Shadow Priest Mists of Panderia

[Kaesebrezen]

o.O same gear set? The weird bit to that is that you don't have darkness on beta - so your spell haste should be lower - which makes me think you were in different gear, that your spellpower may be much higher?

The shorter duration in MoP is actually a sign of lower haste. He went below the breakpoint, and lost the additional tick. A 13.94 duration is pretty close to getting an additional tick.

The jump in damage actually isn't that big:
- Shadowform increased by 5% -> result in tooltip change
- Mastery passive -> result in tooltip change. With 14 Mastery that's already a 23% increase.
- If evangelism is gone, the 10% are also baked into baseline dot damage. -> tooltip change.
- 10% of the level 10 Orbs on live als baked into the baseline damage. -> tooltip change.

But since he lost a tick (from 7 to 6 i assume), that tick has to be substractet.
Then basically you also have the buffed Inner Fire, which gives you ~600 additional spellpower.
If there is an actual damage buff, it's not that high.

Or to put it in another way: Go on a target dummy on live, stack evangelism to 5, and proc an Orb, your VT tooltip will also be around 60k.

[Yvaelle]

Or to put it in another way: Go on a target dummy on live, stack evangelism to 5, and proc an Orb, your VT tooltip will also be around 60k.

Ah good points, ya my mastery is 21 on live, so I gain like 40% bigger dots from Empowered Shadows - which is kind of enormous and I wasn't counting it. Given that, the damage might even be a nerf - but our ramp-up time may be lower.

[Archbishop Benedictus]

Hello, I am a Shadow Priest who has not been on the scene for too long as I am a Wrath baby. I did however fall head over heels in love with being a shadow priest since Cata launched. I am proud to call my priest my main I do not want people to comment on this saying you have no right to talk since I have not been playing since Vanilla because I do as much research into my class as possible to be able to compete as a DPS class. I may not have as much experience as some Shadow Priests that have been playing since then (I even know that shadow sucked in Vanilla, except PVP) but I still enjoy my class.

As a hybrid I love being able to help heal in an intense progression fight where a healer falls and I pop Divine Hymn to save the falling tank or use Hymn of Hope to give the healers mana when they are going out. They are completely taking one of the best hybrids in the game and making them a pure DPS class. Why must we become what warlocks are now?

I am also shocked to see that they are ruining multidotters in Mists. They have removed our DP and I am sure they are going to change VT before Mists comes out. They got rid of some warlock dots for some specs and changed Insect Swarm. We wont be able to compete in single target fights without some of our main dots and will be lost to the melee and hunters. Just because on multi-target fights we shine does not mean we should lose them all together.

If only you'd seen what I've seen. THEN you'd understand,

Yes it is I, Archbishop at your service. After reading your disgruntled response to the glory of priest service alterations all around Azeroth, I would like to inform thee that you have been relinquished of your priestly duties and will be cast aside.

May your faith guide you,



Archbishop Benedictus


P.S. I have yet to receive thee Dargon Soul that was promised to me...

[Nindza93]

There is only POWAAA

On a side note, give shadow priests the spell that archbishop benedictus has http://www.wowhead.com/spell=103777 the one that appears above the boss and after a few secs lands and does AoE damage. I hope you know which one I mean

[Mattachine]

The shorter duration in MoP is actually a sign of lower haste. He went below the breakpoint, and lost the additional tick. A 13.94 duration is pretty close to getting an additional tick.

The jump in damage actually isn't that big:
- Shadowform increased by 5% -> result in tooltip change
- Mastery passive -> result in tooltip change. With 14 Mastery that's already a 23% increase.
- If evangelism is gone, the 10% are also baked into baseline dot damage. -> tooltip change.
- 10% of the level 10 Orbs on live als baked into the baseline damage. -> tooltip change.

But since he lost a tick (from 7 to 6 i assume), that tick has to be substractet.
Then basically you also have the buffed Inner Fire, which gives you ~600 additional spellpower.
If there is an actual damage buff, it's not that high.

Or to put it in another way: Go on a target dummy on live, stack evangelism to 5, and proc an Orb, your VT tooltip will also be around 60k.

