I want to keep this short and sweet…
I think the damage profile for shadow is essentially perfect for single target however…
For the love of god we need help with this ramp up time it takes way too long to get damage rolling in dungeons shadow crash applying vt/pain to 8 targets is fine but in the situations where the tank pulls more than 8 targets you are forced into spending 5-10 globals tab target vt spamming before you can even start pressing a real damage globals. Meanwhile when compared to other classes that have full impact near immediately it feels really bad.
I don’t want damage adjustments i think shadow priest is mostly in a perfect spot but I really want to see either a (second charge of shadow crash/cdr/higher target cap for dot spreading), any one of those would be fine the most ideal would be second charge or target cap increase.
What ends up happening most of the time in non structured random pug dungeons is either you send shadow crash and it literally misses target because the tank decides to pull more while moving everything away or in the lower keys everything dies by the time you are ready to start doing damage. Shadow priest always feels close to worthless in low keys and just ok in the 10 range.
TL:DR 2nd charge of shadow crash or some other way of spreading dots without needing to waste 5-10 GCD pressing vt tab vt tab.
4 Likes
The issue of damage ramp-up is common to several specs, like Fire Mage and Affliction Warlock, especially in low-level content. The time it takes to start dealing meaningful damage compared to how quickly enemies die can make the gameplay feel pretty frustrating.
I really hope they come up with a solution for this — maybe by making DoTs tick faster or something along those lines.
Honestly Shadow Crash is horrible for the spec, it should have been Dark Void but they randomly removed it over Shadow Crash (Use to be a choice node).
- Dark Void - Unleashes an explosion of dark energy around your target, dealing (74.8% of Spell power) Shadow damage and applying Shadow Word: Pain to your target and 15 nearby enemies.
Now imagine if Dark Void was changed to be like Shadow Crash and Spread SW:Pain and Vampiric Touch, it be perfect.
15 targets is great, no misfire due to travel time or weird axis blockage. Just tank pulls you Dark Void and ready to unleash Hell.
I’ve argued this for a long time.
What we should of gotten (when talented with whispering shadows),
- Dark Void, 20 sec cd, 2 charges - Unleashes an explosion of dark energy around your target, dealing (74.8% of Spell power) Shadow damage and applying Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to your target and 15 nearby enemies.
On the Talent Tree, Dark Void replaces Shadow Crash, Whispering Shadows allows it to apply VT and give a second charge.
It has a 2 sec cast time, but they could change it to be instant or personally I’d take a 2 sec cast time for a cast once and done and save time over multiple casts of VT and the chance for Shadow Crash to whiff over movement and mechanics.
Boom, Shadow Priest is fixed. Thank you.
I would like to see a spread mechanic instead. I’ve suggested in the past that Mind Sear could be reintroduced back as an addon to Mind Flay. Then, if VT is on the target, ticks of Mind Flay could spread 3 seconds of VT to all enemies hit by Mind Sear.
Remove Mind Flay from Psychic Link to offset the added AoE. Psychic Link damage reduced above 8 targets.
I often feel like I’m the only shadow player who actually liked not only Mind Sear, but Searing Nightmare as well. They just went away and it seemed like nobody cared lol
You can’t do that as Mind Flay: Insanity is the largest chunk of a Show Priest damage. The other issue is how that would inpact our Mastery as everything not doted woukd be hit like a wet noodle. Or not work at all as PL only spreads to dot targets
I’m not following your logic.
Psychic Link currently transfers 30% of damage to targets with VT. Introducing a talent that adds a Searing effect to Mind Flay, meaning it radiates out and does damage to targets around it, would replace its need to transfer damage through Psychic Link.
I purposely left out numbers for what percentage of Mind Flay damage would extend to other targets through the Searing effect as it would obviously need to be properly balanced, but one could assume it would be about 30%. Taking into account it would then hit all targets, not just those with VT on them, that calls for the “damage reduced above 8 targets” soft cap.
As far as working with our Mastery, I’m not getting where the misunderstanding with that would be either. If VT is spread to targets that the Searing effect hits, then those targets would have VT and SW: P through Misery, and would get the same effect as they currently do.
The one point I’ll concede that isn’t fully fleshed out is the lack of target cap for spreading of DoTs as I’ve proposed. To clarify, I haven’t proposed that because that’s the way I think it should be, just in what I have worked out, that’s the one area I haven’t decided where the right course of action would be as we wouldn’t want DoTs to scale too well with really high target counts.
One way I have thought to counter that would be to remove Misery, and have Shadow Crash only apply SW: P to something like 12 targets. This gives more identity to the DoTs rather than treating them as one, and limits the unlimited spread through Searing to only VT. Then VT damage could be balanced such that it is more of an enabler where SW: P hits harder.
I liked Mind Sear, but I’m also an older player that knew that as our only AoE back in Wrath. I’d like to have it back in some form.
Take Archon Hero Talents as they sit. Casting Halo gives (at the end of it 4) stacks of Mind Spike: Insanuty or Mind Flay: Insanity that does +60% more then what a standard Mind Spike/ Mind Flay would do. As such one of those two is almost always going to be your top damage spell. If this rework removed MF/ MS from the cleave to apply a dot you loose that bonus improved damage for AOE.
Let’s say a standard Mind Flay hits for 40K. A MFI would hit for about 64K. Now on live currently 30% of that 64K spreads to targets though Psychic Link. That is 19.2K dmg going out to dot targets. Your idea removes MF from having the captiability to spread damage
A simple and easy fix for Blizzard to do is give a second charge of Shadow Crash. That alows one simple change instead of having to mess with the entire kit.
I don’t know how else to explain it. I am suggesting that new talents be introduced that would make Mind Flay, Mind Spike, and their Insanity variants both spread VT and radiate out approx. 30% of their damage to nearby enemies. It is essentially giving Mind Flay the mechanics of Mind Sear, with a passive near Searing Nightmare effect, but with VT instead of SW: P.
And because it would then innately do damage to all targets as Mind Sear did, it would not need to go through Psychic Link to do it again.
They could just make VT/Pain do 5 million damage, and it would actually feel like a good button to press
Blizzard would never give our filler a way to spread out dots. At this point the only changes that might work is a second charge of Shadow Crash or they alter one of the idols like C’Thun to have it when a Shadowy Apperiation explodes it spreads the dot to nearby targets