Shadowpriest Q&A

[[-Spiritus-]]

Come on guys... what part of /ignore troll do you not get?

It truly is telling if you read into GCs comments. I can understand a developer having a more reserved opinion than someone "invested" in the class. I get it. I also get why he said no to alot of the questions.

But its just the straight up ignorance of some of his comments that are so frustrating.

Like the "mind control" comment. The end-state is "we do not have any plans to change MC at this time." I can accept that. There are a lot of good arguments as to why MC shouldn't be changed immediately for PvP, which was the central theme of the thread. However, one of those reasons isn't MC "lets you use their abilities against their allies." Anyone who's ever gotten an MC to land in PvP can tell you that.

[Strykzor]

I'm sure Strykzor would come and claim Guardian Spirit is useless on Mimiron.

Thats just stupid, GS is obviously useless on EVERY fight.




doin it rite?


Here are some points.
GC is an idiot.
This thread is redundant.
Shadow priests are underpowered.

[isfry]

At this point why don't Bilzz just auto-spec us as Disp anytime we enter a pvp zone and have a raid warning say "Silly Priest, Shadow is for PvE"

[Swaagie]

Oh, and the Developers didn't know that Mind Control doesn't give you the other players abilities in PVP.

I don't play a priest but I feel very sorry for all the Spriests out there, clearly GC is a trained monkey!

[Exostential]

I registered so i could post on this thread lol

I get the argument that shadow was maybe intended to be a lvling spec, and that makes sense since no healer is going to have a fun time grinding to 60/70/80. But why then is blizzard bothering to put pvp spells in the tree at all? They basically send us mixed messages here.

And i like the double standard on things like that replenishment shouldn't be exclusive so they can "bring the player not the class", well doesn't that apply to pvp as well or no? Other classes should get snare and snare removal which is next to essential in pvp but we don't need it?? lawl. I've been a player left out of alot of teams because the other class(not player) had good snares or could be counted on not to get steamrolled stuck in one place.

Ghostcrawler's answers were arrogant, uniformed, and unhelpful.

[syanid]

Strykzor, we all know that on Patchwerk-like fight where you just stand and nuke - locks, mages, rogues, warriors, death knights will do more damage definitely.

However, to stop all the whine about "class x does more damage than me", they made Ulduar in such way that certain fights favor different types of dps.

Now, if you want to be the top of the Recount, why don't you make a lock then and stop whining? Yes, shadow priest's damage potential is lower than warlocks' or mages', we all know that. However, we have fights that favor us more than them, hence we top the meter every now and then.

Also, random happy people like TheOne - I don't know for you, but I enjoy playing shadow priest more than my mage. Naturally, I'd like to see it perform better in pvp because I really hate healing, I want to be the one who does damage.
Your comments are not helpful in any way, all you're doing is asking for flaming, which isn't what mature people do so I don't get it why you want to cause chaos in the topic.

What others said in this topic is more than true - the leading designer of the game knows jack shit about shadow priests. Mind Control is useful only at 2 encounters in the game, first is naxxramas and second is Ulduar at Thorim. So much for our MC.
Also, saying we get to use abilities of others is also false. MC breaks when someone farts on you or you go too far, and I won't bother to mention "damage" we do to others with MC-ed people.

Also, only an idiot wouldn't attack a priest, who stands still which takes care of how much our MC lasts.
For battlegrounds - I go there with my pve spec and pve gear. I don't really care about topping the meter, I simply like doing damage. In pvp gear my damage is laughable, in PvE gear I at least get to kill someone who takes all 3 of my dots (and actually I survive longer).
I could link screenshots from battlegrounds where I had 1 mil. damage done with 100+ HK's and over 60 killing blows, but that doesn't prove me being a good pvper. BGs are full of recently dinged people or someones' alts who can't play very well.

Mistaking BG for pvp is silly, PvP = arena. And in arena, we fail even when played with an exceptional teammate. So asking for pvp buff isn't unjustified, it would only be fair that finally, after 2.5 years of torture of being hit and obliterated by anyone who has brains to push more than 1 button is not satisfying.

So haters, if you're in for flames - there are many websites with kiddies who argue over who's got bigger dick, maybe you should make accounts there and join the fray. If not, let us laugh at lead game designer who knows jack shit about one of the specs. We are also paying customers, and we'd like to feel some joy when prevailing against equally skilled opponent.

