The amount of effort you have to put in for just a little bit of aoe is a joke. If shadow crash is on CD, good luck. If the adds are spread out, good luck. Everything is half dead by the time they’re dotted up and you’re ready to go.
2 things that would greatly improve this spec:
-Raise the damage from Psychic Link from 15% to 20-25% and it now applies to Shadowy Apparitions
-Give Shadow Crash 2 charges, make the aoe radius much larger and make the bolt travel faster. Otherwise its nearly impossible to apply your dots effectively especially when a tank is pulling groups together and everything’s spread out
19 Likes
Honestly they should revert it back to 10.0 version.
6 Likes
We’ve been saying it since DF beta. It’s great to have a way to mass apply DoTs, but the implementation is terrible, especially considering our entire AoE now depends on correctly timing/aiming a single, ground targeted spell with a travel time and 20 sec cd.
One slip up or tree branch that decides to get in the way as you click and you can forget about that trash pack. Just start running to the next (since, you know, Priest… the group is just going to catch up to you cause we’re slow).
6 Likes
Forget the AOE. How do you even single target?
Constantly needing to move to avoid things and everything which hits hard has a casting time - until you can build up and use instants.
I can do 80k DPS if I dont have to move but it literally drops to 40k DPS when Im dodging things.
Would love some tips.
1 Like
Try using a rotation addon to squeeze out more dps. It probably won’t work but it’s with a try.
How does an addon help?
The issue is Im mid cast and have to stop and move, or I finish the cast and cop damage.
1 Like
Im consistently doing around 130k on single target, try to always be casting something, whether its DP, SWD, MB proc, SWP. Get to know fights that way you can pre-plan and be aware of what might happen. Just takes practice. I end up stopping casts all the time. Especially Void Torrent, which sucks but it happens.
I’d take this - did not love Spriest in 10.0 either, but it sort of worked out to be an adorable mess that I was able to piece together eventually.
The 10.1 rework was flabbergasting as well as everything that came after it.
Spriest Community: “10.0 is ok, but can we get a cooldown change to Shadow Crash?”
Dev: “What I’m hearing is a complete rework to make you guys turret casters.”
Spriest Community: “Um… wait what?”
Dev: “Ah, got it. You want to also do no damage. Sounds good!”
Spriest Community: “…???..”
Dev: “What’s that? You guys don’t want to have any utility either. Odd request, but sure! Done!”
Spriest Community: “… I see, we’re not power infusing you during your raid. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
Dev: “Agreed! Power Infusion is too strong. Thank you for understanding. Let’s nerf that into the ground too.”
Spriest Community: “… when’s that stupid Riot MMO coming out again?”
11 Likes
You don’t need to move anywhere near as much as you think you do is one thing, that’s not a dig at you it’s just something you gradually learn as you get used to the mechanics happening around you. The other thing is that you can often pre position for things to reduce the amount of reactive movement you need to do, use your instant casts in the rotation (SWD, DP, Procs) to shuffle a bit towards a better position each and every time, this way when the mechanic happens that makes you move, you’re already maybe 70% of the way to where you might need to be.
To be fair, the rework for 10.0 was like that, too.
Us: Can we have a normal kick?
Blizzard: No.
Us: Can we at least not have Silence in the spec tree?
Blizzard: No.
Us: If Psychic Horror must be in the spec tree, can it have a link to the next row?
Blizzard: No.
Us: You know you essentially removed Psychic Horror from the game, right?
Blizzard: Yes.
Us: Can we have something other than Shadow Crash to spread dots?
Blizzard: No.
Us: Can we at least get a second charge of Shadow Crash?
Blizzard: No.
Us: Can N’Zoth trigger at ten stacks?
Blizzard: No.
Us: Can N’Zoth at least trigger on death?
Blizzard: No.
Us: Can we get something that makes us useful in M+?
Blizzard: You already have good M+ utility. Finds a monkey paw and crushes its fingers into dust.
7 Likes
Every few seconds there is an explosion forming under my feet where if I dont move it does damage and interrupts the spell.
So you cast, move, cast, move, cast, move.
Meanwhile classes filled with instants dont even bother paying attention to the environment.
I assume if things were going well there would be heaps of SPriests in the high keys and we wouldnt have just got a 5% DPS boost the other day.
1 Like
Can we just have halo replace shadow crash as our dot applier please 
Mind sear was so fun 10.0, especialy when you would get it free with that one talent. It also extended dots and did very good dmg.
3 Likes
Every caster has to deal with volcanic. But if your dps is dropping by half then yeah, you’re messing up.
The spec isn’t in a good spot right now - the damage is pretty poor. But it’s capable of clearing content and doing alright, and it certainly doesn’t lose half its DPS because of volcanic.
This is very much a learning curve thing.
3 Likes
Volcanic generally bones all casters. It’s not indicative of normal m+ weeks. There is movement, but there is still a lot of room as shadow to play around it with the suggestions others have made (though yes, the spec is underperforming relative to other dps specs atm).
3 Likes
this. mind sear felt so good when it was a free proc
2 Likes
Or at least an ability that spreads DP to other targets. That would be nice
i think this is such a good post. it makes it so clear the prejudice which this shadow spec is being given. its like there’s literally nothing that they want shadow to excel at, everything has to be as weak as possible, and the talent tree isn’t even designed that well to begin with, it was arguably most fun in 10.0 and been downhill ever since, and you just made it so clear.
but also Barrison’s post was great for illustrating how we got here too. in retrospect, with these nice summaries, it looks kind of insane how shadow has been dealt with. its been a very negative experience, when i read barrison and your posts i was just like, damn, they really did the abusive boyfriend act to shadow. or like the manager at your job who wants you to quit. willfully misinterpreting everything the community has said. its so clear, and awful
1 Like
Shadow is simply in limbo now until they figure out what they’re going to do with it. It’s all about the Havoc DH meta right now because they outdps every spec in keys like Fire Mages did last season until they got nerfed.
Even Disc is getting overshadowed on the high keys with Resto Druids/Mistweavers/even Holy Priests having timed higher keys then Disc.