I like the way Anduin handled the Jailer during the intro quest gives us Discipline lore to be a tank spec.
I’m pretty sure in every conversation between “meta” players on streams / podcasts the shadow tree has been the butt of the joke or a frequent example of bad design that’s been brought up when people compare trees.
It goes against multiple design intentions that have been outlined by developers about how trees should work / feel, and even manages to contradict the release statement that came with the tree announcement itself with the design of its talents.
Nobody else* likes this.
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I have an honest sneaking suspicion that Discipline was initially planned to be a tank like WAY back in vanilla.
They had too much random stuff that would have possibly supported it (inner fire, improved inner fire, martyrdom, CC resistance, etc.
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I would say that was the notion before the DF alpha sure.
But things changed and I myself have been hearing and notice the aforementioned shift in perspective about shadow in DF. You can also see clear surprise when people positive talk about shadow because people were so used to poking on it lol.
As for anyone else liking what I don’t that’s none of my concern. I’m hoping all the specs are fun and nice to use come launch and we won’t have any stuck in the Stone Age.
Do you have any links to this? Because nobody I’ve spoken to who has alpha has had anything good to say about it, besides maybe a few tiny things.
I’ve seen it in a number of twitch streams.
Just go to the site, join a stream and ask. They could say what I’ve said (notion wise) or something else. We already have been hearing two different things anyways lol.
I’ve also been talking from a pvp perspective as i avidly pvp and thus I’m mainly in pvp streams.
Going Graph Theory here, there are more edges in the graph (tree) for the Shaman Tree and the Resto Tree than in the Priest Tree and Discipline Tree.
54 Edges Priest Tree
48 Edges Discipline Tree
84 Edges Shaman Tree
61 Edges Restoration Tree
Translation: shamans have more ways to path to nodes they want to take than priests.
EDIT: Restoration druids have fewer edges in both Druid and Restoration trees.
Yeah pve has had a vastly different opinion. And PvPers seem more interested in the hybridity / just what buttons are there. Most of the concerns are in how those buttons fit together and how that compares to other specs. Also the AoE rotation, something PvPers aren’t concerned with at all.
From a PvE perspective Shadow is well and truly in the stone age.
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Damage-wise it seems like it does decent DPS, but playstyle-wise it’s weird that they basically just exacerbated the traffic problem it has and then ALSO went ‘how about you mind flay more’ lol
Where did you see this?
I’m one of the first people to publicly test DF Shadow and the sentiment I’ve seen from the Shadow community across the board has been overwhelmingly negative. Hell, I was actually semi-optimistic about it initially and after playtesting it I 180’d almost immediately. Notable Shadow players like Publik, Ellipsis, Jaerv, Rivenz, and more have very few nice things to say about the tree and some of them are even saying that Shadow in its current state is completely unsalvageable given the myriad of problems with the spec tree.
So again, and with all due respect: where have you seen Shadow’s tree get any sort of noteworthy praise? I’m the most least-pessimistic about it and the spec was in such a bad state that I 180’d completely.
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Hybridity is one form but the praise I’ve been seeing for shadow was mainly for its damage but more importantly how much cc they can opt for.
A general rule of thumb I have is that if something plays fine/good in pvp then it should be just as fine one pve considering pvp is more dynamic than the latter.
Are bout in DF? Cause my only gripe currently is the situation with priests lack of baseline movement.
Yes, I’m talking DF.
And what are those people saying makes shadow feel like it’s in the stone ages in DF?
Twitch and a video or two I believe from YouTube.
I’ve only spoke on my experience though. If y’all are hearing bad things and seeing people have bad experiences those are just as valid. We all have to wait to see exactly how the spec will end up, regardless of people’s opinions.
It’s too bloated afaik. If it were me, I’d take Shadow back to Wrath talent tree - become single target gurus + mana battery + party-wide healing based on % of single target damage done.
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Depends how you define fine/good?
As in a-tier maybe? If so, it’s def not the case. Some specs do shine accross all contents but it’s more frequent that a spec that shines in pvp doesn’t in m+ or raid or both.
And I’d say that it’s true for feels/fun factor as well. A lot of specs feels very different in different contents.
I.e. shadow is fine in pvp atm and its ok in raid but feels aweful in m+ (gameplay-wise at least)
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Bloated with utility spells that should be in the class tree by Ion’s description of what class trees are for.
The whole SFP playstyle being the shadow branch of the class tree, and not being optional because there’s nothing else in the class tree you’d even want.
A significant lack of branches and choice in the class tree making it hard to even diversify builds if you want to.
Numerous things in the shadow tree being incompatible with eachother / synergies being inaccessible because of how the tree was designed. The idol that buffs apparitions being on the right, when all the apparition talents are on the left.
Of Shadow’s 21 talents on live, every single one of them has been added in DF, and of them 19 of them can be taken at once. As so many rows in Shadow’s tree were designed around “3 different ways to do the same thing”, this redundancy in the tree is super awkward to play with.
Shadow’s bloated rotation adds more to the insanity generation problem, where the spec was flooded in single target and aoe without any real way to spend it all.
Five talents that buff mind flay in the spec tree, when it was stated that blizzard removed dark thoughts specifically to reduce the relative strength of mind flay in the rotation.
Requiring taking AoE talents like Mind Sear, Psychic Link, and Shadow Crash to either reach strong Single Target nodes or entire sections of the tree.
Sanguine Teachings exists.
Shadow’s AoE rotation has been derided by the vast majority of the community in SL, with Searing Nightmare being the major spell people disliked. It’s still here.
Shadow’s tree genuinely feels like they dumped the current spec’s spells and abilities in random places, without any care or thought about how or even if they interact with eachother, or if they were things that made sense to bring forward in the first place.
If the buttons work ok in PvP, and people are glad they got their healing spells back, cool. But there’s so many issues with what’s been provided so far that many people are genuinely hoping they just scrap the whole thing and start over. (Obviously if that were to happen, the things PvPers are happy about wouldn’t change because they’re things that moving back towards talent trees do by default such as being able to grab healing stuff.)
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Hmm ok.
I disagree with some of those but i won’t be maining priest come DF anyways so hopefully y’all get what you want so long as it’s balanced lol.
that’s my rule of thumb but that’ll of course vary from player to player. We all have opinions lol.
A class being good in a type of content isn’t a matter of opinion though 
It is and good is subjective.
Cause that’s going to vary from player to player.
Meta in and of itself is a collective opinion.
Either way, I’m more in it for the fun myself. And spriest in m+ is aweful for thr majority of players. Shadows has problems in how it feels for pve and that has been true for SL as a whole. Since you seem to be more into the pvp side, I guess it doesn’t impact you 