PvE Concerns (from Bluetracker)

[Nezoia]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1959...-concerns.html

What you think?

I'm happy others also acknowledge the issue. My guild currently resorted to using Balance Druids, instead of Shadow Priests for ToC25 Hardmodes. Yes, that's right, not even bringing a single priest.

And if Ensidia is only bringing 1 along, where they brought 3 along for most Ulduar hardmodes, then I think that perfectly clarifies where we stand.

It feels hard to be a asset for ones guild, with all odds going against you. Even with multi-target on the few fights that allows it in ToC normal, I would end up at the bottom of the meter. Most experienced shadowpriests today can archive a 98%+ DoT uptime on a single target encounter, but what point is it when other classes scale so much better?

Bring the Player, not the Class, clearly failed in terms of shadowpriests. And not being the right class for progress raiding just makes raiding feel so dead to me.

From top asset at Ulduar25 Hardmodes, to worst possible class to bring in Trial of the Crusader... what's your thoughts?

[Firegod1385]

Does that mean you've been sidelined Nezoia? Or do you have an alt you're bringing now? Cause that would be sucky for you to be shelved because you're not up to par (class wise - I'm fairly sure your skills in-game are good, at least judging by your communication skills on here :P)

That is sad to see, Shadow Priests are a very cool spec, I enjoy using it as my off-spec from time to time, and am generally disappointed with them scaling that horribly. I do think they should get some better scaling - at the very least. And if not just that probably a little bit of tweaking to get up on par with everyone else.

I'm wondering if GC's comments mean they aren't looking into it that much - or if they are, and just dont want to release any information yet to get S-Priests hyped up over just yet.

[Weena]

First off, wtf did Ghostcrawler say? He didnt even mention shadowpriests once in his reply, well done. While not bring shadowpriests to TOC hardmodes i can see why, due to our shitty single target dps, although i must admit i think shadowpriests can do well on Beasts due to double dotting and faction champs with the mass dotting that can be done. Once again shadowpriests are only doing well or decently on these fights because dotting is involved and not because we are a half decent single target dps class.

P.s has ghostcrawler ever see an Algalon WWS/WMO? I'd if he did and saw every class 'beating' shadowpriests by such large numbers he would make a mention about it.

[elcher]

i can feel your pain. being thrown out of a raid simply because of class-scaling is something that has not happened to me yet, but nonetheless i feel your pain.

on the other side, cataclysm brings you guys a "nuke" (i asume it will be something in the strenght of steady shot for hunters now, more or less a filler ability to use when stuff is on CD), but since you already have that blue facemelt idk how its going to turn out.

however, keep on hoping, maybe blizzard will hotfix the scaling of, say MB or even mindflay (doubt that though) or maybe even SW:P

one can only hope for the best...

[Nezoia]

Does that mean you've been sidelined Nezoia?

Technically yes, and I perfectly understands the motives behind doing it, with hardmodes in ToC being very dps focused.

There's simply no reason to bring a shadowpriest, when a moonkin does 500-1000 dps more in the same gear.

We used to bring 2-3 shadowpriests for some hardmodes in Ulduar, Freya and Yogg+1 to be precise, and now we're down to bringing 0-1 per raid. That obviously results in someone having to sit out with 35 signups for a 25man raid.

[Strykzor]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.ph...891#msg1415891
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.ph...525#msg1289525
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.ph...073#msg1289073

Ive been telling people this for months, why does no one listen :

[Nezoia]

Because I disagreed with your way of argumentation. At Ulduar launch where the other classes haven't scaled over our head, our dps was on pair, due to the nature of the fights in Ulduar.

Now we're back to a Naxxramas style dungeon, with mostly single-target encounters, and all the other classes scaled much better with gear than we did.

I have however, always been in agreement with us needing stronger single-target dps, because I suspected dungeons/encounters like Trial of the Crusader, would arise, and make us deprecated as a class.

And you're terrible at presenting your arguments, so it's harder to take you serious than say, a priest from Ensidia.

(I never expect to be taken serious, I just troll)

[Nezoia]

Also I didn't feel like drawing any early conclusions before Trial of the Crusader *really* got started. Now it have, and the verdict is clear. We been out ruled.

I would however, like some more important, and some experiences. Lostprophet and Worshaka being some of the few others with raiding experience here.

I'm personally not to fond of shadowpriest.com, as the regulars there are so tied up with their guild that they wouldn't be ruled out, simply due to seniority. But not everybody got that luxury sadly.

[Deleted]

Single target dps is so low compaired to other hybrids that I don't understand how it's possible for blizz or anyone not to notice it. I would estimate spriest is about 10-20% behind the hybrids and upto 20-30% behind the highest pure classes right now. And it's not stopping there because it's largely a scaling problem. What was the difference in TBC again?

