Ohhh maaaa gaash Shadow priest REAL CD BURST OMG

[Halda]

Sometimes I get bothered by it. The key is to know deep down that our true strength is something Ghostcrawler cannot nerf, our immeasurable awesomeness is what makes us overpowered. Ghostcrawler cannot nerf our awesomeness - he sometimes tries to nerf everything else in a futile attempt to balance us. But we will always be overpowered, so long as we remain true to the darkness in our hearts: the shadows in our footsteps.

Mother Shadow is greater now than the game in which she was borne, she cannot be contained by Azeroth, nor controlled by Ghostcrawler - her wake now ripples across these internets - into the hearts and minds of mortal men. She fills the space between the stars above. Ghostcrawler can no more nerf Shadow than he can nerf an idea or a whisper, or the absence of light. Our mistress is eternal now, what is Ghostcrawler against the ebb and entropy of time? What man could hope to stop the heat-death of this universe? His nerfs are petty things, Her victory is fate

will you mary me ? love it !

On a sidenote, after the first 25H wave of boss testing, something probably need to be done.
On Jinrok you're fighting really hard to avoid last place by far, it's atrocious because this fight require some movement you can't really anticipate, so either you're lucky with procs, or you're doomed. We probably need some form of reliable movement dps. Except this boss, we're quite decent, we're middle of the pack (still behind Mage and locks) but with the number of adds in nearly every fight we should'nt be sat on progression fight (at least until Lei shen and his last phase...), ToF once again save us if we manage high uptime, sad we can't play another talent for 90% of the fights this tier.

[Yvaelle]

…wat?

(lol'd, nice read Yvaelle)

Haha, I was pretty out of it at the time - re-reading it it's pretty silly and disconnected, I could do better! Thanks though

[Verain]

If you ever look at how much healing healthstones do in a serious progression attempt (where people are going through 2-3 each), you'd be pretty shocked to see how much more raid healing a lock brings as compared to a spriest. If everyone eats their cookies like they are supposed to, locks outheal spriests.

While true, this is not a straight compare. Lockstones are DEFINITELY undervalued. However, part of that is that when I eat a lockstone, that was a big part me- I had to choose to eat the stone correctly. I'm pretty sure when Varlot died on our Blade Lord kill, he didn't eat his stone- he was still overwhelmed at being on a new class in a new role with only a couple attempts in that phase, but the point is, the stone itself doesn't solve the problem, it just makes a tool available.

I think that this game would benefit more with more things like lockstones and symbiosis.

In terms of raid buffs, we bring 10% stamina and 5% spell haste - they bring 10% stamina, 10% spellpower, -5% magic damage debuff, -50% casting speed debuff, -20% physical damage.

The casting speed debuff is stupid and I hate it. Wind Lord has adds that cast, and guess what they are immune to? I don't think this supposed raid debuff has even had ANY effect on ANY of the last like 31 raid bosses. The -20% physical is interesting, but mostly moot, as I believe every single tank has no issue keeping it up, and it is a damage loss for them to cast it.

In practice, priests bring 10% stamina and 5% spell haste, and locks bring 5% damage taken, 10% spellpower, and 10% stamina. This is a bit out of line, but...
Mages bring spellpower and crit. Rogues bring spell damage taken and windfury.
Adding a third to priests wouldn't be unprecedented, but locks are already exceptional in this area. If they added a raid buff to priests- or just to shadow priests- which one do you think it should be?

In terms of CC they bring more than us:

I don't think priests need more CC. Locks have a gratuitous amount, with possibly one mob feared, another seduced, and one banished- and that's just what can be done forever. I would say that this is a big part of their core design and concept though. I would not be sad if priests had their sleep back from vanilla (with controls for pvp), but I think locks even got THAT now- they just have to turn into a demon for it.

In terms of damage they bring way more than us;

Locks are overtuned for this tier. Shadow is also too low this tier. It looks like they may be a repeat next tier, but with less of a gap. Hopefully.

The best argument in our favour is that we have Mass Dispel - and Blizzard was "kind" enough to put in two times this tier where that was practically mandatory - Elegon/Will trash, and Wind Lord Mel'jarak - token mechanics so Shadowpriests would be near-mandatory.

GC has stated that priests aren't needed on Wind Lord. I bet his guild has a priest though!
I don't think these are token mechanics exactly. The dispelbait trash is really to help the classes that can't just blast away snares and roots. Wind Lord seems just a legit and cool use of the spell.

I do think that there isn't enough reward for dispels in the current raid tier.

If there was a super-important defensive dispel fight though, locks are actually better at that than we are - via Singe Magic, which is instant and doesn't require targetting/casting (it can also be set to auto-dispel the lock if so needed). The counter argument to us having Mass Dispel, is that locks have Battle Rez.

Well, mass dispel is situational, much like banish. More situational than banish in general. Battle Res shows up all the damned time.

