FWIW, he did do a lot to bandaid the spec.
Have to keep in mind that Shadowlands was horribly behind schedule (obviously), and designers on any game project can’t just decide what scope they have over any design. Everything in game dev takes bandwidth. An entirely new skill takes Design, art, animation, UI, programming and QA, and entirely new assets can take months. If any of those teams can’t commit, the designer is SOL or has to start making sacrifices. IE: What spell effects do we already have that I can cobble together into a new thing? (See: Idol of Yogg-Saron).
What it looks like is happening (to me) is that Blizzard has had an incredible tech debt ever since legion that they’ve been trying to crawl out of. So designers are having to attack things that they already have assets for. Lowering the amount of dev time it takes to attack any given issue.
Add that to not really having a deeper understanding of Shadow, and you get the current problem. Unfortunately, once you do have a deeper understanding of shadow, the question becomes ‘ok, how do we FIX this without putting strain on literally every team who are already making an entirely new class as an expansion defining feature?’
The answer’s not a simple one. So it’d be nice if we didn’t just attack devs. Their job isn’t easy.
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Frustration is perfectly valid when Shadow’s problems are a direct result of not understanding Shadow at a fundamental level.
If I was told to do my job and I knew nothing about the subject matter, do you think maybe I would go to a subject matter expert instead of pulling it out of my behind?
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Let’s be real for a second, shadow’s largest problems are not obvious to most people just stepping into the spec. The traffic problem doesn’t even feel like a thing until you’re trying to optimize play and realizing that the game is actively working against that optimization.
And if you go do your research into people’s frustrations, and return with the impression that the changes you would need to do are extensive, but the rest of your team tells you that they have no wiggle room to make such extensive changes, what then? Do you think they should attempt no fix? Or is the band-aid better than nothing? There’s not an easy answer there.
I’m not saying frustration is invalid. Plenty of people have shown their frustration in this thread. I’m saying specifically attacking certain devs with no knowledge of what the project is like is a bit unfair.
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I’m not attacking any devs, just musing about why the spec is in such disarray. It simply doesn’t have anyone dedicated to it. It’s constantly being kicked down the road to someone else who’s trying to make sense of the jumbled pieces they’ve inherited.
I counter your argument with Searing Nightmare still existing.
QED
That’s fair. I guess I’m trying to curb the inevitable “whoever’s working on priest should be fired!!!” It happens fairly often in these forums already.
You didn’t counter anything except maybe the layman thing? I’m also not trying to argue here. Just a discussion - I already said Searing Nightmare is the one part of the spec that seems like an obvious hole that’s being plugged up. But I don’t think it’s one of Shadow’s worst problems either. It’s just an obvious shoehorning of AoE.
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Class tree feedback:
Shadow flame prism feels like the default choice for shadow priest. Perhaps Void Shift (pvp talent) or Mind Sear could be a replacement capstone.
- Shadow flame prism being throughput option incentives shadow to taking it by default.
- It is arguable that there is little incentive/value for shadow priests to go towards the holy portions of the tree because the tools don’t interact with shadow toolkit. (Priest is a unique class because it has two healing specs. Making something that works with a dps spec is a challenge worth acknowledging.)
- Shadow flame prism in the class tree (as a default feeling choice) potentially removes some design space that could be explored in the shadow tree as an option to the player. In some cases having a dps ability on the class tree feels like an addition, a means of getting a secondary interaction, but in this case this seems to be a defining playstyle that limits choice.
- From a healers perspective, Shadow flame prism as the capstone on the shadow side seems to give value because it is damage but maybe lack luster in terms of the feeling playing it due to the limited number of times healers can trigger the effect.
Void shift as a capstone for the class tree could be an interesting replacement.
- At a long cooldown and its effect, a quasi lay on hands effect on an ally, it has the impact one could expect from a capstone.
- It provides a tool that is helpful for healers (Note: although it could be a bit redundant with Holy Word: Life it would be an option a player can choose 1. because of the talents needed to get to each and 2. the differences in the negative effects they have)
- It builds in utility for shadow priests in both raid and 5 man content.
- It’s an iconic shadow spell that has a kiss/curse flavor that could thematically work with a dark/void priest.
If not void shift, Mind Sear could be an useful capstone. While it likely feels like a weaker option than Void Shift, it presents some design freedom.
- Baring any changes to the class tree if shadow is going down the right path path regardless, it could free up 1 talent on the spec tree allowing shadow to reach deeper towards new abilities in the current tree.
- It would allow disc priests options for m+ in AOE. They could go nova or mind sear (both would work thematically).
