How to * fix* Shadow priests.

[Deleted]

Well.. we all know Sps are currently lacking in PVP and PVE abilies. Low dps, low surival, low CC abilites. Low everything at this point to be perfectly hontest.
Lets face it, the whole idea of a clothy *tank / punchbag caster* in PVP was ment to fail from the beginning without the proper tools.

When people have suggested various things to blizzard to boost SPs to a competitive level, their main complaint to giving SPs more abilites / more powerfull spells seems to be them worrying about making Disp and holy far to strong in a PVP situation , or even in PVE, by haveing even more nuke and survival spells abavilable to a healing spec.

The answer - Give us damage spells / survival abilites / CC that REQUIRE you to be IN Shadowform.

Seems simple, but i feel it is the answer. Look at druids , certain things they need to be in cat form to use, for example, or like warriors needing certain stances for certain abilities. Why can SPs not be given the same thing.

Also we need a decent 51 point talent, a talented self silenceing evocation isnt exactly what you would expect from a 51 point talent , is it now? Dispertion should still be a deep shadow talent OR be changed to a trained ability, which, needs you to be in shadowform to use. But I do not really know what exactly would go in its place as the 51 pointer. Possibly one of the new spells / abilites needed to make us not suck anymore.

I feel that SW: D needs changed too, perhaps increased crit chance >25% would be the way to go. It needs to be alot more of the finishing move than it is today, blizzard even said somewere they considered making it NOT hurt us back if the target is under 25%, i cannot see why this change wasn't actually added, would be nice to have a finshing spell, that was actually capable of finishing somthing.

PW: S is no were near the level of absortion it should give either. It takes roughly 3.5k damage to break it , what is 3.5k in this game today? 1 hit, 1 tick, of anything, and its gone. It needs vastly improving. I remeber when it used to actually let you cast a few times before it broke, now im lucky to cast anything, it really is not worth wasteing your mana to cast.

Fear - Our fear has been useless since BC - This is mainly due to them ballancing everything around warlock fear . ( This is not the first time SPs have been Directly nerfed due to ballanceing issues of another class, remember the shadow weaving nerf due to warlocks? ) .WOTLK beta gave SPs a talent , that made there fear a horror effect for the first 4 seconds, and it really did make a difference to our pvp, but it was canned and we got the 2 minute/ 5 Seconds Disarm talent instead.

Mind flay - Apart from the giant *plzs interupt me* Sign that it has, it just feels a very weak spell. But its not to much its damage, but rather its patheticly useless snare, it needs to remain for 2-3 seconds after the cast has ended.

Iv been playing an SP for nearly 5 years nowy, iv watched them go from being good at PVP in vanila but shit at PVE since every guild wanted you to be a healbot and our DPS was poor.
To reaching a more ballanced point in BC PVE, but still lacking at PVP .
To the near death of SPs completely in WOTLK - in both PVE and PVP.
It makes me sad that they really dont seem to want to truely * fix* our spec at all.

No dobut im going to get a bunch of QQs about how *Hybrids arent ment to be IMBA* ( druids, cough, rets, cough, cough ). Im not asking to be imba, im asking to be brought to a level of competitiveness, not 1000s of DPS behind everyone else, or hundreds of arena rateing behind everyone else just because I choose to play an SP.

[blupp74]

No other class has spells/abilities that require a form/stance that isn't available to all specs of that class.
Sure, warriors have certain abilities that require berserker stance, for instance...but ALL warriors have access to berserker stance.
ALL druids have access to cat form.

...and so on, and so forth...

[WorldTree]

No other class has spells/abilities that require a form/stance that isn't available to all specs of that class.
Sure, warriors have certain abilities that require berserker stance, for instance...but ALL warriors have access to berserker stance.
ALL druids have access to cat form.

...and so on, and so forth...

.. really..? Like all druid have access to mangle?

Like all warlocks have shadow cleave in metamorphosis?

Like Typhoon isn't only available to moonkins? (well after you take moonkin talents. sooo)

You have no point?

[Pagefault]

No other class has spells/abilities that require a form/stance that isn't available to all specs of that class.
Sure, warriors have certain abilities that require berserker stance, for instance...but ALL warriors have access to berserker stance.
ALL druids have access to cat form.

...and so on, and so forth...

^This

[Diolol]

Yeah how about let sps train every skill from talents a priest has...

Stop your crying about SPs not being effective. I've had friends who got Gladiator as a sp and I know people who raid as a sp and don't need to go on forums to cry about dps at all.

