silv

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.

 

◊ Shalas

No, I think they're going to suddenly stop nerfing shadow priests with every patch and start giving us gear that isn't incredibly suboptimal.

 

silv

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.

 

◊ Kalman

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.

 

◊ Kyth

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.

 

◊ Shalas

It has spirit, spell crit, more spell hit than we need, mana regen and significantly more int than is optimal. Comparing it to other sets is pretty meaningless -- mage T6 is also incredibly suboptimal for shadow priests.

They've nerfed our threat reduction, vampiric embrace, shadow weaving, dot coefficients, and SW:D's cooldown. We may well still need more nerfs to be balanced, but it's pretty obvious that Blizzard is well aware of how powerful shadow priests are.

 

silv

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.

 

chase

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.

 

Caligula

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.

 

Nezralix

Actually warlocks return mana to themselves *much* better than shadow priests, but I assume you're talking about funneling mana to the group.

 

crym

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.

 

Lum

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.

 

Lum

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.

 

alberico

For some reason, the thought of doing this never occured to me. It would be unfortunate; point for point, the +hit talents for every class in general are the most effective damage boosts.


The OP is right; but just how feasible is this number? I don't know the coefficient for mind flay, else it's a simple calculation to see how much shadow damage is needed to reach this point. I would think that an arbitrary cap on the amount of mana return would be the best way to prevent a situation like this from arising. Modifying the % return off VT or the coefficients for various spells would just be treating the symptom, not the problem; the same problem would crop up again just at a higher damage level.

Something along the lines of: VT can never return more than 50% of the base cost of a damage spell; while arbitrary, it takes care of the problem.

 

Rephaim

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.

 

Huntemup

Absolutely. I certainly drop points in it as my hit rating from gear improves. It allows for you to stay at max dps while having regen/pvp talents. I've always argued that excessive hit isnt worthless as many have stated. It is simply a way to buy back talent points, and that is always worthwhile.

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silv

I believe these are accurate, but correct me if I am wrong:

SW:P - 111%
MB - 43%
MF - 57%
VT: 100%
SW - 43%

Shadowpriest damage comes largely from our dots, and that percentage will only increase as the scaling gap gets wider.

 

Lum

Bekah did some math on the Shadowpriest.com forums way back in TBC Beta, when the coefficient was at 81% for the short time. The number was far, far lower(below 1700), and was easily attainable with TBC gear and old consumables. It was changed back to the default rate it's always been, and the number went up quite a bit. I don't know that it's that high however.

I don't really see other classes leaving us in the dust as we do them now, the gear upgrades aren't that significant, and there's plenty of off-set loot that's still good upgrades for us, some of it better than FSW. We'll maintain high damage, and high utility on more than a situational level. Our nerfs past T6 won't be class level, they'll be gear level; we're not going to be relegated to "mana battery" anytime soon.

 

3AM

Keep in mind that with talents, Shadow Priests receive a whopping +40% to shadow damage (Shadow Weaving - 10%, Darkness - 10%, Shadowform - 15%, Misery - 5%). That effectively turns the coefficients into:

SW:P - 161%
MB - 62%
MF - 83%
VT - 145%
SW:D - 62%

 

Darkmantle

So? The majority of your damage comes from swp/flay/vt.

Proof by contradiction:
Shadow priests have shadowform for 15% shadow damage which an affliction lock can't get therefore shadow priets have better scaling.
Also elemental shamans have the best cast time reduction in the game so they should scale better than everyone else.

The only way to demonstrate relative scaling between classes is to get a spreadsheet or simulator you trust and compare the effect of 100dmg or 100 crit rating. Obviously shadow priests scale worse with crit but compared to other classes their scaling with 100 dmg will probably far closer.

http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.ph...er=asc&start=0 would be a good place to do that.

 

crimsonsentinel

Shadow priest talents aren't nearly as good for scaling now as they were pre-BC.

With the new empowered talents, Druids and fire Mages get nearly as much % scaling from their talents, and that's not even including the -cast time talent (it increases scaling but doesn't increase DPM). Shaman don't get as much pure % increase but have the best -cast time talent of any caster. Warlocks don't have as many % scaling increases, but the sheer number of scaling spells they have doing damage at one time compensates (3 or 4 dots all scaling at 100% or more ticking while the warlock is shadowbolting is a lot of return from +dmg).

 

Yes

You only really care about +%damage scaled per second of cast time and or dot duration when figuring out how things scale.

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heel

Vampiric Touch not scaling correctly is very old news. I would bet money that they rework the talent before the level cap gets raised again, but I wouldn't expect any changes before then.

 

panny

Would putting a cap on the mana gained for the Shadowpriest only fix this problem?

Say "You can only gain back 10% of your mana pool per VT" or something (dunno what numbers are appropriate). You keep the group mana battery aspect of the spec, while not making them infinitely sustainable without some investment into longevity itemization points. Actually, you could even set a max on the entire group gains (10% of mana pool each) to make raid mana sustainability even less simple. You go from "stick a shadowpriest with X spell power in the group" to "stick a shadowpriest X spell power in the group and make sure everyone has Y mana pool".

 

Bloodtear

Even thou the VT can be broken at large amount of damage (Curator, Socrethar, banished Magtheridon come to mind) I really doubt Blizzard will make big changes to it. Not only that we are still far from that point, but it will push the shadow priest back to vanilla WoW.

We remember the priest back when MC raids were starting. There was not much damage gear around. Priest spells had high base damage and great DPM. A respectable dps class. And spell scaling didn't matter much ( 42% of 0 == 81% of 0)
When DM appeared and mages, warlocks (pre CoS fix) started gearing up, the scaling became an issue and soon priests become a taboo. Those few that remained or became shadow priests afterwards had to use max consumables to get near the top 10 of an unflasked raid.

What we have now? When you see the talents gained only VT. We used 5 talent points to get 15% shadow weaving, now we use 10 points to get 10% weaving and 5% misery. We had one point of VE to give the same amount oh healing as two points give now. We got Shadow Power to address the crit rate of few bad scaling spells (PvP talent in my view). We lost 5% dmg from shadow form. We got 15% boost to MF scaling. We lost 9% dot scaling. We gained Focused Mind. We gained partial dot resists.

With FSW, we more or less reached our peek and the other classes will continue to improve. Not just in their damage, but in other stats as well. VT will matter much less to the mage/healer that has 100 more intellect/spirit/mp5 that he does now, but it will remain the reason to have a shadow priests in a raid.

Blizzard will keep VT if they want to continue with their current intent - every spec should be viable.