[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Djriff]

after a read through the guide, it won't much matter to me. I will just be doing what I can outside of raiding. That is just way beyond me. Enjoy Legion All.

What's confusing to you?

[Malico]

Excuse me, S2M? STM?

[Djriff]

Excuse me, S2M? STM?

Surrender to Madness.

[davesignal]

Different specs have different strengths. A spec that is weak on single target likely has strengths in other areas. If everyone performed roughly the same on single target then that wouldn't leave a lot of room for actual niches in other areas.

I don't buy into the notion that classes need niches. I think you could make compelling classes based on different mechanics, visual effects, sound direction, and overall appearance without having to then tack on the notions like 'Spec A doesn't get a good AOE damage spell' or 'Spec B does bad single target DPS'.

the problem in this case is that you are assuming that those patchwerk sims are accurate to begin with.

The concept isn't contingent on that particular results list. I think you and I both know that it's a given that one spec the gulf between the best spec and the worst spec is going to be fairly substantial, based on this:

@davesignal based on interviews with Blizzard developers over the years, their internal formula is built around NOT balancing classes. The classes are instead purposefully imbalanced, both in terms of potential and in terms of ease of play. People are diverse, and the classes each have small clusters of players who fit into certain demographics and stereotypes. Classes are geared more towards those micro-communities rather than balanced against each other as a whole.

This Extra Credits video explains it better than I can.



The short of it is that a well-balanced WoW would bore everyone.

Also shadowpriests, generally speaking, are try-hard masochists. The class' difficulty is purposely more difficult to master than most other classes, less reward for more effort. It's been that way for a pretty long time.

It's vaguely insulting that, because I like DOTs, channels, and being a purple ghost, Blizzard thinks I'm a self-hating masochist who wants to do more work and be rewarded less for it.

[marathal]

What's confusing to you?

don't mind me. The class has just gone over the top for me now. I will just do what feels right and hope for the best.

[Djriff]

don't mind me. The class has just gone over the top for me now. I will just do what feels right and hope for the best.

What i mean is, what's got you confused? It's the same class essentially as it was before WoD, just some slight differences to the rotation.

[marathal]

What i mean is, what's got you confused? It's the same class essentially as it was before WoD, just some slight differences to the rotation.

Perhaps to someone as well informed as yourself that has an understanding of it all. To me it is taking Shadow DoT weaving to a new level of complexity. Perhaps to yourself it may appear more simplified. But to me it is just too much. So I will just wing it and if I have to just play old content, until a later tier when a change comes along that might make a more simplified way to play at least partially viable.

[Deleted]

There are (or could be, due to unknown factors) a few reasons:

1) I'm not sure what fight length or iterations were used to generate that chart.
2) The talents used in the T19P for Shadow need to be updated. It currently uses ToF/VL/SL/PI/LotV when, according to the comparison of all DPS talents I did in the first wave here for Heroic (which, again, may not be the same at a lower level) [ https://www.beotorch.com/batch.php?r...c-008cfa070490 ] show that the best non-S2M talent combo is ToF/VR/AS/PI/MSp by about 3.3%.
3) Mass Hysteria affects S2M more than other L100s, and at a lower profile level you have fewer other artifact traits to balance this out (or reduce the overall impact).
4) Stat distributions, especially trinkets, are different between the two levels.
5) Running a sim with all actors that have execute (like 28 Shadow Priests) as opposed to a sim with only a few actors with an execute (like the stack rankings for a raid) mean that you'll have more time spent in execute range, which means higher uptimes on abilities used within that part of an encounter. There's not an easy way to correct for this, so I try to do my base sims with as wide of a basecase as possible. One flaw in this set of batches of mine is that I should have always included all 27 combinations of L15/L60/L100 and pivoted the batches off of a different L75+L90 combination to mitigate this as much as possible (I pivoted off of L60+L75 instead, so RoS isn't used in every sim run).

