The way Shadow Priest feels

[Deleted]

I just wanted to type out my thoughts on the current Shadow Priest.

First off; I dislike the Shadow Orb system, since this used to be exclusive to Warlocks in the sense of Soul Shards, then eventually, Paladins got Holy Power en we got Shadow Orbs... it doesn't feel special, at all.
If we do have to have those orbs, it felt better in Cataclysm, where Mind Blast was your spender, instead of a generator.
It felt much better having 3 DoT's with 3 massive, loud, harsh burst.
Great even, it felt so good just having that one-time massive damage which you could time to just mess up someone so bad if done correctly.

Now it feels so... petty.
Having only 2 DoT's, don't get me wrong, their damage is great, feels dull.
You cast Mind Blast with medium to high damage, with a pretty big cooldown to generate an orb.
With the only way of generating more orbs is proccing more Mind Blasts or casting a Shadow Word Death, and using it all to cast a medium to high damaging burst with a low-duration pretty strong DoT, feels boring in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, Shadow Priests are strong and I still like playing it, I just liked it more before Pandaria.

My suggestion would be, give us Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch as main DoT's [albeit weaker versions since you now have consistent 3 DoT's.], no changes to Mind Blast, Use Psychic Horror or a new Shadow Word or Shadow Word: Death as Orb Spender, and make Shadow Word: Death much more mana intensive but spammable like Execute, or make it so that Shadow Word: Death uses up 1 orb, always, unless in execute, where it can be cast once before going on CD.

These are my 2 cents.
Also, since you will be weakening our DoT's significantly for this to work, maybe introduce a new spell; Shadow Word: Infect or Plague or whatever, something that spreads Shadow Word: Pain through all targets, albeit at 50% effectiveness and proc coefficient.
Having Pain spread at 50% effectiveness and proc coefficient, it occured to me this is extremely strong, having no proc coefficient on Mind Blast maybe more fair.


I also posted this on the Blizzard forums.

[DiGG]

What you're saying is you want spriests to go back to pre-5.0, and add a mix of warlock and dk spell? It's a it's a... a legitimate wish, but I don't think Bliz will change anything (sadly for you). I do prefer the way it was pre-5.0, but ultimately I love the way dps ramps off over time, how on pulls we (I) start low, but finish near the top of the charts.

[Deleted]

What you're saying is you want spriests to go back to pre-5.0, and add a mix of warlock and dk spell? It's a it's a... a legitimate wish, but I don't think Bliz will change anything (sadly for you). I do prefer the way it was pre-5.0, but ultimately I love the way dps ramps off over time, how on pulls we (I) start low, but finish near the top of the charts.

Well, somewhat.
I just feel that currently it's all a bit plain.
I just wish they'd add in a bit more.. spice.
Maybe a new Shadow Word, which as said could spread or maybe act as a new orb spender.

[BobAwesome]

I'm enjoy MoP version of spriest out of every rendition of spriests since release. I only wish that we still had passive healing from VE, even more so now that they're planning to nerf hybrid healing.

[Deleted]

I'm enjoy MoP version of spriest out of every rendition of spriests since release. I only wish that we still had passive healing from VE, even more so now that they're planning to nerf hybrid healing.

I'd love VE being a toggle with lower amounts.
Current VE is OP, throw dots, dispersion, heal up.

[Demetrion]

Only thing that I dislike is how RNG the class has become. Sure thing, every class has some RNG involved but at the end of the day they have a way of controlling that RNG and making it "less" RNG.

Fury warriors for example. Huge partition goes around being Enraged which is accomplished by scoring critical strike with Bloodthirst which has 2x critical strike coefficient (double the chance). At low gear levels this is huge issue, but once warrior gets to 50% critical strike chance they will completely remove that aspect (and critical has bigger value than strength at this moment), where shadow priests no matter how much haste we get, the chance to proc instant mind blast (hence better orb generation) will always be 5%.

I like how priests are at the moment, but we need a cooldown which can grant us orbs on demand.

[Succath]

Only thing that I dislike is how RNG the class has become. Sure thing, every class has some RNG involved but at the end of the day they have a way of controlling that RNG and making it "less" RNG.

