Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

The Priest Q&A was released by WOW here  

A couple of things  I want to comment on in regards to Shadow Priests – as most of the responses to the questions were generic – and we are ‘happy with the way it is’  – and to be honest. When I can still beat pure classes at DPS that are similarly geared to me I am happy with my class spell power mechanics.   What I will never be 100% happy with is how raids decide to use the utility of us  – but then we must stop and think.  We have a unique set of tools  us priests , would I want to lose some of them to reduce my utility  – no.  Ghostcrawler said this of healing priests, but I think it goes the same for Shadow – and  its one of the reasons why I like my class.  He said that they have an  unmatched versatility.  I’ m a one class sorta player, and this versatility has been one of the things that has kept me playing my Shadow priest.

A couple of things I want to comment on regards to his Shadow Specific comments are

Q: How about increasing the range of Mind Flay?

Ghostcrawler: The glyph improves the range at the cost of the snare, which seems like a reasonable trade-off. We have discussed bumping damage and range, or possibly just removing the snare loss. It was put in as PvP protection early on in Lich King, but at this point we don’t think it would be a problem if the glyph just bumped the range without the penalty. It’s probably too conservative a glyph.

 – Really -Please! Pretty Please.   I had forgotten how much I missed those  extra 10 yards when it was the least important glyph to swap out for my dispel spec.  ( Don’t tell my class lead,  but I took out the +healing 3% of a player when you dispel them because the effective heal was still dismal, and I needed my 10 yards to refresh my dots to maintain competitive dps during Yogg.  )   WE NEED THOSE 1o yards.. Shadow Priests scream it!

Q: Since a lot of the damage a Shadow priest does builds with damage-over-time (DoT) spells, are you concerned about them being well-rounded enough to do adequate damage in shorter PvE encounters, 5-player dungeons, or in the Arenas?

“Third, there is an issue of player skill here too. If your group kills the skull first every time, then maybe you want to DoT the third or fourth mob in the group so that you do have the benefit of time elapsing. DoTs just work differently. The Enhancement shaman by contrast can be at 100% on one target, then switch and be at 100% on the new target instantly. Not every class or spec can do that and class diversity would be a little boring if they could”

All I can think of is if priests started Dotting anything other then the skull someone would scream ” Why isn’t the dps on the skull”   – having a dps lead that understands your class – and cares about your dps enough to let you get the max damage from your casts as possible would be a requirement for that to happen.  Shadow Priests don’t have good burst damage.  I feel it when we were doing Heartbreaker on XT-002 , and when we do Sar 3d Zerg we need those dots,  and if they aren’t up and stay up along time, then our damage is not great. – as a class the shadow priests in our raid have their moments,  where they can out- dps pure dps classes, and the other hybrids.  In BC we were more often always on the bottom.  It was where we were expected to be. But moving onto the 3rd or 4th target ( if you aren’t mindsearing.. )  Would  could be considered as ‘padding’ the dps metres.  By multidotting, we can do a lot more damage, even our mindflay has to tick before it does damage. Following a Dot based spell rotation on a Mob that dies  too quick is silly.   I agree its a skill to consider that  but I also think that there is a lot of opposition to letting a class such as ours do what is best for us to remain competitive, The job gets done everything is dead,  we just did it a little differently to the classes that can switch targets easily and not lose dps. 

 I will leave a target before its dead.  ( Within reason)  because I know that the dots and other classes burst already on it are enough to kill it.  So I will move on just a little before the body hits the floor.  It sounds like I am not following the correct kill order.   The mobs still die in the same order, but my damage and spells are more affective.

Q: As many players report that Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch lack viability in PvP settings and Vampiric Embrace tends to generate too much threat in PvE settings, are there any plans you can share to improve the functionality of these spells?

……….We can look at the Vampiric Embrace threat. That’s not feedback we hear often. Shadow priests pulling off of tanks doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem.

I leave pulling threat off tanks to the Warlocks and the mages.  The good thing about that is normally they just get one shot and the mob goes back to the tank.  Normally, I have an issue with VE threat sometimes on Leviaton when we are doing 4 towers.  I get sent up on top of the Leviathon and they put me in the same group as my fellow turrent dpser so I can heal /shield/ my VE is useful to us both,  because you can take a bit of damage while your up there.  Even if i don’t have to heal them outright  the healing from my VE alone is often enough for me to attacked by adds as soon as I hit the ground.  That’s really my own prob with VE in Wrath.   Back in BC,   it was a problem all the time VE and VT would produce threat  add that to our Damage threat,   it was a little cruel  Give us all this threat, but not the damage that other classes producing the same threat would do.   They solved it when they nerfed the healing rate of VE and made Replinishment a proc rather then a party buff.