[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[Ilir]

I'm sorry but no.

Recasting your dot before they fall off or after they fall off isn't hard. It's like saying applying them in the first place is hard, it isn't.

Knowing when to refresh or not would have been hard IF you didn't have addons letting you know the power of your dots and telling you if you should refresh or not. Or stuff tracking your trinket ICD/buffs.

It didn't add any difficulty, you just had to look at your addons.

Now, leap of faith and etc, I can agree than those spells were something that could show you who was a good priest and who wasn't, aside from a dps/hps point of view.

[Biomega]

I'm sorry but no.

Recasting your dot before they fall off or after they fall off isn't hard. It's like saying applying them in the first place is hard, it isn't.

Knowing when to refresh or not would have been hard IF you didn't have addons letting you know the power of your dots and telling you if you should refresh or not. Or stuff tracking your trinket ICD/buffs.

It didn't add any difficulty, you just had to look at your addons.

Now, leap of faith and etc, I can agree than those spells were something that could show you who was a good priest and who wasn't, aside from a dps/hps point of view.

Your point being? As was mentioned earlier, nothing in WoW is HARD hard. Cardiac surgery is hard. Playing WoW is nothing compared to that.

However, even with addons etc. simply the fact that you had more chances to do something wrong makes it hardER than what we have now. And before that is misconstrued: yes, even now there's plenty of room to screw up. It's just that before, there was MORE room - and, consequently, also more room for smart decisions to reflect in DPS gains. Now it seems the deciding characteristic is whether or not you are capable of sustaining the required APM physically.

[Djriff]

So I've recently moved and currently my internet is a lot worse than the connection I use to have. There is quite a distinct difference in using StM with minimal latency and using StM with moderate latency, to the point that it almost feels unplayable past 70 stacks as my internet atm can't just keep up. Fortunately i'll be upgrading my net back to what it was soon but it's a very real concern for some players that don't have that option (Kilee comes to mind). What are some things you guys think could be used to help mitigate that?

[Ilir]

Your point being? As was mentioned earlier, nothing in WoW is HARD hard. Cardiac surgery is hard. Playing WoW is nothing compared to that.

However, even with addons etc. simply the fact that you had more chances to do something wrong makes it hardER than what we have now. And before that is misconstrued: yes, even now there's plenty of room to screw up. It's just that before, there was MORE room - and, consequently, also more room for smart decisions to reflect in DPS gains. Now it seems the deciding characteristic is whether or not you are capable of sustaining the required APM physically.

I would believe you if everyone was doing 100% of the DPS/performance they're supposed to do with their classes. They don't.

It wasn't really a decision... it was "will I follow the way of the addons and do the best dps I can or will I ignore my buffs etc and just go "blind" ?"

If you didn't really care, you would go with the blind way, if you cared, you'd DL those addons.

Like I said, it wasn't harder, it was different and obnoxious.

Which brings me to your comparison with surgery : WoW is a game, should be fun, for the majority of people (even some of those who were in the top guilds) the snapshots mechanics were not FUN at all.

It all goes down to personnal preference. I wish I could get BC Spriest back. But I enjoy Legion Spriest a lot more than vanilla/lk/cata/mop/wod Spriest.

[britishbubba]

So I've recently moved and currently my internet is a lot worse than the connection I use to have. There is quite a distinct difference in using StM with minimal latency and using StM with moderate latency, to the point that it almost feels unplayable past 70 stacks as my internet atm can't just keep up. Fortunately i'll be upgrading my net back to what it was soon but it's a very real concern for some players that don't have that option (Kilee comes to mind). What are some things you guys think could be used to help mitigate that?

I raid with 40ms and our other spriest raids with ~80-100 and they are not able to consistently maintain STM over about 80 stacks. As far as we can tell there's nothing they can do. They server sometimes just won't recognize a command fast enough due to losing about a seventh of a gcd just to latency.

Gets even worse when they get a micro disconnect and can't cast for a few seconds at all and just die at like 40 stacks.

It wasn't really a decision... it was "will I follow the way of the addons and do the best dps I can or will I ignore my buffs etc and just go "blind" ?"

