Post Multi Nerf Shadow Word Death Numbers.

[Evaangelina]

Because many people seem confused about exactly what nerfs were put to shadow word death over the last day or so. After raid today i took myself out and did a bit of testing with a friend to get some actual numbers on what happened to shadow word death.

After testing and from what you will see in the screenshot there were three total nerfs. In order of when they happened here they are.

1: Nerfed shadow word death damage by from what i can see around 20 percent (this is what happens when you saw the crits go from 31k in raids to around 18-21k in raids.
2: Nerfed the glyph of shadow word death to have a six second internal cooldown. What this means is that when you shadow word death a target below 25% health. You will get an instant recharge on your next shadow word death. however that is the only one you will get as you will have to wait for your full swd cooldown duration before you can swd again. thus fixing the spamming of it.
3: Nerfed the damage that shadow word death does to targets above 25% health by an additional (estimated) 60%. This means that shadow word deathing a target above 25% health is a terrible idea as it will do next to nothing because swd damage to targets above 25% health was nerfed by about 80%

Here is a screenshot breaking down the damage difference on targets above and below 25% health and also crit and non crit. I obviously removed any referencing names to any characters. If any mods have any problems with the picture i posted please let me know in a pm and i will either fix or remove it as soon as you let me know.

P.S: In the picture when i say above 25% i mean above 25 percent health... and either a critical hit or non critical hit. also the final pic on the bottom right was a "below 25% health Critical"





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[undethknight]

Couldn't you just waiit 6sec for the glyphs Icd to finish before you cast the SW: D you got from it?

[Evaangelina]

Couldn't you just waiit 6sec for the glyphs Icd to finish before you cast the SW: D you got from it?

yes but i will tell you why you dont want to do that. with crude math that will probably be wrong.

Lets say the boss is below 25% health and you shadow word death 1 time. The glyph instantly recharges it then you shadow word death again instantly. You then have a 10 or so second wait before you can do it again. SO effectivly that is 2 shadow word death casts every 10 seconds.

Now if we tried it the way you suggested.
You cast swd. then wait six second. then cast it again. then you will have to wait another another six seconds to cast it again.. that is 2 swd in 12 seconds... I THINK...

lets use a graph. Dots mean seconds

Target is below 25 percent health

SWDSWD..........SWDSWD..........SWDSWD
SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD

so even with perfect timing it would take longer to get the same shadow word deaths in. in this case being sloppy and just spamming it when its up is a good thing

Once again my math is pretty bush league.

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 08:48 AM ----------

yes but i will tell you why you dont want to do that. with crude math that will probably be wrong.

Lets say the boss is below 25% health and you shadow word death 1 time. The glyph instantly recharges it then you shadow word death again instantly. You then have a 10 or so second wait before you can do it again. SO effectivly that is 2 shadow word death casts every 10 seconds.

Now if we tried it the way you suggested.
You cast swd. then wait six second. then cast it again. then you will have to wait another another six seconds to cast it again.. that is 2 swd in 12 seconds... I THINK...

lets use a graph. Dots mean seconds

Target is below 25 percent health

SWDSWD..........SWDSWD..........SWDSWD
SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD......SWD

so even with perfect timing it would take longer to get the same shadow word deaths in. in this case being sloppy and just spamming it when its up is a good thing

Once again my math is pretty bush league.

------


Edit: Another thing that i want to state is that im sure we can all tell by now that shadow word death has no place in a rotation at all unless the target is below 20% health.

However is it worth it even under optimal condition?

I mean if you think about it. At the current moment an average death bringer saurfang heroic kill is around two minutes and thirty seconds.

With that kind of time allotment i can assume that killing the final 20% of a bosses health (often times guild bloodlust before then and keep it for the rest of the kill) takes around 15 or 20 seconds.

That means under optimal conditions you will be able to get around 4 casts of shadow word death off in 20 seconds. Because as we all now know you can only cast vt two times and it goes on cooldown.

so you have 4 shadow word deaths that can hit for around 10k and crit for around 20k. for this we will assume 50/50 (even though your actual crit is lower than 50% in raids.)

that means in the entire final 20 percent of the bossfight your 4 shadow word death casts will net you a grand total of 60k extra damage... Now if we factor in time lost from globals and compare that to what you could have done by simply spamming mind flay.

Im sure you are getting what im saying by now. Is it worth it?

well to me this just seems pretty subpar and average. but you decide.

[say10]

I think changes 1 and 2 were really needed but change 3 just seems completely overkill removing the spell from rotation above 20% and making it extremely haphazard in pvp. I really hope blizzard revert this 3rd change.

[llDemonll]

3rd change is fine, SWD was never meant to be a humongous part of our damage.

Overall I'm not disappointed with the change

[Deleted]

blizz sucks... on priests execute spell is threat to user... i dont see any warlock drain soul nerf with it bilions of crits they make, they dont get dmg from using it or hunters' kill shot dont reflect part of dmg to caster.... and they can spam it...
so WTF :/

[Supernex]

3rd change is fine, SWD was never meant to be a humongous part of our damage.

Overall I'm not disappointed with the change

Except this is the first time since SW: Death was introduced into the game where it hits for less than a DoT tick when over 25%. This was a kneejerk reaction, IMO, as it was in PTR and Beta this whole time, (and even pre-patch it hit respectably over 25%, at least double what it hit for now.)

blizz sucks... on priests execute spell is threat to user... i dont see any warlock drain soul nerf with it bilions of crits they make, they dont get dmg from using it or hunters' kill shot dont reflect part of dmg to caster.... and they can spam it...
so WTF :/

Not that it matters much, but yes, they halved Drain Soul, now it only ticks 18-20k and crits for 35k+...but yes, it is a much more powerful spell than SWD.

[Gemazarus]

I am OK with this change. I had a couple nights of fun totally destroying the meters. Spamming SW: D didn't feel right. I loved the idea that our rotation and gameplay changed so much during the Execute Phase, and am very sorry to see it gone tbh.

However, SW: D should not be our main damage dealer. It should not do more damage overall then Mind Flay. It is wrong, and frankly, how Blizzard would create such a glpyh for Shadow Priests is beyond me. Surely they must have thought we would gladly abuse such a DPS increase?!

I am yet to do my own testing, but it does appear to me that we are once again back to the same old rotation. I'm wondering if it is even worth having the SW: D Glpyh now, and I might revert it to SW: P since I don't need the Dispersion Glyph anymore.

Dissapointing overall methinks, but very much needed. I do feel they could do something with our class though, I thoroughly enjoyed the changes, weaving in SW: D, making conscious decisions on whether to use SW: D or MB it was innovative and fun.

And I of course enjoyed taking my guild to town and showing them proper numbers

[Supernex]

I am OK with this change. I had a couple nights of fun totally destroying the meters. Spamming SW: D didn't feel right. I loved the idea that our rotation and gameplay changed so much during the Execute Phase, and am very sorry to see it gone tbh.

However, SW: D should not be our main damage dealer. It should not do more damage overall then Mind Flay. It is wrong, and frankly, how Blizzard would create such a glpyh for Shadow Priests is beyond me. Surely they must have thought we would gladly abuse such a DPS increase?!

I am yet to do my own testing, but it does appear to me that we are once again back to the same old rotation. I'm wondering if it is even worth having the SW: D Glpyh now, and I might revert it to SW: P since I don't need the Dispersion Glyph anymore.

Dissapointing overall methinks, but very much needed. I do feel they could do something with our class though, I thoroughly enjoyed the changes, weaving in SW: D, making conscious decisions on whether to use SW: D or MB it was innovative and fun.

And I of course enjoyed taking my guild to town and showing them proper numbers

I don't think people are so much upset about the GLYPH nerf as they are about the SWD damage nerf. SWD now does LESS damage than a DoT tick on targets above 25%.

[Gemazarus]

Yeah. I said in my post that I enjoyed having SW: D as part of my main rotation. If it is doing less damage then a dot tick, then clearly it is no good at all to us at level 80. And that is a shame.

[say10]

I am OK with this change. I had a couple nights of fun totally destroying the meters. Spamming SW: D didn't feel right. I loved the idea that our rotation and gameplay changed so much during the Execute Phase, and am very sorry to see it gone tbh.

However, SW: D should not be our main damage dealer. It should not do more damage overall then Mind Flay. It is wrong, and frankly, how Blizzard would create such a glpyh for Shadow Priests is beyond me. Surely they must have thought we would gladly abuse such a DPS increase?!

I am yet to do my own testing, but it does appear to me that we are once again back to the same old rotation. I'm wondering if it is even worth having the SW: D Glpyh now, and I might revert it to SW: P since I don't need the Dispersion Glyph anymore.

Dissapointing overall methinks, but very much needed. I do feel they could do something with our class though, I thoroughly enjoyed the changes, weaving in SW: D, making conscious decisions on whether to use SW: D or MB it was innovative and fun.

And I of course enjoyed taking my guild to town and showing them proper numbers

I agree of course that sw: death spam was a little silly I think the glyph still remains pretty cool. However the 60/80% reduction in dmg of sw:d before 25% is a far bigger change to a spell we have had for 4 years. It leaves shadow priests without a spell to cast while moving save DP it makes the spell rickety and frustrating in pvp unlike other classes whose execute lights up at 25% or warlocks who can spam theirs ours is usuable, deals no damage and simply gets put on a 12 second cooldown if you use it before 25%. It just seems like such a huge change to an archetypal spell was made a little too quickly.

