2 March 2009

Phase 1

So I've set out the aims and arguments of the mind flay campaign in a separate post. Now I'd really appreciate your feedback before I throw it to the forum lions. Please check I've got my facts right, and please tell me what you think of the arguments I put forward for changing the spell — and the ideas. I particularly want to know what you think if you PVP as a shadow priest, given that any increase in range will most likely come at the cost of the snare. How would you feel if you had to glyph for the snare? Are you happy with the spell as it is? Who here (go on, be honest) thinks it's fine as it is?

5 comments:

Leigh said...

You do present an interesting argument and to be honest if it was the same range as MB it would be nice. Right now i am happy with the spell as it is, and that is being honest!! The only fight I find it annoying on is Grobbulus (I had 3.8K DPS last night on him and could have been a lot higher only for the constant moving by the tank to avoid the green crap he drops on the floor.

I likes the utility that the snare effect brings, like take Illidan for example and the shadowy construct things that move towards a targeted raid member, MF saves the day on fights like that and who knows what 3.1 will bring in that respect.

I would suggest changing your campaign to something the class really needs. What our class sorely needs at the moment is the ability to compete in that last 30%. We done Faerlina and Patch last night and in both cases I came 10th with 4.2K DPS. That's really annoying when your hit capped, have sizeable spell power, crit and haste and still cannot compete with classes that you are level on gear with if not outgear in some instances. I logged the PTR to see if the crit changes to DOT's makes a difference and single point on a dummy my DPS was up by about 200. Hardly earth shattering!!

Anonymous said...

I don't know that you'll be able to change their minds, but good luck. Not sure anything argument-wise needs to be changed.

@ Leigh - I was in 10-man the other night with my priest. According to InventoryOnPar I was geared only higher than two healer alts and outgeared by a good margin. By the time we got to Maexxna I was still on top of the dps and damage meters (not fully epic'd yet as this is an alt). Either we are competitive or I have really stupid dps on my team. Not going to argue that the latter is a huge possibility...

Leigh said...

At low gear levels, particularly entry level at Naxx 10 we can perform very well. I remember my first Naxx 10 run I was in blues and some BT epics and I pushed out 2K DPS, topping the meters against other classes who had heroic gear, craftable gear and some Naxx 10 gear as well. Fast forward two months and the have everyone on the same gear level and you will notice the difference. We just don't scale as well as other classes. This is our last Patch kill:
1: Warrior 5.2K
2. Demo Lock: 5.2K
3. Arcane Mage: 5.1K

Positions 4-9 were around the 4.6-4.3 mark and were made up of death knights, warriors, hunters and a ret pally. I came 10th with 4.2K DPS. Our raid had fully stacking buffs with the only thing missing was an elemental shammy (we had a boomkin and a resto). The thing is some shadow priests are capable of pushing 5K on fights like that with the right gear level. By the time i get to that gear level the other 9 people above me will have jumped an equal, if not greater amount, ahead of me. That 1K DPS gap needs to be filled by making us competitive enough so that they choose a shadow priest for their DPS potential over bringing say an elemental shammy who might do marginally worse but super buffs the other casters. Our role in the raid has been severly reduced to being the MC person and that can even be done with hunters and distracting shot!!!! :P

Merlot said...

I'm not terribly well geared and am still running mostly normal Naxx, but I can guess we have scaling problems. I'm annoyed they are changing crit (which I am broadly happy with as a stat) while ignoring haste (which as you probably know I think is shambolic).

I know there are other issues, but I see this as one of the big ones. Our glyphs are shocking, and whether priests can live without the mind flay glyph or not (and I can't), it's one slot that should be filled with a dps boost. And make no mistake, for some classes glyphs provide a very significant boost. We, on the other hand, have only one decent glyph (sw:p), one very mediocre glyph (shadow) and a hobson's choice of crappy dps or much-needed utility (sw:d v mind flay).

This of course is only one small battle in a bigger war. The first step in improving our glyphs is getting people to recognise the miserable state of them right now.

The mind flay glyph is a huge sticking point, because it masquerades as a decent choice. It is not. Take the glyph of mind flay out of the equation and you suddenly see that, far more than any other dps spec, shadow priests have been thrown a largely worthless lot of glyphs in place of decent raid-quality ones.

So stage one: tackle mind flay's range. Stage two: get some decent shadow glyphs. That's the plan, anyway!

Leigh said...

Agreed, the glyph state is pretty shocking. We just need one standout major glyph and even converting MF's glyph to a minor glyph would solve two birds with the one stone :)