---

Q u o t e:
Sometimes players aren't seeing the right numbers. Players put a lot of faith in simulations, target dummy tests, data base packages, theorycrafting and simple fights. None of those sources of information are totally invalid. None of them tell the whole story either. Often players are comparing apples and oranges because they are considering a fight which is very good for another class or comparing themselves to an overpowered class who has already gotten nerfs (that do not show up until the next patch). Players also tend to downplay any fight with adds ("trash doesn't matter") even though there are very few single-target boss fights. Players tend to downplay half of the fights as "gimmick fights" which leaves only Patchwerk and maybe Golemagg.

---

But when ALL the theorycrafting numbers say the same thing, and ALL the fight breakdowns from top guilds indicate the same thing, what else can you possibly be basing your opinions on class balance off of (when they don't fall in line with the aforementioned)? Are you balancing around bad players and outdated content?

---

Q u o t e:
And if haste is so useless for us, or not supposed to be, why would we have a Mind blast talent in the first place to speed to spell up? And it being a primary source of dps, it seems like youve NEVER played shadow. I almost have to know you have never played shadow to make such childish statements, if you want to defend GC making a fool of yourself in not the way to do it.

---

Clearly, YOU'VE never played shadow. The Mind Blast talent decreases the cooldown, not the cast time. It doesn't speed the spell up at all. It just makes it available more often.

Try reading your talents first. You'll save yourself from looking like the deathtard you're posting on.

---

Q u o t e:


But when ALL the theorycrafting numbers say the same thing, and ALL the fight breakdowns from top guilds indicate the same thing, what else can you possibly be basing your opinions on class balance off of (when they don't fall in line with the aforementioned)? Are you balancing around bad players and outdated content?

---

Yeah, I have yet to see anyone, whether its Devs or any of the "shadow dps is fine" supporters post any numbers that are sound.

Shadow is fine = All anecdotal

Shadow has problems- Anecdotal, simcraft, dps, WMO.

For those of you who think shadow is fine, bring it on. No, seriously, bring it. Go find that shadow priest and ask him do join the "forum minority" and bring it. I'll be here waiting.

Good thoughts here. The problem with a disonect betweenthe devs and the communities' thoughts?

Nothing.

They know what comes next. You don't.

They know the real numbers we kinda pathetically try to quote.

They know how new mechanics would affect the future of the game.

If players made the game how they liked. I'd hate it now. But what's worse, they wouldn't know what to do to make me not hate it in the future.

---

Q u o t e:
Good thoughts here. The problem with a disonect betweenthe devs and the communities' thoughts?

Nothing.

They know what comes next. You don't.

They know the real numbers we kinda pathetically try to quote.

They know how new mechanics would affect the future of the game.

If players made the game how they liked. I'd hate it now. But what's worse, they wouldn't know what to do to make me not hate it in the future.

---

this is why the game is turning into flotm devving. for every 1 troll, there's 5 fanboys all happy blizzard allows them, the terrible players to play this game.

---

Q u o t e:


Okay, I'll try and answer this line by line a bit to try and shed some light.

First, you aren't the majority. Sorry. Even if you were the majority, I'm not sure it's fair to give every player an equal vote. Some understand our philosophy better. Some have seen more of the content. Some have played multiple classes and have a broader perspective. Some are better at math. Very, very, very often in the "everyone agrees our dps is low" threads (for any class) you see players who disagree, sometimes very smart players. But those guys are shouted down as "not getting it" rather than being included in the discussion.

Sometimes players aren't seeing the right numbers. Players put a lot of faith in simulations, target dummy tests, data base packages, theorycrafting and simple fights. None of those sources of information are totally invalid. None of them tell the whole story either. Often players are comparing apples and oranges because they are considering a fight which is very good for another class or comparing themselves to an overpowered class who has already gotten nerfs (that do not show up until the next patch). Players also tend to downplay any fight with adds ("trash doesn't matter") even though there are very few single-target boss fights. Players tend to downplay half of the fights as "gimmick fights" which leaves only Patchwerk and maybe Golemagg.

