[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Fleckens]

Define top 3, because situation like:

Mage [|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||] 40% total damage done
Warrior [||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||] 37% total damage done
Shadow priest [|||] 7% total damage done

is us being top 3 as well.

Also, while raid damage and stuff is unknown, questing felt awful even for my awesome, geared copied from live 740+ priest. For 680 premade character it was a fucking disaster. I killed one mob while everyone else killed five or more on 680 premade. I was killing one mob while everyone killed three on my 740+ priest. And this fucking selfhealing pauses are simply the worst. Killed a mob? Stand and cast 2x shadowmend. Killed a mob? Stand and cast 2x shadowmend. Arrgh.

Please, don't act stupid, it's a raid of 25 people, obviously it's not split up like that. It was more like me doing around 185k with most people sitting around 150-170k and then usually some really well geared hunter, warrior, shaman or rogue sitting above 200k(yes I know gear is scaled, but you can have better itemised gear, more artifact traits and gems if they work).

Now I don't disagree with questing being shit for us, although you have to remember that it's a lot harder for everyone. Yes we are probably one of the worst for leveling due to how our class works, but it's not like other non tanks are miles ahead of us, a lot of them have to heal up between fights as well. Warlock for example plays a bit safer than shadowpriest and can survive more mobs, but it has significantly slower kill speed.

[Doodledoo]

logs /10chars

[l33t]

Now I don't disagree with questing being shit for us, although you have to remember that it's a lot harder for everyone. Yes we are probably one of the worst for leveling due to how our class works, but it's not like other non tanks are miles ahead of us, a lot of them have to heal up between fights as well. Warlock for example plays a bit safer than shadowpriest and can survive more mobs, but it has significantly slower kill speed.

I don't really know what are you talking about. A 680 Destro lock is plowing through mobs like a hot knife through butter. Any melee class I've played on beta - fury warr, frost/unholy DK, outlaw/assa rogue, cat, enh shaman, havoc DH - does the same. Any ranged hunter specs have no problems with mobs either. Fire mage pretty much kills everything far before that everything begins to chew on his frost shield. Aff lock kills mobs somehow slower than us - but he compensates that by being able to pull 4-6 mobs at the same time, in a long run he'll kill his 6th mob at the time you'll struggle with your 5th - and also not having to fucking selfheal after every mob. So please, tell me what classes have problems in leveling? Boomkins and ele shamans, both of them having non-sucky dps spec to play? Bah.

I think if one talent is so strong that we have to suffer all the game except for the 2% of our time when we are able to use it in raids - fuck that talent, kill it, bury it in a ground and make another 98% of our gameplay enjoyable instead.

[Ilir]

"I topped the meter in lfr, X class is fine, dw guys !"

I admit, I laughed.

Now I'm not saying Shadow isn't fine dps-wise... but please... use actual meaningful data.

- - - Updated - - -

I topped dps in LFR with my Mistweaver monk in like every beta (except this one). I guess MW monks are top dps too eh ?

[Isentropy]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mrhyXJDTfnb7LgVK
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zaH43TgptJvAdXYV
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/f21V6tqpjY7NxkQa

Shadow's currently performing in the upper regions overall. There's a couple of specs that are still quite a bit ahead (enhancement, fire, survival/BM) but considering that number tuning is far from over, shadow really isn't in a poor spot right now.

[Fleckens]

I don't really know what are you talking about. A 680 Destro lock is plowing through mobs like a hot knife through butter. Any melee class I've played on beta - fury warr, frost/unholy DK, outlaw/assa rogue, cat, enh shaman, havoc DH - does the same. Any ranged hunter specs have no problems with mobs either. Fire mage pretty much kills everything far before that everything begins to chew on his frost shield. Aff lock kills mobs somehow slower than us - but he compensates that by being able to pull 4-6 mobs at the same time, in a long run he'll kill his 6th mob at the time you'll struggle with your 5th - and also having ~100% hit point as well. So please, tell me what classes have problems in leveling? Boomkins and ele shamans, both of them having non-sucky dps spec to play? Bah.

I think if one talent is so strong that we have to suffer all the game except for the 2% of our time when we are able to use it in raids - fuck that talent, kill it, bury it in a ground and make another 98% of our gameplay enjoyable instead.

At 110 destruction isn't all that great at killing mobs, and it's extremely squishy, it's very similar to shadow except it deals with 2 targets slightly better but single target worse.

And if you pull 6 mobs as affliction you will be killing very slow if not dying. Depends on what type of mobs of course, but if you don't keep your voidwalker alive you're dead, which means you will spent most of your time just health funneling. Anything above 3 mobs was pretty hard to deal with, and since your fel hunter does a quite significant amount of damage, having to use voidwalker kinda sucks.

Shadowpriests are by no means perfect, we definitely have some issues, but so do most other classes, and it's always like that. Every single pre expansion you will see people complaning about the changes to their class and how it is the end of the world, and yet in most cases it turns out fine. In some it don't and so it is important to voice our complains about the issues we have, but you can do it constructively or you can just whine about your class sucking, which do you think has the most chance of helping?

[Ilir]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mrhyXJDTfnb7LgVK
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zaH43TgptJvAdXYV
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/f21V6tqpjY7NxkQa

Shadow's currently performing in the upper regions overall. There's a couple of specs that are still quite a bit ahead (enhancement, fire, survival/BM) but considering that number tuning is far from over, shadow really isn't in a poor spot right now.

Actual logs, cool. Still LFR tho. But I more enclined to trust your logs since you're the one usually saying to be careful with reading too much into logs because of players skill etc etc.

Thanks !

[l33t]

which do you think has the most chance of helping?

