Shadowfiend, a strange 3min CD

Classes Priest
1

I’ve always thought about this. When I think 3min CDs, I think of Incarn, Frostwyrm Fury, and … Shadowfiend. I think about how strange and lackluster this CD is, and I thought about the reasons why it is the way it is.

  1. DPS???
  2. Resource generation for SP/Disc
  3. Fade to Aggro
  4. Highlight the talent

Did some basic Test Dummy DPS, no pet attack speed conduit, no Mastery buffing with DOTS or haste buffing with PI. Just comparing the straight up melee and see the value of Shadowfiend.

Shadowfiend - 3min CD
~11.5K dmg

Mindbender - 1min CD, used every 1min for 3min.
0 - ~12.5K dmg
1min - ~12.5K dmg
2min - ~12.5K dmg
TOTAL: 37.5K dmg

Something should be done here. I thought about the design perspective. Purposely made Mindbender talent to be the better option for SP/Disc? Not every 3min CD needs to do bigdam??? Talent aside, a 3min CD primarily used for DPS should be good standalone.

Some solution options

  1. Buff the damage of the 3min CD. Make it summon Xylem/Voidwraith. Essentially the 3min dmg needs to equal 3 1min uses of Mindbender or more.
    OR
  2. Make Shadowfiend a 1min CD baseline. Have Mindbender be a glyph.
2

Honestly I’m kinda at the point where the spec’s outgrown its need for shadowfiend. I’d absolutely prefer them not to buff it though if it stays, either change it to be more frequent or drop it.

3

Maybe go the Frost Mage route where you can talent out of your pet and it buffs your other abilities in some way (Frost mage talent Lonely Winter). And just have that talent replace the Mindbender talent.

Also, add the option to glyph your pet to look like Mindbender or Fiend if you choose not to take the talent.

That is a single-target dps row, so imagine something replacing it that just makes single-target more easy/powerful.

1 Like
4

It definitely seems lackluster for Shadow. Wouldn’t mind it being stronger for Disc too, but at least it feels reasonably impactful.

5

Wish they removed it, always felt stupid and pointless. Rather have an open keybind

6

Must scale with stats as my shadowfiend hits way harder and it’s quite a decent burst cooldown adding 15% or so to my damage.

Also really helpful to keep people in combat.

7

When they first added Shadowfiend it was basically the Priests version of innervate. You get low on mana you pop out your Shadowfiend that gave mana back each time it hit its target. Only problem was in arenas people would just spam CCs on it.

Now it’s just a rather unnecessary button on an already bloated class in terms of its DPS cooldowns. Power Infusion, Void Form, Shadow Fiend, and Covenant Ability. The worst part is you have to sit there and wait for Power Infusion resets to maximize all of them.

8

Good idea’s but as always would buff Discipline’s raid healing to pretty substantial points. I don’t think there is a problem with Shadowfiend from a disc standpoint it is quite good. Substantial mana return and descent burst damage. The only complaint I’d have is that Mindbender doesn’t compare to it either in the damage department or in the mana department when compared to Shadowfiend + Solace so Mindbender should be buffed. We only took Mindbender in 9.0 because our ramps were on a 1minute cycle and we needed Mindbender’s DPS to cap Spirit Shell. This isn’t the case anymore.

A Shadow specific talent or passive to make it stronger could be nice for such a long CD.