Shadow BFA Datamining

[Clrg]

Vtorrent need to do a fuckload of damage to be a level 100 talent, but then i remember Void entropy was a thing and i laugh.

[Goremonger]

I'd rather go back to using the wand to kill stuff than play legion or bfa shadow priest.

[Ophenia]

SI will likely never be good as long as Mind Blast only has 1 charge. This tier will likely be between FotM and SW: Void with SW: Void taking the lead as soon as aoe or movement comes into place. So might as well stay on that talent for tier 15.

Why ? Void is still a single target damage with the same casting time (1.5sec) but at the cost of a longer cooldown (9 vs 7.5) with 2 charges

I don't really, really see the point of this talent, tbh.

[Kaesebrezen]

TL;DR: Number reductions are fine because they allow for more strength elsewhere, BfA talents offer far more meaningful choices while also not gimping you outside of whatever niche they promote.

Yeah... doubt that

T15: SW:V is vastly mechanically superior to the other two. FotM is strictly single-target, as soon as you even remotely go multi-dotting/aoeing, it can't compete with SW:V. SI is poor whatsoever, especially since they changed it to RPPM (i.e. same procs regardless of ST/MT), while not fixing the underlying issue (1 charge MB). You'll pick FotM for single-target, and SW:V for any other fight (unless you can ignore the very minor DPS gain FotM currently has over SW:V, and just go for overall better gameplay with SW:V)

T45: Dark Void is extremely situational, you need a lot of very short lived adds, plus have VEr ready at that point. Misery and ToF can compete, but the selection criteria is just weak - number and time to die of add spawns. Get adds that live long enough (~10+ seconds), pick Misery. Get adds that die shorter than that? ToF (which is also the ST pick)

T75: Issues with gear selection here. ASp majorly favours crit and haste, while the other two don't benefit from haste at all, and get worse the more mastery you have (as they replace your filler spell). Further, going by the class design block post, the AoE vs. ST/Execute vs. Sustain talent selection is something they wanted to avoid - pretty poor job in this row.

T90: LI is terrible weak, as Voidform gives you about 7.5-10% Haste at maximum stacks currently. PI vs. Mindbender is a dumb choice whatsoever, and has been the whole of Legion. As insanity generation is currently pointless in BfA, it's a ST cooldown vs. a multi-dot cooldown, same idiotic choice as T75.

T100: Voit Torrent is useless, since Voidform stacks just don't matter right now. It's effectively a self rooting ST damage cooldown, that deals poor damage. StM is useless, as the mechanics that made StM strong have been removed (100+ stacks, Hysteria, very high haste). It shifts Voidform around, and you get 1 minute of casting while movement. The effective Voidform uptime gain in the minute it's active is also not that much ahead of just picking LotV.

I can live with T15 Fotm. vs SW:V, and T45 Misery vs. ToF (with 2 dead talents), but T75, T90 and T100 need a lot of work.

Why ? Void is still a single target damage with the same casting time (1.5sec) but at the cost of a longer cooldown (9 vs 7.5) with 2 charges

They have the same cooldown effectively. MBs cooldown is 7.5 + 1.5 sec cast time, while SW:V can recharge as long as it is below 2 charges.

[Deleted]

Why ? Void is still a single target damage with the same casting time (1.5sec) but at the cost of a longer cooldown (9 vs 7.5) with 2 charges

I don't really, really see the point of this talent, tbh.

And yet Mangaza's Madness, which gives exactly the same effect (even worse, cuz SW: Void actually improves the damage and insanity), is our top legendary for an entire expansion. Turns out that avoiding wasting Mind Blast casts thanks to recharging buffer is worth a lot.

I really don't mind the talent tree changes, as they seem to create some very nice choices for raiding:

T15: SW: Void vs Fortress.
T75: SW: Death vs Auspicious Spirits
T90: all seem to be possibly viable depending on tuning and stats
T100: LotV vs STM(as the ultimate execute talent or a cooldown, depending on tuning vs LotV)

[kalaratic]

just because there's choice doesn't mean it is a good talent tree. we shouldn't have to make the decisions that the 15 and 75 row ask us to do

[Master Guns]

Shadow Word: Pain
Cataclysm Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28): Shadow Word: Pain damage done has been decreased by 12%.
Hotfix (2013-03-05): "Shadow Word: Pain now deals 25% more damage."
Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.4.0 (2013-09-10): Now deals 25% more damage.
Hotfix (2013-03-12): "Shadow Word: Pain now deals 25% less damage."
Hotfix (2013-09-23): "Shadow Word: Pain's damage has been reduced by 15%."
Legion Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): No longer available to Holy. Damage per tick reduced by 5%, now lasts for 14 seconds (down from 18) and generates Insanity.
Hotfix (2016-08-26): "Shadow Word: Pain (Discipline) damage increased by 7%."
Legion Patch 7.1.0 (2016-10-25): (Shadow) Damage reduced by 10%.
Legion Patch 7.2.5 (2017-06-13): Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 5% for Discipline and 10% for Shadow.
Hotfix (2017-06-13): "Shadow Word: Pain damage reduced by 20% in PvP situations."

