Shadowpirest changes incoming!

[Trururu]

SP needs another talent rework, like it happened with feral recently.
Current talents are just way too off meta-game considering popularity of m+ grind. There should be talents that thrives in m+, currently there is arguably only one - Misery.
Adding 5% to this or that will not fix aoe problem.

[Grumpy Old Man]

So looks like S priests need to stack tomes to change talents 10 times per M+.

You can't change talents once a M+ has started.

[arr0gance]

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.

Nothing quite says "class fantasy" like Mind Blast charges or a rotation that's more dependent on latency than your ability to play the game.

[Deleted]

I'm really looking forward to these buffs. Too bad they were not up on PTR, atleast last night.

First of all. Mind Sear buff is great even it is not great in numbers, it's still flat buff to our baseline aoe spell. In dungeons like BRH, Mind Sear does quite nice dmg.

I think the Void Eruption buffs is awesome. Only one dot required so I can always pick up Mindbender for longer VFs. With Mindbender, it's alot easier to keep your VF up from trash pack to trash pack. And if you somehow drop out of VF, you get back into VF faster and get the buffed Void Eruption dmg. For 95% of priests Void Eruption buff will make up for the nerfed DoT dmg and only top priest who always get their long VFs executed perfectly might see the loss.

About the Shadow Crash, I'm not sure how much use that talent is going to see yet. I think it would truly compete against LotV if it gives 30 Insanity. The aoe dmg what it does will make up for the 5% from LotV if you truly need that aoe burst and you will get the 20 Insanity from it anyway so you will only miss 15 Insanity compared to LotV.

These buffs wont make us FOTM dungeon burst spec but definately this is a chance to right direction imo. More dmg early on VF cycle and less in the end.

[Lime]

Mind Sear was always crap. Only problem now is that it cannot be used in trivial content.

I actively use Mind Sear in trivial content, it just requires Misery so you don't 1 shot the mob. Gather mobs -> Vampiric Touch (Misery) -> Mind Flay. Even if it dies before the pulse appears to go off, it will still go off.

[Deleted]

Odd how the changes to makes us better in short aoe fights actually counteract each other.

Picking shadow crash delays us getting into voidform, makes getting VEruption off on all targets basically impossible on an aoe trash pack.
Shadow Crash should still be 30s and EITHER apply both dots to all targets hit, OR allow VForm to be entered at 65.

As it stands now you can still never take SCrash except for WQs.

[Orwell7]

Looking at the changes of Feral and how versatile the spec has become, and how they so-super-carefully trying to tweak Shadow has led me to this conclusion:

There are TWO teams who design specs
-Team A has a manager who wants "true" balance - the specs belonging to this group usually have serious flaws in one area or another, be it aoe/st/utility/movement speed etc., BUT they have one *really* strong side.


-Team B has a manager who thinks that all specs should be capable of doing everything correctly. There are usually 1-2 areas where their spec is "weaker" by 5-6%, but on the other areas they are stronger than average by the same 5-6%.


The problem is Team A. Their weak areas are usually 15-20% weaker than the average, while the strong are stronger by the same 5-6% like in Team B.

The result?
A lot of specs with serious issues / weak sides (like SP aoe, Elemental ST, warlock mobility), and the rest of the specs all all-round good ones (mages, feral, balance, havoc, etc.)

[Trururu]

Looking at the changes of Feral and how versatile the spec has become, and how they so-super-carefully trying to tweak Shadow has led me to this conclusion:

There are TWO teams who design specs
-Team A has a manager who wants "true" balance - the specs belonging to this group usually have serious flaws in one area or another, be it aoe/st/utility/movement speed etc., BUT they have one *really* strong side.


-Team B has a manager who thinks that all specs should be capable of doing everything correctly. There are usually 1-2 areas where their spec is "weaker" by 5-6%, but on the other areas they are stronger than average by the same 5-6%.


The problem is Team A. Their weak areas are usually 15-20% weaker than the average, while the strong are stronger by the same 5-6% like in Team B.

The result?
A lot of specs with serious issues / weak sides (like SP aoe, Elemental ST, warlock mobility), and the rest of the specs all all-round good ones (mages, feral, balance, havoc, etc.)

Nah, it's much simplier. None of blizz top-class-designers(or whatever they called) playing SP, and so they have to make decisions based on forum feedback/logs, and we all know how it can go. This is why some classes like warlock gets fixed in a matter of weeks, and some classes have to wait a year just to get confirmation that problem was acknowledged by blizz.

[Jaigar]

Problem is, Void Form is just fundamentally flawed, and the best way to dull that would be to just scrap mass hysteria and buff DoT damage to compensate... but they won't do that.

[Deleted]

i would be happy if shadowfiend gave insanity, so i could play misery without fucking me hard on tryanical bosses. i think that could be a reasonable change.

