Oh I agree and its frustrating to hear so much talk about the power fantasy of a class. Well apparently the power fantasy of a priest is “get carried by another class.”
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Well, to be fair what happens is when a strong FOTM forms non-meta classes get denied like 90% of the time… so people reroll specs to not get declined.
Priests in S2 were just mandatory for keys because of the whole mass dispel/mind soothe being needed in nearly every single dungeon. Shadow was in the top 3 for AOE dps before nerfs and Holy Paladins were meta so it led to a Shadow meta.
Imo that was less about class power and more of the stars aligning in a very rare moment in time where the utility Priests have had for multiple expansions that goes beyond 10+ years just so happened to be extremely useful to the point where it makes a massive difference where as in the past it was just a very niche thing.
I recall talking about how useless our utility was in dungeons on these very forums some years back now and that we would have more to bring if our utility actually had moments to use in group content instead of being invalid or a waste of a GCD.
The issue is that the utility went from rarely used and not making a big difference to being widely useful and very impactful.
I made the same comparison with PvP in that for years (since Legion) Shadow in PvP just falls over if you just tunnel it down and after years of this treatment / abuse, it just became accepted that Shadow is not a threat and just tunnel it into oblivion. But as soon as Shadow can become a threat and tunneling it down won’t work and you actually have to counterplay it (S1 Dragonflight for example) then everyone else is all up in arms because Shadow should be a free kill and since they broke the long held mold of being an easy target, it SEEMS they are grossly overpowered and in response gets a mid expansion rework and removed the convenience of instant cast spells to the point where you practically have to turret yourself as a class that already struggles with mobility as it is.
Conclusion:
Shadow at least has been is this sad state of affairs for so long that it’s become commonplace to think they should belong in this state of helplessness and if they ever step beyond the accepted reality and cause waves of change then instead of adapting to the new norm, they need to be thrown back to the helpless state in order for the other classes to go back to business as usual.
Shadow is not allowed a day in the light so to speak.
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Less that - more that other class utility isn’t as useful or has been nerfed specifically for M+.
Shroud was far less useful for skipping packs because of truesight mobs. Mind Soothe could skip a lot of packs because it didn’t have that weakness. Previously you’d bring rogue for those skips, in S2 you brought priest.
I also think a lot of people didn’t realize just how much mind soothe reduced aggro range until S2 because Spriest was very good for damage, and mind soothe got its AoE rework, so people were trying it more. Some of the S2 skips felt like cheating because you’re in a tiny cave or hallway, but soothe let you walk right past.
There were a lot of skips you could do in Shadowlands dungeons, too, but people just never did them. I remember doing the exact opposite of what you’re saying - in SL I remember talking about a lot of utility options we had, and people would just write that off.
I still think mind control goes under-utilized in coordinated groups. You can use it to make several hard packs easier and kill the controlled mob in the next pack. In pugs I’ve saved pulls by MCing an accidental problematic add (like the double flame dancers accidentally getting pulled in RLP being a very common mistake in pugs). Its problem is largely just the aggro drop is hard to coordinate without voice. Funnily enough, in beta and early S1 of M+ you used to be able to MC flame dancers and immediately use burn-out which would kill them. It got fixed pretty quickly, though.
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The primary utility I was thinking about when writing that was the one that got changed the most…
Mass Dispel
The idea that it got such a long cooldown now after it’s inception in BC is just a knee jerk reactions imo to how good it suddenly became compared to previous expansions.
But on the Mind Soothe front, I personally liked it when it was single target casted and I made it work just fine in groups since way back in classic.
I often skipped everything in BRD with my friend as we 2 man the Ring of Law event farming gear as well as in Alterac Valley sneaking into the enemy bases back when it was filled with a lot more NPC’s.
So I’m glad it finally made its return and I guess it only took 20 years for the word to get out on how useful that spell is even though it existed since the beginning lol.
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The idea it got nerfed at all was a joke. It has literally been around since TBC and never been an issue and then suddenly not only does it need an insane CD it also need x3 cast time.
Its just further proof blizzard devs only either play against priests in pvp or with them in their group but never pilot the class itself.
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This was a big loss for PvP, really.
In PvE, there were MD strats in raid, but Blizzard tended to be designing fights for a long while that would specifically stop an MD strategy. A lot of “Here’s 4 debuffs, but when dispelled bad thing happens, so you never want to dispel them all at once!” things were designed in raid.
In M+, it’s insanely rare nowadays that more than one MAGIC debuff goes out. It’s usually several poisons, diseases or curses that’ll go out simultaneously. And they’re always tuned in a way where you’re not guaranteed to have that type of dispel in your group so the damage cant be bad enough to not be able to heal through.
S2 was the first time in a long time where they brought just the right dungeons back, and had 2 of the right dungeons in the df pool that put out mass magic debuffs.
So I kinda agree, weird it was nerfed. But Blizzard has been so adversarial to that spell for so long, I really didn’t NOTICE the nerf anywhere but pvp.
I’ll be happy if they brought back mana burn for pvp purposes. I’d also like for mana burn to siphon resources like energy from rogues and whatever resources warriors and other melee use.
Yea, i stopped using it in pvp. The long cooldown makes it almost useless in blitz brawl. I can see it’s uses in arena though. But I don’t arena anymore.
I gotta admit, voidweaver looks great. From aesthetics and visuals perspective.
I haven’t played alpha to have an opinion about the gameplay
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I’m laughing in main since TBC, or crying, can’t tell the difference anymore lol
TL:DR alpha is largely same ole same with a new coat of paint.
They only give access to the alpha to streamers and people with credentials. The alpha doesn’t really include much to play with though because it’s really just the rough early draft.
The beta is supposed to be coming after 10.2.7 launches so it could be a few weeks after. The expansions supposed to come out before Autumn so probably a late August or early September.
That’s literally only maybe 3-3.5 months of actual beta testing. That’s shorter than the Dragonflight beta. And the DF release was rushed because they had to push class overhauls off into minor patches after.