Shadow Priests- Worriesome Survivability next expansion?

[Raugnaut]

After taking a look at the numerous changes to all classes next expansion, it has come to my attention that Shadow is getting a large amount of their control and mitigation abilities removed. Psychic Scream replacing Psyfiend on the talent row, can only have Scream OR Roots, Inner Fire being removed with the increased armor going away (Going from 50%->30% physical damage mitigation by my reckoning), T90 talents no longer generating any form of healing, Roots breaking on 10% of health if it isn't healed (For me, it would break at 50k damage were it live. 50k!), our damage being moved away from our dots into our direct-damage spells with the mastery change, thus lowing our amount of damage while kiting, Renew being removed from Shadow, causing our only healing spells to be PW:S, PoM, and Flash Heal, Psychic Horror no longer disarming opponents (thus only acting as a horror effect, which further shares DR with fear effects), PoM having a 1.5 second cast time instead of instant cast thus further limiting our healing, ALL add up to major Shadow Survivabilty nerfs.

I do suppose that Psychic Horror lasting for an additional 20 seconds on PvE targets will help, but ONLY if it doesn't break on damage, and even then, it doesn't help with PvP, and against mobs immune to Horror effects. (22-24 seconds with a 35-45 second cooldown).

So yes, it is my opinion that Shadow Priest's survivabilty is being significantly nerfed next expansion, in both PvP and soloing content. Our self healing, being reduced, our damage-while-mobile, being reduced, our ability to lock enemies down, being reduced, ect. Shadow is NOT looking to be in a good place PvP/Soloing wise. (PvE seems to be better however).

Thoughts? Is blizzard going overboard with nerfs to Shadow? Can we trust blizz to compensate us for the loss of many of our tools in a PvP/soloing enviroment? Or is shadow pretty much boned next expansion?

[Anetulan]

They are losing cc, but so are a lot of classes. Same with the off heals. Their plan with mastery is to make a mastery heavy build better for single target, while other stats would be better for multiple targets.

[l33t]

1. Noone said that armor buff of IF won't be passive (and don't forget the 10% spellpower increase too! it is way more worrysome buff to just go away, TBH).
2. There is no info on health pools/damage after squish, so it is not a time to start panic about roots.
3. CC amount is being nerfed for all classes, not only for us.

[Dierdre]

After taking a look at the numerous changes to all classes next expansion, it has come to my attention that Shadow is getting a large amount of their control and mitigation abilities removed. Psychic Scream replacing Psyfiend on the talent row, can only have Scream OR Roots, Inner Fire being removed with the increased armor going away (Going from 50%->30% physical damage mitigation by my reckoning), T90 talents no longer generating any form of healing, Roots breaking on 10% of health if it isn't healed (For me, it would break at 50k damage were it live. 50k!), our damage being moved away from our dots into our direct-damage spells with the mastery change, thus lowing our amount of damage while kiting, Renew being removed from Shadow, causing our only healing spells to be PW:S, PoM, and Flash Heal, Psychic Horror no longer disarming opponents (thus only acting as a horror effect, which further shares DR with fear effects), PoM having a 1.5 second cast time instead of instant cast thus further limiting our healing, ALL add up to major Shadow Survivabilty nerfs.

I do suppose that Psychic Horror lasting for an additional 20 seconds on PvE targets will help, but ONLY if it doesn't break on damage, and even then, it doesn't help with PvP, and against mobs immune to Horror effects. (22-24 seconds with a 35-45 second cooldown).

So yes, it is my opinion that Shadow Priest's survivabilty is being significantly nerfed next expansion, in both PvP and soloing content. Our self healing, being reduced, our damage-while-mobile, being reduced, our ability to lock enemies down, being reduced, ect. Shadow is NOT looking to be in a good place PvP/Soloing wise. (PvE seems to be better however).

Thoughts? Is blizzard going overboard with nerfs to Shadow? Can we trust blizz to compensate us for the loss of many of our tools in a PvP/soloing enviroment? Or is shadow pretty much boned next expansion?

I'm pretty sure inner fire is gone because no one ever switched to inner will, and its effects will very likely be baked into shadowform or minimized when they tune the numbers.

The change to void tendrils sucks though, now they're crappy normal roots that anyone can break anyway on pvp, and that might lose their slight usefulness in PvE. I'm still hoping for the whole number squish to help keeping them useful though. We can only wait and see.

[Frmercury]

This is actually my greatest concern for Warlords at this point. I know with CC changes, healthpool scaling and several other things there will be a new metagame happening but nothing outside of glyphs is improving for Shadow while at the same time things were taken away.

[Wow]

They probably found the armors redundant with shadowform giving 100% armor and the healing specs having a passive 30% dmg reduction.

[Annarion]

"I see a change announced without seeing it's final form! The world is ending! Also no tuning or numbers have been released! Also I'm ignoring all other class changes and looking at one spec in a vacuum!"

Do you really think that they're just going to nerf us into the ground and then walk away? Other numbers will be brought up, maybe our base armor or shadowform is increased to mitigate inner fire. There's literally no reason to be speculating at this point, since no other details are available.

[Wow]

Do you really think that they're just going to nerf us into the ground and then walk away?

They did it with rogues in mop beta who's to say they wouldn't do it again with another class? I would hope it doesn't happen but as it happened before I wouldn't just say its only beta they'll fix it right...

[Kreuz Kontrol]

"I see a change announced without seeing it's final form! The world is ending! Also no tuning or numbers have been released! Also I'm ignoring all other class changes and looking at one spec in a vacuum!"

Do you really think that they're just going to nerf us into the ground and then walk away? Other numbers will be brought up, maybe our base armor or shadowform is increased to mitigate inner fire. There's literally no reason to be speculating at this point, since no other details are available.

Um, yes? Shadow Priests have been garbage for 2 expansion now. Their only "niche" has been multi-dotting which Blizzard seems to always find a way to nerf when it becomes too powerful. Pitiful single target, and pitiful PvP ability for two expansions now.

[Volitar]

Can we have Disperstion while shadow locked back and heals in shadow form (LIKE EVERY OTHER HYBRID) now please?

[zorkuus]

They are losing cc, but so are a lot of classes.

A lot of classes have cc's to spare. Does it break a class if it loses 1 of its 5 cc's? How about when it loses 1 of its 2 cc's?

[Deleted]

Psychic Scream replacing Psyfiend on the talent row

We call this balance. Having 2-3 Priests in a group chaining Psychic Scream (that seems to have a 63 day duration) was crazy OP.

[Cerbz]

Um, yes? Shadow Priests have been garbage for 2 expansion now. Their only "niche" has been multi-dotting which Blizzard seems to always find a way to nerf when it becomes too powerful. Pitiful single target, and pitiful PvP ability for two expansions now.

Did you even play Cata? Shadow was very strong.

[Darth-Piekus]

I am glad that I am not the only one WHO is concerned about the lack of crowd control. The class is designed to have an insane single target burst but no crowd control or kiting effects to do it.