Nerfs inc soon for shadow

[talrob]

Just done some tests and although I only gain 500 dps on a target dummy (11% increase) you know fine well that when we start to do equal dps to mages and warlocks, the QQ tears will fall about 'amg you could wear an entirely different set of gear in an entirely different spec and heal' and we will be nerfed.

Shadow priests enjoy the ptr, this is like the time they gave us 25% damage after dispersion, it won't last when the QQ starts. Shame really as we are perfect now

[Worshaka]

Nice informative post based on facts... no assumptions here.

[talrob]

Nice informative post based on facts... no assumptions here.

Like blizzard has ever applied 'facts' to shadow priests. We did 'fine' dps a month ago...

[Uhuuu]

Ok just shut up.. spriests cry and cry for more dps and now you cry because they say they will buff us?.. ffs dude

[Direshadow]

I've done A LOT of dps testing between the Live and PTR servers.

on the PTR, I can push out 4.2 to 4.3 dps fairly easily, if I'm 100% on the ball with well timed mind blasts and refreshing of dots.


On the Live servers, I can BARELY push out 4.1....

I have no doubt that before the patch goes live, we will see a nerf here or there, but I'm okay with that. At the moment, I do think that we're doing a bit to much. They won't be massive, but I do believe that they'll scale us back a little bit.

Either way, we'll walk out of this being able to compete, and I'm okay with that.

[Worshaka]

Like blizzard has ever applied 'facts' to shadow priests. We did 'fine' dps a month ago...

Great argument... because in your opinion Blizzard don't use facts or logical reasoning it's ok to use the same poor strategy in voicing an opinion. Nothing flawed with that thinking process.

Again thanks for your contribution based on completely nothing but speculation and ill will.

[Weena]

Ive played a premade mage, feral druid and warlock on PTR and i still do more damage on those than my pre-made shadowpriest.

Also great informative post.

[Deleted]

Informative or not, after 5 years of WOW i can say he is right .
The tears of the * pure* dps classes can already be heard. * WAA i cant slack and be afk for half a raid and still be top DPS waaa nerf Spss waaa*

You know its comming....

[Direshadow]

Great argument... because in your opinion Blizzard don't use facts or logical reasoning it's ok to use the same poor strategy in voicing an opinion. Nothing flawed with that thinking process.

Again thanks for your contribution based on completely nothing but speculation and ill will.

You're a good poster here, but you have to admit that recently, Blizzard has acted pretty low when it comes to buffing our spec.

Number crunching sites like Elitest Jerks practically throw our low numbers in the face of Blizzard, all while Shadow Priests in top tier guilds lose their spots, and in response, Blizzard sheds some light on how they do things, and ends with "We don't agree with those numbers, Shadow Priests are fine".

And I'm okay with that. If they think a class is "fine" then that's up to them. It's their game.

What really pisses me off, is what they've done recently. Where after everyone from all over the web shows them concrete proof that Shadow DPS is failing, suddenly they throw massive buffs at us and act like they've known all along.

It honestly makes me worried about what kind of stuff really goes on behind the scenes. I mean, do they honestly sit down and have serious discussions about the classes and specs, or do they just follow what Elitest Jerks tells them?

I'm not bashing our buffs, but so far they've mentioned nothing about knowing that we've had problems. It kind of pisses me off.

[kneeo]

Well, if you silly people would avoid making preemptive QQ threads maybe it would take them a bit longer to catch on.

[Worshaka]

You're a good poster here, but you have to admit that recently, Blizzard has acted pretty low when it comes to buffing our spec.

Number crunching sites like Elitest Jerks practically throw our low numbers in the face of Blizzard, all while Shadow Priests in top tier guilds lose their spots, and in response, Blizzard sheds some light on how they do things, and ends with "We don't agree with those numbers, Shadow Priests are fine".

And I'm okay with that. If they think a class is "fine" then that's up to them. It's their game.

What really pisses me off, is what they've done recently. Where after everyone from all over the web shows them concrete proof that Shadow DPS is failing, suddenly they throw massive buffs at us and act like they've known all along.

It honestly makes me worried about what kind of stuff really goes on behind the scenes. I mean, do they honestly sit down and have serious discussions about the classes and specs, or do they just follow what Elitest Jerks tells them?

I'm not bashing our buffs, but so far they've mentioned nothing about knowing that we've had problems. It kind of pisses me off.