It's hard to say locks have less utility than we do - at best we are comparable - at worst they are slightly ahead in utility.

Even after all this, I wouldn't go that far. Swapping life with someone can be a big deal. The ability to actually cast a goddamned heal instead of praying some turkey eats their green pill, and the ability to put out far MORE healing to a single target than the lock stone can deliver to that target (Verain having a stone doesn't help if Wreckstorm needs healing), some light damage shields, and of course Vampiric Embrace... these healing tricks are not matched by locks or by lock stones. I agree that locks have a lot of healing, but our raid would be hurt more by, say, Yvaelle transforming into Yvaette, than by Shademan turning into a shadow priest.

I do think that your utility and healing tricks are being used as a justification by Blizzard to tune you lower. I also think that GC won't touch that with a three mile pole- they won't admit it.

In WotLK Blizzard decided the utility vs. dps argument was archaic - and all DPS should be relatively equal (5% gets trumpeted alot as the hybrid tax, but Ghostcrawler officially denies it so he isn't accountable if its greater than that), and by that measure, all hybrids and pures need to be of roughly equal utility.

They've fell apart on that last part. You spent this whole time talking about locks, who have a bunch of tricks. What does the mage bring? A new raid mechanic to yell about, the "don't stand in my rune" buff? Rogues are getting a 20% raid damage reduction so "stand in my cloud" is totally not gonna be a played out joke, but note that we've spent several tiers having NO raid utility.

I think they are just lying, and that they are penalizing you more than they say. Yvaelle can and does keep up a raid and get a kill attempts before we would have had it without him. As a raid lead, losing a shadowpriest is terrible!

Extra holy loot doesn't drop just for your rets, outside your loot system

Actually, you should have picked any other example. Because this DOES happen. Holy plate drops time and time again, and unlike spirit cloth, which the priests always have reasons not to take, holy paladins actually DO wear holy plate- so if your ret is willing to heal, yea, he can actually put it to use if you need a pally healer or just need a healer that night.

The ability of hybrids to change roles is both nontrivial and has progressed our guild in the past. If you want to bring up top guilds that "always have someone on the bench", then I want to point out that top guilds actually have multiple geared players- and they will actually pick and choose whatever is optimal for that fight. World first kills normally have a couple geared alts in them, for stacking purposes. We saw that, what 60% druid world first? A big enough deal that Blizzard had to make nerfs. The power of hybrids to do multiple things helps even world first guilds- just because they each can have a couple hybrids to choose from doesn't change that fact, it just means that your shadow priest can go disc and heal, or he can go enhancement for burst.

Also, and more importantly, the game isn't designed around those guilds. For the vast majority of the playerbase, a stronger choice is a hybrid.



None of this justifies the large difference in shadow priest dps, however. Nor does is justify the far in excess of acceptable performance of arcane and affliction- why weren't these tuned down slightly when appropriate?

And even in Shadow's case - swapping a geared Spriest to a healing spec (before everything is on farm) isn't practical because their spirit often lacks way behind and they don't have healing trinkets (and trinkets are to healers what weapons are to melee).

That does become less of an issue as the tiers progress. In first tier, particularly THIS first tier, the "one tier below regular" gear was guarded like crazy and hard to get. In the past, you could go to heroic dungeons and get your gear like that. This tier only had regular dungeons (two tiers behind raid), which were labelled "heroics" for literally no reason. Then it had LFR to get the stuff one tier behind the raid- but LFR is metered, and you normally have to queue as dps each week, and can't win healing trinkets that way (and may simply NEVER see them, even if you spent your whole tier queueing second half of Cry About The Mogu SexDoll Machine raid as healer). But going into Troll/Mogu tier, I don't think this will be the same issue exactly.

I can't justify Shadow being 20k below Affliction in single target (in 5.1, more in 5.2), and even more in multi-dotting, on the basis of our utility being stronger than theirs - when our utility isn't stronger than theirs.

I am 100% sure that shadow's utility- mostly in the form of keeping the damned raid alive during parts where that is hard- is stronger than locks.
However, you are correct- the 20k delta is just too goddamned large.

[Yvaelle]

While true, this is not a straight compare. Lockstones are DEFINITELY undervalued. However, part of that is that when I eat a lockstone, that was a big part me- I had to choose to eat the stone correctly.

Or a healer had to call for it - providing that option though is in itself highly valuable - especcially since it's something many classes don't have such a strong response to (instant 20% of max hp self-heal), and even classes that do - like Spriests (PW:Shield) can stack the effects to survive Blade Lord phase 2 after the all the healers die, for example (a recent example where I would not have been able to keep up with the damage were it not for a healthstone as a spriest).

The casting speed debuff is stupid and I hate it. Wind Lord has adds that cast, and guess what they are immune to? I don't think this supposed raid debuff has even had ANY effect on ANY of the last like 31 raid bosses. The -20% physical is interesting, but mostly moot, as I believe every single tank has no issue keeping it up, and it is a damage loss for them to cast it.

