Do you actually enjoy the current state of shadow?

[ragecloud]

Hey all, I just wanted to get some feedback on this for personal reasons only. I used to love shadow because I thought it was the whole "easy to learn, difficult to master" idea that blizz wanted, but now I feel like it's just an uninspired class that's not a representation of "easy to learn, difficult to master."

I hate shadow orbs and think that getting rid of them as a resource would make me want to play shadow again. Shadow was always my favorite thing to play, but I just don't find it fun or compelling to play anymore.

[Deleted]

I preferred shadow before shadow orbs. With the whole shadow weaving and misery. People complained about ramp up but I loved it.

Generally not liking the direction shadow is going which started in cata

[Morthulo]

I personally love Shadow at the moment. The orb system is great IMO and with the changes coming in WoD, I can only see the spec becoming even greater.

Two things however that do annoy me with Shadow are;

1. Low survivability
2. Highly Gear dependant

Apart from those, it's great.

[Juicebox]

Peak of Shadow for me was back in Cata. Nothing beats that playstyle, and going from that to the MoP playstyle was something I didn't enjoy.
I stuck with it, but I've rerolled for WoD now, seeing WoD Shadow isn't changing, they're just adding to what we already have.

They could have gotten rid of Shadow Orbs, set a fixed cd on DP of 30 seconds, and have MB reduce that cd by 2 seconds.
They could have gone back to our old mastery and had it proc from DP with a 20 second duration.

Now THAT would've made me stick with Shadow. I never signed up for playing a ranged retribution paladin. Each to their own though!

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nope. As soon as my priest got high enough ilvl, I simply made her disc. It works for dailies and such and feels faster, and also better in terms of survival, than shadow.

[Dierdre]

I hated orbs when they came out. I then learned to live with them, now I kinda like them. All I ask for now is that mythic tuning pass we've been waiting for since 5.0.

[Cerbz]

Well Shadow is actually easy to learn/difficult to master due to how punishing it is for mistakes and movement.

There's a lot I don't like about current Shadow and it's made me considering switching mains a bunch but I stopped raiding for the tier back in March after getting Garry down so obviously no point in rerolling at this point. WoD is showing some promise but still rough around the edges, but it's already better than what we have now so I'll likely stick with Shadow for Mythic raiding. If we can be competitive damage wise and I never have to use Insanity again, I'll be happy.

tl;dr WTB Cata Shadow, fuck MoP Shadow.

[Chaosturn]

The orb system only had one flaw - caps at 3. 5 in warlords is gonna make me play a lot on my priest alt

[1know]

It seems that we are very strong now, I was killing lvl 100 mobs with the pre-made with 2 MS and 1MB.
Now im wondering about raiding, will i keep on MS or will I use the DOTs?

[Annesh]

2. Highly Gear dependant

Whenever this pops up I facepalm, because it implies shadow scales better with gear than other classes, which is just false. If anything it's actually worse with gear, because some other classes scale better, and the disparity grows wider.

To answer OP's question, yeah I love shadow right now, for the most part. Feathers add a lot of mobility and Guise has great potential. On live servers I feel pretty sturdy with all the off-healing options we have - Divine Star, Renew, Mending. Multidotting and focused nuke procs are a ton of damage in larger scale pvp, and with silence and the option for a 4 second horror that doesn't share DR with anything but lock horror can be devastating if executed well. I really do enjoy pvping on my spriest. As for raiding, well it could be worse. We're not so bad that we can't get raid spots as long as we know our spec. I always like raiding, just wish my old raiding guild of 5+ years hadn't fallen apart last year.

However, I do have gripes. I fucking loathe how powerless I feel with even one decent melee on me, let alone two or more, especially if it's a rogue or monk. I may be able to survive well enough to sort of function, especially with some external heals, but the fact that they're there shuts down so much of what I can do. I have to burn every GCD and cooldown I have just to survive, and I have zero ability to go on the offensive. I can juke well enough, but the fact that I have to spend time and effort just to bait out kicks, just to coax an ability they'll have back up in 15 seconds - not to mention all their other spell interrupts - means while they have essentially 100% uptime on me, I have maybe 40% or less uptime on them. I'm eating all their DPS abilities and autoattacks and no matter how well I perform under pressure like this, I'm slowly losing.

