[Shadow] Mythic Dungeons

[Sarkol]

Shadow Priests may not be the best caster in Mythic dungeons, but so fucking what? They're one of, if not the best in raids at 110 right now. I think a lot of posters here would be the first to cry homogenization if the priest got burst aoe at the expense of their dots etc. Shadow Priest can do Mythic 10 dungeons and beyond. It's that simple.

[Deleted]

Shadow Priests may not be the best caster in Mythic dungeons, but so fucking what? They're one of, if not the best in raids at 110 right now. I think a lot of posters here would be the first to cry homogenization if the priest got burst aoe at the expense of their dots etc. Shadow Priest can do Mythic 10 dungeons and beyond. It's that simple.

Well I was hoping to focus on Mythics in Legion, so I don't really care if Shadow Priests are the best in raids, PVP or fishing. Based on J Innk's videos - the fact is that Hunter and Demon Hunter are doing 2-4x more damage than Shadow Priest for 78% of the time spent in the dungeon while Shadow Priest struggles to keep up with the tank damagewise. If that's cool with you then great. I on the other hand don't want to be more of a hindrance than a help just because my DPS spec is subpar for Mythics (but great in other scenarios).

[Deleted]

But they do well in Boss fights on Mythics, and they do ok on Trash pulls if you multidot, and can keep SWP up...

I agree, shadow priests do well on 20% of the Mythics (Boss fights).
But I wouldn't call being outdps'ed 2-4x by other classes for 80% of the Mythic "ok" (on Trash).
In fact I think the group would be better off with another hunter, demon hunter or dps warrior instead of a shadow priest.
And yes, SP in the videos I've seen on YouTube (J Innk) was multidoting.

[Deleted]

But they do well in Boss fights on Mythics, and they do ok on Trash pulls if you multidot, and can keep SWP up...

Thats where the counter intuitive design comes in though. We want to be in voidform, and in as long as possible but while doing that we cant keep SW:P up on anything passed 4 targets. Thats why people were thrilled at the thought of the initial Void Eruption implementation when it refreshed the main targets DoTs and people thought it might refresh them all. Something as simple as that even if we had to talent for it would be such an improvement, we still have to multidot we still have ramp up but we can atleast for 18sec make use of VF, mass hysteria and Sphere of Shit. Hell even just removing the stupid restriction of SoI only cleaves to targets with SW:P and just shoots at everything in x yrds of the target might even go a ways to make SoI something you might consider taking over any of our non dragon AF traits and might be enough to make our AoE go from abysmal to passable.

[Deleted]

I agree, shadow priests do well on 20% of the Mythics (Boss fights).
But I wouldn't call being outdps'ed 2-4x by other classes for 80% of the Mythic "ok" (on Trash).
In fact I think the group would be better off with another hunter, demon hunter or dps warrior instead of a shadow priest.
And yes, SP in the videos I've seen on YouTube (J Innk) was multidoting.

While I agree with the point you are trying to make regards Shadow being to weak on trash (most likely duo to Mind Sear being really bad) - it is not really fair the way you analyze it. You might be right regarding the boss time, but you are not taking into account all the time they are running etc., which atleast consist of 15-20%.

If you want to make a numerical comparison you have to include all factors

[Deleted]

While I agree with the point you are trying to make regards Shadow being to weak on trash (most likely duo to Mind Sear being really bad) - it is not really fair the way you analyze it. You might be right regarding the boss time, but you are not taking into account all the time they are running etc., which atleast consist of 15-20%.

If you want to make a numerical comparison you have to include all factors

I agree my comparison is a little oversimplified, after all it's based on a YouTube video.

Still, I think the point that Shadow is far from optimal (2-4x times worse than some other classes) for most of the dungeon stands. If I'm bored tomorrow maybe I'll try to check their out of combat time and let you know if this "most of the dungeon" is closer to 60% or 80%

[Deleted]

I agree that Mind Sear is pretty weak. I think if this becomes a huge issue (as in the numbers come back and only 1% of SPriests do Mythics, etc, they will look at it.) But you cannot balance a class around one type of encounter.

