5.1 shadow priest neglect

[Deleted]

Just had a quick look at the ptr patch changes for 5.1, lots of new intresting features for a few classes and a few nerfs. Shadow Priests however look right now as if they are being left alone, this would be good if we were not in need of a buff. DPS wise we are never going to be top not in the current state, and in my opinion we lack a burst button.

Rolled a shadow priest for MoP because id never played one at a high level, the skill level to play a SP is significantly higher than some other classes, and I enjoy that but I would really like to see some form of buff before 5.1 is released, any thoughts?

[chunkycarl]

We're not in a bad place right now really.
I'll be honest i'm not in a "hardcore" raiding guild, however with 6/6 under my belt i have a fair scope to go off.

In terms of single target (our general team at the moment been 2x afflic locks myself (shadow) and a rotation of a hunter/rogue/mage/warrior/DK for the remaining spots)
i'm finding it easy to power ahead early on in fights. With DMF trinket and pro pot my burst is usually above everyone (locks sometimes break ahead), However the one anoying thing personally is the difference in burst situations if you have 3x shadow orbs or not (IE if you have come in from a fresh wipe of streight from trash)
Having the DP opener with full benefit of pot and other procs (elgalon trinket and DMF) is a significent difference in my own DPS. it would be nice if we had something to allow us to pre stack the orbs after a wipe
AoE fights and multiple target fights, im wipeing the floor with the rest (whether its skill difference or not, i wouldn't say for certain)
Multi Dots with talents like FDCL have some real power. Elgalon with Twisting fate is almost a constant uptime with careful timeing.
Looking over 5.1, i agree we dont seem to have anything new and shiny, However where we stand at the moment (minus the Shadow orb thing) personally from my raiding experiences shadow seems just as awsome as ever

[Deleted]

We suck at aoe, thats the main problem. And I wished we had some real cooldown to use too. And we scale extremely bad with gear, every other class will have their ressource generation scale with haste/mastery, not us. Unless we pick DI(which is a dps loss in every case), we are going to have the same orb generation when fully geared which I find to be stupid.

[Deleted]

We're not in a bad place right now really.
I'll be honest i'm not in a "hardcore" raiding guild, however with 6/6 under my belt i have a fair scope to go off.

In terms of single target (our general team at the moment been 2x afflic locks myself (shadow) and a rotation of a hunter/rogue/mage/warrior/DK for the remaining spots)
i'm finding it easy to power ahead early on in fights. With DMF trinket and pro pot my burst is usually above everyone (locks sometimes break ahead), However the one anoying thing personally is the difference in burst situations if you have 3x shadow orbs or not (IE if you have come in from a fresh wipe of streight from trash)
Having the DP opener with full benefit of pot and other procs (elgalon trinket and DMF) is a significent difference in my own DPS. it would be nice if we had something to allow us to pre stack the orbs after a wipe
AoE fights and multiple target fights, im wipeing the floor with the rest (whether its skill difference or not, i wouldn't say for certain)
Multi Dots with talents like FDCL have some real power. Elgalon with Twisting fate is almost a constant uptime with careful timeing.
Looking over 5.1, i agree we dont seem to have anything new and shiny, However where we stand at the moment (minus the Shadow orb thing) personally from my raiding experiences shadow seems just as awsome as ever

I've always found burst to be extreemly slow as a SP, what are you doing at the start of a fight, what Rotation.

[Deleted]

I've always found burst to be extreemly slow as a SP, what are you doing at the start of a fight, what Rotation.

I put up VT and SWP, DP if i got 3 orbs from trash then MB and go back to dotting when needed and just enjoy all of my MS and MB procs, its me and a ele shaman that always gets the best burst in our raidgrp. oh, and use a int pot before pull

[Deleted]

I put up VT and SWP, DP if i got 3 orbs from trash then MB and go back to dotting when needed and just enjoy all of my MS and MB procs, its me and a ele shaman that always gets the best burst in our raidgrp. oh, and use a int pot before pull

Same as me, can I have a link to your amory please!

[Deleted]

I'm from a 5/6 25-man HC guild and the main problem I feel is that we're not a very consistent class on a per fight basis. Some fights we're very good for (Will of the emp, Elegon) but then there are other which we aren't quite so. (Feng Normal, possibly others depending on opinion). Even then, I wouldn't say we're bad, just often towards the lower end of the meter, It's going to feel like the worlds crashing down when you're coming from top 1-5 in Cata.

My guild is quite competitive - I can't comment for end T14 gear shadow, but It's not yet at the stage that I'm being replaced in our raiding environment. Shadow single target could really use a significant buff in my opinion, though.

