I’ve really wanted to commit to Shadow Priest since SL was announced. I love Warlock’s Affliction, but I also want to heal. The hype was insane going into SL, but it didn’t seem to materialize.
From early feedback, it doesn’t look like DF is the expansion either. I figured I’d come ask the experts - is it going to be whack-a-mole for another 2 years?
spriest in raid is looking really good, if you don’t like channeling.
I have liked what i have seen so far. I feel a lot of people are still doom and gloom atm.
Single target has a playable / ok build.
AoE / Mythic+ does not function.
Main disappointed is Mind sear costs insanity now. 25 initial and then during channeling. Makes it not seem worth even having, let alone a talent point
Not sure about the healing specs, but shadow feels kinda chaotic. Cool downs are on odd intervals, feels more like I am managing a character instead of having fun playing it. Dots are the main source of dmg still, and mind spike and mind blast are still low dmg fillers. They need to up the insanity generation, or make mind spike and mind blast do 20% base dmg. Also revert the cool down on shadow crash would be nice.
Not into mind flay or its dmg modifier, I find it mind numbing to channel a spell constantly, its a boring style for me to play.
To be honest, that comes par for the course with a DoT spec and should be expected. If you don’t like or want that, imo you shouldn’t play a DoT spec, as that’s just expected.
That’s like playing a Fire Mage and expecting to not be a burst spec but sustained damage spec. It just doesn’t fit.
They could do both with trees, it doesn’t a have to be limited to dot filler, dot filler…
Why do you associate a DoT spec with a channel? Could not disagree more
Because a channel is a DoT, it makes perfect sense to promote the DoT spec and promote channeling. It fits in together and ties together greatly over casting a regular spell.
I like the sound of a sustained damage spec. Where do I find one of those in retail wow?
There’s quite a few DoT specs that don’t have have channel fillers. Affliction and Spriest are the only two that do and Affliction has the option to stick with Shadow Bolt.
atm, Elemental is as close as you can get, idk what it’s like in DF though.
You’re correct, they’re melee, assuming you’re referring to Asn Rogue, Feral Druid. If you’re referring to Balance then that isn’t and hasn’t been a DoT spec in like 5 expansions at this point.
Nobody uses Shadow Bolt, so regardless of it having that option that isn’t something that people will select.
Spriest has always had the channel filler thing, which makes it awesome. Drain Soul is the perfect filler for Aff, and Mind Flay for Shadow.
Ah, so then it’s not
is it?
I’m curious why you don’t consider Boomkin a DoT spec though.
Because most of the damage profile is not from DoTs. It used to be, but with everything else doing more damage than the DoTs; Starfall, Wrath, Starfire, Starsurge, they all do way more damage than the DoTs do. DoT specs are becoming less and less about DoT damage and more in line with burst damage and DoTs doing some damage.
I even tried to do a Necrolord build in PvE with Balance and tried to bring it into a full on DoT spec and it was still quite garbage with DoT damage.
Like I said it used to be, but they slowly wittled away at DoT specs to make them less DoT damage-y and more other sources of damage-y.
Interesting. So then why does Boomkin get a higher percentage of its damage from DoTs than either Affliction or Shadow?
Idk bout Shadow but Aff’s DoT % is around 70% of its damage from DoT damage. It just takes all 9 DoTs totaled up to get there, which is absurdly dumb, annoying and irritating.
If you mean why does Moonfire and Sunfire do more damage % than Corruption, Agony, UA etc. then that’s because DoT damage is less per DoT itself since there’s 7-9 DoTs total on the spec.
As for Shadow, no clue. I’d suspect it’s because between the spirit mechanic and people who keep pushing DoT specs to be less about DoTs and more about other things, that’s probably it, there.
Also I don’t see anywhere where any boomkin’s total DoT damage is higher than Affliction’s.
As far as Shadow goes, adding up the total % of DoT damage n whatnot without including tier bonuses, Shadow’s looks to be dead even at around 50/50 on multi, on ST it’s DoT damage is quite terrible because they just don’t do much damage at all.
Blizzard, for this and last expansion, kept trying to get DoT specs to be less about DoT damage and more about maintaining DoTs while doing other things, which is absurdly dumb but oh well.
Guess it depends on what you want to consider DoTs. Do they need to have a certain amount of uptime? Do they need to be a certain length? Do you count channeled fillers?
Same as it ever was. A tier, but with fundamental problems that hopefully you can live with: turret, RNG heavy, no defensives to really speak of in PVP.