If you look at the numbers Spriests do very well on boss fights... they do ok on (some) trash. Do you want a class that does well on boss fights and trash?

I think people need to understand that if there was a class like that, everyone would be playing it. And when/if that happens, ie, the flavor of the month/expansion, Blizzard usually nerfs them. You can't, and shouldn't be good in everything.

In which case why does current fire mage exist as that IS good in everything, Burst, AoE, Single target granted it may need to talent for such things but isn't that what the talent system should be for?

SP are good on boss fights as long as bosses stay alive long enough for you to ramp up, but without StM they are not the best, and as I said earlier outside STM there are a few classes that are better Single Target/Bosses and also absolutely destroy us in AoE and by pressing 1 or 2 buttons, no multi dotting no dot management etc. (not that multidotting bothers me)

Again ill say it I dont think SP should be good at everything, but a dps shouldn't be behind/only slightly ahead of tanks in damage output at similar gear levels, if all the classes adhered to your Good at A, Bad at B then id agree but when many classes even ones with brain dead game play are Good at A, Good to OK at B its annoying when we are Good to Amazing if you don't screw up, boss/raid team doesn't goof you at A, Abysmal at B.

Again ill stress, I personally don't want SP to be amazing at AoE, just some tools to makes go from abysmal to Ok.

[Creatinebrah]

all the people whining about shadow priests not having aoe, try looking at OVERALL damage.

rogues are in the same boat as they don't have strong aoe but they have have MONSTER single target damage:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...cXCDv#phase=-1

[Deleted]

I'm wondering about legendaries / set / trinkets when getting in those M+ dungeons. Maybe we'll get better than expected

[Fleckens]

all the people whining about shadow priests not having aoe, try looking at OVERALL damage.

rogues are in the same boat as they don't have strong aoe but they have have MONSTER single target damage:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...cXCDv#phase=-1

Is their aoe as bad as ours? As we can't really compete with their damage on boss damage as shadow unless we use stm(and probably not even then) as their cooldowns for short boss fights are just insane. They may be single target but they don't have long ramp up time like we do which is why they are good.

[Jullyx]

Sub and outlaw have no problems at all. Assas is bad on AoE, like always. Sub FoK+nightblade is crazy at timer. B

As shadow, we shouldn't be expecting to compete with demon hunters, hunters, fire mages etc on dungeon trash. We're not supposed to be good in every scenario and that's completely fine, but we can't be a burden on pugs and guildies. If we become some laughingstock that no one brings regardless of gear, it's just gonna suck. Something has to be done and it really doesn't have to be big at all. I've said before that Shadow Crash baseline and I'm 100% happy. Maybe a talent that reduces the CD by 50% in it's place. I don't care what the change is, but a minor buff in this area that doesn't affect our raid dps is neccessary.

[Biomega]

Honestly, some sort of change to Shadow Crash and/or Mind Sear should be on the table still. I feel that it would fix so many things people think are wrong with Shadow at the moment (though not all, most notably not the RSI issue).

DoT spread may be too strong, but some sort of snappy burst AoE would do wonders.

[Isentropy]

(though not all, most notably not the RSI issue).

I don't think this is a complaint many people have. I and many other people I know really enjoy the high haste playstyle, I've only seen a handful of complaints about wrists. It's anecdotal conjecture either way, but I wouldn't count this as an issue because it's highly subjective.

----------------------------------------

Regarding shadow in mythic dungeons... the problem is that the gap is too big between best and worst in terms of AoE - more can be done to make that gap smaller. Shadow's kit works well in raids because of fight design for the most part. There are only a handful of fights that are really in the favor of AoE instead of multidot (and no, they're not the same) spread over the entire first tier which masks our AoE weakness. This is actually usually the case for shadow in raids. Even on those few fights that do favor AoE, shadow still has solid single target damage to fall back on. In a raid this is a tradeoff that isn't detrimental for your raid because any serious guild uses a comp that has different specs that can do different things, and you can make up for each other's weaknesses.

