Are Shadow Priests really as bad as people say?

[mindp]

Man, this thread drives me to drinking.

[Yvaelle]

Man, this thread drives me to drinking.

Yep, I keep it open just to centralize the QQ - lest a new thread be born.

[Jacob Sweets]

Shadow is not as bad as people in this thread say. I went shadow on my priest for the first time after collecting many pieces for it while running heroic siege as disc and I really don't see how people are saying it's so bad. On fights such as protectors, norushen, galakaras, shamans and pretty much almost every fight this tier with more than one targets I was in the top 5-7 dps only behind arcane mages and aff warlocks by a pretty small margin. I ranked top 200 on plenty of fights my first time going shadow this entire expansion. And that was with a ~576 shadow set with non upgraded trinkets.

The only fights I was behind everyone else was juggernaut, blackfuse and thok but even then I was beating ret pallies and/or ele shaman (on boss damage, not bat damage).

Shadow has the potential to beat in the top 5-8 on majority of the bosses this tier. I kind of think the problem here lies with the person behind the keyboard, not with shadow itself. Shadow itself is not bad at all.

[Syenite]

Shadow has the potential to beat in the top 5-8 on majority of the bosses this tier. I kind of think the problem here lies with the person behind the keyboard, not with shadow itself. Shadow itself is not bad at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier

Just because 1 out of 10.000.000 parses will be on par with the max produced by other specs it doesn't merrit the shear lack of power within the not-so-bloody-random parses.

[Jacob Sweets]

<snip>

Just because 1 out of 10.000.000 parses will be on par with the max produced by other specs it doesn't merrit the shear lack of power within the not-so-bloody-random parses.

Not sure what you are implying or even saying for that matter.

All my implications come from this. The people who complain about their spec (shadow) being underpowered on the forums represent a very small amount of the actual heroic raiding shadow priest in the community. I'm implying that just maybe these implications of shadow being underpowered when played to it's full potential are not accurate. It may be possible that something is going wrong along their end (not playing the spec correctly, guild strats preventing them from doing their full potential, or just plain bad at shadow) or they are exaggerating to a pretty high extend.

There are really only 3 bosses this tier where shadow can find itself near the bottom on the charts but even in those cases it will still be beating some specs like retribution, elemental such as juggernaut, thok (not counting bat damage) and blackfuse.

[Nachturnal]

So some experience with Shadow Priest. When I bought the digital deluxe edition of WoD, I boosted a priest, and played shadow. It's like playing an affliction lock with heals, and less dot staring.

Anyways, one day, I'm playing my mage, farming secrets, at the time, my mage was 557ilvl. In the last wing of ToT, I came across a 575 shadow priest who was helping a guildie farm legendary mats. Now I didn't have my meta or cloak, yet I was keeping up with this priest, on Iron Qon, I beat him in dps, next 2 fights, neck and neck.

So I stopped playing my shadow priest that day. I'm a very DPS-centric player so take my experience with a grain of salt. I'm all about the numbers. But that day I didn't want to waste my time with a subpar class, no offense to shadow priests out there lol. I do play WW Monk and Ret Pally even though they have average DPS, but they're really fun to play for me.

[Deleted]

Shadow is behind ele on all 3 of those fights.

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/5#

[Jacob Sweets]

Shadow is behind ele on all 3 of those fights.

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/5#

First of all warcraft logs / raid bots can't tell you anything and linking them doesn't solve your case or prove anything. And you honestly cannot use that as an excuse to be bottom dps every fight. If you do you most likely are proving my point back to my original statement on that.

Secondly comprehension would tell you boss damage (AKA single target dps). Elemental seems high because (As I clearly stated before) they AoE bats and cleave mines etc. Shadow boss damage is always higher. Elemental has one of the best aoe sells which is why they seem higher. But again this is all assuming the player behind the keyboard is actually skilled at their spec.

Again, the excuses for being "worst dps" every fight are not justified and are most likely exaggeration or lack of knowledge on their class.

[Clrg]

Not sure what you are implying or even saying for that matter.