I think multidotting is a overrated in a lot of fights, it's only good if things need to die at the same time, otherwise it's often more beneficial to the raid to burn targets down 1 by 1. Many classes have abilities for hitting 2-3 targets at the same time (cleave anyone?) and still have competitive single target dps. Even if you do try to bloat the meters you won't end up very high anymore in a T9 geared raid.

I'm actually glad that ToC doesn't have any aoe fights, it really shows the poor single target performance now that mind sear doesn't bloat the meters.

[Nezoia]

FoK, Cat Swipe, Cleave, Sweeping Strikes... yeah

And mages got Living Bomb, just to annoy us further. It's a bloody awesome AoE dot.

[gaymer77]

I'm so happy that I can show this post to my guild's officers. As it was told to me by one of them I'm a "shitty dps" and "in my gear I should be #1 on all fights" in Ulduar. He swears that he reads forums and is aware of all the goings on with most classes and still thinks that WE are fine and should be #1 dps. The situation with our class vs all other caster classes scaling such more effeciently than us has actually gotten to the point where I don't log on to WoW that much any more (actually when I had logged on I would get sat routinely because as I stated above & was told I'm "shitty dps" and "should be #1 on all fights" but I'm not) because it just makes me sick to see how as a class we are going downhill. I'm one of those people who refuse to do the whole tab-target dotting bullshit just to up the meters (unlike our other shadow priest in the guild who suprisingly is higher on meters because he does just that...I've tabbed & seen multiple dots is how I know he does this) because I don't feel that meters show what's really going on...ask any disc priest about meters & they'll agree with me. I did the tab-target dotting today just to prove to the nay sayers of my "shitty dps" that I can put numbers up there where they feel it should be but noticed for the first time since doing General hardmode that I was starting to have mana issues keeping up that dps.

Just to clarify, my guild has not done Firestarter, Freya-3 (we've done Freya-1), or any version of Yogg hard mode but have done all the rest which are on farm. Our guild's 10 mans, however, have done all but Yogg-0.

The fact that in a 25 man setting we get blown away by everyone else but in 10 mans we rock the meters is much more than ironic....its uncomprehendable. And the fact that we can go from topping meters in a 10 man to being at or near the bottom in 25 mans just makes no sense....other than to show how broken we are.

Really it does sadden me to see how broken our class is right now. Hearing many shadow priests saying how they are getting sat (myself included) because we just don't bring the umph for downing bosses that every other caster class brings. Hearing shadow priests saying how horrible we scale with gear...we are afterall a dot heavy class so the only thing that really benefits us the most is a lot more SP and crit & then pray to the RNG gods that you crit enough to up your numbers high OR you get an ungodly amount of haste that allows 3 mindflays before mindblast is off CD. Hearing so many shadow priests say how we just don't bring anything that would be benefical to the raid that can't be given by someone else already by a class that can do more dmg that we can too.

People who don't play the class don't understand where we are coming from and view us as a class that SHOULD be competing with the other damage casters on an equal level. They assume that because we have similar gear that we should be putting out similar numbers on those almighty meters that everyone knows is the the measure of how good you are.

Unless Blizzard actually does something to fix the problems, there's really no reason for me to even try to get into our raids or even play the game. That's a sad fact of life because I've enjoyed playing this class as shadow since before ZG was out. I enjoyed seeing Naxx at 60 as a shadow priest and seeing KT dead several times before BC came out. I enjoyed seeing myself #1 on meters in BC and then in Sunwell seeing myself #1 in dmg and #1 on effective healing on fights like Brutallus & Felmyst. I enjoyed seeing myself in the top 5 on every fight in Naxx & Sarth all the way through Sarth 3D. I enjoyed feeling like I brought something that justified me being there along with the fact that I did competitive damage to ensure my spot in a raid. All of that has changed & people who don't play the class just don't see to understand or care.

[hannibaal]

I'm so happy that I can show this post to my guild's officers. As it was told to me by one of them I'm a "shitty dps" and "in my gear I should be #1 on all fights" in Ulduar. He swears that he reads forums and is aware of all the goings on with most classes and still thinks that WE are fine and should be #1 dps. The situation with our class vs all other caster classes scaling such more effeciently than us has actually gotten to the point where I don't log on to WoW that much any more (actually when I had logged on I would get sat routinely because as I stated above & was told I'm "shitty dps" and "should be #1 on all fights" but I'm not) because it just makes me sick to see how as a class we are going downhill. I'm one of those people who refuse to do the whole tab-target dotting bullshit just to up the meters (unlike our other shadow priest in the guild who suprisingly is higher on meters because he does just that...I've tabbed & seen multiple dots is how I know he does this) because I don't feel that meters show what's really going on...ask any disc priest about meters & they'll agree with me. I did the tab-target dotting today just to prove to the nay sayers of my "shitty dps" that I can put numbers up there where they feel it should be but noticed for the first time since doing General hardmode that I was starting to have mana issues keeping up that dps.

