Shadow Priest bad AoE class design

Classes Priest
1

(sorry for my english bad)

A little feedback on the SP:

I’m at the end of my life lol, I feel like I’m at the max of what I can do mechanically and the class doesn’t reward the investment in the gameplay (which is much denser than many other specs)

I did the 8 Mythic 0 dungeons with the same roster of friends with whom I did all my Keystone masters, so players who parse mini to 90%.

And I find that the result is catastrophic.

I’ve got the aoe build so I’m not sure what to do with it, but I’m sure it’s a lot of work.

I have an aoe build, so a build that makes me lose almost 5k dps in monotarget but uses mind sear as a spender aoe.

where a lot of DPS classes can have a sustained very strong aoe with 2 buttons, in SP:

Have several cd’s available namely shadow crash (30sec) to apply dots in a small area + mindbender (1min) + have all my mental attack charges and blank exec to cleave the mindbender. (better if we use void eruption (2min) which resets 2 charges of mental attack)
And this is just to max out 35/40k for a few seconds before dropping back to 25k :slightly_smiling_face:

I have to dps mono until I reach 100 (or 75 insanity) to get 2.8 / 2.1 sec of dps aoe via mind sear, there it is strong.
But it’s very short and not constant without free proc (less than 10% chance and sometimes 0 in 5 min) I can’t maintain this dps and I fall back to 0 insanity or I have to dps again more than 10 -12 sec to be able to do mind sear again…

While a lot of other classes never wait more than 4 sec to send the sauce back to aoe.

So playing my life, being at full throttle I only went over 30k overall once in dungeon and only finished first once out of 8 dungeon 1st while my buddies were in pure chill (evoker dps, war prot, evoker heal (who outdid me in dps aoe at times mdr :sweat_smile: )

(i have 8 ilvl more than my friends too)

… … … … … … … … … … … … …
And I maintain, the problem is not the numbers, but the design of the specialisation that has NO synergy with its own spells as it was the case in Shadowland :pensive:

SL for aoe it was really nice, the shadow word exec: DEAD, was reset if the target was killed within 6 sec, so the principle was to snipe exec the target low pv which would generate 40 insanity.

Then we used the shadow crash which was a big spell of raw damage aoe, and especially we channeled mind sear and in this channeling we could throw our talent aoe: Searing nightmare (35 insanity) it was a very dynamic and fluid gameplay, we would generate enormous of insanity and by managing well we could finish all the pack to 70 + insanity and started the following directly with 2 searing nightmares (massive multi dot in bonus)

And the SP could hold even Boomkin in AoE on the S1, I was even mostly ahead and this without sacrificing monotarget.

So here I am quite sad of the specialization mechanically, it is badly designed for PvE, and with my schedules I could not play as often with my buddies and even by being top 3 rio on my grouping of server in s1 SL as SP was not considered meta in spite of a huge dps I spent more than 1:30 am in tag the afternoon for 1 dungeon, so there if in + the DPS is not any more as impressive I dread the continuation

:pensive:

(lot of google trad :sweat_smile: )

2 Likes
2

I think part of my numbers problem atm is my stats are all wrong, but I can still tell it’s a lot of work (bad stats mainly translate to no reward for the work).

There’s a lot of mechanics, yeah, whereas we had mainly our core mechanic (mastery) and I’m not sure further mechanics were really needed. I’m mostly sad about them because I feel they’re borrowed from other classes.

I gave different idols a chance but went back to inescapable torment because its a reliable cleave and insanity gain. Yogg and C’thun are both fine, I kind of want a Yogg who stays until he’s cast 25 void spikes rather than vanishes while running to the next pack.

N’zoth is just way too unreliable, when it finally procs and has less impact than psychic link. Would much rather see a design that either guaranteed large dot radiation from main target or (guaranteed?) small dot radiation off all targets. Or actual interaction with void torrent/damnation?? Like detonating off 3rd dot or torrent.

There’s just… so many ways to fix this?

Hasted cooldowns. We only have mind blast and void bolt atm.

We have a lot of builders but none of them are very good, where’s my low damage high insanity return spell? Why doesn’t PL give 30/60% insanity for the extra targets hit?

Designing the class so vers and crit aren’t dead. This could be from general extra insanity gain from crits, and having burst spells that did their damage without mastery benefit. I didn’t play old mind spike, but searing nightmare scaling mainly off a single dot comes to mind.

I think what’s missing in my kit atm is the ability to start generating insanity while the tank gathers mobs. We can’t start at 50 or generate it passively in combat. I’d generally like to be able to set up my insanity at the start of the pack and have it generate throughout the encounter, and I suggest dots reliably generating insanity over time. Again, for comparison, once a demo lock gets rolling you don’t have to shadow bolt that often and even then 1 bolt returns 1/5th of your resources, and you start at 3/5.

I also want for my party members to see my SUPER COOL GHOSTS.

3

Shadowcrash cd being 30seconds and not having any other way to spread dots is miserable…

If anything gets added to the pull or spawns during those 30seconds you do 0dmg to those mobs. Cleave from mind blast or mind flay (which is minimal anyway) does not affect mobs without dots on them.