All my implications come from this. The people who complain about their spec (shadow) being underpowered on the forums represent a very small amount of the actual heroic raiding shadow priest in the community. I'm implying that just maybe these implications of shadow being underpowered when played to it's full potential are not accurate. It may be possible that something is going wrong along their end (not playing the spec correctly, guild strats preventing them from doing their full potential, or just plain bad at shadow) or they are exaggerating to a pretty high extend.

There are really only 3 bosses this tier where shadow can find itself near the bottom on the charts but even in those cases it will still be beating some specs like retribution, elemental such as juggernaut, thok (not counting bat damage) and blackfuse.

There is a reason why we use raidbots a lot over here because facts > anecdotal data. Nobody in the right mind will pick a shadow priest over any other ranged dps for the last 3 boss in hc progress.

[Syenite]

Not sure what you are implying or even saying for that matter.

All my implications come from this. The people who complain about their spec (shadow) being underpowered on the forums represent a very small amount of the actual heroic raiding shadow priest in the community. I'm implying that just maybe these implications of shadow being underpowered when played to it's full potential are not accurate. It may be possible that something is going wrong along their end (not playing the spec correctly, guild strats preventing them from doing their full potential, or just plain bad at shadow) or they are exaggerating to a pretty high extend.

There are really only 3 bosses this tier where shadow can find itself near the bottom on the charts but even in those cases it will still be beating some specs like retribution, elemental such as juggernaut, thok (not counting bat damage) and blackfuse.

Alright, lets help you along. The absolute top parses are statistical outliers and in most cases very hard if not impossible to reproduce. They will require everything to line up to your very needs, giving you the most uptime on aoe or whatever else is possible to cheese.

If you take the 5% strongest shadowparses this tier and hold them up against a lot of other specs, not all, but a large portion of the remaining specs you will notice that the top 5% shadowpriests will not always keep up with half the warlock, mage or hunter population.

Now, you stating that a lot of priests dont play their character to its full potential, sure. That is the case for a lot of things, including all other classes. I usually topped every single fight in my guild, not because i'm the best payed this world has ever seen - but because most of my guildroster consists of mouthbreathing keyboardturners with no sence of direction in life.

A few examples:
Fallen protectors 25Hc: Multidotting, little aoe etc. A fight you'd expect shadow to do well at. To some extend it does - except for the fact that a top 5% shadowpriest will do the same dps as the top: 50% warlocks, 25% mages, (10-15)% monks & warriors.

Iron Jug.25hc: Singletarget, no adds, no multidotting. a top 5% Spriest will do similar dps as a: top 40% warlock, 30% rogue, 25% mage yada yada yad.

The same pattern goes for just about any fight. And if you'd bother looking at data avaialable you'd notice there being a large difference between top 25% and top 5% mages - hence saying that only Spriest have players not doing their theoretical max is not correct as far as i'm concerned.

You seem rather occupied by what numbers elemental shaman seem to be pulling - and yes, elemental does once again have the short end of the stick compared to mages, rogues, warriors, warlocks, you name it. On the bright side shamans do have the chance to play enhancement - which happens to do rather well.

TL;DR: Wanting to single out shadowpriests as a group of less skilled players with a detrimental approach to dps is a load of ****.

[Yvaelle]

First of all warcraft logs / raid bots can't tell you anything and linking them doesn't solve your case or prove anything. And you honestly cannot use that as an excuse to be bottom dps every fight. If you do you most likely are proving my point back to my original statement on that.

Kind of funny, coming from somebody linking nothing to support his claims. Objectively collected, quantitative, empirical evidence - using hundreds of thousands of data samples - is a pretty rigorous and accepted basis for scientific analysis - and the conclusions it suggests.

If you would like to provide something more than your biased, personal, anecdotal, qualitative evidence in response - then I might accept your appeal to a higher standard of rigour than the mere hundreds of thousands of sample logs collected and averaged online.

[Vorality]

Kind of funny, coming from somebody linking nothing to support his claims. Objectively collected, quantitative, empirical evidence - using hundreds of thousands of data samples - is a pretty rigorous and accepted basis for scientific analysis - and the conclusions it suggests.

