WoW XIX: This is my Artifact. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

[The_Jackal]

Having lower DPS outside of Void Form isn't that bad, since void form DPS is fantastic, the real problem is S2M being SO powerful due to staying in void form for ages that they can't buff shadow priests without destorying balance.

2SM just needs either nerfed and made a part of the spec, or removed as a talent completely.

Except that it is bad. The problem is that void form windows can and do get hosed by fight mechanics. At least with Arms Warrior's garbage 'damage window' mechanic (colossus smash) you can at least fish for cooldown resets, but Shadow Priests have to rebuild their insanity stack when their Void Form expires. I don't know why Blizzard has a penchant for these 'feast/famine' type designs, but they're profoundly un-engaging to play, because they give you these prolonged windows of doing paint-scuffing damage, punctuated by brief moments of adequacy.

[Ionbound]

Also, in any circumstance when you don't get to pop Voidform (say on trash in a indoor content or while leveling) the class just feels bad. Like, I've changed spec to a damage dealing Disc priest to level with because SP feels so bad when you don't have a tank and can't build insanity fast enough to pop voidform before it would be pointless. IMO, the class, while enjoyable in a specific scenario (DPSing raid bosses) needs a rework.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Except that it is bad. The problem is that void form windows can and do get hosed by fight mechanics. At least with Arms Warrior's garbage 'damage window' mechanic (colossus smash) you can at least fish for cooldown resets, but Shadow Priests have to rebuild their insanity stack when their Void Form expires. I don't know why Blizzard has a penchant for these 'feast/famine' type designs, but they're profoundly un-engaging to play, because they give you these prolonged windows of doing paint-scuffing damage, punctuated by brief moments of adequacy.

A rare time when The_Jackal and I completely agree, which means it must be a problem.

Retadin is limited by Crusade windows. Hunters by Vulnerable procs and True Shot. Shadow Priest by Void Form. Arms by Colossus Smash. Outlaw by Roll the Bones. And the number of times I've set up a limited combat window like True Shot or Crusade only to be forced out of it due to RNG movement mechanics is frustratingly high. I can't even wait to get selected by an RNG mechanic and then pop it, because sometimes they'll pick the same person twice in a row.

I don't mind having High/Low design, but Feast/Famine is too skewed. Sure: make Void Form a cool DPS increase. But don't stick 75% of their damage in there. Sure, Crusade is fun. But don't make it so my DPS at 858 can break 400k IN crusade, and averages 180k outside of it. And if that makes execute phases and burst damage phases less interesting? Give us other, longer moments of empowerment through more abilities like Bloodlust, that are clearly usable just once per fight.

Yes, it's fun to nova. But too often my nova is ruined by mechanics that aren't entirely predictable, or my someone else's actions (tanks pulling the boss away from a Ret Paladin who lacks the movement to follow, for example). When I lose most of my DPS window due to having issues with Void Form timing or Crusade's duration falling before I can build stacks, or being forced to move wildly during True Shot...well, it's not fun.

Further, it often overly simplifies rotations, as you have a nice, easy fall-back pattern (often un-engaging), and your high-point that makes the spec fun is uncommon. Arms fishes for resets pretty much constantly. Hunter just hits Sidewinders and Aimed Shot. Ret just builds to three, hits Tempest. The moments where this feels engaging (either through more complicated rotations or just fitting as much stuff into a limited Haste-boosted window as possible) are where the specs begin to shine, in my opinion. I want MORE of that, even if my damage in a single instance of it is a little weaker.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Except that it is bad. The problem is that void form windows can and do get hosed by fight mechanics. At least with Arms Warrior's garbage 'damage window' mechanic (colossus smash) you can at least fish for cooldown resets, but Shadow Priests have to rebuild their insanity stack when their Void Form expires. I don't know why Blizzard has a penchant for these 'feast/famine' type designs, but they're profoundly un-engaging to play, because they give you these prolonged windows of doing paint-scuffing damage, punctuated by brief moments of adequacy.

EVERYBODY can get hosed by a fight mechanic, you know what is awesome? setting up for Soul Realer + Apocalypse pressing Soul Reaper and then getting targeted by a mechanic, oops there goes soul reaper, you know what you do to solve this? Don't go into void form before a major mechanic ticks off, and if something happens that you need to take care of during Void Form Dispersion.

but they're profoundly un-engaging to play

And that right there is full YMMV, I find the Void Form management to be one of the most engaging things in a DPS spec, watching that bar go down and trying to get it to go back up is great fun to me.

