[Priest] Blizzard's Class Feedback - Shadow Edition

[Elicium]

To be honest i do not agree on SW: D it's never intended to be rotation spell and i'm really enjoying the fact that i have to risk sometimes while using it.
It's an awareness check and it will rarely kill you if you are timing it right.

I think the OP was referring to specific fights like Baleroc - where SW: D will def. kill you if you are one of the people taking the crystals when the boss is below 25 percent.

SW: D is hopefully in every SPs rotation/spell priority when the boss is below 25 percent (barring specific situations like Baleroc).

[lovecraft]

Make ES buff passive for shadow or when we are on shadowform and each point of mastery increase for x the damage over time and let shadow orbs to increase the damage from MB but not affecting from ES equal with aflictions but stil we gonna have the agony of how much hard our MB will hit...
And like brusalk said shadowy appartitions is fine about the numbers they will spawn but it is a very bad joke about the damage that they deal and especialy in fights with movement appartitions can be very useful.

If they were to make ES a passive all it would do is just about revert the nerf we took to our passive back in april. It really wouldn't do much. Now if they made ES in the way shadow weaving was back in BC and give it a % chance to gain ES stacks (either max it at 3 stacks or 5 stacks = 10% periodic dmg increase) with a rework harnessed shadows talent in our tree to reflect this. In which you can remove this line "you have 100% chance to gain a shadow orb when critically hit by any attack" with "25/50% chance to gain ES (max 3/5 stacks) when you deal any periodic dmg". (yes 25/50% sound like a lot if you think about it)

[Popesickle]

Change Shadow Word Death to do x% less backlash for every DoT you have on the target?

Empowered shadows + dark evangelism is too much ramp up time IMO, it's like shadow weaving all over again. I like archangel as a cooldown, but ES is bad.

I always thought that having both shadow orbs and apparitions was an annoyance. And our mastery is too clunky.

My recommendation: get rid of shadow orbs and ES mechanic completely. Make mastery affect the movement speed, damage, and spawn chance of apparitions. Why do they walk like slow retarded zombies, they should be screaming and flying towards the target. If they would fly, they would no longer get stuck on things and act generally stupid.

[joyu]

just make a 100% chance to get dot damage increase everytime you cast mb on a target with all the dots.

[Zuziza]

I disagree with:
-The idea that a backlash is a bad thing. We all remember what happened when there was no ICD or limit on SW: D spam at the very end of Wrath: we spammed the shit out of it as much as possible without dying (and even if we were going to die). Hell, I had a healer assigned to me on Blood Queen <25% so we could end the fight that much faster. It's added in as a check because SW: D is a powerful execute, and as far as I'm aware, we're the only class other than warlock that gets to double-dip in the CD.
As for why it's variable: Its damage is increased sub 25% health by 30% with 2 points in Mind Melt, and it can crit. So your lowest extreme is X and your highest extreme is Y*1.3*2*buffs, when the range of original damage is X to Y. If you want to see what your personal X and Y are, do a boring Sim where you cast it on CD on a 100% health Patchwerk, or go try it yourself on a dummy and estimate.
The only way for them to "fix" this by narrowing the range would be to eliminate SW: D above 25%, making it a true execute... and removing its usage for mana restoration (suck it levelers and gearing priests!) and giving us no use whatsoever for Masochism. And even then, that only narrows the range, it doesn't actually mean we use it more often as an execute, it means it will be cast far less often.
SW: D is fine the way it is. QQing that we can't use it on one fight (Baleroc) because your raid comp means you're in the rotation is just noise. That's like whining that we can't use it on that annoying reflect boss in Stonecore because we'll nuke ourselves because we wouldn't pay attention to or dispel his buff.

-Getting rid of orbs/mastery. I sincerely doubt any changes to our mastery would be as well planned as what they did with 4.03a. I do not want to go back to Shadow Weaving, which is what a lot of people suggested. Maybe you don't recall the absurdly slow ramp up time, but it was nowhere near as fast as the ~10 seconds of the start of a fight that it takes to get everything going now. I recall enjoying the long, drawn-out Wrath fights because it was the slowest, most boring crawl to the top of the pack on charts, and the longer the fight, the higher my DPS would go, but it took so damn long to get there. We were the tortoises of the pack; we could do some damage... over the course of at least 5 minutes. I will gladly take a bit of RNG into it if it means I never have to deal with that lazy pace ever again.
That said, the 18% is a bit aggravating, and I do wish there was a way to increase it. If crits from MB had a chance (NOT a guarantee) to proc an orb, it would increase the value of the spell, increase the value of crit, and it wouldn't be game breaking because it's not an orb on demand. Mastery increasing the proc chance would either require a very low increase or it'd practically eliminate RNG as a factor. I don't particularly like RNG, but getting rid of it means the bonus is passive, and that means NERFS. I like where our DPS is atm, and I'm fine with RNG if it means Blizz leaves our numbers alone.

-And this:

However, I do think we need a temporary speed increase ability. Something around 50% speed for roughly 4 seconds would be fine, just something to help with getting melees off of us in PvP. Could easily be worked into the Phantasm talent and become part of Fade to be honest.

Fade is on a 9 second CD with talents; you want the ability to run around for 4 seconds at high speed every 9 seconds? That'd be way too much of an advantage. It can't be tied to Fade for that reason alone. Switching to Inner Will was the option they gave us, at the expense of the 2 GCD's to switch and back, plus DPS loss while it's active. Anything else would have to be a new spell or being able to use Life Grip to pull ourselves to a team member... that could be fun, but I'd have no idea how they'd implement that without just redoing the spell.

What could be fun is if they changed our Apparitions for PVP use. They don't even have to attack, just proc around us and have the same nameplate, and when they proc, they lose target of us (like when a mage pops Mirror Images). The split second it takes for them to figure out which one is the enemy (telltale sign is the health/mana amount, not the name hovering above) gives the priest a GCD to either get away, cast a fear/CC/whatever, or a head start on some damage. Nothing game breaking, just annoying for them and a helpful defense for spriests.

I also say this because HAWHAW apparition damage.... especially when the targets are either out of reach or die too quickly for the Apparitions to get to them. They're nigh useless for PVE, and until they get a buff or some other mechanic added to them, they're not noticeable any more than the range of damage for a non-crit MB.