Here's some info on the character stats:
Live
-Intellect: 7145
-Spirit: 1418
-Spell power: 10453
-Haste: 2997
-Hit chance: 16.4%
-Crit chance: 17.25%
-Mastery: 12.35

Beta
-Intellect: 6985
-Spirit: 1418
-Spell power: 10737
-Haste: 2903
-Hit chance: 16.4%
-Crit chance: 15.77%
-Mastery: 11.75

One thing to remind people, in Beta, wand is gone. This is why Intellect is lower in Beta, but weird thing is Spell power is more. Haste/Crit/Mastery also lower in Beta.

[Venteus]

I am so tired of hearing "too early to tell."

At first sight of the talent trees shadow priests were worried. "We're still in development."

Beta is released and the talents are still in shambles "too early to tell."

No. If there's any time to complain, run around screaming, and flail your arms in the air it's N O W. Now is when they need to see that we aren't happy, because they assume otherwise unless they hear it.

- Shadow priests talents are essentially a joke. They are obvious and lack any sort of choice to them.
- No new CCs or motility were added to the class which we have been desperate for throughout entire expansions.
- Survivability has been substantially shot via the loss of many healing abilities shadow priests had (Renew, PoM, Holy Nova)
- Offensive dispels are shot
- Defensive dispels are shot
- As a result, class utility has substantially decreased
- The overwhelming majority of priest talents are talents that already exist as abilities and have been thrown into the tree. The rest of them are healing spec abilities that shadow priests would never take.

Voice your concerns now, ignore the "it's just beta" kids, and consider alternative classes should the worst happen.

[Yvaelle]

What Eregos said - the whole point of beta periods is to voice your concerns and fix the problems - if you are even looking at these abilities and Not thinking about the potential problems they have you are looking wrong, if you are in the beta and you aren't writing your concerns to the devs - you are a waste of a beta spot. They don't need you to stress test the servers, they have 8 years of server experience, they need you to look - think - experiment - complain. That is what a beta is.

While I'm excited for what we may become in MoP - there are very real losses of utility we're taking, and as Eregos pointed out - many of the abilities that we are gaining are sidegrades or replacements to existing abilities - while the things we have asked for for years haven't been answered (again).

[gaymer77]

(I even know that shadow sucked in Vanilla, except PVP)

Whoever told you that shadow sucked in vanilla was a complete idiot. Shadow played well with warlocks and vice versa. Its why if given the option of 2 mages or a shadow priest & lock most guilds with with the lock & spriest. I was always top 10 dmg in raids and in BWL got top dps a few times too.

As for the rest of what you said, they only are taking about 1 of our dots and increased the damage VT does in addition to bringing back us healing for a larger amount. If we are behind people its because of how they have treated us with every expansion. If you weren't a Wrath baby you'd know that and you'd also know that they eventually "fix" us after they see how weak we are. If you don't like how the class is then I'd suggest using MOP as a way to make another class your main because it'll be the same thing all the time with us.

[Yvaelle]

Shadowpriests in Vanilla in full Naxx gear actually had the highest single target (Patchwerk) DPS, and then as now we were good at multi-dotting. The reason the mis-conception about shadow being bad in PvE in Vanilla is because while we scaled Extremely well with gear, our entry raid dps was very low comparatively. Such that for the first few raid tiers were something you carried your friends on - we had enormous threat, but worst damage - but by late BWL/Naxx, spriests were arguably the best DPS in the game.

[lsfreak]

Shadowpriests in Vanilla in full Naxx gear actually had the highest single target (Patchwerk) DPS, and then as now we were good at multi-dotting. The reason the mis-conception about shadow being bad in PvE in Vanilla is because while we scaled Extremely well with gear, our entry raid dps was very low comparatively. Such that for the first few raid tiers were something you carried your friends on - we had enormous threat, but worst damage - but by late BWL/Naxx, spriests were arguably the best DPS in the game.

