Shadowpirest changes incoming!

[Lucrece]

So looks like S priests need to stack tomes to change talents 10 times per M+. No way S Crash is going to be taken over LotV.

Man.. I wish they'd just give S priest a way to spread DoTs better.

Shadow Crash should be baseline and apply SW:P on a 20-25 sec cd.

[Yvaelle]

Shadow Crash should be baseline and apply SW:P on a 20-25 sec cd.

God I wish they would get rid of all the proposed changes and just do ^ that. And I don't even like the idea of giving us a DoT spreading mechanic - but that's so much better than what they are proposing.

Edit: Threw some tweets at the devs with some maths for those interested:

@WarcraftDevs Celestalon Spriest changes are really bad. Crash buffs are nice. Sear buff is negligible. Void Eruption buff is not 'neutral'. 100% (base) * 300% (old Heart of the Void) = 300% VE damage. 700% (new VE) * 75% (new HotV) = 1225% (increase from current base). 1/2

2/2 4% VT+Pain nerfs aren't ideal. VT+Pain = 50% of our single target DPS. -4% DoT damage = -2% overall damage. Void Eruption is ~0.24% of our DPS. 700% * 0.24% = +1.68% overall. Would prefer stronger DoTs personally.

[Alanar]

Right so, the buff to not needing to have your 2 dots on the target to do the max damage of VE is well yea.. QoL change not huge deal tbh.
VE and SC buff is nice, but I don't think I would like to swap with LotV anyway.
Only option here imo would be to make SC 20 sec sc and BASELINE.

So the only real buff that would help without switching that 1 talent, is Mind sear buff and Void Eruption since it can be used instantly without a cd or anything.
I never liked the change of Void Eruption being a damage thing/cast bullshit. That is what slowed us so down in the first place.


Legendary no one cares.

[Ramaloce]

Glad to see i'm not the only one that saw the changes and thought it's a clunky (and most likely unsuccessful way) of getting it done.

the goal of improving their AOE damage performance in short-duration multitarget situations - namely dungeon trash packs.

And the spell they chose to champion to help is Void Eruption? The spell we have to dump a GCD per target we are going to hit with it (not to mention already banking 65 or 100 insanity by that time), which by that time the class and specs that already do it better would of have the mobs already dead, wasting the form buff in the end if we do use it to overkill what's left?

The shadowcrash changes are nice. Would still rather have Legacy in that row even in dungeon runs. Also maybe heart of the void healing might actually be useful in Wpvp duels now? (I can dream)

If they really wanted to help shadow in that situation (without a good rework) they should of just buffed mindsear to a point where it would be "good amount damage" in this expansion, not a previous one.

[Lucrece]

God I wish they would get rid of all the proposed changes and just do ^ that. And I don't even like the idea of giving us a DoT spreading mechanic - but that's so much better than what they are proposing.

Edit: Threw some tweets at the devs with some maths for those interested:

@WarcraftDevs Celestalon Spriest changes are really bad. Crash buffs are nice. Sear buff is negligible. Void Eruption buff is not 'neutral'. 100% (base) * 300% (old Heart of the Void) = 300% VE damage. 700% (new VE) * 75% (new HotV) = 1225% (increase from current base). 1/2

2/2 4% VT+Pain nerfs aren't ideal. VT+Pain = 50% of our single target DPS. -4% DoT damage = -2% overall damage. Void Eruption is ~0.24% of our DPS. 700% * 0.24% = +1.68% overall. Would prefer stronger DoTs personally.

Unfortunately what I've noticed in the entirety of this xpac is that they simply will not design new talents to replace a talent they might make baseline. They just don't want to do that design work.

Havoc demonhunter is a prime example of a half baked class that would be so much better gameplaywise by baselining several talents to expand the rotation beyond chaos strike spam, and they simply have done nothing about it. Same for warlock's pruned abilities that used to be baseline and were made into talents like backdraft and fire and brimstone, or balance druid's stellar drift (starfall is virtually unusable at its ridiculous base cost if stellar drift is not taken).

I really don't understand. They have a humongous team on the most profitable MMO with the largest budget of all MMO's and they can't even design new talents mid-xpac.

