worth goin shadow for pve?

[Karpalo]

in wotlk atm it looks like shadowpriests role from manabattery has gone to be raidhealer. Slap few sp:s and you can drop healer or 2. Propably we will not be topping meters but misery is always misery so every raid will be running with 1 minium.

ps: to the guy who said VE causes high threat, it sure does but our threat gen stays same it is now when tanks threat get scaled up by quite a lot

[jhemfl]

www.shadowpriest.com

Shadow Priests do NOT use a spell rotation...we use a spell priority system, due to cooldowns and dots needing refresh. VT>SW:P>MB/SW when vt has 1.5 seconds left, recast....when sw expires refresh, mb/sw:d when cooldown up, and vt or sw:P doesn't need refreshed, and mf when all dots are good and mb/sw:d on cooldown. Starshards or Devouring Plague at your leisure. DP should likely be macro'ed with Inner Focus for mana saving purposes.

The nerf to vt is disturbing, and I don't believe it will be "made up" with increased damage according to current theorycrafting. I am gearing my mage for a main switch in case they don't make some changes soon.

You're right, blizzard is just going to make spriest completely useless, good thing you got that mage

DURR DURR DURR

[Statix]

Shadowpriests passively heal a group/raid and replenish mana for casters in that group/raid. Ofcourse their damage isn't going to be as much as that of Mages and Warlocks.

You people QQ way to much. Shadowpriest is good for PVP and PVE. If you don't like it, reroll. I for one can't wait to have a level 70 Shadowpriest and when WotLK comes out, level to level 80.

[borbes]

So, every min-max raid leader will probably want one shadowpriest for Misery alone. But you probably won't see more of them per raid in WotLK, since they simply won't be THE utility class they were in TBC.

GOOD. There are 30 specs, and 25 raid slots. If it's balanced to where more than 1 of any spec is a bad thing... then they're doing a good job.

[Kalakukko]

Shadowpriests passively heal a group/raid and replenish mana for casters in that group/raid. Ofcourse their damage isn't going to be as much as that of Mages and Warlocks.

You people QQ way to much. Shadowpriest is good for PVP and PVE. If you don't like it, reroll. I for one can't wait to have a level 70 Shadowpriest and when WotLK comes out, level to level 80.

What I am concerned about is that the 20% damage increase in talents(NEW TALENTS) will not cut it with the current scaling... The thing I fear is that with the new gear in Wotlk we will be doing a little bit over the amount the current full SWP geared hunters do. The scaling truly is that bad... Shadowpriest.com has many many more experienced shadow priests than me, who also share the same concern.

[rikken]

What I am concerned about is that the 20% damage increase in talents(NEW TALENTS) will not cut it with the current scaling... The thing I fear is that with the new gear in Wotlk we will be doing a little bit over the amount the current full SWP geared hunters do. The scaling truly is that bad... Shadowpriest.com has many many more experienced shadow priests than me, who also share the same concern.

/pat on the head

its ok =] dont worry... people are gonna worry no matter what, but us spriests are just fine in wotlk.

55% percent more dmg (talents)
30% spirit in spell power & when we crit we get 50% more spirit and regen
50% bonus to crit strike dmg
60% less dmg from swd
and...no more refreshing SW:P

dont worry bout the skeptics, we are gonna do some crazy dps, and this is coming from an experienced shadowpriest =]

[Nonoss]

Well said. Many shadow priests forget this in their quest for Moar DPS.

Regardless, there are many DPS boosts in the Shadow tree. 10% To SWP, 10% To Mind Flay and Mind Blast assuming 2 DoTs, 175% Crit damage on SWD and MB, as well as 30% Damage from spirit that synergizes with the new Spirit Tap is all going to buff Spriest damage to be closer to the Pure DPS classes.

It's still not going to be even, but that's why theres still the 2% VT.

The problem being, we don't want to compete with pure dps classes. We want to compete with other hybrids, like doomkins that are able to put out 30% more dps and still gain a tremendous amount of utility buffs come WotLK.

/pat on the head

its ok =] dont worry... people are gonna worry no matter what, but us spriests are just fine in wotlk.

55% percent more dmg (talents)
30% spirit in spell power & when we crit we get 50% more spirit and regen
50% bonus to crit strike dmg
60% less dmg from swd
and...no more refreshing SW:P

dont worry bout the skeptics, we are gonna do some crazy dps, and this is coming from an experienced shadowpriest =]

All of which do not adress our main issue: we have one-way scaling, where other xasters benefit entirely from haste and crit rating. Add in the poor base coefficient of our spells. We are overpowered with low end gear on, and start to decay very fast after the second tier of raiding gear. Without proper modifications in our spells formulas, we will still fall behind other hybrids no matter what beautiful talents we get.

[Kalakukko]

All of which do not adress our main issue: we have one-way scaling, where other xasters benefit entirely from haste and crit rating. Add in the poor base coefficient of our spells. We are overpowered with low end gear on, and start to decay very fast after the second tier of raiding gear. Without proper modifications in our spells formulas, we will still fall behind other hybrids no matter what beautiful talents we get.

Yep.

