Finally our DOTS won’t hit like wet noodles!! I’ll trade the huge buffs to our two main dots for a DP hit
Shadow
Let’s just be clear on this for others. That’s not 60% to 52%, that’s 60% to 55%, which is an 8% reduction in value.
Glad the other 2 dots got buffed.
Sucks about sfp.
Can we get a really good spriest pvp legendary now!!! Like damn
Glad to see baseline dots buffed. Multidotting, a historic shadow strength, can shine a little better now.
The Talbadar’s nerf was another nerf to single-target, which some of us expected in some form.
The Shadowflame Prism nerf was also expected…it was clearly not designed to be a contender for single-target damage.
I’ve been having so much fun with SFP 
sad.
Can confirm the Lego is really only a 5% drop on the PTR.
Not sure why blizz has it out for Devouring Plague this patch. They removed the PvP talent and now we got another -18% nerf.
+25% SWP/VT is a decent boost to tab dotting, but they’d probably need to prop up Shadowy Apparitions to support that playstyle.
Shadowflame Prism will still be great in AOE situations after the nerf, it just won’t be the right choice for every encounter (currently).
Talbadar’s nerf seems unnecessary. They are likely trying to make our other legendaries more appealing - but the problem is the other legendaries suck for other reasons.
We like SFP and Talbadar’s because they work, and the others don’t - nerfing the functional ones is not going to fix the others.
DOTS
The DOT rebalancing is a great move. It looks roughly DPS neutral for single target, so it will make multidotting worthwhile again.
I would much rather they nerf or even remove Shadowy Apparitions, perhaps leave Auspicious Spirits as a talent, and buff our DOTs even further.
im more annoyed they nerfed devour as many times as they did… lol. this is what 5th or 6th time ? At what point is it just gonna be a minor dot
Sure, the devouring nerf + buff to SWP and VE is a slight dps increase (like 8 dps for me) but the legendary nerfs will probably drop us 50-80 depending on the situation. Also extremely frustrating to make a legendary only to find out three days later blizzard is nerfing it. Overall not great.
The Blizzard buff/nerf cycle has obliterated any chance half of my friends will even look at this game anymore. Even if this is slight, its still obnoxious. Wish they could just keep their hands off things that work.
I have played FFXIV since Realm Reborn came out, which is what, 6-7 years now? I have never been nerfed there. Never.
Talbadar’s nerf seems unnecessary. They are likely trying to make our other legendaries more appealing - but the problem is the other legendaries suck for other reasons.
I’d have to agree. Our single target is stronger than many other specs and to warrant some kind of nerf, but Talbadar’s seems to be the wrong target for the nerf. It feels just beneath “just right” as far as how much damage a legendary should have.
Good to see dot damage buffed, they feel pretty underwhelming currently. DP is going to be less worth pressing than purge next patch. Are these dot buffs confirmed?
Yeah, they’re on the ptr.
This nerfs the only thing we currently have going for us, our ST, and makes us even less bursty in PvP content (which we already weren’t).
The DoT buffs seem insufficient to make the DoTs really shine, and would be welcome if not for the massive nerf to our strongest ST ability. This alone will leave us doing 3-5% less ST damage. Then they also nerf both of our preferred legendaries and BiS conduit.
ST is all we really have going for us, it is the only thing that makes sPriest stand out in any way. We have no useful raid utilities (no hero, no bres/ss, no summons, no cookies, no invuln, no mobility, no external defensives). We have the worst raid buff in Fortify, which holy/disc also have. We’re not great at target swapping unless we’re in Void Form (need all 3 DoTs up before we do optimal damage w Mastery). Our consistently strong ST damage is all that justifies our existence, and we’re losing it.
Worst of all, our damage is only good with PI – losing overall ST potential increases the pressure on us to give away out best CD to another DPS. Which is not fun to say the least.
This also nerfs a legendary that was only always BiS for one covenant… further punishing players who don’t play that covenant. They should buff other legendaries, rather than simply nerf the ones that work; or fix that clearly unbalanced covenant ability.