Wasn't there also a debuff cap problem? Granted the guild I was in was baaad, so it could very well be one of those misconceptions like poor early dps, but I recall the number of debuffs I would eat up was one of the reasons I wasn't allowed to go shadow - Weaving, Pain, Flay just myself, mages/locks needed ignite and ISB, plus Sunder and TClap from the tank left one debuff for the entire rest of the raid.

[McSpriest]

Hello, I am a Shadow Priest who has not been on the scene for too long as I am a Wrath baby. I did however fall head over heels in love with being a shadow priest since Cata launched. I am proud to call my priest my main I do not want people to comment on this saying you have no right to talk since I have not been playing since Vanilla because I do as much research into my class as possible to be able to compete as a DPS class. I may not have as much experience as some Shadow Priests that have been playing since then (I even know that shadow sucked in Vanilla, except PVP) but I still enjoy my class.

As a hybrid I love being able to help heal in an intense progression fight where a healer falls and I pop Divine Hymn to save the falling tank or use Hymn of Hope to give the healers mana when they are going out. They are completely taking one of the best hybrids in the game and making them a pure DPS class. Why must we become what warlocks are now?

I am also shocked to see that they are ruining multidotters in Mists. They have removed our DP and I am sure they are going to change VT before Mists comes out. They got rid of some warlock dots for some specs and changed Insect Swarm. We wont be able to compete in single target fights without some of our main dots and will be lost to the melee and hunters. Just because on multi-target fights we shine does not mean we should lose them all together.

a couple of notes
Bold point 1) we still have vamp embrace (recent beta build shows it heals 50% of our damage spread evenly) vamp touch heals us, and we can pick up that vamp dominance spell and do a fair amount of raid healing.
Bold point 2) DP has not been used to multi-dot since they changed it to being on one target only, and i'm fairly certain they are not going to drastically change VT before MoP. I don't know when you are so pessimistic about it.
Bold point 3) we will be balanced to compete in single target dps, our other dots will become slightly stronger to make up for not having DP.

4)its BETA things change chill out they aren't going to gimp our class, they are going to make sure its all balanced out before mists releases.

---------- Post added 2012-03-28 at 10:10 AM ----------

I am so tired of hearing "too early to tell."

At first sight of the talent trees shadow priests were worried. "We're still in development."

Beta is released and the talents are still in shambles "too early to tell."

No. If there's any time to complain, run around screaming, and flail your arms in the air it's N O W. Now is when they need to see that we aren't happy, because they assume otherwise unless they hear it.

- Shadow priests talents are essentially a joke. They are obvious and lack any sort of choice to them.
- No new CCs or motility were added to the class which we have been desperate for throughout entire expansions.
- Survivability has been substantially shot via the loss of many healing abilities shadow priests had (Renew, PoM, Holy Nova)
- Offensive dispels are shot
- Defensive dispels are shot
- As a result, class utility has substantially decreased
- The overwhelming majority of priest talents are talents that already exist as abilities and have been thrown into the tree. The rest of them are healing spec abilities that shadow priests would never take.

Voice your concerns now, ignore the "it's just beta" kids, and consider alternative classes should the worst happen.

the talents look fairly cool to me, and you get power infusion as a spriest!
the survivability looks like its increasing (if you use renew and PoM as a spriest then you fail and stop disgracing the name of spriest with your holy spells)
-we are getting multiple new cc's WITHOUT sacrificing dps, as well as a root effect
-stop screaming bloody murder the beta has just started a week ago, and in case you haven't noticed a lot has changed in that week alone, relax they aren't going to kill spriests.

everyone who hasn't seen a beta before is so whiny...

---------- Post added 2012-03-28 at 10:15 AM ----------

What Eregos said - the whole point of beta periods is to voice your concerns and fix the problems - if you are even looking at these abilities and Not thinking about the potential problems they have you are looking wrong, if you are in the beta and you aren't writing your concerns to the devs - you are a waste of a beta spot. They don't need you to stress test the servers, they have 8 years of server experience, they need you to look - think - experiment - complain. That is what a beta is.