The closest they ever came was with affliction replacing soul effigy with what is essentially a pvp talent they moved over. It's hilarious.

[Jullyx]

Some reasons why I find the changes bad:
Until VERY high tyrannical keys, Misery simply plays a lot better in dungeons. With Misery, the change to Void Eruption dmg triggering from either dot changes nothing in terms of how you play.

If you ever do play Mindbender, you are reliant on the Twins ring to get dots out at a reasonable pace. Now that a larger portion of our damage comes from VE, this playstyle will suffer, favoring Misery, which also doesn't get anything from this change.

Buffing Shadow Crash might make it slightly more attractive, but the talent still promotes a slower, less engaging playstyle with longer time out of voidform. It's just not fun to play without LotV.

Shadow Crash doesn't need to be buffed. It just needs to become baseline, and a slight nerf to dots to compensate makes sense, as we don't need a dps increase in most situations. The main problem is that we don't have a reliable way to damage targets without using two GCDs (one with misery) on EVERY target, then waiting for Mass Hysteria to stack up. Losing LotV is a way too big hit to our damage because of how the spec revolves around Lingering Insanity and Mass Hysteria.

Make Shadow Crash baseline and put a talent in it's place to reduce CD from 30 to 15 sec.

Please.

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: Threw some tweets at the devs with some maths for those interested:

@WarcraftDevs Celestalon Spriest changes are really bad. Crash buffs are nice. Sear buff is negligible. Void Eruption buff is not 'neutral'. 100% (base) * 300% (old Heart of the Void) = 300% VE damage. 700% (new VE) * 75% (new HotV) = 1225% (increase from current base). 1/2

2/2 4% VT+Pain nerfs aren't ideal. VT+Pain = 50% of our single target DPS. -4% DoT damage = -2% overall damage. Void Eruption is ~0.24% of our DPS. 700% * 0.24% = +1.68% overall. Would prefer stronger DoTs personally.

I think the math is wrong, atleast from how I interpreted the post.
Right now each dot on the target makes VE do x damage, a total of 2x if you have both dots applied. In the future, a single dot will make VE do 2x damage.

So buffing VE by 700% and making a single dot apply the full damage will be the same as buffing the original effect by 350% assuming you always have both dots up before casting VE.

For me, playing Misery+chest on trash at all levels of m+, this means I get 50% more from current base VE damage (equates to 16,67% increase), then a 75% increase from the chest, or about 88% increase to VE (1,1667*0,75 = 0,88).

I might have interpreted it wrong of course!

[Kharum]

So what does it change for raid? A nerf or a buff?

[Tahlee]

These changes are absolute garbage. No spriest will EVER take shadowcrash even in this "buffed" form over Lotv in high mythic keys. It might benefit low level keys that barely anyone runs outside of alts and that's it.

Sear buff is really null and void as it's just a filler spell. Over-all in the past two days all they've done is nerf us not once but twice.. first gimping our 4 piece and now dropping out dot dmg. I fully expect SP's to be near the bottom in dmg for Antorous. Utter bs Shadowcrash isn't a baseline spell yet and that out of every single spec in game we have the highest reliance on secondary stats and have literally no choice but to stack mass amounts of haste and crit.

All our dmg being back-loaded on MH stacks at the 45+ stack range.. hell we'll be lucky to make 45 stacks with the new raid and set bonuses. Welcome back the days of having to use dispersion just to extend our stacks instead of it's supposed intended use as a defensive cd. The class is just beyond broken with retard devs.

[marathal]

I know that these changes will be tough to balance around those players in the right sets of gear, doing certain content. For me at face value, it seems like it will help. I do not have the expertise many of you have to maintain high stack levels of void form, nor do I run Mythic+ or Raid any longer. I am willing to see how it plays out live, and hope that it will provide information to them to make some changes going into BfA rather than have this idea be what we might have seen 6 months from now.

[Stratcaster]

Shadow priests are having a bit of an identity crisis in Legion. I've been playing them since the middle of BC - so I'll spare you a long rant. I do appreciate how the devs have tried to create something unique and fun to play BUT, for me anyway, it's not working with the way the game is played these days. I got so disgusted in SP play style, I rolled a lock... and the funny thing is, it feels like a shadow priest!