There was a boss in Dragon Soul I'm pretty sure needed cast speed slows? In any case, while those are obviously the weaker ones they bring - priests have no correlation at all to them - while warlocks do bring them as options: options in themselves are valuable, even if unused.

In practice, priests bring 10% stamina and 5% spell haste, and locks bring 5% damage taken, 10% spellpower, and 10% stamina. This is a bit out of line, but...
Mages bring spellpower and crit. Rogues bring spell damage taken and windfury.
Adding a third to priests wouldn't be unprecedented, but locks are already exceptional in this area. If they added a raid buff to priests- or just to shadow priests- which one do you think it should be?

Mages also bring Bloodlust but you may be counting that as a cooldown more than a buff. Obviously not to put too much weight on this - but Arcane brings cast speed slow (Slow). Rogues bring 10% melee haste, -5% magic damage taken, -12% armor reduction, -50% healing reduction, and -50% cast speed slow (the last two generally being much less valuable than the first 3).

If they were to give us another, I'd suggest a debuff (since we have none, and they are generally less valuable than buffs) - such as -5% magic damage dealt or -10% physical damage dealt. -5% magic damage was originally a Spriest exclusive debuff (in Burning Crusade, we were the only spec that brought it) - since then we don't bring it while many other specs do (including rogues). -10% physical damage dealt could be a good alternate option - but it risks buffing Shadow PvP (melee being a current weak-point for us). In reality, it is probably best to leave us low on buffs/debuffs and compensate us with say, more damage (or other utility). I don't think this is how to 'fix' us.

I don't think priests need more CC. Locks have a gratuitous amount, with possibly one mob feared, another seduced, and one banished- and that's just what can be done forever. I would say that this is a big part of their core design and concept though. I would not be sad if priests had their sleep back from vanilla (with controls for pvp), but I think locks even got THAT now- they just have to turn into a demon for it.

So just to be clear, locks have way more buffs/debuffs than us, and way more CC - and that's by design (I agree). We've covered a lot what constitutes 'utility'.

Locks are overtuned for this tier. Shadow is also too low this tier. It looks like they may be a repeat next tier, but with less of a gap. Hopefully.

We think that gap may actually be larger, despite affliction nerfs and a Shadowform buff. The problem is that locks scale 30% faster with gear in 5.0/5.1 than Shadow does. The nerf to GoSacc hits both absolute DPS and gear scaling for Affliction, while the buff to Shadowform both (very slightly) increases our DPS and (very slightly) increases our scaling - but they're still outpacing us by too much: every additional item level gained is a relative 'buff' to Warlocks and Mages (all specs of whom scale WAY faster than Shadow and Elemental).

GC has stated that priests aren't needed on Wind Lord. I bet his guild has a priest though!
I don't think these are token mechanics exactly. The dispelbait trash is really to help the classes that can't just blast away snares and roots. Wind Lord seems just a legit and cool use of the spell.

I do think that there isn't enough reward for dispels in the current raid tier.

There are lots of dispel fights: Protectors, Tsulong, Vizier, Wind Lord, Empress, Stoned Doggs, Spirit Kings. I don't think the way to buff Shadow is to make dispels more mandatory than they already are. The only reason that Wind Lord makes Shadow almost mandatory is because of the extraordinary cost of Mass Dispel - to spam it on cooldown (and still end up behind in dispels, so you need dispel magics in there as well, which also aren't cheap), Disc wouldn't be able to heal if they had to spam MD the whole fight. Shadow if they focus on mana regen over damage (VT spam vs Mind Sear for example) can keep their mana high and still provide the necessary dispels. If a fight only required mass dispel occasionally - any priest would do - I'd rather not see more fights that require mass dispel every 15 seconds.

Well, mass dispel is situational, much like banish. More situational than banish in general. Battle Res shows up all the damned time.

Right, our Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel combined are only useful on 7/16 fights (listed above), and some of those are stretches (ie. Protectors is only if all the healers in a 10m are chosen for the stun at the same time - and none of them have human trinket / bubbles available). In practice, I've had to do it twice this tier in all our protector kills and attempts. Battle Rez is useful, and will continue to be useful, on every attempt and kill on every boss.

Even after all this, I wouldn't go that far. Swapping life with someone can be a big deal. The ability to actually cast a goddamned heal instead of praying some turkey eats their green pill, and the ability to put out far MORE healing to a single target than the lock stone can deliver to that target (Verain having a stone doesn't help if Wreckstorm needs healing), some light damage shields, and of course Vampiric Embrace... these healing tricks are not matched by locks or by lock stones.

