Really enjoying the SoD so far, so great job! Discovering things for my self and not using guides is proving a great source of engagement and entertainment.
That said, I wanted to play Shadow Priest as it’s a favourite of mine, and Classic was awful time for them with debuff slots, and zero mana management functionality. Unfortunately, based on what I have found thus far only one aspect of this has been addresses so far (debuff limit). Shadow Priest still has no ability to manage their mana, or regen in any form other than drinking, now this might be okay if the damage output was good enough, but it is currently not.
I understand Shadowform will change (hopefully) a lot for us. However, some thoughts that might improve the Phase 1 of SoD for Shadow Priests are:
- Add the masochist talent into the Shadow Word: Death rune, so when used and dealing damage to ourselves returns mana (more at 25% or less HP on target)
- Potentially reduce the cost of Shadow spells, or add VT now (assuming this will be a future rune)
- I would also like to see the damage of Mind Flay, and/or SW:D increased a little as Penance does considerably more damage even as a Shadow Priest which feels deflating.
I don’t want to make it so we are overpowered but SP are currently (along with some other casters) VERY far behind the pack.
Thanks
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The core spriest issues that aren’t addressed yet with level 25 SoD Runes are:
- Shadow spells scaling poorly with spell power (our SP coefficient for MB/MF/SW:P is ~44% as strong as a mage’s fireball has, less than half the scaling, is what I’ve seen online from pretty knowledgeable nerds)
- No bonus 100% crit damage talent
- Mindblast is the only spell that can crit, plus it’s on an 8 second cooldown, plus it does 200% dmg crits instead of most other casters’ 300%, thus crit is almost a useless stat for Shadow
- SW:P and Mindflay only scale up from spellpower and do so very poorly, and not at all from crit
- Our mana is bad, we oom in 15 seconds at level 60
Spriests are currently in a very distant last place in dps in BFD, doing I think less than a third of the top performing DPS’s damage.
I think we need runes for:
- Critting Shadow Word: Pain and Mindflay
- 100% crit dmg bonus like Warlocks’ Ruin talent
- Some sort of mechanism to scale us better with spellpower
- Improved spell mana costs and mana regen.
(#4 I think is definitely needed, but if these were implemented and were too OP, maybe skip #2)
With the lvl 25 runes, we’ll do good AoE and have a decent raid utility armor debuff (though I hear it totally removes all sunder stacks which is annoying) but we’ll never scale up our spells and never do good single target damage.
Also improving our role as a support class with Vampiric Touch and it’s mana return would be great too instead of that new disease DoT.
I love SoD, and just about every class looks extremely promising to be fun, but Spriest is looking too rough at 25, for now. Really just about every other spec in the game seems to be on the right track except for Shadow.
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This is something I noticed yesterday, really sad because I was looking forward to getting rid of penance for sw:d 
Yeah, I hope they help SP out a bit. Would be nice to see them in raids/played in later phases.
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They should increase dot scaling with spell damage. There’s no need to turn them into a crit build, just make their dots actually scale appropriately. Same could be said for affliction lock, though they use shadowbolts as well which makes it less problematic. But shadow priest is going to be broken at 25, because they get their SWP upgrade at 26 so they’re hosed just due to the levels. And spriest should never do as much damage as a pure dps class, given their group heal utility. And arcane mage should be comparable since it’s the same role more-or-less.
The more I play the more I realise Shadow Priest is never ever going to happen, like you’ve mentioned our scaling is horrible, even our Runes scale absolutely bad.
Void Plague just little over half the damage of SW:Pain.
SW:Death mechanically isn’t suitable for Classic, we simply do not half the Health pool, Mana and the ability to sustain the backlash damage, I can’t wait to see us killing ourselves at lvl 40 once we get Shadow Form + Darkness Talent.
Mind Flay in Classic even at 40, we get rank 3 at level 36, that use to only then finally out scale the old gravestone sceptre from BFD, the new Wands from Raid simply out scales our kit insanely and I’m positive as we progress through Phases we will be getting even better and stronger Wands. No 20% boost Rune will ever help, it’s simply more dps to Wand. Not to forget Wands Crit and cost zero mana.
Heck Penance is the only saving grace we have currently, they nerf that we have nothing, currently it does more Damage then SW:D and Void Plague, mana efficient, zero downside and great healing, we lose this at 40 going Shadow Form as it’s a Holy Spell.
We seriously are gonna have to get some insanely strong Runes moving into phase 2 or a heck of a buff and changes for the Runes we have now to even be considered as the role for dps.
Blizzard seems to be quick to nerf runes, but hesitant to buff any from any class so I’m not sure we even have a future in SoD. Every other spec does more damage now and further will pull ahead once we hit 40. We are running a marathon with our legs tied up.
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i think we might actually keep penance in shadow form alot are saying as its a discipline tree like power word shield. but im not 100%
It says it’s a holy spell, and benefits from “Holy Specialisation” 5% crit to Holy Spells. I very much doubt it, but hey I’d love it if we could.
Even so do you think Penance is going to to justify Shadow Priest over other DPS specs.
to be fair PWS is also considered holy on wowhead. So truly dont know. i feel it will be used in shadow form personally.
Very true, but like smite it does say it deals Holy Damage, I guess we will have to see but it simply isn’t going to help Shadow Priests.
You may aswell if what you are saying happens just run full Discipline and get Force of Will for a further 5% damage and Crit to Penance then Phase 3 grab Holy Specialisation and that’s 10% Crit for penance. Not to forget Power Infusion on yourself which I’d argue be better on another Caster.
Shadow is in the same spot.
Meanwhile, Balance and Resto druids are as useless as we’ve ever been. At least priest got solid options in phase 1
I agree balance needs help too, I can’t talk much saying Resto is bad, in BFD we have cleared it everytime with me as Priest Healing with a Resto Druid. I feel that’s a good pair that compliments each other.
Resto just lacks efficiency, as always. They are a decent complimentary heal, but can’t main heal anything well
But it’s doable, I feel like all healers while some are better then others currently do work, but dps is a different game entirely and like you’ve mentioned about Balance, Shadow is in the same problem.
Using the exact same logic, Balance and Resto have a solid option in phase 1… FERAL.
Shadow, Balance and Affliction were all bad in Vanilla/Classic and this needs to be addressed for them to be viable in SoD.
Unfortunately, my 4 favorite dps classes to play are HotS & DotS… Affliction, Shadow, Balance, Resto.
Yes, but the runes priest has acquired will be great for the overall class moving forward. The same cannot be said for Druid
Druid got a raw deal in Phase 1
But they don’t, that’s the whole argument, our runes for Shadow are absolutely horrendous, SW:D isn’t designed even for Classic, it does a 4th of our hp every 12 seconds to do damage.
I understand you are a Druid player but to say they got it worse isn’t debatable.
For shadow, even if you got nothing else, you’d be able to shift and use a penance to efficiently and massively heal yourself in a short period of time. That and Mending alone + Era shadow will be disgusting in pvp
And group play in general
You do realise how much the mana cost Shadow form is in era right?
Absolutely, and every good shadow priest phases in and out of the form in Era. Add the most efficient heal bliss has ever put into the game in Penance and it becomes even easier and more effective