Shadow Priest Nerf: Why This is the Wrong Way to Nerf
As you may or not know, Shadow Priests have just been hit with a large nerf to their single target output. There will be a TL;DR at the end but please try and read the entire post. The nerfs are as follows:Voidform stacks no longer increase while Dispersion and Void Torrent are active.The benefit of Mass Hysteria (Artifact Trait) is now capped at 100%.In this post I will explain why these nerfs are poorly designed, and offer my ideas on how Blizzard could have changed these abilities without completely ruining them. I will also try and explain why I believe blizzard went ahead with these nerfs in the first place.Alright, lets take a look at the first nerf again:Voidform stacks no longer increase while Dispersion and Void Torrent are active.For those of you that aren't aware of how these abilities interacted with Voidform, basically what happens is while in Voidform, your insanity drains over time, and the longer your in VF the faster it drains. Dispersion and Void Torrent (artifact ability) when used, cause you to no longer drain insanity. In effect this abilities where used to stall your insanity drain so you could stay in Voidform longer. Another benefit of these abilities was that you continued to gain Voidform stacks.Now, I understand why Blizzard changed these abilities, it doesn't make sense to be able to GAIN Voidform stacks while not LOSING insanity. You can't have one without the other. However, this should only apply to Dispersion, it is a defensive cooldown and should not be used to increase your dps.Void Torrent on the other hand is our artifact trait and is used as a DPS increase, as well as an Insanity stall and I feel that this ability should still gain you Voidform stacks when used.All in all, this nerf isnt the worst and half makes sense. Hopefully blizzard can look at it an change it so Void Torrent still gives you stacks while Dispersion does not.Now, the second nerf which quite honestly ruins the fun and class fantast of Shadow:The benefit of Mass Hysteria (Artifact Trait) is now capped at 100%.Again, for those of you that aren't aware, Mass Hysteria is an artifact trait that almost every shadow priest rushed to get because for every 1 second that you are in Voidform, you gain 2% damage on Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch.Combined with Surrender to Madness, a Shadow Priest was able to stay in Voidform for an extended period of time and a good Shadow Priest could gain more then 100% increased DoT damage.With this nerf, the DoT damage is capped at 100%, therefore you only need to stay in Voidform for 50 seconds to achieve the full effect. Overall this punishes the good players who where able to stay in Voidform longer and therefore do more damage.Why I think Blizzard did this: As priests gain more haste, they will be able to stay in Voidform for even longer periods of time, as the xpac progresses and the power creep becomes prevalent, there's no telling how long a priest can stay in Voidform and therefore how high there DoT dmg could increase. However, this isn't an issue this early in the xpac. A good shadow priest could stay in Voidform for 80-120 seconds with Surrender to Madness, thus giving them 160-240% dot dmg.This felt rewarding, this was what the class fantasy was all about. How long can I stay alive and do damage until I literally Surrender to the Madness and die. How long can i go insane for? It was a game within a game. And that is completely removed now because you only need to stay in Voidform for 50 seconds to achieve the maximum effect. There is no incentive anymore to push yourself to stay in Voidform for as long as possible.I believe Blizzard could have changed this ability in many different ways without completely gutting the class:Instead of 2% per 1 second change it to 1% per 1 second. This would nerf the damage in half but good players could still achieve higher then 100% dot dmg.Increase the rate in which Insanity drains while in Voidform and using Surrender to Madness. This would make it harder to stay in Voidform for a long time, but a could player could possibly do it long enough to get higher then 100% dot damage. This would really display the good shadow priests from the bad.Dont change the ability until further in the xpac when Haste levels start causing insane amounts of stacks.TL;DR: While some of these nerfs are understandable, there are other options that Blizzard could have looked at that would not completely ruin the fun and reward of the class. As it stands now, Shadow is not only no longer top tier, they are no longer any fun to play.I really hope Blizzard looks at these nerfs and revises them to still allow a good shadow priest to excel at the class.
