Baseline fixes for shadow

Classes Priest
1

Hi all. Posting here for my thoughts on helping shadow not be crippled in shadowlands. I think there are several ways to go about it, but what I think the easiest way to help the spec is as follows:

Make the following baseline in addition to the other changes:

  1. Shadow word void - this is an absolute requirement for all specs.
  2. Lingering insanity - pretty much same as above.
    Making those two talents baseline free up so much for the spec.
    3). Add Chorus of insanity as a passive ability

Again, there are many ways to help the spec but I think these 3 things will at least allow us to retain viability. Thoughts?

2

I wanna touch on these two specifically, because while it feels like they’re necessary to add any weight to voidform, they also come with a lot of annoying baggage.

Mainly the fact they occur after a voidform ends, and impact your performance for a solid 30+ seconds after that voidform is over. The more power and value you put after a long voidform (LI COI), the less power voidform itself, or just the spec generally can have. It’s a major culprit for the massive backloading of power shadow has today.

Also worth noting that once voidform starts dipping its fingers into many different aspects of power increase, interactions between those power increases start mattering. Namely if you have something provide both haste and crit, not only is more stats better, but more haste increases the value of that crit etc etc etc… You go from linear scaling, something much more predictable and controllable, to exponential scaling where the various rewards start interacting not just with voidform but with eachother and it all gets out of hand very quickly.

LI, I think serves a much more important purpose than damage though. It stops the spec feeling trash between voidforms. That’s important, it’s something that should be preserved. But chorus, and lingering’s consistent impact on the power of your next voidform, that’s gotta go.

6 Likes
3

chorus of insanity pretty much goes against the main mechanic of voidform and purpose, that is to stay in voidform.

you only get the benefit of chorus after you leave voidform. this makes your first voidform important but completely unimpactful because the main purpose of it is to build stacks. your second voidform is when you can see the dps ramp up.

3 Likes
4

You both bring up some really great points there. That’s where it gets tricky for me. It really does seem like the spec is at odds with itself, by design. I kind of understand why, but ultimately it’s confusing direction from the development. I myself really like the unique aspects of voidform and don’t personally want to see it removed. But I definitely see that we are headed into deep waters come shadowlands at the moment. Thanks for the feedback, I’d love to hear more ideas or suggestions.

2 Likes
5

the only passive that I can think of that incentives you to stay longer in voidform is Mass Hysteria. Mass Hysteria increased the damage of your DoTs for every stack of voidform and dropped after you get out of voidform.

here is where it gets confusing.

Blizz gave us Voidform because they “felt” that shadow played to much like Aff warlocks, however voidform mechanic when introduced was basically a less efficient Aff Lock.

You ramp up you DoTs the longer you are in voidfrom. Aff Locks whole playstyle is around managing your DoTs and ramping them up. its just shadow is less efficient because you don’t actually have direct control over the ramp up.

you see how from the get go the whole spec and Voidofrm had an identity crisis.

in BFA they tried to push it into another direction but it obviously didn’t work.

I think ramp up in its entirety needs to go.

there is too much going on with the set up of the spec. you have to first build up insanity to enter voidform then in concept you would want to try and keep up with the drain until you have enough stacks to do good dps. they need to choose one of the two systems.

either have it so we build up insanity to enter vodiform and once you are in vodiform you get an upfront fixed buff and drain or…

have it so it’s a heat build up system. Meaning rather then building insanity to enter voidform there is a drain that push’s against your insanity generation and the more your insanity bar is full the more damage you do. think of it as you are always in voidform but rather then getting kicked out once your insanity hits 0 it just remains there and you can just keep generating it as it depletes.

you could attach a tier system to it. So every 20 insanity is a tier adding up to 5 tiers. Each tier provides a buff, for example each tier provides %3 increased haste and damage adding up to %15 haste since they want the spec to be oriented around haste. they could add a visual indicator of each tier.

all you have to do to get the buff of the tier is to keep your insanity bar in the range of that tier. For example, you want to stay in tier 5 you just have to keep your insanity bar above 80, tier 4 is between 60-80, tier 3 is between 40-60, tier 2 is between 20-40, tier 1 is between 1-20.

by the way the heat mechanic(tier system) is not a new idea Yvaelle proposed it I believe way back in BFA alpha.

2 Likes
6

I think the tldr for voidform from my perspective, is if it has to stay and work as it does (I don’t want it to stay at all ultimately but here we are.) Then the following has to happen.

Voidform itself has to meaningful and fast, ideally bring the haste back to 1% per stack, or even more now we don’t have mass hysteria.

Stack scaling has to be linear and remain linear. We don’t want multiple aspects of voidform’s power influencing eachother.

Voidforms have to be independent of eachother (No knock on value).

