THREAD DISCUSSION SUMMARY:
In addition to what I discuss below, the following points were brought up in this thread.

1. Shadow priests did well on a number of Ulduar hard modes but are falling behind in ToC hard modes most likely due to scaling issues.
2. New WMO ranking for ToC normal and hard modes show shadow priests as possibly the worst dps class. This data may not be 100% accurate
3. Simcraft data currently shows shadow priests as one of the lowest dps classes. However, new simcraft data needs to be produced for T9 gear to compare the classes at current gear levels.
4. Shadow priests require the use of nochanneling macros, low latency and a high skill cap to be able to clip mindflays to increase dps. The interaction between these components and haste is also an area for concern.

UPDATE: Small buff coming in 3.2.2 - increases the spellpower benefit of spirit from 10% to 20%. Guessed to be roughly a 100 dps buff - concerns are that it will not be enough to keep us in line with other classes - more testing needed.

*Will edit this summary as needed*

Original Post:

Introduction:
It is past time for shadow priests to recieve some much needed buffs to boost our dps in PvE - specifically on single targets and in burst situations. In the past I believed we could still hold our own to a large degree but the past few weeks have definitely opened my eyes.

I do not wish to see us become overpowered but we are most definitely lagging behind other classes heading into hard modes in ToC. There are several areas of concern which I have outlined below and provided possible solutions for. While I know the devs most likely have their own ideas and other considerations to contend with - I provide ideas in the hopes of fostering a discussion about how we can be best brought up to par with other ranged dps classes.

Many top shadowpriests have expressed concern over this very topic:

---

Q u o t e:
I think Shadowpriests are weak going into Trials HM. I don't see it likely that we will be using more than one per fight, but I could be wrong. We were great in Ulduar, but now other classes have simply scaled passed us and we can't keep up in any fights (not even aoe fights).

---

- Eoy from Ensidia

---

Q u o t e:
But ya, our single target damage needs some love. The only reason I do well in Ulduar is because 90% of the fights have multiple adds to dot or mind sear down.

---

- Shin from Exodus

Summary of Concerns:
1. Low single target damage.
2. Lack of true burst & our nuke for cataclysm.
3. Itemization/talent issues
4. Additional notes

Single Target Damage:
Shadow priests currently excel in fights with more than one mob given out ability to 'multi-dot' and in AoE situations given the strength of Mind Sear. However, we greatly fall behind on single target dps in comparison to other ranged dps classes.

I get the feeling the devs are hesitant to buff spriests in such a way that makes them stronger while multi-dotting for they would become too strong and possibly overpowered in the process. I completely agree with that concern and the next section outlines ways to fix our burst and single target damage without buffing us in situations where we already do strong dps. Strong burst damage is often tied to strong single target damage, hence why my suggestions apply to both.

Burst Damage & Our Nuke for Cataclysm:
Ghostcrawler stated at Blizzcon that they are actively looking to give Shadowpriests a direct damage 'nuke' with no cooldown for Cataclysm. While I am very much appreciative of the devs acknowledging that our dps, especially of the burst variety, needs some love - I think this is the wrong way to go about it.

We currently use Mind Flay as our filler spell because it both refreshes Shadow Word Pain and is our only direct damage spell without a CD. This new Nuke must have lower damage than Mind Blast or that spell would no longer be useful and unless it does more DPCT than Mind Flay - it won't be used at all. If the damage is on par with Mind Flay I have concerns over how that would affect our rotation and if we would just resort to casting one tick of MF to refresh SW:P.

Suggestion:
Make Shadow Word: Death function much like Conflagarate where it does the damage of a full duration Vampiric Touch while consuming the effect and possibly provide a glyph similar to Warlock's and Elemental Shamans where it does not consume the DoT.

Itemization/Talent Issues:

Spirit:
There are 4 caster classes that utilize spirit on their gear through talents, glyphs and short term 'armor' type talents. While I am not advocating homogenization, the devs have addressed the usefulness of spirit for 3 of these 4 classes, leaving shadow priests behind.

