What is our progress? When is the release?

We've released v0.31 rc2 on 19.08.2008.
We've released v0.32 on 2.09.2008 on US forums.
We've released v0.32 on 5.09.2008 on EU forums.
Next release is planned to the end of September

What's our status?

US Priest Beta forums: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 7&sid=2000
EU Priest Beta forums: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 6&sid=2003
US Priest Live forums: [release not planned]
EU Priest Live forums: [release not planned]

What next?

I consider this project to be completed, and all the development of our soon-to-release feedback v2 will be done within the new topic - Shadowpriest.com - Yet Another Feedback Project.

The new thread covers mostly PvE issues, so PvPers should visit another topic - Shadow Priest PvP Concerns compiles feedback about PvP aspect of our WotLK gameplay. Join the discussion if you like melting pvp faces!

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Shadowpriest Community Concerns v0.32
Notes in square brackets are self-documented or are commented at the bottom of the text

Summary

http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?p=141629#p141629

Our community

We at http://www.shadowpriest.com are constantly seeking the Truth of shadowpriesting to find out even the most subtle details in spec and game design. With a rich history we've become a crew of concerned and dedicated players, with more than 15k members and 120k of posts.

Our community is rightfully proud of such major analytic projects as:
* SimulationCraft (a sophisticated simulation software that can be used as a valid grounding for even the most advanced analysis' of game mechanics),
* Theorycraft subforums (a vast collection of already solved game dilemmas and hard choices of various difficulty; every day something new is posted in there, something is clarified, reevaluated and invented).

Of course, we could not ignore a truly major event of year 2008, release of Wrath of the Lich King expansion. After the first minor sources of information were exposed to the public several independent researchers started a comprehensive study of involving estimating and evaluating changes in game mechanics that the expansion is potentially bringing.

Now, after a month in Beta with deep respect to the work done by game developers, we would love to share our experiences and impressions about upcoming changes in shadowpriesting. While greatly appreciating the changes that bring PvP shadow priests to cardinally new level we would like to manifest our serious concerns and fears about the future of the raiding shadowpriest.

Dps and scaling

Analysis of Wrath of Lich King beta version 3.0.8885 has lead us to the following facts about shadow priests.

Shadow priests got a dps buff not bigger than 20% (this number is a result of two unrelated theorycrafts that can be exposed to public if needed), which means that our spec in Wrath of the Lich King will retain the position of lowest dps spec among the existing specs in the end-game raiding of The Burning Crusade (however, current data about Death Knights and it's tendency to change doesn't allow us to judge their performance in relation to ours with the reliability required to make such claims).

Our lowest dps position is ensured by peculiarities in our damage sources. After extensive testing and experience we have concluded that more than half of shadow priests' damage in The Burning Crusade comes from spells that do not benefit from crit (VT, SWP, MF), and more than two thirds of our damage comes from spells that are unable of leveraging the full benefit of spellhaste (VT, SWP, MB, SWD).

This means our spec receives less improvement from a multitude of caster stats that are typical to generalized caster equipment and makes our dps performance become more and more sub-par as new gear arrives. This is what we experienced during the course of The Burning Crusade, and this is what we want to avoid by any means in the Wrath of Lich King, because apart from a purely theorycrafting standpoint, it's simply depressing to witness slow decay of your own power as the game progresses.

After thorough analysis we claim that Improved Spirit Tap, Pain and Suffering, Twisted Faith and the new revision of Shadow Power all nicely augment our damage output but barely address the spec’s scaling problems (analysis and its results can be posted if necessary).

Utility concerns

In itself the fact of lagging behind on dps meters doesn't mean anything substantial, so now we'll complement it with shadow spec utility analysis.
Edit. This section was updated after a major raid synergy revamp in beta patch 8885.

Shadow priests' staple utility aspect in The Burning Crusade - in-combat mana regeneration, is completely redone and spread across multiple specs. Currently we don't possess enough data to estimate effectiveness of our raid mana regeneration ability in comparison to Hunting Party and Judgements of the Wise, so we'll restrain from evaluating it.

In regards to raid utility Shadow Weaving was removed from the table by being changed to self-buff.

Misery, our new utility debuff introduced in The Burning Crusade was changed to increase spellhit of the raid by 1% per rank. After preliminary evaluation this effect appears not as powerful as it is on live from pure dps standpoint. What's more: it makes gearing choices of an entire raid to be dependant upon presence of a shadow priest or moonkin, which is generally considered to be a bad practice by lots of raid leaders. So this talent introduces a dilemma:
* Either the raid is aiming to reach the spellhit cap anyways, and the talent doesn't bring its full benefits at best or is mostly useless at worst,
* Or raid's casters collect gear and make gem choices assuming they will get +3% to spellhit in raid, and simultaneously put themselves in danger in case when neither Improved Fairie Fire, nor Misery are available.

