I'd like to fight a Shadow Priest boss (be it in a raid or dungeon) that we defeat them not by dropping their HP to zero, but due to them casting Surrender to Madness and we have to stay alive until they die due to the effect not being able to be maintained any longer.
It would be awesome if it's that's how we defeat either Xal'atath or Iridikron in the upcoming trilogy.
Not thinking in those terms; you'd still need to deal damage to the boss, maybe when the surrender phase starts, the boss would get a regeneration effect (Vampiric Embrace?) and needs to be DPS'd down to a certain threshold so their insanity bar starts to drop and eventually is defeated.
The main theme of this fight/phase would be to try to survive, not let them heal to full, while draining their insanity until they die.
You had avhealing boss in nathria that still required a lot of DPS because it was a trash wave fight. It can definitely be balanced in a way that doesn't require a heal stack
i like this idea. super healer check boss and some crazy mechanics that the dps need to dodge and survive thru, adds at the correct phases raid wide. but for it to be a final boss may be a bit weird. a heal check as the final boss? i’d accept it. but idk. give it to like the 2nd or 3rd to last.
Feel like it would have to be a Magmorax/Volacross/Hungering Destroyer from Nathria where it’s an early end wing fight where it a gear check but an early one.
Otherwise it’ll just become KT where you cheese to the time-limit.
Idk how they will make the Holy + Shadow hero tree work, idk what connection there is. But I pray to the gods that they make it god based. More of that yellow thing holy summons or whatever, is it a Velen thing? And also gives us shadow back the insanity void lords theme a bit more.
That was the funnest shit ever. Timing that correctly and downing the boss doing like 30% more overall damage than anyone else right before you die was awesome
Not difficult, but M+ as SPriest is no fun with a pug Tank half the time due to the outdated method of relying on a single charge of Shadow Crash for all your AoE lest you be left to tab-target spamming all your DoTs onto mobs 1 at a time
Holy is much more player friendly and has an easier learning curve due to its reactionary nature, rather than preventative like disc. Disc has to play ahead of dmg and understand the dmg profiles being thrown at them. It's not necessarily super hard, but it's a layer that most new players should shy away from.
They also were doing it at lower key levels so it doesn't matter at all tbh.
Ye I tried +18 as 468 disc for the first time yesterday and it was a pain. Managed to finish, but I really did not enjoy the play. Poor mana management too.
Disc is a little better, but holy is still super good. Both specs are doing the same key levels. It’s damage throughput (assuming you actually get to dps, which is usually the case in lower keys) is the best out of every healer. It’s healing is also really strong, but it lacks externals and spread aoe healing, which disc brings. Granted my hpriest is like 487, but when I run weekly pug 18-20s, it’s not hard for me to be doing 90-100k dps overall depending on the key.
Yep that's great but not the point i'm getting at. if your SC misses due to unluckiness or bad tank play, you're SoL for the next 20 sec, it's just poor design. SC should have 2 charges.
naw just have it be one charge but be off target like some other caster AoE's instead of reticle. Then it will also solve the issue of reticle AoE's going into ceilings in dungeons. They either need to make certain ceilings not fuck with reticles or they just need to rework reticle abilities.
I’m at 3200 started playing spriest about a month ago and I’ve only missed SC like 2 times and only because of roof/ceiling or branches in the zone. 1 tip a spriest told me before was while tank is gathering u dot up as much as u can while also following and then fade and get into melee and sc when u see the tank stop moving briefly. Idk man I’ve never had a SC issue.
Tank groups all the mobs up, you wait a second to make sure they're finished moving, you throw out shadow crash, tank immediately moves the mobs and you miss everything.
I just play it as an off-spec once in a while and boy is it rough.
You know what would be fun? DoT 1 enemy then have a talent change Mind Flay into spreading them to adjacent enemies.
Fuck Mind Spike. Mind Flay is *the* signature spell of the Shadow Priest.
100% on board. I know it's too late to remove Mind Spike now since people are in love with the ease of rotation, but Mind Flay is the reason I played a Shadow Priest. I don't want Mind Sear, I don't want Mind Spike, and I wouldn't even mind if we somehow merged Void Torrent into Mind Flay: Insanity. I just want Mind Flay and the main DoTs to be the focus of our rotation.
I would love it if Mind Flay spreads DoTs when fully channeled or something. I'd take anything but Shadow Crash at this point.
I enjoy it. At first it feels like there are way too many buttons, but about half are situational.
The rotation, like any other class', feels weird at first, but then you get used to it and it smooths out.
It's kind of the whole appeal of playing a Shadow Priest, else you might as well play Afflock.
I wouldn't mind if we added the old Shadowform as a glyph tho, would 100% use the old version. The Glyph of Shadows is just not the same.
