Shadow Priest Mists of Panderia

[icest]

Glyph of Mind blast is too situational(crit lol our crit with full cataclysmic gear = about 15%? or 1.5s cast plus 1.5s cast for 30% crit). and It is 99% snare, not root. Warrior and Feral druids can charge to us under its effect.

Our Silence is worst silence spell in the game. It has 45s CD(melee = 15s, other casters = 12s(shaman), 24s(lock, mage), 1m(balance - aoe silence and school-lock) with no school-lock mechanism.

Psychic scream has too many counter spells and it can't spammable.

Void tendril's root is easy to break by damage, even warrior who does not have dispel

Psyfiend is one of the most garbage talent in our tree, It casts single fear on target(not horrify and has 1.5s cast time) so DR with psychic scream, and lasts only about 10s. (so up to maximum 6 target fear! great! lol)

[Yvaelle]

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.

Every CC mages have has a significantly shorter cooldown (or no cooldown at all) than Any CC that spriests have, beyond that - many CC's mages have are superior versions of CC's spriests have. Mages have the ability to eternally kite melee with 70% snares, and a 15 second cooldown stun and snare breaking teleport, there is no comparison between the pvp control set that frost mages have with what spriests have. That's fine, that's by design - but balance mandates then that we have strengths that frost mages don't - finding those is pretty subjective.

[jplusl]

void tendrils looks pretty cool. Other than that idk. Shadow apps resource could either be great or bad. Depends on their damage

[Yvaelle]

void tendrils looks pretty cool. Other than that idk. Shadow apps resource could either be great or bad. Depends on their damage

Right now their damage is pretty much like it is on Live, which is to say - possibly not worth casting even when you have 3 >< (unless your moving) I expect that to get fixed though, that can't be intentional.

[Mattachine]

Just tested some AoE, multi-dot last night since the zone/dungeon is now opened.

With the mana cost and removal of mana return from SWDeath, as well as Evangelism not working, I am having some mana issues. Multi-dotting with 4-5 targets can get my mana low quickly by the times all the mobs are dead. I hope our mana regeneration can be improved at this point.

I also think they should bump/change the damage of Shadow Apparition a bit higher.

I wonder any other class has talent/spec that increase their damage when mob is below 20% health in MoP beta. Currently we only have it through the talent Mindmelt, if you pick it rather than Divine Insight.

[Direshadow]

Everyone at this point just wants to see how Spectral Guise works -_-

[Deleted]

It's no news that shadow priest CC, utility (outside of off-healing) and mobility in pvp have been utter crap ever since Classic with very few changes since then (we had silence, psychic scream and mind control in Classic, our most basic CC tools). I really think that speaks the volume of the shadow priest pvp development since then.

Our rotation has been pretty solid since the release of the TBC pre-patch, but it was nicely polished in Cata. If you exclude the tier 13 set bonus then you could easily proclaim that we have some of the weakest dps cooldowns. We could easily use a 3rd cd, and archangel and shadowfiend should recieve a buff or have better synergy with each other.
Outside of fixing our cooldowns I am really happy that we are finally getting better synergy with shadow word: death and mind spike, and the fact that they are removing empowered shadows and dark evangelism means much less clunckyness and will probably be a buff in pvp/soloing.

[Karei]

Well, regarding Dark Evangelism... I've never fully understood why on earth they put it in. I mean, they remove Shadow Weaving because it gives a rampup time but Dark Evangelism does just that. Ok it's nice to use with Dark Archangel and all but the way they changed it is the way it shouldve been really. A dps cooldown that you can use for nukephases. Now it's more a manareturn than an actual nuke buff because you use it on cooldown anyways.

[Forian]

Everyone at this point just wants to see how Spectral Guise works -_-

Yeah that ability is going to be useless and suck beyond belief. Just saying .

The only thing it'll be used for in PvE is to avoid mechanics and it may not even be able to be used for some. We'll have to see.

[Veiled]

Right now mana is sucking as shadow. VE, I'm still neutral about. It reminds me of casting a holy radiance and could be quiet helpful if used correctly. I think the cooldown on it is a bit much for what it does though.

Our only mana returns as of this second are: hymn of hope, fiend, and dispersion. Two of those bring us completely out of combat for 6+ seconds, which is a bit of a punishment.

I believe that if they don't change something with how our mana is returned, that crit value will skyrocket.

[Fleckens]

We definitely have mana issues right now, i just did the first instance and on the last boss which had a pretty decent lenght, on the last 20% or so i was forced to melee with my staff(at least they buffed it's dps to 800!) and only use swd, as i didn't have mana for anything else and already used all my cooldowns.

I don't mind our new rotation that much, although i must admit i would have prefered something else than apparations as our way of using shadow orbs for dps. It's nice not having to get empowered shadows up before doing proper dps. Im not too sure how i like the rng talents though, but i guess i could learn to live with it. What we really just need atm is a fix to our mana regen and some more ways to spend shadow orbs would be nice as well.

[Ananan]

Shadow has a history of often being the most mana starved caster, especially in PvP. Let's hope that won't be the case in Mists...

[Mattachine]

We definitely have mana issues right now, i just did the first instance and on the last boss which had a pretty decent lenght, on the last 20% or so i was forced to melee with my staff(at least they buffed it's dps to 800!) and only use swd, as i didn't have mana for anything else and already used all my cooldowns.

