Shadow Priest Shadowlands development path

Classes Priest
1

Disclaimer.
Here I want to show how Devs balance spriest since the expansion release till now. I will include only “released” patch notes that were officially announced with maybe just a few ptr data.

I. Shadowlands Content Update Notes. Release of the expansion.

I don’t want to cover rework details here. It was needed and Blizzard made some. Someone liked it, someone don’t. But we all see a lot of topics about such design issues and that nothing ever changed since then. So, let’s just try to pay attention on things that can be explicitly or implicitly considered as buffs and nerfs.

  1. Mind Blasts Insanity generation is now 8 (was 12). - Nerf
    Vampiric Touch’s Insanity generation is now 5 (was 6). - Nerf
    Void Bolt’s Insanity generation is now 15 (was 20). - Nerf
    Mind Sear Insanity generation is now 6 (was 8). - Nerf.

These changes were made to make our insanity flow more fluent and to avoid overcapping issues. Generally, for AoE situations it was a nerf because pretty early we ran into issues of overcapping during AoE and such adjustements couldn’t do anything about that. For single target you can consider it as neither nerf nor buff. For 3-5 targets it was nerf because such amount of targets is our pain since the beginning.

  1. Dark Thoughts duration has been increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds). - Buff

  2. Mind Flay damage has been reduced by 15%. - Nerf
    Mind Sear damage has been reduced by 15%. - Nerf

  3. Devouring Plague’s initial damage has been reduced by 15% and its periodic damage has been reduced by 12%. - Nerf.

  4. Searing Nightmare Insanity cost has been reduced to 30 (was 35). - Kinda buff.
    Anyway the further into expansion we go the little we get from this.

  5. Auspicious Spirits now generates 2 Insanity (was 1) and its damage increase to Shadowy Apparitions has been reduced to 15% (was 30%). - Nerf

  6. Shadow Crash no longer has 3 charges and no longer applies a Shadow Crash damage vulnerability debuff on targets hit. Shadow Crash now deals 100% more damage and is on a 30 second cooldown (was 45 seconds). - not sure if “3 charges” SC ever been on live and might not last long on ptr as well, so with 100% more damage and cd reduction I believe it should be taken as Buff.

  7. Void Torrent’s duration reduced to 3 seconds (was 4 seconds) and damage increased by 20%. Void Torrent now generates 60 Insanity over its duration (was 30), no longer refreshes your damage over time effects, and its cooldown has decreased to 30 seconds (was 45 seconds). - Buff

II. 9.0.5 Update Notes.

  1. Mastery: Shadow Weaving no longer benefits multiple times from damage amplifying effects. - Nerf.

III. Chains of Domination Content Update Notes.

  1. Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 25%. - Buff for both st and aoe.

  2. Vampiric Touch damage increased by 25%. - Buff for single and cleave situations. Irrelevant for 15-20 keys in AoE situations.

  3. Devouring Plague damage reduced by 18%. - Nerf

  4. Shadowflame Prism Shadowflame Rift damage reduced by 16%. - Nerf

  5. Talbadar’s Stratagem Mind Blast’s damage increase reduced by 8%. - Nerf

  6. Dissonant Echoes now grants 20% increased Void Bolt damage (was 35%). - Nerf

IV. 9.1.5 Content Update Notes.

  1. Surrender to Madness duration increased to 30 seconds (was 25 seconds). - Buff

  2. Psychic Link (Talent) deals 60% of Mind Blast’s damage (was 50%). - Buff.

Both changes didn’t make any impact on spriest state.

V. Shadowlands: Eternity’s End Content Update Notes.

  1. Pallid Command’s (Necrolord Runecarving Power) Rattling Mage’s Unholy Bolt damage has been reduced by 40%, and Brooding Cleric’s Stitch Wounds healing has been reduced by 5%. - Nerf.

Also I find it important to notice that our 4-piece bonus Living Shadow was also 40% nerfed during ptr balance cycles and since it wasn’t made on “release candidate” ptr patch that change wasn’t included in official patch notes.

VI. Shadowlands 9.2.5 Content Update Notes.

Nothing.

Buffs - 8 (most of them did not have any impact on performance or have almost irrelevant one).
Nerfs - 16.
Some changes I counted twice: 1 time for buff and 1 time for nerf.

So, as you can see even if we just compare number of buffs and nerfs without analysing was it good, neccessary or bad, spriest recieved 100% more nerfs than buffs. Was spriest somewhere OP or ridiculously broken? No.
Another funny part that almost all spriest buffs did nothing to both aoe and st dps as it was addressed to spells/talents that spriests don’t use. And as we can see it’s still being unused.
With such “buffs” and nothing done to AoE damage, Spriest got so many nerfs to his core/essential spells. If not all but almost every change was a st nerf.

Currently I don’t have an access to Warcraftlogs but when I checked it last time I didn’t see any encounter to overwhelmingly consist of spriests.

PS. What do you think we get in s4? Buffs, nerfs or nothing at all?

2

Nothing at all. They just dont give a f. Too busy tunning ww monks and destro locks over and over again.

3

I’m guessing tiny tweaks to dot values and an obnoxious legendary power. Bet you 5 of whatever the best flask is at the time.
And we’ll probably manage okay, while being even more stressed and confused about the multitude of gameplay styles inside the tree. And I’ll look at my damage graph and the 20 damage sources and wonder just exactly how to improve.

4

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.