That’s not an answer to the question I asked but ok.
I feel like blizzard don’t know what they’re doing with the nerfs, but they’ve needed to do something every single tier and the numbers from each have shown that. Shadow scales too well with crit, haste, azerite piece ilvl to just be left alone. I think the previous nerfs have been done without thought, and have lead to the need for more because they aren’t nerfing the reasons we scale. They’re still trying to fix problems they left alone over a year ago that just repeatedly come back.
The issue is azerite trait scaling, not so much stat scaling, but I get what you mean. Especially as judging from your armoury you aren’t the sort to have access to these items, at least not during current content.
To an extent, but you’ve also got to balance things against how difficult you want the content to be.
If you buffed other specs because shadow’s spread cleave is higher than theirs, then you’re
1: making spread cleave bosses easier and easier,
and 2: making specs that are designed to not have spread cleave (Melee dps mostly) worse and worse on those bosses.
If SWP had a 30% chance to spawn a Shadowy Apparitions per tick or every 3rd tick it would stop the scaling problems. It wouldn’t be as much fun but you wouldn’t have the interaction between crit and haste increasing each others values… at least in my brain.
Could have a talent increasing their proc chance instead of dmg they do which would be cool. Everyone loves a sea of purple ghosts!
At this point though apparitions is literally just extra SWP damage that takes longer to reach your target. I agree it fixes the problem, and what apparitions does now isn’t really good for the future design of the spec, but if that’s the change you made it wouldn’t serve a purpose beyond visual.
It wouldnt be that much of a problem how it works right now without coi trait. And i doubt those traits will persist till next expansion.
But its true. See every single patch only nerfs to our class is frustrarting as hell. And its always situation of “just wait and see” …and im tired of that, but realisticaly …what can we do except wait and see.
And from the vibe im getting from those developer’s note ,that they feel like dot spreading classes shine way too much on spread cleaves meanwhile not falling behind enough everywhere else (which is true for sp this tier but only in raid), is like they are tunel visioning raid bosses and doesnt see any other part of the game. Im tired of my dots hitting like my white attacks if im standing close ty my target and stabbing them with my dagger in pvp, while on some classes like destro it feels like my dots healing them and their immolate melting my a$$. But thats just me.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see, as one of the major class design philosophies going into 9.0, a return of 1 target capped major dots (Old DP, old UA) and multi dotting being at best a soft target scaling thing (Kinda like aff shard gen) instead of a hard target scaling thing where the multi dot value comes directly from damage.
Multi dotting, at least in the form we’ve had it for the last few expansions, feels to have outstayed its welcome. Single target fights have been getting rarer and rarer, and as fight complexity rises (Especially with later and end bosses) the value of multi dotting has also risen.
Fight design isn’t what it was a decade ago when these concepts for dps were initially fleshed out, and perhaps its time we distanced ourselves from them.
I think it’s more that they want to phase multi dotting out as it massively restricts design space for raid encounters. Shadow is currently the only spec with “True” multi dot left.
This is how I see situation too. They fix PvE somehow, but shadow goes worse in PvP and situation don’t have any signs of fix. We need strong tuning for PvP specially versus any mele class. There is no other range class that suffer so much versus meles. By so much I mean everything, if we are trained, we can’t do anything to shine in arena.
That’s why for PvP I choose Whispers of the Damned over Spiteful Apparitions, because our dot’s are not even good and developers destroy shadow PvP with every new major patch PvP.
Yes, please. But with old UA, do you mean the one prior to legion? It could be applied to several targets afaik, but not stacked like this current abomination.
I meant wrath UA. Literally give us a dot to manage that can only be put on 1 thing. An actual single target tuning knob with the potential for interesting ST interaction, and bring the focus of dot specs away from an inherent need to multi dot to be good. (So that can be sidelined for some proper balance)
IT’s awesome maybe people can get it into their head that disc is not a better healer than holy, holy is 100% committed to healing and of course they should always be a better healer as a role.
I am so tired of dying to disc priest thinking they can heal a tank, but they have no decent st heals, i always start with low hp as a tank before pulling because they can’t heal me up without doing damage, i am glad they’re getting nerfed for that reason, maybe people will go back to being a real healer then.
Pretty much this. Also, you do realize this post is about Shadow priest yes? Why rant about Disc here?
