wow The New DPS Kings Get Nerfed: How Did the Pre-patch and Beta Changes Affect Shadow Priests?

[Starym 3,776]

 

This week was quite the rollercoaster for Shadow Priests, with them coming out extremely ahead of everyone else in the week 1 pre-patch DPS logs, almost immediately followed by a nerf on live and much more significant changes on the beta after that. Now that the changes have been around a while, we checked in with Publik, our SP guide writer and resident expert, to see what exactly these changes mean for the spec, both in the short-term pre-patch state, and long-term in Shadowlands itself.

First off we got a couple nerfs to our Azerite Traits on live, which was definitely a necessary change based on how the rework changed our spec (for the better) and caused some unhealthy relationships with these traits. You can see from our recaps of spec performances that this was indeed putting Shadow Priests in an overpowered state. The changes specifically to Azerite are going to result in a roughly 10% overall damage nerf, still putting us as a top tier spec, just not absolutely broken. The Spiteful Apparitions nerf is where the bulk of this comes from, whereas the Whispers of the Damned trait simply lowers the priority of that trait specifically. Our optimal build for traits in prepatch will for the most part remain unchanged, however you could swap out Whispers of the Damned trait for a Heart of Darkness if it is easier for your build.

As we get into the big changes from this week's beta there are a lot of things to digest here, but honestly these changes are mostly healthy for the state of the spec. These changes were based on direct feedback we put on the forums, and are not knee jerk nerfs as a reaction to Shadow’s performance on live. Overall I think these changes are in a healthy direction, we just need to keep iterating on them. A big problem that we gave feedback on was that Mind Blast and Void Bolt were both becoming increasingly low in priority, and it could even be a DPS loss to press these abilities due to Shadowlands tuning. In the blue post Blizzard started to address this problem by nerfing Mind Flay and Mind Sear by 15%. This is overall a healthy change, because it should make Mind Blast much more worthwhile to press. In my opinion this is only step 1 to make that possible though, as I think Mind Blast still could use its own damage buff as well to fix other issues with the spec.

I’ve gone over these changes in more detail on my YouTube channel if you’d like to watch the video version going over these changes.

Another important change from this build is the slight rework to Dark Thoughts. They altered the buff duration to 10s, which is great, but unfortunately removed the stacking component of this proc. This is kind of odd, as we always loved the idea of banking up charges of Dark Thoughts, but we were never really able to do this because the buff duration was so short. Hopefully after this next round of feedback they can reinstate the stacks of the buff, but maybe just 2-3 stacks instead of 5 stacks. That way we can bank up charges easily on AoE, and then dump these charges into a priority single target mob.

After posting feedback earlier in the beta cycle about the problem with Auspicious Spirits and Psychic Link being too similar, Blizzard has started to address this concern by restoring the Insanity to the Auspicious Spirits talent to 2 Insanity, but then nerfing the damage to compensate. The idea here is to make Auspicious Spirits be the “I want more Insanity” talent and Psychic Link be the “I want more cleave damage”. Unfortunately even after this change Psychic Link still is not good enough to ever consider using over Auspicious Spirits, and is still too similar/has too many downsides. Auspicious Spirits always provides consistent value, and the Insanity generation just feels great to play with. The damage nerf here doesn’t really change anything, we took this talent for the Insanity, not the damage. This nerf has nothing to do with the live Azerite Trait problems, it was purely intended to fix the talent balance of this row, it just didn’t quite hit the mark.

A couple other small changes in this build include Conduit buffs, Searing Nightmare Insanity reversal, and Devouring Plague nerfs. Overall these changes don’t really matter much, and are just a way to help balance out the damage sources of the spec. If you want more detail of these changes and my feedback on them check out the following forum posts where some in the Shadow Priest community address these points.

Publik’s Post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-priest-class-changes/490697/1081

Ellipsis’s Post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-priest-class-changes/490697/1096

Jaerv’s Post: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-priest-class-changes/490697/1110

[Unholyknight 9]

Not surprised. This is what blizzard do. Instead of buffing other classes, they nerf the whatever is on the top.

[Nayrusa 50]

48 minutes ago, Unholyknight said:

Not surprised. This is what blizzard do. Instead of buffing other classes, they nerf the whatever is on the top.

Yeah because if u buff all other classes then u have to buff the dungeons and raids aswell or they destroy the balancing but yeah
balancing is easy i guess

[Nakzul 37]

I'm happy they don't balance wow like they balance Diablo where everybody has gotten so powerful all the content is a joke. Whenever a class is way stronger than the others everybody else just gets buffed to get closer to the op class. The numbers are so rediculous at this point compared to what they were at launch.

[elmurufdd 45]

3 hours ago, Nayrusa said:

Yeah because if u buff all other classes then u have to buff the dungeons and raids aswell or they destroy the balancing but yeah
balancing is easy i guess

while i agree with u on not buffing everyone . balancing has to be easy otherwise why would blizz add a covenant ability multiplied by conduits multiplied by legendaries . so instead of banacling 36 specs they have to balance over 10 millions things . no way anyone dev with half a brain would add that many things to balance if balancing was hard to do . unless they are the worst devs on the planet .

 

[Lithari 194]

4 hours ago, elmurufdd said:

while i agree with u on not buffing everyone . balancing has to be easy otherwise why would blizz add a covenant ability multiplied by conduits multiplied by legendaries . so instead of banacling 36 specs they have to balance over 10 millions things . no way anyone dev with half a brain would add that many things to balance if balancing was hard to do . unless they are the worst devs on the planet .

 

If the shoe fits. lol

[Devastor 11]

13 hours ago, Unholyknight said:

Not surprised. This is what blizzard do. Instead of buffing other classes, they nerf the whatever is on the top.

Aaaaaand then buffed sth like the friggin Frost Mage Orb..... well yeah seems lil wizardo boys cried enough

[SidonisAntares 288]

When there's that much of a discrepancy, and even the guy who writes the SP guides you read on this site says it was OP, the nerfbat is the correct option. And even with the nerfs, he said SP is still a top tier DPS. Y'all are crying like you're a Survival Hunter or Feral Druid.