Shadow Priest earflicks

[Yvaelle]

It does feel weird that flay has dropped so low, even for a filler. However I'm a fan of the rework for shadow. The feeling you get as your climb higher into voidform, especially with StM is an adrenaline rush that no other class has been able to replicate. Sure it does feel a bit awkward at times and I'm mashing keys, but I'm fairly certain we're not the only class like that.

Right, generally I'm quite happy with how Shadow has started out this expansion - we have a lot of interesting bits to play with - our talents are quite diverse - it's pretty fun to play

I'm #Shadow4Life though, so I have to put my bias aside sometimes - but sometimes you also need to whip it out just to remember why I never stray from my love

My criticism is ~always focused on how Shadow could be made even better, on where the cracks exist. If Shadow were 98%, the dark zealots amongst us (myself included) would be transfixed by the missing 2%. For the devs, they would be starstruck with a 98% on anything and scared to even touch it the rest of the expansion - but for those of us who live and breath Shadow - perfection is defined as 100% - and even a six sigma performance wouldn't sate our desire for continuous improvement.

I'm not saying Shadow is at 98% right now, but we're probably like... at least an 85%? The devs are thrilled to get the A- and go home to their wives and kids, but for us Shadow-keeners, an 85% can sometimes feel like a devastatingly poor performance. It's tricky to balance the two perspectives.

[Djriff]

Well depends on what you're grading on.

DPS
Dungeons - Poor AoE, Medium ST, Excellent Sustained AoE - C
Soloing - Medium ST, poor AoE due to survival - D
Raids - Based on HFC and beta testing, excellent - A
Arena 2's - CC to hell and shut down - F
Arena 3's/5's/BG's - Great if melee doesn't turn on you (according to theed, his area not mine) - B

Overall - C

Survivability/Utility
Dungeons - AoE stun or Fear and 45 second silence/interrupt, Fairly strong CD (VE) for 5 mans - C
Solo - Takes forever to kill mobs with low gear, low survivability, need bodyguard to survive more than 1-2 mobs at 110 - D
Raids - VE is piss poor in raids, Stun is already brought by others, fear is useless, Dominant Mind maybe? - F
Arena 2's - No escape, only 1 real CC, cast times on everything worthwhile, easily shutdown - F
Arena 3's/5's/BG's - VE can be powerful, Ranged AoE stun, PW: S on allies, No escape. - B

Overall - D-

I wouldn't say 85%, probably closer to 50% though.

[blargh312]

The same is true of my criticism of Mind Flay, it does no damage, so interrupting it for any reason whatsoever isn't a DPS loss, but the feel of having a spell that we will basically never completely cast (due to Void Bolt coming off cooldown so fast mostly), doesn't feel very good. Imagine if it were optimal for a Destruction Lock (from last expansion, I'm not up on my current lockness) to cast 90% of a Chaos Bolt, then interrupt themselves - and they knew that by doing so they were actually doing more damage than by completing the cast - but it certainly wouldn't 'feel' right to have a spell you never fully cast.

Hasn't this kinda always been the case for channeled spells though, especially for dot specs? I mained affliction for a long time in BC and Wrath and I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I fully completely a Drain Soul channel on a boss. I haven't played affliction much since then but I feel like Malefic Grasp and current Drain Life are probably in the same boat. It honestly does feel like these spells are designed around not finishing the cast most of the time, and I know it's a personal opinion thing, but it's not something that's ever bothered me.

[Yvaelle]

Well depends on what you're grading on.
...
Overall - D-

I wouldn't say 85%, probably closer to 50% though.

Really depends how we subjectively weight those categories though, as example, my weights for the categories above are like:

DPS:
Raids - 60%
3v3 Arena - 30%
Dungeons - 9%
Other - 1%

I don't think soloing really matters because it's all pretty cake, even if it's not very enjoyable as Shadow - especially compared to other classes/specs who just breeze through everything. Plus, soloing gets a lot easier when you get above ~840 item level, so really it sucks for this first month - but will be cake for everyone for the rest of the expansion. The 110 mobs don't gear up, but we do.

2v2 Arena is probably horrendous, but 2v2 Arena has been a joke since they removed titles from it in like, WotLK, because they recognize that it was an unbalance-able Charlie Foxtrot. I haven't stepped foot in there as Shadow since mid-Cataclysm, and even then it was mostly just warm-up games (for 3's) with a rogue friend.

