- Dark Thought duration increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds).
- Developers’ notes: We’ve also decreased Dark Thought’s max stacks to 1, as 5 felt excessive. We are open to feedback about how this feels, as always.
- Mind Blast generates 8 Insanity (was 7).
- Mind Flay damage reduced by 15%.
- Developers’ notes: Shadow was proving too powerful in single target situations. This helps address that while still allowing Mind Blast to feel impactful.
- Mind Sear damage reduced by 15%.
- Devouring Plague initial hit reduced by 15%, and periodic damage reduced by ~12%.
- Auspicious Spirits generates 2 Insanity (was 1). Damage reduced to 15% (was 30%).
- Developers’ notes: This to differentiate it more from Psychic Link. Auspicious Spirits should be about getting more Devouring Plagues, while Psychic Link is better at spread damage.
- Searing Nightmare once again costs 30 Insanity (was 35).
- Developers’ notes: There is some gameplay value in getting 3 Searing Nightmares in a row when pooling Insanity, so we decided to revert this change.
OFC fun detected, nerf it… This Developer can’t learn how to properly make their own game since 5 years…
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From what I’ve seen and heard, this was sorely needed. Spriests were supposedly walking deities post-rework.
is this for a prepatch or just on beta?
Because if its for pre-patch …then why the actual fak you didnt nerf azerite instead of talents that stick with us?..
Also mindblast +1insanity…like realy?
Did sp need nerf? I have no idea on beta…but on prepatch theyre op because of azerite…so making a huge wall of nerfs is a bit confusing.
Edit: oh ok…we did get a separate nerf on prepatch aswell…im glad that we do get so much atention every time shadow pulls ahead…why do they take a time to nerf stuff on bfa prepatch? Will it be here realy that long?
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And yet in pvp there are many classes that do even more stupid damage, yet didn’t get a single nerf. Shadow nerfs would have been fine if all those other specs also got a nerf, that includes arms, ret, mm, sub, aff etc. But they didn’t. This is typical Blizzard nonsense as usual.
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Affliction just got a 35% nerf to UA’s dispel protection.
Sub was even more OP earlier and it’s been toned down. Obviously not enough, but I expect they’ll give it another pass.
Tuning is still underway, and it’d be unrealistic to expect every single change to happen simultaneously. I’m glad they’re addressing OP classes at all, and until release I’ll be looking forward to further nerfs of too strong classes and/or buffs to those that perform poorly.
So blizzard rework class for shadowland than nerf it bcs it was op in pre patch ?
Most of sp power atm comes from azerite power and system with its removal shadow dps would be under grand.
Along that i should remind you that shadow legendries in sl are trash , also there are not any good covenant ability for shadow .
I never understaood why some classes like rouges and warlock must be good in all game aspect like pvp mythic raids open world but some others specs like shadow ,feral , some shaman specs must be down under grand forever .
about these changes DT change seems fine , adding 1 insanity to mind blast is a joke , mind fly nerf OKAY fine but why did you nerf mind sear ?
DP nerf not acceptable since we generate all those insanity to use dp nerfing it would feel bad .
Overall i don’t have any hope for Spriest i can see they ll be benched for m+ for another expansion get destroyed in pvp and would be lame in world content adn average at best in raids and bcs of good game design we will see 3 rouges 1 tank 1 resto in all high mythic keys .
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Ok brother warlock share what you heard about SP in sl ? have you seen their covenant abilities soulbinds and legendries in sl ? or bcs you heard they are top dps in pre patch bcs of azerite treats you think the class must be be nerfed for shadowland ?
We got nerf on Azerite traits AND on beta, and one is unrelated to the other.
To be fair, shadow needed some nerfs. However other specs also need nerfs and should have been a priority (pvp only) such as MM and ret etc. But the nerfs they implemented on prepatch today I don’t even notice in PvP.
That is true, forgot about that one. But, even though it did absurd damage, the damage aff pumps out atm is still quite absurd. Not complaining though, I kinda like the fast meta. But like I said, they should have nerfed the biggest offenders first such as MM and Ret. The others I mentioned also need nerfs, if you’re gonna nerf shadow.
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This isn’t “fun detected” this is the fact shadow was overpowered in every section of the game lol… on beta they are overperforming by miles.
It’s overpowered on beta aswell it’s litterally been overperforming on beta since it’s release. Stop acting like shadow is so different on beta… it was never balanced…
This will just stop it being FoTM lmfao
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Yeah shadow which is garbage 90% of the time is FOTM now, sure, can’t we have good performing spec for a change? Blizzard won’t balance us, so id rather be on winning side, not being bottom tier for majority of expansion.
Shadow will even with these nerfs be a top tier damage dealer, so if you think the spec is fun to play it will still be fun to play after these nerfs. Personally I think fun and top tier are too different things, in WoW history there has been some top tier specs that has been extremly boring to play and there has been rather average specs with amazing rotations that just lacked abit of numbers.
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For me fun > performance ofc and i have it now, but why not both? 
these nerfs wont make shadow a bad specc lol, just far more balanced then u were… it’ll still be a leadiong DPSer.
i mained Shadow priest through BFA and it defintly wasnt garbage all the time, putting everything playstyle wise aside. my performance was perfectly fine in every area of the game playing a Shadow priest most of the time. it just wasnt the optimal choice. that dont make it garbage.
Ofcourse We are all bias to the classes we play.
but that doesnt mean our classes shgould be left to bench other classes…
Because its not exactly right that Shadow should be that strong players start benching other classes to gain more of them.
I pay very little attention to numbers in the prepatch.
I primarily look at what beta testers give feedback on.
You may not have enjoyed old Voidform but shadow was never garbage for 90% of the time.
Plus not being FotM but still being decent is Imo a way sweeter spot than being FotM.
Being FotM is basically asking for nerf and they will come sooner or later.
I would rather have a decent constant spec instead of being FotM for 4 months and then being nerfed into oblivion because of that.
Way out of line performance won’t last forever, if you find shadow fun you will stick with it, regardless if the spec is not way ahead of every other spec in the game.
Plus this version of shadow was never on live so it is pretty common to adjust things if they are way better than anything else.
And tbh i kinda hate fotm reroller, so i would prefer them to not to pollute Spiest community.
Do not nerf a thing from Spriests. Buff all other classes up. If Shadow Priest steals my Poly give me back CS silence and Deep Freeze and we are good. And return mana or resource management to EVERYBODY.