[Deleted]

are these changes going to affect Shadow Priest in a good way or is it just to compemsate for the t21 nerf that i read about, are they set to be FOTM?

T21 was nerfed because it was overpowered.

[Squishy Tia]

Not really an attempt to nerf our dot damage, more trying to buff our AOE. The dot nerf is just there to offset the burst Void Eruption will provide. Actually went and did the math on our mythic run tonight and took away 4% of my dot damage on fights and multiplied my VE damage and it ended up being a tiny increase on ST, but it will be amazing for burst AOE.

This will heavily nerf anyone using the honor talent that boosts damage by 20% when not in voidform and at 100% insanity, and it will make world questing a lot less enjoyable as it's a straight up 8% nerf flat out to us there. The real elephant in the room is having to go to and from voidform itself constantly. That's what makes the shadow play far from ideal. I know this is supposed to make us want to pop voidform more often in general or at least feel less craptacular for having to do so often, but it's a band-aid on a gaping wound that is shadow's spec design. About the only thing worse than shadow's cyclical nature and slow ramp up is Markshanship's god awful RNG + Vulnerable mechanic. But the heavy handed nerfs to non-raiding/mythic+ play is making shadow ever so much closer to being as abysmal as MM for hunters.

[Deleted]

A lot of people complained about low lvl keys, dont act surprised when blizzard didnt buff priests on high end content.

[Deleted]

A lot of people complained about low lvl keys, dont act surprised when blizzard didnt buff priests on high end content.

The surprise is that

a) they nerfed priests on high end content

b) the changes don't really do that much to fix the ramp up time - it's still awkward, since you need to dot up everything first and talenting shadow crash means you have to wait longer to cast void eruption (the other thing that is supposed to fix out "burst") plus give up 5% damager overall.


OTOH it shouldn't be that surprising after almost decade playing as shadow priest....

[Shandalar]

You are really a believers if you think just for a moment that Blizzard is going to make a new talent just for you actually.

Demonology Warlocks deserves 10 thousand times the attention u are recieving and still got nothing along this expansion.

[Trururu]

You are really a believers if you think just for a moment that Blizzard is going to make a new talent just for you actually.

Demonology Warlocks deserves 10 thousand times the attention u are recieving and still got nothing along this expansion.

*coughspecafflictioncough*

I really want to know how did they test this changes. What key lvl did they run? Or we talking not about m+, but leveling dungeons?

[Annesh]

My contribution

https://twitter.com/AnneshWoW/status/933643859833139200

[Sxq]

4% VT+Pain nerfs aren't ideal. VT+Pain = 50% of our single target DPS. -4% DoT damage = -2% overall damage. Void Eruption is ~0.24% of our DPS. 700% * 0.24% = +1.68% overall. Would prefer stronger DoTs personally.[/URL]

Making up false numbers doesn't help anyone

The change IS neutral on long lived targets aside from a bit of granularity with VE where it can be better OR worse depending on if you end a fight right before or right after a VE cast

[Deleted]

Making up false numbers doesn't help anyone

The change IS neutral on long lived targets aside from a bit of granularity with VE where it can be better OR worse depending on if you end a fight right before or right after a VE cast

Making such claims with no mathematical proof doesn't help anyone either.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Shadow priests are having a bit of an identity crisis in Legion. I've been playing them since the middle of BC - so I'll spare you a long rant. I do appreciate how the devs have tried to create something unique and fun to play BUT, for me anyway, it's not working with the way the game is played these days. I got so disgusted in SP play style, I rolled a lock... and the funny thing is, it feels like a shadow priest!

Shadow Priests have had an identity crisis since they threw 8 years of naturally occuring class development out of the window at the end of Cata.

They didn't know what to do with us in MoP.

Or WoD.

Or Legion.

Every change made to Shadow between Classic and the MoP prepatch, was a logical addition, building on the idea they had for Shadow back in Classic. The worst thing is that pretty much nobody complained about the state of Shadow in Cata, in fact, a lot of ppl still think that was the best version of the spec.