3.3 [Shadow] - The Week After

[Nezoia]

So now we had the option to play our new improved selves for a week, and clear Icecrown Citadel twice, this time without random lag, and with better knowlegde to play perfectly.

What's your experience? Are you happy with the changes?

I'm very happy, and being able to compete with the pure dps on some fun nuke fights, like Lady Deathwhisper, is just awesome. It feels better being among the top, when you know you can play it better than some pure dps classes, where we before would be below say, a semi-decent mage, where we should be near the quite good warlock instead.

Of course, most things are encounter specific, and we're yet to see if we scale though out the rest of the instance, but for now, it's really looking good.

How have your guilds approached the increased shadow priest dps? Perhaps they're considering recruiting one more, or taking others in who were benched during TOTGC progress?

[Elix]

I don't play a SP myself, but our regular SP has been rocking the charts so hard. Really happy you guys are back in line doing good DPS.

[Vongimi]

I havent gotten a chance to do pve yet, but pvp has been amazing. I do so much damage now. I was disc playing PMR... we dropped the mage and picked up a resto shaman and did RLS (with a twist, spriest instead of lock) with me respeccing having never played shadow in arena before. Our rating went up 150 points first night.

[Worshaka]

So now we had the option to play our new improved selves for a week, and clear Icecrown Citadel twice, this time without random lag, and with better knowlegde to play perfectly.

What's your experience? Are you happy with the changes?

I'm very happy, and being able to compete with the pure dps on some fun nuke fights, like Lady Deathwhisper, is just awesome. It feels better being among the top, when you know you can play it better than some pure dps classes, where we before would be below say, a semi-decent mage, where we should be near the quite good warlock instead.

Of course, most things are encounter specific, and we're yet to see if we scale though out the rest of the instance, but for now, it's really looking good.

How have your guilds approached the increased shadow priest dps? Perhaps they're considering recruiting one more, or taking others in who were benched during TOTGC progress?

In my experience thus far, i've always been in the top 5 for progression content... that means I was in the Top 5 when we first entered nax and I was top 5 for the first month of Uld and I was top 5 in ToGC25, I just slipped back badly when we did TotC25.

So in that vain with ICC25 being progression content and not what I would term on farm (just yet, although we clear it reasonably easily) nothing has changed except I could safely say i'm top 3.

In terms of encounters:

Marrowgar - Fade allows us superior dps time and dots are effective during bonestorm as he invariably gets out of range. If you just VT spikes you can amp up your damage a bit more, the only time we suffer is if we get picked on by spikes or if you need to dedicate a lot of time to ranged spikes because other people arent.

Lady Deathwhisper - I'm one of the people who is full time on lady and doesn't have to DPS adds, so comparing dps on this encounter is rather redundant. I'm sure if I was asked to do adds, the ability to dot them all would see you pretty high up on the list anyways.

Gunship - DPS is rather inconsequential, but I dot up all the riflemen and AoE the adds that board our ship, so again i'm easily first.

Saurfang - This encounter is very nice for us, I average just over 8K and am only really beaten by one of our rogues who is doing 9.5K pure single target. VT all the adds, keep rolling your dots on Suarfang, all you need to do is manage mana.

Obviously the changes increase our dps by 10% or so, so it makes our potential dps far more competitive... however I still don't think that potential DPS is quite at the level of some of the other classes so I expect us to fall down a bit when the instance is on proper farm. However when doing hard modes etc, classes rarely operate at their potential DPS and our form of DPS usually has us operating somewhat close to our maximum... so I expect us to be extremely competitive if not near top for that type of progression content, ie. where melee classes can't simply concentrate on dps and GCDs have to be used for survival etc.

[majesta]

I'm loving it! The changes are so nice for those that have been frustrated by poor mechanics, but know how to play the class. Was always annoying watching the noob who didn't know how to play their class (i.e DK) and still do crazy damage on boss fights.

[Whoopse]

Big thumbs up here.

Before the patch I had to put 110% in to be competitive on the dps meters, with this buff putting that same effort in finds me being the highest caster dps on many fights and doing extremely well in icc25.

Having a lot of fun as shadow atm, and looking forward to getting 4pc t10 bonus.




http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ssan&n=whoopse

[Crpzz]

How have your guilds approached the increased shadow priest dps?

They went:
Random dpser: "Holy Jesus Crpzz, did shadow get buffed or something? I can't keep up with you anymore"
Crpzz: "nah, we got fixxed"
8)

Atm I'm the only raiding shadow in our guild, we used to roll with three but two fell off the wagon due to school/work obligations.
It actually kinda sucks that I'm the only one, because now I cannot compare my own play with another, nor see how other shadows act in certain situations.