- It would retain disc priests option in pvp to remove classes from stealth.
- It is a quality of life tool for trivial mobs in lower level content.
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I would love Void Shift back in our normal skills (Class Talents) again. But I question what was the reasoning why it got moved to a PvP Talent to begin with.
We had Void Shift baseline in MoP and I think it was removed in WoD as I don’t recall having/using it.
I want to say it was abused in PvE or something.
But regardless, I think it would be great to come back as a class talent.
I really do not want to see mind sear as a capstone. It’s not a particularly beloved ability and for that much investment I think it would have to be pretty overtuned.
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The best class tree capstones are the ones that don’t affect throughput (meaning they’re utility or survivability). Shamans are the perfect example of this. Does their class tree have the strongest capstones? No. But are they all useful and worth using, could all specs pick (almost) all of them, and are they all non-dps? Yeah. And because of that, they’re all interesting and live up to a lot of the stated philosophy of the new trees.
Imagine if the priest capstones were Dispersion (with intangibility built in), Greater Fade, and then some holy-themed ability in a similar vein . Not the best example, but it shows you could make stuff worth getting, that doesn’t affect raw numbers, and which any spec could want any of the three pending playstyle/preference/etc.
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In a PvE sense, great. In a PvP sense, I think everyone else suddenly hates you for allowing healing priests dispersion and greater fade. 
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There are PVP problems if you could get both, but that example wasn’t meant to be some perfect anything! It was Just to show that you can offer interesting choices that appeal to all three specs, have trade offs if you can’t get it all, and don’t affect raw damage/healing. Shamans do this by having the capstones be utility oriented. Druids do it by having theirs be off-spec focused. Lots of ways it could be done.
Holy would have to give up a lot of healing stuff from their side of the class tree for Dispersion though.
They were already fired for Bobby’s 9th yacht. It’s just business as usual in America. They should operate like this will be the case moving forward. So why not have the development systems in place to make this a very easy task for them?
As someone who went to school for game design, 90% of the job is pulling stuff out of your behind. It’s more art than science, even if there is a lot of math at times.
That said, quickly putting together a rudimentary tree is a valid way to get a lot of focused feedback. Maybe not widely popular, but effective at seeing where the pain points are. Also, less weird implications about effectively contracting out part of the job to passionate non-employees for free.
While that approach has merit, I have zero faith in it even if that is what Blizzard is consciously doing because, again, this is the third expansion Shadow has been in this state during development.
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Shadow tree isn’t as utter crap as people make it imo. The core of the issue for me is the insanity generation/spending that lacks ways to spend insanity and offers too many ways to generate it… fix that and sudenly, the tree isn’t so bad…
Sure there are things that should be added/removed/moved, but shadow isn’t in such a terrible place that it needs to stop wtv the devs are doing to do it IMMEDIATLY.
I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion when you check out the Shadow Tree yourself and play around with it and see how restrictive it is and how it forces you to take stuff you most likely will never use or don’t want and force you to go out of the way to get stuff we shouldn’t have to spend points in the first place OR it should be in the path leading into actual abilities you want the choice to pick.
This doesn’t even touch on the multiple abilities that are just backwards to the reality of how you play/interact with various ways of the game that basically make these abilities 100% useless.
Then when you go into a deeper analysis as explained in great detail in many posts/thread by many people.
So again, I have no idea how you can consider all that and still think its not that bad.
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I’ve seen a lot of it ofc and agree with a lot of suggestions that were thrown here and there.
Still, you guys are talking about spec redesign, removing the void and what else… the tree needs iteration. Hopefully a lot of it. But that doesn’t mean that its irredeamable like tou guys claim.
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I think at a surface level Shadow may look fine.
But when you look deeper at the gameplay from a design perspective, is when Shadow becomes to show how egregious its issues are. A few examples of these are, not exhaustive:
- Lack of a gameplay identity (think Fingers of Frost/Brain Freeze or Hot Streaks)
- Lack of a gameplay niche
- Lack of core spell interactions
- Utility is too focused on spec theme
- Shares little with Priest theme
Shadow is objectively an unfinished spec. It changed too drastically from Battle for Azeroth to Shadowlands without any part of its foundation being changed. And the one interaction that was added that made the spec more cohesive, although contentiously, Dark Thoughts has been removed.
At this point in time Shadow is just a jumbled mess of spells with little-to-no focus or interaction within them. The tree might look pretty at face value, but it is adding onto the massive iceberg of issues that remain unaddressed.
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