Vampiric Touch
Wrath of the Lich King Patch 3.2.0 (2009-08-04): The amount of damage done when this spell is dispelled has been doubled.
Cataclysm Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): No longer causes damage upon being dispelled. However it can be improved by [Sin and Punishment].
Cataclysm Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28): Damage done has been decreased by 12%. In addition, [Sin and Punishment]'s Vampiric Touch backlash fear effect no longer has diminishing returns.
Mists of Pandaria Patch 5.4.0 (2013-09-10): Now deals 20% more damage.
Legion Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Now heals the priest for 50% of damage dealt, and causes the dispeller to be Horrified when dispelled. Duration increased from 15 seconds to 18, damage per tick increased by 48.7%. Now generates Insanity.
Hotfix (2017-01-17): "Vampiric Touch damage reduced by 14%. The damage of Vampiric Touch is reduced by 25% in PvP situations."
Hotfix (2017-01-24): "Vampiric Touch now deals 10% less damage in PvP situations (was 25% less)."
Hotfix (2017-06-13): "Vampiric Touch damage reduced by 15% in PvP situations."

Devouring Plague
Wrath of the Lich King Patch 3.0.3 (2008-11-04): The bonus coefficient has been increased to be on par with other DoT spells. Base damage on ranks 7, 8, and 9 decreased to partially compensate for better scaling.
Wrath of the Lich King Patch 3.2.0 (2009-08-04): Cooldown removed but may only be inflicted upon a single target.
Cataclysm Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28): Devouring Plague damage done has been decreased by 12%.
Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.2.0 (2015-06-23): Now deals 12% less damage.
Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.2.2 (2015-09-01): Now deals 10% more damage. In PvP combat, Devouring Plague now deals 10% less damage.
Legion Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Removed.


And there was a 12% nerf to our DoTs back in December. Like I said, it's been a back and forth game for how long? Would you like me to post all of the direct damage increases that were implemented to "balance" out the DoT nerfs?

what are you not getting that this is an alpha, numbers LITERALLY mean nothing..

[Ophenia]

And yet Mangaza's Madness, which gives exactly the same effect (even worse, cuz SW: Void actually improves the damage and insanity), is our top legendary for an entire expansion. Turns out that avoiding wasting Mind Blast casts thanks to recharging buffer is worth a lot.

Void doesn't really increase anything. You have 25% more insanity for a 20% longer cooldown, and it deals 15% less damage (130%SP for SW:Void vs 150%SP for MB). Plus, Fortress of the Mind will bring the Insanity gain from MindBlast to the same level as SW:Void. But still 1,5sec shorter cooldown.

[Deleted]

what are you not getting that this is an alpha, numbers LITERALLY mean nothing..

I think what he is getting at is more a case of, sort us out to be a mechanically functioning class that works well all expansion without needing constant band aid fixes and chainsaw nerfs as the expansion goes on which happens every time. Something that unfortunately i could have swore i remember hearing in an interview that blizz are more than happy to do and go into expansions knowing they will be doing it as time goes on.

It is something i would definitely like to see, no one really expects classes to be fully or even nearly balanced all the way through but some specs just do not need the drastic number rebalancing that other specs do and sometimes its glaringly obvious that a spec will need these band aid buffs as time goes on, meanwhile other classes / specs can sail through an expansion with just some minor number tweaking here and there.
Like legion alpha we had sphere of insanity at one point was something like 35% of our damage if i recall correctly, then they just starting massive number changes for our dots and i forget what other stuff, people kept telling blizzard that there was some blatantly obvious flaws with how spriest worked and then boom here we are at end of expansion with the ramp up problems that hinder us so much in other areas because of the potential high stacks can do.
Like twist of fate for example, this has been a massive band aid to our damage since forever and is something that i feel the majority of spriests would be happy to lose if it meant they would be meaningful for more of a fight rather than just il catch up on and overtake people at execute phase because of my permanent flat 20% increased damage buff.