I really, really wish Blizz would give Shadow the ability to defend itself against melee in particular. It's no fun at all being bullied every arena match or bg. It feels like I'm spending a whole lot more effort than they are, and I'm losing anyway. Mages and boomkins have great escape tools, warlocks are just very sturdy AND have two different teleports. Elementals have some very strong anti-melee CC we don't have, AND can use most of their DPS while on the move.

I believe the reason they haven't done this already is because we actually do have some very nice group-based utility. We're the last DPS spec that can dispel CC off our healer (locks don't count, no lock would give up their observer/shivarra to have an imp out), our off-healing is still pretty decent, and it's easy to underestimate the power of Flay snare to peel a melee off an ally. I'm probably forgetting some stuff too. None of these things help us in solo pvp encounters, but they make our group stronger in ways that other DPS classes don't. Buffing our ability to defend ourselves in small-scale pvp would make us super OP.

I do think a small defensive buff wouldn't be too bad. But obviously WoD is right around the corner so that's what we really should be talking about.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Whenever this pops up I facepalm, because it implies shadow scales better with gear than other classes, which is just false. If anything it's actually worse with gear, because some other classes scale better, and the disparity grows wider.

This is not quite correct. We scale better than most classes. Our problem is that our dmg is tuned so fucking low, that the scaling doesn't help at all.

[Dierdre]

Describe MoP shadow in three words:

so fucking low

[Simple057]

I love my spriest playing it more than my main lately

[Stormspark]

I have a 90 priest with about a...480-ish item level. It's my 5th alt so I haven't really put much effort into gear, he mainly got the few cloth timeless pieces I picked up on my shaman. Shadow has a huge ramp-up time before you start doing damgae, compared to most other classes I've played. I can see how, on a long boss fight, they can do great damage. But just the time it takes to get going is irritating. His main spec is holy though.

I have a DK (main spec blood, use frost off-spec for soloing). I take him in frost spec into Sethekk Halls (Anzu farming...sigh). He has about the same item level as my priest. I can kill Anzu easily in about 4 seconds. My priest can only get him down to about 30% before he does that stupid banish thing (thank goodness for halo to get rid of the stupid birds). Shadow does great damage when health is low (due to SW: Death), but pitiful damage at the beginning until you get the dots rolling. Anyway, DK can down Anzu in 3-4 seconds. Shadow priest with the same item level takes 45-seconds to a minute to kill him (due to the banish). If he didn't do the banish though, I seriously doubt my priest could down him in under 15 seconds.

Keep in mind that I do NOT DPS in dungeons or raids. I am not a DPS player, I only have DPS specs on my characters because killing things in a healing spec is painful, and tanking specs take a lot longer to kill things unless you gather up huge packs and AOE them with vengeance going.

[Nestar]

I have a 90 priest with about a...480-ish item level. It's my 5th alt so I haven't really put much effort into gear, he mainly got the few cloth timeless pieces I picked up on my shaman. Shadow has a huge ramp-up time before you start doing damgae, compared to most other classes I've played. I can see how, on a long boss fight, they can do great damage. But just the time it takes to get going is irritating. His main spec is holy though.

I have a DK (main spec blood, use frost off-spec for soloing). I take him in frost spec into Sethekk Halls (Anzu farming...sigh). He has about the same item level as my priest. I can kill Anzu easily in about 4 seconds. My priest can only get him down to about 30% before he does that stupid banish thing (thank goodness for halo to get rid of the stupid birds). Shadow does great damage when health is low (due to SW: Death), but pitiful damage at the beginning until you get the dots rolling. Anyway, DK can down Anzu in 3-4 seconds. Shadow priest with the same item level takes 45-seconds to a minute to kill him (due to the banish). If he didn't do the banish though, I seriously doubt my priest could down him in under 15 seconds.

