New Shadow rotation!

[Alanar]

I just hope Shadow will become and stay competitive throughout the expansion for pvp aswell and not shine or be completely Op at the start and kinda meh at like 6.4 for example..

Kinda OT here, but wouldn't you guys like to see some shadow lore next expansion? It all seems shaman related so far..what do you guys think?

[soulyouth]

I just hope Shadow will become and stay competitive throughout the expansion for pvp aswell and not shine or be completely Op at the start and kinda meh at like 6.4 for example..

Kinda OT here, but wouldn't you guys like to see some shadow lore next expansion? It all seems shaman related so far..what do you guys think?

TBH I hope shadow is a pile of shit in pvp in WOD, the pvp burst we have had in MoP is the sole reason we have been so dogshit in pve, any buff to our dmg would have got out of hand in pvp.

Which comes back to my problem of all our dmg being loaded into DP and sw:i and not our dots, slow and steady dps > huge burst cycles

[shanthi]

Which comes back to my problem of all our dmg being loaded into DP and sw:i and not our dots, slow and steady dps > huge burst cycles

The problem with that always seems to come back to multi-target fights and shadow priests keeping powerful DoTs up on two or three persistent targets.

[soulyouth]

That bugs me thought,why was that a problem ? Multidot had always been our niche, no idea why they nerfed our dots so hard in MoP and made us a burst class that sucked at single target and was behind the other dot classes on multitarget.

They really let us down in this xpac.

[Deleted]

Don't you find Shadow really hard to enjoy? Granted my alt is badly geared but general mob killing is a bit of a chore itself I can't imagine having to dps in a raid, especially when having to move often. But I guess i'm biased towards my Lock.

I see a few Spriests play competitively (dusk, iapeto, koiile) but the majority seems to be low-tier.

[shanthi]

That bugs me thought,why was that a problem ? Multidot had always been our niche, no idea why they nerfed our dots so hard in MoP and made us a burst class that sucked at single target and was behind the other dot classes on multitarget.

From what I can tell, the reason the designers considered that a problem was because they didn't want anyone to have "niches" that could be exploited via stacking...if shadow priests are way more powerful than others on council fights, some raid teams might try to bring multiple shadow priests for that fight. The design team, rightly or wrongly, believes in a "bring the player, not the class" philosophy and giving different classes disproportionate power in different types of fights encourages stacking different classes for different fights.

That's my take on what the developers are thinking regarding making shadow priest DoTs powerful.

[ralphie]

So WOTLK Arcane Mage 2.0?

[Yvaelle]

From what I can tell, the reason the designers considered that a problem was because they didn't want anyone to have "niches" that could be exploited via stacking...if shadow priests are way more powerful than others on council fights, some raid teams might try to bring multiple shadow priests for that fight. The design team, rightly or wrongly, believes in a "bring the player, not the class" philosophy and giving different classes disproportionate power in different types of fights encourages stacking different classes for different fights.

That's my take on what the developers are thinking regarding making shadow priest DoTs powerful.

That's what they say, but sometimes it feels like it applies almost exclusively to shadowpriests - if not hybrids more generally. Pures get niches for each spec, and hybrids with two DPS specs often get differentiation by spec. Shadow, having only one DPS spec, is usually trapped into a single niche - or worse - mediocre or bad at most things, and good but not 'the best' at one or two things.

That second design is what they are aiming for, but it doesn't feel fun at all. It's not fun to be 'the worst' at single target (which we currently are), mediocre or bad at burst, 'the worst' at high mobility fights, and over-shadowed (QQ) by every other DoT spec (incl. WW's and Arcane mages) on council fights, and in some cases even non-DoT specs - just so we can be good at 'spread-out, add-wave, council-ish fights': Horridon, Elegon and Possessed Panda Protectors.

Even on our best fight type, Affliction has the same niche - and they consistly destroy us at the one thing we're good at: which means you will never stack Shadowpriests in MoP - you will stack Locks (as everybody has done all expansion).