In mythic+ however, the issue is that you can't make up for each other's weaknesses like that. That is if we're talking about ideal comps anyway, which you could argue isn't entirely relevant - shadow can do mythic+10 just fine if the rest of your comp isn't as bad as shadow. To me it's primarily a matter of principle. I don't feel it's acceptable for tanks to be able to do several 100k more than shadow on trash. That screams bad design in mythic+ where trash is relevant, especially if you look at why that actually is from a mechanical standpoint. Shadow simply isn't well rounded enough to really go for cutting edge mythic+ times, and no, I'm not saying that shadow should be like that, but again: the gap is too big.

Blizzard has put so much power into our multidotting and sustained single target that in situations where you can't make use of that optimally (dungeon trash), we fall behind if the rest of the group is of a similar skill level. The only baseline tool Blizzard has given us for AoE is Mind Sear, and as I and many other people have explained before, Mind Sear is not designed to be a good AoE tool, it's an AoE filler. Void Eruption is an extension of our multidot which is why I don't see that as AoE, before anyone asks. So what other options do we have then? We have Void Ray which improves Mind Sear, but this doesn't turn it into a good AoE tool and doesn't help on trash as long as we have to manually multidot like we do (not a lot of globals left for Mind Sear) ; then we have Mind Spike which is just awful for so many reasons (extensively talked about this on the official forums if you really want an in depth explanation) ; and finally we have Shadow Crash, which is fine right now, but it can't be reasonably expected for Shadow Crash to solely carry our bad AoE.

So we have three talents that help our AoE and only one of those is good, or at least, not terrible. On top of terrible baseline AoE to begin with, this doesn't really leave shadow in a great spot in terms of AoE, needless to say. If we at least had more AoE mechanics, that would make gameplay a lot more interesting as well, and then that actually gives the devs a good tuning knob to decide how they want shadow to perform in AoE situations. Mind Sear isn't a good tuning knob because of its dependence on Mind Flay's damage (unless they slightly rework it), Shadow Crash can't be too much stronger or it will overtake Mindbender too quickly, and Mind Spike's mechanics don't work well in raids or dungeons (again, check official forums for more in depth explanation).

It's not about being good at everything like some of you are saying, but certainly Blizzard can do more to actually fix shadow's AoE problems. Problems that go far beyond just numbers. Right now it's a matter of not being able to do anything but press Mind Sear on the murlocs in Eye of Azshara, or the little guys at the start of Vault of the Wardens, or the imps on Mannoroth. It's not very fun, you know it's not going to do very good damage - it's a feeling of hopelessness to be a bit dramatic. Mind Sear feels detached from our Legion toolkit and I would love to see an AoE mechanic that would fit us more, without it relying on our manual multidotting like Void Eruption currently does.

[Deja Thoris]

I agree that Shadow Crash should have been baseline, and/or Mind Sear should have been buffed (it is pretty weak). But "overall" SPriests are doing well on Boss fights, and they are pretty fun, especially once you get the rotation down, and are in the VB/MB loop because your haste is so high. StM also adds a really nice mechanic.

I think you mentioned this, but if VB refreshed SWP/VE on all other NPC's (without the VB damage) that would also help.

Another irrelevant +1 to post count post by you.

Infracted - Red

[Deja Thoris]

Ditto

I'm just surprised so many people are hating on the spec, is all.

They aren't hating. They are pointing out a glaring weakness in the priests toolkit. It's not one that makes them "not the best" - it just makes them plain "bad" at a certain task. I love shadow, I'm 99% sure I'm going to play it in Legion but this is a thread about mythic dungeons. The biggest part of mythic dungeons is trash and comments like "their boss damage is good" and "they are fun" mean fuck all.

[Isentropy]

I agree that Shadow Crash should have been baseline, and/or Mind Sear should have been buffed (it is pretty weak). But "overall" SPriests are doing well on Boss fights, and they are pretty fun, especially once you get the rotation down, and are in the VB/MB loop because your haste is so high. StM also adds a really nice mechanic.

I think you mentioned this, but if VB refreshed SWP/VE on all other NPC's (without the VB damage) that would also help.

