What happened to shadow priests in this expansion?

Classes Priest
1

Came back to WoW yesterday after skipping this expansion’s season 1 and I have to ask what the heck happened to shadow priests? I am only 616 ilvl, but in heroics / mythic 0 with players of comparable gear (and also versus boomkin + mages of lower ilvl) - I struggle to be competitive. I get it - it’s “early” in the game with respect to dungeons / ilvl, but a shadow priest’s vampiric touch & mindflay should beat a frost mage’s blizzard + frozen orb (surprise, it does not lmao). Am I wrong here?

For some reason the dot management in this expansion feels harder. For big packs, I do cast VT first and then toss in shadow crash but I catch mobs without VT/SWP several times. I do not recall having this issue last expansion. I pushed 3k in DF S4 and I think 2.5-2.6k in DF S3 until I decided to get more serious in S4, but now it feels like a struggle.

Maybe I’m just getting ahead of myself since I’m only running M0 at the moment for gear. Spriest just feels weird.

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I tried SP, with a i642 and I did not find it productive. The targeting for the DOTs just seemed to take forever and without a major impact.
So, I went back to Disc Priest.
Your mileage may vary

3

In lower dungeons where the trash is getting blow up quickly it’s often not worth casting VT at all and just use Shadow Crash and Void Torrent and let the Rift handle the uncapped AoE. Voidweaver is the stronger hero talent for lower dungeons. It’s not until you get up around +10 that Archon gets better, Archon needs trash that’s alive for awhile.

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I don’t know the “Why” but blizz is trying to kill Shadow priest. They are dumping everything into Disc priest being the best healer and abandoning shadow completely. They do give some attention to holy but it doesn’t seem like they have any goal to make it competitive with Disc based on rankings, outputs, community opinion.

When S2 started the Spriest was “meh” competitive: no required buffs or utility, competitively ‘mid’ in Damage output, bottom tier survivability (arguably dead last on this), and definitely dead last on movement. There was however one situation where Spriest was a top 6 (6th place) and that was Single target boss fights with no movement - There was one boss this applied to “One Armed Bandit”.

Blizz was very against Spriest being anything but dead last so they nerfed all damage 3%-5%. The patch notes said 3% but people have been doing some diving to find out that some abilities were nerfed more so. Because of our design and how we scale this ended up being a 9-12% total dps reduction in M+ overall damage which really killed the M+ scene for the class.

Basically you can take a DK, Mage or Boomkin and get the 4M overall damage with a battle rez or lust and a true passive buff like MotW or Arc Int. Or you can take a Spriest who will be doing about 1.5M less on average compared to any top tier, and is going to bring 0 additional utility, is more likely to die, cannot keep up with the pack to pack movement requirements like other classes.

Purely for best possible if you look at any M+ dungeon you can see that the overall bests compared to Spriest bests are some of the worst DPS disparities the game has ever seen
The Below are all based on overall

Cinderbrew:
best = 5.4M
Spriest Best = 4.1M

DFC:
Best = 4.2M
Spriest Best = 2.9M

Flood:
Best = 5.6M
Spriest Best = 3.8M

Workshop:
Best = 3.6M
Spriest Best = 2.7M

Priory:
Best = 5.3M
Spriest Best = 3.9M

MotherLode:
Best = 4.8M
Spriest Best = 3.3M

Rookery:
Best = 4.9M
Spriest Best = 3.4M

ToP:
Best = 3.6M
SPriest Best = 2.6M

Given that “The Meta” and perception are the two most important things to a season and what classes make the cut there is just no reason to bring a Spriest to any content. A Spriest could get through the dungeon and time runs but why bother hoping the Spriest is going to be a top 1% player of the class when you can bring any Unholy DK and they can out dps them without even trying.

The same basic disparity is present in most Raid bosses; the only notable callouts are Stix Bunkjunker and One armed bandit where Spriest still falls into the middle of the pack and is somewhere between 12-18 rather than bottom 3.

Overall there are some fundamental changes this patch which were all detrimental to the Spriest and their kit.

