We will be nerfed

[Samathul]

Our Nightbane kill from yesterday made me actually gloomy, rather than happy. Don't get me wrong, I was super high after we downed him after all of those tries, but after I looked at th numbers of my mod that keeps track of my VT mana regeneration it struck me: Blizzard _can_ not keep this up for shadowpriests

I regenerated 11136 mana for each mana user in my group. The fight took 10 minutes and 50 seconds. If a mana user would have used superior mana potion (1800-3000 mana) every time the potion would have not been on cooldown, that would have regenerated on average 12000 mana. That is imbalanced

Hell, me having an aura that restores that same amount of mana to the group while I would wand the boss would have been imbalanced!

Changing me to a holy priest would have deteriorated the healing alot, as there isn't a single healing class with any gear that would have regenerated 34k mana in a 10 minute fight and still being able to heal.

I am gloomy. Shadowpriests will be nerfed for PvE. Heavily. The most likely nerfs will be to the +hit talent and/or to the amount of regeneration VT produces. Both nerfs would lessen heavily the total amount of mana that the VT produces.

Yay for whining for nerfs that aren't being announced yet!

[Tardon]

Actually, I would be happy with shadow priests bringing utility to a raid in form of mana regeneration... if I would have thought of a nerf reason, it would be that shadow priests were getting way to high on the damage meters, WHILE also restoring tons of mana, VE healing, and being able to jump out of shadow form if needed to heal.
Making a shadow priest a mad regeneration machine would have been perfect grounds for taking in shadow priests, while still not touching on the slots of the DPS classes.
But meh, what do i know :S

[Samathul]

As I see it, currently SPs makes a too big impact on raids. Like Felbie says, it would be best if a raid leader could choose the DPS people from equal grounds without looking too much to the class. Ie, a hunter, while still giving some asset to the raid, would bring as much as taking another mage to the raid. The utility on SPs is exaggerated at the moment, and is what's going to be nerfed badly at some point.

As an example:
Scorpid sting is a great raid debuff from hunters. To make it to have a similar raid effecting level as VT currently has, it needs to be buffed around 5 times to 25%. Same goes to multiple different DPS classes, not just hunters. They have a great utility effect, that just isn't as significant as some others.

[mard]

or no utility at all while having mariginal better damage. i cant remember right now sama, but you were at about same % of whole raid damage done as me at the end of the succesfull attemp, while providing this kind of mana regeneration, damage buff to warlocks, not needing any healing at all, and not being in danger of getting randomly feared into the cleave ( and nightbane's cleaves hit hard enough to one shot leather-wearer ). well, something here is just simply not right if you ask me

[Samathul]

I think they made a mistake by adding a damage component to VT. If it would have had just that 5% mana regeneration, we would have been fine and more inline with the DPS/raid utility chart. Removing VT damage is not going to happen tho.

Mard, don't mind about the total raid damage. My total raid damage is affected by my trashmob damage, which has far higher DPS and far lower DPM than my boss damage. The amount of trashmob damage anyone of us does is meaningless, as long as the mobs die. Boss damage is all that matters, and I think I'm still behind of you real DPS classes.

[mard]

i didnt mean total raid damage, i mean raid damage on nightbane.

[Samathul]

Oh bah, buff rogues!

Didn't know I did that much damage on Nightbane and I even went oom twice after the add phases. Seems like your whine about rogue DPS is justified at some degree afterall

[Tardon]

Buff rogues? I'm sure you were ahead of the mages and locks too

[mard]

we were all at about same %. those of us that didnt die anyway. point is, some provides more utility than others, while maintaining about same damage. maybe i did 2-5% more than next person during this fight. is 2-5% damage worth buffs, mana regeneration, soul stones, aoe or whatever other utility next person brought there in addition to dps ? it might be, on very few straight dps race fights, but there's only few of them. old gruul, aparently hydross, other bosses we havent fought yet. another problem is positioning, point blank aoe, soaking more damage etc.
is it worth mariginal edge on dps ? i really mean mariginal here, for instance according to recap i've beat nightspawn by 10k damage on malchezaar fight last week. mind you i was buffed with agi / attack power potions, while he wasnt. the difference is i have to run in and out, take shadow nova damage, stay behind the mob and avoid infernals falling from the sky. ranged dps only have to worry about infernals.

there's a lot of reasons why it happens : from given boss fight mechanic, through tailoring itemisation being actually better than t5 (its not that hard, whole tier gear is crap right now. point is clothies have better choices while melee is pretty much stuck with blue instance gear), to glancing. i just hope next patch will fix some of this issues :S

[Felbane]

While I agree that the non utility damage classes should be doing more damage in their own right, there's a pitfall right there as well. raid total dps makes or breaks ALL fights there is basically.

we need to have *enough* utility, *enough* healing, *enough* tanks, to survive to the end.
Then, it all depends on how long we have to keep doing these things. DPS regulates that.
If there was non-utility dps classes that easily out-dps'ed the others, we would find that pretty much every encounter there is would be beaten either easily by, or only by, a group with minimal healing/utility, and maxed pure dps.

Thus I imagine the reason why shadowpriests are allowed to keep their dps, is to not make them useless on fights where their mana contribution is less needed. Same with mages warlocks and hunters.
Imo, unfair as that is, its the best solution. Wouldn't hurt to up rogue utilities tho, such as adding more potent debuffs in the style of sunder armor.

[Samathul]

The 2.1 nerf turns out to be a pretty bad one indeed. By decreasing our DPS by 5% (Around 4.5% "actual" DPS decrease when casting times are factored in) our total damage is decreased by 10% due to having a DPM decrease at the same time. This is with my normal boss cycles, which doesn't use MB or SW:D at all.

10% total damage decrease is harsh.

[Felbane]

you just pulled 10% out of thin air...

[Samathul]

I pretty rarely pull out of any damage figures for SPs out of thin air without first checking

We SPs and you mages fuction a little different what comes to game mechanics. For you a 5% DPM decrease is a flat out 5% total damage decrease, but for us a 5% DPM decrease is both a 5% total damage nerf and a 5% manaregen nerf. For us, a DPM nerf and a total mana nerf (total mana = int + VT) equals more total damage loss than just adding those 2 things up, due to fact that we don't only lose 5% DPM and 5% mana from the base stats and VT, but we lose them from the lost damage that we could have done with the regenned mana from VT as well.

I can spank you some numbers in here if you wish. Can't be bothered just now as I do't have the time, but I'm more than willing to straighten up a mage when they talk about SP damage

[Tardon]

Sama, 5% dpm decrease dosn't just equal 5% dps decrease for mages either. You have to facture in things like clearcasting, Master of Elements and such. Just saying.

[Felbane]

I agree that shadowpriests deal damage under vastly different circumstances, but that still doesn't mean you can call a 5% mana loss a 5% damage decrease. I mean.. a bunch of patches ago, felbanes mana pool was cut by well above 15%, and did my damage done in the average instance change that much? nope.
Even assuming you run yourself down to 0 mana in every fight and encounter, you've still not accounted for the dps from wanding, as well as the mana gained from outside 5 sec rule regen now that you're wanding instead of casting during those last 5% of your mana that is now lost.
This of course assuming you are unable to swap to a lower dps but more mana efficient cycle to compensate, reducing the lost dps even more.