Fury warriors for example. Huge partition goes around being Enraged which is accomplished by scoring critical strike with Bloodthirst which has 2x critical strike coefficient (double the chance). At low gear levels this is huge issue, but once warrior gets to 50% critical strike chance they will completely remove that aspect (and critical has bigger value than strength at this moment), where shadow priests no matter how much haste we get, the chance to proc instant mind blast (hence better orb generation) will always be 5%.

I like how priests are at the moment, but we need a cooldown which can grant us orbs on demand.

this is really true. there are fights where i end up destroying the dmg meters because of the procs i get on mind spike or mind blast.
however there are also fights where i barely get a few more procs.

I would love to have some sort +crit = increased chances of procs buff on priest other then that i think priests in general are fine although i liked the Cataclysm way of playing priest better.

[ragecloud]

I like how priests are at the moment, but we need a cooldown which can grant us orbs on demand.

I like the idea of this as it would create a new CD that we would have to use, I just don't want it to be more like a DK with respect to rune refreshing, I think a spell that functioned similar to archangel instead of increasing damage maybe increased shadow orb generation chance would be better.

[Deleted]

I feel the only problem right now with shadow priests is that we don't have a way to generate up to 3 shadow orbs between wipes "like boomkins have with eclipse", nor do we have a proper "BURN DAMAGE" cd right now.

[Karshda]

I feel the only problem right now with shadow priests is that we don't have a way to generate up to 3 shadow orbs between wipes "like boomkins have with eclipse", nor do we have a proper "BURN DAMAGE" cd right now.

We don't need a way to generate orbs between wipes. Shadow Orbs are holy power for spriests. I agree with needing a baseline cd.

[dnlEHEH]

It went from one RNG based system to another. I don't like it. It's just slightly improved from the cataclysm system which was horrible (at low gear levels especially) without good RNG or the shadowfiend 4set. To be able to compete with other classes currently we need extremely good luck with Divine Insight and FCDL.

A good example of how RNG this class has become is that I'm sometimes able to burst as high as 130-140k DPS without bloodlust and sometimes as low as 80k (I'm talking about the 20-25 first seconds of the exact same boss (Vizier Zor'lok) during multiple tries during progression). We do need a new DPS CD other than shadowfiend aswell, I really don't see the point in removing AA from us.

[Deleted]

We do need a new DPS CD other than shadowfiend aswell, I really don't see the point in removing AA from us.

This.

Now, once again, our damage is fine, IF we manage to get decent procs.
We need that little bit extra to grand us one more orb, or a higher proc chance.

[Aica]

Rename Devouring Plague to something else. Shadow Priests have nothing to do with disease. Forsaken did, but Shadow Priests?

[scorpious1109]

I just wanted to type out my thoughts on the current Shadow Priest.

First off; I dislike the Shadow Orb system, since this used to be exclusive to Warlocks in the sense of Soul Shards, then eventually, Paladins got Holy Power en we got Shadow Orbs... it doesn't feel special, at all.

I couldn't even get past this part before seeing you're wrong about something. Warlock shards worked differently before 4.0.1, which is when they got converted to a resource system, which is the exact same time Paladins got Holy Power, not "eventually".

[NotKonway]

...no matter how much haste we get, the chance to proc instant mind blast (hence better orb generation) will always be 5%.

I like how priests are at the moment, but we need a cooldown which can grant us orbs on demand.

With more haste and mastery, you can get more SW:P ticks and more DI procs in a shorter period of time. I'd say that's roughly equivalent to increasing the proc chance.

[Thelxi]

Spriest might be a bit boring now, but at least it is smooth.

[Washuwa]

i still feel we are really behind on single target bosses with no adds, like really behind, other than that we are ok

[Minoan]

Rename Devouring Plague to something else. Shadow Priests have nothing to do with disease. Forsaken did, but Shadow Priests?

<3

Also,
They wanted to make us less RNG about orbs(remember Cataclysm, aye?), but for those who disagree they gave ElemShammiez DoT-Proc system.
At least they gave us an opportunity of choosing it. Mindbender+ToF gives you stable damage increase without any RNG, to let us watch how poor we are in between 22 seconds.

Or get heaps of haste, lots of Disc-reforged gear to make a bigger weight of mastery(more ticks and overcapped haste) and go DI+FDLC.

