[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Fleckens]

What are you smoking? :P I'm 8/10m so I dont know where to rank myself, but I totally disagree that a good player can consistently get to 97-99% on all fights in mythic, not at all. Even if i decided to ignore most of the mechanics I dont think I could do that, and same applies to my guildies and even people in guilds better than mine i usually track. I think you understimate (and a LOT) how much luck you need to have to reach those %. I guess maybe people in methods can achieve that, for sure not all the good players in guilds 8/10 mythic (which I wouldnt consider pro but even not total shits).

First thing I do agree with you on, at least for early progression you're not that likely to rank high as you're being ranked against other extremely good players, not to mention a lot of people private log so a lot of those with public logs already cleared the place. Also it depends a lot on your tactic whether you can rank high or not. For example elisande if you skip 4th ring you're not gonna rank that high because you're ignoring adds after the first 2(well, unless you have bracers) and just singletargeting the boss. Or a more extreme example would be tichondrius where all the top logs will be where they are keeping the bloods alive for much longer.

[Jullyx]

What are you smoking? :P I'm 8/10m so I dont know where to rank myself, but I totally disagree that a good player can consistently get to 97-99% on all fights in mythic, not at all. Even if i decided to ignore most of the mechanics I dont think I could do that, and same applies to my guildies and even people in guilds better than mine i usually track. I think you understimate (and a LOT) how much luck you need to have to reach those %. I guess maybe people in methods can achieve that, for sure not all the good players in guilds 8/10 mythic (which I wouldnt consider pro but even not total shits).

Depends how you define "good" then, I guess. I think you can. Again, with exceptions like tich and spellblade depending on strats. I play in a casual 2 day guild mostly for the social aspect, so I can't talk about the "upper" bosses with the same certainty.

[Deleted]

They did also buff other legendaries, but clearly they just think the level of something like prydaz, shoulders, cloak and belt is where they want things at, so bracers had to take a small nerf while others like helm and sephuz got a small buff.

And again I think it's just better to balance classes at their base level rather than around legendaries, so the less impact they have the better as it's pretty much impossible to balance them perfectly.

I dont like legendaries, I dont like the farm that comes with it, and if it was for me I'd be much happier if they let us upgrade to 950 2 pieces of gear without special effects. Its impossible to balance certain things, even in wod with just the ring it favored a lot more burst classes.
That said, since this is the system they choose, I rather know that if im lucky I can get wrist, than having everything nerfed to the bottom.

Not that I trust anymore what they have to say, but i'd really like to know from blizzard why they decided to nerf the bracers and not touch at all other legendaries that are overall better.

- - - Updated - - -

Depends how you define "good" then, I guess. I think you can. Again, with exceptions like tich and spellblade depending on strats. I play in a casual 2 day guild mostly for the social aspect, so I can't talk about the "upper" bosses with the same certainty.

Well from my experience, Anomaly and Trilliax can give pretty high %, on skorp, aluriel, krosus, bota, tich, star definately no way you can get 97-99% constantly like you said. And i'm not talking just about shadow, all classes... theres no way you can get 97%+ all the time as long as you're good.

[Fleckens]

I dont like legendaries, I dont like the farm that comes with it, and if it was for me I'd be much happier if they let us upgrade to 950 2 pieces of gear without special effects. Its impossible to balance certain things, even in wod with just the ring it favored a lot more burst classes.
That said, since this is the system they choose, I rather know that if im lucky I can get wrist, than having everything nerfed to the bottom.

Not that I trust anymore what they have to say, but i'd really like to know from blizzard why they decided to nerf the bracers and not touch at all other legendaries that are overall better.

So you pretty much agree with me that the system is shit, but because it worked out in your favor you want it to stay as it is. That's fine, although It does mean I can't take you seriously in any balance discussion. And yeah I do also want to know why they didn't change a lot of other things as there are definitely still classes with large difference in their legendaries, mages probably being a prime example.

Also actually if we go by the logic that they should just leave things as they are, why should they even have bothered with any changes in the first place, like the ones they did in 7.1.5 where they buffed bracers and nerfed shoulders and belt, surely they should just have kept things as they were at the start?

[Isentropy]

There's multiple reasons that altogether caused a shift in how we rank our legendaries. The obvious first answer is the shift in our playstyle, from StM to Legacy. This devalued the belt on its own, and on top of the nerf this caused it to fall behind a bit (though still useful on ST fights, of which there aren't that many in Nighthold). After the belt got nerfed, this left the shoulders as king of the castle, and the shoulders were already very strong before then - this caused the nerf to the shoulders, and they are still considered quite strong.