[rarwzs]

"Mind Control however is a really powerful ability. Not only does it prevent the target from doing anything, it also lets you use their abilities against their allies"

eeh..MC lets me use their abilities?

only thing I can do is hit what I know of :S

Or am I noob and have wrong action bar up or something? ;p

[isfry]

Shadow Priests... Working as intended, Please delete your WTF folder.

Warlocks... Here you go have whatever you want green fire, ok fun with shards, ok, fix our pets, ok, flying mount, ok.

We ask for some pvp ability and some better pve utility and told no, other classes would QQ.

[Strykzor]

Strykzor, we all know that on Patchwerk-like fight where you just stand and nuke - locks, mages, rogues, warriors, death knights will do more damage definitely.

Heaps of other classes excel at Patchwerk style fights that also excel at more AoE Orientated fights.

If other classes can have both, why cant shadow priests?

[syanid]

Heaps of other classes excel at Patchwerk style fights that also excel at more AoE Orientated fights.

If other classes can have both, why cant shadow priests?

I've never seen a moonkin or elemental shaman outpds me on a straight nuke fight. Locks, dks, rogues, ferals, warriors, mages - they did ofc.

Now as for your question why can't sp do incredible direct damage, if a mage can:

Number of shadow priests is lesser than number of mages, paladins and other classes that are represented a lot. The reason why ret paladins were made idiotically OP during 3.0 was to draw that population of players back to the game.
Also, a DK was introduced to draw new and old players back to increase the number of subscribers.

The number of GOOD shadow priests is so low that Blizzard doesn't care for our whines. We've been crying for nearly 3 years, there's been a topic at EU priest forums that got locked and deleted and it spreaded over 20 pages or even more. If the population of players isn't huge, they won't move about "fixing" the spec fast.
I'd love to have dps on par with locks or mages, but then locks would whine that they are pure dps class and are getting outdpsed by some hybrid, then the whole argument "why have pures if hybrids do it all" would come up and there'd be hell coming.

Any shadow priest that plays in somewhat good guild knows how to play and probably pushes their char to maximum with timers and haste sweetspots and stuff like that, hence they play at really high level. If such player played a warlock, they'd be doing shitloads of more dps. That's why shadow priest dps is comparable to pures dps in random pugs where you have a full t7.5 lock with ilvl 226 weapon getting owned by a shadowpriest, hard.

So, to cut it short - unless there's a lot of shadow priests who whine, we won't see any major changes. There's a shadowpriest in each raid, they do somewhat good compared to pures on certain encounters and almost no SP pvps. The ones that do, are above 2k and are exceptional players anyway. That, in Blizzard's eyes is acceptable and they can input their efforts into calming down retardin population by changing their cooldowns on divine storm and shit like that.
It's like spoonfeeding retards. Better not fix us, because they'd have 50% people more crying about it.

I doubt we'll ever see any proper change. The greatest upgrade they could do is make our dots scale with haste, making ticks get lowered for haste percentage which would make haste a sweet stat for us.
About pvp, they can make our dots do their full cycle damage when dispeled hence no one would bother to dispel them and that's one change we should be having in order to make us remotely good for pvp.
Lack of self-heal is also an issue in arena, sticking the hp regen component to Dispersion would solve that and making Dispersion 2min cd instead of 3. Fear on 15 sec cooldown, disarm on 45 sec cd, fade granting immunity to snares as long as it's up and voila. There's the show for ya, shadow priest can do something.

Now, even in the state that we're in - I still like playing that char. I really don't care that warlock has higher dps potential than my priest. I simply like the playstyle and I'll stick to it. If they change it - awesome. If not - my voice won't be heard anyway, Blizz is a big company and a huge moneymaker, their priorities revolve around money, not around wishes of a few thousand people who look purple.

[isfry]

syanid /agree

I would not mind if they did what they did toe affliction to us and make the rotation more manageable. i think the fact that we are the or tide with feral the most complex spec in the game it makes our numbers low and our voice low. It is an endless circle. Don't fix it people don't play it and don't complain and won't get fixed. Maybe we will get the Ret treatment...

[ItachiZaku]

I've since switched mains away from shadow priest and then canceled account - last day july 26, seeing all these things the past couple of days, I can't believe how deeper in the toilet things have gotten. And for a Designer to say, in a nut shell, that everything is fine in shadow pvp, is crap.