A shadowpriest can drop form and bomb Flash Heals into someone if the healers can't keep up and a single healthstone isn't going to save them, a good example might be if someone gets Windstepped on Blade Lord - while LoS'ing the healers around a pillar - I've saved a few attempts that way this tier. It's a strong option, and it's a good one - and options are valuable. It requires a lot of the Spriest though - more than I'd expect Blizzard to be balancing around. You have to monitor raid health bars with as much attention as the healers themselves (to see the problem as soon as they do, but to not heal when they have it under control), watch raid positioning to spot the reason for other peoples problems (ie. is the warlock behind the pillar from the healer, when apparently neither the warlock noticed that and moved, or the healer complained about it before the problem occurred) - or respond near-instanteously when the healers call out that the Windstepped isn't in range of them.

The ability to Void Shift and/or Flash Heal is our greatest utility by far - but how many of those situations would also be fixed by the lock being more situationally aware, or teleporting to a better location, or eating a healthstone, or using Dark Bargain (or Unending Resolve, or etc) - or if it happens to someone else, having the Lock Battle Rez the dead (and now you dont need to heal through that windstep anymore!).

For all the utility that locks lord over us - more buffs, more debuffs, more CC, more movement (teleport network), more total healing (via Healthstones) and potentially more lives saved (healthstones, rather than hoping the spriest sees the person low, begins to cast flash heal - and the person is still alive in 1.5 seconds - rather than person seeing themselves low and eating a stone), and more lives ressurrected (battle rez). I'm agreeing that our healing output (Void Shift, VE, level 90 talents, ProM, and Flash Heal as a final option) makes us about equal (or ever so slightly below) locks superior utility in every other meaning / component of utility. I don't think that our healing makes us noticeably Superior to lock utility - so much so to justify us being the worst dps spec (in a world where utility vs. DPS is a trade-off to balance).

I do think that your utility and healing tricks are being used as a justification by Blizzard to tune you lower. I also think that GC won't touch that with a three mile pole- they won't admit it.

Agreed, but he's clearly using the mindset that 'utility vs. dps = balance' - and since our DPS is very low, our utility must be markedly above average - but instead we find our utility is around equal (to locks), while our DPS is at best (single target) 20k below them, and at worst (multi-dotting) 40k below them. So balance doesn't exist here, we need either higher DPS (in which case don't compare us to locks, but an average of all classes, or an average of all pure specs on all fights - including the ones those specs are bad on), or more utility. Giving us more utility isn't the way to fix this (it's TBC-era support spec thinking), so giving us more damage seems the right call.

They've fell apart on that last part. You spent this whole time talking about locks, who have a bunch of tricks. What does the mage bring? A new raid mechanic to yell about, the "don't stand in my rune" buff? Rogues are getting a 20% raid damage reduction so "stand in my cloud" is totally not gonna be a played out joke, but note that we've spent several tiers having NO raid utility.

Mages:
5% crit chance
10% spellpower
Bloodlust
-50% cast speed slow
Polymorph, Frost Nova, Circle of Frost, do they have a banish elemental type thing?
Ice Block (used to cheat mechanics like wipe Windsteps in the previous example)
Cauterize (self-battle rez that doesn't consume battle rezzes)
Temporal Shield (immunity to predicted damage spikes)
Highest single target DPS, ~34k above Shadow in single target

Actually, you should have picked any other example. Because this DOES happen. Holy plate drops time and time again, and unlike spirit cloth, which the priests always have reasons not to take, holy paladins actually DO wear holy plate- so if your ret is willing to heal, yea, he can actually put it to use if you need a pally healer or just need a healer that night.

All priests love spirit cloth, not sure where you get the idea we don't like it. Healers need it, and Shadow prefers it because Spirit cloth is overwhelmingly Spirit+Haste cloth, which are our two best secondary stats - while Hit is more often Hit+Crit or Hit+Mastery - which is not nearly as beneficial to us. A ret will not collect sufficient holy offspec gear fast enough to be useful on progression fights before the tier is often on farm (think of past tiers more than this one). Even a spriest, who uses much the same gear - will be at a significant disadvantage against mainspec healers because they will almost never get Healer trinkets (which are like weapons for melee) or have sufficient spirit to compete, even after reforging/regemming for spirit. Hybrid Offspecs for heroic guilds are always a marked downgrade against a mainspec healer (and they should be) - but if that's the case, our flexibility to respec to an offspec isn't what it's claimed to be, at least not for serious heroic guilds.

The ability of hybrids to change roles is both nontrivial and has progressed our guild in the past. If you want to bring up top guilds that "always have someone on the bench", then I want to point out that top guilds actually have multiple geared players- and they will actually pick and choose whatever is optimal for that fight. World first kills normally have a couple geared alts in them, for stacking purposes. We saw that, what 60% druid world first? A big enough deal that Blizzard had to make nerfs. The power of hybrids to do multiple things helps even world first guilds- just because they each can have a couple hybrids to choose from doesn't change that fact, it just means that your shadow priest can go disc and heal, or he can go enhancement for burst.

