So in P4 we got sort of attention coming from p3. We did not end up battling tanks in Dps and have had a good season overall. Balancing was kinda fine and all good
T1 6P was fun, even tho the range was and still is no acceptable ( 24 yards) it doesnt fit the kit at all and should be changed )
We did not get spell pushback, tbf we didnt need it in MC much and was OK for the circumstances
The Gaslighting was acceptable and people got used to the SwissArmyKnife mentality
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So now with this surprisingly short notice P5 incoming and BWL around the corner, we are in Despair
Major Points and i focus on the only realizable and reasonable things
-Spellpushback → heavily needed for BWL, thats just unfair and no fun to a perma casting class
-Tier 2 Bonus - Well its like many other classes, poor Design, no fun at all and not even worth it over old Tier 1 Bonus
But theres an easy fun fix to that. We want to keep the T1 6p bonus bcs its fun and fitting class spell. You obviously think the same by making us still play it over the new T2 Bonus and the Coreforged mechanic.
So based on that rather do this
→ Make old T1 6p Bonus the new T2 Coreforged 2set Bonus
→ That enables us to play the new T2 6p Bonus
To not make us to want to snapshot that Bonus pre Pull and have hard times to get raids to enable people to do that → Make the T2 6p Bonus dynamic and not snapshotable
→ So we end up having a straight forward Item dramaturgy by not wanting corefoged 6p but wanting the full new Set and holding on to the old T1 6p.
Even damage wise u know that would perfectly fit with the incoming VE nerf which should enable us to do more Damage. This is what u Gaslighted us with @Agrrend
VE and the hole SAK mentality. Now u realized what the spell actually does and Nerfed it. So give us something cool to comprehend this and be fair
If you let this stuff go live now we end up
-Getting utility gutted for nothing to make up for that
-on top of that heavily handicapped with way more spellpushback and to one of the most immobile classes ingame
-boring set design and basically useless new set bonus which will only be used for aoe ( which theres basically no boss fights in BWL )
-Mindflay issue with its casts range (24y) - we cant just run back and forth just to get the spell off so we forced to stay out of the caster camp to use our tier bonus
You let VE untouched for 4 seasons. argued the hole swiss army knife identity and now we kinda “outscale” the natural ceiling of what a spell possible could do → nerfed it by “half” but did not give us anything in return.
Damage would be the only reasonable and acceptable measure to make up for that. its not even out of line or smth you would have to think much about since Shadow is the still the very last dead dps spec ( with boomkins in p4 ).
So iam really seeing my solution about the tier sets - > it has the perfect quality of life with reasonable dmg boost to make up for the utlity cut
-despair buff actually only buffs 3 spells which havent been to 200% before ( SW:D / MS / MB), its a smal dps gain, no big deal
-still no scaling, which is fine ( well kinda have crit scaling but theres no crit to get ) as long as u give us different sources of dmg increase
-apparently we got the QOL things fixed for Fearward and Disease to cast in shadowform
i think people dont actually understand the biggest reason why the shadow priest support utility is so much worse than at the earlier stages of sod
in p1 and p2, the raid were very limited on slots since it was still 10 man
if you can only bring 10 specs to a raid, 1 single spec bringing a multitude of buffs actually has some very good value
warrior doesnt have to spend 5 globals applying sunder, the 1 rogue you are potentially bringing is unlikely to be running improved exposed armor since a single dps contributes a lot more to total raid dps when you are only a 10 man compared to a 20 man
if shadow then also brings a curse, you can safe yourself the warlock slot
having half the raid being passively healed probably also allows you to run 1 healer less
so there used to be really good value when we still had 10 mans
but then blizzard changed it to be primarily 20 mans and did not adjust shadow priest adequately
who cares about shadow having the option to apply curses when you can easily fit 1 warlock now that applies all 3 curses?
who cares about applying armor debuff when you can now either easily have a rogue run the expose armor build, or have enough warriors to quickly and reliably apply sunder stacks?
healing 1/4 of the raid is also much lower value than healing half the raid, especially when its much less restricting on how many healers you can run without giving up valuable dps utility
shadow priest utility used to be really valuable, but it has not kept up
mana return sounds good for the casters group, but just run 1 more ret or shaman, which also provide a lot of other utility, while also giving mana raid wide instead of only party wide
if blizzard wants to keep the shadow priest identity of swiss army knife then it needs buffs to its utility due to its utility naturally becoming lower value with increased raid size, however blizzard has already started going the route of nerfing all of its utility (eye useless, homis useless, healing nerfed by 50%) despite it already having lost a ton of value, so the logical conclusion is to buff the dps which has not happened to a sufficient level yet as shadow priest is currently looking to be dead last on the meters in p5
it seems like aggrend and team have completely lost the plot on what to do with shadow priest so its stuck in a state of being bad at everything
Lets actually just list all the utility shadow has and how it got nerfed
Eye of the Void → straight up dead rune slot now, PnS is mandatory for personal dps and warlocks got MoC in p4, completely invalidating it
Dispel → indirectly nerfed by palas getting dispel in p3 and then indirectly nerfed again by mages getting dispel in p4
Homunculi → horrible to use since still no pet control while also being suboptimal since expose armor exists. the ap and as reduction are outclassed by the aoe equivilants of warrior and druid
Vampiric Embrace healing has been nerfed by 50% in p5, but guess what, shaman has ancestral guidance and pala lay on hands, i dont see a utility tax for that. Boomies can also run wild growth
Vampiric touch mana return is outclassed by ret and shamans, but mana return is a very low value stat either way because of SoDs incredibly short avg fight duration
Shadow priest utility doesnt exist and we shouldnt be taxed for it
In terms of actual suggestions on how to fix shadow priest, here are a couple:
a.) Fix all the QoL stuff mentioned by Keinkrieger above
b.) Increase Shadow Form Bonus Damage from 30% to 100%. This would result in a 56% buff to our dps, putting us slightly below Retribution Paladin. Being top 2 for 1 phase after being bottom 3 for 4 phases in a row sounds fair
c.) Reduce Vampiric Embrace healing further, but make it so that any overhealing applied gets converted to a shield, thereby giving shadow priest some actually useful utility
d.) Reduce our dps further, but make it so that any overhealing applied gets converted to a shield, thereby giving shadow priest some actually useful utility
e.) Make Homunculi and Eye of the Void apply their debuffs as an aura, so that it permanently applies to any enemies that are close to them. Eye then has to also be changed to stay in melee or just apply the curse on AoE from range
f.) Make Vampiric Embrace healing raid wide
g.) Give any target healed by Vampiric Embrace a 10% damage buff for 10 seconds
h.) Add Misery from TBC
thats just a few ways to quickly fix shadow priest, and there are many more
i hope blizzard takes action sooner rather than later, or we might risk every shadow priest quitting the game once they realize the state they are in in p5
Same, in P2 when Mind spike came I went from healing to dpsing, the rotation if much more fun and I enjoy it alot, with T1 6p its fine but hard casting mind flay (like in vanilla) is not fun, so eaither Mind flay will go away again (liked how it worked with T1 p6 but I doubt we gonna use it all of the rest of the season).