Here is raidbots, and even in our most ideal fight this tier - we're 5th place, and we do about 2/3rds the DPS of an Affliction Lock. In the first tier of the expansion it was easy for people to point to this dilemma and say "well, Affliction is way overpowered - so that's why Shadow is not ideal for anything" - but it's been years now and it's only gotten worse: not only did we start way behind affliction on everything, they have been out-scaling us (with gear) all expansion.

It's a persistent, systemic problem - and it's clearly by design: the vision statement for Shadow in MoP is probably scribbled on a whiteboard in Irvine somewhere as, "Like Affliction Locks, but never the ideal choice".

It was far better when we had niche's that we excelled at - like multi-dot and especcially council fights - and things we were terrible at, like single target and burst fights. It meant we weren't ideal for progression on single target / burst fights, but most 99% of raid guilds would still progress with their best players: because only 1% of heroic raid guilds actively run multiple heroic raids a week to keep competitively geared heroic alts ready to swap in for specific fights (ie. Paragon, Blood Legion, and Vodka).

Edit: All that said, personally I think it's the way they have tried to work raid healing stuff into our spec, and then counted that against our DPS budget - that is what truly holds us back from being competitive. They should shift us to a more cooldown-centric design (talking about support utility, VE being a good example), and away from the passive healing of Halo and Divine Star. I do miss being a TBC shadowpriest support class - but those days are over - and our healing-support doesn't fit the way WoW works anymore.

[Dierdre]

Edit: All that said, personally I think it's the way they have tried to work raid healing stuff into our spec, and then counted that against our DPS budget - that is what truly holds us back from being competitive.

That's been the excuse but I don't really buy it. Take enhancement shaman for instance. Even with our t90 talents they can outheal us with Healing Stream Totem alone, not to mention HTT and Ancestral Guidance, and they can outdps shadow in pretty much any fight except protectors and nazgrim.

Shadow's suckiness through MoP was only to intentionally enhance warlock population. Every other argument (healing, void shift, mass dispel ffs ¬¬) was just a lame excuse.

[Yvaelle]

Shadow's suckiness through MoP was only to intentionally enhance warlock population. Every other argument (healing, void shift, mass dispel ffs ¬¬) was just a lame excuse.

Agreed - I didn't mean so much that our healing was a legitimate reason for our lower DPS - but that it has been the official excuse they use to justify our performance: the actual reason is more likely because they want to deflate the spriest population and inflate the lock population - forcing us to 'bring the class, not the player'.

If you look at the amount of raid utility a Lock brings, even healing via Fel Cookies and -1 raid members to heal (Locks don't take damage) - they bring pretty comparable HPS to a Shadowpriest, if people eat their cookies properly (add on their self-healing / reductions, and they surpass us - despite that we put actual effort towards healing to achieve what we do).

[Greyce]

Sounds boring as hell.

[Volitar]

That bugs me thought,why was that a problem ? Multidot had always been our niche, no idea why they nerfed our dots so hard in MoP and made us a burst class that sucked at single target and was behind the other dot classes on multitarget.

They really let us down in this xpac.

This hits the nail on the head..

[Alanar]

TBH I hope shadow is a pile of shit in pvp in WOD, the pvp burst we have had in MoP is the sole reason we have been so dogshit in pve, any buff to our dmg would have got out of hand in pvp.

Which comes back to my problem of all our dmg being loaded into DP and sw:i and not our dots, slow and steady dps > huge burst cycles

Ooh cmon man. If I have to be honest! our surv went down according to tweets from Ghostcrawler. The 15 % dr removed because of pve reasons. I just hope pve doesnt make pvp suck for spriests.
Same thing to say about our damage being not strong enough in pvp cus in pve it would be to strong. In general pvpers have equal reasons here or even more.
Like I said i want to be competitive in pvp and not get shut down because of pve.

[Yvaelle]

In PvP, we are not considered bursty in MoP - that's why we were best paired with 'bursty' specs like Frost Mages and Arms Warriors - because we don't really have it ourselves. Our job was always utility - which is why when they nerfed us it was a nerf to our survivability (making us good targets to sit on, shutting down our utility and damage), and our utility (mass dispel) - without which we aren't worth bringing anymore.