I'm having a blast, always have been when playing shadow, now I just motivate the other dps to work harder.
Nobody wants to be out-dpsed by a priest ;D

[Nezoia]

@Worshaka

On Lady Deathwhisper, just DoT up the Melee Immune adds, gets you even higher dps. The only issue is mana, but with a dispersion during her "aggro reset" on phase shift, and Shadowfiend on every cooldown, I found it manageable.

Also, your saurfang dps would make people think you're not dps'ing the beasts enough ;-) (And clearly, if you beat your melee, they suck quite hard.)

[pitoq]

ours last night on vezax...

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...?s=4735&e=5017

here I died after over aggro ...

did we get any dps buff? no wai!

[syanid]

The changes are great, hopefully we won't fall back again to the bottom after everyone and their alts get filled with ICC gear.
My guild has only 1 shadow priest and me (I play all 3 specs but mostly discipline), so we can't really "stack" sp's and utilize the new buffs at aoe encounters where our VT shines as never before.

[Unholyground]

100% better than it was, Still needs buffs in PVP tho, this being able to dispel my main source of damage is retarded. They need to make all the priest dots do damage = or greater than VT when dispelled, then I would be satisfied.

[Worshaka]

@Worshaka

On Lady Deathwhisper, just DoT up the Melee Immune adds, gets you even higher dps. The only issue is mana, but with a dispersion during her "aggro reset" on phase shift, and Shadowfiend on every cooldown, I found it manageable.

Also, your saurfang dps would make people think you're not dps'ing the beasts enough ;-) (And clearly, if you beat your melee, they suck quite hard.)

I tried dotting those adds but they were dying too fast for it to be worthwhile... so i just concentrate on Deathwhisper... i have no doubt in hardmode i'll have to help out on adds but it seems rather insignificant on normal mode.

As for suarfang, i'm consistently the number 1 damage dealer on the beasts (and i've checked that on every attempt we've done to evaluate what dots I should put up etc), so I think im doing my fair share. While I beat some of the melee on that encounter its not by a number worth discussing... im doing about 8.2K dps and most of them are doing around 7.9 to 8.1k... of course I did say our best rogue was doing 9.5k and there were 1 other above me but I forget who.

I took 1 point in focused mind and that seems to have lessened my mana issues... i wouldn't disperse through a phase change, its best to simply fade and continue dps.

[Tauton]

I'm not a spriest, but we have one in our 25man runs, and he's gone from being in the top 7 or 8 to being in the top 3-4 on most fights.


Just hoping moonkins get a little love too, i try my hardest but can't get above 5th, ever :P

[Deathwatcher]

I think we're doing pretty good, #4 on 1st boss IIC, #1 on the next 2, then #6 on the last. Pretty good I'd have to say.

[Direshadow]

For the first time I a long time I feel like I'm being taken seriously again. I'm beating A lot of pures and I'm usually in the top 6 or 7 on the charts.

[Seradetbc]

8k DPS in a 10man on 2nd boss... was 8.5k on last one until my comp locked up /sigh

[scotty]

better start preparing for the nerfs then

[Kelesti]

better start preparing for the nerfs then

Or bads should start learning to play their "pure" class?

[Medelfart]

In the middle off ToGc 25 i didnt have enough time and didnt like the fact that even the "green geared*" (*a bit fictional) warlock caught up to my dps. My dear Shadowpriest had to be put to sleep for awhile.

The comeback come with patch 3.3, one dummy test and then it were time for a warmup in ToGc 25 and the final show in ICC 25. Okey we shadows maybe just got a 10-15% dps increase but damn i used those numbers, on recount after in the top were some of the meeles, then me after that rest of the meeles and somewhere beside the tanks rest of the ranged* (*a bit fictional ).

So i guess im gonna put my lvl 71 Rogue alt on hold, my Shadow has finally been fixed!

[Deyus]

3.3 is a pretty good performance boost. It seems like Shadow is overall the highest DPS caster (my guild anyway) for long duration single target fights. Arcane mages can still blow us away when they don't have to worry about mana, and affliction locks are pretty powerful under 20% boss health, but overall shadow's looking very good. Mana is a little tighter, but the only real change is that we now actually have to pay attention to when we should use the shadowfiend. In general I find mana consumption to still be in a better place than it was mid T8.

Icecrown normal modes have been a joke - our only wipe so far was the first pull of Lady Deathwhisper. Our priests have done quite well through the encounters there and are near the top on everything besides Saurfang, where the melee run away with the show. I'm looking forward to seeing how we do on the remaining bosses and hard modes after Christmas! Old content has been fun. We're still first (as always) on Yogg, and we can almost match the Unholy DK's on Anub'arak.

One thing that annoys me a bit is being GCD capped during bloodlust (0.9 sec MB / VT casts) but that's not the end of the world. I'm thinking that spell casting is going to be a bit nuts once the 4pc T10 bonus is available (and we lose the T9 2pc).


Edit: I think one of the strangest things things to happen to raid comp since 3.3 is that we no longer have a destro lock! Our two are affliction and demo now..