I don't think that we're competitive dps, either. I wish I had a recent WWS parse to prove it, but I don't. Either you take it on my say-so, or you call me a liar--I'm okay with either of those options. However, the top DPS slots in our 10-mans (which weren't even great for me in the first place), I'm lucky to place top 4 in a non-aoe situation, or above any similarly-geared melee class. Although I'm not the best-geared priest, my rotation is solid and doesn't vary much, and the fights I am thinking of as examples don't require me to move a whole lot (Razorscale, minus aoe-ing the adds; XT when I don't have the aoe slot; Kologarn; Ignis etc.).
So what, then, is the problem? A lot of people would say scaling is a huge issue--Shadow Priests are one of the worst scaling classes/specs in the game right now, second only perhaps to ... actually, I can't think of any. I'm going to go ahead and say we're the worst off in terms of scaling. Our gear gap is growing, and it's not getting any better.
I have heard all sorts of reasons for this gap:
- Needing to use Glyph of Mind Flay to even get close to the range of other caster dps classes. Range issues in general.
- Mind Flay sucks. A crappy spell damage coefficient due to snare component + glyph (effectively) removing snare component = bad spell.
- Haste simply sucks. It doesn't scale, it's too dependent on latency, and its usefulness as a stat hasn't kept pace with the buffs to other mechanics that tremendously increase the usefulness of crit rating.
- No "big nuke" on a cooldown for burn phases. Inner Focus does not a dps cooldown make. Some Shadow Priests I know don't even take that talent, for so long considered mandatory, with no appreciable impact on their capabilities.
- Various bugs the community has been aware of for ages that haven't gotten fixed; i.e. Shadow Weaving stacking (if anything nerfed, due to the "fixing" of the bug with Mind Flay that made it easy to build stacks), goofy mechanics with Shadow Word: Pain, etc.
- A long "ramp-up" time that prevents us from front-loading damage in any way, shape, or form. Ten seconds after mages are happily throwing Frostfire Bolts, we're still applying dots and haven't started the meat of our rotation.
- Sort of related: no spammable nuke.
- Cooldown on Devouring Plague (though to be fair, this is being fixed). As it stands, if we don't want to burn the cooldown, for example, on trash--it's 20% dps gone off the top.
- Dispersion has almost no PVE utility at all.
I have two major suggestions aimed at improving the scaling issues in particular. One, improve the spell damage coefficient on Mind Flay and drop the snare, or buff the range and drop the snare. Or (dare I say it) do both on the current glyph to simply make it into even more of a must-have PVE glyph, which is fine for me, and I think most Shadow Priests would also agree given the options available at the moment. The alternative is the make the baseline spell a no-snare, extended range, better spell damage coefficient version, and change the glyph so that it will return Mind Flay to the original version. Either way works for us.
And secondly, depending on which direction Blizzard wants to take design-wise for the class, either redesign our tree to not be so reliant on applying/maintaining our dots for optimal damage and give us a spammable nuke, or improve our dots to more directly scale with gear. Wowinsider floated the idea I've heard before of having haste give some kind of a benefit to our dots. As it stands, it does nothing for the dot component of our dps, and with us being so reliant on dots to do damage, effectively makes haste half as helpful as it should be.
I'd rather not sacrifice our reliance on dots--that'd effectively make Shadow Priests into a diet mage or warlock, an accusation levelled at us in the past.
But for the love of god, FIX MIND FLAY!
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Mind flay's coefficient is probably a little low but it's hard to tell without another three-second channelled spell to compare it with. The closest I can see is shadow bolt, at about 85 per cent, compared with mind flay's 75 ish. The snare, as always, is what's holding the spell back - which is ironic when you think most raiding shadow priests glyph to remove the snare. I personally think the only workable solution is to remove the snare and give the spell a base 30-yard range. The glyph can add a snare at the cost of 10 yards, say, for pvp priests.
ReplyDeleteBut range aside, I don't have a huge issue with mind flay. It does 200 per cent crits and it scales reasonably with all stats. As 'filler' spells go, it's a pretty good one imo.
What really holds us back is the way we are locked-in by dot timers that receive zero benefit from haste, although I guess that can't be the entire story because warlocks do not have the same issues. Buff haste and affliction locks will become massively overpowered.
I'd like to see our dots buffed - particularly shadow word: pain, which has gone from being one of the game's hardest hitting dots to little more than a tickle. And I'd like to see more benefit from haste, even though I don't have any ideas for how you'd manage it. This, I suspect, is Blizzard's problem too :P
Ugh, sorry for that reply. I wrote it in a hurry and didn't bother to re-read it. Here's a better one.