Often, player sense of perspective is wrong. The classes are closer than they have been at any time in the history of WoW. Could they be better? Absolutely. But when we read these threads that talk about a class problem (even low dps) as being the Worst Thing Ever That Has Always Been This Way, they sort of lose some of their credibility. There are some specs who we see as legitimately not making it into PvE groups very often (such as Frost mages and Demo locks) and some specs that just don't feel very viable in PvP (such as Prot warriors or Fire Mages). Many of the other "am being sat" anecdotes are overblown.

Often, we have made a fix and players just haven't seen it yet because the next build isn't out. It is very telling right now that there are a lot of "I logged into the game, tried hitting something for 5 seconds and didn't notice a dps increase" threads. What we deal with a lot are trends, and trends can take a lot of time to emerge.

Sometimes we even agree something is a problem, but A) aren't sure how we want to fix it yet, B) think that an upcoming change will fix the problem, or C) are just focused on other problems at the moment. You can ask why we won't at least acknowledge a problem even if we have no immediate plans to fix it. But ask yourself if you would be one of those people who would post "Why won't you fix it if you know it's a problem?" :)

---

I really enjoy watching Blizz dance around issues beacuse the poster lacks "credibility". Even better is watching them post over and over again about why they won't get Blue responses.

---

Q u o t e:


I really enjoy watching Blizz dance around issues beacuse the poster lacks "credibility". Even better is watching them post over and over again about why they won't get Blue responses.

---

The worst thing about GC was the threads he would actually post in. They'd be completely horrible threads but him 'tagging' it with a blue would often lead to the thread staying active. But when people made a good, constructive thread with parse examples, thoughts on what can be done to correct an issue etc, he wouldn't post and the thread would just slip away.

He always talked about keeping topics constructive and such, yet he would post in the least constructive thread on the first 3 pages while the very few constructive threads actually posted on these forums would slip away. Look at the front page right now, him posting in 2 threads, including this one, completely derailed what little constructive discussion was happening.

He shouldn't completely stop posting on these forums, however, he should choose where he posts more wisely. Sometimes a constructive thread needs a post from him to continue discussions, sometimes a good thread will be derailed if he posts though, whilst other threads that offer nothing but mindless QQ should be let fall from the front few pages. He should also never post about a class other than the one/s the thread is about. 99% of the time when he posts about another class, such as he did with shadow priests in an elemental shaman thread, the discussion ends and out comes the QQ.

GC posting is good for the forums, it keeps them alive. He just needs to start making better choices in which threads he posts. If that means he only makes 1 post in a week, so be it.

---

Q u o t e:

Often, player sense of perspective is wrong. The classes are closer than they have been at any time in the history of WoW. Could they be better? Absolutely. But when we read these threads that talk about a class problem (even low dps) as being the Worst Thing Ever That Has Always Been This Way, they sort of lose some of their credibility. There are some specs who we see as legitimately not making it into PvE groups very often (such as Frost mages and Demo locks) and some specs that just don't feel very viable in PvP (such as Prot warriors or Fire Mages). Many of the other "am being sat" anecdotes are overblown.

---

How about this for an anecdote. My guild got A Tribute to Insanity the other night. I was in for the entire run but was sat for Anub'arak because despite my AoE damage, I appeared to be too low on the meters and my buffs were easily replaced by a Moonkin, and trumped by the Innervate and Battle Rez. 25 other people in my guild got the server first title and I did not. I feel robbed.

If I could change classes, I would. But I don't blame my guild for not wanting me to change to a class that I haven't had 3 years of experience with.

I posted vehemently on the WotLK Beta boards that we were not going to scale well without more direct damage. WotLK is about to turn a year old. Volley was fixed in like 2 weeks? For whatever reason we got the buff that we did in 3.2.2, it wasn't even enough to make Blue socket bonuses worth taking.