Warlocks
Fel Armor = 30% of spirit as spellpower, 39% talented (needs confirmation) (Baseline + Talented)
Glyph of Lifetap = 20% of spirit as spellpower for 40 sec. (Glyph)

Mages
Molten Armor = 35% of spirit as crit rating. (Baseline)
Glyph of Molten Armor = Additional 20% of spirit as crit rating. (Glyph)

Druids
Improved Moonkin Form = 30% of spirit as spellpower. (Talented)

Priests
Twisted Faith = 10% of spirit as spellpower (Talented)
Glyph of Shadow = 10% of spirit as spellpower (Glyph) - ~90-95% uptime

Shadow priests do indeed have the most sub-optimal usage of spirit on gear out of the 4 classes above. In response to Moonkin spirit itemization issues, Ghostcrawler said:

---

Q u o t e:
We aren't taking Spirit off of gear. It's a stat in the game and we need to use it. "Sub-optimal" is not the same as "worthless." Spirit on plate is worthless.

We did improve the set bonus by quite a bit, and we are considering increasing the amount of spellpower provided by Improved Moonkin Form.

Long term we would still like to evaluate whether we're happy with there being so much crossover of Int becoming a mana regen stat and Spirit becoming a dps stat.

---

I know you have grand plans for changing how stats work in Cataclysm and I think it's a brilliant idea. However, given how much time and content there is between now and the expansion - I implore you to not let this issue remain unresolved until then.

Suggestion:
Increase the spellpower contribution from talents from 10% to 20%.

Haste:
Shadow priests scale very poorly with haste and given it's prevalence on gear and the fact that the best raid 'burst' buff in the game is 30% haste, also creates issues for our burst damage. Unfortunately I am not decided on a way to make this a better stat for us other than saying: Make DoTs somehow scale with haste. However, this may have bad implications for multi-dotting and I feel our current issues could be solved using the other suggestions I make in this post.

While the game has very much changed since then, haste was also an issue back in late BT/Sunwell. Classes that did not scale very well with it (including shadow priests) saw their dps fall in comparison to classes who gained a large benefit from it. There were most definitely other factors in this scenario and I only use it to demonstrate that this problem has been a long standing one for shadow priests.

Additional Notes:

Raid Utility:
Spriests have the highest survivability of any dps class and the buffs we do bring to raids are more than sufficient (modest VE heals, 3% hit, Replenishment). I do not believe we need anything else in this area to 'justify' our spot in raids.

PvP:
I have never excelled at PvP and this post is not directed towards issues in that area although I have tried to somewhat consider the ramifications of my proposed changes in PvP.

Summary:
Most of the shadow priest community, myself included, feels very strongly that we 'Need Some Love GC!'. We feel our dps slipping and while we still remain somewhat competitive, the way other classes are scaling with the new T9 gear (not even including hard mode loot), the issue will only get worse.

---

Q u o t e:


Haste:
Shadow priests scale very poorly with haste and given it's prevalence on gear and the fact that the best raid 'burst' buff in the game is 30% haste, also creates issues for our burst damage. Unfortunately I am not decided on a way to make this a better stat for us other than saying: Make DoTs somehow scale with haste. However, this may have bad implications for multi-dotting and I feel our current issues could be solved using the other suggestions I make in this post.

While the game has very much changed since then, haste was also an issue back in late BT/Sunwell. Classes that did not scale very well with it (including shadow priests) saw their dps fall in comparison to classes who gained a large benefit from it. There were most definitely other factors in this scenario and I only use it to demonstrate that this problem has been a long standing one for shadow priests.

Additional Notes:

Raid Utility:
Spriests have the highest survivability of any dps class and the buffs we do bring to raids are more than sufficient (modest VE heals, 3% hit, Replenishment). I do not believe we need anything else in this area to 'justify' our spot in raids.

Summary:
Most of the shadow priest community, myself included, feels very strongly that we 'Need Some Love GC!'. We feel our dps slipping and while we still remain somewhat competitive, the way other classes are scaling with the new T9 gear (not even including hard mode loot), the issue will only get worse.

---

A good post.

I think the really frustrating part is our problems are all scaling issues and some of us have been saying for months now that if nothing is done by Icecrown we'll be in a really bad way.

Our dps was great in Naxx, good in Uld, it is average in ToC and I only see it being BAD in Icecrown.

Sadly, it appears as if history is going to repeat itself, despite hundreds of shadow priests and even non-shadow priests coming on here to express concern about the spec. We really don't need much, just double twisted faith and then fix haste.

As for a haste fix, I don't think haste ---> dots is feasible (and for sure it isn't in the scope of Wrath). I'd love to see perhaps another component of twisted faith that does a simple conversion of haste ---> spellpower.

If Twisted Faith simply did 5-10-15-20-25% of spirit and 3-6-9-12-15% of haste ----> spell power, we'd be fixed.