People just want their spec to work and be fun, only people who seem to enjoy these big % number changes all the time are blizz themselves as it makes their job easier in designing and balancing, kind of like games before internet, games had to be on point prior to shipping, now it's just a case of "we will throw this out and see how it goes, we can always patch it later"

[Kaesebrezen]

Void doesn't really increase anything. You have 25% more insanity for a 20% longer cooldown, and it deals 15% less damage (130%SP for SW:Void vs 150%SP for MB). Plus, Fortress of the Mind will bring the Insanity gain from MindBlast to the same level as SW:Void. But still 1,5sec shorter cooldown.

This is not true.

First of all, SW:V is 130% SP with 15 Insanity, and MB is 120% SP with 12 Insanity.

MBs effective cooldown is 7.5 seconds plus 1.5 seconds cast time.
SW:Vs effective cooldown is 9.0 second, as long as it is below 1 charge (which should be always after the first cast).

SW:V also drastically changes gameplay during Voidform. Every second MB cooldown overlaps with VB cooldown, so you either have to delay MB or VB. If you have a 2 charge MB, this doesn't matter, as your MB will just continue to recharge. This in turn means you will cast signficantly more MBs (instead of MFs) when using SW:V.

Lastly, FotM also buffs Mind Flay, and a large junk of it's value is tied to that. Any time you cast less Mind Flay (e.g. multi-dotting or AoEing), FotM will loose value, SW:V will not.

[zito]

fotm works out to be more damage and slightly more insanity over the course of 9 seconds. However the trade off is if you miss one tick of 2 cast of mind flay void instantly becomes the better choice. Void just has a lot more synergy and work room than fotm, it's better for movement, burst, on demand insanity better synergies with talents. SI is 100% PvP talent at this point. 3 procs over 1 minute can not even come close to void or fotm

- - - Updated - - -

right now there seems to be 2 "paths"

Fotm, lingering and lotv or void, PI and S2M

insight is going to be deemed the pvp talent which is entirely dumb because there shouldn't be a clear cut PvP vs PvE talents but here it is. Level 30 row does not matter
45 row is always going to be ToF because a flat damage boost to everything you do is better than dot utility
60 is going to be physic horror because why would you give up an extra CC for replacement CCs
75 you switch between death and crash for aoe vs ST (horribly designed line)
and mind bender and torrent are just pointless

The tree is a hot mess

SWD should be baseline to start with. There was zero reason to make it a talent. What they should have done was brought devouring plague back, put it where SWD is and make it spread like every 2 seconds. It is called devouring plague. So the row becomes AS, DP and crash. All aoe related spells.

[Ophenia]

SI is 100% PvP talent at this point. 3 procs over 1 minute can not even come close to void or fotm
insight is going to be deemed the pvp talent which is entirely dumb because there shouldn't be a clear cut PvP vs PvE talents but here it is. Level 30 row does not matter

I hate that they force this "Procs per minute" bullshit. Without this limit, this could be the go-to talent for council fights.

This is not true.

First of all, SW:V is 130% SP with 15 Insanity, and MB is 120% SP with 12 Insanity.

I don't know why, when I checked the Calculator today it said 120 vs 150, now it is indeed 130 vs 120. But still, FotM puts MB above in terms of damage and cooldown, while generating the same insanity.
Given the fact Blizzard is trying to reduce the importance of Voidform for dealing damage with shorter Voidforms, you'll cast more MBs (or SW:V) outside of Voidform, when you don't have to delay it because of the Voidbolt obviously.

[zito]

I hate that they force this "Procs per minute" bullshit. Without this limit, this could be the go-to talent for council fights.



I don't know why, when I checked the Calculator today it said 120 vs 150, now it is indeed 130 vs 120. But still, FotM puts MB above in terms of damage and cooldown, while generating the same insanity.
Given the fact Blizzard is trying to reduce the importance of Voidform for dealing damage with shorter Voidforms, you'll cast more MBs (or SW:V) outside of Voidform, when you don't have to delay it because of the Voidbolt obviously.

fotm is only going to be good if you can cast 2 mind flays in a row after a mind blast and have all 6 ticks hit. If for any reason to you have to cancel void will out perform.

I think that's a fine trade off it actually makes it competitive viable between the 2 and you're basically picking playstyle at this point. A more stationary option that does more damage vs a more mobile safer option. It's just that insight is so far behind the other 2 it's just a straight PvP talent now for that instant when we usually get trained by melee... like always....

[Deleted]

I don't understand what SPriest's niche is meant to be now. At the moment, its spread high health targets aka council fights like Coven and Felhounds. A truly awful niche to be in and one I'm eager to get away from because those types of fight are exceedingly rare and basically don't exist at all in M+.

