Cata itemisation for shadow

[davie]

So we've had a few bits of loot from the beta servers, not all of it granted, but enough for me to be slightly worried.

We all know our mastery as shadow isnt the best, which at this moment in time puts mastery wayyyy below any other stat (im not sure how much this will change as we level up, but i cant see it being as big a jump as it needs to be without them changing our mastery)

A quick glance at the loot tables we've seen upto now, there isnt one piece that has crit/haste, its all crit/mastery haste/mastery etc etc, the hit/spirit is ofcourse useful, but only upto a certain point in the first tier of raiding.

What im trying to get at is that our choice of loot is likely to be extremly narrow with mastery as it is now, we just wont want it above crit/haste once we're hitcapped, yet at the moment you dont seem to have a choice on the loot we see, its all mastery.

I'd hope they buff our mastery so that its as valuable to us as it is to other casters.

[Deleted]

I dont think they can buff our retarded mastery because if they buff it god knows it will be wait for 3 orbs then hit for a truck load. I can see people QQ about it in PVP if it gets buffed.

[Jigawatts]

They could make our mastery work like say the ghouls Dark Transformation for a DK. Where as the orbs are stacking it increases our shadow dmg by X%, than after three orbs use MB and start over. The only problem with that is they would have to make you want to use MB so that you you dont just run around with the orbs. A way to fix that is after using MB it could buff your shadow DMG for X% more for each shadow orb you have. Just some ideas in order to make mastery more attractive, doubt blizz will do it though.

[Constantino]

I hadn't heard any class that found mastery balanced. Perhaps their way of making it relevant is to put it on all the gear and give all classes no choice...

[llDemonll]

its stupid logic. 'hey lets introduce this new feature and balance all the classes around it. except a few, they can just go with a different spec'

[borntoheal]

"It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste." - Quote from Ghostcrawler on the Beta forums.

[davie]

"It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste." - Quote from Ghostcrawler on the Beta forums.

Lets see if they do that to at least bring it level with crit, even then its going to have to be by such a big amount (as its a small % of your overall damage as it only effects one spell) that MB will hit very very very hard, and that has PVP implications i.e. it'll be overpowered.

It'll be interesting to see how they solve this

[zito]

"It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste." - Quote from Ghostcrawler on the Beta forums.

Unless they significantly increase mastery's power crit will pull ahead because crit effects everything. Mastery only effects one of our spells.

[OldHordeGlory]

What im trying to get at is that our choice of loot is likely to be extremly narrow with mastery as it is now, we just wont want it above crit/haste once we're hitcapped, yet at the moment you dont seem to have a choice on the loot we see, its all mastery.

Well for what it's worth, your gear choices will be opened up a bit more by being able to reforge the mastery into something else. I mean, it won't get rid of ALL the mastery, no. But you can chunk it down a bit by taking your crit/mastery and making it crit/haste/mastery or something.

/shrug

[Deleted]

"It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste." - Quote from Ghostcrawler on the Beta forums.

Yes, I bet all of us here can read. And all of us who care have already read that quote.

Anyway, if (and the IF is huge one) the bonus per mastery points gets increased to be on par with crit (which is somewhere around 7% per point), it will result in 70k Mind Blast crits without any 'extra' stuff (WSG buff, ect.). I bet 70k MB crit is something other PvP players won't happy about. That's why sp.com has been calling for mastery redesign for the last 3 months.

Balanced in PvE = overpowered in PvP.
Balanced in PvP = useless in PvE.

And considering how much mastery is all over the raiding items, Shadow Priests might get ToC'ed once again.

"Your mastery now also increases all periodic shadow damage you do by X%. Each point of mastery increases the damage by additional Y%." Shall we?

---------- Post added 2010-10-19 at 10:19 PM ----------

Well for what it's worth, your gear choices will be opened up a bit more by being able to reforge the mastery into something else. I mean, it won't get rid of ALL the mastery, no. But you can chunk it down a bit by taking your crit/mastery and making it crit/haste/mastery or something.

/shrug

You will be way, way better if you take non-mastery item instead of taking one with mastery and reforging it later.
On a side note, remember why crit was so bad back in TBC? Because it affected only Mind Blast and SW. Now mastery affects only one spell. I think this makes the point.

[OldHordeGlory]

You will be way, way better if you take non-mastery item instead of taking one with mastery and reforging it later.
On a side note, remember why crit was so bad back in TBC? Because it affected only Mind Blast and SW. Now mastery affects only one spell. I think this makes the point.

The way I had read his concern, it was that all of the higher-up gear would have mastery, even though it isn't what they preferred. I just offered that there was a partial remedy to that seeming lack of a crit/haste option in the form of reforging. It isn't the BEST option, sure, but it's a way around the 'lack of options' complaint. From there, you can move to the 'lack of perfectly itemized gear...options' complaint

[zingbat]

I'd like to see the shadow master be a bit similar to the holy mastery... Perhaps if Mind Blast left a dot for a % of the damage it dealt. This means we're getting extra dot damage (which fits with shadow), doesn't hurt the way shadow works and has worked since BC... and makes everyone happy (PVP can purge it).

It could work?


EDIT:

It can also work in reverse, and cause our DOTs such as SW:P, DP, etc to cause x damage at the end of the dot, where x is equal to a % of the damage dealt during the DOT....

[davie]

I'd like to see the shadow master be a bit similar to the holy mastery... Perhaps if Mind Blast left a dot for a % of the damage it dealt. This means we're getting extra dot damage (which fits with shadow), doesn't hurt the way shadow works and has worked since BC... and makes everyone happy (PVP can purge it).

It could work?


EDIT:

It can also work in reverse, and cause our DOTs such as SW:P, DP, etc to cause x damage at the end of the dot, where x is equal to a % of the damage dealt during the DOT....

gotta say, this is prob one of the more interesting ideas ive seen recently, i like the idea of one of our spells applying an extra dot on the rarget, this extra dot would be effected by haste aswell so would scale better then our current mastery and we could ramp up the damage it does without seriously damaging pvp as like you say, it can be dispelled.