Perhaps Blizzard is saying we're okay because we're not far from Elemental Shamans or Moonkins at the moment, but consider the buffs that those classes bring. And please consider that right now does not equal the future and that all three of these specs will scale differently into Icecrown. Personally, I'm glad that we don't have any really important buffs to bring to a raid, but unfortunately, our damage does not compensate for that.

I don't see how this expansion is playing out any differently than previous ones; we started out strong and our scaling paced along a very low incline, ending up well below others. I don't see how we're not on the verge of being the joke that we were at the end of Vanilla.

---

Q u o t e:
"Bring the player not the class"

GC, you should have never said that because it's turned out to be a massive failure.

---

I call shennigans on that one. It has not been a complete failure. Let me explain again what GC meant by that.

Let us refer to sunwell. Good mages and fury warriors were being replaced by less skilled and probably baddie shamans and warlocks. Are you shadow priests telling me you are being replaced by other classes played by people less skilled than you?

---

Q u o t e:


this is why the game is turning into flotm devving. for every 1 troll, there's 5 fanboys all happy blizzard allows them, the terrible players to play this game.

---

I personally say it's a bad business model, to make a game and say "no, you can not play it." Reminds me of the soup @*#* from seinfeld. Yes, a good game would be where a company decides who gets to play the game, and who doesn't. I have never seen any MMO(or game for that matter) that bans people because "they suck at the game."

I can see some horrible things happening from that. If it was up to the community these rules would be needed:

1. You must maintain at least a 2500 rating(at least to a friend of mine, 2200 is a low PvP rating) to continue playing

2. You must have at least 5 hard mode achievements from ulduar, or be in a guild that has them.

3. If you create a pug, and you wipe JUST ONE TIME, you are banned from the server.

I would believe the community would find this reasonable. I would also see that only the true elite and expert players would be playing this game as well.

But of course, this is bad game design. Blizzard, nor should any game company, be like the soup @*#* from seinfeld.

Since this thread seems to have two different rails going I shall break my post apart into the two different rails. Shadow priest DPS, and the thread title, the gap between Dev's and the Community.

Shadow Priest DPS and viability side:

I am not the smartst player, I do occasionally read elitist jerks. I do not immediately look at all the new gear in a dungeon and plan my own personal progression. I dislike looking things up like 'at 502 haste I should clip mind flay this many times in my rotation.' And in the end I'm not sure where my numbers end up in full t9 in full t9 equiv other gear.

I can only comment on the things I notice and the value of my class whenever I raid. I have noticed in trash mobs, and AOE groups I tend to top the meter in equivalent gear than my other classy friends. On bosses I tennd to be the bottom of the meter.

I know ways I could maximize my own a bit more by looking up rotations etc. . . learning to clip better but not by the sheer amount of gap that exists even playing my best. What I do realize is what I bring to the group during those boss fights:

Vampiric Embrace: Never -ever- lower the value of survivability, even unimproved 15% of your damage heals -you- This is a beautiful thing to have up, when I can do sapphiron on the wrong side of the dragon and never receieve a heal and stay at full health, that is -nice- and nice to the heallers, less mana used is less mana used. Add in it helps heal your party and that makes it nicer.

Misery: 3% to hit and it doesn't take a GCD, it's up, and will stay up as long as I am alive and hitting the target. I'm always alive (see previous) unless I as a player really really screw up.

Hymn of Hope: -Never- be too proud when somebody announces low mana to run over by them at hit this button. It's not as nice as innervate but it can make a huge difference, especially if it's a healler.

Dispersion - This is a talen that's terribly underrated for it's usefulness I think. How many other classes can shadow word death a KT mob, drag it to the offtank picking up another add, and fade it onto them without dying because for 6 seconds they couldn't die? How many classes can eat a sapph breathe? A red void in KT? How many classes can tank a thaddius enrage for 6 seconds while the 3 dps that are up dps him down the last 50k? I've done it!