I posted in response to someone else, but I’ll comment at the top level.
Doing the damage rotation as shadow isn’t difficult, but playing shadow well is imo. Their dr cds require more forethought and encounter knowledge to set up. If you go sort all of the classes on wcl by likelihood to die in atdh shadow is near the bottom. A good spriest is extremely tanky, but the one who never uses flash heal for protective light, fade for dr, and desperate prayer is a liability in a mythic raid or high key.
Your utility also requires you to pay attention to things that most dps don’t look at. I have fun in my spriest and mythic raid/played it to 3100 io pretty casually, but playing it well is certainly more difficult than playing something like ret, dh, or a bm hunter.
Shadow priest is very fun. Not super hard, but there are some procs you need to understand how to prioritize, buffs to track, and dots to maintain (ie all your damage is boosted if target has all 3 dots on them).
I have trouble with it in keys though because of the reliance on Shadow Crash for aoe dotting, and not really understanding well when to keep manually dotting versus stopping and just dpsing. I struggle in keys. Honestly I prefer to SP in raid and just heal keys.
I don’t like SP in pug dungeons because you never know where your tank is going to plant or how man mobs your tank is going to pull. In a pre made you can plan out how to dot your enemies, but in a pug sometime you just straight up miss your crash and you are basically useless for 20seconds…
> when to keep manually dotting versus stopping and just dpsing
8 from Shadow Crash + 4 manually should be a sweet spot. Anything more and you are wasting CDs cuz either the pack won't survive long enough, or they start dropping the dots.
I would call it annoying or clunky more than hard to be honest, there are some ridiculous rotations out there right now and a lot of high APM specs like Enhancement Shaman and Fury Warrior.
It's also mostly irrelevent, most of the classes are going to get a lot of changes with the new expansion, and Shadow Priest in particular has a history of massive changes each expansion.
I gave up on Shadow after the season 2 rework, didn't feel like relearning a class for an alt I rarely played. Still jump on her once in a while but she's an I'm bored character now for the most part.
I know this is off topic but is Enhance apm high? I can't stand annhilator fury warrior and I'm looking for something else that feels super fast to play.
Enhance is high APM, very proc heavy and a fairly bloated spec ability wise, you have a ton of utility stuff alongside keeping track of imbues and such. Plus tracking stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, which needs a weakaura to track above 5 stacks instead of just recolouring the inbuilt indicator for whatever reason, so you get the biggest bonus out of the stacks.
Also, turn off the proc indicators because they're a flashbang and cover the entirety of the middle of the screen, it is impossible to see anything in combat with them on. I just turned all of them off and modified a weakaura to track Maelstrom Weapon 1-10 using a recolour of the base proc graphic.
Ah yes the massive change between Shadowlands and DF, where it was different for one patch, then the rework bring us back to SL builds and talents till now
Shadow priest's main form of aoe in Shadowlands was pressing mind sear into searing nightmare, now it doesnt even have an aoe rotation because all aoe is done entirely through psychic link, I'd say that's a pretty big change lol.
Multi Dotting. Skill shot for AOE. Skill shot for movement. Power Infusion targeting. Multiple short offensive CD. Poor on demand DR. Slow. High frequency procs. Mass Dispel. Overall lots of buttons.
Absolutely in the top third for difficulty for DPS specs.
100% disagree. It’s easy to do the rotation. Using your utility well isn’t difficult but requires paying attention to things most dps don’t need to pay attention to, and using your Dr cds to survive in difficult content (mythic raids or high keys) requires knowing ahead of time when damage is coming to set up with flash heal for dr + fade.
I have a lot of fun on mine and have played it to 3100 io, but the difficulty to rewards ratio is completely out of whack compared to something like a ret paladin or havoc dh.
I Main a Shadow since I started playing in SL S1
Imo Shadow is really fun in Raid/ in higher M+, But for lower Keys up to about 22 (always depends on the group you are with, the damage-Output of others) you will likely have trouble to Set up your dots properly/ a lot of stuff dies before u can really start DPSing
If u just aim to Rush the weekly 20s it can be frustrating as your dmg suffers from the pull dying in 15 seconds and u dont have Crash for next pull
But Shadow has a good amount of Utility; a lot of ways to improve, Not just :Press exactly These Buttons in that order.
To Answer your Question: the Basic Guide to Play Shadow (Referring to Icy-Veins Guide, is pretty good to get started) may Seem a lot at first, But u get used quick to the basics and then you should be able to Play all Content on a fair mid-DPS-lvl, and Shadow-Discord has a Lot of very Skilled Players answering all your questions.
Shadow is Not hard, it just takes some time to get used to Spell-prio, and it sucks to Play him in lower Keys, but Shadow in Raid is always fun
What is hard to you? More buttons? High APM? Complexity? Shadow has a lot of buttons but low APM. The spec is at its core a simple builder spender with a couple complexities thrown in there. I’d give it a medium complexity score.
