It has been a few weeks since the expansion launched, and we all have been through new heroic dungs ( old m0 ) new m0 dungs ( old +10 ) and progressing our way through m+.
First thing that I have noticed as shadow priest is how this spec just does not play and feel good in heroic dungeons and m0 at all, and all of it is due its design, there has been some weak buffs thrown our way pointing out that whoever is in charge of shadow does not play the spec, because the issues are not primarily damage based, while it certainly does need some love in that regard it goes way deeper than that.
Now the big issue is with Shadow Crash applying your dots only to 8 targets on 20s cd,
I cannot tell you how many pulls I have had with small adds or summons where your dots would go to those small adds that would just melt in seconds and your left with dots on 1-2 or even none of the adds that are left over and your just watching your screen in disbelief while all the other dps just go zug zug with all the cleave they got which is insane btw.
Another thing is packs living for a short time especially as every1 gets better gear and 20s cd is just too long, and manually doting your targets one by one is just not cutting it with this design that we currently have.
The easy solution to that is as follows:
- Change Shadow Crash to apply VT and SW:P to ALL TARGETS HIT as a baseline ( this would remove the issue of worrying about small adds or spawns taking dots from primary targets )
- Change Improved Shadow Crash to increase Shadow Crash damage per target hit by 10-25% AND reduce its cd by 1s per target hit ( now this is where you get rid of the issue that arises on quick pulls or when you are overgeared for the content and just makes the spec more fluid while adding some needed instant aoe dmg )
- Change Psychic Link to be limited to 8 targets ( this doesnt need much explaining it would just become op and impossible to balance with Shadow Crash applying dots to all targets)
I believe that this changes while simple would improve the spec and how it plays in a big way, there are some more changes needed though and it is as follows:
- Dispersion and Silence have to be removed from talent tree and become BASELINE for shadow like yesterday, let us use those 2 talent points for things like improved silence / dispersion / or an extra stun / extra shield from VT overhealing ( I dont know why the double standards still persist in talent trees but just imagine the outrage if mages or paladins had to choose as a talent in their dps trees divine shield or ice block and their respective kicks )
- Mental Decay should be working with Void Torrent aswell
Now last but not least some damage changes, sp damage profile is really out of whack and some abilities have been greatly nerfed in previous expansions due to set bonus ( shadow crash ) and have not been reverted to previous values and some just probably dont scale too well, here are changes I would propose:
- VT and SW:P damage increased by 50% ( I know it sounds like a lot but in single target fight those two combined do barely 10-15% of your total damage and are not too dominant in dungeons either )
- Shadow Crash damage increased by 100% ( this thing hits like a wet noodle it does less then 1% of total damage in dung situation )
- Shadow Fiend damage increased by 200-300% ( its a 3 min cd that does almost no damage at all, I know its not supposed to be a big thing but come on its a 3min cd lets make it have some impact at all )
- Void Eruption damage increased by 100-200% ( again this is a 2 min cd but its damage component is just fluff, this change would not make it OP in any way)
- Idol of N’Zoth limit of targets changed from 4 to 8, damage no longer reduced beyond 5 targets instead damage INCREASED by 50-100% if it hits 4 or less targets ( this talent does such a silly damage yet for some weird reason it is being reduced beyond 5 targets, change proposed would make it a sort of more viable option even for single target fights if some1 would prefer to play dot build )
I would really appreciate some feedback.
10 Likes
I would say you got a lot of decent and good ideas from the perspective of just making minor tweaks to what we already have.
But the things that would require a major rework and restructuring of our talents then I have a slightly different take on how to achieve the results that your suggestions are seeking to fix.
So I can say that we are aligned in the problems but we differ when it comes to the suggested solutions.
I wouldn’t mind some of your suggestions if it was a choice between what we have currently and what you propose.
But the primary reason I would go a different route is that your suggestions to me are treating the symptoms vs actually treating the disease and the disease in this case is IMO Shadow Crash itself.
I think it should either be removed outright or an entire different spell is used as the delivery mechanic (Choice with Shadow Crash) as this slow moving missile is just so freaking terrible with how fast pace the game is designed around and all the issues that stem from that just make things worse.
1 Like
Thanks for the reply, reason why I focused on symptoms in this thread is I have kind of lost faith when it comes deeper changes as it is clear no1 who is responsible for those changes plays the spec or understands what is needed, and I want this spec to be playable and somewhat enjoyable ASAP, I believe those changes would provide that.
Early this year I wrote a whole post with deep talent and design changes that I have envisioned for the spec and how easily we could make 2 different playstyles with not that many changes necessary, but no1 replied so I have abandoned the idea.
