shadow polishing

[reinx]

Shadow power: 3 points 33-67-100% crit damage

mind flay: 30 yd base range, glyph should be 5% crit

darkness: needs a proc, why doesnt shadow have ANY procs? like 10% chance on spell criticals to make your make your mindflay spell cast 50?% faster or a 50% chance apply a (stackable?) snare possibly dazing/stunning the target for a brief moment?(like enigma from dota ) only applicable while in shadow form ofc

i mean these are just off the top of my head but we need something to spice up the spec.

MOAR PROCS PLOX BLIZZ =)

edit: make VE a passive aura

[Zeuq]

Shadow power: 3 points 33-67-100% crit damage

This would free up 2 talent points, but does Shadow really need more talent points? I suppose it would let you get IST, IVE, and ISF, instead of either choosing one of the latter two or dropping the first and picking up Shadow Affinity, but I don't think it's necessary. The tree seems fine, and Blizzard likes there being some choice in the tree rather than having it be meaningless.

mind flay: 30 yd base range, glyph should be 5% crit

I think it should have an increased base distance and make the glyph do something a little more interesting, but I'm not sure if 5% crit on this spell is a good idea. Mind Flay accounts for a lot of damage, so this would probably be a damage buff of around 2-3%. Thus, I would expect that a change like this would result in some nerfing elsewhere to compensate since Blizzard seems to feel Shadow Priests are reasonably well balanced for PVE.

Off the top of my head, they could make a PVP specific one that increases the snare effect or possibly even leaves a full snare on the first or last tick. Or they could even just make it so the beam is invisible so it's not a homing beacon to find the squishy caster; not great of course, but could be nifty. For PVE, maybe they could make it so it ticks for less but more often, so you can stack up Shadoweaving faster and lose less damage if you have to move while casting it. Along the same vein, they could make it so the first tick hits for more and the later ones for less to accomplish a similar goal.

Anyway, my point is that there's a lot of creative things they could do with the glyph rather than just a 5% crit that really just makes it feel mandatory for every Shadow Priest instead of an interesting choice.

darkness: needs a proc, why doesnt shadow have ANY procs? like 10% chance on spell criticals to make your make your mindflay spell cast 50?% faster or a 50% chance apply a (stackable?) snare possibly dazing/stunning the target for a brief moment?(like enigma from dota ) only applicable while in shadow form ofc

i mean these are just off the top of my head but we need something to spice up the spec.

MOAR PROCS PLOX BLIZZ =)

So watching all those DoTs and cooldowns and using a channeled spell as your filler isn't complicated enough, you now want to watch a proc as well? Besides, like with the Mindflay glyph, if they were to add a proc that would increase your damage, chances are they'd have to make a nerf somewhere else to compensate, and all you've really done is complicate an already fairly complicated spec. I don't think you'll see much support for something like this. If you want to watch procs, get 4-pc T8 which is very similar to what you mentioned, or get a trinket with a proc instead. Shadow Priests just aren't a proc class, they're a DoT/CD class

edit: make VE a passive aura

Making it an aura would be OP, because in AOE situations, all the mobs would have it without you having to waste the GCDs to put it up, and you would heal for a crapton. Since it's already free, and lasts five minutes, there's no reason not to just make it automatic. However, to keep it interesting, they just tie it to Devouring Plague since it can only be on one target at a time anyway. Hell, it already returns some health anyway, albeit a paltry amount, so it would only seem natural that it should be tied to Vampire Embrace.

[Proletariat]

God knows shadow can't be buffed, we cant go from shit single target dps to average /sarcasm

OP had good ideas, and ideally I'd like to see at least one or two implemented, but not gonna get my hopes up

[Pheonixis]

Shadow power: 3 points 33-67-100% crit damage

mind flay: 30 yd base range, glyph should be 5% crit

darkness: needs a proc, why doesnt shadow have ANY procs? like 10% chance on spell criticals to make your make your mindflay spell cast 50?% faster or a 50% chance apply a (stackable?) snare possibly dazing/stunning the target for a brief moment?(like enigma from dota ) only applicable while in shadow form ofc

i mean these are just off the top of my head but we need something to spice up the spec.

MOAR PROCS PLOX BLIZZ =)

edit: make VE a passive aura

At least make the mind flay glyph retain it's current side effect if you're going to buff it with 5% crit.

It is quite nice actually to as a shadow priest be the almost only dps class without almost any cooldowns and virtually no procs at all. I dunno about you but I do not like the homogenization of classes at all.

And VE does need some sort of reworking. How about a 20 second selfbuff with a 2 minute cooldown, and when it's up yo heal the entire party for 20% of the damage delt, with talents able to bring it up to 30%? Sort of a healing cooldown for things like frozen blows at Hodir.

[Lostprophet]

Shadowfiend is our DPS Cooldown now xD

[Abandon]

People need to stop suggesting that we have PVP talents that work "on crit". It's a bad idea. We don't crit in PVP.

[reinx]

you know what would really make everyone happy is if they made the mind flay beam only visible to you. woo!

[Abandon]

I'm pretty sure if you are getting Mind Flayed, most people can figure out that the Priest in Shadowform is the one doing it.

[Wildhearted]

we dont want anymore procs and rng shit in this game, blizzard tryed desperatly to remove it in wrath and they partly succeded

[Woony]

we dont want anymore procs and rng shit in this game, blizzard tryed desperatly to remove it in wrath and they partly succeded

They tried to do so in pvp, in pve they added proccs to watch for allmost EVERY class, to make rotations more interesting.