While I'm excited for what we may become in MoP - there are very real losses of utility we're taking, and as Eregos pointed out - many of the abilities that we are gaining are sidegrades or replacements to existing abilities - while the things we have asked for for years haven't been answered (again).

voicing your opinion is important, but saying things like "everything is in shambles" "spriests are being gutted" "blizzard doesn't know what they are doing" etc. as many in this thread (and other threads) have is NOT helpful feedback.

people need to realize that posting a message saying "blizzard Y U nerf spriests? Y U no want me have fun?" does not constitute constructive criticism feedback.

[Arlee]

What Eregos said - the whole point of beta periods is to voice your concerns and fix the problems - if you are even looking at these abilities and Not thinking about the potential problems they have you are looking wrong, if you are in the beta and you aren't writing your concerns to the devs - you are a waste of a beta spot. They don't need you to stress test the servers, they have 8 years of server experience, they need you to look - think - experiment - complain. That is what a beta is.

While I'm excited for what we may become in MoP - there are very real losses of utility we're taking, and as Eregos pointed out - many of the abilities that we are gaining are sidegrades or replacements to existing abilities - while the things we have asked for for years haven't been answered (again).

Well atm the in game feedback in beta isn't on -_- But otherwise completely correct

[gaymer77]

Wasn't there also a debuff cap problem? Granted the guild I was in was baaad, so it could very well be one of those misconceptions like poor early dps, but I recall the number of debuffs I would eat up was one of the reasons I wasn't allowed to go shadow - Weaving, Pain, Flay just myself, mages/locks needed ignite and ISB, plus Sunder and TClap from the tank left one debuff for the entire rest of the raid.

Yes the debuff cap was 40 and a good raid leader/guild leader knew that shadow weaving from 1 person was worth it for the 2-5 locks in the group to increase their damage. Its why the priest/lock combo was preferred over a mage as I said earlier. Their ISB worked with our shadow damage and our shadow weaving worked with all of their shadow spells (which is what locks were back there is shadow damage dealers not the fire locks they are now).

[lsfreak]

Yes the debuff cap was 40 and a good raid leader/guild leader knew that shadow weaving from 1 person was worth it for the 2-5 locks in the group to increase their damage. Its why the priest/lock combo was preferred over a mage as I said earlier. Their ISB worked with our shadow damage and our shadow weaving worked with all of their shadow spells (which is what locks were back there is shadow damage dealers not the fire locks they are now).

I had in mind that Vanilla had an 8-debuff cap, until it was doubled to 16 late (AQ or Naxx) and then upped to 40 with the BC patch. If that's correct, then you could easily see why people would be reluctant to bring a class that ate up almost half the raid's entire debuff cap. It wouldn't surprise me at all, though, to learn that it was merely that 8 debuffs were all that were shown, I was a noob and my raid/class leaders were... not at all impressive in their knowledge.

EDIT: Yep, 1.7 doubled debuffs from 8 to 16. Earlier than I remembered (ZG/AV patch, 4 months before AQ), but still, that's half of Vanilla limited to 8 debuffs, and still, 40 people, 16 debuffs, bringing a class that used up a quarter of them by themselves (forgot about VE) wasn't something a lot of raid leaders wanted to try, coupled with the aforementioned DPS problems early on.

[Yvaelle]

voicing your opinion is important, but saying things like "everything is in shambles" "spriests are being gutted" "blizzard doesn't know what they are doing" etc. as many in this thread (and other threads) have is NOT helpful feedback.

people need to realize that posting a message saying "blizzard Y U nerf spriests? Y U no want me have fun?" does not constitute constructive criticism feedback.

Yes I agree - that isn't constructive either. But the flip side, and IMO the worse side is people who keep telling us "Wait till it's Live - it's still Beta - it may get changed" - this is the opinion we need to rally against. The cost of people providing non-constructive feedback as you mention it, is that the feedback channels are mildly bogged up, and the result is that Q&A need to hire more employees to sift through it, or have a longer-input response loop. The cost of people spreading the idea that no feedback should be supplied until Beta is over and its Live, is that we critically fail the purpose of a Beta period, and the result is that we spend an entire expansion with glaring and unresolved bugs - until we get within a couple years of the subsequent expansion at which point its too late to change anything before 6.0.

