What the difference with cata and MoP Shadow?
What the difference with cata and MoP Shadow?
Devouring Plague was a long "spammable" dot like Shadow Word: Pain. Only usable against one target though. It dealt damage instantly like SW:P currently does. It healed during its duration. Don't remember exact amount.
Your Shadow Orbs were used for harder hitting Mind Blasts. And a buff called "Empowered Shadows" which increased the damage of your dots after hitting Mind Blast, per shadow orb consumed by MB.
The Mastery increased the damage of your shadow orbs.
Your shadow orbs had a chance to be generated from Mind Flay and Shadow Word: Pain.
Vampiric Embrace was a buff much like Shadowform, and not a cooldown like it is today. It healed everybody all the time for 3 % of your damage done, and you for... 12 %? I think.
God I miss it.
What most people "miss" of Cataclysm Shadow and Mists of Pandaria Shadow is something that wasn't even in Cataclysm for half of the expansion, the t13 4pc bonus of Mind Spike spam on a cooldown.
Don't get me wrong, it's a friggin cool set bonus, and it changed the way you played when you had it. But like, t11 shadow and t12 shadow, the only real differences are...
You had some predetermined ramp up and some RNG determined ramp up before you could do your full damage, RNG rampup could be extended off of a trinket proc if you were lucky. But for 98% of the fight you were still keeping two DoTs up (Pain didn't even count, with the auto refresh), spamming Mind Blast and Shadowfiend on cooldown.
That's really it.
That's what people outside of t13 4pc did. And everyone's nostalgic for "how things used to be" but forgetting that it really wasn't that complicated except for some minor nuance in handling trinket procs/Lightweave. And by that, I mean running things like ShadowGreenLight or whatever. Meh.
~Former Priest/Guild Wars 2 Moderator~
Now TESTING: ArcheAge (Alpha)
Now PLAYING: MonoRed Burn (MtG Standard)
Twitter: @KelestiMMO come say hi!
~When you speak, I hear silence. Every word a defiance~
4pc t13 was the worst part of cata shadow, it turned a great dot class into a drooling arcane mage.
Shadow was strong in cata because of our dots, they did alot of our dmg, so when we had to move our dmg wasn't as gimped as it is in mop.
Even after blizzard blanket nerfed our dots going into firelands we still performed amazing well, and once we got a staff we were godly.
One of often forgot perks of cata shadow which I'd love to come back was flay crits reducing the CD of fiend, getting FM it wasn't uncommon for my fiend to come off CD after 1 min in late FL and early DS with the t12 bonus
No, but what the T13 bonus makes everyone forget was all the fights where you didn't generate a shadow orb for the first 60-90 seconds of a fight.
I will still never forget the Heroic Chimeron fight where I didn't generate my first shadow orb until the boss was at 15%.
~Former Priest/Guild Wars 2 Moderator~
Now TESTING: ArcheAge (Alpha)
Now PLAYING: MonoRed Burn (MtG Standard)
Twitter: @KelestiMMO come say hi!
~When you speak, I hear silence. Every word a defiance~
People always remember the good things, but totally forget all the negatives.
There were flaws in Cata Shadow design of course, but IMO it was a much, much more rewarding spec and very, very unique playstyle for the reasons others have pointed out. It definitely wasn't about the bizarre T13 design.
Shadow now just feels like every single other RDPS spec (excepting the channeled filler, which still feels good). I'm glad some people are thrilled with it now (not sarcasm!), but for me, I try to play it and just . It looks like a Shadow Priest, but it's actually a Pod Person from another class.