Shadowpriests improvements

[Deleted]

Playing and raiding as a shadow priest there are some wishes im always debating with a guildmate. Shadows should have some improvements in different fields imo, and I'll share our thoughts with you. tell me what you seriously think

CC:

Silence - should either have a smaller cd (10-20 secs) or it should need only 1 talent point spent. I am aware, that shorten the cd of silence would have a huge impact on PvP, but compared to mages, who have 24 secs cd, and with 2 talent points same effect but 1 point less and a shorter cd.

Mind Control - nerfing attack (and casting) speed by 50% but giving the ability to still interact in the fight as a shadow priest instead of standing around and do nothing but CC. So to say granting shadowpriests some kind of "pet". Could also be a glyph or a talent point in order to make it less attractive to disc and holy priests.

Shackle Undead - Turning to "shackle evil", which allows to also shackle demons and elementals.

Support:

Vampiric Embrace - Though vampiric embrace grants the ability to heal the group, its also very limited. There are several possibilities to change it. Though i personally like it a lot, dont get me wrong, but its not really interesting. except for granting vampiric touch etc. Could be either raidwide, or smart buff, like heals you and the lowest 3 raidmembers by 10% of your damage done.

second option would be to make it an aura, like grants the ability to raidmembers to heal themselves by 5%? of their damage done.

Could also add another buff to raid DPS, but that would be illogical because that wouldnt be vampiric at all.

Oh and a graphical aura on the floor similar to the one in WC3 would be cool, because except for the black glow shadows dont look that evil like their cast tooltips. And shadow orbs look is lame !

Mana Support:

I believe its dull to have to manage mana that much while in the 25% phase of a boss you almost end out with full mana. Dont know how you other guys struggle or dont struggle with your mana.

AoE / Mass Damage:

Adding a different talent as the ultimate but not totally remove dispersion:

Misery loves company (channeled) - spreads your vampiric touch, your shadow word pain as well as your devouring plague among all enemy targets in 20 yds range of the priest (or the target) at half duration. (while you channel they also refresh themselves) other options would be it channels for "lasts until cancelled", but that would be bleh. But it could also have some long channel duration. the idea behind it: you dont make much damage initially but it improves dps in fights where there are a lot adds.)

Balance of stats:

Critical strike and mastery rating: improve the utility of these two to have the same value for shadowpriests like haste rating does.

[Irony]

I like the idea of "Misery loves company", basically just make it a "bad" pestilence. Though, to be honest, I like where Spriests are at the momet, excluding the fact that we must blow Warlocks for dark intent.

[Deleted]

You could never have silence on such a short CD cause it would screw over pvp - this i can asure you will not happen
The shackle idea is pretty cool its not very priest like being able to elemental's but demons for sure.
Again the Vamp Embrace was changed recently cause it was to strong pre cata i remember i had like 3-4k hps on LKheroic one day and they are happy with it the way it is and im sure this will not be tweaked cause it will make shadow to strong in pvp survivability.
Would be nice if we could have 3% raid damage so you don't have to make mage/Hunter spec a weaker spec ( if you don't have a ret paladin that is) They gave 3% raid damage to one hybrid class , why not us aswell.
Your mind control suggestion was very odd and didn't really understand it , it'd be nice if we had some imuinty to pushback / interupt for a few seconds of the mind control but again i don't really see them changing that either
Mana is rarely an issue tbh if your struggling for mana just use Sw: D every 10-15 seconds ye its a dps loss but not mana = no dps. Or get a cancel aura macro for dispersion and cancel it like 3s in or use it when moving as we don't have anything really strong to hit with anymore on the move as Devouring plague costs to much mana do spam on the move like you could in 3.4
And you are very mad if you think they'd let us spread our dots :P epically our main magic dot.

They have made mastery very good for us tbh from 15% extra damage to dots to 27% i have so we cant complain about that 47% with Mirror proc which is awesome providing your lucky with shadow orb procs which im usually not

Im honestly happy with the state of shadow at the moment its a shame that we are slightly handicapped by needing dark intent to compete for top spots in meters but i supose thats just wow for you

[HeatM1ser]

My 2 cents...

Silence is more of a PvP ability, so I'm not too concerned about it being buffed since I don't PvP.