[Lostprophet]

But our Rotation is already interesting.

Not like Mages,Warlocks and Boomkins pre LK rotations.

They spammed the same spell the whole fight... no they got proccs(Hotstreak,Eclipse, conflag) so they can now use other spells too.

Shadowpriests Gameplay didnt change that much, they added DP to all Priest but made SW:"D" permanetly up. In other words they exchanged spells.

Alot of ranged Classes to have execute abilities, which I would like asswell Then i would like to have some better sort of DPS Cooldowns as our shadowfiend is.

But I wouldnt really like a talent whitch would make SW:"D" free and with no backslash and reset the Cooldown like Rime it is for Frost DK's. I already have enough things to watch :/

[Worshaka]

I think the long term issues pertaining to shadow priests are far more complex and require more than a few polishing touches. The issue gets even more complex due to the fact that Blizzard seem hell bent on trying to game 2 different games into one, that being PvP & PvE and generally speaking fixing one side of the game completely destroys the other part.

PvE

Shadow priests are pretty decent for PvE, there isn't a lot wrong except perhaps how we scale. There are obvious structual issues with haste, not to mention that haste only really benefits one of the shadow priests spells well. Perhaps a talent or some form of mechanic that converts haste to SP or crit is a way to mange the issue? I think if haste were applied to dot ticks and CD's it would become quickly OP and further complicate a rotation that is already somewhat difficult.

I would also suggest that our rotation is too rigid and requires such substantial ramp up that we can't effectively contribute with low health targets/add switching. I'd like to see shadow priests gain access to a burst rotation that comes with a price, perhaps at the expense of mana effeciency similar to arcane mages. That would enable us to choose a rotation that focused on long term sustained dps (current rotation involving dots etc) or choose some other up front burst rotation that wasn't sustainable or provided poor long term dps. What if MB and MF hit for x% more damage if the target wasn't afflicted by any of your dots? Perhaps thats more dps in the first 15sec but far less damage of the course of a boss encounter?

VE is an odd spell in that the effect it has on the spriest is almost OP for PvE content but the party effect is extremely lacklusture to the point of almost being insignificant. I'd like to see some change here but I for one can't come up with the right idea. I don't want to lose my 25% self healing and I can't see how increasing the number to my party helps because it will just promote raid stacking. I don't want it to become a passive aura because there are times I don't want to cause global threat, Yogg phase 3 is a prime example and if you've ever done Yogg with one keeper helping (I have in 10man) you'd understand how important it is not to get aggro on adds even for a second. Perhaps they should just remove the party healing effect and give us something else with VE to compensate?

PvP

This is where shadow priests really need some help. Blizzard have stated that cloth classes are inherritenly weak or squishy but gain control spells to counter that weakness. If you look at Warlocks in TBC compared to LK you can see how they were changed from the cloth tanking class to a somewhat squishy caster. And look what happened to them in terms of Arena? They were gods in TBC and now they are very lacklusture, however some very skilled players can still play them at the very top brackets.

My guess is Blizzard are hesitant to make Shadow Priests that cloth tanking class because of the experience they had with warlocks last expansion. The difference is though that Locks have repeatable control, they can fear whenever they like, they have pets that provide CC in forms of seduction and spell lock. Shadow Priests have no repeatable control, all of their control type abilities are on long cooldowns (in terms of PvP) or extremely difficult to use, MC for example is a 3 sec cast, has a 20yd crap range and makes the priest 100% vulnerable so even if it isn't interrupted it can be countered extremely easily.

Look at mages which are the true viable dps caster in PvP at the moment, snares on tap, the ability to get to range, sheep at will, immunity spells, ability to crit hard... they get access to all these control spells to counter their weakness.

Blizzard need to make true on their cloth dps class model... give spriest control spells, or if that becomes homoginsation they need to break their model and allow them to hold their own in melee range. As it stands we don't have either and the evidence is how shadow priests currently perform in arena.

Lastly, the self silence on disperion is ludicrous... the reason for it is to prevent use using a defensive cooldown in an offensive manner. Similar to why Pallys can't use wings and bubble at the same time, and on the surface that makes a lot of sense. However dispersion is NOT an immunity effect, if I could cast under the effects of dispersion I can still be, interrupted, silenced, stunned, cc'd via fear/sheep/etc... the only thing that can't happen is snares. I can't see how a spriest under the effects of dispersion prevents us from being countered like an immunity effect. It's a cop out excuse or something that hasn't been thought through properly. I don't see druids, paladins or DK's getting massive drawbacks when they pop their damage reduction cooldowns... sure they are no where near the scale of dispersion but they last a hell of a lot longer too... imagine if you cast Pain Suppression on someone they were silenced or stunned for the effect? It's completely unnecessary.

[Pheonixis]

you didn't hear? shadow priest are OP, every guild has 6 of them wanting to run every night. ;D

And every time I check LFG, there's always 50 DKs wanting to go Naxx and VoA. Does it make DKs OP? Seeing as half the people I've grouped with are on the bottom of the dps, I doubt it.

And yes, i get the sarcasm.

[Worshaka]

I'm not sure you can use the sample of PuG DK's who are probably in poor gear and have next to 0 skill as an argument suggesting they are not that great.

If you looked at both the PvP and PvE DK's in tiers of content released thus far you would see they have been particularly strong and there is a strong argument suggesting they have been OP. Jury is out on the current 3.2 incarnation though, they did get nerfed quite severely.