Dungeons kind of matter, normal/heroic will all be a joke after the first month for everyone. The problem is, like soloing, we're all basically still wearing Green gear - but pulling shit like we're still decked out in HFC end-tier stuff. This is how the start of expansions often feels for soloing/dungeons. So really it's just Mythics that matter (and there we have legitimate grievances), but personally not nearly as much as Raids/3v3, for the last two expansions I've done Challenge modes on my Hunter alt. We'll probably suck, but that's not really new - and I would never raise dungeon mythic problems to the devs because I'd be worried they would make bizarre changes that impact raids/arenas - our woe there isn't worth raising with the limited attention we get.

So, using your grades, A for raiding, B for 3v3/RBGs, C for dungeons (but only 10% weight): A- makes sense given the way I weight those categories.

As far as survivability/utility goes, I think our survivability is pretty good actually for PvE (because nobody interrupts our Shadow Mend casts, and Shadow Mend is ginormous, which is nice). For PvP, for whatever reason the devs think our lot in life is to be shredded by melee and completely immobile. With a healer and a good dps-peeler partner (rogue, mage, lock, etc) I think we'll be pretty okay in 3v3 and RBGs - but I would kill for Spectral Guise back....

God I miss that spell.

I don't agree that we're an F in raids, our utility isn't very exciting but our survivability is quite high for PvE, Shadow Mend is so powerful that we can spot-heal tanks and such when things go awry - not for long of course - but when the tank hits 10% and the healers can't keep up, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Shadow Mend spam is some of the highest single target HPS over those few GCDs that anyone in the game can output (once you have the Shadow Mend artifact traits). There are plenty of DPS who can aoe stun some trash mobs, there aren't many who can save lives with spot heals - and Shadow (and Ret) should be the ones who can, if any: this is a better utility for us, IMO.

Plus, you forgot that we're still the purge/mass dispel kings

[Djriff]

I'm curious why you put raids at 60%, last I checked we're pretty insane (no pun intended) DPS wise in raids, especially with StM. We scale ridiculously well with Haste and MH makes our dots hit like trucks.

PvP really isn't my area of expertise, not as shadow and most of my insight is from reading the forums and discussing it with some pvp oriented guildies, we suck in PvP when we're alone, which if I was playing against a team with a shadow priest, they'd just be trained/CC'd to hell and i'll handle the other 2 "real" threats".

I was mainly speaking for mythic, normal/heroic is irrelevant since you outgear it so quickly. Mythics = raids now in terms of gearing, hell Mythic +15 will be awarding better gear than EN iirc. I doubt i'll be able to make it that far as shadow and will end up just being a healer for it.

Soloing does matter, and yes gear makes it vastly easier, but as blizzard has done in all previous expansions, new patches = tougher mobs that are scaled up to the average current gear level. So while mobs now are meant to be dealt with by ~800 ilvl geared players, new ones will be tailored to ~840 ilvl players and we'll be struggling again.

Honestly, I've only had to FH spam as shadow in a raid environment once on manno progression and all healers were dead and tank had a sliver of life left. We didn't get the kill, but it bought us oh 0.5 seconds. If you're in the situation that your 4-6 healers are OoM, tanks are out of CD's, Healers are out of CD's, and the Raid is out of CD's, it's probably a wipe and your SM is just delaying the inevitable. Not saying it can't help, that's just a very very unlikely scenario.

The only fight in the last 3 raids I can recall having to use Mass Dispel was Ko'ragh in Highmaul, other than that we didn't need it. It was useful on HFC trash, but that's it. As for purging, what have we needed to purge in raids? PvP? Definitely useful.

[Actarius]

I'm curious why you put raids at 60%, last I checked we're pretty insane (no pun intended) DPS wise in raids, especially with StM. We scale ridiculously well with Haste and MH makes our dots hit like trucks.

They were using weights to weight the scores you made.

It's like what happened in school. Homework was 25%, midterm was 25%, final was 50% of your final grade. She did more or less the same thing.

If you got a 70% on homework, 100% on your mid term and final, you wouldn't get a 90% in the class (70+100+100 / 3), you'd get a 92.5 (70*.25 + 100*.25+100*.5)

In your grading, you assigned an equal weight to everything, and took the average. Most people, like @Yvaelle, do not care about their class's power in soloing, 2s, or dungeons. So you'd weight them pretty much worthless. Dev's never have and never will balance on solo content - they simply make sure each class and spec can level 100-110. The class needs to feel good in your preferred content, which is usually pvp or pve.