I dont like Shadow Crash due to its slowness too it feels clunky, even tho it has been changed, but I think that the easiest solution to that would be to just separate the event of spreading the dots from Shadow Crash hitting the target, it would still be the same spell doing it just the dot spread could be instant in like 10-15y radius from your target or the zone and then few moments later the event of shadow crash hitting that target or an area, in this case we would not have to w8 for it to hit the targets to start pumping.
1 Like
No one talks about? Almost every single SP feedback post in here voices your same concerns. (Keep spamming them and hopefully it they will finally get the hint)
These suggestions about shadow trash being awful, and no baseline interrupt and disperse being of of the only defensives in the game where you can’t DPS have been talked about almost to the point of I feel like I’m in an echo chamber. The problem is, we have received no meaningful changes in the last 3 months
Blizzard refuses to communicate with the priest community and gives us baseline tuning. Over the last two patches most classes have had their issues worked on, or big changes in 11.0.5. We’re the only “real” caster left in the game, and we’re still sitting bottom of the logs, and constantly being locked down in PvP
We’ve received a 10% damage buff and a 5% AOE nerf. That’s it
Priest needs meaningful changes
4 Likes
Obviously every1 talks about the issues, what I meant no1 is talking about is how to make Shadow Crash work, actually work for every1 not just high m+ players but casuals playing normal or hc dungs or m0 too.
I have seen people arguing for 2nd charge, lower cd etc but those solutions dont solve other issues I have mentioned, I did not read every single post so maybe some1 did mention the solutions that I have proposed as it is not hard to think of it, but I have not come across these exact solutions across posts that I have read hence the title.
I agree that priests have been ignored for far too long and only tuning via aura buffs / nerfs dont solve anything in the long run.
If blizzard did this, S-priests would be much more potent and hold their own against the other main caster classes (looking you warlock, mage, ele shaman (boomies I’m sorry but yea you’re a soggy noodle too rn)). S-priests also need a decent hp/survivability buff. I find us quite squishy… whatever happened to that buff we had that boosted our Armour… inner something? If my memory serves me right?
Lastly… how about a Brez blizzard??? I feel like every class has a brez except priests… how do paladins, dks, and even frigging warlocks get a brez and we don’t???
1 Like
Inner Fire
Was a Priest spell all the way back in WC3 lol
It granted Armor and Attack Power for a while in classic which actually made melee attacks really powerful which used with a staff and the fact that our mana Regen capability was basically null and void made lol.
In cataclysm, we got Inner Will which made us choose between Inner Fire and Inner Will buff.
Then I think it was removed in MoP if memory serves.
Titles the post “Shadow biggest m+ crutch that no one seems to talk about.”
Proceeds to talk about the most talked about issue for Shadow over the last 2+ years.
There have been countless threads on the issue surrounding Shadow Crash and suggestions on how to fix it.
The real biggest issue is lack of any communication from the devs to acknowledge how they plan to address any of the issues Priests have given feedback on since Dragonflight beta.
3 Likes
I agree, shadow crash and the way to apply dots to AoE needs some changes
Yeah everyone is aware that the 8 enemy limit is a huge issue, its been brought up constantly for 3 years. Your suggestions to fix have been made multiple times and there has been 0 communication from Blizzard about any intent to fix. Just coming up on 4 years of “+2% damage increase” or “psychic link nerfed”. Because the only thing they definitely don’t want, is a Spriest using their full rotation to be competitive with any melee spamming one button.
In the current Season the SPriest is just being abandoned by players. Week over week it drops by the thousands. The highest tier contents just can’t be done as an SP and unless they address it this will only get worse. The gear scaling of season one has only shown that SP is the worst scaling dps class in the game currently.
It is also blatantly obvious that Blizzard is aiming for this, their goal is the class being abandoned/left for dead. They had tons of data showing it on the decline, endless forum discussions and a professional scene for all their content that for 3-4 years has just been about the SP being disastrously underperforming while also being the most complicated dps class out there.
I’m honestly shocked they aren’t just forum banning people who play Spriest. I assume they are never going to fix it. If I had to bet on it I’d put money on Priest is going to become 2 spec only class like Demon Hunter and we will just be “only healers” with disc and holy being all that we get to choose from. Cause they clearly are not working on a fix for shadow, its been about 8 years since they put us into this nightmare.
1 Like
Honestly at this point we went through so many expacs and Blizz keeps struggling balancing the spec because of dots. Remove dots, keep core rotation and procs, have psychic link hit everything in a certain radius, tune accordingly and be done with it.
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Careful saying crazy things like this. The DoT lovers are a very charismatic bunch and might have a strong word to say to you lol.