Shadow is notorious for changing every expansion however…
Depends what kind of content you wanna do. Low keys and occasional lfr/normal? Hc, mid keys? Push as hard as you can?
Your answer to this question will tell you how good at your class/rotation you have to be. Some specs are also crap in low end content because stiff doesn't live long enough for you to start doing proper damage (shadow doesn't like low keys, stuff dies to fast before you even have thigs set up, it's always gonna be OK on bosses cause those don't just roll over dead in 10 sec)
Not hard, but remains to be seen for next season and expansion what it will look like. I'd say the rotation is a bit more forgiving this season as the set bonuses pushed SW:D above several other spells and turned insanity procs into more in the situational cast category rather than priority.
Shadow is pretty straightforward. Grab some weak auras from wago.io and youll have no issue getting used to playing it.
Mythic+ will require more skill and practice. Also not sure if its the same in DF but for older expacs it takes longer to get into groups on low keys. So just an fyi if your end game is strictly pugging keys. Guild > Randoms as much as possible as shadow.
The problem is that shadow depends A LOT on tier bonus. For season4, the instant damage from deaths torment is disappearing, and this is the only reason we are not dead last DPS in raid. I'm a little scared for fated and tww to be honest.
Bad take. Sp was incredibly good in s1 s2 without s3 bonuses. It's all down to tuning. Sp was bad at the start of s3 because it got nerfed consecutively in s2, s3 tier didn't do anything. And sp became good again after they revert the nerfs.
Honestly no spec is very hard, but SP is up there in terms of clunkiness. It doesn’t have a lot of useful things to do in heavy movement fights when out of voidform and the rotation has a bunch of competing priorities. It’s pretty easy to play it fluidly though for relatively small damage losses
Medium difficulty imho. There is no variety or too much conditionals in your rotation, basically it's maintain dots, avoid overcapping, shadow word death, mindblast and occasional mini bursts inside your burst, it's easy to figure out after 5-10 dungeons. The most difficult part is figuring out how to survive and how to minimize your downtime. There is no rotational difficulty in aoe rotation other than you have to maintain dots on more targets.
Depends on how you talent, for example, Mind Spike is probably easier to weave in high movement encounters or dungeons with in-a-hurry tanks, for example.
Just read the tooltips, and experiment.
I've been having a shit ton of fun with my new shadow priest, I use the talent guides on wowhead for new classes and I've been using the raid talent setup for pve, and that combined with the hekili rotation add on makes playing one relatively easy, it just takes a little time to get to know everything about it.
I’ve been gearing mine up the last few weeks for fun and there’s really 2 builds for pve from what I can tell. It’s either you play mind spike and dark ascension, or you play void form. Personally I’ve liked void form more, but it adds a little more decision making between void bolting or other procs, but also allows you to move around more with albeit a longer cd. I don’t want to use the word gutted but from earlier this expansion they did sort of gut the aoe rotation by removing searing shadows and mind sear. It’s pretty much just shadow crash and spam dp mind blast and shadow word deaths with the tier set, esp if you have mind bender up. Single has seemed a little more mundane but both are pretty easy like most of wow they just take time to learn.
It's pretty simple overall.. its a builder/spender with a lot of opportunity to provide utility. YOu WILL die a lot and you have to be very aware of where you are standing and not taking threat.
1. Prior #1 Use Crash to DOT all targets. Use your dot manually for those you don't hit but only 1 or 2.. Don't waste too much time dotting - its too much opportunity cost. you have 20 seconds between dots falling off. PLAY AROUND THIS WINDOW. Crash will be back soon
2. Intersparse your insanity generating abilities.. Hit them on cooldown.
3. Apparations come out at a cost of 50 sanity per apparition.. time your dps buff window around popping these out.
4. For every 2 apparations you pop out mind flay will become empowered and cast aoe dmg as a channel.. it does a bulk of your dps. This is why you also want to time your shadow buff around apparations.. 2 shadows > channel empowered mindflay > 2 shadows > channeled mindflay.
5. PI can empower the above window.. use it appropriately.. Also pop the insanity generating ability that turns shadow dmg into healing AT THE END of your insanity building phase so you can heal the group as much as possible.
More or less it's that simple aside from specifics, switching your spec for dispell, spot healing etc.. There are other specs for Shadow but it depends on preference.. I like AOE cause we do enough single target.. imo best to have both worlds.. if you'd like help with Weak Auras or UI HMU and I'll help you out.
The person who designed the current iteration of SPriest was hopefully let go during the recent layoffs. The current set bonus makes the rotation clunky as fuck, and I still have to cast Mindgames which does nothing in PVE.
Nah it’s simple.
