I wanna use this opportunity to adress the recent nerf of Shadow Word: Death. I’m going to keep this short and concise, because there’s really not much to say other than that Shadow Word: Death has been nerfed to a point where it’s pretty much useless now.
I agree, it needed a nerf, but in my own opinion, I feel you (Blizzard) went a little overboard with it, and it could use some adjustment.
As a level 26 priest the spell does 168 - 195 shadow damage. Unfortunately, due to this considerable gap and damage reduction I find myself inflicting 50 % of the damage on me quite often because the spell is too weak to hit the execution mark. You are forced to wait til the subjects health is way below 190 HP, and even then it still has a hard time doing what it’s supposed to be doing, forcing you to go even lower in order to prevent damage penalty. By then it’s really just pointless because your other spells suchs as Shadow Word, Void Plague, Homunculi and Mind Flay will be doing their portion of the damage, so you’ll gain absolutely nothing other than “potentially” killing the enemy 1 second faster than what you would without it.
I guess one could argue that 1 second is enough to save ones life and yeah, sure, that’s a valid opinion, but it still hits like a wet noodle. Might as well call it “Shadow Word: Poke”.
Maybe it would be a better idea to add percentage damage instead based on target health, or percentage damage based on amount of priest spells that are active on the target? I don’t know. Would love to hear what anyone else thinks.
Peace.
3 Likes
Its an execute. At lvl 26, 200 dmg is a fair chunk of an average mobs health.
On my lvl 24 priest it conscistently finishes off mobs at 150 - 170 health.
1 Like
I appreciate your opinion, but I still think it’s a bit over nerfed, though, but I’m happy you don’t have any issues with it.
I would love to see a change to the spell too. I understand the nerf but as an execute it is too weak. Maybe ad a little bonus damage to the spell when used on an enemy below 25 or 30 percent.
4 Likes
Yeah, as an execute spell it is too weak. A little bonus damage based on target health below a certain threshold is not a bad idea, actually. There are many ways of improving it, but still keep it within a reasonable range of fairness.
500-800 noncrit is bad? On an instacast? Without an execute range requirement? A spell, which primary purpose is to be used to break out of CC, doing more than a hardcast, is bad? Might wanna continue leveling that war there bud.
3 Likes
It is bad for the drawback we have. Sure it is good to break cc but this is not always the case.
And it would actually help sp a bit in PvE content cause sp is getting weaker each ID compared to most other casters.
Its anything but bad. Shadowburn, a spell on the same cooldown, with a higher mana cost, and a soul shard requirement (and talent point) does half the damage than SW:D. Stop complaining about stupid sht. We have a fully geared SP in our raid and he tops damage in most fights. In some he doesn’t, all depends on the fight. But on the hardest ones he is at the top, which are the ones that matter.
You want some more training wheels or u actually wanna l2p? Skill issue
I agree, it no longer removes 50% of the mobs/player hp. Clearly overnerfed
/s
Would be a good idea to make it a true execute and only usable at 20% hp, you know like warriors execute ability
2 Likes
Nah, then it loses whats cool about it and requires some degree of skill - breaking out of CCs
Shadowburn is far to weak that is true but has nothing to do with swd. You cannot compare a rune spell with a classic talent from 2004. It was always weak in classic and has it niche usage.
And yes it is clearly a skill issue but not from me or your sp in ur raid. When a sp is topping the meters on most fights in the current state of p2 most of the other dps should check their logs!
Shadowburn was never weak. You have no idea what you are talking about. You wanna buff runes even more? They all need to be tuned down to be more like baseline abilities, so if anything, it needs to get nerfed more. Otherwise we can all run around specless and just use runes
No not buff the runes but maybe buff some other spells or talents baseline or yes just simple nerf all of the runes.
shadow should not be top dmg in most fights. Im averaging 90-95 parses, and im definitly behind most of my raidmates with comparable parses.
