[6.0] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Erohol]

Let's hope so, then everyone can hop on a warrior and go to town on him.

It's looking like for some inexplicable reason Marksman is going to win. Good for them, I guess. I mean, it's not like Hunters don't have two more ranged DPS specs to choose from in the event of there being major balance and mechanical problems with their only DPS spec. Oh, and second place Elemental shaman's just fine too. I won't even bother with the sarcasm there. Everyone except for Hunters had their mobility nerfed, and Ele still has Spiritwalker's Grace. So they lost HTT - They can still talent for burst healing or steady healing, thereby having infinitely more -useful- off healing potential in any given encounter as the offensive hybrid class than the healing hybrid class.

There. I feel like I've gotten my obligatory ANGST POST out of the way.

[Alanar]

Voted

Shadow it is!

[Annesh]

Last I heard Ele shamans were having a really rough time. But I dunno how many of their problems are shared with all casters, so maybe if he plays ele then he'll become wise to those.

[Yvaelle]

Last I heard Ele shamans were having a really rough time. But I dunno how many of their problems are shared with all casters, so maybe if he plays ele then he'll become wise to those.

As far as casters go, they are the tankiest in pvp now - their Healing Surge deals double healing to themselves - which is like 40k+ non-crit - and they have the highest passive survivability, which counts for a lot versus melee sitting on you.

Their problem, IMO, is that they are relatively dependent on casts now - which sucks when fighting MoP-style melee, but that's clearly part of the dev teams aim for casters: so that isn't going to change.

[BobAwesome]

Not gonna lie, I'd much rather see Celest play arms, even though their dmg is high, the "rotation" is total shit.

[Dierdre]

Not gonna lie, I'd much rather see Celest play arms, even though their dmg is high, the "rotation" is total shit.

You mean "spam whatever is up and top meters"?

[Deleted]

Honestly, I know Morgrim's argument well enough that AS will scale too quickly - but they don't seem too concerned about it - so I don't feel compelled to tell them "Hey you guys should totally nerf our abilities that are good, so that all our choices suck". Morgrim is worried they will over-nerf it in a future tier.

If it comes to that, I agree the easy solution is just to target cap the Orb generation effect to the most recent Pain application - and to allow other Pain's to generate regular Apparitions instead.

We played this game long enough to know not all 3 talents need to be viable in order to have a fun lvling, raiding, or PvPing tier. Your SWI remark is right on the mark. Blizzard is content when 2 out of 3 talents are viable. In the start of MoP we went to become a proc class thanks to FDCL and its synergy with GoMSp, or CD from Mindbender (that's our DPS CD). Apart from redesign of shadow orb system this also was quite unique for the world of shadow. After first tier it became a redesigned SWI which if you didn't like that well you were screwed. I have no doubt VEnt will get a buff or redesign later on, right not they clearly don't want it to be the choice talent. I argue it isn't incompetence; it is intentional. So my advice is to accept it as it is and have fun with CoP and AS for the time being.

They nerfed MSp which was on my DPS meter huge with CoP. This is an indirect nerf to CoP, SoD, and our mobility.

Mind Flay being bad, don't mind it. As it stands I won't even glyph it which means Mind Flay would be my slow. I will just use procs for movement and feathers when needed.

Mind Sear being bad, same I don't care about it. I rather do good single target damage for a patch or two, using Mind Sear for ToF procs. My only concern is CMs but we can't be good at everything...

Its a lot less dramatic than it sounds. If you didn't like MoP SP mechanic-wise though I do hope people have rerolled/quit though. The new talents work in great synergy with what we had, a next level but not a rewrite.

VEnt is, at the core value, something we suggested before: "we want more than 2 spells to spend out orbs on." Its our Doom, but unique enough. Buffing VEnt I would make it cost only 1 orb, maybe 2. This decreases the ramp up time. Maybe problematic for PvP. An alternative could be every VEnt cast within 200 seconds of the first costs 1 more orb, starting with 1 orb base value for VEnt. While I doubt VEnt will be used much in PvP it does serve a purpose: the dot will tick so long, it will hamper the ability of stealth classes to go into stealth. Another way to buff VEnt is via a tier set bonus which relies on dots. Example: "each time your dots tick damage you have a 5% chance to gain 3% extra mastery, crit, or haste whichever is higher. Stacks up 3 times, lasts 10 seconds." To offset for CoP they can add MSp to the procs when that talent is active. They'll need some kind of way to work around set bonuses which work with VT and SWP anyway.

