RIP Shadow's 4pc t13 burst (and H Spine viability)

[Derpyhooves]

You're not rude, just ignorant.

If you gave this a little more thought, you would know that some people would like to spend those 3 weeks still killing hc Madness and hc Raggy for mounts and gold (selling said mounts to buyers), because after MoP, the droprate of these mounts goes down to 0.1%. It's nice to still be efficient during those 3 weeks.

But you know, insulting people is easier I guess.

Haha wow, great post, did you even read what I wrote before you started ranting and raging over nothing? I never said people won't raid, just that with the 30% nerf the fight is so trivial that a loss of burst from one class is really irrelevant, unless you are doing it 1 lift per plate.

The best part was when you started your post off by insulting me then ended your post by claiming I somehow insulted other people (which I never did and please point out where I did say anything insulting)

Talk about ignorant....

[Frmercury]

3 weeks of farmed content nerfed to the ground. You should manage.

Seriously. Outdated, nerfed, soon to be irrelevant content that you can down EVEN IF Spriests do thousands of less DPS on certain encounters in the next couple weeks.

[emni]

Haha wow, great post, did you even read what I wrote before you started ranting and raging over nothing? I never said people won't raid, just that with the 30% nerf the fight is so trivial that a loss of burst from one class is really irrelevant, unless you are doing it 1 lift per plate.

The best part was when you started your post off by insulting me then ended your post by claiming I somehow insulted other people (which I never did and please point out where I did say anything insulting)

Talk about ignorant....

I never raged or ranted, please stop projecting your own feelings into my posts. I merely stated that some raid groups do and will benefit from trying to maximize our shadow priests' DPS.

We're a small casual raid group that raids once a week and we still manage to clear 8/8hc every time, and have done so for months, so I don't think we're doing too badly. But I'm still not a condescending elitist who goes around forums claiming how easy and outdated the content is, it certainly isn't for us. And I can say for certain that we will struggle on hc Spine if we loose "thousands" of DPS, as Frmercury says above.

I didn't realize that one wasn't allowed to voice ones opinion on this board unless they were a hardcore pro. Well, I'm sorry our raid group isn't as superawesome as yours. For us, the content is still relevant, it's not yet outdated, and while yes, it is nerfed, it can still be challenging if we don't pay attention and don't do our best.

[Macco]

The 4p T13 bonus is the worst thing to ever happen to shadow gameplay, I'm just glad its finally over

[espoire]

The 4p T13 bonus is the worst thing to ever happen to shadow gameplay, I'm just glad its finally over

I disagree. Mechanically, having burst is only a good thing for a class that never had any. Subjectively, I really liked the added depth it gave. It's not like it removed depth by providing more orbs throughout the fight, we still dealt with it by casting Mind Blast on cooldown, just as before. And the option to use Shadowfiend as a single-target burst cooldown (and needing to plan which target not to DoT up ahead of time) made the gameplay more strategic. Particularly so on the more fluid fights, such as H Blackhorn and H Madness.

[Mctriple]

Spam swp on bloods and then spam mind blast (proc'd by all the swp) on the tendons for nearly 100% DP uptime along with the huge mind blast damage while VT and swp are ticking away the whole time, too. Seems like it won't be too bad.

[Socialhealer]

Now, I mean this politely... who cares? Spine Heroic has been out for 8 months now. With nerfs, tendon damage hasn't been an issue for anyone with a basic idea of their class and saving CDs for it. A month after this change Mists will be out.

this so much, im play ele shaman and im going to be losing probably over 10k dps on every fight so much i will probably need the 30% nerf to make my class viable, on the other hand i cleared it like 6 months ago whole guild has everything sold everything so indeed who cares? i'd rather be balanced for mop than balanced at 85 for 1 month and whole game needs rebalancing for 90 that kind of time is just a waste blizz could put somewhere else.

[Lylyth]

Holy shit, come on! If you're in a guild pushing heroics and even with the huge ass nerf you can't kill Hc DW just because one DPser is a little lower than thy were then you suck anyway.

[Twintop]

I know there are a lot of people who have responded to this thread making statements like, "Who cares? H: Spine has been lolnerf'd so burst doesn't matter."

That isn't the point.