[Bremmon]

We suck at aoe, thats the main problem. And I wished we had some real cooldown to use too. And we scale extremely bad with gear, every other class will have their ressource generation scale with haste/mastery, not us. Unless we pick DI(which is a dps loss in every case), we are going to have the same orb generation when fully geared which I find to be stupid.

Not sure where you get your information from, but DI sims out at over 5k dps increase for me, as well as raid testing this. If anything you are going to change talents for the couple bosses so you can cheese the proc on ToF.

[Deleted]

That's weird, I am at 489 ilvl and ToF is always better;s.

To fairyliquid, we are quite good on the whole of MV. But on HoF we kinda suck until Un'sok and the empress. The first four are quite annoying as a SP especially Meljarak where we basically are dispelbots(plus our aoe is crap).

[chunkycarl]

I put up VT and SWP, DP if i got 3 orbs from trash then MB and go back to dotting when needed and just enjoy all of my MS and MB procs, its me and a ele shaman that always gets the best burst in our raidgrp. oh, and use a int pot before pull

Same rotation i'm using :P
Personally im only using TF for fights such as elagon otherwise DI is just so much more win. many many more DP's <3

[Aica]

especially Meljarak where we basically are dispelbots(plus our aoe is crap).

Luckily, having Mass Dispel means that you're pretty much guaranteed a spot on Mel'jarak. We're decent on Garalon as well.

[Deleted]

I put up VT and SWP, DP if i got 3 orbs from trash then MB and go back to dotting when needed and just enjoy all of my MS and MB procs, its me and a ele shaman that always gets the best burst in our raidgrp. oh, and use a int pot before pull

Say what? Our ele sham outbursts me by about a factor of 2-3. He can easily do 250k+ burst for the first part of a fight while ascendance is up. My burst is barely more than my normal rotation damage as my burst is basically normal rotation with a pot and shadowfiend.

I'm typically overall higher dps, but burst is not shadow's forte in my experience.

[Toxigen]

Do we really need to have insane burst like other classes or be #1, #2, or even #3 dps?

With the Dark Binding glyph, being able to toss out PoMs and can land clutch LoFs adds a decent amount of raid utility...and let's not forget a glyphed VE can be absolutely clutch / raid-saving on some fights.

Again, don't focus on the meters (unless you're having serious issues). If your guild is any good, they'll see your strong play through utility.

[Hesp]

Yea, HoF isn't too great for priests. Garalon and Un'sok are the only fights where we aren't flat out "meh". For most people this doesn't matter, but it's kind of a pain when you know you're going to be sat for the first heroic kills on fights like Shek'zeer and Mel'jarak unless you're the mass dispel bot (not much better than being sat).

Shadow having sub-par single target is just a fact of life, and we typically bring enough utility to make up for it. The problem right now is our extremely poor aoe. The design goal of having our aoe playstyle be "dot then sear" sounds fine on paper, but it doesn't really work well in practice since there isn't a single free global once you enter 3-4 target range. Not taking at least one of the proc talents for multi-dotting is too much of a dps loss, but with them you become gcd capped and never have the opportunity to cast a filler spell. So, Mind Sear ends up being in this weird spell purgatory where there is absolutely no reason to cast it since in any situation where you would want to cast it as a filler (4+ targets); there is always something better to cast. There are just too many better spells to cast when multi-dotting; the only way to make the spell worthwhile would be an obscene buff that would give it a higher dpet than everything except Mind Blast, and that's both not likely to happen nor is it compelling gameplay. Barring a total rework of the spell, Mind Sear just has no place in the current raids except as a quick mass aoe (Maddening Shout is all that come to mind).

I don't mind the extra multi-dotting effort, but it's a bit disheartening when I can confidently say I put in the most effort on a fight like Mel'jarak, and am rewarded with being one of the worst specs for the fight. This isn't about being top spec on every fight, not that we are, this is about receiving appropriate dps reward for the amount of effort supplied. I see two solutions to the problem: either buff/nerf spells accordingly to offer slightly more reward for our current multi-dot rotation, or rework mind sear.

I would really like to see damage taken away from Mind Spike and Mind Blast so that we can get more powerful dots. It just feels weird having MB being higher priority than dots. T'm sure some people will disagree, but I'm of the opinion that the class design should involve maximum dot uptime, with procs to fill spare globals as necessary, not the current state of us having our dots there solely to proc FDCL and DI. Of course I'm sure some of the more pvp-inclined priests wouldn't like this change since it's part of the reason shadow is strong right now. This doesn't really do anything for the small niche that Mind Sear fills and would significantly reduce our ability to burst targets down, but I think it would create a more solid playstyle.

