How does Shadow Priest solo play feel?

[Coils]

Yes, definitely able to use fear or agro drop to breathe long enough to shadowmend up. Should have mentioned.

Personal short-coming. I prefer not to include self-heal spam as part of the toolkit when evaluating, but that's admittedly incorrect as the spec is designed around the ability to do this.

[Deleted]

At around ilvl 800, I usually pull 3 mobs at once. 4 is possible but generally puts me into a little bit of a panic mode.

Make liberal use of fear/mind bomb, shadow crash, fade to fiend/tentacle and stuff like that to up your burst and reduce damage taken. DoT everything up but then tunnel one to reduce incoming damage.

[Deleted]

I was pulling like 5-8 mobs when leveling, but now at 110 it seems that everything hits like a truck. Even 2 mobs at once can pretty quickly kill me if I don't use my cooldowns. It feels like I became weaker instead of stronger.

[Theed]

My words from 5 months ago: Shadow takes too much damage. And it still does, but it gets better with higher ilvl.

The removal of Shadowform armor is noticable.

[Leenaleena]

Just my two cents: I leveled as Disc, just a tad bit (read: 1 hours~ish) slower than solo DD friends. Started with full myth gear (742) and the Doom Nova trinket for AoE damage. Plus, the DoT makes tagging things from afar easy but you're damn near impossible to kill.
As for shadow...I only tried shadow once, after I was already 110, for the Velen/Exodar quest/scenario. Apart from almost dying whenever I pulled 3+ mobs, and outright dying when I accidently pulled 5+, I despaired over the end boss of that scenario. I died and died and died again, until after the 6th time I got fed up with it, specc'ed to Disc and solo'ed the heck out of it.

As someone so eloquently said on Priest Discord: For leveling, go tanks > disc > everything else.

[Ilir]

tbh i levelled with a hunter friend... the mobs were dead in one or 2 sec so I basically afk'd the entire levelling... then i went solo to Suramar and when you end up in a zone with tons of mobs... you just can't aggro a lot because : it's slow as fuck and they hurt so much... god forbid they have any sort of control.

[KaPe]

I was pulling like 5-8 mobs when leveling, but now at 110 it seems that everything hits like a truck. Even 2 mobs at once can pretty quickly kill me if I don't use my cooldowns. It feels like I became weaker instead of stronger.

Becoming weaker with levels was always a thing, due to secondary ratings decay. Still, I have to agree, there was a sudden difficulty with that final level. Either the mobs gained a lot more than they previously did, or the decay was especially big.

And the worst thing by far is AOE. The enemies summon some weak swarming adds you're supposed to burst down, but your AOE spell is Mind Sear... Can make otherwise trivial mobs quite a nuisance.

[Deleted]

As someone so eloquently said on Priest Discord: For leveling, go tanks > disc > everything else.

I don't agree with this at all. Until 109-110 Shadow works perfectly and you can just DoT spam everything. Much, much faster than disc. But at 110 you really might want to use Disc until you get some good equipment for Shadow.

[Iria]

At 110 the Spriest feels horrible for solo content imo at least.

[Deleted]

Is every frigging mob in 110 an elite?!

[Reyll]

It's god awful. EVERYTHING hits like a truck. I go into panic mode if I get more than one mob on me at a time and literally have to use my whole arsenal of cooldowns just to stay alive. What the hell happened?

[Theed]

It's god awful. EVERYTHING hits like a truck. I go into panic mode if I get more than one mob on me at a time and literally have to use my whole arsenal of cooldowns just to stay alive. What the hell happened?

Well.. they removed shadowform armor, without compensation.

They removed Spectral Guise, without compensation.

Dispersion was nerfed to 60% is almost useless without the perk.

Fade Damage reduction was removed, without compensation.

They removed Void Tendrils.

Shield absorbs 1-2 NPC melee hits.

Your gear is probably not that good.

And Shadow is far too artifact perk dependend.