Mind blast needs 2 charges and void bolt rank 2 needs deleting.

Voidforms need to be and remain a reasonable length.

Numerous talents need to be either removed or redesigned to be useful.

We need ways to mitigate the ramp of voidform, we need ways to make voidform feel stronger that aren’t just extending it. This can be done with talents to provide genuine options in content where extension isn’t viable or useful.

If we can do all of that (And more besides) then maybe the mechanics got a chance.

8 Likes
7

Design changes at this point in development should be toward fixing problems instead of arbitrary solutions.

So what are the problems with Shadow, scoped by this thread alone?

Voidform’s power scaling is non-linear. This is a problem for a few reasons. First, it backloads the power budget of Voidform to the highest stacks, resulting in excessive punishment if those stacks aren’t attained, as well as delaying Shadow’s ramp even longer. It also leads to gaining stacks later down the expansion having even more scaling which either results in a theoretical limit of stacks or Shadow getting tuned every patch.

Lingering Insanity provides much needed haste into the spec after Voidform. This feels necesary from a pacing perspective alone. Not to mention Voidform is a rewarding system and I don’t think stacks alone are sufficient reward to attain more stacks.

Power budget of Voidform comes from after Voidform. Lingering Insanity is also a culprit of this. As long as this exists Voidform cannot alone have the power budget it deserves. Additionally, as long as it exists ramp will remain way too long in duration.

So from these points alone what do I think the optimal solution to Voidform would be?

  • Make Voidform scaling linear and add no other multipliers to it
  • Give Voidform a haste reward afterward (make Lingering Insanity baseline)
  • Do not make after Voidform rewards more than in Voidform rewards (stacks)

The problems and respective solutions don’t stop there. But I believe that this is the approach, as players, we should take if we want Shadow to be the best it can be.

1 Like
8

lingering insanity was introduced to make the downtime outside of voidform shorter so you could jump back into voidform faster. it’s just that voidform is too weak that it becomes the value of getting into voidform especially with Chorus.

i don’t fully understand what you mean with this could you explain further.

2 Likes
9

Here’s my pitch to fix Voidform without removing it:

  • All long ramps and stacking mechanics removed: Mass Hysteria, Voidform Haste, Lingering Insanity, Chorus of Insanity, Auspicious Spirits

  • Mind Blast now has 2 charges, baseline

  • Void Bolt Rank 2 deleted

Mastery: Madness redesigned:

  • For each insanity you generate and spend, you have an accumulating 0.5% chance to spawn a Void Tendril. Void Tendril channels Mind Flay on your current target, damage increased with Mastery.

Shadowform redesigned:

  • No longer increases spell damage by 10%
  • Grants 15% haste

Voidform redesigned:

  • No longer increases spell damage by 20%
  • No longer grants stacking % haste
  • Voidform grants 30% haste (replaces Shadowform’s 15%)
  • Maintaining Voidform drains Insanity at 5 Insanity per second
  • While in Voidform your spells no longer increase your Insanity
  • Insanity generated during Voidform instead multiplies spell damage (1 + Insanity) * Spell Damage

Shadow Word Void redesigned: Deals 20% more damage than Mind Blast per cast, generates double Insanity on critical strikes (Whispers of the Damned azerite), no longer grants an additional charge (now baseline)

Auspicious Spirits removed, replaced with:

  • Face Melter new Mind Flay can be cast while moving and deals increased damage, but you no longer gain Void Bolt while in Voidform

Lingering Insanity removed, replaced with:

  • Tendrils from Beyond new While in Voidform, your mastery proc chance is doubled from 0.5% per Insanity to 1% per Insanity interaction (generate or spend)

Death and Madness redesigned: Shadow Word: Death can now be cast on targets above 80% health, and below 35% health

Surrender To Madness redesigned: 3m cooldown, 30s duration. Allows you to cast while moving. Marks a single target for death, while a target is marked you generate 100% more Insanity from all sources. If the target dies during those 30 seconds, you retain increased insanity generation for up to 45 seconds (from cast), from all sources. If the target survives for 30 seconds, you die. Horribly.

8 Likes
10

At first glance this looks pretty good

2 Likes
11

I’d like to make it known again that I rather Void Form / Insanity mechanic get tossed out or made into a game play talent choice to give other options of theme / play to people that don’t like the current theme / gameplay.

Now then, I would like to add an idea that would make Void Form more tolerable.
Instead of making Mind Flay castable while moving (I think that’s a clunky mechanic) why not just make our castable spells be instant cast. So Void form would act like Clarity of Power from WoD in a way. It can make Mind Blast be instant cast, have a short Cool Down and Hit harder while in Void Form. Then if you want / need more castable abilities then add back in mind spike and give it the stacking crit % again on next MB or something.

