Finally fixing shadow for WoD! :)

[Shahad]

You mean like it was before they introduced reforging? Where almost everyone had to have different gear sets. Or would you rather have them not address it at all like during this whole expansion? Shadow's mastery wasn't just reworked for this sole purpose, they had to change it since they are introducing multistrike as a general stat for everyone. I bet if they changed it to "shadow spells do 20% more damage" people would still complain that it's just a plain, boring dps increase.

Celestalon said that won't be the case and you won't need a whole seperate set for different fight types, besides changing a few pieces. Yes you might take that with a grain of salt, but no one outside of them knows how it works until we get to test it. They are already changing how flasks work (only providing secondary stats) and the fact that you can enchant haste or mastery on every gear slot will give us more freedom with swapping desided stats.
Besides you're making it sound like haste will be bad for single target and mastery will be a terrible stat for multi target even though you use each of those spells as a regular part of your rotation almost everywhere.

They didn't have to change it. It was just fine the way it is, even with multistrike. I mean, they aren't reworking elemental's mastery, or Marksmanship's mastery, or Arms' mastery. And they all do basically the same thing as multistrike. There's no need to change our master again, even to fix our single target damage. That could have EASILY been fixed with a devouring plague buff, or a mind blast buff.

Not to mention, we're a DoT class. Why in heaven's name would our mastery not affect DoTs at all? That's the whole point of the mastery, to make what a spec does best even better and we are most certainly not a nuke class. It's a crappy mastery and I hope it dies a slow painful death.

[Yvaelle]

or maybe spawn 1 for every shadow orb consumed.. then going forward perhaps do something like Guild Wars 2 did with the mesmer class

I really like that idea

I played a Mesmer in Guild Wars 2 as well - I think a lot of Spriests did - it's a very spriesty spec

It would be very cool if consuming Shadow Orbs caused a ranged Shadowy Apparition to spawn that would then Mind Flay the target - potentially we could see six up at once by building up 5 orbs, and then dropping a DP, Mind Blasting, and then another DP on a secondary target

We should have that instead of Auspicious Spirits maybe

[Shahad]

I really like that idea

I played a Mesmer in Guild Wars 2 as well - I think a lot of Spriests did - it's a very spriesty spec

It would be very cool if consuming Shadow Orbs caused a ranged Shadowy Apparition to spawn that would then Mind Flay the target - potentially we could see six up at once by building up 5 orbs, and then dropping a DP, Mind Blasting, and then another DP on a secondary target

We should have that instead of Auspicious Spirits maybe

I saw a shadow priest multiboxer once. Those five Mind Flay channels at the same time remain one of the coolest thing I've seen in game.

[Yvaelle]

I saw a shadow priest multiboxer once. Those five Mind Flay channels at the same time remain one of the coolest thing I've seen in game.

In Dragon Soul our Warrior tank got the first heroic gurthalak on the server - it used to randomly proc tentacles that would channel mind flays at whoever the warrior was targetting. The trick with warriors was, Sweeping Strikes hits and Bladestorm hits counted as single target damage hits as far as the proc rate was concerned - so SS+BS = chance at 0-5 tentacles spawning. I carried him in 3's up to 2100ish, but ya - whenever 3-5 tentacles spawned at once and all channeled the kill target to death: it was a beautiful sight to behold

In my mind I always used to pretend the tentacles were my doing, because they should clearly be a shadowpriest ability

(Of course, apparitions would work too!)

[tiporispit]

I do understand healing would have to be toned down for balance sake.

If your Shadow Priests were tossing out Flash Heals, your raid fails miserably...

[Yvaelle]

If your Shadow Priests were tossing out Flash Heals, your raid fails miserably...

Eh, some of my favourite victories are those we have clutched from the talons of loss.

I remember my guild's first Fathomlord Kalthress kill where our healers had all died spare one holy priest, and me and another shadowpriest dropped form and bombed flash heals into the tanks as hard as we could so the holy priest could keep the raid up with CoH spam: and we won with like ~6 people alive.

I remember I think our second heroic garalon kill, where our pheromone kiter was essentially dead - and I void shifted her at what looked like 0% health, dispersioned, took pheromones off her - and then we won the fight: wouldn't have done it without her.