But seriously, I’d love this. I actually loved playing Clarity of Power back in WoD. Completely direct damage based rotation.
I think if Priests were reworked, and there was actual effort put into making one side of the Shadow Priest tree the “DoT side” and the other side of the tree the “direct damage” side— and actually balance them both to be viable (which they promised talent trees would provide gameplay variety), then I would be a happy camper.
4 Likes
Buffing crash to “all” targets and simultaneously nerfing link to 8 is kinda counterintuitive no? It would help with some issues and create another. Namely with massive pulls.
It would work if you buffed the dots by 40%,but then our aoe would be broken.
Yes please. Dot shadow has been dying a slow death
As many of my suggestions have detailed out how to make this work pretty elegantly imo.
But often I am met with something along the lines of… Go play Mage if you want to do direct damage or something along those lines.
But even though WoD was a lot more forgiving in regards to dealing damage without putting your dots on the target, you still wanted Vampiric Touch on some targets to feed your Surge of Darkness procs to make your Mind Spike both Instant cast and have that +50% damage buff which then gets added to the +40% damage buff to targets without dots on them with Clarity of Power.
So dots still played a role, but mainly just to fuel your procs instead or suppressing your damage when the targets did not have dots on them as is the case currently.
Its easier for people sometimes to just say switch classes than actually trying to get some changes. Until blizzards Class tuning posts include more than “Increase Damage by x%” SP just gonna be in a rough spot
Few of my own changes that i feel could benefit the spec in some way:
-Make Shadowy insight baseline. Its such an iconic ability for Spreists that it should just be the core of the class…Periodt.
-delete the DoT spread talent node and re integrate it back into shadow crash. WHY they decided to split this is beyond me…
-Bring back Mind Spike as a procable ability. Not gonna go into too much, but back in mists our abilities had the chance to make our Mind spike cast for free at instant…bring it back.
-Allow Mind flay: Insanity to be castable while moving, or mind Spike: Insanity instant cast. I cannot tell you how many times i will be casting Mind Flay Insanity and need to move a split second later…this will at least allow me to continue channeling for the full affect.
-Put Silence on the class tree, not the spec tree. Add dispersion to the class tree, not the spec tree. Priest just have no defensives and needs to change…even if our silence is a 1min CD, i would rather have that and a silence at the minimum…
These are just a few idea’s ive had over time, and this probably resonates with a lot of others as well and their own personal changes they would like to see
1 Like
Well, it’s fortified week, you know what that means, pulls under 8 mobs, gg.
Honestly right now shadow crash/dot spread wouldn’t be it either. Their needs to be a way to reset halos cool down, or give void weaver more than 2 MB stacks. On higher keys when mobs aren’t as trivial it ain’t bad. Being a limp noodle without halo or voidform is the problem now. Because even in trivial mob every thing dies in a second situations I’ve noticed if halo or void form is up, the instants and or the aoe are doing fine without dots.
I had a thought at one point that they could just split Shadow into a new class entirely and cease the “light vs void” dichotomy so we didn’t have to have sparkly light effects and tier sets that make us look like the Pope.
Give me a Cultist class or something, one spec is Mindslayer DoT based mental assaults, and the other is pure Void direct damage. But as others have said, I fear that might just end up feeling like a mage/warlock clone.
I’m sure a lot of Shadow Priest players would hate the idea of essentially dropping their Priests if they ever did this. But… I also had a similar dream of this nature.
Midnight (the expansion) is coming up, and wouldn’t it be so thematic to have a Void themed class? Voidmancer or heck literally call the new class “Shadow Priest” as the class name. We already have “Hunters” and “Demon Hunters” lol. The class would be completely devoted to the Void.
I could see them probably being a cloth caster since we only have 3 of them, and they’d use shadow/void magic to the same potency as a Paladin does the light in combat.
It would be crazy… but not impossible to migrate the current Shadow spec off of Priest to its own class entirely. Then, the Priest class would could adopt a holy magic focused ranged DPS caster for their DPS spec in place of the now gone Shadow spec. Priest would still use some shadow magic spells here and there for utility and theme, but much less now given the new hypothetical class.
I think we’re at a point especially now in WoW lore that it just makes sense to create an entire class devoted to the Void/Shadow. It’s a super interesting and just cool theme that we the players only seem to be able to access through certain specs—
(i.e. shadow priests, affliction warlock, some death knight shadow themed spells— which I’d actually argue are more aligned with “death” for DKs, Subtlety Rogue… kinda???)
You’re right though. They’d have to play very uniquely or else people might compare them to Mage and Warlock heavily.
1 Like