Next up, the bracers. Why did they buff them? They were simply weak compared to the belt and the shoulders in an StM world, and so in an effort to reduce the difference between legendaries they buffed them. Do note that the wrists got buffed before the shoulders or belt got nerfed. From Blizzard's point of view, this probably caused them to lose sight of just how strong the legendaries were/should be, again taking into account that we went from exclusively using StM to barely, if at all. Perhaps the most important part about all of this is simply fight design. Not only are the bracers currently the best in terms of overall damage, they also offer useful damage, in that you get increased priority target damagr when multiple targets have dots on them. Something that is perhaps overlooked in all this is the fact that the bracers essentially remove all punishment for dotting, and in fact, reward you for doing so. Globals spent on applying dots are lost globals for a short while (in terms of damage), but the bracers directly convert that short while of not doing any direct damage into... direct damage. Multidotting being so prevalent in Nighthold and the many situations where there's a boss and multiple adds up at the same time make for the simplest explanation why the bracers are currently the best.

In hindsight Blizzard probably should've buffed the bracers from 2 to 3% in the first place, but that's.. well, hindsight. I'd much rather see Blizzard focus on the legendary that is actually a problem from a design point of view, namely The Twins' Painful Touch. Still a very strong effect, if the timing is right borderline OP, and even if the timing isn't right it's still possible to make use of the buff well. But that's where the problem lies exactly: if the timing isn't right you have to do janky shit just to not cast Mind Flay. It's a pain to play with, and enforces a shitty playstyle that I can't believe Blizzard would be happy with, or if they intended it to be that way in the first place. Maybe in 7.2.5 they'll be able to address that issue.

[dmfg]

On the face of it, it does initially sound fair to slightly nerf the bracers. But then aren't you simply left with the shoulders being the BIS in (almost) all situations, and end up in the same place?

So what next, nerf the shoulders too, trying to hit that sweet spot where they're further behind in single target but slightly better with multiple targets? Then what about the cloak? The belt?

In the end, there are essentially 2 possibilities:
1. Their target of making situational legendaries much stronger in their niches is simply not achievable with current shadow legendary design, and all they are doing is shuffling around which 2 legendaries are BIS in 99% of situations, without actually improving the situation
2. They achieve that target, and people like me who are lucky enough to have all the throughput legendaries have a huge advantage over everyone else because we can always use the 2 BIS situational legendaries (and that advantage will be made bigger than it is today)

I think the legendary situation is fucked no matter what they do.

[Isentropy]

On the face of it, it does initially sound fair to slightly nerf the bracers. But then aren't you simply left with the shoulders being the BIS in (almost) all situations, and end up in the same place?

Not necessarily. New tier set, new fights, possible spec tuning - all of those can have a big impact. We can't say for sure what is going to change at this point, the thing to keep in mind is that Blizzard is actively trying to reduce the relative difference between legendaries; not just for shadow. If they perceive a legendary to be too good compared to the other legendaries, they tone it down, which inevitably leads to a process that never ends. I can't speak for why they're so inconsistent in terms of how much stronger spec X's best legendary is allowed to be compared to the next best. The system is really flawed, and one could argue Blizzard didn't have to touch the bracers at all, but ultimately I don't think it's a bad thing to be less reliant on legendaries. As long as the spec is competitive in the grand scheme of things.

[Onyd]

No mention here yet that the latest PTR build seems to have Concordance of the Legionfall increasing Versatility not Intellect? (Well here I go anyway.)

[Haikus]

No mention here yet that the latest PTR build seems to have Concordance of the Legionfall increasing Versatility not Intellect? (Well here I go anyway.)

Vers for tanks, primary for dps/healers

[joemo]

I'm not sure how those two things relate, so because warriors have some broken trinkets it's a bad change to bring our legendaries closer to eachother? Bracers were by far the best and will probably still remain so, at least for any fight with more than one target.

The argument is that they should be doing something about a class where a trinket does 30% of their overall damage before tweaking the other classes. I still don't get how CoF was nerfed very hard for ret, yet Warriors and Draught remain untouched.

[Deleted]

The argument is that they should be doing something about a class where a trinket does 30% of their overall damage before tweaking the other classes. I still don't get how CoF was nerfed very hard for ret, yet Warriors and Draught remain untouched.

Yup, this is exactly the problem when it comes to balancing. People can accept nerfs, but wont accept them when there's much more out of control stuff that remains untouched.
Blizzard is horrible at this.

