Reasonable assumption?

[redderz]

Blue post in relation to rogues:

Generally speaking the classes that get the most attention are the ones seeing the most issues. Being near the top of damage meters and having good success in PvP likely means a class will see few changes or (if anything) nerfs. (Source)

I play rogue and spriest in PvP. I'm pretty cool with there being few changes to rogues at present. However, if Blizzard were to live up to this policy, surely there would be some mention of changes for Spriests in PvP? Blizz went a long way in 3.1 and I generally liked the changes they made. However, in relation to other classes we are still very poor in Arena PvP with only a few setups capable of reasonable performance. Is it a reasonable assumption then that Blizz may live up to this policy and actually at very least have some plan to make the odd change to spriest pvp?

Mini patch after mini patch now goes by without even the faintest mention of any changes for spriests, and moreover the buffs/nerfs to other classes and specs ends up hitting Spriests harder than the intended targets.

I love my spriest. I play it more than my orginal main (rogue), but despite 3.1 changes, Spriests are simply not where they should be in PvP.

Imho, if blizzard were to consider buffs for spriests they should start by looking at 4 things:

1. Survivability against melee

2. Possible implementation of some kind of snare mechanic

3. Mana issues

4. Protection against dot dispelling and/or a better burst damage mechanic

[syanid]

Since TBC came out, people were arguing about shadow priests' role and arena performance. It's 6th season out now, the only thing we got are pushback resistance, dispersion and disarm, during those long years. I sincirely doubt they'll do anything for shadow priest, even tho I'd love for shadow to be good for pvp once again. But there'd have to be a class overhaul for shadow priest to be viable, since we have no spammable cc, no snare (mind flay isn't frost nova) or tools like that. I also doubt we'd get them. We might see something in the next expansion, I'm really really not expecting them to do anything now, after years of disappointment.

[AetherMcLoud]

Since TBC came out, people were arguing about shadow priests' role and arena performance. It's 6th season out now, the only thing we got are pushback resistance, dispersion and disarm, during those long years. I sincirely doubt they'll do anything for shadow priest, even tho I'd love for shadow to be good for pvp once again. But there'd have to be a class overhaul for shadow priest to be viable, since we have no spammable cc, no snare (mind flay isn't frost nova) or tools like that. I also doubt we'd get them. We might see something in the next expansion, I'm really really not expecting them to do anything now, after years of disappointment.

Alas, 'tis true.

[thethain]

Shadow is sad in arenas right now, unfortunately blizzard is ok with 1 spec per class being arena viable "For now". So until there are more of all the classes, discipline will be holding back holy and shadow from real pvp buffs.

[Kelesti]

Change Mind Flay to be baseline 30 yards, with the movement speed reduction. Then you glyph it to get it to instantly root the target (with Diminishing Returns, but keeping regular mind flay's snare out of it).

How's that for a reasonable fix?

[LaBlueSkuld]

Change Mind Flay to be baseline 30 yards, with the movement speed reduction. Then you glyph it to get it to instantly root the target (with Diminishing Returns, but keeping regular mind flay's snare out of it).

How's that for a reasonable fix?

Too anti-melee, could never happen. =P

With dual spec available, I'm currently fine with PvEing as Shadow and PvPing as Discipline for the time being. I just hope they'll fix our PvE scaling.

[Bucknazty]

A snare would def be nice, but at the least we need more melee survivability. I played SPriest in 1500 bracket at the beginning of this season and our 3v3 comp was Rogue, SPriest, Resto Drood, and all I was able to do before I got kicked in the babymaker was DoT our main target, dispersion, fear, then SWD and die from all the damage on me. Its so disapointing because I think SPriests have come a long way damage wise but not anything in surviv wise.

[Worshaka]

The 3.1 changes didn't go even remotely far enough...

There are 2 possible routes... give spriests repeatable control spells like the other viable casters have or up their survivability to something akin to locks in TBC (and in all honnestly it probably needs to go further than that considering locks had repeatable control in combination with that survivability).

If I was to hazzard a guess they are trying very hard not to homogenise the classes and they don't want to give spriests repeatable control like Locks & Mages. Locks & Mages are also pure dps classes so they are probably trying to distinguish priests who are considered hybrids. I don't have an issue with that, personally priests should epitomise protection (and the shadow tree should have that flavour as well) and i'd like to see spriests become a high survivability class.

I also feel that the game is so far progressed that making the correct changes would have the effect to unravel the entire class. Completely rebuilding the shadow tree so it was viable for both pvp & pve while not upsetting current balances etc is just too hard a job. And tbh I don't blame Blizzard for not going down that path, so I suggest if you are really keen on PvP and you want to be a dps caster to roll a mage and live with the fact spriests aren't going to be viable any time soon.

[domzae]

You know what I would love to see, the cooldown taken away from SWD. It's so painful seeing MB/SWD combo leave a target with 2k or so health left so you follow up with a MF only to see a heal come through the 2.5 or 3.5 second window they have before MF does it's job.

Unlike something like icelance - we know that we couldn't carelessly spam it because we're going to die, very soon.


More so, I'd like to see better DoT protection, maybe a bigger explosion on VT, or a double explosion, so that it hits the person being dispelled as well as the dispeller. I don't want it to have an Unstable Affliction-like component, i think that should be unique to warlocks. Maybe something else like a return dispel or a 5% mana burn.

[Dominada]

There are some pretty easy fixes that can go in to help shadow priests.

In order of importance/ease:
1. Dispersion returns a % of health as well as mana (Mages get this with evocation glyph)
2. More frequent CCs (Shorter cooldown on Silence, Fear, Psychic Horror, or any combo of the three)
3. Better DoT protection (as a disc priest I am never worried about dispelling shadow priest DoTs)
3a. When dispelled Vampic Touch does damage and jumps to the dispeller, when dispelled again it does damage and is dropped from the target.
3b. All DoTs jump when dispelled the first time, are gone when dispelled from that player.
4. Reduced cost to go into shadow form. Or % reduced mana cost for first spell cast after leaving and/or entering shadow form.

Some more complicated, but potentially helpful changes:
1. Vampiric touch should have a melee component to it (hence the touch). If it is on something and you melee it because it is attacking you, you could 'drain' mana or health back per hit
2. An ability similar to backlash that can proc when melee is hitting you, maybe giving an instant mind blast, or a 50% hasted mindflay, or resetting the cooldown for fear/psychic horror
3. Mana destroy/drain DoT
4. DPS received component - if you take X damage over Y time then N becomes available, instant, or cheaper (Thinking sort of along the lines of rogues cheat death)
4a. Dark Rage - When you receive damage equal to 50% of your health in 4 seconds you gain 50% spell haste for 8 seconds.

[Abandon]

If they reduced the cooldown of Silence to 30 seconds, and the cooldown of Psychic Horror back to 1 minute, then I would be happy.