Remove healing from Shadow Priest, buff damage and move away from Discipline abilitiy

[Yvaelle]

How someone could possibly supposedly play a class for nearly 10 years and not even attempt the other specs is beyond me. Or it's just a flatout lie.

Apparently it's beyond you, because I'm a Shadow-4-Life player myself ;p

[Bullettime]

Removing heals would make it worst for healers since this expansion is basically World Of AOE. Every trash every boss aoe damage here aoe there its none stop im fed up with this expansion.

They're only removing the AOE heal if you're using the Shadow version. Try reading comprehension before jumping to "I unsub!"

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Apparently it's beyond you, because I'm a Shadow-4-Life player myself ;p

Funny thing. I might actually play a priest if they made a Holy Smiting spec and you evil Shadow person you!

[MoanaLisa]

We'll wait for beta to see I guess but I find the idea of turning shadow into something resembling a pure class to be a disappointment. There was good gameplay and skill in timing halos at just the right moment and distance to assist in healing raid-wide damage while still having it hit very hard. I'm not one of those that view an off-healing role as an annoyance if the situation demands it.

And despite the class origins there are at the moment exactly two ways to deliver damage at range in the game: burst and damage-over-time. To the extent they remove healing at all and drive us toward simply doing damage it's likely they will be pushing the class towards either being more like a mage or more like a warlock. If I wanted to play those I suppose I would play those. Only thing to do now is wait and see what they have in mind.

[dwightyo39]

I have mainly played as shadow on my priest. Though some of my most enjoyable bgs were in TBC playing a power infusion/holy fire spec wearing black temple/hyjal spell power dps gear. Seeing people fall over after the pillar of flame from holy fire was pure win.

Beckon's vanilla video when PI was on the ptr inspired me.

[Calamari]

They're only removing the AOE heal if you're using the Shadow version. Try reading comprehension before jumping to "I unsub!"

It is a valid concern from a healers PoV, absolutely no need to snap at her/him for it.

Removing heals would make it worst for healers since this expansion is basically World Of AOE. Every trash every boss aoe damage here aoe there its none stop im fed up with this expansion.

Keep in mind though that if all hybrid dps is being rebalanced around much lower personal healing capabilities, the raid damage will also be toned down in relation to compensate for this, and more control over raid survivability can then be given directly to the healers themselves as opposed to expecting absurd amounts of self- and offhealing from the dps.

[Zoulis]

And despite the class origins there are at the moment exactly two ways to deliver damage at range in the game: burst and damage-over-time. To the extent they remove healing at all and drive us toward simply doing damage it's likely they will be pushing the class towards either being more like a mage or more like a warlock. If I wanted to play those I suppose I would play those. Only thing to do now is wait and see what they have in mind.

I can see where you're coming from. I for one am not looking to be a pure DPS class. All I'm asking is that if I play my class correctly, I can compete with a lock or a mage. On every encounter... On some less on others more, but to actually be comparable... I think blizzard at some point had stated that they wanted all classes' DPS to be inbetween a 5% margin. Or I should say the best DPS class to have maximum 5% more DPS than the worst one. I don't mind being that worst class because I'll have some more utility etc. if I'm only 5% behind the best one. But at the moment the difference is not even funny :P and on top of that I feel like we're the class with the lowest utility even though we're getting hybrid taxed. Ok VE is nice. But that's it. I feel that lvl90 talent healing is neglible apart from Divine Star on Thok , and maybe one or two more fights. And it's not like the raid is going to wipe over and over if I'm not there with Divine Star , it's just that the healers will be strained abit more. Everyone and their mother has utility atm. Even warlocks have the gate which is huge... On top of having the best ingame DPS.

Anyway enough of the rant :P I wouldn't mind having healing taken away from shadow ... I wouldn't mind if it stayed there... Please give us some more single target damage and (as a personal preference) fit Mind Spike into our priority system somehow, even for a bit (DS set bonus style)

[Frmercury]

Hands down THE most important and hopeful Blue Tweet?