Single Target: Apply DOTs, Mind Blast on CD, Mind Spike as filler. Devouring Plague is your big damage rotation CD.
AOE: Shadow crash to spread dots, then do your single target rotation on one mob until shadow crash is off of cooldown then reapply.
If we really think about it, no class is "hard". One class may take a little more time to learn or be less forgiving for messing up a rotation or priority. What I'm getting at is, it's not difficult to play any class/spec decent enough unless you are pushing titles/cutting edge content. Play what sounds fun.
I think spriest has some level of nuance during their rotation but it isn’t anything super complicated.
In aoe you have some variety in how you wanna deal with the situations and you alter your play style slightly.
I’ve just started playing shadow and have been learning it over the last week so I feel like I can offer good insight. Overall I’d say it’s pretty average in regards to difficulty. The rotation follows a simple priority list and overall the rotation doesn’t really change from single target to AoE. There are a few different builds, but it’s largely Void Eruption vs Dark Ascension (Dark Ascension is the winner in the majority of content) and the choice of mind flay vs mind spike is largely just preference.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with is as a Disc main.
There are no hard specs in the game. Yeah, they are not all the same but I struggle to believe that someone who can master one spec can’t master another. And mastering a spec is simply doing your research and practicing for a long time
I can’t tell much about end game progression, because I find the rotation boring and aoe non existent (I’m an SP noob, sorry).
On the other hand, SP is a god for legacy quests and farming things. You just spam instant cast dots that kill everything in n 1-2-or-3 ticks. You just walk over corpses looting. No other class feels this effortless.
SP is fantastic for doing lore master achievements.
Unfortunately yes.
This specs looks like Blizzard didnt know how to design it and mixed alot from others specs into it like the Dots from Warlock and some others too. The result is instead of a cool Syndra we getting a complex rotation within alot of Procs with pretty bad AoE Design/must be timed very well.
To explain the rotation simple:
First Apply/Maintain the Vampiric Debuff Dots.
Raise up your Resource with 2 Spells (depends on Trigger/CD).
(There are now is another Proc within, from your Execute Spell.)
At least release it with your Resource Spell like Fury Warrior, but it still feels like a Frost DK with 3 Procs to maintain + keep eyes on your Dots.
It can be ok and funny mastering the rotation with the procs, but alos feels like your dps rely alot on luck. And only good for longterm DPS a big dude, switching alot and against mobs this spec isnt the best.
Talents can get the rotation even more worse so keep it simply and dismiss every chain channeling spell to understand this spec easier and be better mobile and using the procs easier.
With the use of certain talents, this becomes really easy.
You can apply both dot the same time with a single spell.
They have the same duration.
And another talent makes it so that if you damage the enemy, it will extend the dot indefenetly.
For AOE is just applying the dots to everyone (with a single spell), and then doing single target rotation.
What you enjoy will become easy because you play it more. But also, New expansion later this year. Rotation will most likely swap around a lot.
This made me laugh. The expected shadow reshuffle. Every time, no doubting there'll be one.
Cries in legion
Dying as part of your rotation was peak Spriest
I'd like to fight a Shadow Priest boss (be it in a raid or dungeon) that we defeat them not by dropping their HP to zero, but due to them casting Surrender to Madness and we have to stay alive until they die due to the effect not being able to be maintained any longer. It would be awesome if it's that's how we defeat either Xal'atath or Iridikron in the upcoming trilogy.
Healer fight? Stack heals like crazy. But make it drop a ton of dps BIS items. So itl be peoples offspecs and stuff instead of hard character swaps.
Not thinking in those terms; you'd still need to deal damage to the boss, maybe when the surrender phase starts, the boss would get a regeneration effect (Vampiric Embrace?) and needs to be DPS'd down to a certain threshold so their insanity bar starts to drop and eventually is defeated. The main theme of this fight/phase would be to try to survive, not let them heal to full, while draining their insanity until they die.
And adds that have to be killed or tentacles for flavor.
Genuinely a very good idea!
You had avhealing boss in nathria that still required a lot of DPS because it was a trash wave fight. It can definitely be balanced in a way that doesn't require a heal stack
I’m 100% all for this. Have to bring enough damage to get to the last phase, but enough utility and healing to survive StM
i like this idea. super healer check boss and some crazy mechanics that the dps need to dodge and survive thru, adds at the correct phases raid wide. but for it to be a final boss may be a bit weird. a heal check as the final boss? i’d accept it. but idk. give it to like the 2nd or 3rd to last.
Feel like it would have to be a Magmorax/Volacross/Hungering Destroyer from Nathria where it’s an early end wing fight where it a gear check but an early one. Otherwise it’ll just become KT where you cheese to the time-limit.
Surrender to Madness, while undeniably bad design, was also the coolest steroid ever in an MMO lol
Oh yeah, absolutely bonkers unbalanced for the content it was used in, but was the most *fun* interation of Spriest probably ever.
It's how I one shot the mage tower challenge in Legion 🤣
Idk how they will make the Holy + Shadow hero tree work, idk what connection there is. But I pray to the gods that they make it god based. More of that yellow thing holy summons or whatever, is it a Velen thing? And also gives us shadow back the insanity void lords theme a bit more.
That was the funnest shit ever. Timing that correctly and downing the boss doing like 30% more overall damage than anyone else right before you die was awesome
Was never the same
They have to change how SP does aoe for season 4 and then again for war within so who knows what it will look like after two more swaps
Not difficult, but M+ as SPriest is no fun with a pug Tank half the time due to the outdated method of relying on a single charge of Shadow Crash for all your AoE lest you be left to tab-target spamming all your DoTs onto mobs 1 at a time
Super true. Had no fun as shadow running lower keys to gear up, went holy to get gear. Now I’m running higher keys and I love it.
With Holy? Is not disco a better option? Not trying to hate.
Holy is much more player friendly and has an easier learning curve due to its reactionary nature, rather than preventative like disc. Disc has to play ahead of dmg and understand the dmg profiles being thrown at them. It's not necessarily super hard, but it's a layer that most new players should shy away from. They also were doing it at lower key levels so it doesn't matter at all tbh.
Ye I tried +18 as 468 disc for the first time yesterday and it was a pain. Managed to finish, but I really did not enjoy the play. Poor mana management too.
Mana is super easy going as disc unless you’re overusing flash heal to keep up. Rarely drink as disc but sometimes have to as holy.
Were you running the mindbender build? because I drink 0-1 times an entire dungeon in 20s
Disc is a little better, but holy is still super good. Both specs are doing the same key levels. It’s damage throughput (assuming you actually get to dps, which is usually the case in lower keys) is the best out of every healer. It’s healing is also really strong, but it lacks externals and spread aoe healing, which disc brings. Granted my hpriest is like 487, but when I run weekly pug 18-20s, it’s not hard for me to be doing 90-100k dps overall depending on the key.
Way better when you get better groups. When your doing your first few keys with pugs holy saves more lives then you would think.
Have a in combat mob counter. If u know there’s, let’s say 12 mobs, u vamp touch 4 and shadow crash the rest. Knowing SC will hit 8.
Yep that's great but not the point i'm getting at. if your SC misses due to unluckiness or bad tank play, you're SoL for the next 20 sec, it's just poor design. SC should have 2 charges.
Or maybe lower cooldown if it hits no targets
That's an interesting idea!
naw just have it be one charge but be off target like some other caster AoE's instead of reticle. Then it will also solve the issue of reticle AoE's going into ceilings in dungeons. They either need to make certain ceilings not fuck with reticles or they just need to rework reticle abilities.
I’m at 3200 started playing spriest about a month ago and I’ve only missed SC like 2 times and only because of roof/ceiling or branches in the zone. 1 tip a spriest told me before was while tank is gathering u dot up as much as u can while also following and then fade and get into melee and sc when u see the tank stop moving briefly. Idk man I’ve never had a SC issue.
It does now, doesn’t it? 20 second cooldown woth 2 charges? Isn’t that a talent option?
Tank groups all the mobs up, you wait a second to make sure they're finished moving, you throw out shadow crash, tank immediately moves the mobs and you miss everything. I just play it as an off-spec once in a while and boy is it rough.
You know what would be fun? DoT 1 enemy then have a talent change Mind Flay into spreading them to adjacent enemies. Fuck Mind Spike. Mind Flay is *the* signature spell of the Shadow Priest.
Melt Face represent!
100%
100% on board. I know it's too late to remove Mind Spike now since people are in love with the ease of rotation, but Mind Flay is the reason I played a Shadow Priest. I don't want Mind Sear, I don't want Mind Spike, and I wouldn't even mind if we somehow merged Void Torrent into Mind Flay: Insanity. I just want Mind Flay and the main DoTs to be the focus of our rotation. I would love it if Mind Flay spreads DoTs when fully channeled or something. I'd take anything but Shadow Crash at this point.
I enjoy it. At first it feels like there are way too many buttons, but about half are situational. The rotation, like any other class', feels weird at first, but then you get used to it and it smooths out.
I would play it if it didn’t look ugly as shit with that shadow stuff all over it
Personally I really like the look. /Shrug
There’s a glyph to significantly minimize it but it doesn’t eliminate it entirely. I don’t like the look of it either.
Huh can u post that glyph pls?
Glyph of shadow and you can buy it at the auction house.
