Shadow Priest in Midnight thusfar has been one of the most significantly pruned specializations in the game, particularly from a PvP perspective. As a result, SP gameplay in arenas and BG’s has been at an all time low in terms of agency over the outcome of the matches.
The good:
SP does reasonable spread rot pressure. Surviveability is strong with focused will, flash DR, fade DR, desperate prayer amplifiers, and disperse. If you only look at the meters and who dies during the arena match, SP looks to be okay. This point of view is heavily misleading though.
The bad:
SP in the context of pvp is a mythic + damage bot. We have no stun, no kick, no snare, no mobility aside from Feather which is laughable and no root aside from the psychic scream tendril talent that nobody takes because it’s bad. You have an aoe fear that requires you to be on top of the target and you have a silence on a 30 second CD. You also have a life grip effect which can be talented for a lower CD (barely) to displace teammates.
Compare SP’s tools against any other dps specialization in the game in a pvp context. Warlocks can spam fear, evokers can spam sleep, DK’s have our silence and a kick, mages have counterspell and polymorph etc etc. At the moment, your entire focus is on not dying rather than killing in a manner of speaking. You hope you dont overlap defensives with your healer and you hope that something on the enemy team falls over. You also REALLY hope that you’re the target.
At higher MMR in both 3’s and shuffle, everyone realizes that tunneling the SP is bait. Let’s use SP and assassination rogue, for example. If the enemy team tunnels my rogue, what can i do to ensure they survive the repeated go’s? I can mind control, try to run in and do an aoe fear, or life grip the rogue. Compare that to Cyclone, Fear, Chains of Ice, Polymorph, Sleep Walk and so on. It’s not even remotely close to the same level of peels.
As far as kicks go, I can stand in the middle of the map fighting a fire mage and, of the two of us, I’m the only one who has to juke. If he catches me, i’m locked out for 6 seconds. He can free cast forever with no recourse outside of silence or fear, both of which their healer will immediately dispel.
Void form is one of the last two cooldowns that require a cast AND a target in LOS in the entire game, alongside our siblings in suffering arcane mages with their long cast time on Arcane Surge. Make VF instant cast, please.
Further, our “big spender” is Shadow Word: Madness. Any healer in the game can spam dispel Madness without any consequences. Our only dispel protection is Vampiric Touch, which is a negligble 2 second horror effect that everyone disrespects. Boomies received better dispel protection this patch. Hunters got scatter shot back this patch. SP needs to be altered with similar degrees of urgency.
After removing life swap and psychic horror, if the design intention is to have SP sit there, never die, and do damage then 1 of 2 things needs to happen to increase the viability of the specialization.
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Buff all SP damage by 20-40% and buff mindflay and mind blast damage specifically by 200% each. Mind blast hits for 12k. An arms warriors spammable execute hits for 115-200K when talented into Slayer. Our builders need significant help. If we are intended to sit there and do nothing useful except damage, the damage needs to be oppressive.
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Restore Life Swap and/or Psychic Horror to SP and/or give us a kick. The specialization currently has the least amount of agency, peels, and kill potential of any other in the game from a pvp perspective. You’ve done it with Hunters, do it with us please.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading!