Shadow PvP in MoP - thinking out loud

[Sunspider]

Hey guys, first time poster here - somewhat long lurker :)

Wall of text incoming:

I'm playing alot with my priest on the beta, and to be honest I find it looks promising. I have a few concerns, though, and I'm looking for feedback from better pvpers than myself. This concerns both arena and battlegrounds, so feel free to make any pvp relevant comments.

Fade: Obviously, I think every shadow priest that's into pvp will take Phantasm - but Fade is on a whopping 30 second cooldown. On live you can run with Fade at 15 second cd, which is a bit more acceptable. I know the new version of Phantasm is stronger than live, but still, I feel that 30 seconds will be murder. And now we won't have the Disc PvP set bonus to Holy Walk out of snares anymore - more trouble ahead.

Psychic Horror: Now requires orbs to even be usable, feels very weak. A rogue opens on you, and you'll have to get off a Mind Blast before you can stun him for a very short while and disarm him. That means you'll _probably_ have to either Fade and Spectral Guise before you get off your _first_ MB to generate an orb, or you'll have to trinket and probably just eat an instant blind.

Silence: is good. Cooldown is harsh, but a well timed one is still good.

Vampiric Embrace: well timed and it will be godly, unlucky cc on you with it up and it'll cost you a game. But that goes for many classes, so its not a valid complaint as such. I like the change. Active over passive is usually good in my opinion.

Glyph of Dark Binding: seems to be insanely good. I hope it doesn't get nerfed, because shifting in and out of shadow form costs us alot of time we could possibly have spent casting.

Other than Dark Binding I'm quite unsure about glyphs, to be honest. Mind Spike glyph works well together with the FLCL talent, less well with Mindbender and SW:Insanity. Mind Blast glyph will be useful when pinning down a melee or a healer that's stuck his head out in the open, but I'm unsure of what kind of crit percentages we'll be looking at come level 90. Inner Fire is good, Leap of Faith might be good in certain settings. Any thoughts on glyphs that are absolutely needed or not needed?

Talents:

Tier 1: Dominate Mind for Arena, Void Tendrils for battlegrounds. I don't yet know how Psyfiend works, but from reading the text it seems too random to be trustworthy outside of a 1v1 situation.

Tier 2: For PvP, Phantasm is the only choice. Body and Soul MAYBE if you know you're going up against a comp with no slows/melees to speak of. From what I've heard you will be able to see the arena team you're facing before the doors open in MoP. Angelic Feather seems like a choice designed for a raid group that are well coordinated.

Tier 3: FDCL seems very strong for dealing damage while on the move. Coupled with the glyph it will help alot in not having to stand still to cast anything except VT and flay. Mindbender I'm unsure of. If its damage is good, it might be a strong burst talent, but other than that I can't see it being a worthy PvP choice. Am I wrong? SW:Insanity seems interesting, and just _might_ be worth it with the CD on dispells. 8 second dispell cd isn't alot though, but we'll see. It's interesting atleast, and another option for an instant cast while on the move.

Tier 4: Desperate Prayer is good. It's always been good, and it still will be. I just don't know if it will outshine Guise, which gives us a quick Vanish to disorient the opposing team. Escape melee, interrupt shatters/lava burst insanity, you name it. It seems very strong. Bulwark seems silly compared to the 2 others. Maybe for PvE, but even then Prayer seems stronger.

The problem with this tier is the simple fact that we really need another escape mechanism, imo. Desperate Prayer doesn't _really_ help me if I can not escape the rogue that is eating up my HP anyway. I'd rather be 30% lower in HP, but well away from the melee monster pummeling me, than 30% up with him dancing on my face. Angelic Bulwark seems weak, and I can't understand who would take it over the 2 other choices.

Tier 5: Twist of Fate seems too specialized to be worth it, even though I'm sure it can guarantee some kills here and there. Power Infusion seems more attractive after they nerfed Divine Insight to only be 5% proc chance on SW:Pain tick. 20% haste and -15% mana cost from PI seems strong, if used at the correc time. My hope is that they buff Divine Insight to 10%, perhaps then it'll be worth it. 5% seems awfully low.

Tier 6: Don't know, haven't levelled to 90, and won't bother. Any thoughts?

[Pankakez]

Been playing alot of 2s and spriests seem like such great support class with double dps comps bc of the amount of healing u can pump out now its kind of ridiculous. The biggest Issue I see at the moment is just the amount of ramp up time it takes to get damage going and if your playing against a monk healer anytime u DP its dispelled cool game! I am sure there will be alot of chanes and hopefully one will be the disarm cooldown and the cost of orbs I vote they raise the cooldown back to where it was and get rid of the orb cost! I am also hoping they will have some sort of dispel protection for us bc locks still have UA =/!

[Blackmorgrim]

I'd assume SW:I will be a very important spell for trying to force dispels. Considering any player worth their salt will be keeping an eye on your cast bars.

Halo will probably be the main shadow pvp spell. Any stealther caught within its radius will be revealed.

Divine star would probably be useful in that respect, though the effect just won't be as impressive.

Halo just is a game changer with stealth. Having a priest on a team means that the stealther has to start 1) behind terrain to block LoS 2) far enough away that his team can save him from immediate focus as soon as halo hits him. 3) definitely going to hide either inside 25 yards or outside of 30 yards.

[Shaz]

I also would be interested in the opinion of experienced pvp players concernig the 2 on 2 arena bracket.