Blizz PLEASE, pretty please with sugar on top, don't wait until expansion to give us the buffs we will need to be able to compete in Icecrown.

Good post, but sadly everything you've said has been discussed before and has been ignored before. I doubt this will be any different. What is funny though is right at the start of Tier7 level content, people were posting about scaling issues. It is amusing seeing feral druids competing with the top DPS whilst we sit at the bottom with no acknowledgment that our DPS is low, you'd think both being hybrids our DPS should almost be identical, wouldn't you?

Having the lead developer thinking we do too much damage with "searing pain" doesn't strike much confidence about this being fixed, though.

---

Q u o t e:

Having the lead developer thinking we do too much damage with "searing pain" doesn't strike much confidence about this being fixed, though.

---

huh?

before anything can happen our mutli dotting and mind smearing needs to get nerfed.

mind sear is simple, lower the damage.

DoTs on the other hand have to go through a fun little thing that will make a lot of people angry because they cant hit tab-1-2-tab-1-2 and top the meters any more. but pretty much to nerf our DoTs you gotta put an aoe cap of sorts on them. (im just making up numbers btw) when a dot is on 1 target it does 100% damage. when on two targets they do 80% damage, three for 70%, four targets for 65%, etc.

our single target dot damage will be the exact same, but our AOE will get kicked in the crotch. our single target dps will always be low because we have such great multi target utility, and that multi target dps has got to get lowered if we want to be competitive in burst and single target environments. regardless, and i know a lot of Spriests may disagree with me here, but i want to be competative on all the fights, not just the ones that we have to multi dot on.

FLAME ON

---

Q u o t e:



huh?

---

GC said that shadow priests have too much damage tied to searing pain. Yes, he said searing pain.

---

Q u o t e:
Good post, but sadly everything you've said has been discussed before and has been ignored before. I doubt this will be any different. What is funny though is right at the start of Tier7 level content, people were posting about scaling issues. It is amusing seeing feral druids competing with the top DPS whilst we sit at the bottom with no acknowledgment that our DPS is low, you'd think both being hybrids our DPS should almost be identical, wouldn't you?

Having the lead developer thinking we do too much damage with "searing pain" doesn't strike much confidence about this being fixed, though.

---

In all fairness to the devs - they've made mistakes in regards to other classes and given the complexity of a game like WoW they're bound to make mistakes. However, I do feel they have not acknowledged this issue for what it is and it's time they did something.

Going to be bumping this post as much as possible in the next 48 hours to hopefully get some attention to this.

Mind Sear doesn't need a nerf.

---

Q u o t e:
Good post, but sadly everything you've said has been discussed before and has been ignored before. I doubt this will be any different. What is funny though is right at the start of Tier7 level content, people were posting about scaling issues. It is amusing seeing feral druids competing with the top DPS whilst we sit at the bottom with no acknowledgment that our DPS is low, you'd think both being hybrids our DPS should almost be identical, wouldn't you?

Having the lead developer thinking we do too much damage with "searing pain" doesn't strike much confidence about this being fixed, though.

---

I think you are right.

It's my guess they'll have a couple AoE boss-encounters in Icecrown and maybe even another MC necessary fight to keep us mildly pacified until expansion.

It's just really disappointing that our spec has done the EXACT same thing for 2 expansions in a row now and it just doesn't fill you with much confidence when the developer team says they are reading our feedback and yet somehow completely ignoring the facts presented to them.

The sick side of me almost wants us to get benched in Icecrown Cit just so we can say "I told you so..."

Then again, I'd rather just be fixed.

---

Q u o t e:


GC said that shadow priests have too much damage tied to searing pain. Yes, he said searing pain.

---

I wanna read it, where is this at, Blizzcon?

---

Q u o t e:
before anything can happen our mutli dotting and mind smearing needs to get nerfed.

mind sear is simple, lower the damage.

DoTs on the other hand have to go through a fun little thing that will make a lot of people angry because they cant hit tab-1-2-tab-1-2 and top the meters any more. but pretty much to nerf our DoTs you gotta put an aoe cap of sorts on them. (im just making up numbers btw) when a dot is on 1 target it does 100% damage. when on two targets they do 80% damage, three for 70%, four targets for 65%, etc.

our single target dot damage will be the exact same, but our AOE will get kicked in the crotch. our single target dps will always be low because we have such great multi target utility, and that multi target dps has got to get lowered if we want to be competitive in burst and single target environments. regardless, and i know a lot of Spriests may disagree with me here, but i want to be competative on all the fights, not just the ones that we have to multi dot on.

