Feedback on Shadow Priest Design

In Development WoW: Forever Beta Discussion
1

To the Blizzard Development Team,

Hello. My name is Cyradys, a long-time Shadow Priest player and community contributor known through the Shadow Priest Discord and various Warcraft community media outlets. I am reaching out during this beta phase to discuss the current state of Shadow Priest, our spec identity, and the critical adjustments needed to ensure the spec is a viable and compelling choice in Forever.

Currently, Shadow is experiencing an identity crisis. In the past, your raid spot was tied to your class utility, which has been lessened in Forever. While we support the broader design initiative in Forever to strip away utility requirements, which prevents raid spots from being tied strictly to mandatory support needs, Shadow has not received compensation to fill that void. Unlike other specs, we currently lack distinct utility or baseline performance metrics that make bringing a Shadow Priest feel impactful outside of personal friendships or high player skill.

Furthermore, Shadow has traditionally been defined by above-average rotational complexity centered around managing periodic damage-over-time (DoT) effects. This identity is currently missing:

We are operating with not even one and a half DoTs. Shadow Word: Pain remains our primary DoT, while Devouring Plague sits on a restrictive 1-minute cooldown that is easily resisted or dispelled in PvP, entirely nullifying our meaningful damage windows and having only 40% uptime. Mind Flay is coded as a DoT mechanically, but lacks the spreadable, dynamic playstyle associated with the archetype.

Our primary goal is to ensure that players are not turned away from groups or forced into healing specs simply because they chose to play Shadow. The spec needs a baseline, rewarding playstyle that justifies its slot through engaging gameplay.

Key Action Items (Needs)

To address these core problems, we propose the following critical adjustments for the beta:

  1. Add a Second Damage-over-Time Effect: Introduce an additional DoT to restore our multi-DoT management playstyle. Numerical tuning can be adjusted later; the primary goal is establishing the rotational cadence of managing multiple periodic effects.

  2. Remove Increased Threat on Mind Blast: With utility being stripped away and our role shifting away from pure utility support, the legacy threat penalty on Mind Blast is outdated and should be removed.

  3. Rework or Remove Improved Fade: The current implementation in the Shadow tree offers negligible impact and will likely be bypassed by all players. It should be replaced with a meaningful talent that increases talent decision making.

  4. Reduce Devouring Plague Cooldown: Lower the cooldown to create a more meaningful impact on our sustained rotation. This should be paired with adjustments to the Devouring Contagion talent and baseline healing coefficients to maintain balanced PvP performance.

  5. Incentivize Full Mind Flay Casts (Mind Flay 2 vs. Mind Flay 3): Currently, the GCD is limited to 1.5 seconds, and players clip Mind Flay after two ticks because higher-priority spells override the final tick. We request a design that rewards committing to full casts to create meaningful rotational decisions, avoiding Season of Discovery-style band-aids where longer casts simply scale raw damage.

  6. Revert Shadow Word: Death Cooldown: Restore the cooldown back to 12 seconds as the previous nerf lacked clear justification.

  7. Swap Mental Strength and Holy Precision in the Discipline tree. Right now, Shadow has 5 points that it just puts wherever because there are no good choices to be made for the extra points. This would solve that problem.

Quality-of-Life Improvements (Wants)

While secondary to our core rotational needs, the following changes would significantly improve quality of life:

  • Convert Shadow Weaving to a Self-Buff: Change Shadow Weaving from an enemy debuff to a self-buff to eliminate frustrating ramp-up delays between trash pulls in raids.

  • Consolidate Talents: Merge Shadow Focus and Shadow Affinity.

  • Reposition Vampiric Embrace: If utility is being actively removed to make us a more powerful standalone spec, transition Vampiric Embrace into an offensive cooldown rather than a group utility tool.

A Note on Tier Sets

Regarding the leaked tier set bonuses currently found in Mount Hyjal, which rely on temporary power mechanics to modify rotations: we strongly advise focusing on establishing a rewarding, cohesive base rotation first before introducing temporary band-aids via tier bonuses.

Thank you for your time, consideration, and dedication to the game. We look forward to seeing Shadow established as a rewarding and viable spec in Forever.

Sincerely,

Cyradys

407 Likes
Shadow priest is DOA
Dev Podcast completely glossed over Shadow Priest
Forever Shadow Priest feedback
Shadow Priest in Forever: "less utility than a Warlock," Blizzard what are you doing?!
Shadow Priest Feedback for WoW Forever
Beta Realm Maintenance - October 8
Beta Realm Maintenance - October 8
2

I was so excited for Forever because Shadow Priest is one of my favorite specs and I remember it being not great in classic. I would love for us to be viable and have a clear identity <3

75 Likes
3

add crit chance talent instead of the one that makes DP jump if enemy dies, that’s beyond useless. Shadow is the only caster with no crit chance talents.

55 Likes
4

By second Damage-over-Time effect you mean Vampiric Touch, right?

Because I do. :wink:

58 Likes
5

Idk why they just don’t give Shadow Priest Vampiric Touch?