Vampiric Embrace, a spell that appears to be very useful throughout Sunwell Plateau, isn't diminished by a single bit. In fact, increased dps numbers might even increase it’s effectiveness (given health changes are lower than dps gains). However, currently we're unable to fully estimate the usefulness of our group heal in Wrath of the Lich King raid encounters and its relative viability in comparison to similar skills (Blood Aura and Divine Storm for Vampiric Embrace), so we'll restrain from either positive or negative conclusions on the topic.

Consequences for a raiding shadow priest

So far we expect to retain our position at the bottom of the dps table and to see our utility to decay absolutely and relatively to other classes in comparison with The Burning Crusade. This brings a serious concern - will shadow priests be a powerful and competitive raiding spec in Wrath of the Lich King?

Feeling of stagnation

Apart from dps/utility concerns we also feel that the raiding game-play of a Wrath of Lich King shadowpriest will be the same old set of skills with the same problems (arguably underwhelming dps and lackluster scaling) and with mostly unchanged and partially weakened utility aspects.

This definitely differs from our expectations of a major extension of World of Warcraft that brings radical changes to so many aspects of gameplay.

Another thing that both beta testers and outside spectators agree on is that the arsenal of a PvE facemelter remained mostly the same: our new talents (some of those are very fancy to theorycraft) are passive modifications of old spells, and two new skills that we gained: Mind Sear and Dispersion are at best situational in PvE (our newly introduced AoE has high mana cost and is susceptible to interrupts, which makes it unreasonable to use in solo and most raid encounters, whilst Dispersion has a cooldown that prevents it from being used often). Compare our new spells with Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Death that we got in The Burning Crusade and use on a regular basis during our ventures in World of Warcraft and the difference will arise even more clearly.

Impression of stagnation is only augmented by seeing other specs to experience significant overhauls and new impressive toys (exotic pets taming or a recent serious remake of mage/hunter abilities and utility to name only a few).

Sadly, we feel there is lack of fancy changes to shadow PvE gameplay.

Request to game developers

Due to named reasons our collective request to developers of shadow priest spec is:
- Agree on revising PvE aspect of shadowpriesting in Wrath of the Lich King in the light of the feedback in this thread.
- Have a dialogue with our community explaining the vision of our concerns.
- Consider introduction of new aspects of shadowpriesting in Wrath of the Lich King that would majorly distinguish it from The Burning Crusade.

In light of a recent class designer's post regarding an upcoming tweak to shadow priests, the community represented by shadowpriest.com would like to humbly offer up some general ideas that would provide both value and interest to the Shadow tree while still maintaining class balance and synergy.

This thread is a herald of feedback/suggestions threads that are waiting their hour if you, game developers, agree on our concerns. We chose this style of feedback on purpose - rather than overloading our post with minor concerns and suggested solutions that might appear unnecessary at this point, we feel a strong necessity to start a healthy discussion on PvE shadowpriesting in WotLK.

Our community is eager and persistent in it's dedication to shadowpriesting, and our dedication is constructive: we will do everything possible for our lovable spec to shine. When it becomes necessary, we will share a vast compilation of comments on existing and planned minor and major aspects of shadowpriesting, new proposals that address this or that issue revealed withing our community, and PvE raid simulations as a grounding of our claims.

Let's have a constructive and respectful dialogue that will dispel the myth that "Blizz hates shadowpriests"!

Dear shadow friends, I'm very proud to introduce you the draft of our joint feedback to Blizzard. I'm really glad to implement even an initial variant of something that was a vague idea in my head during 2-3 weeks. And especially happy I am that this was my 1000th post here.

I don't really know how the petition was written, and neither I know what aspects and blocks it's made from - I just sat down and it magically appeared on paper. The general plan is fulfilled - the draft covers both objective analysis of wotlk changes and aims to share our disappointment with a reader, as Azisa suggested, while not transforming into a rant, as dedmonwakeen advised (I made my best to remain neutral and use the most neutral expressions I could think of with my knowledge of English and urge to hyperbolization). However I brought my own flavor - emotions and possibly too romantic hope for a happy end.

The only drawback that I clearly see is lack of constructiveness: the draft reveals most major issues of shadowpriesting in wotlk and declaratively states what our community can provide to aid the revision of shadowpriesting, while doesn't provide particular solutions in imperative style. I think this can and will be addressed later.

Also it was to my surprise that my creation doesn't directly ask the question that appears after a dialogue between a frost mage and a shadowpriest posted recently on our forums. It was really big surprise that I lost control over what I'm writing and didn't feature many things I wanted to describe. However, I don't really feel like adding those things to the petition - I'm still not in control

Now, please, post your opinions on the piece of text above. I will return to fixing the unclear points I've marked above and to adapting the petition to your feedback a bit later. Thank you.