I don't mind having High/Low design, but Feast/Famine is too skewed. Sure: make Void Form a cool DPS increase. But don't stick 75% of their damage in there. Sure, Crusade is fun. But don't make it so my DPS at 858 can break 400k IN crusade, and averages 180k outside of it. And if that makes execute phases and burst damage phases less interesting? Give us other, longer moments of empowerment through more abilities like Bloodlust, that are clearly usable just once per fight.

Void Form and Crusade are two wholly different things. Crusade is a cooldown, it's intent is to spike your damage in huge ways, Void Form is a major class mechanic and proper use of it is supposed to contribute to the vast majority of your damage, the reason it makes up 75% of your damage now is because of S2M being a thing they can't buff your non void form damage without utterly breaking your DPS during 2SM, once they fix that thing they can re balance the damage variants.

[The_Jackal]

A rare time when The_Jackal and I completely agree, which means it must be a problem.

Clearly, I must reverse my position. The forms must be obyed.

EVERYBODY can get hosed by a fight mechanic, you know what is awesome? setting up for Soul Realer + Apocalypse pressing Soul Reaper and then getting targeted by a mechanic, oops there goes soul reaper, you know what you do to solve this? Don't go into void form before a major mechanic ticks off, and if something happens that you need to take care of during Void Form Dispersion.

Completely true, yet I feel like the Shadow Priest dilemma is profoundly worse, because of how much of their effectiveness is hidden behind Void Form. Saying it's a class mechanic doesn't make it any less frustrating and annoying. The variable length of Void Form means losing insanity generating casts is hugely detrimental, and the increasing haste buff also makes staying in Void Form a long time crucial to your output. If I get a colossus smash proc, at half rage, I don't feel like I'm totally hosing up my damage and rotation by hitting that button immediately, if it turns out I won't get 8 seconds of time on target to unload, because I can fish for another Smash later.

There's no fishing mechanic for Void Form, you just have to wait for it to happen again, so when circumstances conspire to force you to leave Void Form early, it's just a giant damp squib. Blowing Soul Reaper on a bad window also sucks, to be sure, but that's a regular damage cooldown, you don't need to ramp it up, and DK output isn't moist garbage without it. Soul Reaper's haste buff is a 15 second buff for 21% haste, properly executed. Insanity is a 20% damage buff, plus a stacking +1% haste per second you remain in Void Form, and the haste buff persists for 60 seconds after you leave Void Form.

Having a big cooldown-limited button you can press for impressive damage is fine, every class should have one, otherwise the game would be the incessant frostbolt spam of 1.0. But the skew on Void Form seems, to me, to be far too heavily focused on that mechanic. But then, there may be some priest players who love it, and I certainly wouldn't main a priest anyway.

[Togath]

So... Getting back into WoW. Are there any Addons that make it always look like daytime to me? I'm in PDT and play on an eastern US server with my friends, usually in the late afternoon... Meaning I get stuck with a LOT of nighttime.

[The_Jackal]

So... Getting back into WoW. Are there any Addons that make it always look like daytime to me? I'm in PDT and play on an eastern US server with my friends, usually in the late afternoon... Meaning I get stuck with a LOT of nighttime.

I don't think the WoW LUA API permits altering graphics settings. In any case, you'd just wind up with weird gamma changes if you did. It's not like you could change the sky textures so they showed daytime.

[Icewraith]

I don't think the WoW LUA API permits altering graphics settings. In any case, you'd just wind up with weird gamma changes if you did. It's not like you could change the sky textures so they showed daytime.

Have you tried setting your personal time to be different from server time? I did this after our PST server got merged with an EST server (and the EST server set the new server time), and I don't notice weird day/night cycles. Of course, I just may not be paying attention.

[Spore]

EVERYBODY can get hosed by a fight mechanic, you know what is awesome? setting up for Soul Realer + Apocalypse pressing Soul Reaper and then getting targeted by a mechanic, oops there goes soul reaper, you know what you do to solve this? Don't go into void form before a major mechanic ticks off, and if something happens that you need to take care of during Void Form Dispersion.

The problem is that 8ß-100 insanity is built up so quickly that you likely need to get into it right away without loosing damage. You cannot play around mechanics like that. You will only end up with less dps. Also why would you bring a SP in the first place then anyway when you can bring the same dps with a different class with much less hassle?