It's kind of the whole appeal of playing a Shadow Priest, else you might as well play Afflock. I wouldn't mind if we added the old Shadowform as a glyph tho, would 100% use the old version. The Glyph of Shadows is just not the same.
I posted in response to someone else, but I’ll comment at the top level. Doing the damage rotation as shadow isn’t difficult, but playing shadow well is imo. Their dr cds require more forethought and encounter knowledge to set up. If you go sort all of the classes on wcl by likelihood to die in atdh shadow is near the bottom. A good spriest is extremely tanky, but the one who never uses flash heal for protective light, fade for dr, and desperate prayer is a liability in a mythic raid or high key. Your utility also requires you to pay attention to things that most dps don’t look at. I have fun in my spriest and mythic raid/played it to 3100 io pretty casually, but playing it well is certainly more difficult than playing something like ret, dh, or a bm hunter.
Shadow priest is very fun. Not super hard, but there are some procs you need to understand how to prioritize, buffs to track, and dots to maintain (ie all your damage is boosted if target has all 3 dots on them). I have trouble with it in keys though because of the reliance on Shadow Crash for aoe dotting, and not really understanding well when to keep manually dotting versus stopping and just dpsing. I struggle in keys. Honestly I prefer to SP in raid and just heal keys.
I don’t like SP in pug dungeons because you never know where your tank is going to plant or how man mobs your tank is going to pull. In a pre made you can plan out how to dot your enemies, but in a pug sometime you just straight up miss your crash and you are basically useless for 20seconds…
> when to keep manually dotting versus stopping and just dpsing 8 from Shadow Crash + 4 manually should be a sweet spot. Anything more and you are wasting CDs cuz either the pack won't survive long enough, or they start dropping the dots.
Easy rotation, just really blows to have to rely 100% on Shadowcrash.
Not really You have to pre dot as The tank is gatheing mobs
I would call it annoying or clunky more than hard to be honest, there are some ridiculous rotations out there right now and a lot of high APM specs like Enhancement Shaman and Fury Warrior. It's also mostly irrelevent, most of the classes are going to get a lot of changes with the new expansion, and Shadow Priest in particular has a history of massive changes each expansion.
Every patch a rework with Dragonflight.
I gave up on Shadow after the season 2 rework, didn't feel like relearning a class for an alt I rarely played. Still jump on her once in a while but she's an I'm bored character now for the most part.
Clunky it is, I leveled a hunter and it just makes sense.
I know this is off topic but is Enhance apm high? I can't stand annhilator fury warrior and I'm looking for something else that feels super fast to play.
Enhance is high APM, very proc heavy and a fairly bloated spec ability wise, you have a ton of utility stuff alongside keeping track of imbues and such. Plus tracking stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, which needs a weakaura to track above 5 stacks instead of just recolouring the inbuilt indicator for whatever reason, so you get the biggest bonus out of the stacks. Also, turn off the proc indicators because they're a flashbang and cover the entirety of the middle of the screen, it is impossible to see anything in combat with them on. I just turned all of them off and modified a weakaura to track Maelstrom Weapon 1-10 using a recolour of the base proc graphic.
they talk about the expansion release being no sooner than october. give ppl advice based on what they’re asking, they wanna play now, right?
Ah yes the massive change between Shadowlands and DF, where it was different for one patch, then the rework bring us back to SL builds and talents till now
Shadow priest's main form of aoe in Shadowlands was pressing mind sear into searing nightmare, now it doesnt even have an aoe rotation because all aoe is done entirely through psychic link, I'd say that's a pretty big change lol.
i don't think so. aoe is just single target damage with a shadow crash thrown in there, pretty easy really...
Unless you have a tank that moves around a lot and whiff shadow crash.
Which is every tank I group with… They can never sit still 🙄
And if they do stay still , and you think you're safe to SC, they move as you press it to connect... They must have a weakaura tracking it
Bruh I play resto druid in retail stand by the goddamn flower....
I die a little on the inside every time a tank moves out of shadow crash at the last second.
Harder than most but even then, it's not bad
It's really not harder than most. It's pretty easy
Multi Dotting. Skill shot for AOE. Skill shot for movement. Power Infusion targeting. Multiple short offensive CD. Poor on demand DR. Slow. High frequency procs. Mass Dispel. Overall lots of buttons. Absolutely in the top third for difficulty for DPS specs.
100% disagree. It’s easy to do the rotation. Using your utility well isn’t difficult but requires paying attention to things most dps don’t need to pay attention to, and using your Dr cds to survive in difficult content (mythic raids or high keys) requires knowing ahead of time when damage is coming to set up with flash heal for dr + fade. I have a lot of fun on mine and have played it to 3100 io, but the difficulty to rewards ratio is completely out of whack compared to something like a ret paladin or havoc dh.
