Shadowform tooltip update

[Deleted]

Nope.

http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t37074-s...7/#post1456924

As EJ also clarifies, it's so we couldn't lock a SW:P with high haste, over a entire fight, ie. using Speedpot and Black Magic proc in the start, and then keep it rollin' for the rest of the fight.

Most likely they'll just scale up VT and DP instead. It's bonus, tbh, less spells for more damage, benefit encounters with annoyances like Snobolds better.
No, SW:P remains precisely like it works today. No haste scaling for it.

I'm pretty dissappointed with blizzard if this is the reason why they thrashed haste on SW:P. It's a broken mechanic for sure, but rather than making MF refresh all damage modifiers on SW:P (like it should have been from day 1), they thrash the whole thing. I understand that they don't want players to exploit the bug with pots, proc trinkets, weapon swapping, heroism and power infusion, but seems like they took the easy way out again.

It's the same broken mechanic that has been a handicap in spriest starting rotation since 3.0, but it's never been a problem to blizz because players couldn't exploit it enough in the absence of crit proc items and enchants.

Anyway, haste on SW:P was a bigger dps increasement than it is on VT or DP, because it doesn't need recasting. Dps wasn't that high to start with and I'm sure it's not the reason for the nerf. Now would be a good time to buff Int scaling to compensate. Unfortunately Blizzard does have a habit of not compensating for nerfs they consider minor, instead they "observe" the situation untill it's forgotten.

[Natarumah]

Double-dip?Where does Mind Blast benefit from Haste in the first place?
With 2 other replenishment providers and 4/5 T10 it becomes redundant and most likely a dps loss.

Mind Blast's casting time is reduced by Haste, just like any other spell with a casting time.

As for Replenishment, yes others provide it as well, but that is still one of our utilities. For a 10man you only need 1 replenisher, but a 25man requires up to 3* because each occurrence of replenishment affects 10 people.
* depending on the number of mana-users in the raid.

[rimmer]

Has anyone posted about this on the US forums to fish for a GC reply? I'm EU scum so i got more chance of a dev reply on here than on my official forums :'(

[syanid]

Mind Blast's casting time is reduced by Haste, just like any other spell with a casting time.

As for Replenishment, yes others provide it as well, but that is still one of our utilities. For a 10man you only need 1 replenisher, but a 25man requires up to 3* because each occurrence of replenishment affects 10 people.
* depending on the number of mana-users in the raid.

So what if Mind Blast cast time is affected by haste? It's not a spammable spell like Fireball so direct gain is negligible.
You need only two replenishers for 25m raid. You always go with two tanks and at least other 3 melee so you get to fill other 20 spots with casters and I've yet to see a raid made out of 20 mana users and only 5 meleers.

[Deleted]

It doesn't matter if you have 5 replenishers or 1, the buff and the targets receiving it will stay the same. It will pick 10 targets lowest on mana every time. The only thing changing is the frequency of replenishment being refreshed, but with the buff being 15s there should be no trouble for a single player to keep it up.

edit:
Actually the Replenishment buff doesn't get refreshed, it get recast, meaning that you can lose replenishment ticks everytime it re-applies. So having more replenishers in the raid will hurt the mana regen!

Worst situation would be to have so many players bringing replenish that the buff gets refreshed more than once per second, meaning it doesn't get the chance to tick at all. No one in the raid will get a single replenishment tick!

I don't care what raidleaders or players believe or want to believe, that is how replenish works.

[Natarumah]

So what if Mind Blast cast time is affected by haste? It's not a spammable spell like Fireball so direct gain is negligible.
You need only two replenishers for 25m raid. You always go with two tanks and at least other 3 melee so you get to fill other 20 spots with casters and I've yet to see a raid made out of 20 mana users and only 5 meleers.

You are correct in saying that with a cooldown, Mind Blast is not as good as Mind Flay when it comes to spamming. What I am saying is that it is unlikely that Mind Blast would get more benefit from Haste than it does now. That is probably why Blizzard announced a proper Nuke for us in Cataclysm.