I mean, you could do exactly this. DoT specs were much more fun if you kept track of DoT power in your head instead of using affdots to tell you when to hit your DoT buttons.

[Ilir]

So I've recently moved and currently my internet is a lot worse than the connection I use to have. There is quite a distinct difference in using StM with minimal latency and using StM with moderate latency, to the point that it almost feels unplayable past 70 stacks as my internet atm can't just keep up. Fortunately i'll be upgrading my net back to what it was soon but it's a very real concern for some players that don't have that option (Kilee comes to mind). What are some things you guys think could be used to help mitigate that?

There was a suggestion during the alpha/beta phase on the old thread saying that instead of increasing the insanity generation of our spells, StM should reduce the insanity's depletion rate.

[Djriff]

I raid with 40ms and our other spriest raids with ~80-100 and they are not able to consistently maintain STM over about 80 stacks. As far as we can tell there's nothing they can do. They server sometimes just won't recognize a command fast enough due to losing about a seventh of a gcd just to latency.

Gets even worse when they get a micro disconnect and can't cast for a few seconds at all and just die at like 40 stacks.

Yeah normally I raid with about 80ms on Stormrage, although when I pug i'll get lucky and get a server over here on the west coast that puts me at like 20ms. The problem isn't necessarily the connection speed, but the stability as I've had that micro disconnect happen to me during high stacks of StM, it sucks.

Also they should really stop the insanity drain + voidform stack increase when you lose control of your character, very annoying to be at 15 stacks of voidform and get gazed only to lose your fresh voidform because you got a streak of non crits on SW: P.

There was a suggestion during the alpha/beta phase on the old thread saying that instead of increasing the insanity generation of our spells, StM should reduce the insanity's depletion rate.

I remember seeing that (I forgot about it until now), how would that work though?

[Ilir]

Well I guess they could do something like : instead of increasing the insanity depletion rate every 1 second, it will only increase after X second.

Or instead of insanity going down by 10 every sec, it will go down by X every sec.

I don't remember the correct values.

[davesignal]

So I've recently moved and currently my internet is a lot worse than the connection I use to have. There is quite a distinct difference in using StM with minimal latency and using StM with moderate latency, to the point that it almost feels unplayable past 70 stacks as my internet atm can't just keep up. Fortunately i'll be upgrading my net back to what it was soon but it's a very real concern for some players that don't have that option (Kilee comes to mind). What are some things you guys think could be used to help mitigate that?

Create a level 100 talent that can actually compete with Surrender to Madness.

[Biomega]

Create a level 100 talent that can actually compete with Surrender to Madness.

Into the Void

You are now permanently in Void Form, and your haste is increased by 20% but you no longer gain stacks of haste.
Mind Blast now generates 20 insanity.
Mind Flay now generates 5 insanity per tick.
Vampiric Touch now costs 50 Insanity and its damage is increased by 150%.
Void Bolt now costs 100 Insanity and its damage is increased by 500%. Each hit of Void Bolt and the first hit of Mind Sear apply or refresh Shadow Word: Pain, but you can no longer cast Shadow Word: Pain.

[Djriff]

Well that would be better than mind spike. It's an interesting mechanic that's for sure and would drastically change the playstyle, I'm a fan.

[Elofyn]

Into the Void

You are now permanently in Void Form, and your haste is increased by 20% but you no longer gain stacks of haste.
Mind Blast now generates 20 insanity.
Mind Flay now generates 5 insanity per tick.
Vampiric Touch now costs 50 Insanity and its damage is increased by 150%.
Void Bolt now costs 100 Insanity and its damage is increased by 500%. Each hit of Void Bolt and the first hit of Mind Sear apply or refresh Shadow Word: Pain, but you can no longer cast Shadow Word: Pain.

I agree with Djriff, that sounds interesting. However, they would have to redesign a big chunk of our artifact (like Mass Hysteria) so... can you provide suggestions for those as well?

EDIT// I'd miss my tentacles tho, unless they made it a part of the permanent Void Form.