Some of us have done this five times now, we've seen the difference it makes when the community takes a vocal, active role in shaping our class - and the penalty we pay when other classes do this - while we remain quiet until the beta ends. If non-constructive criticism is an inherent, collateral cost of 'Criticism' as a whole - then it's a cost we need to accept: the alternative is far worse.

@Isfreak

That sounds right about the debuff cap, but I don't remember honestly.

[Juicebox]

One thing that seems to be overlooked is the chance to multidot with VT now that is has the healing DP used to have. I can see why we lost VE as a static buff with this change, and it makes sense to me.
I still think all the talents are aimed too much at healers though, which is worrying.

[Yvaelle]

One thing that seems to be overlooked is the chance to multidot with VT now that is has the healing DP used to have. I can see why we lost VE as a static buff with this change, and it makes sense to me.
I still think all the talents are aimed too much at healers though, which is worrying.

I explained this already somewhere (possibly the beta sticky). If VT is 20% of your dps (single target), then:

Live:
100% (total damage) * 6% (VE healing) = 6% of DPS is self-healing

5.0:
100% (total damage) * 20% (VT damage) * 15% (VT healing) = 3% of DPS is self-healing

If there are two targets, your dps will be slightly less than 120% of your single target dps (casting second VT's every 15 seconds costs GCDs that reduce below 120% efficiency), but your healing will be exactly the same as single target on live (6% of single target dps)

If there are three targets, again maintaining 3 VT's every 15 seconds costs GCDs that reduce your other damage - so it won't be 9% of your dps - but it will be 9% of your single target dps (if there had only been one target, but not accounting for the increased DPS for multi-dotting).

In most scenarios (1 or 2 persistent targets, or many in which case MS doesn't heal now) this is a nerf to our health returns - we rarely see 3+ persistent dottable targets in fights - and on Live when we do see this - our dps scales up and our VE scales off our full (multi-target dps) and not just as a fraction of single target dps. Example (and I'll ignore group healing for the sake of making it simple to understand):

If you do 30k DPS single target:
Live: 30k * 6% = 1k8 HPS
5.0: 30k * 3% = 900 HPS

If you do 50k DPS on three targets:
Live: 50k * 6% = 3k HPS
5.0: 30k * (3% * 3) = 2k7 HPS

The result is that even though 15% sounds good compared to 6%, it's 15% of 20%: or 3%.

Now that might not sound like a colossal nerf, it's only half - and I left out the healing that Live's VE does to group members, which is +12%, or a 3x multiplier to the Live numbers above:
Single Target (30k) Live VE Healing: 5k4 HPS (mostly overhealing)
Three Target (50k) Live VE Healing: 9k HPS (mostly overhealing)

Our utility to our group is greatly diminished by these changes, regardless of whether it's versus 1, 2, 3, or AoE scenarios (since we don't VT for mass AoE but sear, which scales off Live's VE, but not off 5.0's VT).

You might be quick to point out that Vampiric Embrace (3m cooldown 50% damage as healing for 15 seconds) is now baseline for Shadow in 5.0, and that this big healing cooldown will make up the difference and give us more control over our overhealing - but this is not true either. The 5.0 version of Vampiric Embrace (active cooldown) is a replacement to the loss of Divine Hymn - this intended replacement is supported by the amount of healing that it does:

On Live, DH during a high damage raid phase will heal for around 600-800k HP.
30k DPS * 50% * 15 seconds = 225k HP
50k DPS * 50% * 15 seconds = 375k HP

However, 5.0 VE has a 3 minute cooldown versus DH's 8 minute cooldown - making it useable more often to make up the difference, but it comes with a big caveat as well - you need to have targets alive and maintain your DPS to maintain your healing - you can't blow it on a phase transition when nothing is active and massive damage is going out - and that's often the ideal situation in all past raids to use DH.

There is also the Glyph of Vampiric Embrace that Theed linked earlier today - 100% of healing return, but only lasts 10 seconds:
30k * 10 seconds = 300k HP
50k * 10 seconds = 500k HP

So VE's new model is that if we have targets to kill, and we use the glyph, then its roughly comparable to DH's healing, and if we don't glyph it but find a perfect oppportunity to use it every 3 minutes, and have mobs to kill - then it works out to about the same as well over the course of a 3, 6 or 9 minute fight (but less in any valley in between).



