Priest
- Shadow
-
Devouring Plague damage reduced by 8%.
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Dissonant Echoes’ (Conduit) Void Bolt damage reduced by 5%.
-
Its not like we could do much outside of single target.. might as well nerf the ONE thing we excel at!
24 Likes
Regarding the nerfs, I understand we don’t want to be head and shoulders above everyone in ST, but to me it doesn’t make much sense if we aren’t the top since that’s our new niche. Is a Dev around to possibly shed some light on the reason for the nerf? Do we scale super hard with the gear coming in 9.1 and need this to stay in line with other classes?
5 Likes
We don’t scale super hard, here’s BIS (best in slot 259 gear) from Sanctum of Domination for all classes, before this nerf takes place.
https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T27_Raid.html
An 8% nerf to Devouring Plague will be a ~3% nerf in single target. A 5% nerf to Void Bolt will be an additional 0.5% nerf in single target.
So the above is a 3.5% nerf to Shadow in single target, when we’re already middle of the pack in single target (our former Castle Nathria niche) after the previous round of nerfs (see Simcraft link above).
We will drop from Current DPS:
- Necrolord: 10795
- Kyrian: 10675
- Night Fae: 10648
- Venthyr: 10612
To New (Nerfed) DPS:
- Necrolord: 10417
- Kyrian: 10301
- Night Fae: 10275
- Venthyr: 10240
With the adjacent buffs coming to Fire Mages, Affliction Locks, BM and MM Hunters - all of them will move ahead of Shadow in single target too.
So the only thing worse than Shadow at single target if these nerfs go live will be:
- Havoc DH
- Survival Hunter
- Elemental Shaman
Really frustrating to drop this nerf right as the tier goes live. This is a good enough reason to main swap for the tier, but the tier is already live 
6 Likes
Shadow getting nerfed and not having issues with it properly corrected? This has never happened before..except for every time it happens.
Just goes back to the idea that it really seems like no one PLAYS shadow in these test/dev environments and just read reports about how shadow is SO good apparently.
4 Likes
If anything, it goes to show they don’t play anything nor test at all, even the PTR is just there… they balance a week or two after it goes live, ignoring every single feedback they’ve received.
2 Likes
I see it kind of like how CEOs and Vice Presidents handle things at companies. They don’t look at anything but the most boiled down data. The people making the decisions aren’t seeing how the game actually functions or plays or feels. They just see a pile of numbers plopped onto their desk/email and go “Yep these are too high! Fix them!” not “But these other numbers aren’t” or “It feels bad to play with things like this” because those aren’t raw data and its been distilled 2-3 or more times before it even got to them.
3 Likes
These sims will not reflect actual raid fights. Even with the nerfs Shadow priest will be at the top. You have nothing to worry about.
1 Like
The question was whether we scale super hard and therefore these nerfs are needed to prevent us from being OP in single target.
This is a good enough approximation to prove that is not an issue we’re facing.
I would also echo the sentiment that I would like to understand the rationale for these nerfs - it seems rather early to be changing damage so dramatically for a class this early on in the raid, and it’s not like Shadow is far beyond other classes in single target damage after the pre-patch nerf. It’s rather frustrating for me because I switched from Balance Druid to Shadow right before the patch when our guild decided we wanted that extra bit of single target DPS, but now Balance is simming better than Shadow by far for ST, and brings with it all of the extra utility, AoE, and movement that Shadow lacks. I’m not seeing the niche Shadow is expected to fill now when Balance seems to check every single box better than Shadow if these nerfs go live, so I’d love to hear what the devs are expecting this spec to have as its niche going forward!
3 Likes
Blizzard don’t do this
The nerf now puts us very middle of the pack on ST and since we dont have a solid source of aoe damage this might get us sat in favor of balance druids which will pass us up next week
2 Likes
I am sure Blizzard did not see some of the repercussions of these nerfs.
If an spriest does about the same ST dmg as some other classes with pi, why should the spriest pi itself? If spriest’s ST dmg without the pi is lower than other classes, there is absolutely no reason to pi an spriest, unless all other specs scale badly with haste. On the contrary, there are a few specs that scales just as well. And lets not talk about cleave and aoe fights because strictly speaking an spriest should always PI some other specs in those fights.
This wasn’t an issue in 9.0 because spriest did so much ST dmg, even without pi it was basically one of the best ST dmg classes(on par with affliction but weaker than feral and balance, but druids scale horrible with haste) And so an spriest had the reason to keep pi for itself. But this is no longer the case since the first 18% nerf to Devouring Plague.
If I am to predict the situation of spriest in 9.1, I would say any spriest who does competitive content(m+, mythic raiding) will have to consider the option of PIing other classes. And once an spriest decide to pi others, with or without the PI legendary, it loses at least another 5% of its overall damage. And at that point, the spec becomes literally a pi bot with weak utilities and very weak dmg.
These nerfs won’t have repercussions in the casual scene. But next week, if the nerfs go through, we will start seeing some PI bots(lets assume bringing these pi bots is better than bringing a real dmg class 
) in mythic raiding. Not sure if this is intended by Blizzard, but I for one would never play a PI bot, even at the cost of playing a weaker class.
Shadow Priests are already S-tier and nudging them down -3% isn’t really going to do much. We’re not far away from unlocking the full soul bind trees and empowered conduit slots.
I think the biggest issue for shadow in this raid is just how sylvanas works.
That and moonkins managing to dodge the nerf hammer.
2 Likes
AGAIN!
3% is basically the difference between S-tier and a mediocre A-tier, especially at this tier spriest is not ahead of others by much at all. And speaking of conduits and soulbinds, spriest(unless necro) is only average. Last but not least, you have several other classes getting powerful covenant legendaries. Spriest may look good now, but the meta can shift after a few months.
If you look at the newest sims and you take 3% off spriest, it ends up doing the same ST dps with arms, and arms is so much better than spriest at cleaving and burst aoe. And if you consider the fact that spriest at CN is only one of the tier-S classes because it literally sits at the top of the sim, you know what the spriest after the 3% nerf will be at in SoD. Why is that? Because you have about 7/9 ST (with light cleave) bosses at CN, and 7/10 similar bosses at SoD.
This is actually tragic…
The overreaction is real.
Lol…. Doomsaying over useless sims.
Never pans out… sims are good for choosing gear upgrades-that is all, but are rarely accurate as it relates to raid results.
I just wish they would offer some explanation or rationale for the changes.
Not exactly seeing SPs dominating any content. They aren’t struggling like they were at the beginning of BFA thank goodness, but this seems out of the blue.