Please. I dont see any in the MDI
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I could be wrong, but the reason Shadow hasnāt been seen in the MDI isnāt just about damage but utility. Priests in general simply canāt compete with what other classes have to offer; the only ones weāve seen are Discipline Priests, and even that is more of a sacrifice they make to save their preferred specs for later so they donāt get banned.
All priest spec are in a bad state right now. But to be honest, Lord have mercy to those who play Discipline or Holy since they are the ones who have the hardest time.
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Say an extra prayer for those that love playing VW disc. They didnāt just bury us while trying to nerf oracle. They cemented us in and built an office building on top of our grave.
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Well yes, and when the only thing that a spec can bring to the table is damage..shouldnt it be exceptional? 
I would also say that pulling entire dungeon on top of bosses while speedruning the dungeons on +15 isnt realy a shadow priest teritory either.
1 Like
I think shadow is pretty good, actually, it just isnāt the very best, particularly for the very non-representative type of gameplay you see in the MDI.
Would be cool if theyād reduce the CD for Mass Dispel again, or make VE feel worth pressing, but it isnāt that bad. Would rather them not tinker with shadow more at the moment, to be honest.
For sure. MD cd wouldnt do much for us in current m+ season, but in pvp it would make sp more viable. VE beign a defensive cd, significant defensive cd for a whole group would be awesome too..making PI hero, or giving priest CR and reliable kick..another wishfull thinking.
Shadow isnt THAT bad, but as i said..if only thing you bring is damage..it should be respectable. And we arent the only spec in this situation.
When i saw the latest rework (number 7 or i dont even know what number we are on) my biggest fear was that the talent thats choice node with misery -sw pain dam. will become the go to build for m+ā¦and ofc here we are..some chinese masochist made it work so its now meta for high keys, and without misery the gameplay in dungeons is an unbeliveable 
..imho, while the results arent even that amazing to begin with.
Itās not a buff we need, we need actual useful utility skills xD
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With 12.0.5 adjusting other classes shadow has dropped to tenth for dps.
Damage is now below the phys comps which got some good buffs and priests are still considered the absolute worst utility wise. We just cant compete woth lust and brez and have the worst class buff with fort.
I cant speak towards other classes but at the highest level of M+ play shadow is significantly harder than it was in TWW. Managing the individual casts of SW:Pain is a lot more work than having both halo and void torrent was.
I disagree. We need a complete redesign because what weāve had since Legion is a half-finished mess, and the developers have simply been building upon on it, dedicating just five minutes of attention to Shadow spec in each expansion.
We need a more consistent AoE spell; Voidform needs to be either redesigned or simply be removed entirely. One of the reasons we donāt see Shadow Priests in the MDI aside from their lack of utility is that once Voidform ends, a Shadow Priest does practically nothing. Our DoTs are garbage, and a tank can easily outdamage us.
Our mobility is awful, it has been for years, despite how much the community has complained about it. Power Word: Shield is practically useless; it shatters after taking a single hit from a basic mob, and itās not even worth casting on yourself except for the speed boost it provides (assuming you have the talent).
Our best build, which starts to keep pace with other classes, doesnāt start working till some +17s and all +18s.
Below that level, you just have a DPS that doesnāt DPS as much (assuming skill and gear are equal), brings fort (who cares, no one because not having fort isnāt stopping anyone now), and makes another spec look even better by doing more damage without attributing the Shadow Priest.
MDI mostly starts at +15 and stops at +17, so our damage profile doesnāt work.
Iād also argue that as the tier has gone on, fights with adds, the spec has also suffered. Twist of Fate and Shadow Word: Death execute damage just doesnāt matter when everything blows up because of instant-on-demand AoE/cleave damage from every other DPS spec. Or their DPS is just so high, execute windows shrink.
Any tax on Psychic Link because it is āspread cleaveā is counteracted by everything being a death ball. And when it isnāt a death ball, just bring a DK, and it is a death ball. There really is no such thing as spread cleave in this game, as if it were, it would disenfranchise most DPS specs.
Tanks also donāt really like to play āspecialā in M+ just for Shadow Priest by chain pulling ToF range mobs into boss fights or additional packs. That play-style allows +10% damage to be kept as you pull. However who wants the added stress if they can just invite something else that does that damage without having to worry, do something different, etc. and also brings better utility/bufs/etc.
And lastly, our horrors that stack up donāt matter if things die from on demand AoE/cleave or have incredibly short execute windows due to high DPS.
The class is āfineā as it is playable, but it is literally a benchwarmer for all of RFW and MDI, and that hurts its image as viable in the eyes of many players. Couple that with lackluster tuning early on, lack of any utility that matters, and a lack of addressing its damage profile, and the spec has one big case of a bad reputation that canāt be shaken.
I honestly donāt know what the devs are thinking. I can only assume they are sitting in some bubble of make-believe, looking at data that works in a spreadsheet but not in reality, and tuning that doesnāt help fix the image issue.
It isnāt even beginner friendly considering how important it is know know exactly how and when you tentacle slam in every encounter. How you are going to get ToF or timing burst during ToF. Do it wrong in non-single target environments, and you do DPS well below every other spec. Even when you do, you still might get to do no DPS because everything is killed before you get to do your damage.
High friction, high learning curve, high skill expresion, no payoff.
The meta is established and canāt be fixed until they overbuff the spec so people start inviting it at this point or retool it so it is attractive to at least try out. If shadow isnāt topping the damage, unquestionably, they have no utility to fall back on that the community values. It does have utility, but as Iāve said in previous posts, it is either not as good as others or it is invisible - it has no detectable impact for most players.
That said, I donāt expect anything at all for season 2. I expect minor tweaking that will do either nothing or overbuff us to the point of needing nerfs and we will be right back where we are now. Iāve already propose changes in other posts on how they could give themselves more easy knobs to tune with (instead of jocking PL %s around to make us under powered or over powered but never stable), correct the damage profile, and provide utility, but it seems beyond them.
Iām working diligently in +19s and +20s, trying to keep going, but it is a slog.
5 Likes
No lies here, but I just wanted to say that I love your name!
dude they are not. Where do you doomers come from
show me your priest, explain yourself why you consider me a doomer. If Iām wrong, please explain to me why all priests complaint about utility and damage compared to other classesā¦
Posting on a lvl 25 warrior in the priests forum ? and Iām the doomer ? yeah sureā¦ The āā kids āā of nowadays like you just make me laugh
3 Likes
A major design flaw that holds shadow back in M+ is the large pulls. Generally, the first pull and many pulls throughout dungeons go beyond our tentacle dot cap while other specs can just aoe with complete ease and no set up. We also donāt seem to have a good way to prioritize trash or boss without making major sacrifices to the other while other specs can focus on one without giving up too much for the other. Iāve been forced to play disc this season since absolutely no one wants shadow. Itās a raid spec and thatās how blizz is balancing it.
I feel like when you play with misery, these large pulls are our strengt not weakness. Issue is that higher keys we dont pla misery. 
Noā¦ not at all. When the enemies have enough health for us to ramp and get multiple tentacle slams out to hit all the mobs we would benefit from not running misery.
We use misery for mobs that die faster but the pulls are too large for tentacle slam to hit them all.
Even with the coming 3s cd reduction we would also meed them to reduce the number of fodder mobs or have TS apply dots to 9 or 10 instead of 6.
I would want them to higher the cap, and give us some sort of payoff to reduced the CD on Tentacle Slam. So we get rewarded for reducing the CD.
Or that they higher the cap so the priority of the spell is AoE-Dotting, and reducing the amount of procs Tentcale Slam activates.
I just dont understand why Shadows AoE-tool has to have a restriction, instead of a DR on PL. It would massively improve Shadows gameplay in a M+ scenario.
I canāt find another DPS spec that has the same type of restriction.
I truly donāt believe they care about balance for this season, not even a tiny bit. There are multiple dungeons where the top dps classes are doing 50% higher than the mid tier classes literal #1 records. For most dungeons its like 30% as the average but no amount of data driven balancing should result in that much of a disparity when a minor tweak of 2% can be done to the aura or to PL or to TS target caps.
The only reason for such disparity is that it is intended. They donāt want to balance Shadow Priest, they donāt want it to be in the meta and they donāt want to spend any time actually fixing the issues. It is easier to let everyone drop the spec and play something they want to spend their money and time developing.
Priest isnāt the only class experiencing this currently, and I donāt know how or why they picked the 3 (arguably 4) classes they have decided to hate on. If I had to guessā¦ I would guess AI integration, just because I work in a corporate driven entity and they LOVE forcing AI into systems and processes.