Actaul Situation (4.3) as I do experience it:
I played a lot arena in recent months with a guild mate (a resto shaman). I experienced SP as a class which has major headache against all melee(/heal) combs, beause it isn’t able to keep melees in distance. Even for a short time. SPs are stunned, pummeld, charged, overwhelmed, slowed and such all the time and you rarely find time to cast something with cast time. So it is nearly impossible to put pressure on an opponent, as long as the melee decides to focus you.
You are only able to react in that case and a tie after 45 minutes is all you can earn, but more often my healer goes oom before that.

Another weakness: You often have a hard time with too few cc abilities, because fear breaks so easily and has such a high CD. Especially against two DD combos this becomes obvious. For example DK, Paladin. After I spent my PsiHorror and my Fear, my mate is killed long before one of this two comes out of CD again.

As far as casters are concerned, mages/healer combs are a pain. Simply because of their 8 sec spell lock with only 24 sec CD, it seems to be impossible to put enough pressure on the mage (when he decides to use the silence strictly on you).
Again: Best is a tie, but as you put much less pressure on the mage than he does on you, your healer runs out of mana mostly before 45 min are over.

Overall I found the dispell protection to be too weak. If an opposing healer decided just to dispell every Dot I put on an opponent, it was nearly impossible to score a kill. Especially against melee/healer combs.
Against Paladin healers I had situations where they removed my dots faster than I could apply them, without going down in mana. The „VT dispell protection“ did not really do anything about that.

Our selfheal (which once was our signature) seemed to be laughable compared to others in arena.




What will change in MOP?:
- Ok, now you get psyfiend or roots and the slow-immunity effect of fade (on a very high cd).

- On the other hand you loose the only realiable instant damage sources (IDP and SWD) and the procc talents seem to be not reliable / luck dependend to me. Plain said: You need burst when you succeeded with a cc chain on the healer, not when the proc decides to happen.

You only have one dot which can be applied instantly, you lose the healer 4pc bonus and (most annoying) you loose much of psychic horrors power because of its orb mechanic.
From my experience now, we will have a real pain to create orbs in a reasonable time span. Therefore Psychic Horror and DP seems to be great spells in theory, but in practice I expect things to be different.

- The new selfheal CD sounds great at first glance, but it is dependend on our burst damage. Because of my experience burst damage being nearly impossible against an attcking melee (where you need selfheal the most), I am a bit sceptic about ist value.

- Dispel now has a 8 Sek CD, but on the other hand dispel protection has gone completly.



I am maybe wrong, but on paper it looks like as if the problems of a shadow keep more or less the same. maybe the situation becomes even worse, because the loss of IDP and a reliable Psyhorror (our maybe strongest ability in PvP) does weigh very high in my eyes. On the other hand strong CDs we have to handle keep as they are (e.g. antimacig shell, hammer of justice, kidney shot).

Does anybody has experience concernig those issues and their development in MoP?
Do we have to expect arena as it has ever been as Shadowpriest? If you not decide to play those two or three possible double DD combs (like Rogue/SP or Mage/SP) you will become frustrated quite quickly.
Or will shadwopriests be versatile enough by itself to function with more than only two specs.

[Aescu]

In rated BGs I'm more or less forced to use the Mass dispel so one glyph still set in MoP I assume.

[Alandra]

Hey guys.

I was not sure where to post this, but it seems Void Shift works on our Shadowfiend as well as on party members. And since it's percentage dependant, timely used it works as LoH only w/o it's debuff. And it's twice as powerful as DK's Death Pact.

I'm not very experienced in PvP, but my gut tells me this is a very powerful CD.

I hope this helps someone.

[Spartan0416]

I had a question about mop pvp...
How are we classifying the importance of stuff....
is it.... haste > crit > mastery?
so are we still buying the stuff with lots of spirit so we can reforge it into haste? just trying to figure out what gear is best to buy

[Woaden]

I had a question about mop pvp...
How are we classifying the importance of stuff....
is it.... haste > crit > mastery?
so are we still buying the stuff with lots of spirit so we can reforge it into haste? just trying to figure out what gear is best to buy

In general (IMO):

PvP Power > Int > 5% Hit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

[Alessandra]

<deleted when i discovered there was a whole pvp section which answered questions>

[kybucs]

Per noxxix.com

6% Hit > PVP Power > Intellect > PVP Res > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Spell Hit (6%)
The Hit cap of 6% (2040 Rating) will eliminate the chance for any special ability to miss against other players. To check your Hit, open your character panel and then look under the Spell tab for "Hit Chance" and make sure it is at or just above 6%.

PvP Power
Increases all damage done to players and their pets or minions, and increases healing done in PvP zones.

Intellect
Increases damage and healing dealt by all spells and slightly improves critical strike chance.

PvP Resilience
Provides damage reduction against all damage done by players and their pets or minions. You start with a base PvP Resilience of 40%. PvP Resilience is more effective than raw Stamina for mitigating damage received in PvP environments. The choice of how much PvP Resilience to stack entirely depends on how much damage you want to mitigate versus how much damage you would like to deal to your targets. If you find yourself dying too frequently, try adding more PvP Resilience.

Haste
Decreases cast times and increases DoT ticking speeds.

Crit
Increases the chance for your attacks to critically hit for 200% damage.

Mastery
Mastery Shadowy Recall gives your DoTs a chance to deal damage twice with each tick.