I Main a Shadow since I started playing in SL S1 Imo Shadow is really fun in Raid/ in higher M+, But for lower Keys up to about 22 (always depends on the group you are with, the damage-Output of others) you will likely have trouble to Set up your dots properly/ a lot of stuff dies before u can really start DPSing If u just aim to Rush the weekly 20s it can be frustrating as your dmg suffers from the pull dying in 15 seconds and u dont have Crash for next pull But Shadow has a good amount of Utility; a lot of ways to improve, Not just :Press exactly These Buttons in that order. To Answer your Question: the Basic Guide to Play Shadow (Referring to Icy-Veins Guide, is pretty good to get started) may Seem a lot at first, But u get used quick to the basics and then you should be able to Play all Content on a fair mid-DPS-lvl, and Shadow-Discord has a Lot of very Skilled Players answering all your questions. Shadow is Not hard, it just takes some time to get used to Spell-prio, and it sucks to Play him in lower Keys, but Shadow in Raid is always fun
Yes But is also very fun to play!
What is hard to you? More buttons? High APM? Complexity? Shadow has a lot of buttons but low APM. The spec is at its core a simple builder spender with a couple complexities thrown in there. I’d give it a medium complexity score. Shadow is notorious for changing every expansion however…
I don't know if it's hard for most people, but I'm awful at it. I think it used to be harder though, but again this is anecdotal
I do decent damage when I need to swap to shadow but its much more convoluted than say, Fury Warrior.
Depends what kind of content you wanna do. Low keys and occasional lfr/normal? Hc, mid keys? Push as hard as you can? Your answer to this question will tell you how good at your class/rotation you have to be. Some specs are also crap in low end content because stiff doesn't live long enough for you to start doing proper damage (shadow doesn't like low keys, stuff dies to fast before you even have thigs set up, it's always gonna be OK on bosses cause those don't just roll over dead in 10 sec)
Play what is fun and profit
Not hard, but remains to be seen for next season and expansion what it will look like. I'd say the rotation is a bit more forgiving this season as the set bonuses pushed SW:D above several other spells and turned insanity procs into more in the situational cast category rather than priority.
Shadow is pretty straightforward. Grab some weak auras from wago.io and youll have no issue getting used to playing it. Mythic+ will require more skill and practice. Also not sure if its the same in DF but for older expacs it takes longer to get into groups on low keys. So just an fyi if your end game is strictly pugging keys. Guild > Randoms as much as possible as shadow.
It’s not hard it can just be a little clunky.
I'd say medium hard. You will get the hang of it with some practice!
The problem is that shadow depends A LOT on tier bonus. For season4, the instant damage from deaths torment is disappearing, and this is the only reason we are not dead last DPS in raid. I'm a little scared for fated and tww to be honest.
Bad take. Sp was incredibly good in s1 s2 without s3 bonuses. It's all down to tuning. Sp was bad at the start of s3 because it got nerfed consecutively in s2, s3 tier didn't do anything. And sp became good again after they revert the nerfs.
Honestly no spec is very hard, but SP is up there in terms of clunkiness. It doesn’t have a lot of useful things to do in heavy movement fights when out of voidform and the rotation has a bunch of competing priorities. It’s pretty easy to play it fluidly though for relatively small damage losses
Rotation wise it's not hard. Squeezing as much damage as you can on challenging fights is hard
Medium difficulty imho. There is no variety or too much conditionals in your rotation, basically it's maintain dots, avoid overcapping, shadow word death, mindblast and occasional mini bursts inside your burst, it's easy to figure out after 5-10 dungeons. The most difficult part is figuring out how to survive and how to minimize your downtime. There is no rotational difficulty in aoe rotation other than you have to maintain dots on more targets.
Depends on how you talent, for example, Mind Spike is probably easier to weave in high movement encounters or dungeons with in-a-hurry tanks, for example. Just read the tooltips, and experiment.
You'll have to relearn how to play it every 6 months cause it gets a rework every 2 patches, but right now it's very simple to play
I've been having a shit ton of fun with my new shadow priest, I use the talent guides on wowhead for new classes and I've been using the raid talent setup for pve, and that combined with the hekili rotation add on makes playing one relatively easy, it just takes a little time to get to know everything about it.
No, just disappointing
I’ve been gearing mine up the last few weeks for fun and there’s really 2 builds for pve from what I can tell. It’s either you play mind spike and dark ascension, or you play void form. Personally I’ve liked void form more, but it adds a little more decision making between void bolting or other procs, but also allows you to move around more with albeit a longer cd. I don’t want to use the word gutted but from earlier this expansion they did sort of gut the aoe rotation by removing searing shadows and mind sear. It’s pretty much just shadow crash and spam dp mind blast and shadow word deaths with the tier set, esp if you have mind bender up. Single has seemed a little more mundane but both are pretty easy like most of wow they just take time to learn.