I like mind control as it is. Sure, it definitely sucks to have to stand in one place to mind control something...but if you mind control the right NPC, you can CC and attack using that NPC's abilities. Mages can't do that...they cant using the NPC's abilities against them. I absolutely LOVE to MC in heroics.ts really fun to see and use an NPC's abilties and find out which one is the best MC target. For example, when I MC the witches in TotT, I'll do 30K+ DPS and massive damage during that pull. I think their AoE ability is called Typhoon, and its a beast of an ability. The aquamages in there are also really good DPS. So, although my priest has to stand in one spot to MC, and pools of bad stuff may spawn under him, our CC can help down other mobs. And if a pool or fissure spawns under my priest, I simply break MC and move, then pick up MC again. I think MC is a little OP if used correctly.

I agree that you should be able to shackle demons, but if that were to happen I believe the end results would wind up affecting PvP more than PvE. If Blizz was to shorten the CD on silence AND allow priest to shackle demons, priest would own locks in arenas.

I like your suggestion about VE healing the 3 lowest raid members, but I think that the shadow tree would have to be redone so that its a talent you have to put points in to get. I know VE healing isnt great or anything, but making the changes you suggested to it would nerf a fight like heroic Chimaeron...so I think priest would have to sacrifice in another area by having to allocate a point or two into the new VE talent and take a point or two from somewhere else. I don't think the aura idea is all that great because it sounds a little OP....especially when your raiding with extremey well-geared players who can do massive DPS. It might even make DPSers feel like they dont have to watch their threat as much because they know that a big burst of damage will heal them if they pull threat.

As far as mana goes, I don't think its a problem. From what I;ve read, throwing SW into your rotation is a DPS loss. I only use it when I start going OOM and need replenishment, or my target is below 25% health. In multiple-adds fights, its easy to drain your mana DOT-ing everything up, but a skill spriest will switch from inner fire to inner will for DOTing, and then back to inner fire when you dont need to DOT a bunch of adds. Some fights I have to manage mana well, while other fights I have absolutely no issue with my mana pool. It probably can be improved so that if your playing your spriest correctly you will be extinguishing your mana pool just about at the same time as the boss goes down.

As far as AoE goes, it needs to be buffed. In 4.1 Blizz says that they are doubling the damage of mind sear, which comes on top of a previous 15% buff to mind sear. I always am top damage in a fight like Cho'gall where you have to burn a bunch of adds fast, but I'm rather useless on the oozes until at least the 3rd wave. With the mind sear buff I think shadow priest will be more useful against a bunch of adds like in the Cho'gall or Maloriak encounters.Spreading your DOT's would be really nice, but would be OP too.

TBH, it sounds like you should reroll a mage with the suggestions your making. A lot of your suggestions sound like your trying to make a shadow priest be more like a fire mage. I'm surprised that you didnt suggest something similar to combustion+impact proc that totals the sum of your dots up to place a new DOT worth that value and then have the ability to spread it to everything in a certain range.

IMO shadow priest are pretty good as they are. I think their AoE needs to be improved, but you can't buff them as much as your suggesting or your turning a hybrid class into a pure nuking class with hybrid capabilities and OP-ness in PvP. I agree that shadow priests should have to juggle secondary stats more.As a matter of fact, I started a thread last week about hit rating and how undervalued it has become in Cata. At 10.5% hit I miss less than 2% of the time...which is pretty bad when your rocking 2300 haste and get off alot more casts and DOT's because of the high haste. I don't think that Blizz can change the way crit is valued without changing the way dark intent works,though...so mastery and hit would have to be improved upon.

I dunno...some of the ideas you have are good, but I think some of them are a little OP or fire-mageish. I'm interested in seeing what others have to say.

[Palebane]

They need to separate the abilities for PvP and PvE. I'm sick of getting dicked over because of the gay ass arena.

[Deleted]

hardly getting dicked over shadow priest are perfectly fine in pve we don't need a damage increase as much as id like one.
Yeah we're getting a mind sear buff but im sure majority people would agree and say they are happy with shadow as it is some of your 'improvements' where far fetched to say the least.

[Daerken]

My .02 cents...

I just had to... I don't know if it's intentional, but the right saying for that would be: "My .02 dollars..."

[Valynvin]

AoE / Mass Damage:

Adding a different talent as the ultimate but not totally remove dispersion:

Misery loves company (channeled) - spreads your vampiric touch, your shadow word pain as well as your devouring plague among all enemy targets in 20 yds range of the priest (or the target) at half duration. (while you channel they also refresh themselves) other options would be it channels for "lasts until cancelled", but that would be bleh. But it could also have some long channel duration. the idea behind it: you dont make much damage initially but it improves dps in fights where there are a lot adds.)

so u basiccly wants that spriest are best aoe class ;x just thinking how op that would be ;O think of halfus hc or cho'gall or magmaw etc. would be freaking awesome to spreads dots but well would be to fckn op but well yes shadows need new ae spell and actually the spread id issnt bad but it should spread just Vampiric touch or shadow word pain then ae would be fine as hell

[HeatM1ser]

I just had to... I don't know if it's intentional, but the right saying for that would be: "My .02 dollars..."

fixt!