Big impact M+ changes:

  1. Only Interrupts stop spell casting, Only silence and with it requiring 2 talent points for a 30s CD silence Shadow priests need to give up no less than 3% of their total damage to have a competitive and helpful interrupt. Psychic scream can no longer truly stop spell casting. The mobs will just immediately cast it again.
  2. Higher mobility requirements in all new fights. Very few fights truly permit a DPS the ability to stand; other classes with movement issues saw updates and changes to fix this while priest saw no such address. Voidweaver offers moving while using torrent but is a much weaker option compared to Archon. It is literally worth more dps to lose a GCD in archon than to go voidweaver.
  3. lots of High quantity non elite mobs. Pretty much every dungeon in S1 and S2 (and all TWW new dungeons) have 2-3 areas where the trash pull is more than double the total target cap of Shadow crash. Only Spriest is negatively impacted by this and every other DPS class has a viable option to unload damage on these packs.
  4. Very bad gear itemization; Shadow priests are very dependent on Mastery and Haste and most gear is poorly itemized with all of the best non set piece items coming from raid. This vastly limits options and means “luck of drops” plays a much larger role in you being able to be bottom dps or bottom dps but better than other shadow priests.
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Blizzard scrapped the Legion rework for two reasons - it was hard for them to balance a spec that behaved fundamentally differently from other specs in raid, and because it was extremely weak in world gameplay and in easy dungeons. We know it isn’t because of the remove Voidform gang even if DA did eventually return for that reason because survival’s rework (however fun it is) was a resounding failure that obliterated the spec’s popularity and they never reverted that design change.

Their adjustments in BFA, SL, and DF did little to address the easy dungeon issue even if it did largely solve the world gameplay issue and did very effectively homogenize shadow’s design with the rest of the classes. Shadow doesn’t burst hard enough to be competitive against enemies that die quickly. Most classes press their instant cast cooldown and start blasting. Shadow? Halo, Shadow Crash, Shadowfiend, Mind Blast (and SWD if IT is used), DA/VE+PI, VoiT, and now you get to start doing damage. Other classes start doing damage in their 1st/2nd/3rd GCD, but shadow doesn’t start until 8-10 GCDs have passed at minimum.

Shadow isn’t alone in this, but it is part of a small number of specs that play this way.

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6

I just feel the nerf Shadow Priest received recently was not necessary :man_shrugging:t4:.

Not sure how Blizzard justified it compared to other dps.

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I understand how you feel. It is weird. I’m 665 atm, SP is my “main” but I’m going bench it when personally get 3K rating and switch to a spec I can pug with and don’t feel weird about playing. I don’t have much time to play nowadays being a 1st time dad so it may be a while this season. Keys feel a whole lot better on Demo Lock and UDK for sure who are minus 10-15 ilvls.

The weird part rn was the 3% nerf after RWF bc SP performed well… I guess. We got the same nerf as Fire Mages and WW Monks. That was crazy… we are not in the same tier as them and I definitely felt the nerf in M+ moreso than raid. That needs to be reviewed.

The other part that I will say is weird is the VW vs Archon depending on the key level, dungeon, the group comp’s DPS, and how the tanks pulls. When you’re in the 10-12 range. It’s a toss up. Sometimes I regret not going Archon or VW vice versa. I understand that high keys are for the most part Archon… but I’m not in that solidified range with my homies just yet.

The quick fix is and still more charges to Shadow Crash to allow faster activation of Psychic Link AND unfortunately they need to increase the % dmg share of PL with the current iteration… If they think that’s OP, take look at UDK just hitting Vampiric Strike in Defile, and proccing Sudden Doom Death Coil and Blood Buddy. That dmg doesn’t make sense for how ez it is pump. I laugh when I play UDK. Same with Ret and Boomy.

The other weird part is the defense of SP at the high key range where it’s “fine”. >+14. Like OK guy, what % of SPs are doing the content rn. Many never even hit that content. So the best feeling of the spec is unreachable or has not be played yet, which is also weird justification.

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8

So something we been asking for literally years… :sob:

9

What is crazy weird about this is its not even true. Liquid had 1 shadow priest who did well but people were actually stacking fire mages, most guilds had 3-4 of them and less than half even brought a Shadow priest.

I would love to see what Blizz is looking at to make decisions about shadow priest.

10

It makes more sense if you think of it this way:

They do nerfs and buffs based on where they want classes to be performing in the hierarchy not to make them competitive and even. If the goal of all their changes is to put Shadow priest on the very bottom then everything makes sense and they are succeeding.

The high point in rankings for Spriest this expansion was 9th out of 26 total dps specs. That was followed with an immediate nerf and were now sitting at 23rd in the rankings. The only 3 specs below us have all been buffed and should now out perform shadow, augment is the only one that may not be able to personally out perform a Spriest. Yet with their kit they can buff the other 2 DPS far beyond that disparity.

After this reset its going to be interesting to see if Spriest is truly the lowest ranked DPS in all pve content and by all metrics that should be true.

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