And that's a really fair choice. Tbh, I don't think getting over 8085 haste makes DI FDLC mandatory. Moreover, even it is only in my thoughts that when you're getting 6.5k haste, FDLC>bender(correct me if I'm wrong, but IMO at most bosses it's just like that), but challenge of ToF<=>DI is a really interesting thing. Yesterday I was checking BL roster before I went to sleep, since I recognised more and more 25-man and even 10-man guys are taking ToF(before, ToF was taken only @ Elegon, Garalon, Will & Unsok as mandatory) more often. I found 5 geared-up Priests with viable shadow specs, 3 DI vs 2 ToF.
Today you're linking 2 amazing vodka spriests, and again, even with same caps, DI vs ToF. It's a good question for me now, since priest is not my alt but my passion now.

The really unfair thing is, our single target damage is not as good as I'd like to see. Anyway, we haven't see the whole power of 4t13PC, so far Insanity may become an amazing spell for single target especially if it crits fair enough.

And of course CDs. Playing a DK made me wish just one thing for shadow priests. I don't think they will return DA since

IT WILL MAKE OUR GLYPH OF DARK ARCHANGEL USELESS AND GLYPHS ARE NOW FOR FUN AND YOU SHOULD USE THAT CASUAL FUN SO EAT WHAT YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN OR SPEC TO OP DISC NERDS

but when rets had a shitty Holy Power, they were at least having Zealotry. Class designers are not giving us such an option-moreover, they are not giving us some non-combat regenerations of it(why don't they make a non-combat button to regen 3 orbs with 10 min CD if it may be switched off on Arenas and be refreshed after every boss pull, also giving an additional firearms in casual PvE for soloing elite mobs? DK's AotD analogue, switched off in combat just like SYmbiosis)

How I'm seeing it: let's call it Shadow Evocation.
Generates 3 Orbs, desn't matter how many of them do you have so far.
Cooldown:And that's where it became a problem.
If you're giving it 3 minutes cooldown, it's just damn good, but
If you're giving it 5 minutes cooldown, it is, as well as 3 minutes CD, gives you an amazing PvP benefit.
If you're giving it 10 minutes cooldown, it doesn't make a big sense in PvE.
But if that spell may be switched off from using on Arenas, it is great. And it may get a special T14 bonus decreasing it's CD by 30-90 seconds.
Too hard to implement. And I'm seriously thinking that they will give us something like T13 next patch in 2T14 PC-for example, VE will generate Orb with every Mind Spike, or SW:I will generate an orb(huge buff), or whatever.

Your thoughts? Waiting for better stats and caps?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Personally I much more prefer the direction Shadow went in 5.0 to where Warlock went.

The warlock systems feel needlessly clunky. Burning Embers should be a bar but blizz made a convoluted ember display for it. And the chaos bolt you get from it feels weak. The DoT system in use by affliction feels more like put up 3 dots then spam the ability to extend their duration.

Shadow, meanwhile, feels more like the old warlock did. You have to watch your dots or risk losing dps. There's no clunky system to extend your dot duration, so nice they're up you've got a good 15 seconds to fill time.

And shadow has options for filling time, surprisingly. I find between, and its 3am so sorry if I get a name wrong, Mind Spike (glyphed to not remove DoTs), Cascade, and mind flay, I'm rarely spamming one move.

Yes orbs aren't a needed system, but it's a system that fits into your rotation already. If you aren't generating orbs, you're probably not doing good dps.

If I had three things about shadow that I'd change, it'd be
Shadowform persists through death
DoTs have a slightly longer (5 second) duration.
Some more AoE ability.

[Minoan]

And shadow has options for filling time, surprisingly. I find between, and its 3am so sorry if I get a name wrong, Mind Spike (glyphed to not remove DoTs), Cascade, and mind flay, I'm rarely spamming one move.

MindSpike glyphed gives you a buff to reduce MBlast casttime by 50%. Stacks 2 times. It doent's remove dots only if it procs from FDLC.
Cascade is not mandatory for the whole fights, and T6 talents are 15-40 seconds CD. Mindflay for 3-6 seconds of Mblast CD or one more button in 15-40 seconds ain't a good filler. In a stable scenario. In an unstable scenario if your procs from dots are going in a row you're just hitting everything like frostDK, rushing the rotation like an idiotic squirrel with a 7-button priority on execute, trying to collect all benefits in 4 seconds