It's not necessary to point to <DREAM-Paragon> to see this happen, any serious heroic guild on any populated server doesn't have to rely on their hybrid offspecs to find a necessary healer replacement for progression attempts. If they do, it's more likely because that player already knows the fight than because of their healing capability - in which case we're giving the hybrid a fallacious advantage (fight experience) to combat a real disadvantage (offspec gear).

That does become less of an issue as the tiers progress. In first tier, particularly THIS first tier, the "one tier below regular" gear was guarded like crazy and hard to get. In the past, you could go to heroic dungeons and get your gear like that. This tier only had regular dungeons (two tiers behind raid), which were labelled "heroics" for literally no reason. Then it had LFR to get the stuff one tier behind the raid- but LFR is metered, and you normally have to queue as dps each week, and can't win healing trinkets that way (and may simply NEVER see them, even if you spent your whole tier queueing second half of Cry About The Mogu SexDoll Machine raid as healer). But going into Troll/Mogu tier, I don't think this will be the same issue exactly.

If the hybrids are willing to continue farming past heroic tiers to get offspec gear, then yes - what you are suggesting is possible. In practice, isn't it slightly unrealistic to expect hybrids to go farm the current tier, while progressing 5.2 tier - to get 502/509 healer trinkets?

I am 100% sure that shadow's utility- mostly in the form of keeping the damned raid alive during parts where that is hard- is stronger than locks.
However, you are correct- the 20k delta is just too goddamned large.

I'm still not convinced our utility is stronger than locks, equal perhaps - but stronger I doubt. That's 20k to afflictions single target damage, we're ~36k behind Arcane's single target damage - and 40k+ behind Affliction's multi-dot damage. In 5.0/5.1, going into 5.2, those gaps may actually increase (especcially by BiS) where the nerfs to Affliction in 5.2 will be outweighed by them still scaling 20-25% faster than Shadow (or Elemental).

[Verain]

There was a boss in Dragon Soul I'm pretty sure needed cast speed slows?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Name the boss!

Mages also bring Bloodlust but you may be counting that as a cooldown more than a buff.

It's valid to consider it a raid buff. I could see battle res counting as a raid buff too- multiple people bring it, and there's controls preventing you from stacking them.

Obviously not to put too much weight on this - but Arcane brings cast speed slow (Slow). Rogues bring 10% melee haste, -5% magic damage taken, -12% armor reduction, -50% healing reduction, and -50% cast speed slow (the last two generally being much less valuable than the first 3).

In the last 30-ish bosses, I can think of one boss you wanted -25% healing for (-50% healing hasn't been a thing in forever, but also was super rare). It is pretty much ruinious to bring wound poison as a rogue- IIRC you'll lose more than 15% of your dps, depending on spec. Casting speed I would propose not even count as a raid buff tbh- you can tell that Blizzard doesn't really count it as such (no class with multiple dps specs in the same role can pick up a raid buff with one from not the other- for instance, I can't go sub to give 5% crit or combat to give physical vulnerability). It's totally never a goddamned thing at all.

I did forget to count expose armor, which I end up routinely glyphing and using, especially on target swaps.


If your point is that many classes bring 3 and priests bring 2- that's pretty damned valid.

If they were to give us another, I'd suggest a debuff (since we have none, and they are generally less valuable than buffs) - such as -5% magic damage dealt or -10% physical damage dealt.

You keep saying it wrong. Nothing reduces magic damage dealt. There's +5% magical damage taken ("magic vulnerability" or "spell damage taken"), and there's the "physical damage reduction" which every tank spec provides (and locks and hunters ofc)

In reality, it is probably best to leave us low on buffs/debuffs and compensate us with say, more damage (or other utility). I don't think this is how to 'fix' us.

Well, if you bring less raid buffs, it would fix that. Bring EVERY raid buff wouldn't fix a class that is too low dps.
Crit strike or Mastery seem like roughly appropriate buffs. The debuff setup is pretty crowded. Spell damage taken seems like it was handed out deliberately- and maybe crit strike does too.

There are lots of dispel fights: Protectors, Tsulong, Vizier, Wind Lord, Empress, Stoned Doggs, Spirit Kings. I don't think the way to buff Shadow is to make dispels more mandatory than they already are.

Well, making mass dispel more rewarding is generally a good buff to priest desirability, if that's the concern.

The only reason that Wind Lord makes Shadow almost mandatory is because of the extraordinary cost of Mass Dispel - to spam it on cooldown (and still end up behind in dispels, so you need dispel magics in there as well, which also aren't cheap),

In case you are curious, on our kills you are around 70% of the dispels on that fight. You are carrying dispels, especially with Totem stepping out.

I'd rather not see more fights that require mass dispel every 15 seconds.

