My friend says that for raiding this is gonna be a slight dps loss, and for mythic+ this will really hurts shadow priests dps. Don’t know if he’s telling the truth or just exaggerating.
It’s more than slight, 9-12% single target. Which sounds “fine” but even just ham fistedly mathing that on something like 80% Sivarra mythic logs takes us from 3rd to 21st. Single target is remarkably well balanced right now, and no spec can really take a hit of 10% and still be decent.
For multi target fights, generally its between 18%-25% overall. Which is far from small, especially with the hit to boss damage hurting our relevant dps on fights that have adds but they aren’t primary kill targets.
For M+ I’d say 15-20% is accurate, and the new affix “seems” initially to favour single target with the addition of mini bosses. Something we’re definitely not suited for.
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do they realise this makes levels 1-119 even slower then what it already is to level with Shadow?
They make changes for the top end which makes the class horribly worse in pvp and for the those who aren’t BiS at level 120.
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I’m just amazed that they will have a corruption/sanity mechanic in 8.3 that looks like it will have absolutely nothing to do with the existing Spriest Insanity meter.
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Feels bad to keep seeing blanket nerfs all because of raid performance. Surely there are options for bringing raid performance in line with whatever they’re trying to achieve without making the experience worse everywhere else as well? It’s already bad enough doing outdoor content or even dungeons, and every nerf to things like our DoTs just makes it even worse. BfA has really not been a fun expansion to play as Shadow for me. 
Its significantly easier to level as disc for most of it.
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I feel they should have just added a buff to talents/azerite outside of raid groups, the same as divine hymn and its non raid group buff
I haven’t seen a nerf this harsh since WoD, where Blizzard hammered Warlocks in the head.
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Okay I can definitely feel these shadow nerfs.
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Yeah these nerfs are pretty brutal. I get the class needing a tone down for raids but they could of done that by raids only and left the rest alone. They effectively just made SP’s literally the worst class for raids and when it comes to mythic +, you’ll be a pity invite at best by guild/friends. Nothing surprising though. Typical Blizz fashion to just gut a class instead of fixing it the proper way.
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I’m still willing to give it some time to see how much difference scaling makes, especially with some of the corruption effects, but out of the box it’s really pretty aggravating.
My stationary, single target boss dummy damage was down very close to 7.5%, which of course in a real fight will be worse because of the need to reposition from time to time. I haven’t run a mythic+ key this week yet, but I’m kind of dreading it.
I played around with a few of the azerite traits to help in mythic plus. So far, this combo has worked fairly well for me:
1x Thought Harvester
1x Death Throes
1x Chorus of Insanity
1x Whispers of the Damned
2x Searing Dialogue
I was able to really ramp up the damage on the big trash pulls, and I held my own on single target for this week’s Tyrannical. I hope that helps some of you.
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I don’t really like the ‘scaling will fix it’ argument, because plenty of other (if not all) specs are generally fine right out of the gate, at least compared to shadow, and don’t need gear in order to perform effectively even as a fresh 120.
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Though it definately isnt as beast mode as it was before the patch, I still feel relatively ok. I managed to do 2 corrupted zones and thrall in my last vision run the other night, so I feel like we arent that horrible. Havent run a M+ this week yet, so I guess it could be worse than I feel
I’ve played through the starting quest line on 5 relatively equally geared alts (I know, I know), and my priest felt waaaay more painful than the others. These nerfs feel like they were a bit harsh. 
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And also the reality that most people who play shadow won’t ever be decked out in BiS mythic raiding gear.
Anyways, I don’t disagree with you. I think we all want Blizzard to fix the spec so that it can be enjoyable at any reasonable gear level for the content we’re doing. We shouldn’t have to be mythic raiders to be enjoying the spec.
The problem with declaring a blanket “Blizzard broke shadow! It’s garbage now, and people are going to be rerolling left and right!” is that come summer somebody is going to post dps rankings that for all I know might show shadow being near the top in mythic Ny’alotha. And maybe Nataleya will still be posting a top ten dps raider.io score for mythic+, and people will say, “What are you talking about, ‘Shadow is broken’?”
Basically, the larger picture is that they didn’t break shadow with the 8.3 nerfs. It was already broken with respect to the interplay of stats, class mechanics, essences, azerite traits, and so on. It’s just that in 8.2 it was broken more favorably, so to speak.
Sadly, getting them to care about the experience of their “average player” is not even a fight. More like punching at air. So I’m not getting my hopes up that any of the spec’s real issues get addressed for 9.0.
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The whole waiting for scaling is going to be even worse for shadow this tier though. Since all our bis Azerite are from the last 4-5 bosses, it’s going to be a long while before you can even get your bis mythic pieces outside of heroic. If they leave shadow in it’s current state, I don’t see many sticking around just for that. It shadow had a fluid play style like say fury warrior I’d stick around.
Luckily my warrior is geared so I’ll likely just drop the priest. Just isn’t fun when my alts less geared can just blast through everything with such ease and you can bring meaningful utility, St, and strong aoe all in one package w/o having to wait months for gear that “might” scale your dps up. It’ll be interesting to see how guile’s like limit/method stack classes for progression. I’ve got one friend on stormrage in a top 100 guild and he said they have 4-5 locks and 4-5 boomkims for their raid and all the shadow re-rolled or quit.
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So I tried running an M+ 18 which last week was cake for me. I tried this week and my dps was 30k to everyone elses 50k+. In a SoB no less when that is like bread and butter dps for Spriest. Got chewed out cause we missed timer. I felt pretty bad tbh. How do you even try to explain to other classes whats happened to your dmg?? As I only play Spriest I am just sad face. Not sure yet if I want to even try to compete in M+, hoping that the dmg will get better.
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So far M+ really hurts.
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This is even more of an issue for those of us that PvP.
You can fight your arbitrary timers and npcs all you like, it’s gutted SP in PvP formats.