Current plan is as follows

1. I'd love this draft to see final revision till Sunday, 17th so we can post it in a hot day when it will be read by lots of people. There's a good probability that we can make it in time, so restrain from posting on official forums before our "heavy artillery" is ready.

2. I expect really nice feedback and suggestions regarding the draft (since it is no way in finished state). We have really lots of experienced and dedicated shadow priests here, so it wouldn't be very hard, right?

3. I also request all participants of our community to sign this petition or propose constructive feedback so we can adopt the final revision. Success of our project directly depends on effect of the petition and activeness of its supporters so we can present Blizzard our deep concern and hard persistence. To my opinion a simple but effective indicator of our activeness will be a number of posts in this very topic. First step is 50 signatures or constructive comments within 3 days.

This is a major project that has good chances to become a legendary event in the history of shadowpriesting. Don't miss a chance to stay in history.

/signed

First of all:
/signed Jesah - EU Norgannon

Second:

[4] As far as I know there is only Elemental Oath as a new Shaman Group Buff, which on spellcrit decreases the manacost by 2% and increases the crit chance by 2% for 15 seconds(stacks 3 times).

[5] If I haven't missed something, the only thing that DKs bring in terms of Shadow Synergy is Ebon Plaguebringer. On the other hand some of the DKs spells are dealing Shadow Damage(imho most Plagues do + Scourge Strike and Necrosis), so they might get some Bonus by Shadow Weaving and Misery.

[6] I think that I've seen a blue post about this claiming that Ebon Plague and CoS are not stacking, but unfortunately I can't provide a source.

Very much signed indeed. Nicely written Battlemaid!
I'm afraid I don't have much to add to it.

/signed

/signed

Chownlife - Nagrand

/signed Klein - US Antonidas

Now, one question, when you put [Proof!] on the text, are you planning to link to some thread in this forum, or add another post on the thread that will be created, or just leave it there and have an answer ready in case someone questions it?

Also, can you quote other forums on the wow forums? it'd be pretty dumb to have the thread closed because we were quoting to an external forum xD

Once the post is complete enough (which, btw, i think it already is, even if it can be polished a bit more, good job!), we should ask this forums moderators to do a sticky/anouncement, to make sure as much ppl as posible read this and know when to post on the official forums to /sign

I can't think of nothing else, i really liked the post

/signed

Great going Battlemaid! This is really wonderful. I think you did a great job of maintaining neutrality and not making it into a rant. That said I have a few suggestions. Please understand I think you're doing an amazing thing here and I commend you. But I do have some constructive feedback to offer if you want it. What I would suggest is to clarify and place stronger emphasis on the following two things:

The first is that our general dps is not as big an issue as our scaling. While our lackluster dps is a concern, I think the biggest disappointment for shadowpriests in TBC was the truly awful scaling we experienced, and that is not something we want to experience again. Ideally, wherever our dps stands in relation to other dps classes should not change drastically through tiers. Obviously every class scales a bit differently, but some degree of consistency is important to us. Why? Because it's simply not fun to feel as though you are getting dramatically weaker as you progress through content. I get the impression that the class developers are not seeing the distinction between buffing dps and buffing scaling, or that they think we aren't aware of such a distinction.

The other is that, although glyphs are most likely nowhere near finished, we would really like to see some shadowpriest glyphs that are useful. Shamans and Paladins have some truly amazing glyphs that greatly augment and/or customize their playing experience. For example, an elemental Shaman can pick up the extra 10 yard range on Flame Shock. This is a simple, yet profoundly useful glyph as it will allow elemental Shamans to include Flame Shock in their spell rotation, making Lava Burst a viable part of the rotation as well. The fact almost all of our glyphs seem to have been created by someone who doesn't understand shadowpriesting much at all is very frustrating.

I realize that your post needs to be as clear and concise as possible, but I think it would be beneficial to include these points (or a shorter summary of them.) Thanks!

/signed


phenomenal post.

intelligent, well thought-out, based in fact, very open for blizzard to contact us for further feedback.


I like it

/signed Deiss - EU Conseil des Ombres

Thanks

Candidate 1 looks very promising in general, but its maybe bit too long so if you could "shape" it a bit it would be even better imo :>

just let us know when and what to /sign :>

/signed

I'll read it more thoroughly tomorrow, but from what I've seen so far it is very well thought out and exactly what we need!

/signed - Pungent - US Eitrigg

/Signed

Itonami
<Rosvosektori>
EU - Kor'gall

(gonna make my guildie shadowfriends to sign that too! Atleast on official forums)