[BobAwesome]

You mean "spam whatever is up and top meters"?

If by spam, you mean hit the two skills they still have left, then yes. Would you rather have a fun and functional rotation that's balanced or a sloppy mess that does the most damage?

[Tanned]

I did a SimC test using one of Twintop's gear sets at level 100 to illustrate how bad Mind Flay and DoT tuning is right now. Spoiler alter: it is really bad. Here's the Results HTML on Dropbox: https://db.tt/ldu93yBI

Here's a taste:


The action set I used for MS SPAM was literally only "Cast Mind Spike."
The action set I used for Mind Flay + DoTs was "Keep dots up. Cast Mind Flay."

[Deleted]

Not gonna lie, I'd much rather see Celest play arms, even though their dmg is high, the "rotation" is total shit.

At least they can aoe. RIP dogsear.

- - - Updated - - -

Last I heard Ele shamans were having a really rough time. But I dunno how many of their problems are shared with all casters, so maybe if he plays ele then he'll become wise to those.

In pvp or pve? In pve they are fine. At least ours are competitive single target, aoe is a bit annoying due to tanks moving out their op earthquake.

Looking at streams though, I have yet to find a decent ele in both pvp and pve on the beta, they are all lfr caliber.

[Blackmorgrim]

I did a SimC test using one of Twintop's gear sets at level 100 to illustrate how bad Mind Flay and DoT tuning is right now. Spoiler alter: it is really bad. Here's the Results HTML on Dropbox: https://db.tt/ldu93yBI

Here's a taste:


The action set I used for MS SPAM was literally only "Cast Mind Spike."
The action set I used for Mind Flay + DoTs was "Keep dots up. Cast Mind Flay."

The only issue with that however, is by casting mind spike, you give up a lot more than just DoT damage. With AS, you lose orb generation, and with VEnt you lose VEnt. I highly doubt you'd see the same result if you just replaced mindflay with mindspike in every full rotation. The only one it should work in is CoP, however, Vent might not be strong enough to make up that difference in single target.

However, I think replacing MF with SWP, and keeping SWP, VT, and VEnt rolling should be just enough to beat MS spam. I'll take a look.

[Deleted]

Buffs to Mind Sear, but further nerfs to all our other standard dmg spells.

Edit: Missed the Void Entropy buff, good to see them agree with us that quickly for once.

[Deleted]

Everyone got nerfed. I think their aim is around 20k dps single target for every class. Most classes that got nerfed were around 21-25k.

They buffed void entropy, well the qq didn't take long. Let's qq more, they need to double the damage.

[Tanned]

That's right, Blackmorgrim. There's an opportunity cost to Mind Spike spam that the CoP talent tries to clear up. The point is that the core balance of Shadow's spells should be that without CoP, MF+DoTs should do more damage than Mind Spike spam.

Here's a Sim from build 18738 without a level 100 talent, using a full rotation, where instead of using Mind Flay as a filler, I use Mind Spike (except when Devouring Plague is up): https://db.tt/UYwKbIOG

I just use ToF and MFI and slightly modify the CoP action list to have it make a little more sense for the test. The results are too close in my opinion:


EDIT: I'll run more Sims when the new changes get pushed into SimC, but it looks like this new build fixes some of the issues I had with Mind Spike Spam beating out Mind Flay + DoTs.

[Kaesebrezen]

Buffs to Mind Sear

Not really a buff... more like a bug. It's ticking for 13000 damage.

but it looks like this new build fixes some of the issues I had with Mind Spike Spam beating out Mind Flay + DoTs.

Dpn't worry, the nerf to MB/DP made haste rather weak.

[Deleted]

Not really a buff... more like a bug. It's ticking for 13000 damage.

Dpn't worry, the nerf to MB/DP made haste rather weak.

Which is much better than the 2.5k ticks it was doing before :P

[Valkaneer]

Ok, so what am I doing wrong here? I have done maybe 75% of the damage I can do on a mage. Yet they keep Nerfing Spriest and buffing the mages. I really don't see a lot of skill to use. MB, SW:P, Vamp Touch, MF / DP, Halo, SF. What else am I missing that is making Spriest so OP that they need to keep nerfing them?

[soulyouth]

atm mind sear is better single target then flay on the beta I was messing round for like 30min it's dmg is insane #notgoinglive

[Deleted]

First nerf wave done. We wait for more...

[Ilir]

Some nerfs I can understand... some I don't OO