Our first heroic Lich King kill, our whole raid wiped at 17% except me and my shadowpriest apprentice at the time - and we (both night elf engineers) combined rocket boots, 15 second fades, dispersions, and shadowmelds to pingpong Lich King around the platform - while aoeing down the ghosts - enough to duo the boss to 10%: we had two people release because they didn't have faith - but we pulled out an incredible final hour win and it felt awesome.

It must be nice to be in Paragon and have everything go right every pull, where nobody ever makes a mistake and you one-shot every progression boss the first time with your flawless play: but down here in the scrub non-world-first guilds - it's actually pretty fun having to use our non-dps abilities cleverly to recover from what should not be possible - I wouldn't trade places

[Deleted]

If your Shadow Priests were tossing out Flash Heals, your raid fails miserably...

its not about flash heals it's about the lvl 90 talents having their healing aspect removed for spriests, renew and prayer of healing being removed, I personally use all 3 of these healing in specific situations or just to give that little buffer on people caught out of position.

one good situation is on seigecrafter hc we had 2 hunters on the belt if they got too low from overload/bomb damage for whatever reason I'd run over and quick heal up, that isn't failing miserably and is probably more of what diedre was talking about. (and I have saved a couple of lives with a flash heal or PW:S occasionally theres no reason to dismiss it as bad cos u lose a little dps time on some fights).

Edit: Yvaella put this a lot better with obviously more experience than me spriesting it up, would like to see some of the good little bits of utility help out the raid still going forward

I do worry about saying "oh its all very well them getting rid of these healing aspects" but then not seeing a proper step up will feel pretty bad, I'm generally optimistic though so i'm looking forward to some good feedback from spriests that make it into the beta!

[Dierdre]

If your Shadow Priests were tossing out Flash Heals, your raid fails miserably...

If you think the bulk of a spriest's healing comes from flash heal, you're the one failing miserably at understanding the spec.

It must be nice to be in Paragon and have everything go right every pull, where nobody ever makes a mistake and you one-shot every progression boss the first time with your flawless play: but down here in the scrub non-world-first guilds - it's actually pretty fun having to use our non-dps abilities cleverly to recover from what should not be possible - I wouldn't trade places

Amen.

- - - Updated - - -

one good situation is on seigecrafter hc we had 2 hunters on the belt if they got too low from overload/bomb damage for whatever reason I'd run over and quick heal up, that isn't failing miserably and is probably more of what diedre was talking about. (and I have saved a couple of lives with a flash heal or PW:S occasionally theres no reason to dismiss it as bad cos u lose a little dps time on some fights).

They should've been using spirit bond though. But yes, If I had a copper for every time one of my PWS has prevented a death, I'd be goblin rich. Halo, VE, HTT and AG from shaman allowed to solo heal normal mode garrosh. Nothing trivial. The problem is that it's ON all the time, even if you don't need it, and your decent damage switch is OFF even if you're not offhealing. I'd rather have the choice of lowering my damage to provide off-healing.

[Shahad]

In Dragon Soul our Warrior tank got the first heroic gurthalak on the server - it used to randomly proc tentacles that would channel mind flays at whoever the warrior was targetting. The trick with warriors was, Sweeping Strikes hits and Bladestorm hits counted as single target damage hits as far as the proc rate was concerned - so SS+BS = chance at 0-5 tentacles spawning. I carried him in 3's up to 2100ish, but ya - whenever 3-5 tentacles spawned at once and all channeled the kill target to death: it was a beautiful sight to behold

In my mind I always used to pretend the tentacles were my doing, because they should clearly be a shadowpriest ability

(Of course, apparitions would work too!)

Oh, I remember than weapon. When the 5.0 prepatch was released it mistakenly counted each tick of Unholy Blight as a hit. I've spawned up to 30 or 40 of these tentacles a couple of times in lower level instances.

[Frmercury]

"and getting more damage!"

Says who?

Celestalon.

Twice.

[Deleted]

Find it way more satisfying when wins come from everyone doing what they should, instead of the "pro" players having to pick up the slack - that gets old REAL fast.

Cause only shitters like myself wipe every so often? Call me crazy but sometimes I like to just hop into the game for the sake of having fun, and play around with the people around me. It may cause a wipe here and there for various reasons..

