Shadow Priest Battle for Azeroth SUGGESTED Changes

[Soluna]

I love how Spriests are currently dominating in Antorus, along with afflis, and so did in ToS, and EN/ToV, with the only problem being in NH, oh, let's not forget that its an insanely fun specc to play, and we still have spriests whining their shit out.

[davesignal]

Yeah, boy, love to get repetitive stress injuries from playing a spec that never used to have this problem. Nothing more fun than button-mashing faster than a coked up ferret.

Shadow used to be deliberate and deep back in Cataclysm. Now it's a drinky-bird spec on speed. Void Bolt, Mind Blast, one GCD of Mind Flay, repeat.

Fuckin' Legion Shadow is like the world's worst lover: extremely shallow and incredibly fast.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

I love how Spriests are currently dominating in Antorus, along with afflis, and so did in ToS, and EN/ToV, with the only problem being in NH, oh, let's not forget that its an insanely fun specc to play, and we still have spriests whining their shit out.

This is just wrong though. Anybody who thinks Shadow are dominating have no clue how to read logs and statistics.

We do fine on Multidotting fights (as we should), but we are still dead last on ST.

Dead last, of every single Dps spec in the game, including the ones that never get played like Arcane, Outlaw and Survival.


Fun is also subjective. As far as fun goes, the current version is not very pleasant to play, and feels very "anti-Shadow". While both MoP and WoD Shadow (AS, not CoP) both had their issues (mainly being undertuned), the playstyles were a lot more fun than what we have now.

[Nihiel]

Just to add to ThrashMetalFtw's points (with which I agree completely) if you really think shadow is "dominating in Antorus", you're honestly clueless. People saw affliction and shadow do very well in the first week of heroic, which resulted in shadow's dots getting nerfed (and HAHAHAHA look at how affliction got rebalanced - oh wait, there were no consequences and they're still by far the best performing spec).

Shadow is in no way dominating. Our dots themselves didn't need attention (Mass Hysteria did and still does) and after the nerf we're left with dots that don't scale well, on top of dots always doing less dmg as time passes by because shit dies faster. This is further evident as the dots got nerfed and not MH - I think most people can agree that shadow does well on council fights (where MH is the cause for high dmg) and not on the many different add fights where MH never did much because ToF uptime is the main dmg boost - yet still they nerf our dots and not MH. It's just panicky reactive clueless "balancing" which destroys proper scaling.

It's sad Blizzard did this dot nerf as shadow is ALWAYS better in the start of tiers, and as everyone else is doing more dmg our dmg goes down. Being shoehorned into Mind Blast ST builds sucks. We require very very specific gear setups to even utilise the new tier set and it is still pretty much garbage, meaning our performance will be too. Just look at how our tier set went from 1% crit to everything to 1% crit to ST spells to 0,5% crit to ST spells. Same goes for the NH tier, it went from 2 insanity per tick for both dots to 1 insanity per tick for both dots to 1 per VT tick. And don't even get me started on how they initially thought Surrender to Madness was "balanced." Blizz is clueless (or maybe careless) in forecasting how shadow performs and thus always kneejerk-nerfs our kit when it's too late to balance it properly, solely because well played shadow (read: 99th percentile well-itemised players ignoring fight mechanics to not lose dps uptime in any way) inflates the numbers and makes the spec look better than it is. This hurts our "niche" of multi-target sustained dps, and leaves us with meh overall performance and shitty single target.

Wait a few weeks from now, check the overall statistics from warcraftlogs and you'll see how "dominating" shadow will be. Lolol no need to wait, we'll be well below others. Affliction as usual is able to funnel their resources into proper single target dmg (throwback to AS crit spec into DP "machine gun" spam in WoD which affliction for some reason had to get while shadow lost it) with a fucking ridiculous Godmode ToF-buff (can't really be surprised that affliction got a buffed ToF and ours went from baseline to a mandatory talent) which means they beat shadow on everything else. The only current saving grace for shadow is having higher ToF uptime if your fellow raiders aren't playing optimally, but this gets diminished with gear too. I'm personally already starting to lag behind and parse lower on many fights compared to how I parsed in the first two weeks, simply because shit is dead in no time.


On Topic: I'd be very happy if we lost void form and the whole resource drain thing. A "snapshot" maintenance buff like Cata's mastery, AS -> DP spam, or Dotweaving with periodic Mind Flay focus (like HFC's CoP Insanity /w class trinket) are all playstyles I'd be very happy to play again. I miss having more time and smaller opportunity cost in focusing on dot- and ToF uptimes - now it's all about not losing resource generation.
So basically I hope the resource drain playstyle is gone. If not, I hope at least VB and MB will have higher cds so it won't be as spammy as it is now. My #1 wish is for S2M to be removed too.