So what are we occuping now? With the changes to how spells and talents work, maintaining dots is going to be more difficult especially on multiple spread targets. Dots have a much shorter duration, and we'll be in voidform less to cast voidbolt, which refreshes dots less. WAY more GCDs spent re-applying dots make the fights we used to be designed for no longer easy for us.

Dark void means that we can dot a huge add packs in AoE situations and sustaining that damage looks way more viable due to the scaling insanity gain with mind sear + auspicious spirits that would cause.

Our single target though looks like its going to get cut off at the knees with AS/SW and LS/MB on the same rows. Our dots can't do significant damage because that would scale out of control when there was more than one target and VT can't compete with LotV.

All I can say is that the current BFA talent setup makes us look like we're going to be AoE/Cleave specialists, and that worries me

[Deleted]

I don't understand what SPriest's niche is meant to be now. At the moment, its spread high health targets aka council fights like Coven and Felhounds. A truly awful niche to be in and one I'm eager to get away from because those types of fight are exceedingly rare and basically don't exist at all in M+.

So what are we occuping now? With the changes to how spells and talents work, maintaining dots is going to be more difficult especially on multiple spread targets. Dots have a much shorter duration, and we'll be in voidform less to cast voidbolt, which refreshes dots less. WAY more GCDs spent re-applying dots make the fights we used to be designed for no longer easy for us.

Dark void means that we can dot a huge add packs in AoE situations and sustaining that damage looks way more viable due to the scaling insanity gain with mind sear + auspicious spirits that would cause.

Our single target though looks like its going to get cut off at the knees with AS/SW: D and LS/MB on the same rows. Our dots can't do significant damage because that would scale out of control when there was more than one target and VT can't compete with LotV.

All I can say is that the current BFA talent setup makes us look like we're going to be AoE/Cleave specialists, and that worries me

[BobAwesome]

what are you not getting that this is an alpha, numbers LITERALLY mean nothing..

So then why are you okay with Blizzard adjusting numbers, which don't meaning anything, rather than working on our piss poor spec mechanics?

[zito]

So then why are you okay with Blizzard adjusting numbers, which don't meaning anything, rather than working on our piss poor spec mechanics?

Mechanic changes usually only come when a new expansion rolls around while number dps tuning comes after the fact when dust settles. They could literally remove I don't know swd from the standard rotation we've had since forever and we don't know how that will effect our dps anymore because our execute is gone.

So until we have level cap and gear from level cap there's no accurate way to determine what buffs and nerfs in alpha of all things really mean

[BobAwesome]

Mechanic changes usually only come when a new expansion rolls around while number dps tuning comes after the fact when dust settles. They could literally remove I don't know swd from the standard rotation we've had since forever and we don't know how that will effect our dps anymore because our execute is gone.

So until we have level cap and gear from level cap there's no accurate way to determine what buffs and nerfs in alpha of all things really mean

No fucking shit sherlock, so why the fuck are you guys acting like it's no big fucking deal that they're making number adjustments before actual mechanical changes? Like how fucking dense can a person be?

[Ophenia]

Mechanic changes usually only come when a new expansion rolls around while number dps tuning comes after the fact when dust settles. They could literally remove I don't know swd from the standard rotation we've had since forever and we don't know how that will effect our dps anymore because our execute is gone.

So until we have level cap and gear from level cap there's no accurate way to determine what buffs and nerfs in alpha of all things really mean

I think you don't understand that nobody here is complaining about the numbers. We're complaining about the gameplay that seems to be completely dull right now, because we're losing 2 spells (one being baseline since the beginning) of our current rotation without gaining anything.

They could make Mind Blast deal 20 billion damage, that won't change the fact we :
- Lost our execute phase (SWD as a talent, ToF heavily nerfed again)
- Lost Void Torrent (I don't really care, but still)
- Didn't gain any new spell in terms of DPS rotation
- Didn't gain any utility spell
- Lost our only special ability (Massdispell on a 45-second cooldown is nearly the same as a straight removal)
- Got heavily nerfed in terms of survival (Dispersion went from 90% 3min-CD pre-Legion to 60% + 1min and something CD + 50% healing in Legion to 60% 2min-CD and go fck yourself in BfA)
- We're passively nerfed in terms of mobility as well, as our current mobility in Legion is only due to our 80%-uptime Voidform that will likely disappear in BfA.

So yeah they could tune numbers so that the Shadow Priest wrecks the Damage Meter, that won't change the fact the gameplay sucks hard.

TL;DR : If they're tuning numbers, that means the current Alpha gameplay is fine for them. This is our problem.

[Ilir]

So is SP still hot garbage as it was in the first build ? Didn't really follow through with the changes.