ReplyDelete"The snare, as always, is what's holding the spell back - which is ironic when you think most raiding shadow priests glyph to remove the snare."
This is the often-quoted example of a random vestige of vanilla WoW-era shadow priests that is inexplicably still around after the spec has been redesigned twice. It would be easy to up the damage coefficient via talent (maybe in Misery?) if Blizzard didn't want to completely redesign the ability (for example, in the interests of low-level shadow priests where the snare is still quite useful).
I was thinking haste could increase the damage coefficient on our dots, perhaps through a talent, for example Pain and Suffering which seems to fit the effect well. This change wouldn't solve the lack of frontload damage, but it would at least help with scaling and itemization issues. Adding an effect through a talent would be easier than changing the way the haste mechanic works, and hence easier to balance for other classes/specs. However, if you ask me, Aff locks could use some PVE love in the dot department -- they do in fact suffer from much the same things. Most PVE locks are some variation of destro, simply because applying and re-applying dots sucks for most encounters, despite the Aff spec revamp.
Maybe Affliction could simply get an identical talent. :)
My knowledge of locks is pretty slim, so I believe you when you tell me affliction locks are suffering too.
ReplyDeleteAs much as buffing dot power with haste would work, it doesn't feel like an elegant solution to me. Haste increases casting and attack speed; it shouldn't have anything to do with spell damage. Blizz did the same thing with crit for a while, until they realised it was much more appropriate for dots to actually crit than get a random boost from the rating.
There are only two solutions I can think of that would feel like appropriate applications for haste, but both have their problems:
1. Haste reduces the duration of your dots — essentially, your dots tick faster. I think from a stylistic perspective this is the best solution. It causes all kinds of practical headaches, and potentially puts a strain on mana in long fights, but if the ratio was applied correctly our spells would be able to fit together as neatly with any level of haste as they do with zero haste.
2. Second option is to revamp shadow to reduce the spec's dependance on dots. This could be done in a million different ways - coefficients, talents, spells, whatever. I don't like it as much because it would mean changing the nature of shadow, but it would at least ensure we gained more benefit from haste.
While I'm on a roll, I forgot to mention how utterly crap shadow word: death is and how desperately in need of some love it is. One idea I had was for it to apply a debuff to the target that inceased damage from dots - say, double damage for 6 seconds.
Option 1 isn't as attractive to me for mana reasons, as well as rotational reasons. It might work if the cooldown on Mind Blast was removed (another bit of vanilla's legacy), but left alone, more and more haste would not only increase mana consumption drastically but would make rotations more and more difficult to keep consistent.
ReplyDeleteOption two was what I was going for with my suggestion. The only change that is sensible to me, in that it wouldn't change the "feel" of shadow or cause practical issues when using a spell rotation, is to up spell damage coefficients as haste rating rises. I agree it doesn't fit with the nature of the stat, nor is it elegant--but it'd get the job done without changing our spec up.
But I think we're both agreed here that haste is shit. :) And yeah, SW:D isn't great, but I actually love it just for the mobility it gives me. Shadow Priests seriously lack that kind of tactical flexibility, with a main filler spell that is both channeled and a huge waste of mana if all three ticks don't go off once cast. If I feel like I'm going to have to clip a MF, I will usually move first and cast SW:D on the go to throw in a little extra damage. I also still have 4p T7 [:*(] so SW:D is also a bit better for me than other, better geared shadow priests.
I'm one of the best-geared people in my Ulduar progression guild, with many of my items in the top 3 BiS or even BiS itself, according to shadowpriest.com. My rotation is fine, I have little to no lag, and I know the fights backwards and forwards.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, lesser-geared moonkins, mages, hunters, DK's, and even an elemental shaman are out-dpsing me. I'm doing solid dps when it comes to boss fights where we don't move around a lot (XT, Kologarn, etc), but it's the non-aoe trash and the very mobile fights with long periods of non-dpsing (Razorscale comes to mind, as does Hodir) that kill my dps for the evening.
Because you are absolutely right - we have no front-end damage and it takes a while for our damage to start pouring in. For trash mobs that die quickly and aren't grouped together, our dps really takes a dive. Our primary spell (Mind Flay) is a channeled spell, so our lack of mobility greatly affects our dps on fights where we have to move around.
And yeah ... haste sucks. I still take it when I can, though - the less time MF has to complete its ticks, the more time I have to move around.
Clearly, no one on the Blizzard development team plays a shadow priest. :-P
(I'm one of those that do not use Inner Focus - I never, ever run out of mana and I see no need to have a mana-less spell once every few minutes.)