[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Deleted]

Does Mind Sear generate more Insanity than Mind Flay on single target with the new patch? It generates 6 per Target hit on live 50% buff = 9 per target hit, Mind Flay only generates 8.

Mind sear is 5 second cast (9 Insanity), while Mind Flay is 8 insanity in 3 seconds cast time

[Andriokz]

I played Spriest from Vanilla>Cata. Been playing my DK and monk, but I have been thinking about moving Spriest to current serv. Other than hearing about your AoE and some even getting kicked from mythics, I know nothing about them now.

Do you enjoy the new system with insanity and is the AoE true or just a skill sort of thing?

[Deleted]

I played Spriest from Vanilla>Cata. Been playing my DK and monk, but I have been thinking about moving Spriest to current serv. Other than hearing about your AoE and some even getting kicked from mythics, I know nothing about them now.

Do you enjoy the new system with insanity and is the AoE true or just a skill sort of thing?

I really enjoy the playstyle with insanity.

The AoE thing is not really that bad in my opinion. If you have the really strong AoE classes like DH in your group then it feels quite bad, but if trashgroups don't die instantly then you can do quite good dps at least on every 2nd group. (1st group just multidot and build insanity up - 2nd group multidot + pop voidform after applying the dots). You definitly don't want to just afk-Mind Sear on trash (not even after the buff).

Shadow overall feels really good if you have the right gear: haste on every item possible and a decent amount of crit.

[Djriff]

How much haste % should we be aiming for?

All of the haste you can get. ~20%+ crit is good too.

When should you start to ignore ilvl?

In terms of upgrades? Let pawn handle that for you. String is in the first post.

[Zephirdd]

Okay so blizzard loves me. I'm getting ALL THE MASTERY! I just got 860 mastery gloves from WB...

Considering I also have 865 crit/mastery shoulders from nythendra, the legendary crit/mastery neck, and I also got a very mastery heavy 870 boots from a mythic 4 dungeon...

Do you guys think there's a build that can take advantage of all that mastery and the lack of haste? It feels awful to use a 835 neck just for the haste for example. I've been considering something like SWVoid + Void Lord + San'Layn, which I realize is very much the opposite of the cookie-cutter build, but the idea would be to have higher VF uptime for more voidbolts(not necessarily longer VFs) and San'Layn to buff my VT damage which pairs well with my 60%+ maestry.

I've been dummy-testing it and numbers feel good so far, either because of my higher ilv or because the build actually works. Will report back with more info.

[Slammin Shaman]

With the Dispersion change, would it be better to take MB now? Would it be more beneficial to use it during VoiT or Disp to regain some insanity now that we can't get 12 free seconds out of Dispersion?

[Djriff]

ToF > SW: V, but Void Lord and San'Layn can be alright for dungeons. How much crit do you have?

[Zephirdd]

ToF > SW: V, but Void Lord and San'Layn can be alright for dungeons. How much crit do you have?

22% crit and 19% haste. According to AMR simulations I gain about ~2k dps on single target with SW: V, but I'm always wary of simulations(especially because it assumes perfect or near perfect play). The reasoning would be to be able to get back into void form ASAP and get more and more casts of Void Bolt(which I talented with 15% extra damage on my weapon), since it benefits from my ridiculously high mastery.

[Djriff]

22% crit and 19% haste. According to AMR simulations I gain about ~2k dps on single target with SW: V, but I'm always wary of simulations(especially because it assumes perfect or near perfect play). The reasoning would be to be able to get back into void form ASAP and get more and more casts of Void Bolt(which I talented with 15% extra damage on my weapon), since it benefits from my ridiculously high mastery.

The unfortunate part of sims is that they can't really calculate ToF sniping. One a fight with a lot of adds (majority of EN bosses) you'll have a lot more ToF uptime than you would in a sim. That ~2k dps gain in sims is far outweighed by higher tof uptime. I would stick with AS for raids, although San'layn may give you a nice boost in dungeons, you need AS' insanity generation in StM.
You'll get back to Voidform quickly enough without SW: Void as it dramatically loses it's value after the first voidform due to Lingering Insanity.

[Kretan]

Nothing changed? I beg to differ. They are basically admitting that they fucked up with Surrender to Madness, and that they can't fix the mess they made by themselves through a hotfix without gutting the spec's only viable playstyle in raids. They're conceding their loss here. This paves the way for mechanical improvements to the spec in 7.1.

This is what I take from it too. I remember posting in the alpha thread "Aren't we worried about the ridiculous scaling of Mass Hysteria + StM?" as did like 40 other people. I'm just kind of shocked that they couldn't see this scenario play out. It really wasn't any sort of "oh shiiii" revelation upon launch.

[Nihiel]

It's sad beyond words is what it is. I'm so frustrated at how careless they have been. HOW can they not have taken into consideration the fucking myriad of feedback that's been posted during alpha and beta. And then once Legion has launched and we're half a week away from mythic raids, they start realising "Oh wait, S2M really is too hard to balance."

It's just sad. So fucking sad.

[Andriokz]

It's sad beyond words is what it is. I'm so frustrated at how careless they have been. HOW can they not have taking into consideration the fucking myriad of feedback that's been posted during alpha and beta. And then once Legion has launched and we're half a week away from mythic raids, they start realising "Oh wait, S2M really is too hard to balance."

It's just sad. So fucking sad.

I'm a bit late to the SPriest part, but I saw the revert. What does S2M do exactly that makes it either super strong or breaks your spec?

[Ocedic]

I'm a bit late to the SPriest part, but I saw the revert. What does S2M do exactly that makes it either super strong or breaks your spec?