TL;DR:
Overall, unless Vampiric Dominance comes back, we're losing a lot of healing capability in MoP - not gaining it as some people think (and I thought until I did the math).

[Venteus]

the talents look fairly cool to me, and you get power infusion as a spriest!
the survivability looks like its increasing (if you use renew and PoM as a spriest then you fail and stop disgracing the name of spriest with your holy spells)
-we are getting multiple new cc's WITHOUT sacrificing dps, as well as a root effect
-stop screaming bloody murder the beta has just started a week ago, and in case you haven't noticed a lot has changed in that week alone, relax they aren't going to kill spriests.

everyone who hasn't seen a beta before is so whiny...

As a shadow priest power infusion influences a grand total of three abilities. Flash heal, mind flay, and vampiric touch's cast time. It does absolutely nothing to our DoT damage. That's actually one of the worst choices to take as a shadow priest in that tier. Both in PvE and PvP.

"We are given multiple new CCs" This is wrong, very, very, very , VERY wrong. We are given the OPTION of trading in an AMAZING cc (Mind control) for any of two blatantly worse CCs. Psyfiend is an embarrassment (it even DR's with psychic scream), as are void tendrils (useless on casters). We're actually not receiving a single new CC.

If no one screams, then we'll be receiving what we have in beta right now when it goes live. You saw it when they released the talent calculator. Dozens of children saying "Calm down, we're still in development they said," and on day 1 of the beta we are shown the same damn talents, two of which were left a mystery which we now know to be more useless, bland, damage/healing output spells.

All I ask of people who want to reply to shadow priest concerns: Read through the shadow preist talents. Take note of what they're doing. Now read through warlock, mage, shaman, or druid talents. See the difference, how some classes are given new, innovative talents that add a new CC or mechanic to class play. That's why we're unhappy.

It's not all "Blizzard is useless," though. I for one am very happy with our level 87 ability, spectral guise (so long as we can cast while invisible). I think part of the issue is they have to work with sticking a DPS spec with hard choices into a class that already has 2 healing specs. It's a challenge but I think the simple truth to this is that they need to scratch away the majority of these talents and just start from scratch, creating new abilities to add dynamic to our class.

[Prod]

Are 5 CCs not enough?
Psychic Scream, Horror, Silence plus one tier 1 talent, plus Glyph of Mind Blast.

Frost Mages have 6 (not including slows such as Cone of Cold)
Frost Nova, Polymorph*, Deep Freeze, Water Elemental Freeze, Improved Counter Spell, plus one tier 3 talent. I don't need to tell you the limitations on some of those CCs.
*I can't seem to find if Improved Polymorph is still there.

If we're talking about mechanics, From Darkness, Comes Light adds Mind Spike into the rotation. Follow this up with Glyph of Mind Melt for instant crit Mind Blast. Followed by Divine Insight to add Shadow Word: Death into >20% rotation.

[Venteus]

Glyph of mind blast is not a CC, at least not a viable one. It would be the longest cast time CC in the game. There's a reason why no one takes it (with mind melt) in PvP.

The tier one talent you must take is mind control. If you're playing a shadow priest there truly is no option there. You won't take psyfiend because it DR's with psychic scream and is on a large cooldown. Tendrils are useless vs casters and are easily killed by melee. Mind control is your best bet, your dots continue to tick and you can move them to a location favorable to you. The unfortunate part of this is you're also CC'd during its duration but I'll count it.

The other thing we lack are slows. Mages automatically apply slows with their shield, our slow also roots us.

There's really no debating that we're short handed in terms of proper CC compared to other classes. Each of our CCs has a significantly large cooldown attached to it (compared to zero CD cyclone, poly, fear), and if not is a lackluster CC in and of itself (referto mind control or tendrils).

I'm not saying that every class should have the same amount of CCs, merely that our class has needed additional CCs and slows for ages and we have been ignored every expansion.