I thought things were generally ok in PVE, be it aoe, boss fights, single target, whatever, hard pressed to find anyone to out damage me, which got old and boring, but then to turn around and get faceplanted by anyone swinging metal in pvp was just ass.

[roflcopter96]

I made an account just to respond to this

I have been playing a shadow priest for a long time, and I have to say that never have I seen such a moronic Q&A.

There were so many things wrong with this post, including the fact that GC clearly doesn't understand basic priest mechanics. But there is one question with a major problem that no one seems to have caught yet.

"Question 16: From my understanding there is a cooldown on Devouring Plague to keep us from putting it on multiple targets. Couldn't you just make Devouring Plague only usable on 1 target at a time and remove the cooldown?
Yes. I'm not sure many players would consider that a buff though."

For the hit capped spriest there is still a small chance that spells are resisted, and when one of your main DPS dots gets resisted and you can't cast it for another 24 seconds it hurts your dps a lot and is quite infuriating. changing the spell to a one target only mechanic and removing the CD would fix this problem, as would it fix the problem that if it is dispelled in PVP it can't be recast for another 24 seconds. But apparently "not many players would consider that a buff"

[Garrim]

GC is clueless. He said something like 51 point talents shouldn't be massive increases to dps. I think he forgot dps trees for warriors (Blade Storm and TG), or hunter talents (ChimS or XShot), or druid talents (Starfire and Frenzy), or Shaman (ghost wolves or thunderstorm), he probably also forgot locks (Haunt Demon Form and Chaos Bolt). I'm sure he also forgot about the rogue talents (Killing Spree, Hunger for Blood which is an 18% increase in dmg and he forgot shadow dance which means ambush spam), or mages (living bomb and arcane barage). Yup that's every class and every dps 51 talent offered to them. Yup none of those boost dps at all.

Oh and DK with Gargolye runic wepon (not super nice but helps) and howling blast. Yup those are weak talents too.

[isfry]

GC is clueless. He said something like 51 point talents shouldn't be massive increases to dps. I think he forgot dps trees for warriors (Blade Storm and TG), or hunter talents (ChimS or XShot), or druid talents (Starfire and Frenzy), or Shaman (ghost wolves or thunderstorm), he probably also forgot locks (Haunt Demon Form and Chaos Bolt). I'm sure he also forgot about the rogue talents (Killing Spree, Hunger for Blood which is an 18% increase in dmg and he forgot shadow dance which means ambush spam), or mages (living bomb and arcane barage). Yup that's every class and every dps 51 talent offered to them. Yup none of those boost dps at all.

Oh and DK with Gargolye runic wepon (not super nice but helps) and howling blast. Yup those are weak talents too.

but we get to turn in to a ball of goo and get some mana back but basicly a self sheep that is OP! If it didn't give some mana back i wouldn't waste a point but there is just such a few times i even use it. The only times i use it is Kologarn when i am in the hand. KT if i get mana detonate and fiend is on CD. Of if i get BR'ed. that's it that's the list. Maybe on Hagen if you can't dance...

[Antdog]

This will probably be the worst Q&A of all the classes/specs.

My priest hit 80 about a month ago, and although I dont have the pvp/resilience I shoudl have, im already seeing the problems Shadow Priests have. This Q&A pretty much told us NO to all of our problems.

Im so happy I leveled my Druid First and raid as a feral tank. To bad for my SPriest pvp alt.....imma go level my warr, hes sitting at 50.

Sad, sad, sad.

[Alexendra]

Question 17:
Mind Control although this is a fun spell it isn't very useful in pvp situations because it leaves your character immobile for however long and randomly breaks. Could mind control make the controlled target your pet but movable by using the same mechanic used to place a death and decay?
We might do something like that for pets in general. Mind Control however is a really powerful ability. Not only does it prevent the target from doing anything, it also lets you use their abilities against their allies. It's going to be hard for us to remove too many downsides from the effect.


I, like many others here, love the response to this question by GC.

NOW, unless he is hinting that there is a change in the works that WILL allow us to use other classes abilities while MC'd, it's beyond stupid.

Sure, there are mobs that can be MC'd, but they control which abilties we can use, if any. Most of the time, it's just an auto attack.