Keep in mind that I do NOT DPS in dungeons or raids. I am not a DPS player, I only have DPS specs on my characters because killing things in a healing spec is painful, and tanking specs take a lot longer to kill things unless you gather up huge packs and AOE them with vengeance going.

He's only got 295k hp, Shadow actually has quite strong burst in opening gcd's if we have orbs, it just doesn't last as long as other classes.

Pull anzu with 3 orbs active, should take 3 casts even in your gear, 4 tops.

Fiend > Devouring > Blast > Flay x3.

Oh and if you have halo, pre-cast it.

[draykorinee]

Nope. As soon as my priest got high enough ilvl, I simply made her disc. It works for dailies and such and feels faster, and also better in terms of survival, than shadow.

Me too, no down time at all.

[Marrilaife]

I like my priest shadow, I played Holy back in WOTLK, in Cata my Priest was on the shelf, in MOP I tried shadow and it's quite fun, but there are some issues I really dislike and would like to see them fixed:

No. 1:

The orb system only had one flaw - caps at 3. 5 in warlords is gonna make me play a lot on my priest alt

Yes, this, delaying Mind blast or Shadow word death because you'll get capped on orbs is counter intuivite.

No. 2, connected with no. 1:
The **** mandatory insanity talent, which means I HAVE to mind flay when Devouring Plague is up, which means I often have to delay putting it until I refresh dots and spend my cds or sit on my cds and see my dots drop because I have to DP + Insanity.

I hate Insanity to the point I'm gonna soon spec into Octopus (mindbender) or something just to not go insane myself lol.

No 3.:
No dps cooldowns. I liked my Shaman before they added Ascendance, but still they added it so shamans can burst. So why Spriests got left out?
Unless Power Infusion is their "dps cooldown" and I missed something somewhere (was under the impression this talent isn't worth it.)

I can live without no. 3, as it seems for WOD Surv hunters and maybe some other specs too are losing their dps cooldowns.
But the day I can never worry again about shadow orb capping and channeling insanity I will say Spriest is fine as a class.

I liked multi-dotting golden lotus protectors or the troll council in TOT, I wouldn't wish this playstyle to go away but I wouldn't want a world where abusing multi dotting is the only correct way to play Spriest (and what if some boss has no adds?) Various classes have various ways to abuse aoe / multi target situations anyways.

Also slightly annoyed that Divine Star range is so short, I like this talent in situations where I don't want to pull extra adds from the sides or behind, but often I find 25yd range or what it is doesn't hit the boss. Can't count how many times I pulled extra packs with Halo, last time nearly wiped in heroic scenario because of that. :P

I'm not a hardcore player so I can't say if the class is strong or weak on the "top the chart" game atm, just speaking about the class feel and the abilities I like and dislike.

[Overdispersion]

I liked Shadow before Insanity. It made one of the least mobile classes even less mobile and clipping a MF:I is just too much of a dps loss. I get that top players have adapted to it and hopefully being able to store two extra orbs makes it easier to delay a DP to get 100% out of Insanity. It introduces us to a whole new dilemma though, which is saving DP for trinket procs...

[Alarinth]

I love my spriest playing it more than my main lately

Me too, and coming from a warlock, I find this hilarious.

I really dig all the utility in PvP, as well as smart choices you can make with psychic horror vs DP+3 in terms of team utility. Feels a lot more dynamic and fun than my warlock for some reason.

[Deleted]

Me too, and coming from a warlock, I find this hilarious.

My thought exactly, but we're in the minority here.

Anyway yes I do really like it, although I'm also aware that our current design doesn't really fit the raid philosophy of this expansion. Nowadays you need to be able to do your rotation on the move, if you can't well screw you. But overall I'm enjoying it despite it's flaws.

As for the orbs I don't mind them that much, I just don't like how they forced them onto us. There wasn't anything wrong with Cata Shadow so why would they even attempt to fix something that wasn't broken, at least mechanics wise. Sometimes I feel they just do these types of revamps, because they feel like they need to spice things up so people won't get bored with a specific class. But instead of improving that what feels amazing and adding new features to it they just turn things sideways for the sake of it.