I like playing medium difficulty specs to be able to concentrate better on the actual gameplay. My character doesn't need to be a puzzle experience in and of itself. Having levelled up my Hunter, I feel like I have gotten both end of the difficulty stick, but no comfortable in-between.

[The_Jackal]

The problem is that 8ß-100 insanity is built up so quickly that you likely need to get into it right away without loosing damage. You cannot play around mechanics like that. You will only end up with less dps. Also why would you bring a SP in the first place then anyway when you can bring the same dps with a different class with much less hassle?

I like playing medium difficulty specs to be able to concentrate better on the actual gameplay. My character doesn't need to be a puzzle experience in and of itself. Having levelled up my Hunter, I feel like I have gotten both end of the difficulty stick, but no comfortable in-between.

This. Plus the whole 'S2M and die' mechanic is beyond silly. I'm fine with an opt-in spec or talent choice which will let you get a more complicated rotation, but in the case of Priests, it's "Holy" "Shadow" or "Be terrible", neither of which is going to appeal to everyone.

Also, not for nothing, I'd also like to see Blizzard start to pay attention to trash DPS balance. I realize that, in the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, but getting half the figure of a marks hunter spamming barrage and sidewinders doesn't feel that great.

[ryuplaneswalker]

The problem is that 8ß-100 insanity is built up so quickly that you likely need to get into it right away without loosing damage. You cannot play around mechanics like that. You will only end up with less dps. Also why would you bring a SP in the first place then anyway when you can bring the same dps with a different class with much less hassle?

I like playing medium difficulty specs to be able to concentrate better on the actual gameplay. My character doesn't need to be a puzzle experience in and of itself. Having levelled up my Hunter, I feel like I have gotten both end of the difficulty stick, but no comfortable in-between.

I have an ability that gives me a 5 second window to use an attack 3 times (or once with my artifact ability) to give myself a mini bloodlust don't talk to me about "Can not play around with mechanics" that can also be compounded by "Oh Festering strike decided it wanted to give me 4 stacks in my opening set of attacks..there goes my entire opening window of damage" which can also get into "okay I got 8 stacks now time to Soul Reaper--OH HI ROT Guess that haste buff gets wasted"

[GungHo]

Also why would you bring a SP in the first place then anyway when you can bring the same dps with a different class with much less hassle?

Not everyone has the time/drive to build a closet-full of alts with a trunk full of gear. As much as I think class diversity is a good thing, I don't think the answer to a really annoying mechanic is "don't bother fixing that, you should have played something else". There shouldn't be bad specs. Don't get me wrong... making a raid near impossible if you try to bring 25 rogues is perfectly fine. But, if you tell me something is a DPS spec or a healing spec or a tank spec, it should be viable in that spec, even if it's not optimal.

[Togath]

So, any way to reduce view distance below the minimum in the settings menu?
I could swear "minimum" is what the maximum was last time I played, and it's rendering the game unplayable...
Or maybe it's malfunctioning?

[Kish]

Not everyone has the time/drive to build a closet-full of alts with a trunk full of gear. As much as I think class diversity is a good thing, I don't think the answer to a really annoying mechanic is "don't bother fixing that, you should have played something else". There shouldn't be bad specs. Don't get me wrong... making a raid near impossible if you try to bring 25 rogues is perfectly fine. But, if you tell me something is a DPS spec or a healing spec or a tank spec, it should be viable in that spec, even if it's not optimal.

I believe I detect a misunderstanding.

Correct me if I'm wrong in my paraphrase of you, but my understanding of what each of you is saying is:
Sporegg: Given that a slot in a dungeon or raid can be filled by a shadow priest, or a mage, or a warlock, or an elemental shaman, or a balance druid, or a hunter, and they all do comparable damage but only one has mandatory suicide for that damage, why would the group/raid leader choose to take the one with the mandatory suicide? Thus, whatever Blizzard or its defenders can say about the mandatory suicide making the class/spec interesting, I say it's a problem and should be fixed.
GungHo: It's not fair to someone who wants to play a shadow priest that they can't unless they're willing to kill themselves to do good damage. I say it's a problem and should be fixed.

[TechnOkami]

I agree with that statement.