[Deleted]

Well Im not a high end content raider anymore, since work and study etc. and thats why I chose a rather casual guild with friends on a different server over my last one which had 5-6 raiddays per week but was successful.

Silence is indeed more of a pvp ability but its also necessary in some pve content, and when you dont have the right classes nearby its sometimes a struggle. We usually dont have many classes with interrupt / cs / silence. Latest kills with Maloriak the resto shaman is forced to interrupt the add spawn (dds are: hunter, 2 locks, bad mage)

In terms of MC its true, you can do a lot of fun stuff with the adds but its personally annoying to cancel and to retake when you gotta move out of something.

Let's face it: our DPS is okay for being hybrid, though other hybrids are easier higher: druid. shaman. example: I got ilvl 354. doing 14k DPS on dummy selfbuffed. enhance shaman, buddys twink: ilvl 348 doing his 15-16k DPS on dummy. another friend as moonkin also does slightly more DPS (14,5-15) with same ilvl. Im all enchanted right socketed, and stuff? (6900 spellpower, 25.6% haste, 13.6% crit, 11 mastery, 16.99% hit -- all selfbuffed) or maybe i am too stupid to play a spriest but then again in raid im usually 17-22k DPS depending on the fight (once i pugged and i met this guy from guild no.1 on our server and he whispered me that my damage is quite good for shadow, if i could give some hints).
But compared to the other hybrids our support is way too low. Shaman has its totems, heroism and a proper spell counter. druids have their battleres, innervate, and solar beam. priest has? little groupheal which can be compared to healing totem and then nothing. Dont get me wrong I dont want other classes abilities, and i dont want to change main, i really love my priest and its full of good memories, like several server firsts, etc. And its all in all a good and stable class but looking at other classes our DPS together with support is just inferior to other classes, hybrids and pure dps classes.

thats why I'd say change the support we have to something more useful and people want us for it.

And by the way I strongly dislike the arguement: youre hybrid you shouldn't top DPS thats what pure DPS classes are for. then we should return to classic where there were only pure DPS and no hybrid DPS. I don't mind pure topping, but then hybrids should have _useful_ support especially more useful than pures, to have their right to exist in a raid.

Spreading dots would be too OP is kind of nonsense. Mindsear will roughly do about 3k per 0,8 sec with 4.1 if they double the damage. you use it without any pretime just set it on the tank and let it work. right now, just my dots do 5-7k DPS per mob. but you roughly need 3-4 sec to get it set up. and the dots dont tick instant but need another 3 secs to tick. so the damage done to adds should roughly be equal to what mind sear will do and it would be more interesting more fun than stupid mind sear. I dont get the point why you think Shadow is all dots. its not. the basis of spriest are the dots and why not work with them in aoe.

And I wasn't aware the fact that fire mages can control a target and do something else, can cc undead, demons and elementals, nor was I aware that a fire mage can heal the group or has to spread dots in order to do aoe.

[Bigwolfe]

I read most of the posts in this tread and im not going to comment on them. But to the OP, mana really isnt an issue. Even when I stepped into raids and was sporting blues and greens I just used SWD on CD and I had no mana issues. As for AOE, I dont care about mind sear, almost every fight you are able to multi dot the adds(VT only) and keep nuking the boss. Mind Sear is a waste of mana, and not as much dmg as a single or worse case 2 VT's. I'm also finishing on the top 5 on every fight at the very least, most fights myself and the other SP in my guild are #1 and #2. You just have to figure out how to play your class during a specific encounter. Figure out when its ok to multi dot, when to mind spike and when to use SWD in your rotation because your going to need the mana down the line in a fight. SP's dont need a buff atm. although the person behind the keyboard might need one....


Edit: Switching between Inner will and Inner fire for multi dotting is a huge waste of time and dmg. Use SWD or cast your fiend in that GCD.

[Deleted]

i think we´re perfectly fine pve wise, the only thing i really really really want to see is:

your shadow word:death also grants 1 shadow orb when used on targets at or above 80% health.

something like this because it´s so annoying when i´m 30seconds into a fight and not a single orb has procced -.-

[Bigwolfe]

^ now that is a good idea. maybe something like a 35% chance tho. every SWD would be to OP.

