12.1 Shadow Priest Feedback

In Development Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek Public Test Realm
1

I applaud the decision to move AoE away from psychic link. By and large good changes.

One Pressure Point:

Archon had consistently outperformed Voidweaver since both of their iterations. The margin has not been extreme, but Archon pulls ahead. I hope the patch notes are incomplete, because the only hero talent changes for shadow are buffs to archon.

Continuing the discussion from Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek PTR Development Notes:

These buffs will make the gulf between Archon and Voidweaver more significant. I am no expert or theory crafter, but I absolutely prefer to play Voidweaver. I like the playstyle more. I would like to see void torrent hit hard again, or perhaps Add an effect to overwhelming shadows, that causes Void Torrent to Launch Shadowy Apparitions Each time it deals damage.

I could be wrong about everything, but With buffing the higher performing hero talent, it only pulls further away from the fun one.

6 Likes
2

I’ve tried out Archon on the PTR and saw a ~+13% DPS 1T and ~+4% 5T w/o the new 2pc/4pc but with the current 2pc/4pc. The Void Volley changes are very apparent as it shot up in its damage contribution, felt very on demand, and very fun to press. Apparition death-ball friendly cleave will be interesting to see play out as well.

That said, within the 2m burst window, there were too many resources to spend (Insanity for Madness, Volley Charges, Mind blast + Mind Blast Procs, Insanity Flays, and Tentacle Slams) even w/o the 4pc of additional instant-but-on-the-GCD Vampric Touch procs from 4pc. It feels bad capping resources and it is only going to get worse with more buttons to press.

Tentacle Slam timing, DoT management, and Twist of Fate awareness all make Shadow a high-friction class to get started in. Having your entire cooldown manager lit up with resources all in the same small burst window and having to make on-the-fly judgment calls on what to cap will only increase friction for new players. For the more experienced, they will reason it out, but this isn’t going to help with the image Shadow has if new Shadow players struggle.

On the lack of mobility changes: nothing but sadness. Buff Angelic Feathers +10% baselines, +2s in combat, +4s out of combat, and Move Divine Feathers to the class tree and give priests mobility or something. Anything.

I’m happy to see PW: Shield get some love but it is still 22k on a 599k hp character at 291 ilvl. It is 3.6% damage reduction. We can’t keep having to Fade + Flash Heal + Power Word: Shield. If I have to spend a GCD on a defensive it has to matter and 3.6% isn’t cutting it and its mobility portion is still lack luster. The button feels bad to press and it is just another button in the junk pile.

And a last note, Twist of Fate has to be re-thought. It scales so poorly as tiers progress and that 10%’s lifetime shrinks due to the scaling of other classes that don’t have the same ‘buffed window”.

5 Likes
3

Class: Shadow Priest

Content Tested: Primarily raid and sustained AoE target dummy testing

Overall, I think this PTR build is a significant step in the right direction for Shadow. The Voidform package is the strongest part of the update and largely succeeds at the stated goal of improving Voidform gameplay while reducing rotational congestion.

Voidform / Ancient Madness

The Void Volley redesign is a substantial improvement. Having a fixed number of uses during Voidform instead of a cooldown creates more room in the rotation and allows players to make meaningful decisions about when to use charges. Voidform feels less crowded while still maintaining its identity.

Ancient Madness is also a standout redesign. The stacking haste and Voidform extension mechanics create a satisfying sense of momentum and evoke some of the feeling of older Voidform iterations without recreating the problems those versions had. The lingering haste effect after Voidform ends feels particularly good.

A few notes:

  • Improved Voidform currently appears to still grant the Insanity from its previous version.
  • Void Volley does not appear to interact with Sustained Potency. This may be intended.
  • Void Volley still feels somewhat isolated from the rest of the kit. As it becomes a more important part of Voidform gameplay, it would be nice to see it participate in more of Shadow’s systems such as Idol of C’Thun.

One question I have is whether the goal is for players to enter Voidform with significant Insanity banked. With Improved Voidform no longer providing Insanity, there are occasional awkward ramp scenarios when aligning cooldowns.

