QoL changes for Shadow Priests in Legion.

[CthulhuFhtagn]

So what? Use one of the other talents (that will inevitably get buffed) if you suck. If you remove the death penalty of StM, it becomes broken beyond precedence. Heard of early Wrath Ret Paladin? Literally naked Paladins running around owning people? Your change would be very similar to that.

Wasnt me who suggested the death penalty removal, l2read avatar names. I was commenting how said death penalty would affect the raid if not executed perfectly. And at higher stacks it has to be damn near flawless or you go bye bye along with your precious DPS.

[Isentropy]

The moment you introduce long duration multidot situations, (think Hellfire High Council) our DPS can jump 10-15%

If we're talking actual council fights like that, the DPS we gain is far more than 10-15%. You're not even close with that guess.

If you have multiple targets that are more like swarms (think Kormrok grasping hands or Mannoroth imps) they're almost not worth hitting, which is a big problem.

Not being able to contribute very much to Kormrok hands is not a problem at all, and even if it was we have Shadow Crash for that, which would be a fine choice for that situation. Mannoroth imps are relevant to be able to hit, but such a fight with extremely high priority AoE (as in, everyone needs to contribute) does not exist in the first tier of Legion.

1. We are essentially forced to pick up Auspicious spirits even though its 0.5-1% of our damage, the insanity generation is far too valuable.

Shadowy Apparitions empowered through AS give us a lot more than that just from raw damage, but you are correct in saying that its main strength is Insanity generation.

2. S2M makes the other 2 T100 talents irrelevant except in cases (yet to be seen) where Mindspike is SUPER effective, LoTV is essentially a useless talent as you want to have 80-90 insanity banked before you use it anyway.

Mind Spike will never be super effective. It's absolute and complete garbage from a design and numbers perspective. StM is incredibly strong, but Legacy & Mind Spike do a pretty damn good job at making themselves irrelevant by virtue of barely being DPS increases. It's a combination of StM being strong and Legacy & Mind Spike being useless, not one or the other.

3. We are incredibly dependant on predictable kill times (optimal S2M usage) and benefit INSANELY from a well timed heroism, but how practical is it for 1-2-3 people in a raid group to ask for a specific time to use heroism when other classes want to use it during their DPS cooldowns at fixed times.

No, we're not dependent on predicting kill times because below 35%, if you are able to survive for as long as you are possibly able to, it doesn't really matter when you die - unless there is a situation where you die, say, 30 seconds before the boss dies and some add has to be killed just as you die - I'm thinking a situation along the lines of Archimonde Mythic on the last Infernal wave. Even still, overshooting or undershooting by a little bit will not be a massive deal in the grand scheme of things. Within reason of course, dying 2 minutes before the boss actually dies is terrible and just poor play.

4. Burst AoE/Ramp up time. Ramp up time has always been something a dot class suffers with, it became very noticeable with the meme ring and now in legion we also have insanity Ramp up too? this is a big problem and it wont be so apparent until it is. Burst AoE is lacking severely, Shadow Crash is nice but its cooldown is far too long and its travel time is too slow to be a reliable AoE, It is no secret that spriests suffer in dungeons and now that dungeons are more relevant than ever, this causes issues.

Shadow is a sustained damage dealer, which is a strength in and of itself - having burst does not automatically make you viable for raids, and having too many burst specs in your raid can hurt you in the long run. For raids, our ramp up is not a big problem. It just really isn't. The ring didn't start to become a real problem until really late farm, and Blizzard doesn't care about performance during farm. Progress is what matters, and on really long kills you can really see shadow's sustained damage pull through. You could see so in WoD, and you're going to see it happen in Legion as well. Our burst AoE is shit as always, but burst AoE isn't as required of a strength in raids as it is in dungeons. And in high mythic+, burst AoE isn't always preferred anyway, so we don't suffer as much in that regard (our ramp up also isn't nearly as bad in high mythic+). That does not mean that I think our AoE should not be improved, to be clear.

[ttylol]

Equip: When you enter Voidform, every 7 sec of remaining duration on Lingering Insanity grants you a stack of Voidform.

(4) Set (Shadow): For 6 sec after activating Voidform, the cooldown on Void Bolt is reduced by 100%.

Something synergistic like those should be added to LotV. Or further emphasize it as the AoE talent: Void Eruption deals 200% increased damage and refreshes all active DoTs.

[Nefarious Tea]

Have you played StM?
Because you cant be ressed after you die.