As an example: Eternal Call of the Void would be great if not for the fact that you can fight a target dummy for 3 mins straight, through two Void Form phases, and not see it proc a single time.
This all said, if they wanted to make the class better, they would make the Twins of the Sun Priestess legendary ability baseline, and do the same with Searing Nightmare as having to talent for our only AoE Insanity spender is truly awful, as is our AoE (period) when SN isn’t slotted. Because Mind Sear’s damage is a joke, and DoTs are so short tha,t even with Misery, by the time we’ve applied DoT to 6 targets we already need to reapply.
It’s a dead meme spec now. I really don’t understand how they look at a spec that was like 2nd or 3rd place in single target, complete garbage at everything else, and decide to make it middle of the pack in single target. Literally why would anyone bring a SP with these changes? Then they turned around and buffed Affliction warlock. Meanwhile demonology warlock, which was already competing for last place in the whole game, didn’t get anything? Now we’re wrestling with Demonology for biggest ranged meme spec
The biggest utility spriest brings is VE + San’layn for fights like mythic Council. I wish they would bring back the old mana battery/base healing Vt and VE had
Good lord that’s an overreaction. Some things to point out.
1: Shadow was the strongest single target dps spec in the game, not the second or third, on live servers. It was even stronger relatively than that on the 9.1 ptr because of changes made to other specs and we saw that in raid testing.
2: Everything added together, the nerf is about 4% on single target in current gear, that includes the reduction to the void bolt conduit that was already on the ptr. There’s no way we’re “middle of the pack” as you put it.
3: Affliction took a massive hit right at the start of the 9.1 ptr, the changes made to it recently were lessening those nerfs, it’s still weaker than it was in 9.0.5.
How embarrassing to be so demonstrably incorrect.
Shadow’s utility is in a weird spot because while there is nothing specifically that you bring a Shadowpriest (or Priest in general) for, cumulatively we have a lot of utility:
When you list it all out like that, it seems like a lot, but since so much of it is very weak, and the applications are very niche - for a given encounter we can only make use of ~25% of our utility at a time.
When you compare to utility like Chaos Brand that is desirable 100% of the time, or AOE stuns that are desirable every AOE pull, or immunities (ice block, paladin bubbles, etc) that dictate raid strategies - the Priest ‘Big Sack of Garbage’ approach to utility is underwhelming and underpowered.
I would rather see them remove Shadowmend and PW: Shield, to buff Vampiric Embrace to be a 60s cooldown baseline, off the GCD, and a smart heal that ticks every second on the lowest health ally for all damage done that second. Then you can buff San’layn to grant the Spriest 10% Leech passively.
I would love it if they would give us Chaos Brand - because that was originally our unique debuff (called Misery), and one of the reasons you brought a Shadowpriest. Even if that means we needed to sacrifice Life Grip and Shackle Undead and etc.
It kinda sucks to see these nerfs for Pve, but an overall 4% loss really isn’t too bad all things considered.
What really sucks is these nerfs in PvP. All our main instant damage (all our main kill pressure other than a well timed mind games) has been heavily nerfed, and it wasn’t even close to the best in the game.
Void bolt conduit gutted, lasting plague removed, and now baseline DP gutted.
All we’ve received is a paltry increase to pain and vt lol… I’d like to see the following changes:
the biggest change, dark thoughts reworked back into something like shadowy insight. Make the mind blast proc come off sw:p again (or maybe a chance to proc based on all periodic damage done by the priest). You can still cast it while channeling mind flay/sear.
mind devour conduit proc chance should be buffed to 20% from 10%.
new pvp talent - void purification - when you enter void form, for the first 3 or so seconds, void bolt has no cool down and no gcd (the old shadow priest nighthold tier set bonus).
“new” pvp talent - mind trauma - Mind blast crits root the target for 4 seconds, damage does not break this root.
Overall, these buffs lessen the effect of the ST nerfs in PvP (and potentially in PvE depending on if mind devour becomes bis). Improve dark thoughts in PvP (since free channeling mind flay really doesn’t happen) and PvE, and gives us some good, “new” PvP talents like they promised.