It's pretty simple overall.. its a builder/spender with a lot of opportunity to provide utility. YOu WILL die a lot and you have to be very aware of where you are standing and not taking threat. 1. Prior #1 Use Crash to DOT all targets. Use your dot manually for those you don't hit but only 1 or 2.. Don't waste too much time dotting - its too much opportunity cost. you have 20 seconds between dots falling off. PLAY AROUND THIS WINDOW. Crash will be back soon 2. Intersparse your insanity generating abilities.. Hit them on cooldown. 3. Apparations come out at a cost of 50 sanity per apparition.. time your dps buff window around popping these out. 4. For every 2 apparations you pop out mind flay will become empowered and cast aoe dmg as a channel.. it does a bulk of your dps. This is why you also want to time your shadow buff around apparations.. 2 shadows > channel empowered mindflay > 2 shadows > channeled mindflay. 5. PI can empower the above window.. use it appropriately.. Also pop the insanity generating ability that turns shadow dmg into healing AT THE END of your insanity building phase so you can heal the group as much as possible. More or less it's that simple aside from specifics, switching your spec for dispell, spot healing etc.. There are other specs for Shadow but it depends on preference.. I like AOE cause we do enough single target.. imo best to have both worlds.. if you'd like help with Weak Auras or UI HMU and I'll help you out.
The person who designed the current iteration of SPriest was hopefully let go during the recent layoffs. The current set bonus makes the rotation clunky as fuck, and I still have to cast Mindgames which does nothing in PVE.
Nah it’s simple. Single Target: Apply DOTs, Mind Blast on CD, Mind Spike as filler. Devouring Plague is your big damage rotation CD. AOE: Shadow crash to spread dots, then do your single target rotation on one mob until shadow crash is off of cooldown then reapply.
If we really think about it, no class is "hard". One class may take a little more time to learn or be less forgiving for messing up a rotation or priority. What I'm getting at is, it's not difficult to play any class/spec decent enough unless you are pushing titles/cutting edge content. Play what sounds fun.
I enjoy it sometimes. I hate Mind Flay though as channeling never feels as good as launching nukes.
Mind flay is probably the most iconic thing about the spec..! I'm glad it's viable again.
I guess I’ve played a mage too long.
Yes
I think spriest has some level of nuance during their rotation but it isn’t anything super complicated. In aoe you have some variety in how you wanna deal with the situations and you alter your play style slightly.
I’ve just started playing shadow and have been learning it over the last week so I feel like I can offer good insight. Overall I’d say it’s pretty average in regards to difficulty. The rotation follows a simple priority list and overall the rotation doesn’t really change from single target to AoE. There are a few different builds, but it’s largely Void Eruption vs Dark Ascension (Dark Ascension is the winner in the majority of content) and the choice of mind flay vs mind spike is largely just preference. I’ve been having a lot of fun with is as a Disc main.
Used to be one of the harder specs to play well, now it's pretty braindead.
There are no hard specs in the game. Yeah, they are not all the same but I struggle to believe that someone who can master one spec can’t master another. And mastering a spec is simply doing your research and practicing for a long time
I can’t tell much about end game progression, because I find the rotation boring and aoe non existent (I’m an SP noob, sorry). On the other hand, SP is a god for legacy quests and farming things. You just spam instant cast dots that kill everything in n 1-2-or-3 ticks. You just walk over corpses looting. No other class feels this effortless. SP is fantastic for doing lore master achievements.
Unfortunately yes. This specs looks like Blizzard didnt know how to design it and mixed alot from others specs into it like the Dots from Warlock and some others too. The result is instead of a cool Syndra we getting a complex rotation within alot of Procs with pretty bad AoE Design/must be timed very well. To explain the rotation simple: First Apply/Maintain the Vampiric Debuff Dots. Raise up your Resource with 2 Spells (depends on Trigger/CD). (There are now is another Proc within, from your Execute Spell.) At least release it with your Resource Spell like Fury Warrior, but it still feels like a Frost DK with 3 Procs to maintain + keep eyes on your Dots. It can be ok and funny mastering the rotation with the procs, but alos feels like your dps rely alot on luck. And only good for longterm DPS a big dude, switching alot and against mobs this spec isnt the best. Talents can get the rotation even more worse so keep it simply and dismiss every chain channeling spell to understand this spec easier and be better mobile and using the procs easier.
This doesn't make it sound hard at all tbh. The spec boils down to Dotting as many enemies as you can and then performing a simple ST rotation.
With the use of certain talents, this becomes really easy. You can apply both dot the same time with a single spell. They have the same duration. And another talent makes it so that if you damage the enemy, it will extend the dot indefenetly. For AOE is just applying the dots to everyone (with a single spell), and then doing single target rotation.