[Deleted]

Yeah how about let sps train every skill from talents a priest has...

Stop your crying about SPs not being effective. I've had friends who got Gladiator as a sp and I know people who raid as a sp and don't need to go on forums to cry about dps at all.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

[Sigmundus]

.. really..? Like all druid have access to mangle?

Like all warlocks have shadow cleave in metamorphosis?

Like Typhoon isn't only available to moonkins? (well after you take moonkin talents. sooo)

You have no point?

[Ceko]

We are fine in both PVP and PVE aspects of the game so stop crying for buffs. :-*
You just need to put much more effort to succeed as a shadow priest.That's the beauty of it. :

[Feinel]

Yeah how about let sps train every skill from talents a priest has...

Stop your crying about SPs not being effective. I've had friends who got Gladiator as a sp and I know people who raid as a sp and don't need to go on forums to cry about dps at all.

No one is saying it isn't possible, with some very good arena partners it definitely is, but you can't ignore the fact that the percentage of top ranked shadow priests is VERY low.

We are fine in both PVP and PVE aspects of the game so stop crying for buffs. Kiss
You just need to put much more effort to succeed as a shadow priest.That's the beauty of it. Roll Eyes

So, how is naxx progress going? Oh and battlegrounds are serious business, cause that's all were we're doing fine at.

[CATER]

Like all warlocks have shadow cleave in metamorphosis?

They do they really do

[blupp74]

.. really..? Like all druid have access to mangle?

Like all warlocks have shadow cleave in metamorphosis?

Like Typhoon isn't only available to moonkins? (well after you take moonkin talents. sooo)

You have no point?

Oh, I have a point. You're just missing it completely.

All druids don't have access to mangle, no. But that's not the same thing as what's being suggested. A correct comparison would be all druids having mangle in their spell book, but Cat Form being a talent that needs to be picked.

Shadow Cleave is an ability only accessable when you have the talent metamorphosis.
Typhoon is also a talent, in the balance tree. Not sure if it requires moonkin form (probably doesn't), but who in their right mind would go that far the balance tree without picking moonkin form?

Let's turn the question around like this instead. Let's say the priests got 2-3 trained abilities that required Shadow Form...other specs would not be able to use those spells. Which is what I'm saying. No other class has trained abilities that require something else they don't have access to. Warlocks shadow cleave would be the closest example, except if you don't have metamorphosis talented, shadow cleave won't exist in your spell book, as it's directly attacked to the talent.

Actually, come to think of it, that's a pretty good comparison. But your examples of Mangle and Typhoon are just silly. I'll agree with Shadow Cleave though.

[Ceko]

No one is saying it isn't possible, with some very good arena partners it definitely is, but you can't ignore the fact that the percentage of top ranked shadow priests is VERY low.

Its because most of the good priests prefer to faceroll it as a discipline.Just because its just ridiculously easy. :-/.We all know what is the state of the arena discipline priests at the moment. >

/gather gear
/faceroll
/profit

Respecc from discipline to shadow and moaning that shadow suck right after sounds just about right. :


Same shit PVEwise..... you log your destro lock ... spamm you macro ....bang you hit 7k dps just like that ... ... relog back to your priest right after ...you moan about it... etc..
"Until the end of times"

[Deleted]

Yeah how about let sps train every skill from talents a priest has...

Stop your crying about SPs not being effective. I've had friends who got Gladiator as a sp and I know people who raid as a sp and don't need to go on forums to cry about dps at all.

Yes because blizzard have never done that with other classes?
oh lets see Ice block.. Cloak of no skills.. and for a short period in WOTLk beta, mirrior image was an arcane talent.. so plzs stop posting shit.

[Wexx]

the problem is that they give the pure DPS classes (mages/locks) better self-healing than the "support" classes (eleshamans/spriests/boomkins) --

however, boomkins have a spammable CC off cooldown, while lacking interrupts. They cant solo anyone but are seriously only underrepresented in arena because no one even tries to play boomkin. ele shamans excel in 3s/5s where they can freecast; their burst is terrific. Back on the topic of boomkins, if you let a boomkin freecast in 5s you are asking to lose. They will destroy you when bloodlusted (which will be the case on 90% of 5s teams)

spriests are a good class with ALL cooldowns up. however, after casting silence (45 sec), psychic horror (120 sec), shadowfiend (180 seconds, talented), and psychic scream (23 seconds with 2 talents and PVP gloves) -- we are limited to DoTs and healing or dispersion if its "oh shit" time (75 second CD with glyph).


