A Few Simple Tweaks for Shadow

Classes Priest
1

The war within Shadow priest could be made a lot more fluid with a few simple tweaks.

Make Halo, Dark Ascension, and Mind Spike: Insanity instant.

Tune the damage of Mind Blast, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death such that they deal at least 1 mil damage to a target with 8 mil health.

Tune the damage of Vampiric touch to 2 mil and swp to 1.5 mil.

Completely rework the mastery to something like a buff to mind spells or chance for dots to hit twice.

The first change would quell many complaints. The damage tuning would make us feel like proper Shadow priests again. The final change would free us from the shackles of our DoTs.

We used to cast DoTs because they provided the highest damage per gcd if they completed their full duration. Now we are forced to cast DoTs because the rest of our spells are neutered if we don’t cast them.

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Dark Ascension has to have a cast time to stay even with voidform.

Mind Spike: Insanity also cannot be instant because mind flay: insanity can’t be.

This is the problem with Blizzard trying to cater to both sides of the voidform/dark ascension spectrum. All it does is drag us all down.

This I can agree with. Shadows mastery is a ball and chain tied to our feet. We’re so chained to dots we can’t even kill a simple quest mob easily without dots up. It sucks, and it holds us back because so much of our damage is locked behind it.

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Dark Archangel (Dark Ascensions predecessor) never had a cast time in Cataclysm.

Voidform has always had a cast time with Void Eruption doing damage aside from the PvP only Void Origin when it did exist.

Mind Spike was instant cast (Procs) for the entirely of MoP and WoD alongside also having Mind Flay.

Halo, Cascade and Divine Star were all instant Cast in MoP and WoD.

Also, they made a mistake creating Surge of Insanity in merging 2 completely different spells together.

They should be their own talents with other talents that synergies with a specific spell so they can become more interesting.

So if we look back and compare pre and post Voidform, you can clearly see all the issues we have today were not issues pre Voidform and have always been issues post Voidform.

So what is really dragging down Shadow? It sure is not Dark Ascension and it sure is not Mind Spike as the records speak for themselves.

So I would argue its not an issue trying to cater to 2 different play styles, it’s an issue because specifically and solely the way Voidform currently works creating a cascade of issues like wretches being thrown all around the gears that make shadow work and it gets clogged up and seizes and breaks down.

It has always been Voidform as the centerpiece of Shadows problems.

We need to redesign Voidform and break up/separate Void Eruption and Void Bolt into their own separate and respective spells. That will go a long way in allowing the rest of the spec to breath and heal and actually evolve instead of this fake evolve that has left Shadow remaining stagnate or when compared to other classes it seems like it’s more so regressing in terms of design philosophy.

Also I would / could argue that there could also be a slight chance that Shadow having that slight extra bit of mobility caused by Void Bolt could also be the deciding factor as to why Priest as a whole in the class tree doesn’t have better mobility/Displacement capability.

It might not be related, but can we really rule out that possibility at this point?

So I can start to conclude that Voidform not only drags Shadow down but it may also be seeping into Holy and Discipline and affecting them negatively as well.

It’s a far reaching stretch, I know. But something in my bones just tells me somehow it doesn’t seem to farfetched.

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This would literally make the whole sp experience fun to play, it’s really that simple but Blizzard refuse to make Sp anything other than a hard casting 2 expansion behind mobility spec

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None of this true man, you’re literally playing into their narrative. Currently MFI is a 1.5 channel that is the equivalent of 1 global, which would mean an insta cast MS proc would be equivalent.

Still going to die on this hill but when they released DF, Sp hadn’t seen such great fluidity and fun decision making since WoD.

Enough Pve andies couldn’t get over the fact that they had two fillers and apparently too many buttons to press on their precious M+ runs so now we have the dog water rework still in place

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“A few simple tweaks” :joy:

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No it wouldn’t. Even if MFI is the same as a global it cannot be cast while moving. Spike would be. So at equal damage spike would always be superior because it would allow mobility without losing damage.

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They don’t do equal damage. Flay deals more and Spike requires extra talent points.

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I think it would be a fair trade where you need to spend an extra talent point to pickup Mind Spike and therefore you get it instant cast.

But also make Mind Flay castable while moving.

But I also have a completely different direction I would prefer to go down for these two spells, that said, I would be content with this I guess.

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