Because it scales so well with heavy drawbacks. Which means it's extremely powerful in specific instances, and as gear gets better that will inevitably get out of control. However, if you nerf it so it becomes useless, then shadowpriests pretty much have nothing to offer.

[justflayin]

I'm a bit late to the SPriest part, but I saw the revert. What does S2M do exactly that makes it either super strong or breaks your spec?

It's the pairing of S2M with Mass Hysteria. The nearly limitles scaling makes it incredibly hard to balance in the player damage and player skill area.

[Yvaelle]

I'm a bit late to the SPriest part, but I saw the revert. What does S2M do exactly that makes it either super strong or breaks your spec?

Shadow right now alternates between a Shadowform phase, and a Voidform phase - Voidform can easily be like a ~50% damage boost even before the Insanity haste mechanic ramps up (30% from voidform + access to void bolt). The Insanity haste mechanic increases our haste for every second we remain in Voidform by 1%, usually this is something like 30 seconds - so 30% haste.

Instead, Surrender To Madness enables us to stay in Voidform for like, 2 minutes - at which point it is 120% bonus haste, multiplied against our base haste, multiplied against Bloodlust. Further, one of our artifact dragons is called Mass Hysteria, which increases our DoT damage by 2% for each second we remain in Voidform. For a normal 30 second Voidform, this is 60% bonus DoT damage - not shabby. For a 2 minute Surrender To Madness, this is 200% increased DoT damage.

Basically Surrender To Madness can be a 2 minute long 'burst' cooldown, that increases our DPS by like... 3 to 5 times our usual damage by the end of it.

Try balancing a spec around the knowledge that it can be doing 5 times its normal DPS under some circumstances, but that it will also kill itself and die randomly throughout fights.

Now try balancing the other two talent choices that need to be competitive with the above.


It can't be done, a talent that kills you for blinking, but potentially multiplies your damage over and over again - is just bad design. People think it's fun, and I'm not denying it can be fun - but it's not good game design.

Given we have access to the above, the devs need to balance around the assumption of what we're potentially capable of - if we do it exactly perfect every time without any bad RNG that kills us. That means that the top 1% of Spriests who execute the above perfectly and consistently, will be set as the balance point for the class - while virtually every Spriest below them will be therefore set as a detrimental position relative to every other spec: because that's the only way to 'balance' the potential of the talent. They can't simply allow the top 50% of Spriests to outdamage every other spec in the game - and they shouldn't - but that would be commensurate to balancing us given the certainty of our deaths we sign up for by using that talent.

Further, given that our entire spec is now designed and balanced around that one talent choice, no other talents matter - except those which improve our ability to use Surrender To Madness. So we can't take our other L100 talents = no choice. We also can't really use anything other than Reaper of Souls, because it's the best for Surrender To Madness. We decide whether to use Mindbender or Power Infusion, based on which better enables Surrender To Madness - but we can't take Shadow Crash in a raid because it is not as good at supporting Surrender To Madness.

Surrender To Madness makes Shadow unbalanceable, and removes all talent choices - either you're picking Surrender To Madness (and the things that make it better) - or you're doing Shadow very, very, very wrong (like, 100's of K DPS lost).

Until S2M is gone, Shadow will spend the rest of the expansion richocheting between being utterly broken on some bosses (ex. Xavius), and utterly useless on other bosses, or entire tiers (ex. because we're broken on Xavius, we'll get repeatedly nerfed into the ground).

[Deleted]

For a 2 minute Surrender To Madness, this is 240% increased DoT damage.

MH caps out at 200% increased damage.

[Yvaelle]

MH caps out at 200% increased damage.

Fixed - thanks

[Djriff]

Voidform is also only a 20% bonus. It appears that it'll be back to 30% in 7.1 with the 10% increased damage while in shadowform.

We didn't get nerfed for one fight due to xavius we had gotten nerfed because MH + StM is broken and still is. I'm quite surprised they reversed that change. StM should be powerful, it's a 10m CD and you die at the end, the problem is that it shouldn't be a talent, it should be baseline or gone. Seriously if they made it baseline it would fix a lot of problems with the t100 row and yet create a dozen other problems with the class as a whole.

[Deleted]

I'm a bit late to the SPriest part, but I saw the revert. What does S2M do exactly that makes it either super strong or breaks your spec?

It is not S2M that does it actually.
It is the artifact trait Mass Hysteria that increases DoT's damage each second you are in void form.
S2M gives you a crazy long voidform so your haste increases, your dot's damage increase and it all scales to insane levels.

[Yvaelle]

Voidform is also only a 20% bonus. It appears that it'll be back to 30% in 7.1 with the 10% increased damage while in shadowform.

We didn't get nerfed for one fight due to xavius we had gotten nerfed because MH + StM is broken and still is. I'm quite surprised they reversed that change. StM should be powerful, it's a 10m CD and you die at the end, the problem is that it shouldn't be a talent, it should be baseline or gone. Seriously if they made it baseline it would fix a lot of problems with the t100 row and yet create a dozen other problems with the class as a whole.

Xavius was just an example of where S2M really draws a lot of attention. Attention matters because even if S2M was as broken as it is for Shadow, if we weren't topping meters with it, we wouldn't be getting buff/nerfs right now. We're virtually tied with Fire and Havoc right now on Heroic Xavius, but we're in the bottom half of specs on Heroic Nythendra as example - despite S2M being broken - if more fights this tier were like Nythendra, the devs wouldn't be looking at Shadow: but S2M would be just as problematic.

Baseline would solve the L100 problem but not address any of the other systemic problems Shadow has, all stemming from S2M, which is why the only good fix is to delete it entirely. I suspect that's the plan for 7.1 - delete it - give us new L100 talents... maybe my suggestions?