WoW is not Dark Souls, where death is a core mechanic of the game. For WoW PvP at least I could see S2M still being there only because death isn't nearly as gated as it is in a Dungeon or a Raid but for the average joe (like me) it tends to be very anti-fun and the only reason I'm still playing a Shadow Priest at the end of the day is because of Eldritch Horror Stuff.

[Spore]

Not everyone has the time/drive to build a closet-full of alts with a trunk full of gear.

Kish has explained this very well. Even on casual (raiding or mythic) guilds you can play a Shadow Priest until people hit a progress boss or a certain mythic difficulty. Then you either adapt (play Healer in our case) or get subbed.

Secondly you can always reroll. I know it is annoying but any player in Legion should have a Lv 100 alt (due to the free 100 boost). Even if you do not (because say you used your 100 on the same class for another realm/faction) levelling a second character is preferrable to suffering through a character for what could be 1-2 years.

I know it. I have done it in MoP with a Shaman. And although I stayed Disc then because it was obscenely OP and I needed that power to carry some raid members throught nhc raids, I still have seen that a week of dedicated levelling can yield a max level character. I didn't even use the newer potion/RAF/heirloom shenans. At this point it is clearer how most characters and specs play out and you can level a new character without stepping into unexpected territory.

[The_Jackal]

Secondly you can always reroll. I know it is annoying but any player in Legion should have a Lv 100 alt (due to the free 100 boost). Even if you do not (because say you used your 100 on the same class for another realm/faction) levelling a second character is preferrable to suffering through a character for what could be 1-2 years.

Presenting rerolling as an option to adapt to poorly designed classes is a TERRIBLE work-around. For many players, they've got a great deal of effort and personal investment caught up in their main character. Also, it just plain sidesteps the issue that talents are supposed to be CHOICES, and presenting one option which clearly outshines the others renders it into a non-choice: You can take the good talent, or you can be mediocre. Face it, S2M is crummy, poorly thought-out design. Sure, it's got great flavor, but I believe that, now as ever, gameplay trumps fluff every day of the week.

[Prince Gimli]

While I can see the Jackal's point that you'd want every class and spec to be able to perform adequately well, and that "oh just re-roll" should not be an excuse for leaving a poorly designed class in its poor state...,

...I also think Sporeegg makes a good point in that re-rolling (or playing on another character for a while) is at least a way of being able to enjoy the end-game while waiting for the devs to patch up your favorite class/spec (which, judging by what I've read in this thread, can sometimes take long, and...very long).

You can like it or not like it, and you are free to choose whether to do it - it is just an option. And in my mind, it can be good to have options

[Kish]

I doubt anyone is actually unaware that they can make another character. Pointing it out seems condescending--as well as weirdly defensive of Blizzard's bad design choices.

[Traab]

So, I was curious, is the method of unlocking flight in WoD still the same as it says in the wiki? Namely completing all the zones main quest chains, finding 100 treasures, getting exalted with three factions, etc? Because dang. Thats a lot of effort. Thank goodness you only have to do it once.

[Psyren]

I doubt anyone is actually unaware that they can make another character. Pointing it out seems condescending--as well as weirdly defensive of Blizzard's bad design choices.

Complaining about class balance on an unrelated message board (or, let's be honest, even the official one) is just as unlikely to effect change as unhelpful advice. In the end, we're all just shouting into the headwind and waiting while the small subset of the playerbase that Blizzard actually listens to finishes compiling their data points.

[The_Jackal]

Complaining about class balance on an unrelated message board (or, let's be honest, even the official one) is just as unlikely to effect change as unhelpful advice. In the end, we're all just shouting into the headwind and waiting while the small subset of the playerbase that Blizzard actually listens to finishes compiling their data points.

Meh. The marginal difference between complaining on the Blizzard forums and complaining here or elsewhere on the forum-verse is approaching zero. I think folks complaining here are looking for sympathy and agreement, or at least something to discuss in an animated fashion. As I've said before, I've got little dog in this fight, having only a few guildies who are Shadow Priests, and they're all exclusively LotV.

[Psyren]

Meh. The marginal difference between complaining on the Blizzard forums and complaining here or elsewhere on the forum-verse is approaching zero.

That is in fact exactly what I said

[Guancyto]

"You can always reroll" is sort of the WoW class balance discussion's equivalent of "we have no objective proof of anything in existence" or "the sun will burn out eventually and none of this will matter" inserted into, well, basically any discussion.

As technically accurate as it is utterly useless for anything.

[GungHo]

I believe I detect a misunderstanding.