[benjaminandjen]

Shadowfiend insanity would be amazing. Just get rid of bender talent and make shadowfiend bender. Then we could pick shadowcrash.

[davesignal]

Making Mindbender baseline and shoving the Squid Buddy into a glyph would be pretty great.

[Romanticide]

Problem is, Void Form is just fundamentally flawed, and the best way to dull that would be to just scrap mass hysteria and buff DoT damage to compensate... but they won't do that.

Voidform per se is ok, it's just Mass Hysteria that is very problematic (read: broken).

[Trururu]

Shadow Crash on launch(not landing, but lauch) should trigger Void Erruption. So every doted enemy gets Void Erruption damage + priest enter voidform(no matter insanity lvl) + bulk of damage from Shadow Crash(buffed by voidform).
Thats it. Problem solved. So priest can enter voidform on every pack, deal some burst damage at first + more SCs through fight + multidoting thingy.
It's the cheapest solution imho.

[Romanticide]

If Shadow Crash isn't going baseline we need SW:P being applied in an area around the target. It's ridiculous that we have NEITHER a targeted aoe spell nor a way to spread our dots efficiently.

I want SC to be baseline with the same cd, travel speed and damage it has now and get a burst option as talent on it's place (something like PI, but bigger and better).

[Blackmorgrim]

Tbh, for most of this expansion I really never felt the real issue was how weak shadow's damage on multiple targets was. I really thing what happened was the ball was really dropped when it came to how prolific aoe burst became. I mean, we've had aoe burst in the past with mages and warrlocks in Legion, where the aoe 'burst' was 4-6x single target damage. Legion was a whole new level where burst aoe was literally in the range of 15-20x single target damage. On top of that, those same classes were also given insane mobility.

I truly feel this was the major imbalance that pretty much defined the meta of mythic pve this expansion. Many veteran players saw this trend and tried to warn about it in regards to mythics back in beta. Those of us in shadow actually listed this as the defining reason that shadow was the least desired in challenge mode content for the past two expansions, and that without the ability to have burst aoe, or for instance design to put a heavier emphasis on boss damage... shadow would fall behind again.

However, Blizz has their process, and while it hasn't helped shadow much, its kept the game going for 13 years. I can only hope after the redesign this expansion, we get a polish for next expansion.

Can't wait to try this new change out tomorrow though. After two tiers of mainly feeling mediocre next to melee in mythic+, hoping the change is enough to really make it look like I'm doing more than taking up a slot for a more effective spec.

Otherwise, I'll just be grateful Xenoblade Chronicles 2 comes out Friday.

edit: Wow, I really need to update my sig here.

[Cracked]

Tbh, for most of this expansion I really never felt the real issue was how weak shadow's damage on multiple targets was. I really thing what happened was the ball was really dropped when it came to how prolific aoe burst became.

Yeah, well, you can look at it from any perspective. Shadow AoE damage is great, but in the current game it's absolutely irrelevant anywhere but on progression raids, simply because Shadow AoE is dotting up every target, going Voidform and then you are doing damage - maybe 10-12 seconds later. In the current game, chances are that targets are either already dead (worse case), or at low health (better case).

It's really sad, aoe went from scarce to common to everywhere and that really hurt any class with AoE buildup, since if you need to aoe, the classes that do it bursty are also tuned to come out even in the longer term, which means that short term, they always win.

[Rhaxus]

Lacking instant/bursty aoe becomes even more egregious if you get confronted with minions or older content, no matter how much i loved shadows flair, after doing falcosaurs once i immediately abandoned shadow and waited for changes which, sadly, have yet to be implemented

[Stratcaster]

I felt the same way - I roll'd an affliction warlock.

[Deleted]

Returning priest here. I've been doing some calculations based on ToS logs using LotV. So the following is based on T20 data.

With the % nerfs to DoTs and the VE buff, overall the damage is almost the same on ST, maybe a tad bit more.
When looking into 2-3 target sustained cleave fights, where you can sit in VF more, hence decreasing the number of times VE is cast, this seems like a nerf. On fights like (M) Mistress it seems similar to ST.

On a second note, judging by the H2P sims regarding tier bonuses, T21 feels a bit lackluster compared to the current tier (equal ilvls). Some speculations even mention 20k haste will be necessary (IDK about this part). My concern is that the 4P bonus favours time spent in VF, so the VE change feels kind of counterproductive to me.

I understand what they're trying to achieve, to give the spec more oomph on shorter AoE fights, but IMHO this is not the best way. On top of this it hurts the spec in other areas, like sustained cleave, which is considered a niche.

Even though I know better to trust Simcraft, I've checked the current rankings and noticed that Shadow seems strong. So a question regarding this: Isn't Shadow considered mid tier on ST? (Goroth logs are flawed becasue of StM can't judge by those)

Overall, I enjoy the spec, I'm planning to gear my toon up in Antorus and play Disc/Shadow.