We will just have to wait and see, even tho I'm negative about it I still love the class too much to reroll.

[hellar]

i relized i posted this topic to begin wit but now that druids and hunters can restore mana to the group will they relly be wanted. there dps is not that high. all they are there for now is mana regen and heath. imo

[rikken]

The problem being, we don't want to compete with pure dps classes. We want to compete with other hybrids, like doomkins that are able to put out 30% more dps and still gain a tremendous amount of utility buffs come WotLK.All of which do not adress our main issue: we have one-way scaling, where other xasters benefit entirely from haste and crit rating. Add in the poor base coefficient of our spells. We are overpowered with low end gear on, and start to decay very fast after the second tier of raiding gear. Without proper modifications in our spells formulas, we will still fall behind other hybrids no matter what beautiful talents we get.

Our scaling is changing, we NEED crit. Haste is our bread and butter. Spell dmg is always gonna be nice, but now we actually need some other things. Not to mention spirit is gonna be awesome.

[Egeldi]

Yeah, with the changes crit will be a bit more valuble to us than before. Earlier it was basically useless. Now it'll be at least marginally useful, depends if mind sear can crit. If it can, it'll be good for AOE situations.

The potion change (1 potion per fight) will definitley mean that spriests will still be valuble. Yes, each class is gaining new methods of conserving mana and improving their personal regen, but with a spriest around theres a lot more leeway.

For example: mage is down to 10% mana, pops evocation. Boss uses AOE ability, mages evocation is gone after only one tick. Granted, good players will be watching their timers to avoid situations like that, but sometimes there's just bad luck and sometimes you screw up. An spriest will make the difference, I think, between a mage that has to go into mana-conserve mode casting high-efficency spells for a while, and a mage that can continue to use his high DPS nuke spells.

Spriests have never been there for raw damage, they've been there so the mages, locks, ele shammies, and moonkins, can go all out the entire time without having to worry about suddenly being OOM.

That said though, people who say shadowpriests can't compete in damage haven't seen me putting out 1 million points of damage on an Illidan kill, 200K more than the next closest person.

[Karpalo]

the thing is they maybe dont even have to pop that evo if they got sp in their group :>

[Ceko]

chheck this out
"Improved Water Elemental will now increase the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 5/10/15 seconds and your Water Elemental restores mana to all party or raid members an amount equal to 1/2/3% of their total mana every 5 seconds."

[Yon]

Our scaling is changing, we NEED crit. Haste is our bread and butter. Spell dmg is always gonna be nice, but now we actually need some other things. Not to mention spirit is gonna be awesome.

Our scaling is changing, but not enough.
Bonus crit damage is still half of what all other classes including other hybrids have, not to mention we only have two spells with cooldowns that can crit.
Haste is good, but with our short and frequent casts I would say it's not as good as for a caster with slower cast damage spells due to the inevitable gaps between spell casts that plague even the best of shadowpriests.
Spell damage is always going to be nice indeed, but not as nice for shadowpriests due to the unjustly penalized coefficient on Mind Flay (59%).

Basically I see Mind Flay as being our biggest problem. As long as it retains its crap coefficient and inability to crit shadowpriests will always face an inevitable decline due to poor scaling. In BC our poor scaling was justified by VT, but with the nerf we really need to get our base spells reworked so that we can scale at the same pace as every other class (other hybrids included). Doing less damage than pure dps classes is fine, seeing yourself falling further and further behind everyone else again as you progress would sadden me greatly.

[Sonic018]

You're absolutly right and I might add hhat even if you're gonna bash everyone at the beginning (see SSC The Eye, Karazhan) doesn't justify the really low eng game scaling. Yeah we got some "upgrade" in the beta right now, and it might be true that spelldmg istn important anymore, knowing we get +15% through talents + also the Bonus on will, which could result finally in nearly +20% spelldmg. So the pure red gems wo'nt be irreplacable. But it's true, that our mana regeneration ability got nerfed. At the moment I think, the mana regenration will be equal as it is now in the lvl 80 endgame gear.

But still, I hoped we could get at least 75% crit bonus, considering the low spelldmg coefficiants on our crit spells (1.5 sec casttime max)
And also Mindflay is really crappy compared to other chanelised spells of mages for example.

To solve these issues, ther are 2 ways:

1. changing the base dmg of the spells (we will be pretty overpowered and flamed at the beginning of WotLK)
2. changing the coefficiants of the spells, so we won't be that overpowered but still in competition with other classes. If you want a prcise example, just look a little bit at caster shamans ;-)

[Calaba]

I'm expecting the scaling to be reset at lvl 80, as we get all new ranks of spells. Then we'll have exactly the same problems with scaling as now, in other words it's down to gear
It's a poor solution, but they could always make up for the otherwise bad scaling with trinkets and set bonuses (10% extra damage on mind flay or something)

[Sonic018]

still, if you have your t6 set bonus, you won't increse you DPS above 1400-1500, compared to BM Hunters, Firemages and destro-wl's it's nothing. Also hybrid classes like caster shamans or owl druids have no problems to bypass you without being more skilled...

So, Blizz hasn't really improved the scaling at all...