[PVE] Current state of Shadow

[Djriff]

You can also use the tornados pet with a macro to mind sear or SW: P them to game ToF uptime as well.

[Seriv]

It is not recommended to have Tito out while anyone has the legendary ring since a badly spawned cow can reduce the strength of the ring explosion immensly.

[Djriff]

True, but you can summon pets mid combat right? Same for dismissing them.

[Sageless]

While shadow isn't truly bad, it does have several weaknesses that combined can truly demotivate a player.

Considering we don't have any cooldowns combined with the legendary ring, means every other dps can get twice the amount of damage out of the explosion a shadow priest can get. This gets even worse on short fights since we our class trinket needs to be stacked (debuff) before our other abilities become decent for CoP. Not starting with orbs makes this even worse. Add that the explosion often is used to kill off longer living adds reduces the usefullness of shadow even more.

I can understand that for better players / guilds shadow was decent for progression. However with the current level of the ring, shadow is one of the least usefull specs for a raid comp. Other classes bring better or similar dps, but add burst or AoE damage as well as more utility (VE is crap as utility as the only times healers need help is when the entire raid needs move and then VE won't do any healing since we don't do any damage when we need to move).

Also our CoP design with mandatory class trinket limits our potential if we don't just tunnel a boss or ignore mechanics.

We aren't completely useless, but anyone taking an equally geared / played shadow priest over a mage for their raid is just gimping themselves.
Still regretting not making my mage my main. Looking at alpha from Legion shadow again looks barren compared to the other ranged classes (artifact made me chuckle, might as well just add +5% damage to every spell so you don't need to get it).

[l33t]

Still regretting not making my mage my main.

You have all the time in a world to levelup and gear another class right now, when everything is on farm and would remain so for at least half year. If I were you, I'd stick to the hunter. It is obvious that hunter would be godawesome in legion. Another strong choice is oomkin. Mages are also always a strong choice.

I have a feeling that Shadow priest would never be allowed to be on par with mages and locks - their main gear competitors, and that is a part of design, like Blizzard wants Shadow to always be sub-par. So, there is little to no reason to keep loyalty to a spec which forces you to do 200% effort to match 75% of other dps specs damage done. (Not to mention a fucking mess which is shadow priest on alpha, design-wise.)

[Relapses]

We aren't completely useless, but anyone taking an equally geared / played shadow priest over a mage for their raid is just gimping themselves.
Still regretting not making my mage my main. Looking at alpha from Legion shadow again looks barren compared to the other ranged classes (artifact made me chuckle, might as well just add +5% damage to every spell so you don't need to get it).

As a T17 10/10 Mythic SPriest who swapped to their Mage in T18 and currently despises their Mage, I can tell you the grass isn't always greener. Mage is broken, yes, but it can be even more frustrating than Shadow since the entirety of the rotation is reliant on RNG. When it's good, it's really good, but when it's shit... you feel useless. I've recently picked up my Priest again and raid in another run on the weekends and have found that even though Shadow has it's own nuanced frustrations, I still enjoy playing my SPriest more than my Mage.

[Seriv]

When someone asks me if I want to join his raid I prefer to do it with my shadow since it is the least annoying to play in random raids where stuff happens like the ring or lust is used at awkward times, bosses are getting moved in weird ways and you never know if an encounter lasts for one or ten minutes. As a shadow you just don't care at all. I could join the raid with some other class probably resulting in more damage but chances are that I would not enjoy it that much (for instance you start to hate everyone when you place your Prismatic Crystal and the boss is moved away from it or when you use your cooldowns and no melee uses the ring).

[Djriff]

(for instance you start to hate everyone when you place your Prismatic Crystal and the boss is moved away from it or when you use your cooldowns and no melee uses the ring).

THIS THIS THIS. Bane of my existence on my mage. I also hate when I rip aggro of a tank because hunters don't know how to misdirect/tanks don't know how to generate threat.

I usually prefer my priest because its honestly fairly mindless. No CD's, nor real worries other than keeping RoW up.

[Relapses]

THIS THIS THIS. Bane of my existence on my mage. I also hate when I rip aggro of a tank because hunters don't know how to misdirect/tanks don't know how to generate threat.

I usually prefer my priest because its honestly fairly mindless. No CD's, nor real worries other than keeping RoW up.

It's just the variance of DPS on pulls which frustrates me on my Mage; and having absolutely zero control of it. Sometimes you have good RNG, sometimes you don't. It was kind of like this with Fire at the end of SoO but at least there was a bit of a skillcap by using Altered Time to properly snapshot. Now, let's take two identical Mages, one played by somebody who plays extremely well, one who can barely log into the game without starting a house fire: The first Mage doesn't get any procs, the other Mage gets God tier procs; the second Mage, despite being an ostensibly worse player looks like a God while the first Mage is stuck sitting around with their thumb in their ass. It's not good gameplay, it's not fun, and I'm so thankful they're getting rid of it in Legion.