This discussion was not about how Mind Blast has a cooldown, benefits less from haste or whether we should provide replenishment. It was about whether or not we will drop Mind Blast from our priorities.

About Replenishment, there is some overlap yes. I am not sure how it is for everyone, but I am taken along to raids already considering that I provide replenishment. To have the raid leader pick me for that and then not providing it basically means I am not doing my job.

Will casting Mind Blast really become a DPS loss? I am not sure. As long as it will not be a DPS loss, we will cast it, and by casting it give replenishment. If we stop casting Mind Blast and stop giving replenishment, Blizzard will likely change things because Blizzard wants us to give replenishment.

About the possibility for DPS loss, I made a small calculation, but I am not sure if it is 100% correct; so any input would be appreciated. It simply is the comparison of 0% and 100% haste on Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Flay with the 4pt10 bonus (0.5 seconds off channeling time).

I am assuming here that the bonus is added last, and am using 1000 and 2000 spellpower to make comparisons easier. If there is a DPS anomaly between Mind Flay and Mind Blast, it should be a huge difference.



Coefficients from wowwiki, last tested patch 3.2
Contribution is how much of your spellpower is turned into damage per cast (Mind Blast) or 3 ticks (Mind Flay)
Base damage is the base damage of the spell per the tooltip (averaged for mind blast as it has a damage range)
Base + Contrib is the base damage plus the contribution
DPS is the total damage divided by cast or channeling time

If I calculated it correctly (and it is a rough calculation, granted) Mind Blast will not yield less DPS than Mind Flay. So while we will spam Mind Flay, we will still use Mind Blast.

Edit: smaller table

[Deleted]

You didn't take into consideration that minimum GCD is 1s. Although the MB cast itself takes only 0.75s, you will not be able to cast another spell untill the GCD is over. Using a spell will always take atleast 1s effective casting time, giving "Mind Blast 4" in the table only 1882 dps.

Also, you haven't calculated talents or glyphs, they boost MB and MF different. And I also have a feeling that is not the way the T10 bonus is calculated to MF casting time. The base channeling time will go from 3 to 2.5sec and haste + other cast time reductions are calculated after that (like with penance). 2.5s spell with 100% haste has 1.25s casting time, not 1s.

MB and MF will scale very similary with haste untill 50% haste, at which point MB reaches 1s cast time and it's dps hits a hard cap. MF will continue scaling beyond that and at some point it will reach MB dps. With about 3100-3200sp and 4pc T10 I have calculated that point to be somewhere around 60-70% haste, but ofcourse with T10 gear you would have more sp than that, so sp scaling could shift it a little.

[Nezoia]

The discussion about using Mind Blast or not, is stupid. If we don't use Mind Blast, we don't bring replenishment, and then we might as well get replaced by a Mage or Warlock.

So we'll keep using Mind Blast, no matter what changes.

[Zhivago]

Here http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=24328 is a link to Shadowpriest.com that shows math for MB vs MF, including expected talent damage increases, etc.

[Direshadow]

Sick and tired of this.

I really am.

I mean, it seems like ever since the Wrath Beta, we've been the class that's been pissed on the most. From being crappy in PVP, and to our current situation where our numbers are near the bottom of the chart, to Blizzard knowing this, and even confirming that they're okay with this.

When it seems like we'll finally be able to compete with these recent changes, Blizzard kicks us in the balls again.

[Gadix]

I like the new haste changes. It sucks that we had all 3 dots getting boosted and now we only get two, but I would've been happy if it was only 2 from the beginning. What pisses me off is that instead of acknowledging the change and its reasons, they claim that it was always that way and you just didn't notice, so we changed the tooltip to clarify.

Just come clean and say you'd rather scrap the buff than fix a bug we've had for over a year. Don't insult our intelligence with this "tooltip" crap.

[Direshadow]

What buffs?

After the SW:P nerf on the PTR, we're pretty much back where we are on Live, even with the haste changes.

[Deyus]

It's reasonably obvious that the dev's didn't want all of us to race change to troll, pick up engineering, and bribe our disc brethren for PI on the pull. This is understandable, as it would give a massive advantage to one race / profession when compared to the others. I was not looking forward to paying for a race change and investing 6k gold and a weekend of my time simply to be able to take full advantage of my class/spec.