Even having 100insanity before the pull with mindbender and shadowcrash up i cant hang with other classes like demolock for example.

During beta they nerfed mindsear from 8 targets down to now 5 btw :smiley: so the bigger the pull the worse you will do compared to other classes.

Many competitive mythic+ runners listed SP in swamptier along with mm&survi hunters and now 6th of december they are being buffed but there is nothing for shadowpriests. I think they have no idea what to do and will do nothing.

1 Like
4

Brind back Searing nigthmare + shadowland version of death and madness for hight generation insanity .

Or … Mind sear max power with 50 insanity …

And … Being able to use our spell procs while channeling, it is nonsense that our proc cancel out everything.

1 Like
5

No no they have said A tier not swamp tier like maximuss said tbh

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Idk with lucky procs and full insanity on cds i do over 100k aoe…but you need devourer and cds…

Issue is that when you do this…and any other dps decide to sent cds aswell…everything dies before you finish second sear and your cds are wasted. While other dps can do this kind of numbers pull to pull…namely ww monks which managing to dodge nerfs somehow. This will get better in m+ where mobs dont die first 5 seconds.
Number wise sp isnt that bad…bud the mechanics of the spec are horrible.

2 Likes
7

shadows m+ performance is so much improved compared to shadowlands, i dont get why people complain. its substantially less complex and im doing around 35k overall in most dungeons with my 372 shadow, if u take into perspective how much offhealing and utility it brings thats pretty competetive.
i really really like it atm and if they dont mess it up i see a much brighter future for the spec than lass xpansion.

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For me it feels more like a sidegrade than an improvement. We traded a tonne of flexibility for a simpler AoE opener.

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wdym, what did we lose? dont feel like that but maybe im missing something, didnt take it to serious yet bc packs die to fasat anyways

10

The ability to have at least one dot on all targets without a cd, something searing nightmare (as hated as it is) allowed us to do and something both affliction and balance do through improved sunfire and seed of corruption.

As you say it’s kinda whatever while we’re doing M0s with discrete individual pulls you can start off with a shadow crash and go from there. It’s much more awkward when you’re chaining packs or grouping multiple packs together and having to wait on doing damage until you get a good opportunity to shadow crash, or can’t really do damage to the second part of the pull because you had to crash to do anything to the first part.

Obviously VT is better than pain, and it’s a good thing we can mass apply VT on some sort of cd, but the difference in damage between aoe situations where crash works well and where it doesn’t is massive.

11

In what regard ? Im genuinely curious. Because it is the exact same as shadowlands…you still have to chanel sear…you still play shadowflame prism.

I feel like sear should cost less insanity and be faster.
If you dont have cds and your mind decourer decide to ditch you, then the damage is abysmal.

Im sad to say this but ive prefer way more shadowlands aoe…but well see how (if) they polish this spec in higher keys.

I would much rather see some sorr of bfa ghost version where we would focus on psychic link cleave…but thats whatever…we got what we got …now we have to make best of it.

12

The complain is about :

  • tank not packing every mob in a 8m circle for Shadow Crash
  • tank starting to pack, not moving for 3 sec and right after Shadow Crash, go pull another 6 mobs pack
  • every other classes having some (even weak) instant aoe damage w/o our ramp up

but number wise, we’re good. in high keys, where anything won’t die in 5 sec, we’ll surely perform :slight_smile:

13

well u gotta hit ur shadowcrash, thats true, but in higher keys we wont pull half of the dungeon so grouping up wont be that kind of problem. and if u are patient and not too greedy its not really a problem, i kinda never miss them.
and u could mass dot pain in shadowlands, but it did no dmg. this time around u only got 8 mobs dotted, but in almost every dungeon thats more than enough. we wont do these massive pulls like now in m0.

u do build up a lot faster by shadowcrash dotting, so we dont have the dotting ramp like before. thats a huge gain in rotation uptime and mobility bc u can move while the pull starts.
and without searing nightmare we do our dmg one full gcd earlier. in shadowlands i had to move so often after starting mind sear and maybe one searing nightmare in the last one fell off bc of movement. this time around, u already have 2 ticks of dmg out at that moment, what makes it feel a lot more dynamic, u dont have that empty ramp up gcd in your rotation.
i know, it sounds small, but it has a huge impact on how the spec feels and lets you decide on ur next actions much more freely.

sure your dmg isnt great without cds but u have them on almost every pull, had never problems with that. its not that punishing, as long as u dotted the mobs and pump your mind sears u put out competettive dmg

14

? A bit confused. You dropped dotting altogether and just go either pop all cds and spam sn or just sn…maybe 2-3 vts before tank gather mobs. In ramp up sl version was superior to this.

You can do a lot of dam now IF you have insanity bar full, cds up, devourer proc from previous pull…if you dont you will spent a lot of time trying to get proc or fill the bar.

But that is the problem…while youre patient and sitting duck every other spec in the game already mashing the pack no matter if they move or are spread etc…if you wait you will fall behind and never catch up - in group with decent players that is.
Catching up in dps was always a sp downfall…this wont sadly change.