Alternatively, they could completely rework Mind Sear. I've seen the idea mentioned before, but I think it's definitely one of the best: make Mind Sear cost shadow orbs and buff it significantly. A mind sear that deals its current damage at 0 orbs and increasing damage per shadow orb used would not only make us more effective aoe'ers, but also lessen the difficulty of multi-dotting while adding a new layer of gameplay to the class. I could see an aoe style of using swp on all targets to generate DI procs, then spending those orbs on Mind Sears being rather interesting. Of course this particular MS change would make DI maybe too favorable, but I think the idea still has merit.

There are plenty of changes that could be made to increase our viability on cleave-type fights, I just hope we see something before 5.2 rolls around. I think the underlying issue is that it's just not "fun" to be a shadowpriest right now, at least in my opinion. There just needs to be some happy middle ground where shadow won't fluctuate from too strong to too weak. The amount of work required to maximize dps is just so far out of proportion with the dps we're capable of that I don't know how much longer it will be before I just say, "screw it" and reroll for the sake of my raid's dps and my own sanity.

[Alanar]

Do you think the nerf to shadow healing is going to be painfull?

[jonish]

The issue with shadow isnt necessarily now. It is next tier. Shadow scales worse with gear than any other class by a huge margin. Our mastery does not scale at all, and our orb generation doesnt scale in any way/shape/form.

Our ramp up time on a boss is actually worse now than ever before if you dont come into a fight with pre-generated orbs which isnt possible on anything but farm bosses your dps suffers alot. We scale very poorly with gear with mind flays still incorrect spell power scaling for a 3 second cast time channel spell along with mind blast not scaling with mastery in anyway.

Right now in terms of gear , depending where you are in your process getting to the 8085 breakpoint is a big dps increase. As is getting to the 2pc bonus, but beyond that , there is nothing to shoot for as a goal for a long long time to boost dps. The next attainable breakpoint is at 10124 and that is a rather minor breakpoint via Vampiric Touch. It isnt the giant breakpoint you get with DP at 8064.

So , shadow is good situationaly now. We thrive on certain fights as we always have in multi-dot scenarios. Stone guards/Elegon/Will. Even Gara'jal if you are good in your phased portions of the fight getting off 2 cascades per phase down below. Our aoe output is still pathetic. If Bliz doesnt want to up mind sears dps , make it do something else. Give it a seed of corruption style effect and make it spread SWPain or something.

Halo - needs to be fixed. halo should do a fixed amount of dps and that amount should be split amongst the active targets within the area.

Cascade - not bad after the recent buff but still needs it's damage increased a fair amount.

Divine star - needs a rather large dps increase. Great in grouped up fight scenarios for the healing aspect.

SW:I - still completely useless even with the 4 pc bonus. This should be redesigned. Great idea but it just fails in actual use.
Twist of Fate - needs to be increased to 30%.
FDCL - each proc should grant a shadow orb but it should have an internal lockout on how often it can proc as a result.
DI - DI'd mind blasts should not effect the gcd or cooldown of mind blast. Should increase crit chance of next mind blast ??

Void shift needs to be taken off the global cooldown.


Really need some better glyphs added in for shadow. This is a big issue.


EDIT: forgot the most important thing.
Shadow needs something to generate shadow orbs to set themselves up pre-fight. Moonkins can switch to start in eclipse , warlocks can generate shards etc. This change really needs to happen. Does any other class have a 24 second ramp up time for dps ??

[Aica]

...mastery doesn't scale at all...?

[Bremmon]

I don't mind the extra multi-dotting effort, but it's a bit disheartening when I can confidently say I put in the most effort on a fight like Mel'jarak, and am rewarded with being one of the worst specs for the fight. This isn't about being top spec on every fight, not that we are, this is about receiving appropriate dps reward for the amount of effort supplied. I see two solutions to the problem: either buff/nerf spells accordingly to offer slightly more reward for our current multi-dot rotation, or rework mind sear.

The truth of this made me tear up a bit..... honestly though, that is how shadow priests have always been. Maximum effort for mediocre dps, granted there have been times that we have rocked it, but over all those times are too far and few between.

[Deleted]

I'm kinda glad we getting fairly untouched some small nerfs but we are in a great place atm. was hoping the mass-dispell change would make it live
but I guess it would of been insanly op.
Also does any know a good shadowpriest pvp youtuber? my mate has cartoonz and the other has cobrak
talabar hasnt made any vids in months

[Mctriple]

Shadow does not need a buff. I'm glad they're not nerfing us hard.