- Author: lettara
- Date: February 17, 2024
- Updated: February 17, 2024
- Expansion: WoW Classic
In addition to the plethora of balance changes announced earlier this week, Blizzard just revealed their plan to tune several key Shadow Priest abilities. Spriests have been dominating the damage meters both in PvE and PvP, so their decision to look under the hood and tweak some numbers should come as no surprise.
Here’s a list of the Shadow Priest changes going live on February 20th:
- Mind Spike damage increased by 10%.
- Void Plague damage increased by 10%.
- Shadow Word: Death base damage before modifiers decreased by 40% and spellpower coefficient adusted to 42.9% (was 64.3%).
So all in all we see a buff to Mind Spike and Void Plague, with a massive nerf to Shadow Word: Death. Kaivax, Blizzard’s Community Manager, gave this justification:
Overall, this should result in a 33-40% damage reduction on Shadow Word: Death, depending on the amount of spellpower the priest has. Shadow Word: Death has been doing a larger percentage of overall priest damage than intended, and we feel like this could begin to put additional pressure on healers in PvE, as spellpower gear improves and the damage that priests inflict on themselves continues to scale upwards. It could also prove to be increasingly oppressive in PvP, as it’s an instant attack that can be used on the move, from range, with very little counterplay.
This seems like a well reasoned balance change from our perspective here at Warcraft Tavern, but what do you guys think?
To see the full blue post, read below.
Added to the OP here, as we now intend to make the following additional adjustments with scheduled weekly maintenance:
Priest
- Mind Spike damage increased by 10%.
- Void Plague damage increased by 10%.
- Shadow Word: Death base damage before modifiers decreased by 40% and spellpower coefficient adusted to 42.9% (was 64.3%).
- Developers’ notes: Overall, this should result in a 33-40% damage reduction on Shadow Word: Death, depending on the amount of spellpower the priest has. Shadow Word: Death has been doing a larger percentage of overall priest damage than intended, and we feel like this could begin to put additional pressure on healers in PvE, as spellpower gear improves and the damage that priests inflict on themselves continues to scale upwards. It could also prove to be increasingly oppressive in PvP, as it’s an instant attack that can be used on the move, from range, with very little counterplay.
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