Shadow Word: Death damage reduced by 30% in PvP combat for Shadow only (was 20%).
Mind Blast damage reduced by 25% in PvP combat for Shadow only.
Mind Spike damage reduced by 25% in PvP combat.
Devouring Plague damage reduced by 25% in PvP combat.
Vampiric Touch damage reduced by 5% in PvP combat (was increased by 10%).
The proc rate of Shadowy Insight has been reduced by 25% while in PvP combat.
The proc rate of Surge of Darkness has been reduced by 25% while in PvP combat.
Really bud? The proc rate? This community has some of the most vocal cry baby streamers on any platform and this is a direct by product of most of them being mage mains.
Anytime sp has meaningful damage, damage that isn’t just pad on 3+ target it has been nerfed systematically. Can for once any and all self-respecting shadow priest players stand up to this crap and blow up their twitter. These people are really acting like shadow priest is the problem in arena before specs like Demo, Arcane, Sin, Fury, DH, WW, and Pres. Wake up, blizzard. Stop catering to your poster boy mages and get a grip.
The sad part is while SP damage was good, I never thought any of these were the problem. This is going to make SP really bad in the mid to lower brackets. Awful changes that do nothing to address the actual issue.
They went nuclear on spriests but brushing the best dps in shuffle off as just meaningful (it’s broken) isn’t going to garner sympathy.
Also they are getting PvE buffs, which is probably why the nerfs are heavy handed. 10% buff and then a 25% PvP specific nerf means the damage in pvp was toned down 15% put simply.
I forgot they are going to nerf focus willed by 5%, so yea back to playing lock all day. Oh wait… 7 expansions later VAMPIRIC EMBRACE IS OFF THE GCD > WOW WE’RE SAVED.
I just think there are other things making them prevalent. Like Improved MD and Life Swap. Damage is really high across the board and nerfing it for anyone just seems off.
You will not get much sympathy here. It’s a melee dominated section of the forum.
It’s funny how the 2 most common moronic takes on spriest is:
Utility good, nerf damage (ie:make irrelevant)
CC good, nerf damage (ie: make irrelevant)
It hard to say without play testing, but the nerfs might not make the spec as unfun to play as it was in bfa and shadowlands S3/S4 nerfs. The damage might still be effective enough. We will see.
BFA was probably the worst version of spriest in the borrowed power era, it had zero kill potential and was nothing but a purge bot.
SL S3/S4 it went downhill as well, not to bfa levels though. It did have the worst pvp legendaries in the game throughout SL. Among plenty of other issues.
Couple things that will happen is that the fotm spriest casters will probably shift back to locks and their 3 specs. So you will be seeing a lot more locks, aka lock meta inc
Secondly, melee fotm spriests players will probably shift to dks and wars now, maybe even rogues. So look forward to that!
probably because no caster in this game really has to cast anything anymore. you have the melee arms race of mobility running amok. shadow just became unviable. you will never cast or get away long enough to cast.