I'd personally weight it more like

Raiding: 50%
Mythic+ Dungeons: 45%
Other: 5%
PvP: 0%

Vs a hardcore pvper who doesn't raid, would probably have raiding at 0-5%

[Kilee25]

He was weighting what type of content he felt was "relevant" to grading shadowpriests. 60% was the level of importance towards the grade rather than the grade.

[Djriff]

Ah, that makes a lot more sense now. My brain is a bit tired today apparently.

[MoanaLisa]

As soon as you have the legendary belt 1) is not a problem anymore and the belt also allows you to take Shadowy Insight.
In my opinion Blizz made the Shadow with the belt in mind, beacause it feels so much better to play.

Perhaps, but they've said that class design and balance was done outside of requiring/having legendary items. That's a direct contradiction. I don't know whether it's true or not but I'm not in the camp that accuses Blizzard of lying every other post.

[Yvaelle]

Perhaps, but they've said that class design and balance was done outside of requiring/having legendary items. That's a direct contradiction. I don't know whether it's true or not but I'm not in the camp that accuses Blizzard of lying every other post.

I don't think they lie, but it does feel like they designed a bunch of abilities with synergies, and then spun a wheel to decide which is baseline, which is a talent, or a pvp talent, and which is an artifact trait.

As example, Sphere of Insanity makes virtually no sense unless we had a way to spread our DoTs, which we don't - multidotting isn't sufficient to make it not horrible. But Mind Trauma is a PvP talent that makes Sphere of Insanity suddenly make sense, as is the Twin's Painful Touch legendary ring.

[MoanaLisa]

I don't think they lie, but it does feel like they designed a bunch of abilities with synergies, and then spun a wheel to decide which is baseline, which is a talent, or a pvp talent, and which is an artifact trait.

As example, Sphere of Insanity makes virtually no sense unless we had a way to spread our DoTs, which we don't - multidotting isn't sufficient to make it not horrible. But Mind Trauma is a PvP talent that makes Sphere of Insanity suddenly make sense, as is the Twin's Painful Touch legendary ring.

I don't doubt that they look at our abilities as a series of concentric circles with baseline stuff closest in, talents out from that and perhaps legendary items out from that. I was just commenting on the idea that there was some assumption that we would be needing the legendary belt and they had planned around that. There's no doubt in my mind that some legendaries are going to have some synergy with existing talents to bump them up and make them fit together better. I was simply objecting to the idea that designers were building the spec around requiring any of them.

I mostly agree with your comments generally about shadow, especially S2M which is about the least attractive thing they've ever given to us. At least with Shadow Word: Death back in they day if you killed yourself it was your own damn fault for being careless enough to do so.

[Alexieel]

I mostly agree with your comments generally about shadow, especially S2M which is about the least attractive thing they've ever given to us. At least with Shadow Word: Death back in they day if you killed yourself it was your own damn fault for being careless enough to do so.

Well there are a lot of people who enjoy S2M.
But I dont like it because it makes the whole tier pretty hard to balance / make the other as powerful, so it isnt a no-brainer.
I would rather have 3 strong talents instead of 2 underwhelming and 1 incredible strong one.

[Yvaelle]

I don't doubt that they look at our abilities as a series of concentric circles with baseline stuff closest in, talents out from that and perhaps legendary items out from that. I was just commenting on the idea that there was some assumption that we would be needing the legendary belt and they had planned around that. There's no doubt in my mind that some legendaries are going to have some synergy with existing talents to bump them up and make them fit together better. I was simply objecting to the idea that designers were building the spec around requiring any of them.

I like your concentric circle example because it shows the level of access, which should align with the dependency
I would put baseline as the smallest circle, pve talents around that, artifact dragons around that, pvp talents around that, and legendaries as the outermost circle. Sphere of Insanity, as example, should only be dependent on baseline and pve talents to be effective/interesting - but instead it only synergizes in the presence of either pvp talents or legendaries.

It feels like the dependencies in this case are backwards - if Mind Trauma were an Artifact Dragon, and Sphere of Insanity was a PvP talent - that could make sense. Or if the Legendary ring effect were an Artifact dragon, and Sphere of Insanity were a legendary ring effect - that would also make sense. Getting access to Sphere first feels like, not a lie, but an oversight on their part - they probably recognize the synergy, but didn't recognize the dependencies.