If you would like to provide something more than your biased, personal, anecdotal, qualitative evidence in response - then I might accept your appeal to a higher standard of rigour than the mere hundreds of thousands of sample logs collected and averaged online.

Some big words make you look smart, too many big words make you look foolish because you're trying to prove someone wrong a bit too hard, lol. I'd tone it down a bit. I only know this because no one, especially yourself, wouldn't talk like that or even come close to talking like that irl. Keeping your words close to who you actually are instead of who you're pretending to be will make your posts more reasonable and less daunting.

[Jacob Sweets]

TL;DR: Wanting to single out shadowpriests as a group of less skilled players with a detrimental approach to dps is a load of ****.

You're jumping to conclusions. I wasn't implying every shadow priest who complains about lack of damage to be a lesser skilled player. The implication was referring to that OR numerous other possible reasonable possibilities. Along with another possibility of simply "following" their fellow peers's complaints. There could be a lot of valid reasons : guild strat preventing you from putting out maximum potential (skilled player but strat disallows competitive damage), exaggerating or under performing etc. The list goes on. There are many obstacles that could prevent them from keeping up with everyone else on the 11 boss fight I did not name

I'm sure there are plenty of highly skilled shadow priest on this thread but the overall reasoning for their complaints may not be fully understandable with valid reasoning that doesn't refer to my previous listed obstacles etc. Again, I'm not saying you aren't highly skilled at a shadow priest because for all I know you could be one of the most knowledgeable. That goes for pretty much everyone here who has cleared heroic content on a shadow. That along with many of causes could be what's holding you back, I don't review each and everyone of your logs so I couldn't tell you.

Also the fact that I was able to rank top 200 on quite a few fights at 576 my first time playing shadow kind of diverts the reasoning.

[Dierdre]

I was able to rank top 200 on quite a few fights at 576 my first time playing shadow

You don't say?

[Jacob Sweets]

You don't say?

In case you were unable to read my previous post. I main spec disc and gathered plenty of shadow gear for off spec before actually playing it.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

You don't say?

Implying that 576 is anywhere close to good gear with item upgrades. No it isn't.

Shadow has the potential to beat in the top 5-8 on majority of the bosses this tier. I kind of think the problem here lies with the person behind the keyboard, not with shadow itself. Shadow itself is not bad at all

A good Shadow Priest can be the top Dps of a shitty 25man guild. A good Shadow Priest can beat a mediocre Ele or Ret on every fight this tier. A perfect Shadow Priest, can NOT beat a decent (as in a guy who knows how to play, but still makes obvious mistakes here and there) Lock, Mage or Rogue. That, IS bad design, and a very real problem.


As for the bolded statement. If you were close to topping any fights as Shadow Priest, I suggest you look at how the other members of your raid ranked for their own classes. If you beat them as Shadow Priest, chances are high, that they were not even within the top 200 (something that is very easy to do if you know how to play and have the gear). Ofc there are bad Shadow Priests aswell, yes, they like to use the shit state of our class as an excuse for poor play, but there are also bad players of all other classes, all the way up to the top 50 guilds.

The fact remains, if you compare a perfect SP parse, to a perfect "anything else", we will be behind, with the gap being VERY large up to the most OP specs.

[Raiju]

Implying that 576 is anywhere close to good gear with item upgrades. No it isn't.

It's more than enough to rank with for all but the most popular specs though.

[Calamari]

Man, this thread drives me to drinking.

Find myself coming back here too for no apparent reason.. guess it's like watching a smoking car wreck, you know it doesn't help to stare at it, but you can't look away either.

Bottoms up!

[mindp]

Some big words make you look smart, too many big words make you look foolish because you're trying to prove someone wrong a bit too hard, lol. I'd tone it down a bit. I only know this because no one, especially yourself, wouldn't talk like that or even come close to talking like that irl. Keeping your words close to who you actually are instead of who you're pretending to be will make your posts more reasonable and less daunting.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL Don't use hard words? Ladies, gentlemen and masters of the English language: the US education system at work here.


Pretending to be a simpleton doesn't project intelligence.

[Dierdre]

the US education system at work here.

Hard word is hard.