He was either trying to be really funny, hint at something that is in the works, or is completely retarted and knows NOTHING about Mind Control. I personally hope for either 1 or 2, myself.

I don't mind them saying " We like the ability the way it is and have no plans to change it.", or " We will look into it.", but do NOT write us a response about an ability we have and try to tell us how it works, when it clearly doesn't work that way.

I think Spriests do need some help in the PvP dept. Our damage isn't too lackluster, i guess, but we are struggling when it comes to survivibility. There isn't much we can do when everyone and their grandmothers can burn us down. Dispersion is decent, and it was a step in the right direction. We just need a few more steps in the same direction to be viable again. ( I'm not asking to be OP. I just want a chance to play my spriest seriously in arena. )

[Xelaeno]

After reading that, I wanted to throw my laptop through the window. Shadowpriest PVP is crap and has been for a NUMBER of seasons. Not sure what it will take for Blizzard to realize the problem.

I second that

[Strykzor]

I've never seen a moonkin or elemental shaman outpds me on a straight nuke fight. Locks, dks, rogues, ferals, warriors, mages - they did ofc.

Moonkins and Shaman are close, but yeah just behind.

Number of shadow priests is lesser than number of mages, paladins and other classes that are represented a lot. The reason why ret paladins were made idiotically OP during 3.0 was to draw that population of players back to the game.
Also, a DK was introduced to draw new and old players back to increase the number of subscribers.

As retarded as the idea of buffing a class so much they are stupidly op to lure back people to the class, its something blizzard would do.

The number of GOOD shadow priests is so low that Blizzard doesn't care for our whines. We've been crying for nearly 3 years, there's been a topic at EU priest forums that got locked and deleted and it spreaded over 20 pages or even more. If the population of players isn't huge, they won't move about "fixing" the spec fast.

5x 25 page threads on the US forums. + alot of smaller ones.

I'd love to have dps on par with locks or mages, but then locks would whine that they are pure dps class and are getting outdpsed by some hybrid, then the whole argument "why have pures if hybrids do it all" would come up and there'd be hell coming.

No doubt in my mind that Mages, locks, rogues, hunters should be topping DPS, but the whole "5%" ahead of hybrids was quite possibly the stupidest thing blizzard have done. Give or take a warlock does 7.5k on Ignis, I reach 6k, altho I lack a 'little' gear in comparison to them, not 1000dps worth though.

Any shadow priest that plays in somewhat good guild knows how to play and probably pushes their char to maximum with timers and haste sweetspots and stuff like that, hence they play at really high level. If such player played a warlock, they'd be doing shitloads of more dps. That's why shadow priest dps is comparable to pures dps in random pugs where you have a full t7.5 lock with ilvl 226 weapon getting owned by a shadowpriest, hard.

The highest i rwached on Patchwerk was 5.4k, mages and locks were at 6k (no include doomguard), now i find myself even further behind, only think that has changed since then is the choice of gear i have, Ulduar is choc a block full of Haste/Spirit Gear.

So, to cut it short - unless there's a lot of shadow priests who whine, we won't see any major changes. There's a shadowpriest in each raid, they do somewhat good compared to pures on certain encounters and almost no SP pvps. The ones that do, are above 2k and are exceptional players anyway. That, in Blizzard's eyes is acceptable and they can input their efforts into calming down retardin population by changing their cooldowns on divine storm and shit like that.

On US Realms Bloodlust is (or atleast was) the most skilled PvP battlegroup, Ive never seen a shadow priest at a decent rating.

I doubt we'll ever see any proper change. The greatest upgrade they could do is make our dots scale with haste, making ticks get lowered for haste percentage which would make haste a sweet stat for us.

Exactly what Ive been saying.

About pvp, they can make our dots do their full cycle damage when dispelled hence no one would bother to dispel them and that's one change we should be having in order to make us remotely good for pvp.

Ive also suggested this.

Lack of self-heal is also an issue in arena, sticking the hp regen component to Dispersion would solve that and making Dispersion 2min cd instead of 3. Fear on 15 sec cooldown, disarm on 45 sec cd, fade granting immunity to snares as long as it's up and voila. There's the show for ya, shadow priest can do something.

And this.

Now, even in the state that we're in - I still like playing that char

As do I, but i still want to see SOME sort of a buff.

[Victorz]

R.I.P. Shadow Priests.

Game Over!

to be honest....NOT REALY!