Correct. They want to remove the barriers that kept them from giving us more damage in MoP.

I see 1000x more "Shadow's Damage sucks" than "I'm not support healing enough" threads.

[Bullettime]

We'll wait for beta to see I guess but I find the idea of turning shadow into something resembling a pure class to be a disappointment. There was good gameplay and skill in timing halos at just the right moment and distance to assist in healing raid-wide damage while still having it hit very hard. I'm not one of those that view an off-healing role as an annoyance if the situation demands it.

And despite the class origins there are at the moment exactly two ways to deliver damage at range in the game: burst and damage-over-time. To the extent they remove healing at all and drive us toward simply doing damage it's likely they will be pushing the class towards either being more like a mage or more like a warlock. If I wanted to play those I suppose I would play those. Only thing to do now is wait and see what they have in mind.

Have a feeling they'll be doing similar for other hybrids as well as they've been harder to balance in PvE and almost impossible to properly balance in PvP. Shadow just has the end tier of basically "big healing bursts to the raid every 30 seconds" which forces them to take a hit in PvE unfortunately.

It won't be a bad change provided they flesh the personal kit out more and balance every other class the same way. If Shadow gets its healing hit while Shaman keep Healing Tide AND their healing talent tier AND Enhancement's constant PvP offheals, something that also holds true for Feral, then something is wrong.

[Calamari]

Then there's Flash Heal.. which is pretty much the sole reason for our terrible mana regen. They don't want shadow to spam Flash Heals in pvp, but the result has been ooming shadows in both pvp and pve.. granted it's less of an issue in PvE, but still having our primary source resource regen tied to a casted dot is in some fights such a fricking headache (mainly Spoils comes to mind).

Being the last caster dps that can frequently oom, is just BS. Another one for the list.

[Deleted]

Correct. They want to remove the barriers that kept them from giving us more damage in MoP.

I see 1000x more "Shadow's Damage sucks" than "I'm not support healing enough" threads.

Absolutely on ur side there Woaden. Hopefully they get past that barriers now and RLY buff our dmg.
Though thats not enough for spriests in my opinion. We also need some more SO consumers.
Playing shadow had become so boring cause we dont have to watch out for anything...
(ok maybe one we might get with lvl 100 talent. Still it has to be chosen over 2 others)
Some kind of SO based AoE spell would be nice. Aaaaand most of all some dot-spreading mechanic.
(Could all be solved via SO!)
BUT im drifting off-topic....
As it comes to healing as a shadow; a shadow is just not SUPPOSED to heal got dammit.
As a shadow we try to take the other road to help our friends ( some would call it evil or dark but as it
was already pointed out the void more of gives us power alike the ones of the old gods.)
So IF we should heal it would always have to be a trade-off with the void.
VE is a pretty good e ample as it fits perfectly into our lore. As it just grants life by taking it
from somewhere else. Same with voidshift (Should be shadow only too!)
For all other heals; pom renew flash heal.... make them gone.
As a shadow i dont rly need that kind of utility. If there would rly be some need to give spriests a heal, make it maybe
SO depending. Call it empowering void or whatever

Whoever finds gramma mistakes can keep them

- - - Updated - - -

Correct. They want to remove the barriers that kept them from giving us more damage in MoP.

I see 1000x more "Shadow's Damage sucks" than "I'm not support healing enough" threads.

