Cataclysm Utility of a Shadow Priest

#0 - May 27, 2010, 6:43 p.m.

What will be the raid utility of a Shadow Priest be like come Cataclysm ?

Shadow Priests have always relied on this in part to support their Hyrbid taxed DPS presence.

Considering the following Cataclysm information

Q u o t e:
* We're also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don't feel as penalized when those buffs aren't available.
* Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
* Hybrid != has awesome, amazing buffs or utility.
* Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition.
* Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities -- something we're trying to avoid in Cataclysm -- we will need to replace several of the tree's talents.

From a common perspective, the raid utility of Shadow Priests have change significantly from BC to WotLK, and we face significant changes with our raid utility again. While WotLK gave shadow priests significant dps it also bought more raid utility to other classes including Moonkins and the pure dps range classes.

Without further information currently available... the removal of Hit Debuff and the reduction of Replenishment is the removal of Shadow Priests raid utility benefit to a level that is far below those of other classes, including the pure dps classes. Based on current information with lower raid utility, limited CC, no interupts, and a hybrid taxed dps... what future does the shadow priest really have.

Bonus Question ???

Any chance of a new shadow form animation in Cataclysm ? Im been staring at a black amorphous blob for some time, even I dont remeber what my epics armor really look like sometimes. The animation seems two part, the shadow form... and a black filter... the black filter hides way too much character detail imo. How about something more Man in Black - Smoke Monster from Lost like :P

Ghostcrawler

#28 - May 28, 2010, 11:41 p.m.

At the moment, Shadow has the 5% spell haste buff, similar to Improved Moonkin Form. That could change as we iterate further on the buff and debuff design.

This is in addition to Shadow's existing healing debuff and general priest buffs such as Fortitude.

As posters above have pointed out, we aren't going to give any spec a buff so powerful that they automatically earn a raid spot.

Ghostcrawler

#105 - June 1, 2010, 5:09 a.m.

Q u o t e:
It's extremely likely that the 3% global haste buff category is being removed completely, and Improved Moonkin Aura will offer the 5% spell haste buff, along with however it is distributed for Shadow Priests, and Shaman,

Yes, we are reclassifying all of the haste buffs as spell haste buffs or melee attack speed buffs.

Ghostcrawler

#155 - June 3, 2010, 4:21 p.m.

Q u o t e:
We live in a grey zone, not easily encompassed within Blizzard's standard nomenclature. I assume in this case that 'melee attack speed' includes us, as it usually does... of course, that assumption has not always been correct :(

Yeah, it went from "melee haste" (which needed a modifier to distinguish it from spell haste) to just "melee attack speed." At this point it's probably safe to just call it "attack speed" since that sounds like weapons (melee and ranged) and not spells.