We will have to see what GC says as to whether this is permananent. Interesting changes would be changing mind spike to be instant with a stacking debuff like AB that increases cast time by 0.5 sec. Replacing the role that Sw filled before of our instant dmg spell.

[TheColorRed]

I dont understand also how blizz ever came up with this silly glpyh and instead of removing the glpyh or changing it to something else, they made the spell useless for anything over 25%

[Rizzoti]

If Sw is good for nothing but an execute (which it is now), it needs some buffs. Either raise the 25% to 35% or so, or lower the cd, or do something cool like make it consume remaining potential dot damage still on the target, dealing it all instantly. Now that's an execute.

[jonish]

If Sw is good for nothing but an execute (which it is now), it needs some buffs. Either raise the 25% to 35% or so, or lower the cd, or do something cool like make it consume remaining potential dot damage still on the target, dealing it all instantly. Now that's an execute.

Or just revert all the moronic damage nerfs to death and leave the cooldown on the glyph. Along with reverting the seemingly unmentioned nerf to mind blast that went along with the initial SWDeath nerf which everyone seems to be ignoring.

[Deleted]

its dissapointing we were supposed to get a finisher not a half-assed alternative way to dps while something is below 25%...i see swd stayin in the margine again

[Shaddowsaint]

With the mana issues Shadow priests are having at lv 85, I think it really bad what blizzard have done to SW: D. It was the glyph that needed to be nerfed, not the spell. Having to include SW: D in rotation simply for a means of mana return while doing pitiful damage is just horrible. :'(

[Kelesti]

With the mana issues Shadow priests are having at lv 85, I think it really bad what blizzard have done to SW: D. It was the glyph that needed to be nerfed, not the spell. Having to include SW: D in rotation simply for a means of mana return while doing pitiful damage is just horrible. :'(

So instead of pitiful damage, you'd rather do no damage, through Dispersion?

[harky]

So instead of pitiful damage, you'd rather do no damage, through Dispersion?

Careful, you might incite bitching about Shadow being the only class with an Evocate that doesn't scale with haste.

Anyway, wouldn't you rather have a class which is coherent instead of good due entirely to a gimmick? Besides, many of the changes being made now are temporary and have been stated repeatedly to not reflect level 85 gameplay. They're being done to account for limited talent pools, missing abilities, etc. The mana concerns are a complete non-issue at 80 and DPS is still competitive. All this means is no more SW facerolling. It wasn't fun, or innovative, so who cares if it was nerfed?

[jonish]

Careful, you might incite bitching about Shadow being the only class with an Evocate that doesn't scale with haste.

Anyway, wouldn't you rather have a class which is coherent instead of good due entirely to a gimmick? Besides, many of the changes being made now are temporary and have been stated repeatedly to not reflect level 85 gameplay. They're being done to account for limited talent pools, missing abilities, etc. The mana concerns are a complete non-issue at 80 and DPS is still competitive. All this means is no more SW facerolling. It wasn't fun, or innovative, so who cares if it was nerfed?

Innovative kinda, but FUN ? Hell ya it was fun. We have been doing the exact same rotation the entire expansion unless your gear level got the point you could drop mindblast. Adding a new spell and new mechanics that required MOVEMENT in the rotation to maximize dps was infact an amazingly different idea.

It also had the element of kill or be killed which shadow priests had lived by for along time. You can increase your dps by 10-20% by sacrificing your own health to the cause.

Now as I have already said a few times in other threads the SPAM was idiotic, but these coefficient nerfs are total moronic cave ins to forum whining. fix the problem through what blizzard stated was the main problem, the glyph.

[Gemazarus]

Innovative kinda, but FUN ? Hell ya it was fun. We have been doing the exact same rotation the entire expansion unless your gear level got the point you could drop mindblast. Adding a new spell and new mechanics that required MOVEMENT in the rotation to maximize dps was infact an amazingly different idea.

It also had the element of kill or be killed which shadow priests had lived by for along time. You can increase your dps by 10-20% by sacrificing your own health to the cause.

Now as I have already said a few times in other threads the SPAM was idiotic, but these coefficient nerfs are total moronic cave ins to forum whining. fix the problem through what blizzard stated was the main problem, the glyph.

My point exactly. I found myself looking forward to the Execute Phase pre nerf, the glpyh certainyl did spice things up, and I killed myself a few times

TBH too, as I said before, I loved having SW: D in my rotation. Having the choice between MB and SW: D was cool, and helped to keep me awake.

I am totally aware that this nerf is hopefully and very likely temporary and look forward to it in Cata.

All is not lost thought tbh, I went to Ulduar 10 last night for shits, and still consistantly pulled north of 12k DPS. All though level 80 doesn't matter now, but Ima enjoy this while it lasts.