Ease at popping out of shadowform and healling -continuously- - I've done this on a lot of boss fights, and honestly between the new mind flay spirit tap trigger, dispersion, and shadowfiend I won't run out of mana healling with an occasional mind flay. I've popped out of shadowform and healed heigan with 3 others up for 45 minutes while spec'd shadow. It wasn't pleasant, but it's doable.

I'm not sure our single target dps is where it should be, and maybe it would make certain achievements a little harder. What I -do- know is I do bring a lot to the table, I'm fairly competant in my class, and I'm a decent player, if a group votes me out due to a weakness in one aspect of my class that's their perogative but chances are it's not a group I personally want to run with, since next patch it could easily be their class gettting looked over for a similar reason.

Gap between Dev team and the community:

Maybe I'm really stupid in saying this, but have you -looked- at the gap in other popular mmo's here? Compared it to what we have. Sure an unpopular, or low population mmo may have a -lot- more dev/community involvement because they can, when you have 20,000 people as your base, it's a lot easier to justify turning game mechanics upside down for them.

World of Warcraft is massive, the game mechanics included. A tiny change to one class effects the entire game so ridiculously I almost call that 'bad design' But on the other hand I do love how intertwined everything is. Also as time goes on I find the dev's becoming more involved with the community, when I started there were a lot less changes, a lot fewer fixes. As time goes on I see people's opinions mattering more and changes coming out within 2-3 patches when there's a large enough demand. That is -huge- yes that 40000 response post didn't see a change for 6 patches, because it may have been hard to implement or they had to test what everyone was saying. If a change happens within a year, that's still kind of big, people speak out and changes happen, just maybe not at the pace you like.

It's a lot easier for you to say 'shadow priests need more direct damage. Point, now, sit and say how that should fairly happen, add a new spell? sure, now come up with every rank of that spell, while you're at it, make sure to adjust all your other spells so they don't blow everything away. Also pick the levels you should elarn the new ranks of the new spell, should any enemy mobs use the new spelll? Like those shadow raven priests in northrend? If so should it be on a different cooldown or a different rank so that 73 rogue can still defeat one easy enough? That is a -lot- of work and they may be looking for ways to make haste more viable with a shadow priest 'dots tick faster?' but then how does that effect every other class with dots? is it fair to make only one classes dots tick faster with haste? There's the thing, an easy enough observation can take months of rewriting code if that is the -only- thing they work on but they have a -lot- to work on. Other things get higher priority, would you like more direct damage or for thorim to not reset bug? Which helps the community as a whole more? Which gets priority?

I think world of warcraft has one of the smallest dev/community gaps I've ever seen in anything half as large as world of warcraft, I disagree with their policy sometimes (okay a lot of time) in how far they go to balance classes, often times really hurting the uniqueness of the class. I don't agree witht he priorities they put on certain things, or how certain is sues only get band-aids instead of full fixes. But still the community desires/changes within a year is ridiculous.

The -only- big complaint I have with the dev team that I don't think is based on complete personal bias is that I personally would love to see more updates. When something breaks and we post about it, we get an initial post of 'we're working on it' then never see anything again till it's fixed. I'd love to see at least more minor updates, even if it's still 'hey we're still trying to figure out where the issue is but we -are- still working on it' within 24-48 hours of the original post. 'we're still researching alternatives to boost shadow priests single target dps' within a week or so of official announcement. More updates, even if they make the community more upset, or ask more questions, or ridicule you more at least lets us know that things are still happening.


But that's out of the mouth of a silly know-nothing average shadow priest. Take it as you will *wanders off*

---

Q u o t e:


I'm not a huge fan of the head on a pike thing, but there still seem to be enough players who don't get it, so allow me to point out that posts like this are QQ at best and will earn you a ban. If you think your class has problems, that is fine to post. If you can't state those problems without insulting the developers, please don't waste our time. Please don't waste the time of other players by making them read your posts or lame responses like mine that have nothing to do with WoW itself.