Correct me if I'm wrong in my paraphrase of you, but my understanding of what each of you is saying is:
Sporegg: Given that a slot in a dungeon or raid can be filled by a shadow priest, or a mage, or a warlock, or an elemental shaman, or a balance druid, or a hunter, and they all do comparable damage but only one has mandatory suicide for that damage, why would the group/raid leader choose to take the one with the mandatory suicide? Thus, whatever Blizzard or its defenders can say about the mandatory suicide making the class/spec interesting, I say it's a problem and should be fixed.
GungHo: It's not fair to someone who wants to play a shadow priest that they can't unless they're willing to kill themselves to do good damage. I say it's a problem and should be fixed.

Not simply "wants to play a Shadow Priest" but "has played a Shadow Priest all the way to 'the end' and is told 'too bad, you did it wrong, go play something else, it doesn't matter that you not only wasted your time, you're now wasting everyone else's time. Anyway, you got a free 100, so go spend a month figuring that guy out and maybe you can have fun eventually... if you pick right.'"

[The_Jackal]

Not simply "wants to play a Shadow Priest" but "has played a Shadow Priest all the way to 'the end' and is told 'too bad, you did it wrong, go play something else, it doesn't matter that you not only wasted your time, you're now wasting everyone else's time. Anyway, you got a free 100, so go spend a month figuring that guy out and maybe you can have fun eventually... if you pick right.'"

Ultimately, I think this conflict is driven out of Blizzard's desire to continue to tie gear rewards to difficulty, which is a design choice which I feel is not very helpful to the community or to the general health of the game. Simply put, if you want the best stuff in the game, you've got to go through this cutthroat, elitist 'adapt or die' mentality guild to get there. I doubt very much that anyone actually WANTS to adopt this mentality, it's just the height of the hurdle they've put in front of the best gear. You either bring a class and spec that outperforms the median, or expect to get carried by other players who have. That's not a very realistic expectation, so this is why these debates about class balance get so heated.

Remember that in Vanilla and BC, there was no raid difficulty tiers. If you beat Magtheridon or Nefarian or Kil'Jaeden, you beat him at both the lowest and the highest difficulty. IMO, that's how the game should be: There's one difficulty, it's scaled so that everyone of an appropriate gear level and a reasonable modicum of skill can beat it with dedicated effort, without having to ruthlessly min-max talent specs, without class stacking or other cheese.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Not simply "wants to play a Shadow Priest" but "has played a Shadow Priest all the way to 'the end' and is told 'too bad, you did it wrong, go play something else, it doesn't matter that you not only wasted your time, you're now wasting everyone else's time. Anyway, you got a free 100, so go spend a month figuring that guy out and maybe you can have fun eventually... if you pick right.'"

The funny thing is that Shadow Priests are among one of the top specs because of S2M if you use it right.

That is the problem, the entirety of the spec is balanced around a Single talent.

[Icewraith]

Ultimately, I think this conflict is driven out of Blizzard's desire to continue to tie gear rewards to difficulty, which is a design choice which I feel is not very helpful to the community or to the general health of the game. Simply put, if you want the best stuff in the game, you've got to go through this cutthroat, elitist 'adapt or die' mentality guild to get there. I doubt very much that anyone actually WANTS to adopt this mentality, it's just the height of the hurdle they've put in front of the best gear. You either bring a class and spec that outperforms the median, or expect to get carried by other players who have. That's not a very realistic expectation, so this is why these debates about class balance get so heated.

Remember that in Vanilla and BC, there was no raid difficulty tiers. If you beat Magtheridon or Nefarian or Kil'Jaeden, you beat him at both the lowest and the highest difficulty. IMO, that's how the game should be: There's one difficulty, it's scaled so that everyone of an appropriate gear level and a reasonable modicum of skill can beat it with dedicated effort, without having to ruthlessly min-max talent specs, without class stacking or other cheese.

At which point the hardcore players (who drive a lot of the enthusiasm, theorycrafting etc about WoW) get bored and stop playing. Or Blizzard undertunes the one difficulty and a ton of people never get to see the raiding content or have to pay for carries. Either way,a significant chunk of Wow's playerbase loses.

The problem is in part the idea that you need to bring a class that outperforms the median. That's not true at all. You need to bring players that can outperform the minimum on the classes they're playing. Of course, the further your group outperforms the minimum, the easier and faster time they'll have clearing the content.