Shadeburst

Shadeburst is an exciting addition conceptually. Shadow has historically relied heavily on Psychic Link for AoE damage, so introducing another AoE source tied to Shadowy Apparitions is a welcome direction for the specialization.

However, the current implementation feels disconnected from much of Shadow’s existing Apparition ecosystem.

At the moment, Shadeburst does not appear to trigger from:

  • Tormented Spirits
  • Void Apparition (Rank 1) generated Apparitions

The reason the talent currently feels underwhelming may not simply be tuning. By excluding many of Shadow’s supplemental Apparition sources, Shadeburst ends up interacting with a much smaller portion of the specialization than expected.

In sustained 5-target testing, the talent contributes less than 2% of total damage and is currently difficult to justify over competing AoE choices.

If the current behavior is intentional, the talent likely needs significantly more tuning support. If it is not intentional, allowing additional Apparition sources to trigger Shadeburst may naturally solve many of its current issues while making the talent feel more integrated into the specialization.

Archon

Focused Outburst

This talent appears substantially overtuned in its current form.

Based on testing, the overwhelming majority of Archon’s current advantage over Voidweaver appears to come from Focused Outburst itself rather than the surrounding Archon changes.

Mechanically, the redesign is interesting and creates compelling gameplay during Voidform.

The issue is simply the magnitude of the reward. At current tuning levels, Archon is outperforming Voidweaver by a very large margin and risks eliminating meaningful hero talent choice before the season even begins.

Resonant Energy

This redesign feels much more successful.

Tying the effect to Halo creation rather than Halo successfully hitting targets makes the talent substantially more reliable and should help reduce some of the variance that has historically existed in Archon’s damage profile.

Overall, the Voidform changes are some of the most enjoyable Shadow gameplay updates we’ve received in a long time. The biggest remaining concerns are Shadeburst’s lack of integration with the Apparition ecosystem and Focused Outburst’s current tuning.

14 Likes
4

voidweaver is the better spec for keys atm

5

Been playing on and off for years, my favorite has been the “shadow/void” theme and now I’ve come to dislike it multiple expansion in.

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CORE KIT

The current Shadow lit consist of too many procs with little engagement. I don’t mind juicy procs that one has to react to for big DAMAGE but shadow is not that. These procs (Idols) only eat away the “feel good” of other skills. Say, when you make a proc do 5% of our damage, it’s 5% we don’t get accros the base kit.

What I want is for skills like Void bolt to HIT hard and Feel good, I want to see my dots to degen my enemies down.

I have pretty much always disliked Shadowy Apparitions, I don’t like them for damage, I don’t like them for insanity regeneration, I don’t like them when they are random nor when they are on demand. I don’t like the build up for idols, the randomness of their procs or even the fact they they take away damage that could be put back into the core kit of the shadow priest. You have redesigned shadow into a pseudo void priest, I would highly suggest to get rid of shadowy apparitions, use a 3 floating void orb theme and have them shoot themselves at enemies as “Lesser Void Bolts” or something similar.

I don’t like the new way the class now applies it’s dots, it has made the spec lose a lot of it’s identity and part of the fault is the Shadow’s Mastery bonus. I get that you feel pressurize in giving us an option to quickly apply our dots to a lot of targets, otherwise mastery becomes useless in a dungeon scenario and then priest would see no play.

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SET BONUS

That leads me to the set :

  • 2-Set Bonus: Tentacle Slam cooldown reduced by 3 seconds and its damage is increased by 100%.

  • 4-Set Bonus: After casting Tentacle Slam, your next Vampiric Touch is instant, generates 4 additional Insanity, and conjures Shadowy Apparitions that deal 200% of normal damage.

Tentacle Slam being more available is kinda neat but I am not a fan of it applying our dots and doing NO damage unless speced in. Also the 2-set should read Tentacle Salm is now CAST TWICE, instead of 100% damage, it would make the set feel more visually impactful.

