But "we thought Shadow dps was too high with all 3 dots hasted" really did make me chuckle...last time i tested things out on the PTR (2 weeks ago) I didn't see no huge boost.
There is a simulation going around that had shadow theoretical dps in the 10k range
of course "simulation is a simulation" so yeah.. take it with a grain of salt.
I maybe a nub here since I don't do sims. I am the old fashioned copy my gear and use the same target dummy with recount...
But when i see those charts, I don't just see 10k Spriest. I see everyone doing 10k +
Heaven forbid we beat out some of those warlocks and rogues...
Not that I'm saying SPriest dps shouldn't be higher, but if you're looking at simulations it's assuming perfect circumstances for all, and you're not going to see SPriests above Warlocks and Rogues. It's the pure vs. hybrid thing. What you should be looking at is being competitive with all dps classes that aren't rogue/lock/hunter/mage.
I won't even touch the hybrid vs pure arguement. I am sure we have all heard enough of it.
Back to the Sw: P "nerf". I had a nice long chat with a fellow Spriest and he shed alot of light on why. Glancing at all the new gear that is coming out with 3.3 damn near everything has haste...
The Sims show where priests sit with T9, you introduce T10 and Icecrown gear mix with our buffs? Yeah it's not fair. Even I will admit that, though if we could of gotten away with it...:twisted:
Rumor has it that T10 might be availble to buy soon on the PTR... I can't wait to try it out
I won't even touch the hybrid vs pure arguement. I am sure we have all heard enough of it.
Back to the Sw: P "nerf". I had a nice long chat with a fellow Spriest and he shed alot of light on why. Glancing at all the new gear that is coming out with 3.3 damn near everything has haste...
The Sims show where priests sit with T9, you introduce T10 and Icecrown gear mix with our buffs? Yeah it's not fair. Even I will admit that, though if we could of gotten away with it...:twisted:
Rumor has it that T10 might be availble to buy soon on the PTR... I can't wait to try it out
Nah, the real problem is like this:
SW: Pain currently scales with crit %, it "remembers" all temporary crit buffs that were active when you first cast SW: Pain so long as you keep refreshing it using Mind Flay. This hasn't been a problem since there aren't many crit buffs in the game besides say, Wild Magic potions.
Haste on the other hand is everywhere: Heroism / Bloodlust, Haste potions, Engineering Buffs, Enchants, on-use Trinkets, set bonuses.
People showed through calculation that you could stack temporary buffs to achieve nearly 100% haste which would make your shadow word pain somewhere in the 9s range. You could then maintain that SW: Pain through the entire fight simply by refreshing using mind flay.
Now, not only is this extremely broken, but from a longtime shadowpriest perspective, its extremely annoying. I for one, did not want to have to carry around Haste pots and switch my profession to engineering and do all the other ridiculous things I would have to do in order to cast my SW: Pain. I'm glad that blizzard nerfed it but I am disappointed that they are saying its because our damage is high enough without it.
I'm not a fan of rolling dots in general. I don't want to have to keep track of all the different AP buffs I do or do not have near the beginning of a fight on my Death Knight, and know whether my diseases are optimally applied, or whether I have to let them drop and try again on the next round.
Yeah I'm surprised they haven't worked harder to fix that bug, but I guess maybe only a small percentage of the craziest and most dedicated shadow priests use it to full effect, so it's not high on their list of broken abilities.
Honestly I wish that they'd get Shadow to where they could make mind flay's refresh of SWP to refresh it with your current haste/crit/whatever, and still do competitive damage. It's really sad that, right now, even with abusing that aspect of SWP, shadow priests are looked down on as DPS.
Then again, I've played FFXI, so I know that a class being "looked down on" for DPS means absolutely nothing. That game had awful flavor-of-the-monthism. I'd get told that warriors can't tank, only nin/war, and then proceed to tank an XP group for 4 hours with no wipes, and get everybody a level or two.
