The reason why Shadow AoE feels so bad

[Annesh]

Like many others, I've been really frustrated with the dungeon gearing process on my Shadowpriest due to a variety of reasons. One of them is the horrible lack of AoE, worse than it's ever been. Part of it is the overtuned specs like DH, outlaw, fire, etc. But the rest is that the spec just doesn't have the tools.

See, to really understand why Shadow is in such a bad place, you have to draw back and look at the game from top down, categorizing fight types and organizing each spec by how good they are at each type.

There would be a TON of such categories, because they're identified by combinations of variables. For example:

A. Pure single-target, 2-3 targets, or 4+ targets.
B. If multi-target, do the targets start or can they be clumped up, or are they spread out with no ability to pull them to the tank?
C. No movement, light movement, heavy movement.
D. Expected fight length - <15 seconds, 16-30 seconds, 31-120, 120+

There are many other minor variables like "Time spent in execute range," (like Wrath of Azshara starting at 20%, which favors us but oddly doesn't allow us to blow up the chart.... you'll see why soon) but for simplicity's sake let's run off these four main ones. The gist is, these things combine to form all the different encounter types in WoW. For example:

Questing/farming is usually A) 3 or fewer targets, B) Clumped up, C) No movement, D) Very short fight length
Most dungeon trash is A) 3-4 targets, B) Clumped up, C) Light movement, D) Fight length short to moderate, 16-30 seconds.

Following, so far? Starting to see where I'm headed with this?

So the thing about the way Shadow is designed, is that our tools just do not support any fight that has any of the following: Clumped multi-target (because other classes have much better tools for doing clumped AoE, or "cleave" if you will), heavy movement (because we have to cast so much to maintain Void Form), or less than 30 second fight length (because our ramp up time is extremely high). If ANY of those things exist in the fight, then it's to be expected that we'll perform anywhere from mediocre to poor. If you add multiple of those things, then it gets worse and worse.

In fact, the mechanics are such that they'll only operate as intended when there's C) No movement, and D) Fight length 30+ seconds, preferably over a minute. Anything else, and our performance suffers. And exactly when are you ever going to see a combination like that? This is why we don't wreck the meter on Wrath of Azshara - the melees are busily doing their full 100% DPS rotation, while we're dropping Void Form left and right just dodging shit. So theoretically, it's a fight we should be really good at, but since it has that one little Heavy Movement variable that we're so weak at, we can still barely break even.

To balance these weaknesses, we're extremely strong on one very specific type of fight: A+B) 3+ Forcibly Spread targets (the primary strength of multidotting), C) No movement, D) Fight length 30+ seconds.

These are ideal circumstances for us. But as you should be realizing, there just aren't enough fights of that type to support us. The huge, HUGE majority of fights in this game are hostile for us in some way - even the one-per-tier "council" fights either 1. Allow the bosses to be clumped, which favors the cleavers, or 2. Require a ton of movement. Or both. To make matters worse, most dungeon and raid trash packs include the dreaded Clumped targets, Low fight length combination that synergistically screws us over, because burst AoEers make the fight even shorter, giving our dots less and less time to deal damage.

This is why we feel so weak. It's not that our toolkit is bad, it's that it's bad in this environment. It's like Einstein says, if you judge a fish on its ability to fly, of course it'll think it sucks. We've been told to build a house with some lumber and a pair of wire strippers, and when we ask for a hammer and nails to deal with the most common component of the job, we're just ignored. This may seem like a simple thing to say that didn't require a long explanation, but I feel like it's important to hash out the context, giving a full logical explanation for why we all feel this way.

With all this established, this is why I feel that Blizzard is doing us a huge injustice by denying us access to proper burst AoE and cleave tools. Theoretically we do have a good niche in long-lived forced-spread multi-target, and theoretically we would destroy the meters in fights like that. But you have to weigh these things by rarity - the rareness of those kinds of fights absolutely does not justify us being as bad as we are at burst AoE, which happens all the flipping time. Honestly I don't think we'd crush the meters even on a specialty fight quite as much as DHs crush us on burst AoE.

There are two possible solutions, and since one of them is to design every future dungeon and raid so that there are plenty of fights we're good at, I think everyone will agree the other one is far more reasonable. Thus, we absolutely must get better burst AoE tools. It must be a concerted, honest effort to fix the problem, not just a half-hearted yawn like the Mind Spike cleave/Void Ray mind sear beta patch. That was just insulting.