to elaborate: say you're trying to kill a mage.... he can counterspell you twice for every time you can silence him, deep freeze you twice for every time you have dispersion (75 seconds with a major glyph), polymorph you to set up his attacks while sitting his permanent pet on you the entire game and popping images at pretty much free will when he has you in a deep freeze you cant escape from. on top of it all, youre forced to cast twice the number of DoTs as normal due to mage armor. If by some freak occurence he's actually awful enough to not know how to interrupt VT or spellsteal ALL OF YOUR HOTS/BUBBLES, he can still blink away and evocate to go from 35% to 100% while his pet simply ties you down as you mash self-dispel and hobble over to him.

This is just the beginning of our problems, but mages are about as bad as it gets. I'm not saying I want a spammable CC, more burst, DoTs, heals, permanent pet, dispersion to heal, shorter cooldown on silence, and an improvement of innerfire while in shadowform to mirror warlock/mage armors.......... but a few improvements are definitely in order.

Meh, just a rant. lol

[Gahouf!]

"Remember the shadow weaving nerf due to warlocks?"

I fail to see how this was a nerf. It's still the same amount of Shadow Damage, just it only applies to you.

[Deleted]

"Remember the shadow weaving nerf due to warlocks?"

I fail to see how this was a nerf. It's still the same amount of Shadow Damage, just it only applies to you.

It actually isnt, it used to be 3% per stack, it was reduced to 2% per stack, then a few weeks later - changed to self only.
But still remained 2% per stack, they *forgot* to re-boost it after they *fixed* it.
So a net loss of raid utility - and 5% damage loss from ourselfs .

Just shows how fast they are to nerf SPs, but when it comes to giving us a needed boost.. it takes years.

[Wexx]

having 5 stacks of a debuff on them was amazing, it served as ample DoT protection. its similar to trying to dispel polymorph with 5 stacks of winter's chill on them or w/e the hell its called

[Abandon]

The way to fix Shadowpriests would be to make us scale correctly with all damage stats, including haste. I can understand why they wouldn't add "Makes your dots tick X haste faster" considering they would have to do the same for all classes with dots, but if they did something like the old crit fix pm Shadowform where if you have 15% haste it increases your dot damage by 15% would really help sort out our scaling issues.

[Abolishment]

"Remember the shadow weaving nerf due to warlocks?"

I fail to see how this was a nerf. It's still the same amount of Shadow Damage, just it only applies to you.

Shadow Weaving used to be a Debuff on the enemy. It stacked up to 5 times, at 3% increased Shadow Damage per stack. When Warlocks were doing too much DPS, and Shadow Priest had accepted that they wouldn't be good DPS and should instead be valued as mana batteries, Blizzard saw fit to nerf Warlocks through Shadow Priests- cutting Shadow Weaving down to 2% increased Shadow Damage taken per application.

When Shadow Weaving became a buff on the Shadowpriest instead of a debuff on the enemy (making it so Warlocks no longer benefited from it), the damage was never re-increased. So yes, it was a nerf to Warlocks, even though it was the Shadow Priest who was actually nerfed.

The way to fix Shadowpriests would be to make us scale correctly with all damage stats, including haste. I can understand why they wouldn't add "Makes your dots tick X haste faster" considering they would have to do the same for all classes with dots, but if they did something like the old crit fix pm Shadowform where if you have 15% haste it increases your dot damage by 15% would really help sort out our scaling issues.

That's a pretty good idea, but it wouldn't do much to help Shadow Priests in PvP.

Personally, I miss Blackout. I don't see why Shadow Priests can't keep Blackout if it was made to be a proc like Impact.

IE: Every time your DoTs tick, you have a % chance for your next Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death to also stun your opponent for 3 seconds.

I think it sounds fair. Blackout was always on such high Diminishing Returns anyways that it wasn't a stunlock, just a temporary interrupt that worked on Melee too.

[fabian]

I'd prefer to scale better with haste but I've came up with some changes on my own.

If they need to free up some talents in the talent trees, they could combine Shadow Reach with Shadow Affinity(which makes a boomkin equivalent talent). Then add more to Focused Mind. One idea would be if you crit with MB, SW CD is reset, costs no mana and hits for 10% more, and if you crit with a mana consuming(to prevent MB/SW spam, although that could be a good idea) SW, the the CD on MB is reset and it becomes instant cast.