Whereas I kind of like that idea, because it plays to our strengths. However, yea, that's a good point. I was more thinking of, there should be fights that put out pressure in the form of debuffs- pressure that can be dispelled or healed and don't require precise timing or coordination, or result in immediate wipes of done incorrectly. Dispels are often a perfection-quest mechanic, and they don't need to be.

I'm agreeing that our healing output (Void Shift, VE, level 90 talents, ProM, and Flash Heal as a final option) makes us about equal (or ever so slightly below) locks superior utility in every other meaning / component of utility. I don't think that our healing makes us noticeably Superior to lock utility - so much so to justify us being the worst dps spec (in a world where utility vs. DPS is a trade-off to balance).

I think spriests are in practice more utility than locks. I do not believe this non-huge advantage justifies the large differences.

Mages:
5% crit chance
10% spellpower
Bloodlust
-50% cast speed slow
Polymorph, Frost Nova, Circle of Frost, do they have a banish elemental type thing?
Ice Block (used to cheat mechanics like wipe Windsteps in the previous example)
Cauterize (self-battle rez that doesn't consume battle rezzes)
Temporal Shield (immunity to predicted damage spikes)
Highest single target DPS, ~34k above Shadow in single target

Ok, lets eliminate the cast speed, which doesn't count, and the "highest single target", which is a clear outlier and getting fixed. I'll point out that temporal shield doesn't save you from enough damage to kill you- it just heals you back up. The myriad of roots and CCs are only occasionally useful- and usually result in nerfs. I think that's a lot to lay on Cauterize and Ice Block- especially because you didn't go listing dispersion in your priest list.

All priests love spirit cloth, not sure where you get the idea we don't like it.

I was denching that stuff wildly in a 10 man with 20% priests. Now with only one priest, I still dench in like crazy. If agi leather drops, you have seven specs that can use it- so it often at least goes offspec. There's always some great reason why I should dench a heroic spirit cloth whatever. Don't get me started on spirit cloth I CAN DO IT CIRCLES

I'm still not convinced our utility is stronger than locks, equal perhaps - but stronger I doubt. That's 20k to afflictions single target damage, we're ~36k behind Arcane's single target damage - and 40k+ behind Affliction's multi-dot damage. In 5.0/5.1, going into 5.2, those gaps may actually increase (especcially by BiS) where the nerfs to Affliction in 5.2 will be outweighed by them still scaling 20-25% faster than Shadow (or Elemental).

Doesn't this sound like an affl issue?

That's what GC will hear, probably. Sigh.

[Yvaelle]

[QUOTE=Verain;20377596]Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Name the boss!

...Yor'sahj or Zon'ozz maybe? I remember something about people using cast speed debuff there. In any case, I agree it's not something they have made use of recently - but having it and not needing it is still a lot better than not having it. Most DPS specs bring 3-6 buffs+debuffs, Spriests bring 2 buffs and 0 debuffs. Even if those debuffs (like cast speed slow) aren't used lately - raid comp buffs/debuffs are still one way to measure utility, and - even not counting cast speed slow - Spriests still only have 2 buffs to many specs 3-6. It's one way to measure it, and even exempting cast speed slow, we're still lagging behind in this metric.

If your point is that many classes bring 3 and priests bring 2- that's pretty damned valid.

Right, all DPS specs bring at least 3, with the exception of Shadow which brings 2. If we had to go this route, giving us 10% spellpower would probably be the best option - as it would provide no benefit to Shatterplay / God Comp / Shadowplay (Since locks and mages already provide this buff to these comps).

You keep saying it wrong. Nothing reduces magic damage dealt. There's +5% magical damage taken ("magic vulnerability" or "spell damage taken"), and there's the "physical damage reduction" which every tank spec provides (and locks and hunters ofc)

Yep my bad. -5% damage taken would make more sense (I prefer to avoid phrases like "magic vulnerability" whenever possible as they are vague without a number anchoring them).

Well, if you bring less raid buffs, it would fix that. Bring EVERY raid buff wouldn't fix a class that is too low dps.
Crit strike or Mastery seem like roughly appropriate buffs. The debuff setup is pretty crowded. Spell damage taken seems like it was handed out deliberately- and maybe crit strike does too.

While I agree crit strike or mastery might be better call for raid variety, the risk with them is that both are also buffs to Shatterplay / God Comp / Shadowplay (unless GC is ok with slightly buffing these comps after the nerfs that have occurred).

Well, making mass dispel more rewarding is generally a good buff to priest desirability, if that's the concern.

In case you are curious, on our kills you are around 70% of the dispels on that fight. You are carrying dispels, especially with Totem stepping out.

Well over 70%, 70% was with Totem present - more like 85%. Buffing Shadow desirability by making more Wind Lord mechanics is not smart game design though. It only buffs our desirability on those specific fights (the rest of which we could be sat for higher DPS or a class whose utility is not balanced around mass dispel fight mechanics being present), and it only buffs the first spriest present in a 25m raid (no reason to bring a second).

