Shadow's DOTs feel really bad

Classes Priest
43

Yea im more of the fan of how WoD handled our resources with Shadow Orbs in both it’s method of generation and how Devouring Plague consumed them.

Currently, we have many sources to build Insanity and because of that, we get a lot of little trickles of Insanity coming in which when you start out at zero insanity, it seems to take an unnecessary amount of time to build up to your first Devouring Plague.

However, once you are fully going and all your spells are going off and procing stuff, it is much easier to keep your insanity resources coming in and your able to constantly send out Devouring Plagues relatively quickly.

But back in WoD, your Devouring Plague cost 1-3 Shadow Orbs. So in theory you can toss out a Devouring Plague right after your initial Mind Blast. But typically you built up to 3 or more Shadow Orbs before you use Devouring Plague as each orb increase the damage it would do.

This allowed you to both build up Shadow Orbs and this spend them on Devouring Plague while also allowing Devouring Plague to hit hard since you could not just start spamming them out as you can do now with a full insanity bar and possible free Devouring Plague casts.

In short, you were able to chunk up your resources in fewer abilities instead of a lot of trickle in bite size amounts of resources as how Insanity works.

Because of WoD Shadow Orbs resource mechanic and ability to chunk up Shadow Orbs for Each Mind Blast, you were also able to generate Shadow Orbs with Shadow Word: Death. However Shadow Word: Death could only be used on targets at 20% health or less (if memory serves) and you were able to double tap SW:D with a glyph. This made your execution phase really strong because both SW:D would be hitting like a truck and it would also fuel your Shadow Orbs alongside Mind Blast which made you pump out Devouring Plagues like crazy.

So having said all that, I see both pros and cons of the way we managed and used our Shadow Orb resource vs Insanity resource but the main standout feature was that with Shadow Orbs, you could not spam Devouring Plague back to back multiple times with the Shadow Orbs system since we had a max of only 5 Shadow Orbs and Devouring Plague will consume all Shadow Orbs up to 3. So it kept Devouring Plague a hard hitting spell because its use was always limited in some manner.

Where as now, because you may be able to spam Devouring Plague back to back multiple times, they have to adjust its damage or it would essentially turn into a 1 shot button at times.

So I don’t know the best solution to make Devouring Plague scary again without it becoming overpowered.

But in terms of preferred resource system, I would take Shadow Orbs over Insanity every day of the week, no question.

5 Likes
44

Shadow’s hybrid specialization has pretty much lost all meaning since so many classes do what we do and do it better. Mass dispel (nerfed), life grip and void shift are the only things that set us apart now.

We’re not the tankiest. Our dots don’t hit the hardest. Our hardest hitting abilities always get nerfed even when no one is complaining about them, we have the worst mobility in the game. Our spender (insanity) is amongst the slowest/hardest to build in the game.

Shadow priest is literally mid on all levels. It’s crazy how blizzard is so precise with our tuning, but other classes run rampant all expansion long, despite thousands of threads across the web saying that there’s a problem

1 Like
45

We have 4 dots my man, 5 if you wanna count shadow apparitions as a dot.

No clue wtf you are talking about.

No they do not. rend does about the same damage as shadow word pain.

Just like no one in their right mind would call a shadow priest a melee spec because you can melee attack right?

Wrong, aff does about 35% more damage than a sp in 3v3. ( depending on comps )

In rated bg’s , sp triples aff in damage.

1 Like
46

5 dots? Channeled skills dont count and apparitions isnt a dot.

You can make your points without being rude and wrong.

1 Like
47

  1. vampiric touch.

  2. shadow word pain.

  3. devouring plague.

  4. echoing void.

  5. i said should we consider apparitions as a dot?

You can even add void tendrils in there as well.

I would take your own advice.

You are claiming im wrong when you are the one who is wrong,

embarrassing.

48

You’re stretching to avoid admitting your mistake.

Echoing void and apparitions are passives neither of which add to our mastery or interact with any other part of our kit as a dot.

Don’t dig yourself deeper.

Low effort troll, embarrassing.

5 Likes
49

guys… it’s not that deep just stay on topic without being rude.

4 Likes
50

My only point was that discussion can be had without being antagonistic. But fair enough. I’m all set.

1 Like
51

Wrong, go google what a DOT is, echoing void is a dot that does damage after a delay.

So if it doesn’t work with our mastery that means it’s not a dot??? Logic?

Shadow apparitions don’t work with the rest of our kit? wtf are you talking about?

It generates our main resource and there is a CAPSTONE talent called idol of yogg-saron that WORKS off of shadowy apparitions!

Are you a bot or something?

:rofl: :rofl:

exactly bye.

52

Good luck buddy. Got no ill will toward ya. We’re all just here to hang out and chat about a game we like. Be well.

53

To bring it back to the topic. I wouldn’t mind so much that our damage was skewed toward Flay if we had a way to move while channeling.

Obviously it can’t be all the time. We saw how elemental was when they could cast lightning bolt while moving all the time, but we could have a proc or spell with charges that allowed for casting on the move.

The voidweaver talent that lets you move while casting insanity is a good start. But we should push it through to regular flay too.

Or just put power back into our dots. That’d fine by me. XD

1 Like
54

I am talking about the damage contribution of Shadow’s DoTs.