Absolutely on ur side there Woaden. Hopefully they get past that barriers now and RLY buff our dmg.
Though thats not enough for spriests in my opinion. We also need some more SO consumers.
Playing shadow had become so boring cause we dont have to watch out for anything...
(ok maybe one we might get with lvl 100 talent. Still it has to be chosen over 2 others)
Some kind of SO based AoE spell would be nice. Aaaaand most of all some dot-spreading mechanic.
(Could all be solved via SO!)
BUT im drifting off-topic....
As it comes to healing as a shadow; a shadow is just not SUPPOSED to heal got dammit.
As a shadow we try to take the other road to help our friends ( some would call it evil or dark but as it
was already pointed out the void more of gives us power alike the ones of the old gods.)
So IF we should heal it would always have to be a trade-off with the void.
VE is a pretty good e ample as it fits perfectly into our lore. As it just grants life by taking it
from somewhere else. Same with voidshift (Should be shadow only too!)
For all other heals; pom renew flash heal.... make them gone.
As a shadow i dont rly need that kind of utility. If there would rly be some need to give spriests a heal, make it maybe
SO depending. Call it empowering void or whatever

[villie]

I think the situation that sp are in pve wise atm is mainly driven by two things, HC content and multi dotting.

They have already stated that if single tgt was buffed too much then sp would be run away insane damage on council fights/sustained aoe, but they also say sp provides a lot of utility in off healing. The trouble is, in current content that off healing is only really needed in HC content, with 90% of ppl raiding in the flex/normal bracket this healing may as well not exist so therefore make sp's feel very underwhelming. A lot of the utility brought by other classes is kind of passive or player activated, ie gate.

Also pvp comes into it, with the right comp, so they don't get trained sp are very strong because of the off healing capability, and if damage was buffed it would make then too strong. It seems like an inherent fault with the class that its core function (dps) is dictated by its off function (healing) than any other hybrid. It's bad design to have utility that's great but only really necessary for a small percentage of raiders and therefore feels like a gimp.

For pvp it's kinda different due to synergy with comps, will more damage make training a priest more necessary than right now is a good question? So taking away their healing could make them worse? So more self survivability would be required.

They have a chance to do this via the vampiric feel of thE spec rather than having crappy disc heals

[Thelxi]

I would prefer they removed the shadow spec completely, and replaced it with a 'light magic' based dps spec.

Or better yet, implement a class quest chain with a cool boss at the end that turns shadow into "light"!

[Emophia]

I hope they don't remove shadow's self healing.

It's an integral part of the specs flavor imo.

[villie]

I hope they don't remove shadow's self healing.

It's an integral part of the specs flavor imo.

Seems they are saying, if you want more damage you have to lose the healing tho.

That being said if your saying flavour don't you think the healing should be more shadow based and not dipping back into the light?

After all the lore says to me that a shadow priest has turned his back on the light and therefore should never use it because it is weak and he/she has rejected it.

Healing should come from the power of the void and vampiric power of the shadows!!

[Crudelitas]

Ez solution to that should be self-only passive old VE that you can activate as a raid healing cd as it is today. Then they can remove whatever healing spell we have for all I care.

[Deleted]

Removing healing from shadow priests would be a huge mistake

[HPLathus]

This is what I think Shadow Priest needs:

• Remove healing 'others' from Shadow Priest shadow spells.
• Remove use of Holy or Discipline spells that heal, at all.
• Increase damage to compensate for loss of healing 'others'
• Give Shadow some kind of Shadow Shield instead of using lightful Discipline shield that doesn't fit with the theme of Shadow at all.

Cus honestly, Shadow is Shadow when you are specced Shadow, it isn't like "light-hearted" now I'm bit throwing Shadowly spells with touch of lightful Holy spells to cheer the sad Shadow cursed people with lightdelight, what!? You get it.

When this is done.
Shadow Priest can be in line with a Warlock or Mage or Rogue in term of damage without being overpowered cus of extra healing or whatever it may be. That's good.

Only on the mmo champion forums would I find a post like this...... old habits die hard.


On a related note, shadow priests do not 100% abandon the light. They just channel the darkness.

[muto]

Would rather just have VE be passive again, and heal the group for 1-2% of damage, or raid wide for .5%

[Clrg]

Would rather just have VE be passive again, and heal the group for 1-2% of damage, or raid wide for .5%

Considering they are cutting down smart healing, i doubt it.