I was more thinking of, there should be fights that put out pressure in the form of debuffs- pressure that can be dispelled or healed and don't require precise timing or coordination, or result in immediate wipes of done incorrectly. Dispels are often a perfection-quest mechanic, and they don't need to be.

I feel that buffing the number of dispel fights will only return us to a state of the game where DPS Priests and Shamans are Support specs whose purpose is to play the debuff mini game, and maybe put out some damage if we get ahead. That's clearly not the game they have wanted to design since TBC (where Support specs don't exist).

I think that's a lot to lay on Cauterize and Ice Block- especially because you didn't go listing dispersion in your priest list.

True, there are fights where Dispersion can do mechanics that are normally designed for tanks - where somebody MUST take some damage (ie. Algalon) so immunity effects don't work. But there are also many fights where there are undispellable debuffs - all of which can be cleared (cheated) by Ice Block, such as Windstep. Dispersion in the same situation would reduce the damage I take to a trivial level for 6 seconds of the 30 second debuff, once every 2 minutes (valuable especcially during other damaging mechanics). By contrast though, A mage can Ice Block the first windstep, coldsnap+iceblock the second immediately after, ice block a third 3 minutes later, and coldsnap+iceblock a fourth immediately after that. Potentially eliminating four mechanics in four minutes. With Windsteps going out every 30 seconds, a mage (with luck) can eliminate fully half of the damage from the hardest mechanic in that fight. A Shadowpriest dispersing twice in that time will only reduce the damage output (of the Windstep mechanic) by 4.5%. There are some mechanics (like Algalon) where Dispersion is the best choice given the situation, and there are some mechanics (like Windstep) where Ice Block is the best choice (20 times better than Dispersion at mitigating Windstep damage).

I was denching that stuff wildly in a 10 man with 20% priests. Now with only one priest, I still dench in like crazy. If agi leather drops, you have seven specs that can use it- so it often at least goes offspec. There's always some great reason why I should dench a heroic spirit cloth whatever. Don't get me started on spirit cloth I CAN DO IT CIRCLES

Spirit Cloth and Healer Trinkets are not the same thing - that you disenchant heroic spirit gloves off Stone Dogs, at the end of a tier, because everyone in a raid has them, isn't going to make a spriest a better disc offspec. How many healer trinkets have you disenchanted this tier (or any tier)? Even if you went back and did Sinestra, the healers in the raid would demand the healing trinket (to sit in their bank and look at it once a month), rather than let it get disenchanted - and so much of a healers power is invested in maximal spirit gear and trinkets that hybrids aren't true replacements (at least during serious progression).

Doesn't this sound like an affl issue?

That's what GC will hear, probably. Sigh.

It sounds like an Affliction issue because I keep comparing to Affliction. I wanted to specifically highlight Shadow's "High" utility versus a pure, of which Locks are the highest - to show just how far off the 'utility vs. dps = balance' formula could be. Would it be better if I compared to Frost or Fire or Demo or Destruction or Arcane? Because they are all average or above on single target fights as well. The one thing that is not useful to compare Shadow's low DPS to is Elemental or Balance - because both of them are in the same boat (albeit both are doing slightly better than Shadow is now and next tier).

Fire, Frost, Arcane, Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction (Mages and Warlocks) are all scaling ~15-30% faster than Shadow, Balance and Elemental. In absolute DPS - Shadow, Balance and Elemental are all in the bottom five of all specs right now (with Shadow being the bottom). If I said "Shadow is doing 95% of Balance's DPS!" everyone would say "well, that sounds just fine, 5% is an acceptable margin of error!" - but if I said "Balance is doing 81% of Arcane's DPS!" there would be furious chickens everywhere (both of those stats are true, btw).

If I compare it to a top end spec like Arcane or Affliction you can see the spread - which is often helpful to show just how much difference we're talking about. If you prefer though, average DPS in BiS gear in single target patchwerk encounters for all dps specs (casters and melee and everyone) is 126k DPS, Shadow is 113k, or 89.7% - 10.3% below average. The total spread between top (Arcane) and bottom (Shadow) is 22% though - that's a huge margin, and it's worse when Fire, Frost, Arcane, Demonology, Destruction and Affliction are not only ahead of us by 11-22% but are also Accelerating as item level increases by 15-30%.

[Verain]

[QUOTE=Yvaelle;20378570]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Name the boss!

...Yor'sahj or Zon'ozz maybe?

Zizzlezizz benefited from a mortal effect, so you might be confusing that. He didn't cast anything. There were a couple tentacles with casts, but I don't recall anyone ever using a cast slow on them. I know we didn't use tongues on that fight.

YS had several casts and a bunch of aoe slime phases, but nothing interruptable or slowable.

