From a Warlock - how is s-priest?

[seungsta]

Don't even bother playing SP if you want to do some good DPS on most fights.
Don't bother playing SP if you're looking for a fun and engaging playstyle. It's a mindless 3/4 button spam fest whilst getting mediocre damage on most fights at best. I main holy and i like it much more if you're looking to play a priest class either way. my guild wants me to make the switch to shadow after getting the legendary belt, and i'm quite upset about that

[Deleted]

I find the 7.2 "rework" to be actually fun to play on most bosses, but being the class with worst ST takes out a decent chunk out of it. And having lust run out half way through your cooldowns really sucks, but that's the reality of shadow rump up. Not being able to AoE if you can't multidot hurts a lot as well. It feels awesome when you do a big the trash pack perfectly and do insane damage, but you always feel that you had to work way too hard for that. Combine that with being the most bug ridden spec and you end up with something you love to play, but feel robbed when you do.

And I'm afraid that no fixes will come until after 1-2 months in to tomb, once devs realize that we no longer have so many multi target fights to band aid ST damage and how loosing t19 4p will impact the feel of the spec.

[Linri]

i've played both warlock and priest
warlock is pretty cool, i much prefer affliction to the other two specs by far....and felt the most connected to my class (personal opinion)
shadow priest is similar, in the fact you cast dots, have some heavy hitting spells, as well as ur healing abilities to party and self

I much preferred the shadow orb style of gameplay for shadow BY FAR to what the current state of shadow is...it was more fun to combo up ur skills, and really blast the enemy with some heavy duty damage... very similar to what demonlogy warlock was in WoD, where you gained that form for a short period of time

the insanity gauge is just "meh" to me, I think it has a good direction to go off of though but could use some work, the fact that a lot of damage was based off of surrender to madness was a bit of a gamble for the class, unfortunately it seemed like a hit or miss to do well... cause if you messed up on your rotation... ur dead
I feel like shadow has the right direction

[Deleted]

I feel like shadow has the right direction too, but we don't really have "heavy hitting spells". Some QoL changes would be very nice (instant Void Eruption like in PvP for example).

[KaPe]

I feel like shadow has the right direction too, but we don't really have "heavy hitting spells". Some QoL changes would be very nice (instant Void Eruption like in PvP for example).

Shadow has "hard hitting spells", but both VB and SW D are tied to legendaries and only achieve that damage through procs or stacking buff. Which is also a reason why neither of them can be buffed, leaving Mind Blast as the only option to buff without screwing the aoe/multi dot potential.

[Archaea3]

Shadow has "hard hitting spells", but both VB and SW D are tied to legendaries and only achieve that damage through procs or stacking buff. Which is also a reason why neither of them can be buffed, leaving Mind Blast as the only option to buff without screwing the aoe/multi dot potential.

Did you forget about the legendary belt? Having it gives you significantly more mind blast casts over the course of a fight.

[KaPe]

Did you forget about the legendary belt? Having it gives you significantly more mind blast casts over the course of a fight.

Sure, but it's still a normal Mind Blast, with no damage multiplier. Messing with its' coefficients wouldn't result in some crazy crits due to random +100% damage proc.

Other than that, there's Shadowfiend/Mindbender, both of which are rather lengthy cooldowns and they're getting their rehashed T18 bonus soon.

[davesignal]

As uninspired as the tier 20 set bonus is as an actual set bonus, it would be a good candidate to go baseline at some point in the future. Mind Flay crits used to reduce Shadowfiend's CD back in the day, and it was a fine mechanic to give critical strike a bit more texture as a stat for Shadow.

[Ithok]

Honestly playing without the legendary belt just makes the rotation so boring. They would have to nerf the belt quite a lot for me to not use it coz its just soo much more fun

[Jimmyleggs]

Honestly playing without the legendary belt just makes the rotation so boring. They would have to nerf the belt quite a lot for me to not use it coz its just soo much more fun

Idk how they could nerf it anymore logistically, I guess they could take away the extra charge and just give it a 2-3 sec CD reduce or some shit lol but that would make it worse than the crafted legendary I'm sure.

The belt is so smoothing on the rotation it honestly should just be baseline and rework it's passive, +MB damage or MB generates X more insanity. Shadow legendaries feel so uninspired (same with talents and weapon traits) that it's really a shame. They made the BM hunter +1 charge shoulders baseline and changed its buff (albeit their shoulders were way stronger to them than the belt is to us) simply because it made the spec play so much smoother. ONE CAN HOPE!

[l33t]

ONE CAN HOPE!

There's no hope when it comes to developer's attitude towards shadow priest, lol. Unless you hope for your dots being nerfed for 15% at the start of a new raid, which happens like 90% of times.

[KaPe]

There's no hope when it comes to developer's attitude towards shadow priest, lol. Unless you hope for your dots being nerfed for 15% at the start of a new raid, which happens like 90% of times.

To be fair, multi doting is pretty good, so with extra 15% it would be a balancing issue. So that part wasn't undeserved - they simply forgot about single target/aoe in the process. At least we have Shadowcrash, slow moving missile on a lengthy cooldown really solves the later issue.

Or maybe there really is some idiot dev out there who sees Shadow doing well on Heroic (and phase 1 Mythic) Botanist and believes that it clearly proves they're on a good place. 'Course if it worked like that, half of classes would be nerfed due to Skorpyron.

[l33t]

To be fair, multi doting is pretty good,.

It was good before they nerfed it to oblivion. Nowadays, especially considering the amount of true multidot (AKA "spread cleave") fights in nighthold (= zero), it isn't.

[kathor]

Has there been any acknowledgement at all from Blizzard that the shadowpriest (and priests in general, my impression is everyone can agree that we are fairly weak both as damage-dealers and healers) is in need of some love at some point?

In Legion I made my priest an alt (after maining as priest since WotLK) - and I have not had the chance to compare his performance in a regular/competetive raid setting. But all evidence (public logs, forum posts etc) points towards it being maybe the weakest class overall both as healer and dps... Having two druids, and playing as both tank and healer, I ma surprised at how imbalanced druid vs priest feels right now. I have always been an advocate of the "bring the player not the class" mantra, but for the first time I feel like investing time in my priest is just wasteful.

And yet, I cannot help feeling that there is something I am doing wring with my priest, both as healer and dps. The output is simply underwhelming compared to my dh, druids and hunter. With the pruned toolkits in Legion, it is not as fun to play as it used to be either. But if this was the case, would not Blizzard at least made minor adjustments to the class? I never did anything but post-110 questing content with the priest while STM was considered a string single-target talent, so it feels like besides Botanist in Nighthold, I have been intentionally placed at the bottom half of the meter in all available encounters.

I really miss my priest, as he used to be my main for so many years. But maining as a class that seems as weak as priests does now is not something I am willing to do - and the fact that we are not given any kind of attention this far tells me there is no point in hoping for it to happen for 8.0 either. According to Blizzard, I guess we are perfectly fine...?

[exjay]

blizzard lack of communication has got me thinking of switching mains before tomb comes out. still debating on what class to go with

[Ransen]

blizzard lack of communication has got me thinking of switching mains before tomb comes out. still debating on what class to go with

Warlock for similarity and flexibility of playstyle, or druid for the healer option, all while getting a tank and melee dps, and out performing priest in every department (until S2M comes back, but I'm not sticking around for that)