That way in PvP we can actually make use of Void Form. Being able to cast mind flay on the move don’t do crap in PvP so it doesn’t solve the Void Form issue. But if you can instant cast and hit hard on short CD while in Void Form then that allows you to make plays and move around without getting locked out.

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I agree I’d like to see our flavor change back toward Psychic Vampire Priest, rather than Insane Void Cultist, but I highly doubt they will do that for us.

Casting Mind Flay on the move would make kiting a lot stronger since we could actually maintain our slow while moving away from our enemies. It won’t help you get space - that’s not something Shadow can create by themselves - but it will help maintain it.

Not sure how Mind Spike helps movement? It was a 1.5s cast spell, where we’d be casting it 2/3rds of GCDs. Making Mind Blast instant in Voidform would definitely help, it’s an idea worth Dev consideration definitely.

4 Likes
13

This has always bothered me. What’s the point of a slow if I have to root myself to maintain it?

In raids or dungeons it’s fine, but in pvp it makes no sense. By trying to slow someone with mind flay, you’re putting a stronger cc on yourself

3 Likes
14

As soon as you making a instant slow ability that does damage, in theory, you can be untouchable from melee.

Come with me on a little thought experiment.

Imagine a game where melee cant gap close you by charging/teleporting/leaping etc. If you can cast an instant cast slow that always does damage, you would never be touched by melee. Also in this world be it in PvP or PvE, as you are moving and slowing the target, your range will be dynamically changing so very awkwardly as your moving normal and further away from the target and they are moving slower and the gap will quite quickly get out of range of mind flay and so you have to start and stop anyway or you will out range. It would be very awkward.

Now back to melee in the real game where they can close the gap. So thats what will happen, they will close in and slow you. So you can be slowed while moving to slow them… that just means your both moving same slow speed which equals no difference now as they will still be able to tunnel you and lock you out.

If your getting trained by more then 1 person, having a cast while moving constant slow ability doesn’t do anything as its limited to only 1 target anyway. So the situations that the movement is needed, wont actually end up with a net positive result. Your still just as effective as not being able to move while casting as being able to move while casting.

The only time its useful is on 1v1 situations and then it could be considered either overpowered or useless pending the opponent / class.

However with Mind Blast usable as an instant cast, you can make use of it in melee range while getting trained and while hoping away or running after your target. Instance cast abilities open way more windows of play vs this silly casting mind flay while moving idea. It simply to clunky to work and hard to balance in PvP.

Edit:

The only way Casting Mind Flay while moving will make it into the game is if they remove the slow affect attached to it.
But now all that does it allow your filler to be used while moving… but its still a filler. And you loose the utility aspect.

Its much better to gain meaningful damage with instant cast while in void form with Mind Blast etc.

15

What I mean is if that was put back into the tool kit to serve a purpose again and then add on the instant cast aspect on it in combination with mind blast instant cast and SW:D while in void form. This would make Void Form a bursty form.

You can make Mind Spike generate 0 insanity so yes you can spam that spell for burst instant cast but only a short amount of time because your insanity generation will be almost nill aside from the mind blast instant cast.

So your trading a shorter Void Form for quick burst damage.
I’m okay with that.

16

I’ll also add my personal experience with using Mind Flay in PvP over the years.

  1. Usually I use it not to slow the target coming at me (that is very nich and not the purpose of the spell) instead, I use it to slow targets running away from me like slowing a EFC or an enemy going after your EFC.
  2. I use it in short bursts while jump moving around just to bait interrupts and waiting for my other spells to come off CD.
  3. I use it quickly to point my toon at the target so I can cast in the correct direction with other spells (this is because when tab targeting a cone of players, you might get someone off the the side and need to rotate yourself properly quickly so you don’t get “target must be in front of you” message from other spell casts)

But during actually fighting, you rarely want to use mind flay as all that does is draw a literal line from the target and you. That guy knows your blowing him up and he will then start swapping to you because that slow is annoying him.
No you typically want to stay in the “Shadows” and cast your damage without them noticing you before its too late.
So many times you can blow up people without them knowing where you are because all the other shadow spells don’t have a travel animation except Mind Flay (Talking Pre-Legion Shadow). But as soon as you use Mind Flay then unless your target is going to die in that Mind Flay, you just gave up critical intel on where your at and what your doing and just opening yourself up to getting trained and shut down.

Having mind flay while moving is not going to help you, if anything it will not be noticeable or be every harder to pull things off.

17

dude post this in the beta feedback please

18

If only I had alpha access :frowning:

19

Beta…

We in Beta now bois! lol.

I wonder if any of us actively posting in the Priest forum got in.
Doesn’t seem like it.