Edit: ^ funny not the only one thinking this @tactful

36 Likes
6

Not Vampiric Touch because it has a dislike from just the name. Can just make a new DoT that is very similar but a different name and icon

17 Likes
7

ive seen enough nerf genji

10 Likes
8

Well said. Agree with every point. Shadow PvE gameplay is so lackluster in its current state.

1 minute DP cooldown is the biggest offender in my opinion. Ignoring the “utility” arguments, having 40% uptime on a core dps rotational spell is a disgrace especially when a tier set is the supposed remedy. Blizz introduced a problem just for borrowed power to “solve” it which is a slap in the face to the players

47 Likes
9

100%—please add Vampiric Touch. Shadow Priests deserve to feel wanted in groups and valued for what they bring. For those of us who love the spec, it means a lot to feel welcomed instead of pushed away just for playing something we enjoy.

43 Likes
10

Wonderful write up, and fantastic points.

The skill expression from tuning your rotation and juggling dots is the major part of what I would miss most out of this class. Having not even 2 dots to maintain is incredibly disappointing, however VT would run into the same problem I have with VE, being that it’s tied too directly to damage, and heavily restricts the performance of SPriest as a spec.

I would much rather see another strictly damaging DoT included, and even some class balance shifted away from VE as well to allow more room for Spriest to change into something more interesting than we’ve seen it in the past, instead of a warm body that’s strictly needed for the utility they bring.

34 Likes
11

Please replace or rework Vampiric Embrace. Casting it is a dps loss and If I want to heal my party I’ll play a healer spec. Give us Vampiric Touch <3

21 Likes
12

Agree with most of what was said. I would also like to point out that silent resolve (which had previously gotten a few dump points) does nothing for shadow now. So the Mind Blast bonus threat is even worse than it was before.

14 Likes
13

Think this is a clear case of “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” or to say, Our TBC era design basically took a 2/10 Vanilla PvE spec and made it a 10/10.

It was the OG “Support DPS Spec” and i’d love to see them work with what made TBC Spriest great and return it to that.

23 Likes
14

I get that some of you, most of you, are really passionate about your classes, but maybe just wait and see how it plays at higher levels.

2 Likes
15

Highly agree, I’m still going to play shadow going in but I do feel like I will be forced out into healing with the lack lustre functionality.

Shadow needs more than a singular dot and mindflay.

Vamp Touch would make such a simple addition to the game and really Flesh the class out a lot more.

22 Likes
16

The problem is we can see the full layout here. It’s not that we get more at 60 or something. This is it. It’s a peeled back version of shadow without the group benefit

28 Likes
17

I really hope they do something with the design, the long-term outlook just feels lame.

20 Likes
18

Appreciate the thoughtful work done here. Looking at what we know right now about Shadow Priest in WoW: Forever I have more questions than suggestions at this time.

In general I want to know: what is our intended class role/identity? In SOD we were allowed to be a real DPS class at the cost of some of our utility. We primarily had single target DPS but we were given enough AOE to make us competitive and useful in multi target scenarios.

In TBC the class design is significantly different. We are primarily brought for our mana return as well as our raid buffs/debuffs making us a valued utility class but also something a raid only needs 1 or 2 of at most. Our single target damage is fine but not impressive due to a lack of scaling.

So when I look at WoW:F Shadow Priest I see a few things happening:

  • More single target damage

  • Almost no AOE abilities (outside of devouring contagion) or the typical behavior of “blanketing” a number of mobs with SWP.

  • Almost all utility has been stripped from the class. No mana return. Healing on a CD. Shadow weaving only benefits the priest and not their raid.

If the intention is to trade most of our utility for raw output I am personally ok with that compromise but I think our toolkit could benefit from a bit more development. Having one dot and another on a long cooldown means our rotation is very simple, mostly effective on bosses and deeply limited on trash/multi target pulls.

I do want to emphasize that Shadow Priest is a functionally distinct identity and role from disc/holy healing priests. I don’t personally heal and I don’t think there is a ton of overlap between healing priests and shadow priests. A lot of us chose this spec intending to main a caster DPS role and chose it OVER mage or warlock. I would like some reassurance that our WoW:F class design supports this role.

30 Likes
19

Sorry but I dont agree with any of this. I play shadow priest and think its in a comfy spot. We dont need more dots, threat on MB is fine and flavorful, Devo plague cooldown is perfectly fine if anything it should be longer. if ur “clipping” mind flay ur just playing wrong with wrong talents.
love the attention to spriest but these changes arent it.

1 Like
20

Shadowpriest in vanilla rotationally was one of the most complex specs already, without multiple dots. We don’t need multiple dots. I’m ok with VE being removed altogether, as it is now is just painful. From a PvP oriented perspective, I would rather not even use VE as it is. If they didn’t like the AOE heal on it, they should’ve just removed that and made it single target. Us giving the healing around was a detriment in PVE anyway threat wise. I want mind flays…all the mind flays…I want to sit and cast mind flay over and over and over. Its by far the most fun ability in the game to use IMO. We don’t need an AOE spell, we have SWP to throw around, we don’t need a cast time dot, we have mind flays to cast, we don’t need DP as it is, all it does is create a burst window for a class that doesn’t…really utilize burst windows. JUST LET ME MIND FLAY

2 Likes