[Not tracked]

---

Hi, im not sure if you remember me but assuming you read all the posts im sure you've read mine and for a while some i knew some i didnt but i think this post finally hit the nail on the head and as a previous offender of getting caught up in that whole just got (enter CC here) for 2hrs by that same (enter class here) and came ranting on forums about it.

I would just like to say im sorry for any offense i may have unintentionally directed at the developers and to future posters I would just like to say that the devs are not here to change the game but to learn whats going on out their from our point of view, their here to help so in your moment of anger try to remember that everyones on the same side here.

---

Q u o t e:

If you think your class has problems, that is fine to post. If you can't state those problems without insulting the developers, please don't waste our time.

---

I believe this is the main message here and that this should be considered explicitly before posting.

Ignorance is often bliss but when it causes conflicts between each other i think its at that point that we have to ask wait whats actually going on here and how can i conduct myself to the best of my abilities. So, again i apologize and I hope that the shadow priests as a community realize that whats being said here is simply that your here not to play court judge and jury but to hear our thoughts, thanks.

~Shadow Priest

---

Q u o t e:


You haven't given us a straight answer about our mechanics ever. Why is stacking shadow weaving and the glyph of shadow word pain (and the corresponding talent) so backwards? When you thought about simplifying the affliction rotation, you didn't think about the gymnastics we have to do to get a proper SW:pain on a target?

Truth- in 25 man instances with competent non face-breathing raiders, shadow priest dps is the lowest on single targets. There is only one fight in the game right now where shadow priests can excel, and that is Onyxia redux (closely followed by feral druids).

---

I too would like a straight answer instead of this "Blizz knows best" argument they keep spouting off. If we are fine tell us WHY. If you are fixing the issue, but don't know just how yet, tell us.

We are frustrated because a lot of us are caught on the fence. If we are getting fixes in Icecrown, great, a lot of us might stick it out. If we are not, tell us so we can reroll something useful for our raid and enjoyable for us to play.

Ambiguity only serves to breed frustration from those who actually care about the spec.

---

Q u o t e:
These forums are not for "demanding answers." if that's what you're looking for then you're going to be continually disappointed. Read the posts above yours and you will see players who think my responses derailed the conversation. They are often right.

Make good posts and we will read them. I will try and make just enough posts to remind players we are reading them. Don't show up with a list of demands and we'll all be happier.

---

That's why europe has so many blue posts, to remind the community Blizz is reading their suggestions OH WAIT

---

Q u o t e:
These forums are not for "demanding answers." if that's what you're looking for then you're going to be continually disappointed. Read the posts above yours and you will see players who think my responses derailed the conversation. They are often right.

Make good posts and we will read them. I will try and make just enough posts to remind players we are reading them. Don't show up with a list of demands and we'll all be happier.

---

I know I shouldn't be posting this since I will be breaking the Rogue Code!! But GC, the rogue community has demanded buffs / fixes/ tweaks so many times that we got them. we kicked and screamed and pouted but we got them. we get fun toys to play around with for quite awhile before blizzard takes them away from us. while other classes get their toys hotfixed 100% you're very vocal and give detailed information in many other class type threads, but when it comes to the priest class you stand idle or give cryptic answers. the community here and from what i can tell the priest one, is very fed up and frustrated at how shadow is in raids. i watched my roommate play his shadow priest and if you want to talk about a rotation that is full of collisions, full of keeping this dot up and that dot up do i clip MF do i not clip MF ok bloodlust is popped do i spam mind flay or wait cast that mind blast. with all that being said, when the boss dies they're still at the bottom of the meters with all that effort, while me and many other classes dont even have to work hard and we're cracking top of the charts with little ease.

i think you owe it to the that 1 particular community and respond to their questions and concerns. they have provided you with all the information you always want.