[Soluna]

This is just wrong though. Anybody who thinks Shadow are dominating have no clue how to read logs and statistics.

We do fine on Multidotting fights (as we should), but we are still dead last on ST.

Dead last, of every single Dps spec in the game, including the ones that never get played like Arcane, Outlaw and Survival.


Fun is also subjective. As far as fun goes, the current version is not very pleasant to play, and feels very "anti-Shadow". While both MoP and WoD Shadow (AS, not CoP) both had their issues (mainly being undertuned), the playstyles were a lot more fun than what we have now.

Go check overall logs for antorus hc/mythic, then come tell me that bullshit man. Also check logs per fight. What do you want anyway? To dominate on all fights? Snowflake much?

[Felfuhrer]

I would like Vamp Embrace and Vamp Touch to be supportive like in BC. Make Shadow Priests mana/heal batteries. Have their DPS converted into mana and health for the raid.

You'll ALWAYS have a spot then.

soooo...disc priest then?

[Deleted]

Remove void form, give us old shadow form back. That would suffice to make me play this game again.

[Dragon Claws]

soooo...disc priest then?

Less boring.

[Caladia]

Go check overall logs for antorus hc/mythic, then come tell me that bullshit man. Also check logs per fight. What do you want anyway? To dominate on all fights? Snowflake much?

As of December 27th:
3rd overall 90% Heroic
6th overall 90% Mythic

Heroic fights (90%):
# in top: 5
# in middle: 3
# in bottom: 3

Mythic fights (90%):
# in top: 4
# in middle: 4
# in bottom: 3

We're not bottom on every fight, but we are by no definition dominating. Which is what he's getting at, as meanwhile the Affliction Warlock is top or middle on every fight, not a single encounter are they near the bottom. Not to just toss Affliction Warlock under the bus and demand nerfs, but as another spec that is similar in "niche" of multi-dotting, they don't have the same nerfs/weaknesses that we do.

[Sylvaeres]

Here's my suggestion:

Abandon Hope
Channel, ~6 years (channel began with the MoP pre-patch)
After years of hopelessly clinging to the idea that the game's developers would finally do something right with the Shadow specialization, you swallow your pride and roll something that isn't balanced by people who obviously aren't playing the game.

ya it's not like you were the top dps class by a mile for an entire tier and still very good on many fights throughout this entire expansion, including this current tier

- - - Updated - - -

I love how Spriests are currently dominating in Antorus, along with afflis, and so did in ToS, and EN/ToV, with the only problem being in NH, oh, let's not forget that its an insanely fun specc to play, and we still have spriests whining their shit out.

thank you. my point exactly

[KaPe]

Remove void form, give us old shadow form back. That would suffice to make me play this game again.

"The old shadow form" did nothing that new shadowform doesn't, so your "change" would simply break the class without improving anything.

[Soluna]

As of December 27th:
3rd overall 90% Heroic
6th overall 90% Mythic

Heroic fights (90%):
# in top: 5
# in middle: 3
# in bottom: 3

Mythic fights (90%):
# in top: 4
# in middle: 4
# in bottom: 3

We're not bottom on every fight, but we are by no definition dominating. Which is what he's getting at, as meanwhile the Affliction Warlock is top or middle on every fight, not a single encounter are they near the bottom. Not to just toss Affliction Warlock under the bus and demand nerfs, but as another spec that is similar in "niche" of multi-dotting, they don't have the same nerfs/weaknesses that we do.

and why do you compare yourself to affli warlocks? So you want to be as amazeballs as them? Why can't you satisfy yourself with having some fights you are good at, some that you are bad at, some that you are amazing at?

Most speccs are like that, and affli is just a horrible example to bring up. You basically make yourself sound like a spoiled kid who wants everything, just like the nearest rich kid next to you. Imagine that I am destro which is usually middle of the pack, and everyone keeps telling me to go affli, yet I don't make doomsayer threads about my 'broken lul' specc.

[Caladia]

and why do you compare yourself to affli warlocks? So you want to be as amazeballs as them? Why can't you satisfy yourself with having some fights you are good at, some that you are bad at, some that you are amazing at?

Most speccs are like that, and affli is just a horrible example to bring up. You basically make yourself sound like a spoiled kid who wants everything, just like the nearest rich kid next to you. Imagine that I am destro which is usually middle of the pack, and everyone keeps telling me to go affli, yet I don't make doomsayer threads about my 'broken lul' specc.

But I gave an example of why I compared us to Affliction Warlock, we fill the same dot-based niche. I'm not asking for us to be overpowered, I'm simply agreeing with the other poster in his statement that we are not dominating Antorus.