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
I just dusted off an ooooold priest (played him from 30 to 58 when BC was released, and then to 65 when I bought wotlk, and he's sat there since I rolled a pally and then jumped to my even older shaman) and dropped my shadow spec and went disc in preparation of running 2 hellfire dungeons with a RaF'd pally tank and a DK.
holy shit that's a lot of fun. It took me a bit to reverse some stupid stuff I had in my head, since the last time I healed with a priest was vanilla content, as shadow... but the guildies I was running with helped me a lot and I'm really glad I did it. might actually play him now.
Actually I think it has been worked out that SW Pain does refresh spell power but not crit at the moment. God knows the technical jiggery pokery that goes into this stuff but certainly the logic that a) Blizzard felt that shadow DPS was too high and b) sorting out the technicalities of SW Pain refreshing was a pain in the ass so indulging in some monolithic dual avicide and removing haste from SW Pain makes sense. I also agree that it would be a pain in the ass to have to worry about proc watching and obsessive buff stacking to get the most out of it. As for our DPS being competitive it is so fight dependant these days. I raid in a 10 man hardmode focused guild (Tribute to mad skill, Firefighter etc all cleared) and on a TotC/TotGC clear I will go from top damage (Anub) down towards the bottom (Jarraxus). I am also rarely out of the top 5 damage on 25 man pugs (but then its a pug so who knows what twisted nega-reverse world it really represents). I am very much looking forward to 3.3 and I am pretty sure that on at least one or two fights in ICC shadow priests will be all over the meters like a rash. A particularly awesome rash wreathed in dark, nebulous power.
edited to remove the SW:P smiley effect from the main post.
It took me a bit to reverse some stupid stuff I had in my head
I think the key to healing as a Priest is just to accept that pretty much every major patch your bread-and-butter heal will be something totally new. Keeps it fresh tbh.
Heal R2 -> GHeal R1,4,7 -> CoH -> PoH -> Holy Nova -> FHeal -> What will tomorrow bring?
Actually I think it has been worked out that SW Pain does refresh spell power but not crit at the moment. God knows the technical jiggery pokery that goes into this stuff but certainly the logic that a) Blizzard felt that shadow DPS was too high and b) sorting out the technicalities of SW Pain refreshing was a pain in the ass so indulging in some monolithic dual avicide and removing haste from SW Pain makes sense. I also agree that it would be a pain in the ass to have to worry about proc watching and obsessive buff stacking to get the most out of it. As for our DPS being competitive it is so fight dependant these days. I raid in a 10 man hardmode focused guild (Tribute to mad skill, Firefighter etc all cleared) and on a TotC/TotGC clear I will go from top damage (Anub) down towards the bottom (Jarraxus). I am also rarely out of the top 5 damage on 25 man pugs (but then its a pug so who knows what twisted nega-reverse world it really represents). I am very much looking forward to 3.3 and I am pretty sure that on at least one or two fights in ICC shadow priests will be all over the meters like a rash. A particularly awesome rash wreathed in dark, nebulous power.
edited to remove the SW:P smiley effect from the main post.
Your right, your "suppose" to recast SW P when you get a crit buff (wild magic, trinket etc) since that is the only part that is coefficent. The only time i worry about things like that are fights I get to just be single target pure DPS, and unless you have decent crit to begin with, your not going to notice a omg huge DPS! Was the Haste buff suppose to be coefficent or act like crit? I didn't even think of that. If it was the latter, good ridiance!
And your also right on the part of fight dependant. Our dps does not come from burst but a long ramp up and maintaining steady numbers, so switching around to other things will always serverally hinder us. With introduction to 3.3 I am egar to see what numbers i can maintain on fights such as jaraxxus or Champs since I can lose almost 2k dps at times also love to see what i will be able to do on twins or Anub :evil:
Man I miss TBC... I was always top 5 and still utility, A'lar was my fight though... No one could move me off #1 spot *soft sigh*
Neyla on
0
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
It took me a bit to reverse some stupid stuff I had in my head
I think the key to healing as a Priest is just to accept that pretty much every major patch your bread-and-butter heal will be something totally new. Keeps it fresh tbh.