I'm pretty sure that tongues was dead on these bosses. I don't recall asking for tongues in memory.

even exempting cast speed slow, we're still lagging behind in this metric.

Yea, agreed.

If we had to go this route, giving us 10% spellpower would probably be the best option - as it would provide no benefit to Shatterplay / God Comp / Shadowplay (Since locks and mages already provide this buff to these comps).

Well, I dunno if they chose raid buffs based on which arena comp is in favor.

Yep my bad. -5% damage taken would make more sense (I prefer to avoid phrases like "magic vulnerability" whenever possible as they are vague without a number anchoring them).

Heh, more like +5% damage taken. I like the phrases because they are standard- and the numbers get messed with over time anyway.

I feel that buffing the number of dispel fights will only return us to a state of the game where DPS Priests and Shamans are Support specs whose purpose is to play the debuff mini game, and maybe put out some damage if we get ahead. That's clearly not the game they have wanted to design since TBC (where Support specs don't exist).

Well, they DO want support- they just don't want support SPECS. If mass dispel shows up in less than 10% of fights, maybe a little bit more could be good. Again, I agree that wind lord is exceptional in that regard- a more reasonable mechanic would involve a boss that throws out damage at random players that also inflicts a magic dot that is healable through, or dispellable. But normally dispel mechanics are extremely raid relevant- some are super unforgiving, like the Sinestra one.

By contrast though, A mage can Ice Block the first windstep, coldsnap+iceblock the second immediately after, ice block a third 3 minutes later, and coldsnap+iceblock a fourth immediately after that.

Well, cold snap is I think 3 minutes, and iceblock is 5 minutes. So that's not quite correct, but it's not far off and doesn't mess with your point much.

More to the point, dispersion and iceblock are both solid at dealing with forms of damage. Dispersion allows the priest to move unhindered, and has a shorter cooldown. Iceblock can stacked to a degree. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Spirit Cloth and Healer Trinkets are not the same thing - that you disenchant heroic spirit gloves off Stone Dogs, at the end of a tier, because everyone in a raid has them, isn't going to make a spriest a better disc offspec. How many healer trinkets have you disenchanted this tier (or any tier)?

I haven't disenchanted ANY trinket in like, forever.

It sounds like an Affliction issue because I keep comparing to Affliction. I wanted to specifically highlight Shadow's "High" utility versus a pure, of which Locks are the highest - to show just how far off the 'utility vs. dps = balance' formula could be.

Right, but if GC sees that argument, he may wave it away "Oh, I guess we'll make some minor affliction nerf / affliction was already nerfed by change X".

Would it be better if I compared to Frost or Fire or Demo or Destruction or Arcane? Because they are all average or above on single target fights as well.

Yea, those would probably have more weight with the guys who are in charge.

Fire, Frost, Arcane, Demonology, Destruction and Affliction are not only ahead of us by 11-22% but are also Accelerating as item level increases by 15-30%.

The extra scaling is an issue, but GC waves it away with pretty big deltas (and Blizzard seems to not care about performance in heroic gear anyway, which I disagree with).

[Viromand]

Warlock is one of the best utility class atm. Ofc Priests are good too but really if your saying its almost equal thats so much BS.

lets start with the 90 talents thy can cast anything while running and in demo and destruction good wls dont even have speed reduction.
CC breaker talent spirit kings hc if wl is hit he just uses it and is free, ok alot of other classe can do the same thing.
healthstones. really nice can even be refreshed on long fights.
Brezz, maybe not gamebreaking but in 10 man with only lets say druid tank and wl as brezz its mandatory.
Demonportal, makes fights bladelord start off p2 a complete joke and thats one boss its so usefull on almost every heroic boss.
70% slow not alot of classes have this it really makes WotE courages really easy.
very strong cds and alot of them and i think the strongest selfhealing abilities of all classes.
larger aoe affects. having a WL bombing elegon hc sparks and beeing able to stack up to 16 min with a wl.

[Deleted]

Warlock is one of the best utility class atm. Ofc Priests are good too but really if your saying its almost equal thats so much BS.

lets start with the 90 talents thy can cast anything while running and in demo and destruction good wls dont even have speed reduction.
CC breaker talent spirit kings hc if wl is hit he just uses it and is free, ok alot of other classe can do the same thing.
healthstones. really nice can even be refreshed on long fights.
Brezz, maybe not gamebreaking but in 10 man with only lets say druid tank and wl as brezz its mandatory.
Demonportal, makes fights bladelord start off p2 a complete joke and thats one boss its so usefull on almost every heroic boss.
70% slow not alot of classes have this it really makes WotE courages really easy.
very strong cds and alot of them and i think the strongest selfhealing abilities of all classes.
larger aoe affects. having a WL bombing elegon hc sparks and beeing able to stack up to 16 min with a wl.

Tempted to start a another thread on this because it's an interesting debate...