It is worth noting that while, in the chart linked, there is a ~22% DPS difference between S2M and what is likely the wrong talent combination for T19P, the delta between the top S2M and that same talent combination on my simset for Heroic is 10.6%. How much of this is attributed to each of the 5 points above? Impossible to tell, though my money is on #3 for a lot of it.

Thanks. I really hope the difference beteween the talents is like you said (and not22%) and hope before launch they buff enough one of the other talents to make it almost as good as s2m, which i hate.

[justflayin]

Perhaps to someone as well informed as yourself that has an understanding of it all. To me it is taking Shadow DoT weaving to a new level of complexity. Perhaps to yourself it may appear more simplified. But to me it is just too much. So I will just wing it and if I have to just play old content, until a later tier when a change comes along that might make a more simplified way to play at least partially viable.

I think you're over thinking it. The basics are all there. keep dots up. use nukes on CD. fill with flay. repeat.

[Deja Thoris]

It's vaguely insulting that, because I like DOTs, channels, and being a purple ghost, Blizzard thinks I'm a self-hating masochist who wants to do more work and be rewarded less for it.

Meh, I find it depressingly accurate. I should / could just roll a mage and faceroll my way to victory but I'm too much of that^^

[Deleted]

SO, what would be the best artifact points path? I will probably go 13 in shadow, then 13 in holy as offspecc and back to the main weapon :P

[Deleted]

That actually brings up a good point. What would you do to mind spike to fix it if you had a tier bonus you could make?

what do you think about my mind spike talent change idea?

i liked the general idea about mind spike, what i would change would simply increase the 'all nearby target' damage part, and add an extra line, which says: if a void spike is detonated via a mindblast, the explosion will also trigger any nearby void spikes. with void spike we would need to cast it on as many targets as we think can survive till the mindblast, the damage could ramp up pretty quickly.. although now that i think about it, shadow aoe could easily get out of hand real quick since all spikes would explode on each mob, increasing the damage exponentially. from what my friend told me about warlocks, affli warlocks have somewhat similar talent called sow of seeds.

[Ilir]

"Driven to Madness now only works outside Voidform and will not activate on periodic effects."

[l33t]

"Driven to Madness now only works outside Voidform and will not activate on periodic effects."

Didn't we predict that nerf, like, three months ago or something?

[Ilir]

we did. But Shadow keeps getting nerfed without any fix to their actual problems.

[l33t]

we did. But Shadow keeps getting nerfed without any fix to their actual problems.

I think it is safe to state that problems you're referring to were never portrayed like that by devs. I, too, dislike the new uberlazy motto of nerfing good talents instead of buffing bad ones, but oh well, what could you expect from Blizzard? They do keep buffing fire mages, that's all you need to know.

[Sarkol]

I think it is safe to state that problems you're referring to were never portrayed like that by devs. I, too, dislike the new uberlazy motto of nerfing good talents instead of buffing bad ones, but oh well, what could you expect from Blizzard? They do keep buffing fire mages, that's all you need to know.

No, they actually don't. They actually received a nerf recently. But keep whining.

[Fleckens]

Honestly if i was to design lvl 100 talents i'd go with
1) STM
2) Draenor-like COP
3) Legacy of the void providing "old" sp gameplay without voidform. Giving passive shadow form like damage boost, making void eruption and void bolt castable all the time but cost insanity as resource.

I think this would cover most ppl playstyles. STM for those who like new sp, cop for those who liked WOD and legacy for cata-like gameplay.

Good in theory, bad in reality as one would always be the best and you would have to play that one. And I don't want to ever have to play something like CoP again.

[Deleted]

SO, what would be the best artifact points path? I will probably go 13 in shadow, then 13 in holy as offspecc and back to the main weapon :P

This will delay your mass hysteria by a tiny bit but it's the best setup to have for when raiding comes around

[Ilir]

i think you'll be able to get Call to the Void and Mass Hysteria once raid opens... if you farm enough ?