4-set Why? Why make Vampiric touch instant? When the Slam already applies vampiric touch!? To basically justify using VT as a kind of cast a single shadowy apparitions on demand? Again here, splitting the JUICE over X-Y-Z. Just FOCUS on Tentacle Slam.
Look at this exemple :

4-set bonus : After casting tentacle Slam, gen a stack of Void Tenties, up to 5 stacks, upon casting void eruption consume all stacks to cast a free tentacle slam per stack, these stacks are not further repeated by the 2-set. ITS visual, its beautiful!

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SOME MORE SOLUTIONS (some bandaid)

Mastery bonus : Instead of X% more damage per dot, make it a strait up Priest deals % more damage if enemy is affected by any source of damage overtime effect. Until you guys can afford a better rework.

Psychic link : Rework it, make it something like mindblast spreads all damage overtime effect currently on the target to other targets in a X radius. By also removing the direct damage upfront component, we can spread this damage toward Slam and Void Eruption.

By removing, VT from tentacle slam, we can focus on it’s raw damage, on a side note, tentacle slam could have a talent node to make it apply to Psychic link (act like mindblast does in my exemple.

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While I think my post and ideas might get lost in time, I feel like it ease my need to vent.

Thank you.

2 Likes
6

Preach. Get rid of this nonsense and bake it all into fade.

2 Likes
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The Vampiric Touch being instant cast makes no sense when Tentacle Slam already applies VT? Wish they would have just really dug into Tentacle Slam with the 4p and did something along the lines of “Tentacle Slam has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown of Tentacle Slam”. That would justify putting points into all the TS damage modifiers and potentially made a fun rotational loop with some extra decision making and would have played more into the Apex talents. Oh well, there’s always 12.2!

1 Like
8

I don’t understand the 4p whatsoever. I think the intentions are good but it directly conflicts with the whole point of TS in general … to refresh dots.

Some easy alternatives would be:

TS has a 10% chance to reset the cooldown of Void Torrent.

TS reduces the cooldown of Void Torrent by 2s

TS has a chance or (just does) cast an additional SWM at 50% effectiveness.

TS makes your next Mind Flay do 50% increased damage.

TS reduces the cooldown of Halo by 5 or 10 seconds.

Making a tier set more complex doesn’t need to mean more clunky.

6 Likes
9

The 4pc bonus makes no sense. Complete trash. please fix it. Thanks.

7 Likes
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Its comments like these that do not help the process of making things right. I dont normally refrain from responding to comments like this, but this is why we end up with diabolical builds or tier sets that no one likes.

When you say something is complete trash, you should at least make the bare minimum effort of saying why and how it effects your gameplay.

Give actual feedback, not some quick one liner that you think will get you a bunch of likes on the forum.

11

After doing the heroic raid testing as Archon only, that the overall feel of the additional charges of Void Volley from Improved Voidform are hard to optimize in PvE encounters. I’m of the opinion at this point that it seems to be aimed directly at scenarios where optimizing it isn’t the point, the point is to burst something down. I can only image that is for PvP and maybe some niche scenarios where adds burst is more important than anything else.

In general Ancient Madness felt better to play in raid and the damage was noticeably more on multi-target fights.

Overall, damage tuning is needed. I tried a variety of talent changes and choices in the testing dome and took what I learned there for 1T and 5T into raid and it was clear that either some classes are overtuned or Shadow is undertuned. Specifically 1T feels incredibly weak.

Additionally in the raid there were many instances in the raid fights where mobility is a key factor in the spec and our mobility isn’t cutting it. It isn’t that we can’t move, it is that we can’t move medium-to-far distances quickly with the Priest talents available. This isn’t a desire to stand still and cast it is a desire to move quickly on demand sometimes over medium to long range distances (and I suppose for our healing specs to be able to catch up out-of-combat when drinking). Our strongest movement is still tied to Dispersions which is the most unfun button to press for movement.

In general the talent tree is still feels like there is too much to choose from that doesn’t matter. Lots of filler that have no clear indication of what they are for and taking them seems to not really change much.

Shadow really needs to come out strong starting out Season 2. Its perception is at an all time low.

