So I've been doing a bit of thinking, wondering if another nerf is incoming to the shadowpriest class.

We have a number of things we bring to the raid, but the one thing no one else has is a way to funnel mana back to themselves based on how much damage they do. Vampiric Touch returns 5% of the damage you do back to your party in the form of mana.

Now, this is all well and good and one of the primary reasons we get brought along in raids, but it also has the effect of doing weird things to our scaling. It creates a feedback loop where the more damage we do the more we get back, making the original spell more mana efficient.

Now, the fun begins when the shadowpriest's spells become so efficient that they return more mana than they cost. Without any other sources of mana, that number is 20 DPM. (5% of 20 being 1) In reality with meditation, BoW, potions, shadowfiend, mana spring, and mana tide that number is significantly lower.

Right now I have around 1100 unbuffed spell damage which is not anything special, and if I neglect Mind Blast I can cast forever. This results in around 930dps that is self-sustaining. With plenty of upgrades around, I will become even more mana efficient and creep my DPS up higher without any worries of going OOM... ... ever.

Given this, do you think shadow priests and specifically vampiric touch, are in for a definite nerf/change? I don't think Blizzard's intention was to make us an endless supply of ranged DPS, especially given our other benefits.

Our T6 gear has equal +dmg to the mage and warlock sets, so I'm not sure how we are really getting incredibly suboptimal gear comparatively speaking.

The one variable they have tweaked so far is our threat generation, which on some fights is a huge problem (VR), but usually isn't too big of an issue with Salv.

The primary way to address this would be to either change VT, or roll back the modifiers we get for +dmg on our spells.

Removing VT would make us incredibly mana inefficient, and tweaking it back would impact the lower end priests with less +Dmg gear pretty heavily.

Reducing the modifiers is an option, but it would be sad to see our growth curve plateau relative to other classes as we move to BT and beyond.

Pretty sure that nothing short of removing VT or nerfing down the % mana return is going to make them undesirable, ever. The mana battery aspect scales not only with your gear, but with everyone else's gear, meaning that even if it scales relatively poorly personally, it's still going to scale well overall.

Not "incredibly suboptimal." But certainly less optimal. You get less out of the hit/crit (since I'd be surprised if you can completely avoid hit on every other slot) than does a mage/destruction lock. Same way affliction locks get less out of the crit on their set than do those who nuke more often.

Net result is that the set provides less of a dps boost to you because you're a dot-oriented class. That's probably what people mean when they say "suboptimal." (unfortunately the gear budget is in your way even if it was all +dmg, since a nuke class will see more of a dps boost off a mixed crit/damage set than you will off a damage set at a certain point of +dmg, no matter how expensive crit is relative to +dmg.)

That all said, perhaps those variations get smoothed over by differences between how the classes scale relative to +dmg? Generally dots scale less well that nukes, but I don't know enough about shadow priest scaling to know.

I agree it has a ton of item points that could have been better used, especially for shadowpriests but they are fairly small upgrades for other classes as well.

The only two of those that actually directly affect our efficiency is SW and dot coefficients, and even with further reductions they are still only stop gap measures until we hit the point where we can cast effectively forever again. I guess at which point they will simply hit us again with the nerf bat?

It just seems to me like a more systemic problem with VT than simple dps nerfing.

Does there ever become a point where priests are not maxing shadow focus because they have so much (non-optimized) +hit? Seems like that would be a benefit as you could place those talent points in a fun/pvp talent.

Well, considering we don't have a crit bonus talent such as ruin, our Dots scale better than our nukes. I believe VT is at 100% bonus from + damage and SWP is at 105%? In any case, both scale well. Mind Blast and SWD scale normally. Mind flay is the only screwy one, it doesn't scale with + damage properly because of the snare effect.

As for VT eventually becoming too powerful? I don't think they will let that happen. There will be a max amount of damage possible on all items available in the current expansion, and it will be nowhere near the +4000 or so damage that it would require for 100% mana efficiency. They will probably make VT a static return, or raise spell costs to counter balance it.

This has actually already been nerfed. In the BC beta the amount of return was much higher, but Blizzard found that a group of 5 shadow priests could actually return enough mana to make their spells seem free. And of course it was nerfed before BC (actually patch right before BC with the new talents) was released. Its possible they would do it again, but not likely anytime soon.

There are a few reasons why our class set isn't completely optimal for our class role; really most of the sets aren't, apart from maybe the tanking sets for Warriors.

If all Blizzard did was create perfect sets for Shadow Priests(75 HR, minor int/stam massive +shadow), then 1: We'd be overpowered(see tailoring priests a few months ago when everyone else was in blues/greens), and 2: there'd be no point to gear selection or upgrades. This is the same across the classes. It gives a place for off-set loot, as well as room for players to simply choose gear paths; not every class needs or should be a cookie-cutter build of exactly perfect stats.

Half the way we get balanced is getting less than ideal gear. Does T6 have some poor points in itemization for a hardcore, raiding Shadow Priest? Sure. Are they good items, and perfectly usable? Yeah, last time I checked, they don't stop you from doing damage.

This stems more into base itemization theories and trends. In order for Teir N++1 to not just have more of everything, they introduce new things to spend itemization budgets on. It's not ever going to be 40>50>60 damage on items, and we can't expect that(even thought that would be by far the best choice for feeding the "feedback loop"). In BWL they started adding more +Hit to items. With AQ, we got Spell Penetration. Now we're seeing Armor Penetration and Spell Haste getting added.

It is much more likely that the gear we have to choose from will diversify before it becomes ideal for our particular style of damage. I don't forsee huge nerfs to base abilities, or coefficients.

Well, strictly speaking, this is still the case now, and has been since 2.0. When you start stacking Shadow Priests in the same group, the results are exponentially better. Look at the few 5-man kills of Loatheb back before TBC. Nothing's changed since then, and their gear was worse! I can group with just one other 1100~ spell damage Shadow Priest and go near-infinite. Blizzard isn't going to change our class based on that kind of stacking.

Mind Flay scales at 57%. With 0 mana regen, we need some 3000 +damage to have infinite mana. However, with other sources of mana regen(5 minute fiend, MP5, Meditation, .etc), we can low-DPS infinite mana much earlier.

The thing is, Shadow Priests scale worse than any other ranged/caster class in the game from their +damage, and even worse from their +crit. (Well, frost mages scale as poorly from +damage). Mind Blast and Shadow Word Death scaling "properly" is poor compared to Shadow-bolt, Fireball, Lightening Bolt, Wrath, and Starfire. Any -casting time talent makes that skill scale much better.

Shadow Priests currently have far superior gear due to 95% of us having Shadoweave. When T6 is reached, we won't be doing nearly the damage compared to the other casters.

Blizzard is going to create future content under the assumption that shadow priests will give mana back to ranged DPS and healers. There's no need to nerf something that you plan for.