Shadow is doing fantastic in raids right now. Zero complaints there. I think it's incredibly fun to play as well. Zero complaints there.

Only doing well on bosses in mythic+ isn't good enough if you've got specs that do a little less damage on bosses, yet twice as much on trash - again coming back to the well rounded argument. I'm not saying that shadow should be a jack of all trades without a specific niche, but that is what the new talent system is supposed to do for us: give us options to specialize in an area depending on the situation, at the cost of losing damage in another area. I feel like Blizzard added some AoE to Void Ray and Mind Spike just to say that they've given us AoE options (in addition to Shadow Crash which has always been the AoE option), but of course considering that Void Ray & Mind Spike are never the right choice in their tier that's a bit of a silly thing to say.

I won't be doing much high end mythic+ personally so I don't really care about doing mythic+15, going for high end times or whatever. However, for those that do tend to do dungeon content for the most part of their playtime shouldn't be shafted just because the spec was purely designed for raids. Especially not if said dungeon content is supposed to be an alternative progression path to raiding - that's just not okay in my book. There's a bunch of ways they could try and actually fix the mechanical problems, it's been something brought up since early alpha, but they seem to have no intention to actually do so. It's disappointing.

It's really not all bad, I'm very happy with how the spec is playing & performing for the most part. But there are absolutely some areas where from a mechanical point of view, they've failed to fix issues that have been there for years - AoE is one of those. They could've addressed that in the rework, but they didn't. Shadow just can't have actual AoE mechanics according to Blizzard, it seems.

[Deja Thoris]

Ahh. So trash killing is how you are successful in mythic dungeons? Killing the NPC's that actually drop loot and why most are doing the dungeon to begin with, is secondary?

Like I said, Mind Sear could use a buff, Shadow Crash should be baseline... But if you actually think about it, you could spec into Shadow Crash for trash, and then into Mindbender for bosses. The Tome of the Clear Mind is pretty cheap to make.

Nothing drops loot in mythic + dungeons. You get a shinies at the end - mostly based on beating the timer. The largest aspect of beating the timer is trash because that is where you'll spend most of your time.

I seriously cannot fathom how you can be so uninformed on a topic you've posted so much on. Bravo.

[Isentropy]

I guess my question is than is it viable to change into AE talents for trash, and "single target" talents for bosses? I know it is suboptimal, but I wonder how that will change the damage when on trash pulls overall. As mentioned, Tome of the Clear mind is not expensive, especially if you are a Scribe, or have an alt that is.

You cannot change talents in mythic+. What you have at the beginning is what you'll end the dungeon with. Shadow Crash is a fine choice for the entire dungeon, Void Ray and Mind Spike (as said) suck dick for AoE, so they're not good choices for trash even if you could talent switch.

[Deja Thoris]

So spec into AE for trash, and single target for bosses.

As for Mythics, I do not do mythics; most of my time is spent in raids.

If I recall correctly currently you have to be out of combat for 60 seconds to be able to change talents so once again you missed the mark.

Edit* As isentropy said, its even worse than that, no talent changes at all!

[Deleted]

I agree that Shadow Crash should have been baseline, and/or Mind Sear should have been buffed (it is pretty weak). But "overall" SPriests are doing well on Boss fights, and they are pretty fun, especially once you get the rotation down, and are in the VB/MB loop because your haste is so high. StM also adds a really nice mechanic.

I think you mentioned this, but if VB refreshed SWP/VE on all other NPC's (without the VB damage) that would also help.

Well said.
Not only this but they could swap some PvE and PvP talents... like Void Origins, Initiation , mind trauma or Psycic link.
Trade them for Mind Bomb (make it to not replace Psychic Scream), legacy of the Void (why go Voidform at 70%? ... from 100% has more uptime which means more bonus haste after it ends) and masochism (i can see me self heal in PvP, i won't really self heal in PvE, in combat, unless questing or step into something that i shouldn't step in a Raid/Dung...it's not like you'll heal others for the same effect, since it counts only for self heals, so it doesn't have any upgraded effect even if you need to off heal in PVE).
This way both PvE and PvP trees would be more solid...