our burst is removed, buff Shadowform to 30% or even 35%. 35% sounds very high, but it's actually the % needed to move both our damage and our scaling to the average of all specs (shockingly precisely, actually).

With the existing nerfs to Shadow's PvP healing, Phantasm, GoMindSpike, and the proposed nerf to Devouring Plague (our burst) - the risk of buffing our PvP sustained damage shouldn't be an issue - but our PvE damage should be lifted up to the all-spec average, and our scaling would be fixed.

[Frmercury]

I agree Yvaelle.

"Smooth" DP (as I refer to it) that deals damage evenly throughout it's duration is a huge secondary stat scaling boon, no doubt.

Mind Sear could use a ~10%+ buff as well.

I'll wait on commenting on Shadowform damage when we get a broad sample of it in a couple of weeks.

[Brainmelt]

"Smooth" DP lol. on a serious note, i completely agree yvaelle.

[Numnumzz]

Yvaelle has an amazing idea i just wish Blizz would give us a little more feed back on our ideas. On another note when ever changes are brought up and sims are brought up and how the sims are still showing us low even though the sims uses a flawless rotation and GC still says its not enough proof that we are so far behind in single target

[Blackmorgrim]

To the OP: Most of the changes there involve MB or MS, both of which are our burst type spells. Buffing either of those won't fix any sort of issues with pvp. Any buff to MS will have very little effect on pve as the spell is meant to be a niche spell, and not part of the standard rotation. Any of those effects added into instant FDCL casts would probably be pretty OP in both PVE and PVP.

@Yvaelle: Right now, with current fight design, I think the current buff to shadowform probably leaves us in a good place. Any fruther buffs to shadowform would probably secure us as the top spot (aka putting us up for the next to be nerfed) in almost every raid fight that has more than one target. Single target damage isn't going to be a huge issue. Personally, I'd be more concerned about the combination of mobility and single target damage. Being on the bottom for like 2-3 fights isn't the end of the world, especially when the utility we can bring to those fights from additional healing will definitely come in handy, allowing raids to have a dps spec with a lot of healing rather than just bringing a full healer.

As much as I'd like just the straight flattening of DP, it wouldn't solve the burst issue... if anything it'd be made worse because of the increased scaling with MB, and the fact that a majority of its damage still sits inside of a silence or worse yet a dispel cooldown. You would need to not only flatten the damage of DP, but it would need to extend the duration of the DoT perhaps to 8-12 seconds. However, SW:I bonus damage would then need to be lowered to compensate for the increased uptime.

As a long term solution, I'd probably take steps to sit shadow as a pressure class in PVP... rather than extreme amounts of burst.

1) DP and Shadowfiend switch places.
Sha-fiend is now summoned with shadow orbs, and now drains life instead of restoring mana. In PVE this will do about the same damage as DP, although the scaling is different. However, countering then becomes more dependant on CC, rather than dispelling. Like how DP works now, its damage will scale with shadow orbs, and as an added visual effect, I'd probably have the sha-fiend's size scale with the number of orbs used.

2) SW:I will now be powered by the summoning of the Sha-fiend, while I'd assume the buff power can be reduced by 50% to compensate for Sha-fiend lasting 12 seconds.

3) Devouring Plague now becomes our 3 minute cooldown. It restores mana per tick, ticking once a second for 24 seconds. As a 3 minute cooldown, it gains a couple of added effects to make it a bit more useful. Just like how other classes have gained abilities used by bosses or past enemies, priests gain the elements of Arthas' plague on devouring plague. Now, when devouring plague is dispelled or its target dies, it will jump to a nearby hostile target, dealing instant damage and its duration reduced by 1 tick. While the damage of the spell is long term, it causes a healer in PVP to make a judgement call about whether the dispel is worth it, if the team is grouped up, it won't actually mitigate the damage of DP, only change who its damaging. Or much like the Arthas fight, cause whoever has devouring plague to need to distance themselves before a healer can dispel them.

Also, this spell then becomes more useful as an accessory to aoe damage, as the plague can jump around low health targets, and because of the 1 second tick times over 24 seconds, the spell will have frequent but small scalings with haste, gaining ticks approximately every 4.17% haste.

4) The Mindbender talent will then be replaced with Plaguebringer talent, reducing the cooldown of DP to 1 minute, while reducing its damage appropriately.

5) FDCL could be changed so that the procs no longer generate on demand burst (since you have 10 seconds to use the procs), so they'd either need to become passive proc effects (so you have no control over when they're used), or perhaps generate charges that enhance the next Shadow apparition summoned into a nibelung-type casting mob. In PVP this acts as accessory damage, rather than protecting against interrupts with instant burst damage, the additional damage is generated by a guardian mob channeling mind flay (possibly slowing the target), so the damage alone isn't bursty in PVP, but does help to build pressure on the target in addition to normal spells. Another solution could be to just make FDCL become the T15 4pc, though I wouldn't be 100% thrilled with it.

Then, a lot of these changes probably wouldn't be appropriate for a mere content patch, these would be more like expansion type changes.

[stickyjam]

I see this a lot. Why does everyone insist on it as an avenue for damage buffing? IMO mind flay damage seems to be the simplest and least-likely to effect PvP. (Edit: Not to mention it makes Heroism have more oomph; we get primarily more mind flays from it.)

blizzard are lazy they've already implemented this before so likely still have the code etc to do it again quickly and easily, similarly buffing mind flay dmg is quick and easy. simples.