Still, i think shadow is in a pretty decent spot. Pvp wise, shadow is VERY strong 1v1, and also really good in group pvp - most people dont realize that adding 6 magic debuffs with 1 gcd is pretty amazing and totally denies the potential to dispell magic efficiently (aoe swp + shadow debuff).
In PVE while we shadows cant top the meters compared to most other specs with similar gear and skill, we have vampiric embrace, which allows us to skip healers completely.
We currently run 1 priest for healing purposes in gnomeregan. The other heal is myself as a shadow. On Grubis, Viscious fallout, Pummler, the priest healer switches to dmg runes and does not heal at all.
Having 250 hps whilst dealing 500 dps on menagerie and being at the same healing value on the tanks as the designated healer is amazing.
Its the best single target pve rune, used in every scenario that is not pure aoe dmg at 4+ targets.
Its the best pvp rune by far.
Oh and btw at lvl 40 with some gear it hits for a decent chunk.
Prenerf i could just erase people in pvp with it, not even funny.
SWD was dealing 1.2k+ damage as an instant cast without a big drawback besides the recoil, which was too much in PvP, hence the nerf. It was literally almost one-shotting fresh lvl 40s and anything below in the first two weeks when no one had more stamina gear.
They buffed the DoT as a result and to be fair, getting the two SP DoTs right now means almost dying just from that for many classes.
I do think SP needs more sustained damage in PvE (probably through Mind Spike, Blast or Flay) but imho SWD is fine for now. It still hits hard.
1 Like
I would definitly not disagree wit hhaving more PVE dmg as a shadow.
But you have to keep in mind that a shadowpriest has 150% of his DPS as raw healing onto his group (the 30% dmg to heal conversion gets applied to everyone, the amount is not split). Basically a better permanent warlocks leech on every member of the group.
Also this number only gets higher with better gear, since the heal of vampiric embrace can, for whatever reasons, crit.
We already joked about having shadowpriests for every grp in 20/40 man content, to completely trivialize aoe dmg and drastically reduce the amount of healers needed.
https://de.sod.warcraftlogs.com/reports/LBN6gFhT9ACrwfQR#fight=26&type=healing
thats one fight of one of my shadows in SoD. The offheal is crazy, and thats even with a healer that tries hard to get high healing values, obviously less heal from a dedicated healer will further rise the amount of heal you actually produce from vampiric embrace.
1 Like
They can include a hidden aura to VE that reduces healing from rune abilities to compensate for any sustained PvE buffs. However, I think this health leech will always be one of their core strengths and I can see them getting Vampiric Touch in the future as well.
Shadowpriests will need to be nerfed in some way, the offhealing provided by VE is far too strong, the DOTs are far too strong for single GCDs, etc
Move damage to casts and add overall damage for PVE. Nerf DOTs. Nerf VE.
Yeah not nerfed enough yet , the burst and summinonings is closer to A necromancer and not A shadow priest. And with disperse on top Even Worse. The 1 global buttons for dots and insta dmg is ridicilous. And Lets not forget the good old blackout. With hoj the best stun in the game.
And guess What its rng and passive from A talent
I think they should not nerf VE. Its too much fun having this insane offheal.
There is one nerf in particular that i would recommend as a shadowpriest enjoyer myself.
But i highly doubt blizzard would consider this, since for some strange reasons they always refuse to nerf/buff pve/pvp seperately.
The nerf im talking about is to remove the -50% manacost of shadowform in pvp scenarios. That is suprisingly where a lot of power comes from in BGS/Stv, the ability to completely ignore that mana is a ressource to even consider.
I can literally spam SW:P with aoe rune forever, and would basically never think about my mana.
And i know that with every use of it, i totally denie the enemy teams dispeller, since i trade 6 magic debuffs (3x sw:p, 3x shadow dmg increase debuff), and potentially 3x blackout on one GCD against a double magic dispell of a priest on one GCD.
Without the reduced manacost shadowpriest would still be nice, but not that spammy opressive in group pvp.
1 Like