Except that Disc is better healer than Holy atm? It doesn’t mean Holy is unviable but Disc is literally performing better than Holy right now, in just about every aspect of the game.
Seems like blizzard wants to kill shadow priest and make it totally unviable spec. It hurts especially because there are some specs like rogues which are pretty overpowered in mm+ and blizzard doesn’t do anything to them and shadow is already quite hard to play in mm+ and these nerfs we’ll get in 8.3 will make us totally not wanted in mm+ teams… So playing shadow priest will be kind of masochism. The Chorus of Insanity is actually type of ‘burst’ we have and if blizzard will nerf it then we’ll be totally useless, imagine nerfing paladins’ avenging wrath… It’s obvious that in fights such as Za’qul where you can stack haste up to 250% or even further you can deal overpowered DPS as dotter.But it’s not spec’s fail but boss mechanics’. I’d rather buff some really low dps specs instead of nerfing the ones which are being in good state at the moment. In my opinion priest is actually in good state and the only thing blizz should change is fix that bug with Anspicious Spirit and Spiteful Apparitions.
Shadow is objectively broken in raids, with or without the specific circumstances of Zaqul, and when we’re moving into a tier where the end boss looks like a 2-3 target sustained fight, having one spec just be both objectively the best at that type of fight, and also top 5~ on progression single target is not a ‘good’ state.
On the topic of chorus, calling it burst is both disingenuous and laughable. Comparing it to a major offensive cooldown like avenging wrath even moreso.
This “bug” (Hint: it’s not even a bug, it’s a documented change they planned that was added on September 26th 2018) is actually the only change Blizzard has NOT currently implemented on the PTR (Though it’s in the notes). It’s also the one that hurts single target and M+ the most…
Since I’m on the topic. The changes that don’t make sense are the DoT nerfs, Shadow’s dots have been nerfed tier on tier, because of the power and scaling of our azerite traits increasing our dps. Now that those azerite traits are finally the target of nerfs, the dots can stay as they are.
Honestly if they do choose to push through the SA change, shadow’s dots could do with a 5% buff because currently their damage is pitiful and SA is carrying the spec on its in AOE and single target.
I just wanted to say that after all those replies it seems that people completely disagree with me when I said that Shadow is behind as a DPS spec and is going to get worse.
I wanted to clarify that I’m talking about M+ there, I already got it that it is strong in Eternal Palace, but they’re destroying the spec by nerfing it based on raid.
As always, Blizzard is making decisions based on raiding performance not caring if it is destroying the spec for every other form of content in the game.
Of course, I can do a lot of damage in M+ on pulls, but guess what, that’s because of Dark Void affecting so many targets and there, I’m dealing a lot of damage all thanks to Shadow Word: Pain being spread on so many targets.
Nerfing Shadow Word: Pain that much will make Shadow an unwanted spec in the M+ scene, well done.
Damage breakdowns for shadow M+ keys, at the least the ones myself and other shadows I know are doing (With COI COI COI SA SA Whispers) are 10-12% of overall across the board for beam, VT, apparitions, and void bolt, with pain slightly behind that. Everything shakes out to be really fairly even overall.
I haven’t disagreed that shadow’s M+ damage is getting hit. It sucks, as does it also suck for PvP. The only thing I have a problem with is the constant “BuT wE sUcK oN sInGlE tArGeT” that gets touted every single time shadow gets touched at all, when all it takes is a cursory glance at any single target fight to see that’s not the case.
Also wanna add that shadow’s damage in keys isn’t low right now, far from it, though not in a position that warrants nerfs that affect us in M+.
The thing shadow suffers from most, in both M+ and raids, is over reliance on specific azerite traits and combinations of traits. Balance has it pretty bad too with triple streaking, but requiring six specific major traits to get anything good out of shadow creates this vast chasm between the haves and have-nots before we even talk about ability to play the spec, or the traditional issue of lacking correct secondaries.
The haves are currently living it up topping charts in m+ and raids, whilst the have nots are struggling to get by and seeing yet more nerfs on the horizon for a spec they just aren’t seeing the numbers from. I don’t blame those people for being upset or worried, I don’t blame them for in some cases lashing out at what (From their perspective) are undeserved changes.
Yea it isn’t bad now in keys but just wait for 8.3.
I hope you’re still that confident about Shadow so good performance when it goes down in every form on content that isn’t raiding, and even there stops being top as people say it is right now.