Heal R2 -> GHeal R1,4,7 -> CoH -> PoH -> Holy Nova -> FHeal -> What will tomorrow bring?
specifically I wasn't shielding, because back then and at low levels it cause threat issues. but now if I shield I get a mana boost and it helps other things I can't remember... it's stupid not to.
also yeah, penance seemed to me like an ohshit type spell but then I actualyl LOOKED at the mana cost of that any my other heals and instantly wet myself with liquid joy.
I think it was an intentional move by Blizzard so that when we talk about our spells you can see their effectiveness by the smiley they make. 'Oh you are using SW:D? Oh you crazy kids make me when you do that.' 'Multi dotting with SW:P again huh? :P'
I find myself DPSing a lot in heroics when I'm disc. No damage gets through to bother healing.
This is only awesome.
I've told the story about how I was with a really really bad DK dps (the rest of the group was my guild main tank and two other guild alts) right?
Well, we were doing UP and I noticed that he was doing...really really bad DPS. I inspect him and discover that ALL his points are in unholy. ALL of them. He has EVERY TALENT.
Rather than kick him, since we were essentially carrying him, I whisper the tank and am like "ten bucks I can out dps this Death knight and STILL keep you all alive"
Heh, we end up doing like 17 Ony runs a week (so it seems anyway) so some are semi PuGs... The longstanding loot rule is: If you can't out DPS the Disc Priest, you can't roll on loot. So far I've beaten 2 Rogues, a Hunter and an Arms Warrior.
I did 1M damage to whelps with Holy Nova last week. >.>
I always read Holy Fire was a dps loss because of its long cast time compared to smite but it has been a really long time since I was paying attention.
I always read Holy Fire was a dps loss because of its long cast time compared to smite but it has been a really long time since I was paying attention.
Cast PW: shield, penance a mob, cast holy fire with haste buff, cast smite
Some Updates regarding us I saw on the PTR patch notes: (read: Free time @ work)
Bug fixes: Mass Dispel: Some trinkets which were not triggered properly by this spell will now work correctly when Mass Dispel is cast.
And it's now offical:
Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
I always read Holy Fire was a dps loss because of its long cast time compared to smite but it has been a really long time since I was paying attention.
Cast PW: shield, penance a mob, cast holy fire with haste buff, cast smite
Isn't your haste buff going to be used up on Penance if you cast it in between shield and Holy Fire?
I always read Holy Fire was a dps loss because of its long cast time compared to smite but it has been a really long time since I was paying attention.
Cast PW: shield, penance a mob, cast holy fire with haste buff, cast smite
Isn't your haste buff going to be used up on Penance if you cast it in between shield and Holy Fire?
Penance is instant cast, channeled, so it doesn't consume the buff.
So here is a pickle of a question for the shadow variety.
Does SWP gain any crit benefit when used with inner focus? My train of thought (and I will gladly be proven wrong) is swp is coeffecient with SP but when you factor in something like wild potion or X fight mechanic you refresh it to gain that stat.
I never really gave much thought to it, nor i have kept track of any data to support or disclaim. but i have thought swp would gain the 25% crit since well, it is a spell that can crit (as per IF tooltip) and now I am in discussion with someone else (who can't prove me wrong but I can't myself right) so searching for thoughts on this.
Yeah blizzard has mentioned before they "don't like" resetting talent points unless the tree gets an over haul or things are added. Thus far the changes seem more like tweeks so outlook for reset not good.
But back to SW:shock:, played around abit. And as I said before RNG is the worst to test out, plus waiting for 3 min CD... Normally it looks like i get an avg 16%, I add in IF and it goes to about 33%. I didn't get a chance to refresh with MF due to IRL stuff. But i did come across a blue post:
# 49 - April 13, 2009, 9:17 am
Q u o t e:
Inner Focus is not currently effecting dots propery.