As for your example about playing Destro Lock and people complaining that you're not playing Affliction. Outside if the complaints that we're at the bottom on certain fights, which every class/spec is going to complain about as you can visit any class forum and look at threads to see it. Most SPriests that complain about Shadow don't complain about the damage, but the punishing play style of our ramp up/down with Voidform durations.

[deviantcultist]

Remove void form, give us old shadow form back. That would suffice to make me play this game again.

No reason to completely ruin the spec fantasy in order to downgrade the spec into a simpler and more functional type of gameplay. Surely there are things to be tuned, but I'm not missing the old Shadow in the slightless even though I've been playing the spec since late TBC.

[Nihiel]

and why do you compare yourself to affli warlocks? So you want to be as amazeballs as them? Why can't you satisfy yourself with having some fights you are good at, some that you are bad at, some that you are amazing at?

Completely clueless non-spriests like you dismiss any form of critique of shadow as whining and begging for buffs. We're not mentioning affliction because we want to be "amazeballs like them" - those are your ignorant words. We're bringing up affliction because it's "the other ranged dot spec" and our immediate rival, and THAT SPEC is actually dominating in Antorus, simply because its kit, synergy and scaling is better than ours.

Shadow is doing just fine, but you really have to be thick beyond words to think shadow is DOMINATING. You've spewed out "go look at logs and statistics" so many times yet the statistics show shadow is not by any means dominating - and this is because of the reasons and faults of the spec so many of us have stated. I assume your reluctance to reply to these points is a sign you have accepted that your argument is invalid?

I'm personally fine with how shadow is performing (the braindead dot nerf destroying our dot scaling aside) and don't really care whether we're #1 or #10. I'm happily gonna keep playing even though the meh Mind Blast-ST centric playstyle is all we've got coming in the future, which for sure will not in any way make shadow a top performer. This is where the much better kit of affliction with better synergy is gonna outscale and outperform us, which once again is my argument for why clueless people like you are wrong in saying shadow is dominating.

And to answer your question, yes, I am satisfied with being a top spec for council fights (until higher gear levels and our terrible dot scaling becomes apparent, where even "nonconformists" like you playing destruction instead of affliction will perform much better in the long term), fine for everything else (very soon adds will die in literal seconds), and garbage single target (shadow is currently #23 of 24 on HC Varimathras, the most patchwerk fight in the raid, as an example)

So to paraphrase; shadow is fine, but in no way dominating. Logs and statistics already show this. Affliction is the spec you should be campaigning against, and its performance is because of its better kit, synergy and scaling compared to spriest. You don't seem to comprehend the context of shadow's performance at large, and I'm glad this thread and its many posts have enlightened you. Now, let's get back to the original topic and let this be

[Deleted]

Just to add to ThrashMetalFtw's points (with which I agree completely) if you really think shadow is "dominating in Antorus", you're honestly clueless. People saw affliction and shadow do very well in the first week of heroic, which resulted in shadow's dots getting nerfed (and HAHAHAHA look at how affliction got rebalanced - oh wait, there were no consequences and they're still by far the best performing spec).

These changes have proved to have been a mistake by Blizzard. I wonder if they are going to revisit it.

[ttylol]

those last 10-15 seconds of void form

There is the real problem. Voidform tuning is currently far too back-loaded, which overemphasizes Mindbender and Void Torrent timing (and therefore overpunishes mistakes). They will hopefully remove Mass Hysteria to relieve some of that, but it may require something more extreme. Like... Voidform haste stacks now cap at 30?

IIRC, Blizz has mentioned that they want to move away from ST vs AoE choices in the same talent row? That will go a long way for Shadow.

Something like: https://i.imgur.com/vkCQQh5.png

[Relapses]

Something like: https://i.imgur.com/vkCQQh5.png

Knowing Blizzard they'd just make idk so ridiculously overpowered nobody would ever spec out of it.

[davesignal]

There is the real problem. Voidform tuning is currently far too back-loaded, which overemphasizes Mindbender and Void Torrent timing (and therefore overpunishes mistakes). They will hopefully remove Mass Hysteria to relieve some of that, but it may require something more extreme. Like... Voidform haste stacks now cap at 30?

IIRC, Blizz has mentioned that they want to move away from ST vs AoE choices in the same talent row? That will go a long way for Shadow.

Something like: https://i.imgur.com/vkCQQh5.png

You know what might be an interesting idea? Buff Void Eruption even more, to an insane degree. Imagine if, say, a full 25% of your Voidform damage distribution was the initial Void Eruption itself-- you'd probably be less interested in long, punishing Voidforms and more interested in shorter, frequent Voidforms, where the margin for error is not nearly as punishing.

[Krekal]

A shadowy Power Word: Shield for Shadow.
Glyph for old Shadow Form. New one is ew imo
Something unique in place of Surrender to Madness (if it's going away, which it probably will) that can change the spec as drastic as it used to, but not be broken.