But thats just my feeling after running m0 both with a bit casual players and with a guys that did literaly 100k +dps every single pull excp bosses.

15

that was the problem sadly, on bigpulls u didnt need to but on like 4-6 target pulls i felt like u always had to cast your vts and i felt like i lost much more time like that, but maybe its just a matter of taste. and i often ran with a premade, i guess a good tank helps a lot with dealing with those matters.

felt just like: 2 sec time for my positioningwhile tank sets the pull up → shootimng out shadowcrash → pumping.
i like that, simple and effective. no fast paced decisions how many dots to castbc dont know how long the mobs will live to minmax dmg etc, just shoot crash

i gotta say the demo in my premade did more dmg than me too, i was at 34-40k overall depending on the dungeon and he was always like 5k higher. but he of cours always got my pi. still if i consider my offhealing potential and my utility im completely fine with that, i felt much more in control of the fight than in the sl-version of the spec and improved mass dispell is awesome too.
so maybe im just optimistic but at least for our premade grp the spec seems pretty good atm, and i couldnt say that at any point in sl where it was like only really good at raid exclusively and just exhausting in dungeons

16

(copy) not just mind sear problem.

Little feedback after having played a lot in m+ the first week :grinning:

and well my opinion did not change it is lame this system of aoe… really lame…

It’s totally fickle, you have to build insanity (100) to do some aoe damage (2.8 sec or 1.4 sec with 50 insanity lol… ) and then pray that the mind blast procs a free spender (mind sear in aoe or devouring plague in mono/bi target) and it’s rare… very rare. :neutral_face:

So yes the rare times when it proc I can go up to 90 - 130k but it will be once in the instance, it is then necessary to re build the insanity which is extremely long compared to the s1 of SL and this by making pure monocible during sometimes more than 10-12 sec where the other dps will cleave like mad monkey :sweat_smile:

Shadow crash) is also badly calibrated, the spell itself is practical although the zone is really not big, but it is not enough to maintain a perfect uptime in aoe (more than 5-6 sec without dot and we are not going to have fun to dot 10 mobs manually for 5-6 sec :neutral_face: ), on the higher keys have to use it 2x on a big pack BUT.

We find ourselves without anything for the following one, obliged to dot with the hand + to make monocible during X time before being able to re-use mind sear… for only 2.8 sec it is a calamity.

The mindbender cleave is only strong with CD burst (PI + void eruption) when you can chain an SW:death + 2 mind blast + void eruption + 2 mind blast again , otherwise it’s really minimal.
I would almost prefer the mindbender to be a permanent summon with reduced damage, it would be more comfortable to play ans consistant steady.

Compared to shadowland season 1 which had an aoe gameplay without holes and dynamic.

Before in aoe it was enough to throw shadow crash, channel with mind sear and throw searing nightmare: 35 insanity, the whole while making SW:death (old talent death and madness) on the weak mobs in life, to recover a reset of the sw:death :blush: + 40 insanity BY mobs killed in the 6 sec after exec.

the gameplay was 100x more nervous, 100x more synergizing so better thought and we could start each pack with 100 insanity or 70+ and be able to aoe immediately with 2 ways to increase quickly the insanity (sw:death and ex mind sear). it’s very very more flexible

And the saddest thing about DF aoe gameplay is that to have a build with a minimum of aoe opti you sacrifice a LOT of monocible dps (3.7k in my sim) :neutral_face:

I watched a lot of Shadowpope stream, a top SP who had his 4P day one (26% haste baseline :grin: ) and was doing m+ 16/17 from last Friday/Saturday (after 3 days of m+ what) :grinning:
Well the guy was doing 40 or 50k overalls with his 4P while the rogue and monk were hitting 65 to 80k+ overall it’s ridiculous.

not to mention the mind blast proc and mind spike that interrupts mind flay… wtf terrible bad class design

(sorry for my poor english)

17

I actually love the new spriest playstyle im ngl, its my favorite, havent loved the specc this much since catalysm.

However: i can agree the fact we have 1 ability to spread DoTs on a 30sec CD feels awkward in fast runs,

We need a second source for this to come through realistically. Imho i think blizzard did a fantastic job with what its done for the specc, but it feels like its a few things short of being spot on.

2 Likes
18

They should make one of our useless Idols in to a permanent pet for shadow and make the cleave it does with mind blast like we are so far worthless would support the idea of a beast cleave passive with Idol of y’shaaj soth of like the one BM has.

Also while at it they should make SW:D and Mind Flay Mind sear still channel while you use those like we could in shadowlands.

19

I feel like my burst aoe is pretty good as a priest but the moment i dont have shadow crash my aoe goes down the drain.
Maybe they should change the Physic Link talent to include mind sear reduces shadow crash cooldown each time it deals damage?

20

this would be the most simplest and fun easy of bringing Spriest back in AoE - I loved sniping with SD, and blasting procs while having a channel of mind flay / sear on.

i am currently really unhappy, I feel like my Spriest is waiting on an elevator to arrive when i have my 30sec cooldown of Shadow Crash… It is just… frustrating