Shadow Word Pain
Devouring Plague
Vampiric Touch
ALL do not gain the crit chance modifier from this spell as they should according to the description.
Inner Focus
Instant 3 min cooldown
When activated, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.
Thanks for the report, we'll look into this.
Dresorull
Blizzard QA
I am surprised there wasn't more discussing from other priests about this in the WoW forums since really nothing been said since from blizz (atleast none i can find).
I enjoy playing battlegrounds with my Disc offspec. Currently my gear is a mish mash of PvE stuff, what should I be buying with my honor points if I have no arena rating? Get an arena rating? Seems everyone looking for arena partners wants someone who is already geared.
Probably seems like some silly simple questions but there's quite a bit of information overload for me since I just jumped in recently.
Yeah blizzard has mentioned before they "don't like" resetting talent points unless the tree gets an over haul or things are added. Thus far the changes seem more like tweeks so outlook for reset not good.
But back to SW:shock:, played around abit. And as I said before RNG is the worst to test out, plus waiting for 3 min CD... Normally it looks like i get an avg 16%, I add in IF and it goes to about 33%. I didn't get a chance to refresh with MF due to IRL stuff. But i did come across a blue post:
# 49 - April 13, 2009, 9:17 am
Q u o t e:
Inner Focus is not currently effecting dots propery.
Shadow Word Pain
Devouring Plague
Vampiric Touch
ALL do not gain the crit chance modifier from this spell as they should according to the description.
Inner Focus
Instant 3 min cooldown
When activated, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.
Thanks for the report, we'll look into this.
Dresorull
Blizzard QA
I am surprised there wasn't more discussing from other priests about this in the WoW forums since really nothing been said since from blizz (atleast none i can find).
As far as I heard, Blizzard will not do a Talent point refund unless they change talents so drastically (i.e it loses ranks, gains ranks, or disappears) that there would be problems with talent points.
I enjoy playing battlegrounds with my Disc offspec. Currently my gear is a mish mash of PvE stuff, what should I be buying with my honor points if I have no arena rating? Get an arena rating? Seems everyone looking for arena partners wants someone who is already geared.
Probably seems like some silly simple questions but there's quite a bit of information overload for me since I just jumped in recently.
I haven't arena'd since season 3 so i would not know first hand, but from what I get from the more "hard cores" in my guild, target resil for beginner arenas you want to try to get is 500+, I think cap is 1400. Not sure if you can get close to resil cap with honor gear or not. But it's a start.
I should get back into arenas, it was fun when i use to do. Even though as soon as the other team sees your a priest they are all "KEEL IT KEEEEEEEEL IT NOA!" It was worst if your shadow... they never went for the other priest bastards.
Neyla on
0
Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
So, it looks like my friend and I are going to be doing the Refer-a-Friend program over winter break and I'll probably be rolling a priest.
I haven't played since before WotLK (actually, before Sunwell) came out, and even then I hadn't played a priest in months (my main was a shaman). Are there any particularly good blogs, guides, etc. that I should be reading to give myself a good base of knowledge to work off of? Basically, what I'm looking for is articles and things along the lines of "stuff I wish I'd read before I'd gotten started"
And here, I'll even start one for you...
Protips:
~Spirit or bust.
~Don't keybind Fade and Psychic Scream anywhere near each other. Somehow this happens when leveling, and there's pretty much a 100% chance you'll hit the wrong key in your first VC run.
~Remember that our Dispel can be used to Purge stuff also.
~Mind Soothe and Mind Vision are useful enough to have on your toolbars. Use Mind Vision to find named quest guys and Mind Soothe to ninja around areas.
~Shackle Undead is super useful when you get to areas where you ca actually use it.