I've provided this as feedback on the forums, twitter an ingame feedback on beta realms for the past 4-5 months.

[Deleted]

Shadowform armor is really missing. I feel like everything would be fine if they just hadn't removed that.

[LocNess]

I've had a pretty awful time so far. Have gotten zero haste gear from heroics, and what is more fun than a shadow priest without haste? Been especially brutal, especially doing dungeons or quests as melee that just kill everything in a couple hits, while I am here doing a full rotation on mobs just to slowly kill them. Been a pretty salt filled week.

[l33t]

Everything is fine, when you are playing in a group with a melee damage dealer who tanks for you, and a healer who heals you both. Solo? Not that good. Not a single gear piece with haste adds to the pile. But oh well, what didya want, when the best of our community were doing nothing except for creating a "shut up we're fine" feedback to devs for the whole alpha and beta testing stages.

[Naga Coatl]

Level 104 so far, and I think that it's a horrible experience. The more I play, the more I cement the opinion I had since the first weeks of alpha - SP is a spec only made for raiding for whatever stupid reason.

Every Voidform, every Void Torrent feels half wasted. Unless it's the typical rare or questline miniboss, I spend an extraordinary amount of time outside VF, and unless I chain pull without regards for my hp bar, it goes off fast leaving me with a little amount of Lingering Insanity. Everytime I have to travel for a minute, the cycle begins anew and I find myself requiring an unglodly amount of time just to getting the flow started - flow that is promptly disrupted for a reason or another.

Meanwhile, my friends even with the big prune are enjoying their favourite classes - DH, War, DK, and don't stop reminding me how cool is this, how cool is that, how nice are the new effects/animations, how bursty are their new abilities, and breeze between mobs with free cleaves, aoe, and sustain. I look at my spells and all I see is 'You do damage. That's it.' on almost every button. My best combo is Mind Bomb + Shadow Crash or VE + VTor to heal myself. I can't help but feel like I still have a 'old' spec that can do little except multidotting and single target damage with no meaningful ways to do something more. No good kiting, no aoe, no meaningful cc to efficiently manage mobs (God I miss MoP Void Tendrils I still wonder WHY they left them out in the current design), just manual multidot and single target damage with a resource system that requires long fights to average the lows with the highs, making the player feel the low side of it too often for my tastes.

Sorry for the bitter and ranty reply but that's basically what I've alway feared after the first weeks/months of alpha, and seeing most of the "level headed" testers reply 'l2p' and dismissing every debate about world content and flavour to discuss almost exclusively about StM fine tuning and raids, saying things like 'devs know better, trust the devs' until it was too late didn't help and makes me feel a bit sour whenever I play the only spec I loved.

Maybe it will get better, maybe I only have to get accustomed to it.

[Theed]

Level 104 so far, and I think that it's a horrible experience. The more I play, the more I cement the opinion I had since the first weeks of alpha - SP is a spec only made for raiding for whatever stupid reason.

Every Voidform, every Void Torrent feels half wasted. Unless it's the typical rare or questline miniboss, I spend an extraordinary amount of time outside VF, and unless I chain pull without regards for my hp bar, it goes off fast leaving me with a little amount of Lingering Insanity. Everytime I have to travel for a minute, the cycle begins anew and I find myself requiring an unglodly amount of time just to getting the flow started - flow that is promptly disrupted for a reason or another.

Meanwhile, my friends even with the big prune are enjoying their favourite classes - DH, War, DK, and don't stop reminding me how cool is this, how cool is that, how nice are the new effects/animations, how bursty are their new abilities, and breeze between mobs with free cleaves, aoe, and sustain. I look at my spells and all I see is 'You do damage. That's it.' on almost every button. My best combo is Mind Bomb + Shadow Crash or VE + VTor to heal myself. I can't help but feel like I still have a 'old' spec that can do little except multidotting and single target damage with no meaningful ways to do something more. No good kiting, no aoe, no meaningful cc to efficiently manage mobs (God I miss MoP Void Tendrils I still wonder WHY they left them out in the current design), just manual multidot and single target damage with a resource system that requires long fights to average the lows with the highs, making the player feel the low side of it too often for my tastes.