The raiding min-max idea that is still causing these class stacking and viability issues was literally birthed in and fed by the single difficulty content system of Vanilla and BC (as well as previous MMOs).

Now, specifically regarding GungHo's issue, I'm not sure if it's an issue with WoW overall or if it's an issue with the group he tried to run with.

On the assumption that he's plenty geared and knows what he's doing, if he's trying to roll with a Mythic Group and Spriest is so far below average that most raids are excluding that spec from their raids, the issue is with Blizzard's balancing.

If he's trying to roll with a Normal or possibly Heroic group (and has appropriate gear and knows what he's doing) (or if the output potential of Spriest is still well above the minimum requirements for Mythic), then the person who excluded him from the raid is probably just a jerk.

[The_Jackal]

At which point the hardcore players (who drive a lot of the enthusiasm, theorycrafting etc about WoW) get bored and stop playing. Or Blizzard undertunes the one difficulty and a ton of people never get to see the raiding content or have to pay for carries. Either way,a significant chunk of Wow's playerbase loses.

There's plenty of ways to incentivize the higher difficulty tuning other than just gear bloat. They could just keep the gear identical and only add appearances, or titles, tabards, mounts, etc.

The problem is in part the idea that you need to bring a class that outperforms the median. That's not true at all. You need to bring players that can outperform the minimum on the classes they're playing. Of course, the further your group outperforms the minimum, the easier and faster time they'll have clearing the content.

It's ABSOLUTELY true. If you bring a Frost mage to 7.0 mythic, you're going to get grief, and to be honest, you probably should. Yes, you probably shouldn't, but most guilds aren't driven by mutual respect and a sense of comradery, they're driven by desire for loot.

The raiding min-max idea that is still causing these class stacking and viability issues was literally birthed in and fed by the single difficulty content system of Vanilla and BC (as well as previous MMOs).

That's a reach, imo. Class stacking was a result of players seeking the shortest path to getting what they wanted, pure and simple. If having 5 shamans to stack bloodlust was going to make dropping the loot easier, they'd do it. Whether there was multiple difficulty tiers was really irrelevant to that decision.

Now, specifically regarding GungHo's issue, I'm not sure if it's an issue with WoW overall or if it's an issue with the group he tried to run with.

On the assumption that he's plenty geared and knows what he's doing, if he's trying to roll with a Mythic Group and Spriest is so far below average that most raids are excluding that spec from their raids, the issue is with Blizzard's balancing.

If he's trying to roll with a Normal or possibly Heroic group (and has appropriate gear and knows what he's doing) (or if the output potential of Spriest is still well above the minimum requirements for Mythic), then the person who excluded him from the raid is probably just a jerk.

No reason it can't be both. If Shadow priest damage without S2M is poor, then it's a pretty rational decision (in a utilitarian sense) to force raiders to take the spec. Why should 24 other players be expected to carry a sub-part spec in highly challenging content?

[ryuplaneswalker]

At which point the hardcore players (who drive a lot of the enthusiasm, theorycrafting etc about WoW) get bored and stop playing. Or Blizzard undertunes the one difficulty and a ton of people never get to see the raiding content or have to pay for carries. Either way,a significant chunk of Wow's playerbase loses.

The problem is in part the idea that you need to bring a class that outperforms the median. That's not true at all. You need to bring players that can outperform the minimum on the classes they're playing. Of course, the further your group outperforms the minimum, the easier and faster time they'll have clearing the content.

The raiding min-max idea that is still causing these class stacking and viability issues was literally birthed in and fed by the single difficulty content system of Vanilla and BC (as well as previous MMOs).

Now, specifically regarding GungHo's issue, I'm not sure if it's an issue with WoW overall or if it's an issue with the group he tried to run with.

On the assumption that he's plenty geared and knows what he's doing, if he's trying to roll with a Mythic Group and Spriest is so far below average that most raids are excluding that spec from their raids, the issue is with Blizzard's balancing.

If he's trying to roll with a Normal or possibly Heroic group (and has appropriate gear and knows what he's doing) (or if the output potential of Spriest is still well above the minimum requirements for Mythic), then the person who excluded him from the raid is probably just a jerk.

You know what is hilarious, it is 100% the group he tried to run with. If you are good..you can 100% do Mythic Cutting Edge content and be just fine. The only time the "Min maxing" is actually relevant is in the 3 week progression races.