#1 - Aug. 8, 2012, 5:55 a.m.
Over the duration of beta Shadow Priest have been the least consistent of pretty much every class. You've swapped talents around, and changed abilities at random like you are just shooting in the dark. Quite frankly it's becoming insulting what you are doing to a spec that some players actually love the feel and play style of.
We don't need new mages, we don't need new warlocks, and we don't need new anything. Classes should stick to their roots. Shadow Priest were extremely popular during wotlk-cata respectively. Now after this joke of beta nearly every spriest I know is rerolling due to the fact that the class just sucks right now.
1. We have no burst CD. Our burst CD is save orbs and lose overall damage.
2. We are a dot class, and our dots are our worst abilities.
3. Our damage relative to other classes is low, this really can't be argued with. Single target we are trash, and sometimes if we get lucky multitarget we can compete, but you nerfed us many times due to our multidot ability. I've read mixed feelings from you all on multitarget damage classes like spriest, warlocks, etc. It seems like sometimes you want a balance between multitarget and single target, then other times you are fine with low single high multi. Fact is, Shadow Priest have always been a class that scales better on multiple target fights. raidbots doesn't lie, look at the stats for shadow priest on multitarget fights vs single and how we preform vs other specs. WE ARE FINE WITH THAT.
I really just don't understand what you all are doing with us, and it sure as hell seems like you have no idea either. You want a tip? Stop taking advice from the 1,000,000 casuals that probably don't even theorycraft on beta and get some direct input from players that actually know how to play the spec and see how they feel about the changes.
Want to know the major issues with shadow priest in Cata that we would have liked changed?
1. Orb generation could suck at times. You fixed this pretty much with the t13 set bonus. Making that baseline would be OP, we understand this. However, having to rely on the current orb generation system we ideally have to have 3 orbs on pull to get a good opener, then bank on casting MB as soon as its up. The only time we MIGHT be able to hold orbs is at 3 and MB is on CD. Other than that its a DPS loss to hold them, which is our burst CD, and goes back to the 1st problem we have on beta. You need to find a better system than this. You know what you could do? Bring evanglism back and dumb shadow orbs. You don't need 2 holy power classes anyway. Then you just gave us a burst cool down too if you pair archangel in with the evanglism. WAHHH !@#$IN LAHHH that wasn't very hard now was it.
2. There aren't any other major issues with shadow priest this expansion. What wasn't broke doesn't need to be fixed. We like having strong dots. Look at wol parses and our top damage abilities outside of the t13 set bonus rotation are dots. Don't get me wrong, the t13 bonus is fun, but that isn't the way our class should go. I like the bonus because its a temporary change that gets back to the roots of a shadow priest, but I would never want a class that bases on procs all the time.
The major overall problem isn't our damage, that can be fixed by you all just by changing the spell coeffiencents or whatever the %^-* it is you all do. The problem is we DONT feel like shadow priest anymore. I don't understand why you think that classes need major changes. We DONT. The changes from WOTLK to CATA stayed with the spriest feel. You added in a few cool mechanics, and what did you do with them? You got rid of them. Why? Whats the point? Is it too hard for people to manage archangel? Too hard for them to track evanglism? Too hard for them to track the number of orbs that had even though I think you should get rid of that !@#$ mechanic in general?
Now that I'm done ranting about spriest in general I'll rant about something you are doing with this game that really shouldn't be done in any game ever. You are taking abilities from certain classes and reworking them into other classes. This should never be done. A shaman signature for awhile was bloodlust, then you gave that to mages, and other classes too. Now your moving the paladin holy power over to shadow priest. Just stop. Be original with what you are doing.
You know what other shadow priest are telling me to do if I want to play spriest in MoP? Roll affliction warlock because it feels more like a shadow priest. How the hell does this make any sense at all....