Shadowy Insight / Mangaza's Madness (legendary belt) endures a similar fate. For a spell like Shadowy Insight to work properly, it needs to have more than one charge, without it - it's highly disruptive to have your Mind Blast cooldown randomly refresh, where it can do so during a GCD, or right when it would have refresh anyways, or proc twice back to back - losing a proc. If Mind Blast had even a single additional charge, Shadowy Insight would be far more functional than it is. We see this with virtually every other spell that other classes have with this sort of interaction.

Enhancement Shamans have Stormbringer, where auto attacks cause their next Stormstrike to be instantly available, cost no resources, and not invoke the cooldown. Elemental Shamans have Lava Surge, where Lava Burst's cooldown will be reset, instant, and with Echo of the Elements - crucially have two charges. Arms Warriors have Tactician, a passive that randomly resets the cooldown on Mortal Strike, but they also have access to a talent - Mortal Combo - that gives Mortal Strike 2 charges.

So it seems the devs clearly understand why a second charge (or having it not interact with the cooldown, in the case of Enhancement) is necessary for most classes, and they even gave Shadow a way to resolve the problem too - they just put our fix on a legendary belt that makes it inaccessible for most Shadowpriests. Shadowy Insight is kind of dependent on having the belt, when it should be the other way around - the talent should be "Mind Blast now has 2 additional charges", and then the belt could be "Shadow Word: Pain has a chance to refresh the cooldown on Mind Blast and make it instant cast".

I mostly agree with your comments generally about shadow, especially S2M which is about the least attractive thing they've ever given to us. At least with Shadow Word: Death back in they day if you killed yourself it was your own damn fault for being careless enough to do so.

Yea, the only way to really balance a talent that guarentees your death, is for it to be overpowered. It's like if Paladins had an attack called, "Ultimate Sacrifice" - using it killed the Paladin. Horribly. But, it instantly /killed any demon they had targeted. If it works on Sargeras, then the final boss of this expansion is going to be brutally hard for some guilds, and others are just going to ask their Ret Paladin to spec into Ultimate Sacrifice, target Sargeras, and collect loot. Hard to balance the fight around the presence/absence of that ability. Or, they can make it not work on all the demons who aren't trash world mobs. At which point, what's the point? At this point, S2M is basically Power Infusion that keeps bugging out and murdering everyone when it expires - and we're all left to scratch our heads when the devs simply respond, "Intended"

[Djriff]

I hope they eventually just bake the legendary effect into Shadowy Insight. It would make the talent much more attractive.

[Reposed]

...For PvP, for whatever reason the devs think our lot in life is to be shredded by melee and completely immobile. With a healer and a good dps-peeler partner (rogue, mage, lock, etc) I think we'll be pretty okay in 3v3 and RBGs - but I would kill for Spectral Guise back....

God I miss that spell.

You and me both! (And Void Tendrils for that matter, especially now that we no longer even have Psychic Horror either.) This reminds me a bit of back in vanilla, when a Rogue could two-shot pretty much any clothie, but with one exception: back then, if you landed a CC on the Rogue and put some DoTs on him he was a good as dead. Now all you get to do is spam SWP & a fairly weak PWS and get curbstomped by any and all melee at their leisure.

[Djriff]

What is it with tanks sometimes waiting 30-40s between mobs pulls and healer mana is fine? Just watching my VF stacks slowly dwindle and my LI buff slowly fading away into nothing. :C

[mottaman]

You and me both! (And Void Tendrils for that matter, especially now that we no longer even have Psychic Horror either.) This reminds me a bit of back in vanilla, when a Rogue could two-shot pretty much any clothie, but with one exception: back then, if you landed a CC on the Rogue and put some DoTs on him he was a good as dead. Now all you get to do is spam SWP & a fairly weak PWS and get curbstomped by any and all melee at their leisure.

God dont I know this... a friggin cat druid was camping me yesterday and it took forever to get away from him.

[Caladia]

What is it with tanks sometimes waiting 30-40s between mobs pulls and healer mana is fine? Just watching my VF stacks slowly dwindle and my LI buff slowly fading away into nothing. :C

I just hope it's them looking at the dungeon journal to make sure they've got all the mechanics ready. It's super annoying, even in guild groups, as we explain mechanics to newly dinged 110 players to watch LI always run out before we start a fight.

[Nzete]

As a healer, shadow is a really sucky dps spec because I use it for questing (ie one of the very worst things to do as shadow). I started my hunter today (beast master) to get some stormscales for tailoring and discovered exactly how sucky shadow is for questing by comparison. I'm doing the put the cheap points into discipline to see if that is any better for questing.

Priests need a spec that doesn't involve tedium or frustration for questing.