[Koramy]

I'm sure I just haven't gotten to the right page yet but can we update this to reflect other builds?

[Rogalicus]

As I recently rerolled to Shadow Priest, I have a couple of questions:
1) What's the best usage of Void Torrent ability? As I see it, it's mainly used to keep voidform just for a few moments longer and, considering it scales with haste, it's better used just a moment before leaving voidform to maximize damage and squeeze out a couple more stacks of Lingering Insanity. However Icy Veins guide advises to use it early on and I don't understand the purpose because you are not really under danger of quick Insanity draining in the beginning.
2) I don't really understand the point of our 4PT19 bonus, should I just consider it bonus little burst and free 4 seconds of voidform or it exists solely to promote usage of Legacy of the Void?
Thanks in advance.

[Saiyoran]

As I recently rerolled to Shadow Priest, I have a couple of questions:
1) What's the best usage of Void Torrent ability? As I see it, it's mainly used to keep voidform just for a few moments longer and, considering it scales with haste, it's better used just a moment before leaving voidform to maximize damage and squeeze out a couple more stacks of Lingering Insanity. However Icy Veins guide advises to use it early on and I don't understand the purpose because you are not really under danger of quick Insanity draining in the beginning.
2) I don't really understand the point of our 4PT19 bonus, should I just consider it bonus little burst and free 4 seconds of voidform or it exists solely to promote usage of Legacy of the Void?
Thanks in advance.

1: Void Torrent is always going to give you the same amount of extra stacks in voidform. Using it early just keeps you from losing a use in a fight.
2: it's just extra void bolts, which hit hard, and it means you never need to refresh dots ever. It is definitely a better bonus for LotV than the other talents.

[Romanticide]

1: Void Torrent is always going to give you the same amount of extra stacks in voidform. Using it early just keeps you from losing a use in a fight.
2: it's just extra void bolts, which hit hard, and it means you never need to refresh dots ever. It is definitely a better bonus for LotV than the other talents.

It's also 5 gcds of free movement!

[Rogalicus]

1: Void Torrent is always going to give you the same amount of extra stacks in voidform. Using it early just keeps you from losing a use in a fight.

Well, with higher amount of stacks it should deal higher amount of damage and also I don't know if it stops drain rate increase.

2: it's just extra void bolts, which hit hard, and it means you never need to refresh dots ever. It is definitely a better bonus for LotV than the other talents.

Well, kind of what I expected. Thanks for the clarification.

[Onyd]

Vers for tanks, primary for dps/healers

That's a relief, the mouseover still says versatility here.

http://ptr.wowdb.com/artifact-calcul...AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Magicspells]

Finally after getting the Guldan trinket i can dps over 500k in Nighthold with the wrist Legendary. Now they want to nerf it. Has this game only become a game for elite leaders who spend their whole day looking at logs, comparing damage among the classes and nerfing the ones that seem to be a bit high. What about the rest of the ordinary players who dont have time to devote 100% of their time figuring what Legendary to wear or what trinket is best for this or that boss. This has become a game for a small bunch of people who can devote all their time at it. Too bad for the rest of us.

[Fleckens]

Finally after getting the Guldan trinket i can dps over 500k in Nighthold with the wrist Legendary. Now they want to nerf it. Has this game only become a game for elite leaders who spend their whole day looking at logs, comparing damage among the classes and nerfing the ones that seem to be a bit high. What about the rest of the ordinary players who dont have time to devote 100% of their time figuring what Legendary to wear or what trinket is best for this or that boss. This has become a game for a small bunch of people who can devote all their time at it. Too bad for the rest of us.

No actually for most people what this does is just you can equip whatever legendaries and not worry too much as they are all pretty close. Like what you complain is helped by this change as you now just use the legendaries you got/like the effect of the most. Seems more that you knew you had the best legendary and you're annoyed that it got nerfed.

[Magicspells]

No actually for most people what this does is just you can equip whatever legendaries and not worry too much as they are all pretty close. Like what you complain is helped by this change as you now just use the legendaries you got/like the effect of the most. Seems more that you knew you had the best legendary and you're annoyed that it got nerfed.

Of course I am annoyed.But this is just the kind of message that i have become accustomed to receiving from Blizzard staff e.i. target the client and not rethink what we are doing. If all the legendaries where the same for all the classes, which is not the case, your point would be valid....some legendaries are completely useless and some are much better than others and that goes for all classes.