Just to clarify, my guild has not done Firestarter, Freya-3 (we've done Freya-1), or any version of Yogg hard mode but have done all the rest which are on farm. Our guild's 10 mans, however, have done all but Yogg-0.

The fact that in a 25 man setting we get blown away by everyone else but in 10 mans we rock the meters is much more than ironic....its uncomprehendable. And the fact that we can go from topping meters in a 10 man to being at or near the bottom in 25 mans just makes no sense....other than to show how broken we are.

Really it does sadden me to see how broken our class is right now. Hearing many shadow priests saying how they are getting sat (myself included) because we just don't bring the umph for downing bosses that every other caster class brings. Hearing shadow priests saying how horrible we scale with gear...we are afterall a dot heavy class so the only thing that really benefits us the most is a lot more SP and crit & then pray to the RNG gods that you crit enough to up your numbers high OR you get an ungodly amount of haste that allows 3 mindflays before mindblast is off CD. Hearing so many shadow priests say how we just don't bring anything that would be benefical to the raid that can't be given by someone else already by a class that can do more dmg that we can too.

People who don't play the class don't understand where we are coming from and view us as a class that SHOULD be competing with the other damage casters on an equal level. They assume that because we have similar gear that we should be putting out similar numbers on those almighty meters that everyone knows is the the measure of how good you are.

Unless Blizzard actually does something to fix the problems, there's really no reason for me to even try to get into our raids or even play the game. That's a sad fact of life because I've enjoyed playing this class as shadow since before ZG was out. I enjoyed seeing Naxx at 60 as a shadow priest and seeing KT dead several times before BC came out. I enjoyed seeing myself #1 on meters in BC and then in Sunwell seeing myself #1 in dmg and #1 on effective healing on fights like Brutallus & Felmyst. I enjoyed seeing myself in the top 5 on every fight in Naxx & Sarth all the way through Sarth 3D. I enjoyed feeling like I brought something that justified me being there along with the fact that I did competitive damage to ensure my spot in a raid. All of that has changed & people who don't play the class just don't see to understand or care.

Ditto!

[Kirkis]

While I still disagree about us not being entirely able to do some multi-dotting in totc heroic, I understand the concerns.
In the new hardmode of the northrend beasts in HM, we can multi-dot the kobolds and Gormok. While many will disagree that it's pointless and we just whore meters by doing it, remember the 3 fights are on a timer. So Upping your overall dps here is certainly not a bad thing. Same thing goes for the Jormungars. On the Yeti tho, we lack behind, and also alot on Jaraxxus given the hp nature of all the adds. A person mentioned multi-dotting on faction champions, but I find that to be walking into a solid wall. The damage you can do in that fight with multi-dotting will be outhealed or dispelled. Therefor it would be wisests to just focus on your single target. Which we pretty much lack, as mentioned in the link from the OP. After these encounters it's pretty much based on fast singletarget dps, and we are here outperformed by many classes and we need some changes there. In Last Resort I haven't noticed any shadowpriests sitting out in the new content yet, so this means we're still 3 sp's per raid.

[syanid]

Using multidotting in order to boost our dps is a bad way of justifying our spot with dps.
Sadly, coliseum is a place where single-target does matter, a lot. And as much as we are good for Ulduar, we aren't for Coliseum.

Some will say Coliseum isn't as hard as Ulduar hard modes, but yes - the fact remains we suck at scaling and even tho I did think (and still think) we are finde for Ulduar - our scaling is crap.

Many have said here, and I do agree - the shadow priest simply sucks at Coliseum. And finally, it will show that we need a fix, either in dots being scaled with haste or in some form of a nuke.

In Ulduar we rocked for AoE, but when it comes to single target burst we're crap (Life Spark, Freya's Roots + Eonar's Gift and so on).

Gear available at Coliseum made me puke and I hated every minute spent there as Shadow, I finally decided to make my priest a healer until it receives some love in shadow department.

[Strykzor]

In Last Resort I haven't noticed any shadowpriests sitting out in the new content yet, so this means we're still 3 sp's per raid.

Normal modes..... could be done with 20 shadow priests.
Hard modes, which is what we are talking about where every last bit of dps is wanted Spriests have no purpose.

If i was raid leading and i had a choice to bring in a Shadowpriest or a Warlock, there isn't 2 ways about it, I would bring a Warlock, they are 1-2k dps ahead, bring a Soulstone and Healthstones, Curses and Fear (Valuable for Faction Champs)

Hybrids are getting phased out, Pures are getting more and more utility.

