Pugging Heroic KJ as a Shadow Priest

[Deleted]

This is really funny. A mage complaining he had to handle several mechanics one after another. Guess what man, they are not mage only, THE SAME SHIT CAN HAPPEN TO SHADOW AS WELL. And the big difference is that when we soak and then have reflections we have to run so much we can barely dps at all, meanwhile a mage will just blink and get under the boss and loses very little dps, same with dreadflame mage can just position in the right spot with a blink, if a shadow feels the need to run away because people are too close he'll lose a shitload of dps. Even soaking the big ones isnt really an issue since all you lose is, top, 3 seconds overall of dps (except if you soak one that is oor from boss, which is not that common, probably happened to me like 10 times in all the tries ive done on my mage, and i killed it 4 times in hc so its a lot of tries).

[kalaratic]

they are both easy classes idk what you guys are going on about

for the OP, going to agree with another poster here about standing melee until the singularity goes out, just ignore mechanics and hardcast. if you really want to scum phase 1, wearing twins and putting on the krosus trinket for maximum pad on the reflections will make you look a lot better for that 1 minute.

[dmfg]

I just wouldn't even try, it won't be fun and nothing good will come out of it. You will be bottom (and bottom by a lot) by the end of intermission 1 and probably will stay there until mid-P2 at best. If you're not bottom by the time intermission starts, your group DPS is probably too low to kill the boss.

The only time you will look good is if you have multiple long P3 wipes where many people are dead at the end, resulting in a long P3. But that requires the group to keep you past some of the most difficult parts of the encounter where you will look absolutely terrible.

[Spicymemer]

A few too many people in this thread fail to understand the English language quite well, too many Americans perhaps?

Spriests have a higher skill/knowledge cap than most other specs, feral druids are an example of a spec that is very difficulty to master.
Mages are an average difficulty spec (comparatively), fire and arcane are the easiest two, frost is slightly harder. (might not be true post-TV nerf?)

Mages have quite a lot of niche use, it seems that a lot of mechanics this expansion are cheeseable or designed around immunities.
Blink is also a useful tool to counter mechanics, such as kiting flame orb on Kil'Jaeden.
This doesn't even touch on the use of blink as a tool to minimise or entirely negate dps loss while countering mechanics.

Dispersion has the advantage of not being an essential tool for the raid, it is almost entirely personal use.
When spriests have to move anything more than a stutter step, roughly 30% of their damage disappears, this doesn't even touch on the DPS loss from potentially dropping void form or not reaching an adequate number of void form stacks, resulting in a desynchronisation of their cooldowns for the rest of the encounter, this is a tremendously painful drop in DPS.

These are my thoughts on shadow.

People arent wrong to turn away Spriests for PvE(lol..pvp too), we're a clunky spec with few applications.

Lets look at the different levels of content and how spriests fare.

Leveling/Mob Grinding, Absurdly survivable, Unable to make significant use of their voidform and need to individually dot each mob.

Mythic 0 and below, Similar issues to leveling and mob grinding, slow dot application, now dependent on voidform uptime and lower need of survivability, usually below tanks on trash damage.

Mythic 2-9, same as above, things get just a little better for shadow here, mobs generally last longer, we're usually halfway between the tank and 2nd dps.

Mythic 10+, Tyrannical weeks, nothing really changes from the above statement, Fortified weeks we begin to break even with other DPS specs, we'll still be beaten by other DPS specs that have sustained AoE, but we're not disappointingly behind.

Our 5man potential is far more negative than positive, this creates a negative feedback loop where spriests dont do as much damage as their competitors, so dont get into groups as often and then dont get enough gear, then get left behind. Even in a situation where this negative feedback loop is less likely to happen (guilds, friends.. etc) spriests still do less dps, which means more time spent in a dungeon which means less time available to spend in another dungeon, perhaps even failing to reach completion within the time limit and receiving less loot overall.

Raiders feel like these issues don't really affect them, outside those rare war/titanforges on ideal stat items, 5man loot doesn't really affect them. Thats pretty true, spriests value haste and crit far and away higher than other stats, most of the time*. So these raiders will expect to pick up loot from raids more often than not, but the grass isn't so green.

1. Spriests share cloth with warlocks who are a better shadow priest, they also bring portals, summons, stones and a battle res. Mages dont hold this many advantages over a shadow priest, but they definitely dont share in any of the disadvantages of a shadow priest. (listed above)

2. Spriests share tier with Paladins, Demon Hunters, Warlocks and Holy/Disc Priests. Every decent raid will have a healing paladin and healing priest, its just a fact of life, warlocks are a better shadow priest, demon hunters are valuable melee, aoe stuns, bursty, mobile and defensive when they need to be, so when given the option, why give it to a shadow priest?.

3. Spriests are designed to be average/weak in most encounters. This isnt exactly intentional, but rather a response to our ability to be absurdly powerful in very few situations, namely multidot, so when you really want that shadow priest their gear isnt that important, blizzard have failed to balance our spells and give us choice in talents that would allow us to be effective in different situations with different talents.

Bring the player not the class has failed the shadow priest raider.

You better be tight with your officer core, thats the only reason to be given a raid spot.

[Annesh]

as a hybrid, you have the option of changing to another role and still be viable, if i can't put out the numbers needed with my main spec (which is the best spec i have at the time) then no amount of respeccing is gonna change that

Dude you better report to NASA, we found something denser than black holes. You pro-hybrid-tax people's heads are so far up your asses you could differentiate your organs by taste.

If I can switch to a healing spec, you can switch to a spec that's performing better. If the object is to be a DPS, then you're in a much better position than I am, because to play a better DPS spec I have to change classes.

[Ailylia]

Please delete "hybrid dps" from your vocabulary, that stuff hasn't been relevant since wrath.

[Deleted]

But the members of Howtopriest say that spriests are good on progression? this is confusing information

We are good in most fights but some fights like Krosus or KJ which take us away from our voidform are really bad for us.
Once you loose a decent voidform stack it takes upwards of a minute to get your damage back up to par.