I don't mind our new rotation that much, although i must admit i would have prefered something else than apparations as our way of using shadow orbs for dps. It's nice not having to get empowered shadows up before doing proper dps. Im not too sure how i like the rng talents though, but i guess i could learn to live with it. What we really just need atm is a fix to our mana regen and some more ways to spend shadow orbs would be nice as well.

I agree we have some mana issues, i think it's same as other class atm, possible due to some bugs. However, I do not have issue with mana on that last boss. Use SF early, and Dispersion during transition when he makes copies of us.

[Forian]

Once Dark Evangelism is fixed on Beta it'll be fine again.

[Kaesebrezen]

Once Dark Evangelism is fixed on Beta it'll be fine again.

Why do people still think that
1) Dark Evangelism will come back?
2) Dark Archangel, a talent, should be there to fix our mana problems?

The manareg on Archangel and Dark Archangel has been removed. And it will never come back, it would go against the very basic concept behind the talent tree. If you must pick it to not run oom, then there is no choice.

And i'm still going with the most basic answer to our mana problems: The base regen is just bugged.

[zakaluka]

Live:
100% (total damage) * 6% (VE healing) = 6% of DPS is self-healing
[...]
100% (total damage) * 20% (VT damage) * 15% (VT healing) = 3% of DPS is self-healing

Yvaelle, this is very good information indeed, thanks for doing the legwork on it.

I am interested, however, in how the utility of VE changed. Specifically, how large of an HPS spike is it? How big is it in comparison to, say, a boomkin's tranquility? Do boomkins still have tranquility? As a healing CD, it doesn't actually munch your dps the same way tranq does, either - just eats one GCD, correct?

edit: already answered my question. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k HPS for 10 seconds on a 5 minute CD, at about item level 400. Pretty equivalent to tranq, but much MUCH higher on gimmick fights with damage multipliers and doesn't force you to kill dps:

30k * 10 seconds = 300k HP
50k * 10 seconds = 500k HP

Currently VE is nothing but a small trickle of baseline HPS. It really just serves to save all your healers X amount of mana, might as well be a copy of Replen. Adding a burst HPS cooldown in place of that seems pretty attractive from a raidleader's perspective.

[Ananan]

I still worry about Vampiric Embrace for PvP though. When you're pressured enough to need it the damage you can dish out is often low. Also it will split the healing with teammates who might be sitting at full health, potentially making it complete crap for 5v5 and Battlegrounds. I wouldn't be surprised if it's dispellable again either, now that it's a cooldown.

An implementation that would work well for PvP (and probably be overpowered) would be to have it heal an injured buddy every time you deal damage - essentially giving you Atonement for all your shadow damage for 15 seconds. That way it'd remain useful no matter how many friends you have around you.

[Fleckens]

I agree we have some mana issues, i think it's same as other class atm, possible due to some bugs. However, I do not have issue with mana on that last boss. Use SF early, and Dispersion during transition when he makes copies of us.

I guess your group had better dps, i used dispersion as soon as i dropped below 60%, then after that shadowfiend, and then another dispersion and i still went oom.

I really wish damage meters worked on beta though, im very curious of how the damage is like.

[Karei]

I think the change to Ve was with Hymn in mind. Since Hymn was occasionally used by Spriests on 'Oh Shit' moments I think they change it in such a way to compensate for the loss of the spell. If this is the right choice remains to be seen but at least from this one I understand their reasoning behind the change.

[Yvaelle]

Yvaelle, this is very good information indeed, thanks for doing the legwork on it.

I am interested, however, in how the utility of VE changed. Specifically, how large of an HPS spike is it? How big is it in comparison to, say, a boomkin's tranquility? Do boomkins still have tranquility? As a healing CD, it doesn't actually munch your dps the same way tranq does, either - just eats one GCD, correct?

edit: already answered my question. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k HPS for 10 seconds on a 5 minute CD, at about item level 400. Pretty equivalent to tranq, but much MUCH higher on gimmick fights with damage multipliers and doesn't force you to kill dps:


Currently VE is nothing but a small trickle of baseline HPS. It really just serves to save all your healers X amount of mana, might as well be a copy of Replen. Adding a burst HPS cooldown in place of that seems pretty attractive from a raidleader's perspective.

VE on Live is similar to Replenishment in that it reduces some of the damage your raid takes, but it stacks with Replenishment (which spriests bring on Live) so we have these two incentives and not just the Replenishment utility of say, a frost mage or ret paladin (but they have WoG, which is insanely good). Vampiric Embrace in beta though is better compared to Divine Hymn - since we lost Divine Hymn in the beta, VE is a more shadowy version - and now that I'm in beta I can say I kind of like that it replaces DH for us (it feels better, even if it isn't nearly as good as having VE + DH on live).

Any raid leader who was looking for burst HPS cooldowns was already taking spriests for Divine Hymn - what we're losing now is the second replenishment effect (VE on Live) that stacks with Replenishment (I'm kind of torturing this all by comparing VE to replenishment but it might make it clearer). So we're losing utility from a raid leader perspective (I am a raid leader though, so I'll keep taking me

I'm hoping some version of Vampiric Dominance comes back, and as Annesh mentioned - I really hope Vampiric Embrace is made into a smart heal so it only heals people who are injured.