[syanid]

Now that you mentioned faction champions, is there anyone more useless than a shadow priest there? Objectively speaking, I'm not trying to be a doom-sayer or something like that but let's consider it a bit.

Mind control doesn't work.
We'd have to spec for silence and disarm (so most don't have it).
Our burst sucks and it's needed there.

So basically, what we do bring in is fear, that is also untalented so it's equal to that of other priests.
And naturally, Misery + Replenishment and Hymn of Hope.

I'll just mention what a few casters can do there:

Shaman - hex, totems, shocks, wolfs that stun, thunderstorm, burst.
Warlock - fear, curses, spellock, healthstone, burst, replenishment if needed.
Mage - snare (frostbolt, cone), frost nova, counterspel, sheep, burst, replenishment if needed.
Moonkin - roots, typhoon, cyclone, burst, spelldamage increase, better misery, innervate.

I'm not saying that every player of forementioned classes will use everything to a perfect point, but they do have those tools and they share our utility better than we do.
All we can do is not die during 6 seconds during Faction Champions encounter.
I don't really like that fact, that my class is the one that is practically being carried there and is not contributing properly.

Until they fix it, I won't burden my raid by being gimped dps class that is a waste of gear.

[gaymer77]

While I still disagree about us not being entirely able to do some multi-dotting in totc heroic, I understand the concerns.
In the new hardmode of the northrend beasts in HM, we can multi-dot the kobolds and Gormok. While many will disagree that it's pointless and we just whore meters by doing it, remember the 3 fights are on a timer. So Upping your overall dps here is certainly not a bad thing.

There's no reason why we HAVE TO resort to multi-dotting just to get numbers anywhere close to every other dmg caster. None what-so-ever! The sad fact of the matter is that is exactly what we have to do otherwise we sit on the bottom of meters and the raid wonders why we're there instead of someone else.

Last Resort I haven't noticed any shadowpriests sitting out in the new content yet, so this means we're still 3 sp's per raid.

I'm not sure what your level of progression or what your guild roster looks like but running with 3 SPs per raid is very far from the norm. Honestly running with even 1 these days seems to be away from the norm due to class issues. The only valid reason to bring a shadow priest to a raid these days is if you don't have a druid for imp FF or ret pally/surv hunter/warlock to provide replinishment (LAWL what guild doesn't have at least 1 of those 3). When you have classes like mages & locks & ele shaman & druids able to provide everything we can bring and have high burst dmg for the fights in ToC (hell even some of the Ulduar fights screw us over and will screw us over once everyone is on the same level gear wise) there's just no reason to bring a class in who is getting carried atm.

Oh wait, shadow priests also bring Hymn of Hope which helps your healers, mages, locks, druids, and ele shaman get more mana back to be able to do their job more since you're giving them a lot of mana back.

[Nezoia]

Last Resort is world #15, for you who didn't recognize the name. It's a old respectable guild.

However, I would say you're bringing 3 shadow priests due to seniority, or because you don't have warlocks/mages to replace them.

Multi-dotting on faction champions I would find bloody stupid, as eventually they'll heal the small damage you done up, resulting in nothing but 'fake' meter boosting.

And as for Northrend Beasts, on hardmode you want to have all your dps swap to Kobols, due to the Mortal Strike debuff, thus single target dps is important to get them killed as fast as possible.

[gaymer77]

And as for Northrend Beasts, on hardmode you want to have all your dps swap to Kobols, due to the Mortal Strike debuff, thus single target dps is important to get them killed as fast as possible.

Again more reason why I can't wait to show my guild's officer's this thread. ATM we are ignoring the kobolds until after a beast is down or if it gets on a healer. Their reasoning is that the fights require much burst dmg & our dps needs to be on the bosses instead of running around killing those things. I had a very long arguement with them about how they should expect to see my dmg (and those of the other spriests in the guild) hit rock bottom because I'll be locked out of casting at least 1/2 the time if I get one on me. Their answer: don't you have holy fire & smite you could dps with if you are locked out of shadow? /jawdrop

[Weena]

Wether people that play shadowpriests like it or not, if there is an opportunity to multi dot and you dont take it, its a waste of dps. If you have 2-4 targets with enough health for your dots to tick, and the mobs wont heal or you need to switch, why wouldnt you multi dot? I am thinking freya hardmode here, when the 3 pack comes, why not multi dot and get all 3 down at once, rather than doing less dps and focusing one? OR even yogg saron hardmode, where there is crushers and corruptors up at once, your raidleader probably said to kill crushers first, but why not multi dot corruptors as well, your doing more dps overall. Sure, on fraction champs and Iron council multi-dotting wouldnt be ideal due to dispells and heals but still you cant be ignorant to the fact that multi-dotting is very useful when used correctly.