Most chance of helping has giving feedback to developers, which I did. Here we are just discussing, nothing more.

Also: I was speaking precisely about lvl 100-110 leveling, I dunno what level 110 endgame mobs have to do with that? Endgame mobs are tough for until you gear your character in top endgame gear in every expansion.

[Fleckens]

Most chance of helping has giving feedback to developers, which I did. Here we are just discussing, nothing more.

Also: I was speaking precisely about lvl 100-110 leveling, I dunno what level 110 endgame mobs have to do with that? Endgame mobs are tough for until you gear your character in top endgame gear in every expansion.

Because we are comparing classes, or do you really think classes should be balanced around 15 hours of leveling? Now honestly even while leveling this is kinda the same experience I had, shadow is very bad at dealing with multiple mobs but as long as we play a bit careful we are fine. Not to mention on live there will be a ton of people around so you can just run around dotting everything and get credit for other people's kills, so I really wouldn't worry too much about leveling.

Our biggest issues outside of questing in the world, which probably won't matter a few weeks down the line when we have more gear and artifact traits, seem to be pvp and 5 man related. As for pvp I'm not much of a pvp'er anymore so i can't really speak for that, but i just hope they manage to fix it without screwing us over in pve. 5 man's is definitely our biggest issue, although I hope it will get somewhat improved in mythic+ dungeons where stuff won't die as fast.

[Doodledoo]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mrhyXJDTfnb7LgVK
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zaH43TgptJvAdXYV
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/f21V6tqpjY7NxkQa

Shadow's currently performing in the upper regions overall. There's a couple of specs that are still quite a bit ahead (enhancement, fire, survival/BM) but considering that number tuning is far from over, shadow really isn't in a poor spot right now.

thanks for the logs. Skillwise do you know about the others in your group
- Are we talking butter eaters/average/raider/top 5%?

[l33t]

or do you really think classes should be balanced around 15 hours of leveling?

I think that classes who have huge ramp-up time should not have ridiculously low survivability, and also think we should get our passive DR on shadowform back. There is no need to be that passive-agressive by the way, I am not your enemy by any means.

[Ilir]

thanks for the logs. Skillwise do you know about the others in your group
- Are we talking butter eaters/average/raider/top 5%?

Isentropy usually says when he or she is playing with randoms... so I'd say it's fair to assume they're skilled players... atleast I hope

[Isentropy]

thanks for the logs. Skillwise do you know about the others in your group
- Are we talking butter eaters/average/raider/top 5%?

I don't know any of these people. As I said: don't look into it too much. There a number of specs that are currently doing better numbers-wise. I don't mean to say that shadow is the best spec, all I mean to say is that shadow isn't doing badly. Plenty of tuning to be done still, but there's not much reason to be pessimistic about shadow's raid performance as far as I'm concerned.

[Doodledoo]

It's better to ask and know for sure instead of guess

- - - Updated - - -

As I said: don't look into it too much.

Im playing shadow no matter what, numbers dont bother me at all, mained Ret for a while prior to HFC /rollseyes.

[Caelala]

Curious about what you guys think of the first path to take in regard to artifact traits. Personally looking at going unleash shadows and to the pain but then a quick deviation to grab mass hysteria which lets me come back to SoI but obviously that leaves me without sinister thoughts which is obviously quite strong.

[Fleckens]

Curious about what you guys think of the first path to take in regard to artifact traits. Personally looking at going unleash shadows and to the pain but then a quick deviation to grab mass hysteria which lets me come back to SoI but obviously that leaves me without sinister thoughts which is obviously quite strong.

I'm not entirely sure if it's the correct path to go, but with the buffed sinister thoughts i went that way first and got call to the void before heading towards before heading towards mass hysteria. I'm assuming we want to get both and hopefully can do that before raids come out, and going for sinister thoughts first means we can get 30% more healing on shadow mend which helps a lot with soloing early on.

[Yvaelle]

Well hard time getting your name right then

Maybe people find Evelle easier to pronouce than my 'Y-va Elle'

They named a boss after me guys! http://www.wowhead.com/npc=25840/entropius

Everyones gotta rain on my parade

[Deleted]

It will all depend on how much time we have untill raiding. Mass Hysteria is required for raiding but it's pretty useless during leveling and has the worst path (SWD/Disperson CD are far from good compared to other traits). SoI is very weak, Call to the Void golden dragon is much better and you can grab Sinister Thoughts/Mental Fortitude which are the best non golden dragons in the tree IMO.

[BradySafety]

We'll most likely be skipping sw:d since we can reach the two golden dragons without it. Dispersion CD isn't TOO bad since we'll be using like an offensive cooldown to get more stacks most of the time. Then I think call to the void gives more dps than sphere of insanity but it might be worth going SoI since we'd only be a few points away.

[Gnarilex]

BTW the only reason why Shadow Priests this time around are being turned into a VOID Priest, is so blizzard can use the Shadow theme for sub rogue.

What I find really funny is Legion is following an expansion filled to the brim with shadow and void magic through the talonpriests and shadowmoon clan, yet instead of taking inspiration from them and reworking the spec into a cohesive theme, they tacked on a few void abilities onto what we already had and replaced the shadow orb mechanic with voidform, which many compare to demo's old metamorphosis. Most of the void spells are incredibly generic and have nothing to do with the Old Gods whatsoever and arms warriors feel just as Old God related with their artifact. If they wanted generic void, the shadowmoon clan literally has all the spells they could ever need to turn into a playable spec (even with a touch of necromancy to counteract all the holy spells in the other two specs). They could have even followed the San'layn and taken us into blood magic, making spells like Vampiric Touch/Embrace make much more sense. I wouldn't be surprised to see another rework in the expansion after.