[thedankson]

I like the idea of "Misery loves company", basically just make it a "bad" pestilence.

Remember when Pestilence spread DP? I put out some crazy dps on aoe packs while healing heroics in early, early WotLK.

I strongly support a buff to VE but I'm not sure about the rest.

[Keamy]

The only thing I agree with here is that 3 points for our silence is pretty steep considering it is baseline in mages and boomkins get a silence for 1 point. I think maybe switching Psychic Horror and Silence in the talent trees might be a viable solution, but there could be something I'm not considering.

[Syrril]

Shadow priests are in a good spot. Top half in DPS for PvE, just below average in arenas(but not at the bottom like most seasons), pretty good in BG's.

Only obvious change I see is switching Psychic Horror and Silence in the shadow tree. Shouldn't spending 2 points in imp Psychic Scream lead to another fear effect? Doesn't make sense the way it is now. Also it seems ridiculous to have to spend 3 points to get an interrupt.

Mastery could use an adjustment. Like druids, mastery does nothing for us during large parts of combat.

VE is underrated. With priests doing good DPS and health pools being so large, I've done as much as 40% overall healing vs other designated healers in my group. Fights with prolonged AoE damage we help considerably. Cho'gall end phase, Chimaeron, Maloriak phase 3, and Atramedes for a few examples.

Last improvement I almost forgot about is moving mind spike out of the shadow interrupt lockout. In arena's we are crippled vs any semi-decently played melee class. We have little chance of getting a cast-time shadow spell off on a warrior or rogue between all the interrupts/stuns.

[xMuse]

I think everyone agrees with switching Silence and Psychic Horror in the shadow tree and it'll happen eventually. Blizzard always seems slow to help shadow priests in any way though.

Imo VE doesn't need to be changed. Shadow priests don't need good raidwide healing, we need better self-healing without mana costs and loss of damage mitigation in having to drop shadowform. My solution is to buff the healing portion of Devouring Plague.

And the Misery Loves Company idea is waaaay OP. They're buffing Mind Sear, that's all we need.

Otherwise shadow priests are fine. MC is good as it is. Dispersion is a pretty disappointing end-talent but oh well. Our mana is just fine. The only fights we should be running out of mana on are the same fights other DPS are running out of mana on. If you need to, use SW: D on CD. Sure, its a DPS loss, but so is the GCD of Life Tapping, the channel of evocation, etc. It's a trade-off. And Mind Spike is broken sharing a lockout with our other shadow spells, but it'll get fixed soon hopefully.

[Kayona]

Mastery could use an adjustment. Like druids, mastery does nothing for us during large parts of combat.

I don't play a druid in mastery range but it seems that our mastery does way more during those large parts. It's not only the plus damage affecting mindblast. It gives us a buff to our DoT-damage which we are supposed to maintain over the fight.
IMO our mastery is fine or at least it could be worse.

To the point "MC is OP": No, it isn't. Just because you can use some of the abilities of some PvE-mobs (in heroics) the spell dont't become "OP". It would be if we could use the spells of other players in PvP or if there were any bossfights where we could control something with a huge damage/healing output.

I totally agree with the change of Silence and Psychic Horror.

And last but not least I have to agree with Syrril about the removing of the lockout for Mind Spike. Everytime I get a spelllock I want to use it because I remenber the bluepost saying we should be able to cast at least one spell without fearing a spelllock or during one. Other classes just switch to another spellschool (e.g.: frost mage to fire).

[Deleted]

@ bigwolfe:
I never said I ever was about to go oom. Please read correctly, I said its kind of strange to manage it through the fight carefully but in the end you get full mana. It's paradox, but not really an issue. So please read right before you start insulting people. I also never said a word about having low DPS or ranking.

@ bigwolfe, syrril
Actually I never complained about the DPS at all, I said its okay. I just wanted to improve the support, because compared to other classes we have less, and the fun factor.

@ syrril
I hardly believe you having 40% overall healing with VE, that would mean you heal more than 2-3 healers plus several other classes who support healing (prot pala e.g.). you should keep both feet on the ground.

@ xMuse
- In which way should self-healing help supporting the raid? Usually you should even take less damage than anyone in the raid. (Dispersion when being hit / special effects or moving out of aoe)
- MLC does roughly the same DPS like mind sear, but its more interesting. I already stated that in a later post. It is also easier to even, because the dots are part of our normal dps.

[Veiled]

Shadowpriests are amazing the way we are... in pve anyway. My idea of PvPing is queueing while drunk and pewpewing in my PVE gear (lol).