[Djriff]

I agree with Djriff, that sounds interesting. However, they would have to redesign a big chunk of our artifact (like Mass Hysteria) so... can you provide suggestions for those as well?

Why would MH have to be redesigned? It could still work, just would have to change it slightly to work from a haste coefficient rather than VF stacks.

[Elofyn]

Why would MH have to be redesigned? It could still work, just would have to change it slightly to work from a haste coefficient rather than VF stacks.

Well, at first I thought that Mass Hysteria is the one trait in the dagger that makes us do the promised exponential damage (up to a point) and Into the Void would replace this exponentiality with something more static. Which I find little boring, but that's just my personal opinion (not difficult to guess that I love StM). But then I realised that that's probably what Biomega was aiming for.

So Mass Hysteria would work like some traits do with Mind Flay / Mind Spike? Mass Hysteria would increase dot damage 2% per second unless in specced into Into the Void, when it would increase dot damage by ...a static amount? or, like you said tie it to the haste?

[Djriff]

I think tying it into haste would be fine, that way you could get benefit from lust and other haste procs. It's not a perfect solution but it could work /shrug.

- - - Updated - - -

Also curious if anyone has some stats/analysis on the Legion (EN specifically) trinkets and/or legendaries. I guess it's a bit early to worry about it, but I was looking through the dungeon journal and some of the procs seemed hard to quantify or were lacking rppm rates.

I looked at them and I'm still working on putting together a list. I should have some time on Saturday to test some stuff out. I'm going with the stat weights simcraft is giving me and i'll ask @Twintop for his opinion as well since he has a better understanding of simcraft than I do.

[Atreyis]

Yeah normally I raid with about 80ms on Stormrage, although when I pug i'll get lucky and get a server over here on the west coast that puts me at like 20ms. The problem isn't necessarily the connection speed, but the stability as I've had that micro disconnect happen to me during high stacks of StM, it sucks.

Also they should really stop the insanity drain + voidform stack increase when you lose control of your character, very annoying to be at 15 stacks of voidform and get gazed only to lose your fresh voidform because you got a streak of non crits on SW: P.


I remember seeing that (I forgot about it until now), how would that work though?

Just tooling around in HFC with StM I can see where micro lag spikes or framerate drops can really screw with the talent. I think the concept and flavor of the talent is very cool but I wonder if there might be a better solution than death. Perhaps instead of dying you have a 1m window where you suffer from "void exhaustion" and can't go back into voidform. If not that some other penalty that still rewards good talent usage but isn't a total FYOU if something unfortunate happens out of your control.

I'm lucky that I have decent internet but for those with 300+ ping consistently I sympathize as there is nothing you can do.

[davesignal]

Why would MH have to be redesigned? It could still work, just would have to change it slightly to work from a haste coefficient rather than VF stacks.

Or you could have it be a rolling bonus that changes based on the amount of Insanity you've spent in the last.. let's say, 30 seconds?

[Djriff]

Or you could have it be a rolling bonus that changes based on the amount of Insanity you've spent in the last.. let's say, 30 seconds?

That bonus would have to count the Insanity you gain beyond the cap of 100 then. Even if it doesn't that's a nerf to MH.

[Kilee25]

@Ilir I agree with @Biomega on the dot issue. I felt the old style of dot management was more engaging than the current model. Can I be allowed to have a different opinion here?
@Djriff I hover around 100ms, with spikes between 200-300ms. StM is nigh unplayable. I can tether my phone and it's at least consistent (but still bad) , but then I'm paying for double internet just to play a game. My family is moving to a new city in September and honestly I have just gone completely casual at this point. The gap between latency for players was always there. I hated talking to people on Fios connections who wanted to insist that Internet doesn't matter and you're just a bad player if you can't compete etc... Imo StM just exposes and enhances what was always there.

[Ilir]

@Kilee25 : Of course ! I thought I sent in another post but apparently not. I'm not saying you guys are wrong. I'm just saying it's really subjective. Maybe I sounded a little too agressive or "what i'm saying is the only truth". Sorry if that was the case.