5 Likes
12

“Shadow’s new Tier Set is its tuning. The set feels extremely weak compared to many that are coming in 12.1 and even Shadow’s season 1 set bonus. Personally I would want a complete rethink but given how close 12.1 is I’m not sure how feasible that would be. It’s really, really bad and I am not looking forward to playing with it at all.” -EllipsisPriest

1 Like
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I feel better after reading that others are also confused by shadow’s 12.1 set bonus. I got into an argument with someone the other day over it when they were trying to explain to me how it made sense. :sweat_smile:

1 Like
14

I dont wanna sound on repeat, but ill post mine too.
The tier set is indees a strange one. Pressing VT again on a dotted target without the NUKE that unfurlling darkness provided feels very very off. At this point why not just every cast of slam just spawns ghosts that will deal 200% dam?

Inside of voidform while on archon feels kinda spammy, and outisde of voidform feels like big nothing-burger.
The cooldown got long awaited and welcomed rework, yet it realy feels like the spec is all about that CD, which is going directly against the “philosophy” of your class changes for 12.1.
Archon

Focused outburst is very overtuned. Not realy against other specs, but inside our kit its very VERY dominant atm. Its also very cool and satysfiying and should stay as it is with tuned down volleys. The visual feedback to your sw:madness is very well done. This talent unfortunately puts voidweaver into the dumpster and should be implemented for both hero specs.

The overal tuning is needed but the spec feels way better than current one.

I dont wanna be doomer, but is x-th major ptr cycle in a row where we receive substantial changes and every single feedback on them is ignored to the very last second. Every build is with complete radio silence when it comes to priests and especialy shadow. I hope this isnt going to be the same again…a bit naive but still.
(Last ptr build -changes only to holy set…).

I would also love to ask devs to make some changes to invoked nightmares and misery node. IN is very dominant in raids and, when high enough, its taking over keys too. I get that its challenging playstyle that rewards good play with good output, but i feel like what you have to do in AOE while runing IN is very unhealthy/gimmick degen playstyle. It could simply just be fixed by adding “Shadow word: pain can now be aplied to 2-3 raget.” I cannot be the only one who feels like IN in dungeons just isnt it.

2 Likes
15

I love most of the Archon talents but I’m not a fan of Halo itself. It’s visually distracting and it has obvious technical issues. They should keep the cooldown buffing talents and get rid of the Halo stuff. Let’s try something new.

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Mained SP this season, and can tell that both Archon and Voidweaver are fun to play but I prefer void too, the black hole is amaizing. Maybe we’ll see some changes since Archon will be obviously outperform Voidweaver for now, maybe not doing something crazy but slighly buffs (maybe).

I just need to ask one thing to blizz, remove the fckin “Protective Light” talent, casting FH for having 10% DR is so fckin boring, just add these to fade on Translucent Image, making fade a real minor defensive for 20% as feint are to rogue without a talent and with low cd as well. They can do a fckin better talent or not but just remove it from there, neither disc/holy like it.

2 Likes
17

I would personally change the “free VT” to a free SW:D that counts as if the target is on the execute range.

It would be nice to synergize with the bottom left side of the tree too by proxy.

2 Likes
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Or it could actualy be the real Unfurling Darkness, adding the nuke damage to VT as it did back then.

But overall yeah, your idea would propably be better since sw:d talents cozld see some use.

1 Like
19

4pc is so odd and feels odd to play around. Anything other than VT would make sense.

SWD, DP, Mind Blast. Even the next cast of tentacle slam. VT is just the most bizarre choice for the 4pc. TS already applies VT, TS is getting a reduced cooldown in the 2pc. So why then, do we need our next VT cast to be instant? The extra ghosts could come from anything else.

Like it’s supposed to harken back to unfurling darkness, but it’s not doing what that did, and also it feels out of place rotationally these days.

2 Likes
20

All these comments about the set bonus for SP, it’s actually quite good in pvp makes it very easy to re-apply our dots because for some reason as a premier dot spec we have the worst dispel protection around so your dots get spam dispelled hence making the set bonus quite nice. I think alot of you M+ and raider gamers forget pvp even exsists.