Sorry for the bitter and ranty reply but that's basically what I've alway feared after the first weeks/months of alpha, and seeing most of the "level headed" testers reply 'l2p' and dismissing every debate about world content and flavour to discuss almost exclusively about StM fine tuning and raids, saying things like 'devs know better, trust the devs' until it was too late didn't help and makes me feel a bit sour whenever I play the only spec I loved.

Maybe it will get better, maybe I only have to get accustomed to it.

Leveling is fine until 109/110. After that it is bad and even gets worse the more you progress in suramar. I'm at 830 Ilvl and it it still is not fine.

Inner Fire/ Shadowform was there for a reason. VT / VE healing is not enough, we need baseline damage reduction or a major armor buff like we used to have.

[l33t]

Sorry for the bitter and ranty reply but that's basically what I've alway feared after the first weeks/months of alpha, and seeing most of the "level headed" testers reply 'l2p' and dismissing every debate about world content and flavour to discuss almost exclusively about StM fine tuning and raids, saying things like 'devs know better, trust the devs' until it was too late didn't help and makes me feel a bit sour whenever I play the only spec I loved.

That happens every expansion, isn't it? Elite "shut up we're fine" club keep ruining the spec for us. All I can advice is reroll. I've took that advice and I feel like a demigod playing my Outlaw. I own damage meters in dungeons. I, for sure, will be very needed in raids. I own world and solo content with ease and fun. Now compare that to what shadow priests currently have - AKA spamming impotent flay for days...

[Naga Coatl]

Leveling is fine until 109/110. After that it is bad and even gets worse the more you progress in suramar. I'm at 830 Ilvl and it it still is not fine.

Inner Fire/ Shadowform was there for a reason. VT / VE healing is not enough, we need baseline damage reduction or a major armor buff like we used to have.

Yeah I suspected that. I wonder -- Devs have said that Legion is the expansion where they wanted to emphasize strengths and weaknesses of the classes/specs, but while the weaknesses of Shadow are quite clear (Mobility, aoe, cleave, sustain, cc, dot spreding...), what exactly are the strong points? Healing/self heal is it no more apparently, is it just gimmicky StM-execute and 2-3 target multidot? Probably I'm still bitter and this is a rethorical question more than anything, but I really can't feel 'strong' while playing.

All I can advice is reroll

Unfortunately it's not an option for me. It's the only character I have, I've been playing it since 2.2 and my mindset in these kind of games has always been a bit old-school maybe, but I am a completionist and I like having a single well developed character ("In this game, -this- is my character"). I dislike alts and the fact that WoW nowadays basically rewards altoholics while punishing those who put the effort in a single character. There aren't other classes I really like (speaking about fantasy/themes/etc), and I don't have the time to redo everything I've done on my only main so... I just have to stubbornly hope for some change in the future patches.

[l33t]

Unfortunately it's not an option for me. It's the only character I have, I've been playing it since 2.2 and my mindset in these kind of games has always been a bit old-school maybe, but I am a completionist and I like having a single well developed character ("In this game, -this- is my character"). I dislike alts and the fact that WoW nowadays basically rewards altoholics while punishing those who put the effort in a single character. There aren't other classes I really like (speaking about fantasy/themes/etc), and I don't have the time to redo everything I've done on my only main so... I just have to stubbornly hope for some change in the future patches.

Well, I am quite sure we will get more StM nerfs before first raid go live. We will definitely get some aoe buff, because what we have right now is mop2.0 all again, AKA complete absurd. Though, I will be very surprised if we will get aoe buffs soon enough to avoid the stigma of "hey its shadow priest, no we absolutely don't wanna you in our mythic group, shoo you useless crap", since I see such claims already - and the sad part is they are 100% true.