What happened to shadow DPS?

[Tarien]

In EN we were doing really well, thanks to a rather OP Surrender to Madness, but now we're bottom (often dead last) in so many fights in Nighthold. What the hell happened?

Is it bad scaling, fights we're not suited to, bad itemisation? Are we eternally cursed to have no burst, poor DPS while moving, poor utility, poor AoE?

Sorry for the negativity but it's hard to feel motivated to raid when you feel outdone by any other class.

[hikamiro]

By often dead last on so many fights in nighthold do you mean only the first boss?

Because that's the only one I see.

[seungsta]

By dead last do you mean right above the middle of the pack? Because that's what I'm seeing

[Deja Thoris]

What you posted is pretty much bullshit. You can't get decent feedback on a shitty false information like you provided.

[Clrg]

Many specs got buffed directly or indirectly with like new traits, while shadow got nothing, we are rock bottom in pure single target fights, and bottom in some others, so in the end our single target is garbage and our cleave is nothing special. Meanwhile affliction and frost mages are at the top in most of the fights, we still seem to carry the s2m stigma so i doubt blizz is going to change anything.

Should have played melee tbh.

[Deleted]

By often dead last on so many fights in nighthold do you mean only the first boss?

Because that's the only one I see.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#

We're above the middle on 3 fights. And we are close to middle overall in Nighthold ONLY because many gulds is doing Tichondrius with Bloods stacked on boss, so we can pad a little. In most fights we're dead bottom.

[Daedius]

My DPS stinks as Shadow for ST

[Archaea3]

Why do people never provide any statistics or evidence for talking about how much shadow sucks? Who cares if it's middle, top, bottom, etc. There's absolutely no way to evenly balance all classes for all fights. Pick a class you enjoy and do the best you can do. The hyberbole doesn't help either. We are bottom on 1 boss, a throwaway boss no one cares about. Balance druids are in fact bottom for multiple bosses.

And it's not like shadow isn't strong, the top guilds use several shadow priests for progression. Shadow has the 3rd most number of mythic parses for all bosses in the past two weeks.

[Vanillasky]

Dunno if you guys saw it.. but i think they got it all right: http://darklegacycomics.com/558
Middle of the dps :P

[Novakhoro]

Dunno if you guys saw it.. but i think they got it all right: http://darklegacycomics.com/558
Middle of the dps :P

If there was a vote system, +1

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

No longer the top spec in the game, but can still be extremely strong if played well.

[niil945]

We should have an option to exclude anyone who has the two bis legendaries from conversations about spec damage, and that goes for about every single dps spec in the game. Legendaries skew the results so much it's idiotic.

[Deleted]

What happened was Shadow finally became balanced.

None of this op STM bullshit.

[Wyviner]

At this point in the game, shadow priests are great in fights where there are multiple high health targets to hit consistently throughout the encounter. Botanist is a good example, Tichondrius is pretty good too. The reason for this is because we can now keep dots up fairly easily on multiple targets due to void bolt refreshing the dots on all nearby targets. And since VT is our highest source of damage, each additional target we can keep dots up on significantly increases our DPS. Don't dot things that will really quick, just the stuff that will stay alive long enough for the dots to get a decent amount of ticks on.

Single target is fairly horrible due to low damage on our spells, at least that is what I have noticed. Check out somewhere like Icy Veins for a general idea of what to do.

[Archaea3]

We should have an option to exclude anyone who has the two bis legendaries from conversations about spec damage, and that goes for about every single dps spec in the game. Legendaries skew the results so much it's idiotic.

That might be true for some classes but it's absolutely not true for shadow in its current iteration. Since single target is the focus of this thread, the dps difference between the top 2 and the bottom 2 legendaries single-target is a combined ~7% difference. Even if you have the two possible worst legendaries you will at worst do 7% less damage.

The top shadow priest parses are doing a hell of a lot better than 7% can account for.

Skill is a far bigger factor than legendaries for shadow in 7.2.

https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10100

[Clrg]

At this point in the game, shadow priests are great in fights where there are multiple high health targets to hit consistently throughout the encounter. Botanist is a good example, Tichondrius is pretty good too. The reason for this is because we can now keep dots up fairly easily on multiple targets due to void bolt refreshing the dots on all nearby targets. And since VT is our highest source of damage, each additional target we can keep dots up on significantly increases our DPS. Don't dot things that will really quick, just the stuff that will stay alive long enough for the dots to get a decent amount of ticks on.