I actually disagree that shadow DPS has been so poor as to prevent raids from completing content. Shadow Priests were all involved in the world first kills of the current teir of content, it's only been somewhat recently that Ensidia have stated that they were only prepared to take one shadow priest to their progression raids and even then they were still prepared to take one.

While I agree our DPS was definitely lower than most classes and perhaps the lowest of all (which is a very subjective discussion because it's obviously contingent on encounter, buffs and skill level) I didn't feel I needed to top the DPS meter to make an effective contribution. In fact I never found myself last on the DPS meter for progression content and I always survived until we either cleared an encounter or a wipe was called.

I think these changes have much more to do with ICC and the apparent issues with scaling. Most people get over geared for content and then base DPS arguments using a sample set that would be outside the balance paramenters Blizzard are concerned with. If you are farming content it's irrelevant what your DPS is, what's important is how you compare to other DPS classes during progression and to that end I never felt that was that far behind the majority of classes to feel I wasn't worth bringing.

Unfortunetly 99.9% of the community associate DPS meters with skill and their vanity means they need the means to link screenshots of their 'awesome' DPS as some sort of validation for their enormous egos. If you can put that aside for 2 seconds you'd understand that you make up 1 person out of a 10 or 25man group and there are team aspects to raiding which are far more important than your individual DPS. Again this concept is too hard to grasp for the 99.9% of WoW players who think their personal DPS is the most pressing issue Blizzard should address ASAP.

I suggest if you equate DPS ability with fun then you play a pure DPS class ie. a Rogue, Warlock, Mage or Hunter because the fundamental role they can provide is only DPS. Hybrids on the other hand have resources poured into them that deal with non DPS roles, be it tanking or healing and there isn't the same focus on their DPS ability. At the end of the day the pure DPS classes get a selection of 3 trees, if one of them doesn't perform they can simply choose another one. Our class has 1 DPS tree and if it's not up to your personal standards of potential DPS it's pretty much tough luck.

I for one enjoy playing shadow regardless of the current numbers. I also enjoy the ability to switch my role to a healer and contribute to my raid in that capacity when the need arises. The priest class is one of the most fun for me to play personally with perhaps the Paladin class being the only other I would seriously consider. These are reasons for playing the priest class, i'd prefer Blizzard spend resources on making my class fun to play instead of increasing numbers when its not always necessary. I suggest you work out what your goal is in playing a priest and if your personal goals aren't inline with the class philosophy you are playing the wrong class. It's akin to hammering a square peg into a round hole, you'll never be happy.

[harky]

I think you're missing the point there. While Shadow was represented in the world firsts, multiple Shadow Priests were not. Guilds that used to raid with more than one Shadow Priest have been trimming them back a great deal. I've even seen raid leaders step down because they thought they were holding kills back. People see fights wiping at 2-300k damage and see better DPS classes that are doing at least that much more damage and are really tempted to switch. On live right now Shadow is one to two tiers behind content in terms of DPS, depending who you compare to. Basically a T9 Shadow Priest can compete with other DPS in T8, or T7 and keep up. On most fights, even older content, Shadow can't keep up when equally geared. There are three ToC fights that greatly favor Shadow's play-style, but Shadow still doesn't come up on top. All other fights Shadow is #10 among classes. The same was true in Ulduar, but the gap widened enough now that it's not acceptable to better guilds. There's really no point arguing this though, Blizz finally took notice, so playing at denial isn't going to help matters.

[Helios]

Z.O.M.F.G. STFU.

[Izenhart]

Nice topic based on...nvm.

Priest were clearly behind any top dps'ers, and struggled even to stay in the middle, Blizz managed that and gave us a power up.

They'll see how it works and eventually nerf us. (Hunters prepatch of TBC, Retpaladins start of WotLK anyone?)

[Worshaka]

I think you're missing the point there. While Shadow was represented in the world firsts, multiple Shadow Priests were not. Guilds that used to raid with more than one Shadow Priest have been trimming them back a great deal. I've even seen raid leaders step down because they thought they were holding kills back. People see fights wiping at 2-300k damage and see better DPS classes that are doing at least that much more damage and are really tempted to switch. On live right now Shadow is one to two tiers behind content in terms of DPS, depending who you compare to. Basically a T9 Shadow Priest can compete with other DPS in T8, or T7 and keep up. On most fights, even older content, Shadow can't keep up when equally geared. There are three ToC fights that greatly favor Shadow's play-style, but Shadow still doesn't come up on top. All other fights Shadow is #10 among classes. The same was true in Ulduar, but the gap widened enough now that it's not acceptable to better guilds. There's really no point arguing this though, Blizz finally took notice, so playing at denial isn't going to help matters.

