Shadow Word: Death now deals 269 Shadow dmg (down from 809)Follow

The problem was that is you speced right, Shadow Word: Death could become a nuke. It would do high single target damage, hit you for a lot less then normal, and give you back a good chunck of mana. They did not want it acting like a use everytime it is off cooldown move, so they had to reduce the damage it could do.

If I understand right, they wanted it to become more of a mana regen mechanic, and not a single dps nuke.

[quote=Mozared]I've been wondering about that tbh. I'm not entirely sure which one of these shadow changes have already been applied to live and which are from beta builds, but my SW:D on live (as holy/disc) is currently hitting for 1500. Yes, that's right, FIFTEEN HUNDRED. In most cases, that means it only kills off normal non-elite mobs if they're on <1% health. Heck, it's not even killing off level 55 mobs for me right now (been doing a lot of low level farming to level cooking). It's easily become the most useless spell in my ****************

Perhaps that's an effect of being holy/disc. As a level 70 spriest, when I use it on targets at less than 25% health I regularly, like every few minutes regularly, see crit damage in the range of 5-6k; normal damage seems to be around 2.9k-ish. Standard build for 70 and the usual glyphs for someone still leveling (MF/Spirit Tap).

EDIT: I logged on and went looking for some trouble just to test something out. All of the SW:D results are at less than 25% Stag health...the last one when he was nearly dead already. They die very quickly once the damage from the dots ramps up.

From my combat log:

MoanaLisa's Shadow Word: Death hits Shoveltusk Stag for 1609 Shadow (1319 Overkill).
MoanaLisa's Shadow Word: Death hits Shoveltusk Stag for 1185 Shadow (1743 Overkill).
MoanaLisa's Shadow Word: Death hits Shoveltusk Stag for 326 Shadow (2408 Overkill).

Make of that what you will. None of those are crits which I believe go for 200% which would be about 5.8k. This is on live.

Multiple edits because I'm disorganized


Edited, Nov 21st 2010 7:17pm by Moanique

It would make sense for it to be at least semi-effective as shadow, else the nerf would have been completely unwarranted. My problem really is that to balance the spell for spriests, they've made it downright useless for healers. SW:D used to be a great spell to (almost) kill mobs with when questing/doing dailies, speeding up stuff quite a bit; as it is now, it's hardly worth the cast time anymore, even though it's instant.

I use it constantly while questing because it's a bit tricky to time with target health going down so quickly. It's like practicing the piano...you have to get in the rhythm of the thing.

My other reason for using it all the time is simply that if I don't use a spell now and then, when I do need it, I won't remember it. That is sad but human.

My leveling/questing partner (71 priest/disc) at this point just stands back after a mob goes under 50% because between SW:P being refreshed with MF and SW:D to finish off, it's a done deal. And then there are those apparitions of me appearing and meandering toward whatever it is in front of us.

I refuse to sacrifice my dignity so far by running around in circles near a mob, but I do take a step or two between mind flays. There are just some things a girl won't do.

I swap the Spirit Tap glyph out for the Shadow Word: Death glyph when running dungeons since it's nearly impossible to guarantee you'll get the killing blow. Stuff like this is much easier to do with the new design for inscription in which you only buy a glyph once.