If PvP burst were really the problem, they would have smoothed out DP like we were asking them to do (for PvE reasons) - but they didn't do that - I suspect because they were actually worried it would make our pvp burst too meaningless, if anything. In PvP gear, in arenas, we burst cycle for only about 150k - that's pretty trivial compared to the 'bursty' specs.

[MoanaLisa]

I've been less and less interested in shadow all expansion. I've been playing it steadily since very late BC/early Wrath but doubt that I will in WoD. For a lot of reasons we're in a weird spot right now: a bit too much like warlocks on the one hand and too much utility in a game that presently doesn't value the utility that we have because other classes collectively do most if not all of it better.

I'm interested to see what they have in mind but it's a difficult spot to be in. We still have a lot of flavor and I think that most of us appreciate that but flavor is another thing that generally doesn't get you any respect as a class. Maybe if there is a real effort to remove the 'bring the player, not the class' business--something I think that has done more harm than good--classes can be repositioned in a way that will be interesting again.

For myself, my very first end game character before shadow was frost but since it wasn't viable for PVE until recently I've never thought about going back to it. At this point, I'm giving it some careful consideration.

Or maybe I need a change. It's difficult after all these years for me to separate out actual class issues from personal feelings about where we are. I'm deeply unhappy with shadow right now though and what I feared during a lot of Cataclysm--which I thought was very good for us, a bit too good in truth--has come to pass.

[Tyrael the Impatient]

I don't get some of you.

I love my Shadow Priest and healing is what I enjoy the most.. but.. there is nothing like a Shadow Priest when you are out there.

Love Shadow Orbs and Devouring Plague.
Love Shadowform with Shadow glyph.
Love Mind Flay and how the blue color from talent make me feel awesome.
Shadow Orbs around you and the way they appear from quick ray of shadowligth.
Love it.

The most fun spell caster is Shadow Priest for me.

The new level 100 talents add a new DoT used with Shadow Orbs is AWESOME.
New way to play by increase damage 40% is AWESOME.

Just using Mind Flay (yes, it is direct damage) and Mind Spike, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death and Devouring Plague.

Even better talent can be getting more Shadow Orbs. Supporting the way things is now.

3 different ways to play Shadow Priest. Same spec. Love that!!!

[Deleted]

tyrael nice name but honestly i dont think everything you say are so simple and romantic.... 3 different playstyle types but if all this are weak even from my fart whats the point ?? i dont care to have 1 same style i prefer cataclysm style i just want to be strong and competitive instead of having 50 weak styles

[Deleted]

I for one, am not a pessimist, and am optimistic that blizzard will finally find a way to balance talents such that these three lvl 100 talents are all viable in different situations and provide an interesting style of play where one suits themselves to the encounter more. Granted, I play disc/holy and am generally not the best shadow priest in the world these days, but I enjoy the flexibility of the healing specs where we can pretty much play in 10 different ways and whatnot depending on encounter. I'd love to see it pan out well and I hope that the dotless rotation is balanced and for all intents and purposes accceptable dps, as much as a dot rotation is. I'm quite excited for beta to get on there and give this a go.

On the other hand. I'm pretty much underwhelmed by the healing counterparts in the talents As disc, I generally have a hard enough time with throughput healing as it is, so I lose my only single target heal to gain yet ANOTHER absorb? As holy of course what I need is another AoE heal...

[Dierdre]

I love my Shadow Priest and healing is what I enjoy the most.. but.. there is nothing like a Shadow Priest when you are out there.

If you're there to look pretty, yes. if you're there to raid and like engaging gameplay, you'll be aware of the glaring disadvantages of playing shadow right now and how t100 talents do nothing to make shadow more engaging and fun so far.

I sure hope they compensate us for snapshotting. As much as I love my priest I don't think I'll be able to bear an expansion of rolling my face on the keyboard.

[Drye]

I hope, fingers crossed, that the orbs when an SA hits will make multi dotting a lot if fun. It sounds like a really interesting idea that will be fun with having 5 orbs.