Have you ever bothered to actually look at them? Here are logs of a Warrior, Shadow Priest, and an Affliction Lock. All at the same ilvl (528).

Warrior - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/z7HtAnjx4YFy1g8p#fight=14&type=damage-done&source=15
Priest - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/9xAaW6YD1nNdXbFR#fight=34&type=damage-done&source=279
Warlock - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PCqKwkXmhdzDyW38#fight=27&type=damage-done&source=21

The combined damage of Shadow Word Pain and Vampiric Touch only accounts for 7.31% of the Shadow Priests total damage. While Rend alone is doing 8.34% of the Warrior’s damage.

And if you look at the individual ticks of their DoTs. You’ll see that the average non-crit Rend tick is not only doing just shy of 300% the damage of Shadow Word Pain, but Rend is doing ~35% more damage than Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch combined. And if you include the instant portion of Rend, the average cast of it is doing 10% more damage than the average cast of the Priest’s Devouring Plague.

21 seconds worth of SW:P and VP non-crit damage is only doing 304k (144k+160k) damage. A single cast of Rend is doing 402k non-crit damage. Meanwhile a single cast Agony or Unstable Affliction from the Warlock is doing 480k and 570k non-crit damage respectively, for a total of 1050k damage. Or 345% more damage than SW:P+VP from an equally geared Priest.

Warriors have 4 DoTs. A mastery that increases damage done to target with DoTs. 9 talents dedicated to DoTs and 20 talents that interact with their DoTs in some fashion.

Arms have:

  • A leech effect on one of their DoTs.
  • Resource generation on DoT ticks.
  • A capstone talent dedicated entirely to DoTs.
  • A cooldown which increases the damage of their DoTs.
  • Several ways to automatically refresh their DoTs.
  • 4 abilities that spread their DoTs.
  • An ability which grants them 100% temporary haste amp on 2 of their DoTs.

Hardly the same as a Shadow Priest auto attacking.

4 Likes
55

I play a SP i know what our damage looks like and our top damage is literally our dots.

So you linked a single target raid fight?

In anything more than 1 target our damage looks like this.

https://imgur.com/a/E8GyLJi

No it does not , go log on your sp bro. Go do a m+ or pvp no one cares about what our dmg looks like in single target, dot’s should NEVER be top dmg on 1 target.

The whole point in a dot spec is to dot MULTIPLE TARGETS.

Some classes excel at 1 or 2 targets some at multiple. every class has different strengths and weaknesses, our top damage should never be dots in single target in pve.

So they turned a war into a dot spec, who cares?

56

Seems to me like you posted your reply after me to derail what I said and you’re hiding on an alt.

I played SP in DF all thru every season, and no, I completely disagree our DoTs did not feel great this whole xpac

1 Like
57

Well, our dot ticks on their ownndont do much, lets get that out of the way.

But, would it be fair to add to their total damage the mastery part?
Meaning that, lets say with 25% mastery, you look at the damage profile and cut every single damaging ability that is affected by our mastery by the 75% damage increase amount?

Wouldnt that put our dots to the top of the damage meter by far, it wouldnt be even close.

Or is doing math like this a stretch?

58

They’d have to rework Shadow once again I’m pretty certain. I think higher mastery sounds like a cool idea, but at the same time then they would have to get rid of some of our burst or offensive cd’s or something like that. Not that I mind, I think what you suggested I might actually prefer than the current model

TBH I hope maybe with hero talents the playstyle of how people want to play SP will have a lot more diversity. Would be cool if you could focus more on DoT dam, or more on burst dam, and or mindbender build… Ect.

59

Oh, we propably didnt understand each other.
I didnt suggest anything. This is exactly how shadow works atm. Ive used 25% as example since thats around the number we can achieve in last season DF.

I was just asking a question to the people that are taling about the actual damage number our dots do…comparing to other specs dots etc.
Im asking if its fair to add to that number the actual cut of damage from every single spell in our toolkit that the dots alltogether buff by (in this example) 75% just by existing.

Even if sw:pain ticks for 1dmg, its presence alone just makaes you do 25% more damage.

Our mastery is a big problem. Imho.

1 Like
60

Shadows main problem since inception it just has too much darn utility, atleast that is their justification if continuously keep our damage relatively low or over nerfing us when we are competitive or S/A Tier in damage.

I truly think it’s about time Shadow breaks
Out of this ‘perceived’ support role and into a full out dps and just gut more of the utility at this point we could probably just get rid of Mass Dispel altogether, make shields our only offheals and bring back Shadowmend instead of Flash Heal. Make grip a disc/holy only ability and keep Void Shift.

I don’t really care about out playing or doing crazy stuff with my utility anymore, this game is about big dam and it’s time for us to embrace our role as a true dps.

61

I kinda agree, but us sharing 2 healing specs makes it difficult. It’s inevitable that the utility from those 2 specs bleed into ours.

1 Like
62

I can see where you guys are coming from the mastery and utility. I think a change or buff to mastery would be huge. We also still need good utility to support a group as a whole while also doing big dam, but that problem is there’s way too much button bloat for a class that needs time to ramp up damage with DoTs…

Yeah good point