The point is how can we use our new toolkit in burst phases similar to what Heroic Spine is. I just did a bunch of analysis and posted the results on my blog:

http://warcraft.twintop-tahoe.com/?p=305

tl;dr: Glyph of Shadow Word: Death, Glyph of Mind Spike, From Darkness, Comes Light, and Twist of Fate. Bank 2 Surge of Darkness procs and have ToF ready to go when the burst phase starts.

[Flaubertlives]

Are you saying to use SW: D above execute to generate Shadow Orbs? I didn't think this worked? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Purpledrink503]

Is there really complaining to a change 1 month before the new xpac and a heroic fight that doesn't mean anything anymore? I mean really?

[Forsay]

The 4p T13 bonus is the worst thing to ever happen to shadow gameplay, I'm just glad its finally over

Can't agree more. It's not only Shadowfiend that sometimes doesn't hit or get ported somewhere (like in early t13 spine, pets were unable to hit burning tendon), but also this rotation is very latency/fps dependent.

Are you saying to use SW: D above execute to generate Shadow Orbs? I didn't think this worked? Correct me if I'm wrong.

That's correct, SWD doesn't generate an Orb if used above 20% hp.

[mindp]

The 4p T13 bonus is the worst thing to ever happen to shadow gameplay, I'm just glad its finally over

I felt like a Cata baby everytime I had to use Mind Spike. Thank God it is over.

[emni]

Holy shit, come on! If you're in a guild pushing heroics and even with the huge ass nerf you can't kill Hc DW just because one DPser is a little lower than thy were then you suck anyway.

Wow, seems that a person looking for help on this forum gets mostly insults from most people. Thanks. Awesome community. :/

That said, thanks Twintop! I saw your blog earlier and your post on HowToPriest, great job.

[Deleted]

I felt like a Cata baby everytime I had to use Mind Spike. Thank God it is over.

If anything you would feel as a cata baby because you've been told over and over to not use Mind spike and then when its time to use it to INCREASE your dps it feels wrong, if anything I loved the 4p since it was something that you could use to burst on Spine or any other place where you needed the burst, and try and work around that burst on a normal fight.

[Austilias]

A month until MoP guys, let's try to keep a little perspective. Were this the beginning of Dragon Soul say, within the first month, people might care more but really; these complaints are like complaining that the doctors decide to change the medication of someone in their nineties who is on their death bed, because they're likely going to die in a few hours or a couple of days no matter what they do.

[espoire]

Wow, seems that a person looking for help on this forum gets mostly insults from most people. Thanks. Awesome community. :/

That said, thanks Twintop! I saw your blog earlier and your post on HowToPriest, great job. :)

OP here. Actually, I mostly agree with them. It baffles me that 90% of the still-raiding guilds on my server haven't beaten H Spine yet. That's not the point. The point is that for future fights that need burst, we're in need of a new burst rotation.

[Celentes]

If you're in a guild that is still struggling with spine (and that is what nerfs are for - guilds that are struggling) and there are several raiders of classes that suddenly lose their main burst potential (shadowpriests and elementals for one) then well, you probably should be concerned.
I don't see much point in all the insults. Nerfs are there for a reason, believe it or not.

[emni]

OP here. Actually, I mostly agree with them. It baffles me that 90% of the still-raiding guilds on my server haven't beaten H Spine yet. That's not the point. The point is that for future fights that need burst, we're in need of a new burst rotation.

You know, we're not a "guild". We're a casual raiding group made up of mostly of alts, friends and family members of raiders from several hard-core guilds. We raid once a week, some weeks we have in new people that haven't raided with us before and we have still clear hc DS and have been doing so for months. We do better than many actual raiding guilds in spite of not being one and yet I'm not arrogant enough to look down on people who have yet to kill hc Spine.

There's really no excuse to be rude to people just because they don't invest as much time, effort, or simply aren't as skilled as you. And yes, some of those people still want to try and do their best, optimizing is fun. Telling them they shouldn't try because the content is irrelevant for anyone that doesn't suck is just being an asshole.

[Shirosaki]

I've been on beta.

New burst rotation for spine is EZmode.

Mindbender and twist of fate. Mindbender is improved shadowfiend. Twist of fate gives you 15% increased damage for 10 seconds after damaging something below 20%. Simply save mindbender for tendons, and before the tendon pops be sure to kill a corrupted blood for the proc. If you're uncomfortable with relying on twist of fate, simply choose power infusion instead. It's not something to cry about, we weren't meant to be a burst class anyway, and we're still going to do decently after today.