FLAME ON

---

That's a pretty clunky solution in my mind - it makes shadow priest dps even more 'mathy' (something the devs want to get away from to a large extent). You'd have to sit down and figure out the optimal time to use dots vs. mind sear on each fight and is not something that's necessarily easy to figure out on the fly.

---

Q u o t e:
Mind Sear doesn't need a nerf.

---

If we scaled with haste and spirit properly, it probably would need a small coeff nerf.

As for DoTs, it all depends on the content to be honest.

If Icecrown is filled with encounters that allow us to sear and multidot, our dps will seem a lot better than it does in ToC where we don't really do much of it.

I guess I've never really been in favor of multidotting because I just see it as a way to bloat the meters and not do what you are supposed to.

I think of Fac Champs...yeah you can dot em all up and maybe they get dispelled or maybe you do some nice dps, but if you aren't burning those healers (and yeah, we are the weakest single-target burn class in the game atm) then you really aren't doing what you are supposed to.

If you need to bloat the meters just to justify having a raid spot, well then isn't that a problem?

---

Q u o t e:


If we scaled with haste and spirit properly, it probably would need a small coeff nerf.

As for DoTs, it all depends on the content to be honest.

If Icecrown is filled with encounters that allow us to sear and multidot, our dps will seem a lot better than it does in ToC where we don't really do much of it.

I guess I've never really been in favor of multidotting because I just see it as a way to bloat the meters and not do what you are supposed to.

I think of Fac Champs...yeah you can dot em all up and maybe they get dispelled or maybe you do some nice dps, but if you aren't burning those healers (and yeah, we are the weakest single-target burn class in the game atm) then you really aren't doing what you are supposed to.

If you need to bloat the meters just to justify having a raid spot, well then isn't that a problem?

---

Not sure a situational aoe is a pigeon-holding our single target dps, sorry, I don't buy it. Mind sear does scale with haste? it is channeled. But asking for a nerf to tab-target doting and aoe is asking for two steps back and one step forward.

---

Q u o t e:



Not sure a situational aoe is a pigeon-holding our single target dps, sorry, I don't buy it. Mind sear does scale with haste? it is channeled. But asking for a nerf to tab-target doting and aoe is asking for two steps back and one step forward.

---

Actually it isn't.

If a mindsear nerf get me to a usefull DPS level for say....IC hardmode then its well worth it. When the cards come down and its an all out DPS race. SINGLE TARGET is what gets you your raid spot.

If our single target DPS was fine "multi-dotting" would be frowned on as poor play...not a requirment to stay competitive.

bump for attention!

---

Q u o t e:
If out single target DPS was fine "multi-dotting" would be frowned on as poor play...not a requirment to stay competitive.

---

I wouldn't come close to going that far. If, say, you aren't multidotting on yogg tentacles, you're not playing your class right, whether our single target gets buffed or stays the (horribly low) levels it's at now.

---

Q u o t e:


I wouldn't come close to going that far. If, say, you aren't multidotting on yogg tentacles, you're not playing your class right, whether our single target gets buffed or stays the (horribly low) levels it's at now.

---

Ok so you found a gimmick on a gimmick fight.


However, for a normal mode kill multi-dotting is by no means required.

---

Q u o t e:


Ok so you found a gimmick on a gimmick fight.


However, for a normal mode kill multi-dotting is by no means required.

---

Lots of things aren't "required," but they still contribute to understanding your class and playing it well. And news flash, every fight has some kind of gimmick else everything would be a tank and spank. My point is that a number of those "gimmicks," especially in Ulduar (and for certain at least a few will in Icecrown), play to our strengths and such fights should be exploited as much as possible. It's not meter padding and it's not useless damage or any of that.

It just so happens that there are no shining examples of such fights in ToC so during hard mode progression our lack of single target is almost surely going to stick out more, so it's more of a concern now than in Ulduar.

Besides, "for a normal mode it's not required;" aren't we discussing hard modes? I think everyone agrees no normal mode in the game is exactly punishing as far as raid composition.

---

Q u o t e:


Actually it isn't.

If a mindsear nerf get me to a usefull DPS level for say....IC hardmode then its well worth it. When the cards come down and its an all out DPS race. SINGLE TARGET is what gets you your raid spot.

If our single target DPS was fine "multi-dotting" would be frowned on as poor play...not a requirment to stay competitive.

---

You missed the point completely, mind sear has nothing to do with single target dps.