~Mind Control is about the most fun thing ever. PW: Shield yourself and Mind Soothe the mob before using it - the range is short and the mob is going to be super pissed at you when it breaks.
~You can heal any 5 man while Shadow specced, your mana efficiency will be terrible though.
~You can nuke down groups of mobs with Holy Nova, it's silly good for AoE grinding.
Way later....
~Prayer of Mending is the best healing spell ever, use it always.
~Shadowfiend actually does pretty decent damage during his few short moments of life.
Posts
Back to the Sw: P "nerf". I had a nice long chat with a fellow Spriest and he shed alot of light on why. Glancing at all the new gear that is coming out with 3.3 damn near everything has haste...
The Sims show where priests sit with T9, you introduce T10 and Icecrown gear mix with our buffs? Yeah it's not fair. Even I will admit that, though if we could of gotten away with it...:twisted:
Rumor has it that T10 might be availble to buy soon on the PTR... I can't wait to try it out
Nah, the real problem is like this:
SW: Pain currently scales with crit %, it "remembers" all temporary crit buffs that were active when you first cast SW: Pain so long as you keep refreshing it using Mind Flay. This hasn't been a problem since there aren't many crit buffs in the game besides say, Wild Magic potions.
Haste on the other hand is everywhere: Heroism / Bloodlust, Haste potions, Engineering Buffs, Enchants, on-use Trinkets, set bonuses.
People showed through calculation that you could stack temporary buffs to achieve nearly 100% haste which would make your shadow word pain somewhere in the 9s range. You could then maintain that SW: Pain through the entire fight simply by refreshing using mind flay.
Now, not only is this extremely broken, but from a longtime shadowpriest perspective, its extremely annoying. I for one, did not want to have to carry around Haste pots and switch my profession to engineering and do all the other ridiculous things I would have to do in order to cast my SW: Pain. I'm glad that blizzard nerfed it but I am disappointed that they are saying its because our damage is high enough without it.
Because it isn't.
Then again, I've played FFXI, so I know that a class being "looked down on" for DPS means absolutely nothing. That game had awful flavor-of-the-monthism. I'd get told that warriors can't tank, only nin/war, and then proceed to tank an XP group for 4 hours with no wipes, and get everybody a level or two.
Woo, writing this post earned me 10968 florins!
holy shit that's a lot of fun. It took me a bit to reverse some stupid stuff I had in my head, since the last time I healed with a priest was vanilla content, as shadow... but the guildies I was running with helped me a lot and I'm really glad I did it. might actually play him now.
funnnnn
edited to remove the SW:P smiley effect from the main post.
Heal R2 -> GHeal R1,4,7 -> CoH -> PoH -> Holy Nova -> FHeal -> What will tomorrow bring?
Your right, your "suppose" to recast SW P when you get a crit buff (wild magic, trinket etc) since that is the only part that is coefficent. The only time i worry about things like that are fights I get to just be single target pure DPS, and unless you have decent crit to begin with, your not going to notice a omg huge DPS! Was the Haste buff suppose to be coefficent or act like crit? I didn't even think of that. If it was the latter, good ridiance!
And your also right on the part of fight dependant. Our dps does not come from burst but a long ramp up and maintaining steady numbers, so switching around to other things will always serverally hinder us. With introduction to 3.3 I am egar to see what numbers i can maintain on fights such as jaraxxus or Champs since I can lose almost 2k dps at times also love to see what i will be able to do on twins or Anub :evil:
Man I miss TBC... I was always top 5 and still utility, A'lar was my fight though... No one could move me off #1 spot *soft sigh*
specifically I wasn't shielding, because back then and at low levels it cause threat issues. but now if I shield I get a mana boost and it helps other things I can't remember... it's stupid not to.
also yeah, penance seemed to me like an ohshit type spell but then I actualyl LOOKED at the mana cost of that any my other heals and instantly wet myself with liquid joy.
This is only awesome.