Important!!! I'm NOT saying I want to have godlike burst AoE. I'm saying that the spec's weaknesses are too many and too crippling, compared to its strengths. I'm saying that those weaknesses need to be brought up a lot, not so that the overall spec is better than anyone else, but to a level where at least I can play through most of the content without feeling every single day like an idiot for not choosing a better class. The burst AoE specialists can still beat me on burst AoE situations. But I'd at least like to be able to contribute, like, 80% of what they are. Just 80%, is that so much to ask? The sad thing is, fights we're designed to be good at are so rare, that we could double other peoples' DPS on them while being capable of 80% of their burst aoe, and if you took an overall running total of who is beating who across all the encounters you'll have in a given month, we'd still look like a bad class. And yet there are people (Blizzard included, it seems like) who act like if we could do 80% of a DH's burst AoE, we'd just be the most OP spec in any game ever. Why are the devs so god damn timid to give us nice things?

The other problem is that to get us up to even just 80% would require doubling our AoE ability or more, which is why I feel our situation is so freaking dire (because seriously when would that ever happen?).

TL;DR Because we're specialized in a very specific type of fight that rarely occurs, we experience situations where we feel weak far, far more often than we experience situations where we feel strong.

[HuxNeva]

Indeed. after having mained Shadow for a long time, I am now looking elsewhere. I loved CoP once I got used to it. So tired of the mismatch between our strengths and the actual practice required. Slow ramp up is most annoying thing. Reason I'm still unsubbed is that I can't choose a new class/spec

[Segus1992]

So basically you're saying Shadow AoE feels bad because it is bad. Got it.

[Kyrik]

This is exactly what I've been thinking myself since early beta, but very well explained. SPriest exists in a game that constantly rewards a toolkit we don't have, while allowing a significant number of other specs to excel in those exact scenarios. And as many have pointed out before, there are far too many specs that exist with no clear mechanical weakness for the types of encounters that are most commonly encountered in this game.

When addressing the clumped up multi target scenarios that have become to common over the last few expansions, my preference would be that very few specs are allowed "free cleave". And for those that do, it should be a minor boost to overall damage, still encouraging the player to focus most of their damage to a single target. DH for me is the worst example, where every one of their CD abilities/talents (glaive throw + bloodlet, eye beam, fel barage, fel rush, Fury of the Illidari) scales linearly with extra targets.

As you point out, StM is so sensitive to latency that I can barely believe it is allowed to exist in it's current for in an online game. We've all encountered occasional latency spikes in the past, either because of the servers, or our own connections. For every other class, it's a minor inconvenience that might mean they lose 1 gcd. For spriest it means death at worst. It's the same for dealing with any encounter that requires you to stop casting. A mage might lose 1 fireball cast, whereas priest losing out on Insanity results in a chain of events that lead to a prolonged period of time where they lose out on damage, or their life.

The spec is a joy at times, but at it's worst, it is completely incompatible with large amount of WoWs design

[Deja Thoris]

This whole thread is very "captain obvious". You're just rehasing the same observations that have been made a thousand time but in your own thread with bold text.

Also lol'd at its "not that our toolkit is bad just bad in this environment". It's useless for a progression path Blizz rejuvenated. Thats bad.

[Annesh]

So basically you're saying Shadow AoE feels bad because it is bad. Got it.

This whole thread is very "captain obvious". You're just rehasing the same observations that have been made a thousand time but in your own thread with bold text.

Also lol'd at its "not that our toolkit is bad just bad in this environment". It's useless for a progression path Blizz rejuvenated. Thats bad.

I definitely agree this stuff is really basic and shouldn't need to be said, and there's a real element of "preaching to the choir." It just felt like a good thing to say, because A) Blizz doesn't seem to think we need the AoE tools, and B) There are people out there claiming all is well, sometimes with loud, toxic aggression. Not that I think I'm responding to those people or that they'd listen to logic at all, but there might be others on the fringe who aren't sure what to believe, and so I bring those people an in-depth explanation about exactly what's going on.

Plus I'm just generally really salty about the state of things and wanted to bitch.

[l33t]

Bah. There is a simple and elegant solution to our bad burst aoe:
1. Remove mind sear;
2. Make shadowcrash baseline with a haste-scaling cooldown;
3. Put a new talent where shadow crash was. "Strong Mind. Passive. Your Mind Blast deal 50% of its damage to 2 adjacement targets".

As a result:
1. We don't have a fucking monstrosity in form of mind sear, a useless aoe filler which is doomed to be always worse than mind flay.
2. Smaller cooldown of Shadowcrash will allow a priest who use void form smartly greatly benefit of both frequent uses of burst aoe and extra insanity it gives.
3. Additional cleave talent will allow us to have choices for stacked cleave fights.

[Djriff]

This topic has been discussed across several different threads, please post in one of those and not make a new topic.

For example: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Shadow-Priests