Every priest knows that by speccing shadow, you are giving up a lot of your healing effectiveness. But that's ok, because we're speccing for dps. Melting faces and the like. Pew pew!

But what if you found out that you could do just as much damage, or more, without sacrificing even nearly as much of your healing effectiveness? What if you found out that a disc/holy priest could out-dps you even if you were trying your hardest?

Let's assume that by lvl 70, you have all your lvl 70 spells, and you're pretty much done with the 5 and 10-mans. You're ready to raid. Your gear might look like this:

700+dmg
15% base crit
300 spirit

You decide you want to dps because healing is boring as hell. At first you think the obvious answer is to spec shadow. It looks like the damage tree, it has lots of damage talents in it, even 2 new damage spells! Clearly it's the damage spec of choice. Sure, you're giving up healing, but hey, that's what druids and pallies are for, right?

So let's say you spec shadow. You might see results like these:

Shadow Build
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/bc-priest/talents.html?505100000000000000000000000000000000000000053250410250123051551

Talents give:
Shadowform = 15% dmg
Darkness = 10% dmg
Shadow Weaving = 15% dmg
Misery = 5% dmg
Shadow Power = 15% MB and SW:D crit

1.15 (SF) x 1.15 (SW) x 1.1 (Darkness) x 1.05 (Misery) = 152.7% dmg

Let's say you use an 18 second rotation, to make sure you are always at full dps and getting as much mana back from VT as possible:

VT > SW:P > MB > MF > MF > MB > MF > MF

SW:P base damage = 1236 (scales at 105%)
VT base damage = 650 (scales at 105%)
MB base damage = 708 - 748 (scales at 43%)
MF base damage = 528 (scales at 57%)

VT does 2116 (2596)
SW:P does 3010 (3491)
MB does 1806 x 2 = 3614 (4138)
MF does 1415 x 4 = 5664 (8172)
Total damage done (14404) over 18 seconds is 800dps.

AFTER shadow weaving is at maximum. Your first rotation will be significantly lower. Not bad, not bad. This would obviously be higher in a raid with a warlock, with Curse of Shadows and Shadow Vulnerability.

But what about if you specced holy?

Smite Build
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/bc-priest/talents.html?505232003000512051000205051302020052000000000000000000000000000

Talents give:
Holy Specialization = 5% crit
Force of Will = 5% crit
Divine Fury = 2 sec smite
Searing Light = 10% smite dmg
Force of Will = 5% all dmg
Spiritual Guidance = 25% spirit becomes +dmg
Imp. Divine Spirit = 10% spirit becomes +dmg
Surge of Light = 50% chance for smite crit to cause next smite to be instant cast and cost no mana but can't crit
Power Infusion = 20% extra damage for 15 seconds every 3 mins

35% of 340 spirit is 119 extra +dmg.

Your "rotation" here pretty much consists of smite spam while keeping SW:P up. Essentially it's a 1 SW:P and 8 smite rotation. 2 of these smites will crit, causing the next smite to be instant but unable to crit. 8 smites is 16 seconds, 2 free instant smites adds 3 seconds of non-crit "free" dps. SW:P adds 1.5 seconds. 21 second rotation (0.5 second error margin).

SW:P > S > S > S > S > fS > S > S > S > S > fs

SW:P base damage = 1236 (scales at 105%)
Smite base damage = 545-611 (scales at 71%)

Smite hits for 1339, and crits for 2009 25% of the time. 1506 average damage.

"Free" smites do 2678
Regular smites do 12052
SW:P does 2070 (2400)
Total damage done (16800) over 21 seconds is 800dps.

Using Power Infusion at the beginning of this rotation would make it 914 dps for this one rotation (20% extra dps for 15 seconds of the 21 second rotation). This rotation also does not require any "prep" of shadow weaving. It delivers full dps all the time.



Notice anything wrong with this??



And with 1000+dmg, it's worse. With 1000+dmg, 20% base crit, and 340 spirit (hypothetical "endgame" gear), a shadowpriest using the above maximum dps rotation will deliver 940dps and a smite priest using smite and SW:P will deliver 1007dps.

Incidentally, if, say, mind flay actually scaled WHERE IT SHOULD BY ALL RIGHTS SCALE, then at 700+dmg a shadowpriest would see 857dps and at 1000+dmg would see 1022.

Notice how the difference gets smaller the more gear scales? Yeah, that's crit. Even if mind flay scaled where it should, eventually, smite would out-dps it, simply because of crit. I've elaborated on why crit is the best scaling mechanic in the game in another thread, and why this fact alone makes nerfing mind flay scaling, frankly, retarded.

And just for the sake of comparison, with 700+dmg, 15% base crit, and 300 int, a frost mage would see 690dps (890 with AP) from frostbolt alone and a fire mage would see 878dps from fireball alone (after scorching). With 1000+dmg, 20% base crit, and 340 int, a frost mage would see frostbolt dealing 835dps (1085 with AP), and a fire mage would see 1123 dps from fireball, not including instant casts (which all increase dps)


Things worth noting in all of this:

--Smite dps equals shadow dps at pre-raid gear levels, though in the long run, with PI and having to build up Shadow Weaving, smite dps wins.

--Smite spam is 67dps higher than full shadow rotation at raid gear levels (ignoring PI and SW issues).

--Smite priests are significantly better healers than shadowpriests.

--Both smite and shadow dps is higher than frost mage dps, but lower than fire mage dps.

--Even if mind flay scales where it should, we would not challenge fire mages as the highest dps casters (especially not when including instant casts and aoe), but we would at least be better damage than smite priests (until they get more crit or +dmg than I have used in the examples).

--We are dramatically more effective in the expansion compared to live, thanks to our second dot and Misery, but without proper mind flay scaling, we STILL fall behind in endgame, while at the same time pushing other casters further ahead. All other casters gain the full benefits of our debuffs (misery for everyone, shadow weaving for warlocks), but besides warlocks with Curse of Shadows, we don't gain the full benefit of theirs (Imp, Divine Spirit, Moonkin Aura).

--Even though I've used the maximum dps rotation I have, most of the time trash mobs will be dead or close to it before 5 shadow weavings are up, and most of the time mind blast is too mana inefficient to use each time it's up, much as fire mages don't usually use fireblast every 6 seconds either. The dps increase doesn't justify the mana cost increase.


If mind flay scales where it should, shadow would be the optimum dps tree for a priest, which is exactly as they should be, seeing as they give up a lot of healing and buff talents to do so. Shadow is NOT the frost tree of priests, it's our fire tree. Please let mind flay scale where it should. If BC hits release and holy priests out-dps shadowpriests, you can basically delete the shadow tree, because it ceases to have a purpose.

Oh and one more thing.... where's our explanation for why mind flay doesn't scale according to the convetions you've established that all other spells from all other classes work by? Like, I'm just curious, becuase my math here really provides absolutely no justification for this ridiculous arbitrary exception. Really, I know I'm not the only one to ask. I know it's been asked a thousand times on the live forums, and at least a dozen here on the beta forums.... do you guys even have a reason? is it spite? Is it some secret "not following blizzard's intended vision for the class" scaling penalty, like the snare penalty? Were the parents of one of your devs murdered by a shadowpriest?

If you're going to nerf a class like this for so damn long.... you'd think you'd at least give some sort of reason. Mages have gotten reasons for their concerns (like CS being put on the GC, blink not dropping target, sheep healing the target, etc). Where's our damn reason?