Again this would have probably been true for ICC content, not current content. I've never been the bottom DPS class in my guild on progression raiding, infact I've been in the Top 5 throughout all tiers of progression raiding. It's when the content gets on farm that I fall well behind.

In any case I'm grateful for buffs but I didn't need them to continue playing my priest as shadow. I think perhaps in ICC had we not gotten buffs that opinion may have changed but it's going to be difficult for me to answer that considering we got buffed.

[Satellite]

I've never been the bottom DPS class in my guild on progression raiding, infact I've been in the Top 5 throughout all tiers of progression raiding. It's when the content gets on farm that I fall well behind.

Its called scaling. Same problem as elemental Shaman, maybe in a bigger way.

[Direshadow]

if they buffs we're getting NOW, go live, then it's over.

We'll kill the lich king, farm it, and by the time the next patch comes around, with all their nerfs, i'll be like, "to late, bitches. I'm waiting till Cata, scuse me while I play Borderlands"

[harky]

Again this would have probably been true for ICC content, not current content. I've never been the bottom DPS class in my guild on progression raiding, infact I've been in the Top 5 throughout all tiers of progression raiding. It's when the content gets on farm that I fall well behind.

Sometimes it's hard to catch on to when your personal experiences are out of the ordinary. I've been there, I was easily topping DPS on a Fury Warrior back in TBC in T4 and I figured people were just wrong about Fury not catching up until T5. That's the real problem with anecdotal evidence like this is when it's you as a first person source for the evidence it feels like it's the norm. The norm currently is that a Mage/Rogue/Hunter in T7/5 man ToC and Badge gear can produce equivalent DPS to a Shadow Priest in full T9, while all other classes need T8 to do it with the exception of Paladin which is only slightly better. This is not a progression issue as classes with old gear are going to be on par with you after you're farming the new content. If in equal gear they should be far ahead of you.

That's where anecdotal stories come in, while you personally may believe you're doing well, it could in fact be that the majority of your DPS are doing poorly. Back in T4 I thought I was doing great to be pulling 900-1,100 DPS when progressing through T4, because the other DPS were only doing 6-700 DPS. It wasn't until later that I realized that our other DPS did not know what they were doing. It took me a day bringing a BM Hunter to a raid to realize just how bad they'd really been doing. I easily jumped back to where my Warrior's DPS was in worse gear, while the rest of the guild who was now in mostly full T4 had barely improved. When we moved to T5/6 I moved to tanking and we had our top DPS as a Marks Hunter. He was consistently 2-300 DPS above everyone and I asked him to respec because he was doing less DPS than my Hunter in blues, which didn't raid. He jumped up to being 6-700 DPS above everyone as BM.

It happens all the time. You see yourself being in a good position in a raid and assume you're doing really well, when what you should really be looking at is how well your raid is doing. Top 5, bottom 3, #1, it doesn't really matter, your placement within your individual raid only shows where you place among those 25 people. It doesn't say anything about where those 25 people place, progression or not.

[Deleted]

I've done A LOT of dps testing between the Live and PTR servers.

on the PTR, I can push out 4.2 to 4.3 dps fairly easily, if I'm 100% on the ball with well timed mind blasts and refreshing of dots.


On the Live servers, I can BARELY push out 4.1....

I have no doubt that before the patch goes live, we will see a nerf here or there, but I'm okay with that. At the moment, I do think that we're doing a bit to much. They won't be massive, but I do believe that they'll scale us back a little bit.

So you managed to gain about 5% more dps and now you are afraid of being op?
Have you seen what the hydrid melee and pures can do?
Hybrid melee dps is very high in dps right now, they have good single target dps and crazy cleave dps. They are the ones who should live in fear of nerfs.

[Deleted]

I've done A LOT of dps testing between the Live and PTR servers.

on the PTR, I can push out 4.2 to 4.3 dps fairly easily, if I'm 100% on the ball with well timed mind blasts and refreshing of dots.


On the Live servers, I can BARELY push out 4.1....

I have no doubt that before the patch goes live, we will see a nerf here or there, but I'm okay with that. At the moment, I do think that we're doing a bit to much. They won't be massive, but I do believe that they'll scale us back a little bit.

Either way, we'll walk out of this being able to compete, and I'm okay with that.

question on this how much haste do you have in that gear? As we all know haste will be an even bigger factor for our gear. Assuming you will go for more haste in your next gear the difference will be bigger?