Rather than emo-raging about the change to SWP, we should try to provide alternate solutions for them to consider before 3.3 goes live. From my perspective the issue is not that SWP scaling with haste boosts our DPS too much, but that whatever code they are using for P&S (and other auto-refresh mechanics) does not work properly. Most of us have worked to exploit this on various encounters throughout Wrath. However, until now it was not a big enough issue to warrant attention as there are very few temporary crit or damage multiplier buffs available in the game (and those that do exist are relatively weak when compared to the temporary haste buffs available).

So, with that in mind, I think the correct thing for the dev team to do would be to re-work the tech behind P&S and other similar auto-refresh mechanics. This is likely a big job, and may not be something that they can realistically accomplish before releasing 3.3.

Another change that would fix this issue would be to get rid of the P&S auto refresh mechanic until such time as they can invest the time to make it function correctly. Replace it with a talent that makes SWP cost zero mana to cast. Ideas for this would include "SWP now has no mana cost when MB is on cooldown" or "SWP now has no mana cost when Misery is active on the target". The second is probably more applicable as it still requires us to expend mana to multi-dot. This solution isn't ideal from a DPS perspective as we lose some GCD's to re-applying SWP, but I think it would be better than having SWP not scale with haste.

[Direshadow]

Deyus, as much as I agree with you, it doesn't matter.


Full raiding Shadow Priests are on the verge of losing their raid spots completely and this change doesn't help us in that situation at all.

I know the PTR is for testing, but I can't believe Blizzard didn't see JUST how much of a DPS loss we'd suffer before the change went to the PTR.

[fabian]

If they can fix the spell so that MF refreshes haste, then I am sure that the change will be reverted back.

They're fine with the fact that some things SW:P will carry over through MF refreshes but do not want anything major to last the entire fight unless it is part of the fight or a buff that can be provided during the entire fight, so that leaves us with Bloodlust/Heroism being the major spell that causes this nerf.

I'm no programmer, but the fix to this seems simple(copying the SP refresh code) but could get pretty complicated.

[Direshadow]

there are other solutions to the problem, Blizzard is just to stupid to even consider them. They've been working with their own broken system for far to long.

[Deyus]

there are other solutions to the problem, Blizzard is just to stupid to even consider them. They've been working with their own broken system for far to long.

Assuming the coding to fix P&S will take too long, I've made my best suggestion for an alternate fix. If you can see other solutions to the problem please explain. I'll gladly go post them in the official forums (with credit to you) if you're too jaded to post there anymore

[Worshaka]

even with swp haste AND the bug with swp you were still only able to do what the other underachieving dps did unless you were just better than them

we're nowhere near the 5% dps difference blizz said they were aiming for

I love how people make up numbers. Blizzard have specifically stated there is no magic number, it doesnt' exist, they balance classes on what they think is reasonable, not to some sort of hidden mathematical formula or secret number.

[Direshadow]

Assuming the coding to fix P&S will take too long, I've made my best suggestion for an alternate fix. If you can see other solutions to the problem please explain. I'll gladly go post them in the official forums (with credit to you) if you're too jaded to post there anymore

Blizzard needs to start thinking outside of the box. In fact, I really wish they'd play some other RPGs other then their own. Maybe they do... but they don't take a lot of inspiration from them.

There are OTHER solutions to the problem, other then just trying desperately to fix a bug...

In fact, if it means my DPS being brought up to acceptable levels, I'd be willing to, dare I say it, go back to re-casting Shadow Word Pain manually.

I know.... crazy thought right?

[Deleted]

I've reported damage modifiers not updating with SW:P as a bug on every PTR since 3.0.

The first thing I tested on the 3.3 PTR was if haste buffs stick on SW:P. Every spriest with a brain would have seen this coming since day 1, blizzard sees it 1-2 months later as usual. They finally had to face the broken SW:P mechanic, atleast they know it's broken now. Ofc there is no time to fix this "new" bug they found for 3.3, so they decide to thrash haste on SW:P instead.