[Overdispersion]

Celestalon.

Twice.

He justs says we won't be paying the hybrid tax anymore, not "sorry you've sucked this expansion I'll let you be on top next one". WW Monks, Ret palas, DKs overall - none of them is significantly better than spriests at the moment and they are not paying the hybrid tax. They're removing our raid utility, everything else is just a tuning issue that they haven't showed they're willing to fix yet.

[Severusss]

Honestly idk what you guys are all so excited about. You all must be pvers because losing our self healing as well as making fear and roots a choice you have to make between the two makes it seem like we are just going to get trained into even more and have less of an out as well as less survival.

[Yvaelle]

Honestly idk what you guys are all so excited about. You all must be pvers because losing our self healing as well as making fear and roots a choice you have to make between the two makes it seem like we are just going to get trained into even more and have less of an out as well as less survival.

It's far too early to judge the PvP meta of WoD - but I share your skepticism about the psychic scream-as-a-talent decision, it might make sense for healing priests - but for Shadow we're already so far behind locks/mages/chickens in CC (even with the planned CC nerfs) that it's baffling to ponder Shadow's role in pvp in WoD (the bench, from the looks of it).

I suspect they might plan to announce some real pvp buffs at some point soon - like like a 20 or 30 second Silence cooldown, and no orb cost on Psychic Horror. That would bring our CC up a bit - but we would still get trained into the ground - so that sounds pretty sucky. But who knows - maybe they will also give us the Shadowpriest Teleport spell they designed for us in Cataclysm but never went live (Archibishop Benedictus knows the spell though!).

[Mormolyce]

"and getting more damage!"

Says who?

According to blue posts multidot will be brought down and single target up.

[Frmercury]

He justs says we won't be paying the hybrid tax anymore, not "sorry you've sucked this expansion I'll let you be on top next one". WW Monks, Ret palas, DKs overall - none of them is significantly better than spriests at the moment and they are not paying the hybrid tax. They're removing our raid utility, everything else is just a tuning issue that they haven't showed they're willing to fix yet.

and another one I didn't keep track of.

[Overdispersion]

and another one I didn't keep track of.

Again, the issue with some classes doing less dps isn't exclusively due to hybrid tax. We might get more single target dps in exchange for our multitarget dps, but thinking we're going to be equal to other classes is a bit naive and premature when no numbers and tests are out. We might be best or we might be worst depending on how they balance stuff. Don't get your hopes up too much is all I'm saying.

The only conclusion we can draw is that if our dps is sub-par next expansion, it's not going to be due to the hybrid tax.

[Deleted]

I suspect they might plan to announce some real pvp buffs at some point soon - like like a 20 or 30 second Silence cooldown, and no orb cost on Psychic Horror.

Why u no read front page?!

Glyph of Silence - Reduces the cooldown on your Silence spell by 25 sec, but also reduces its duration by 2 sec.

WowDB entry

Previous suggestion on forums about it.

That would bring our CC up a bit - but we would still get trained into the ground - so that sounds pretty sucky. But who knows - maybe they will also give us the Shadowpriest Teleport spell they designed for us in Cataclysm but never went live (Archibishop Benedictus knows the spell though!).

Glyph of Restored Faith - Leap of Faith pulls you to your target instead of pulling your target to you.

The Dispersion-related glyphs might be good or interesting, see link.

I find it peculiar

Glyph of Shadow Magic - For 10 sec after activating Fade, you are immune to Silence and Interrupt effects, but the cooldown of Fade is increased by 60 sec.

is Disc/Holy only

[Frmercury]

@Overdispersion

Where did you read that suddenly Shadow Priests aren't going to be strong Multi-DoTers? Please link where they stated they changed that bit of their Design for Shadow because I missed that bit.

[Deleted]

He justs says we won't be paying the hybrid tax anymore, not "sorry you've sucked this expansion I'll let you be on top next one". WW Monks, Ret palas, DKs overall - none of them is significantly better than spriests at the moment and they are not paying the hybrid tax. They're removing our raid utility, everything else is just a tuning issue that they haven't showed they're willing to fix yet.

Are WW Monks, Ret Palas, DKs not hybrids? What do they all have in common? They all have tank specs! [conspiracy]Its a secret agenda to make tanking more popular![/conspiracy]