I have quite a bit although I haven't noticed that. I guess it's because I die at the exact same time as the boss so battle rez is irrelevant. However, I did just test it in my garrison while writing this post and you do indeed get a debuff. Neat!

[Aeriel]

Honestly: making Void Eruption instant would be the best QoL change for Shadow. Also 2 more seconds on SWP and VT, so that there is enough time to VB before they drop, if Void Eruption does not refresh properly.

Talents are kind of a mess, but they are for most classes. After the change to talent switching, Blizz basically gave up any semblance of tuning.

[Kasoy]

2. S2M makes the other 2 T100 talents irrelevant except in cases (yet to be seen) where Mindspike is SUPER effective, LoTV is essentially a useless talent as you want to have 80-90 insanity banked before you use it anyway.

Why do people keep insisting on this? There is no reason dps-wise not to use it at 70 insanity. You do not get bonus damage or anything from popping it at higher insanity (It's a fixed 20% whether you pop it at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%). You will be capped out at 100 insanity either way at the start of Voidform just from the normal rotation.

[tiptopmemer]

I'd say Mind Spike should be replaced rather than LotV. LotV is good for dungeons, making it easy to have a high uptime on VF. Mind Spike is too situational.

Sims have shown that LotV is next to useless, like i explained later in the post, you want to wait till 80-90 insanity to use void form anyway, it nullifies the benefit of the talent significantly.

One talent. "Surrender to Madness." When you get used to boss mechanics, spriests will be the top dps by far. so please.

S2M isnt as OP as non-spriests want to believe, sims show that we are upper-middle tier DPS.

Why do people keep insisting on this? There is no reason dps-wise not to use it at 70 insanity. You do not get bonus damage or anything from popping it at higher insanity (It's a fixed 20% whether you pop it at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%). You will be capped out at 100 insanity either way at the start of Voidform just from the normal rotation.

Keep using HFC with insanely overpowered set bonuses as the basis for your conclusions, it will serve you well when legion comes out.

[Meagree]

Wasnt me who suggested the death penalty removal, l2read avatar names. I was commenting how said death penalty would affect the raid if not executed perfectly. And at higher stacks it has to be damn near flawless or you go bye bye along with your precious DPS.

As is the point. Remove death penalty and the ability has to become a measly 20-50% buff to compensate.

[Rumstein]

Why do people keep insisting on this? There is no reason dps-wise not to use it at 70 insanity. You do not get bonus damage or anything from popping it at higher insanity (It's a fixed 20% whether you pop it at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%). You will be capped out at 100 insanity either way at the start of Voidform just from the normal rotation.

I think the reasoning is that one cast will take you to 100 insanity from 85, while you wont cap out with 70 (and wasted at 100).

[Deleted]

they should give void bolt 2 stacks. remove all level 100 talents (maybe add some purely aoe talents there instead) and give flat 10% dmg boost. currently shadow is opposite what it should be - instead insanity we have strict order, pedantic rotation, have to do spells.

[Kiea]

Why do people keep insisting on this? There is no reason dps-wise not to use it at 70 insanity. You do not get bonus damage or anything from popping it at higher insanity (It's a fixed 20% whether you pop it at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%). You will be capped out at 100 insanity either way at the start of Voidform just from the normal rotation.

You do not generate enough insanity without the use of a Mindbender or Shadow Word: Death to get the maximum duration in voidform if you activate it at 70 insanity.

[Djriff]

Void Eruption being instant cast or 2 more seconds on SW: P and I'd be happy, everything else with shadow feels smooth.

We don't have the best burst AoE, and honestly that's fine, we need a weakness somewhere and if burst AoE is it, so be it.

They need to just remove mind spike or make it something wayyyy better as i'll never ever take it as a talent unless some secret rotation was discovered similar to dot weaving with CoP.

Why do people keep insisting on this? There is no reason dps-wise not to use it at 70 insanity. You do not get bonus damage or anything from popping it at higher insanity (It's a fixed 20% whether you pop it at 70%, 80%, 90% or 100%). You will be capped out at 100 insanity either way at the start of Voidform just from the normal rotation.

It's been simmed at 70 and 85 Insanity with LotV. It's a slight DPS increase, but for general players it won't make a huge difference.

[Rumstein]

While Spriest is fine without BURST AoE, our AoE in general feels pretty nonexistent. If the mind spike talent added some effective cleave without being clunky, it might be useful. They should ditch the MB detonation aspect maybe, and make it detonate on SW:P ticks instead or something, then you could try and weave in 2 spikes per dot explosion or something similar.