Single target is fairly horrible due to low damage on our spells, at least that is what I have noticed. Check out somewhere like Icy Veins for a general idea of what to do.

Agree, our single target damage is quite good under certain circumstances like you said only IF you have the wrist, dotting scrubbers to get wrist stacks, dotting everything that have a hp bar in botanist, spellblade and tich mythic. The changes to chronomatic, elisande and guldan was a huge fuck you to shadow.

[fiestatastic]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#

We're above the middle on 3 fights. And we are close to middle overall in Nighthold ONLY because many gulds is doing Tichondrius with Bloods stacked on boss, so we can pad a little. In most fights we're dead bottom.

Not really sure how you derive that from this link you posted, which has shadow sitting very comfortably mid pack, within a marginal percentage of a bunch of other mid pack classes, that are all WELL above the bottom classes in terms of numbers.

The link you posted shows balance druids, enh sham, and arcane mage about even at the bottom, significantly less than everything above, and then fire mage as dead last, not even close to even the 3 other bottom dps. Any way you look at the percentages consistently shows that shadow is in a decent spot for ranged classes.

[Deleted]

Not really sure how you derive that from this link you posted, which has shadow sitting very comfortably mid pack, within a marginal percentage of a bunch of other mid pack classes, that are all WELL above the bottom classes in terms of numbers.

The link you posted shows balance druids, enh sham, and arcane mage about even at the bottom, significantly less than everything above, and then fire mage as dead last, not even close to even the 3 other bottom dps. Any way you look at the percentages consistently shows that shadow is in a decent spot for ranged classes.

Ok I assume your abilities with browsing warcraftlogs are nonexistent.You can check on "all bosses" tab and see how low we are. And argument - fire mage is dead last" is beyond retarded. Mages can respecc frost and be first of ranged classes. We can't do that trick, nor we can go Holy comfortably since noone wants Holy Priests.
And being 15/24 overall is NOT comfortable for me.

[niil945]

That might be true for some classes but it's absolutely not true for shadow in its current iteration. Since single target is the focus of this thread, the dps difference between the top 2 and the bottom 2 legendaries single-target is a combined ~7% difference. Even if you have the two possible worst legendaries you will at worst do 7% less damage.

The top shadow priest parses are doing a hell of a lot better than 7% can account for.

Skill is a far bigger factor than legendaries for shadow in 7.2.

https://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10100

Your position is laughable. A 7% difference is not a small difference and that's not accounting for the fact that we're not talking just one legendary, we're talking two. It's entirely possible for someone to get 2 good legendaries and someone to get 2 bad legendaries and have a ~10% difference between the two players even if they're exactly the same stats and player skill across the board. And that's all theorycrafting, which is great for getting a sense of relative power, but theorycrafting and actual play are entirely different beasts. Add to it that shadow as a spec is heavily dependent upon getting good damage phases in during void form that are easily disrupted by fight mechanics relative to other classes. The potential is there, if you have good legendaries and if you get good luck during a given single target or mostly single target fight to do okay. Not amazing, but okay. And if you have a particular job on a fight which requires you to stop dps'ing and move or you just get bad luck and have to move a lot that interrupts the heavier cycles in shadow dps, you're most likely not going to fare well in relation to other specs that aren't as impacted by a disruption to their rotation. The % difference in performance of the legendaries just amplifies that disparity regardless of whether we're comparing ourselves to other classes or whether we're comparing ourselves to other shadow priests.

[Wyviner]

Something that could possibly bring you comfort to this situation is the idea that, until this expansion, priest was pretty much the only class in the entire game with only 1 dps spec, if you exclude classes with 1 dps spec and 1 tank spec. I know the days of hybrids and hybrid tax are long gone, but when I think about the fact that historically we could have been considered "the class" to logically be the worst DPS, and now we are middle of the range, it's really not all bad.

One other factor, not mentioned here, that I have when I run with my guild is the composition of the raid itself. If your raid is melee heavy, you will be targeted more often by boss mechanics that are designed to hit ranged players. Obviously this will impact your DPS because you will need to move more often, compared to a person in a raid with more ranged players. There have been times when I have raided and been the only ranged player in a team of 16, and I land up getting targeted by almost every mechanic, putting me in dead last for DPS on certain fights.