I've told the story about how I was with a really really bad DK dps (the rest of the group was my guild main tank and two other guild alts) right?
Well, we were doing UP and I noticed that he was doing...really really bad DPS. I inspect him and discover that ALL his points are in unholy. ALL of them. He has EVERY TALENT.
Rather than kick him, since we were essentially carrying him, I whisper the tank and am like "ten bucks I can out dps this Death knight and STILL keep you all alive"
Long story short, I won ten bucks
I did 1M damage to whelps with Holy Nova last week. >.>
Cast PW: shield, penance a mob, cast holy fire with haste buff, cast smite
Bug fixes:
Mass Dispel: Some trinkets which were not triggered properly by this spell will now work correctly when Mass Dispel is cast.
And it's now offical:
Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
Penance is instant cast, channeled, so it doesn't consume the buff.
Probably a bug, but I'm not arguing.
The second rule of Priest Club: We do NOT talk about the Rapture bug.
Does SWP gain any crit benefit when used with inner focus? My train of thought (and I will gladly be proven wrong) is swp is coeffecient with SP but when you factor in something like wild potion or X fight mechanic you refresh it to gain that stat.
I never really gave much thought to it, nor i have kept track of any data to support or disclaim. but i have thought swp would gain the 25% crit since well, it is a spell that can crit (as per IF tooltip) and now I am in discussion with someone else (who can't prove me wrong but I can't myself right) so searching for thoughts on this.
SW8-)
But back to SW:shock:, played around abit. And as I said before RNG is the worst to test out, plus waiting for 3 min CD... Normally it looks like i get an avg 16%, I add in IF and it goes to about 33%. I didn't get a chance to refresh with MF due to IRL stuff. But i did come across a blue post:
I am surprised there wasn't more discussing from other priests about this in the WoW forums since really nothing been said since from blizz (atleast none i can find).
Probably seems like some silly simple questions but there's quite a bit of information overload for me since I just jumped in recently.
As far as I heard, Blizzard will not do a Talent point refund unless they change talents so drastically (i.e it loses ranks, gains ranks, or disappears) that there would be problems with talent points.
I haven't arena'd since season 3 so i would not know first hand, but from what I get from the more "hard cores" in my guild, target resil for beginner arenas you want to try to get is 500+, I think cap is 1400. Not sure if you can get close to resil cap with honor gear or not. But it's a start.
I should get back into arenas, it was fun when i use to do. Even though as soon as the other team sees your a priest they are all "KEEL IT KEEEEEEEEL IT NOA!" It was worst if your shadow... they never went for the other priest bastards.
I haven't played since before WotLK (actually, before Sunwell) came out, and even then I hadn't played a priest in months (my main was a shaman). Are there any particularly good blogs, guides, etc. that I should be reading to give myself a good base of knowledge to work off of? Basically, what I'm looking for is articles and things along the lines of "stuff I wish I'd read before I'd gotten started"
And here, I'll even start one for you...
Protips:
~Spirit or bust.
~Don't keybind Fade and Psychic Scream anywhere near each other. Somehow this happens when leveling, and there's pretty much a 100% chance you'll hit the wrong key in your first VC run.
~Remember that our Dispel can be used to Purge stuff also.
~Mind Soothe and Mind Vision are useful enough to have on your toolbars. Use Mind Vision to find named quest guys and Mind Soothe to ninja around areas.
~Shackle Undead is super useful when you get to areas where you ca actually use it.
~Mind Control is about the most fun thing ever. PW: Shield yourself and Mind Soothe the mob before using it - the range is short and the mob is going to be super pissed at you when it breaks.
~You can heal any 5 man while Shadow specced, your mana efficiency will be terrible though.
~You can nuke down groups of mobs with Holy Nova, it's silly good for AoE grinding.
Way later....
~Prayer of Mending is the best healing spell ever, use it always.
~Shadowfiend actually does pretty decent damage during his few short moments of life.
I'm sure I'll think of more at some point.