Void Form and Void Bolt might as well be the same thing, as they are tied together as abilities. Void Torrent might as well be “Powered up Mind Flay” and Void Volley is a PVP talent enhancing Void Form. Are you just picking out abilities that have the word void in them? If they changed those abilities names to “Ultra Shadow Form” “Shadow Bolt” and “Shadow Volley” would that make it better to you?
At no point in Shadow Priests entire history has shadow EVER been mobile. You still aren’t explaining what you mean by a “void spec” and a “Shadow spec”. You’re just naming abilities with void in the title and saying “Bad.” They aren’t competing ideologies. GIVE EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU MEAN.
Shadow has ALWAYS been a low mobility hard casting spec since the vanilla. It doesn’t really matter what abilities came in at what point, it’s how the abilities work together in their entirety.
History lesson time. Shadow had never actually had a dps cooldown for a VERY long time. They were often just a simple dot based support class, even when wotlk came out and designed the “bring the player, not the class” mentality they were still primarily used for utility effects like dispersion and mass dispel, alongside some minor benefits like VE. The original shadow priest was a support based caster dps, which was around for vanilla and TBC before disappearing entirely.
Later iterations of the class were caster dps specs that leaned more on allowing the dots to enhance the way the class would play, rather than having dot damage be the primary focus as dot damage scaled off. Starting in Cata you began to see more focus on direct damage spells augmenting the damage more, and dot spells being supplemental and generating procs. They were still utterly non-mobile. When your filler spell is a channel, you aren’t moving much.
Legion was really the first time the spec had a major revamp that significantly changed the gameplay loop. All previous incarnations of shadow priests all focused on a core identity. Maintain SWP/VT uptime, use Mind Blast and procs on CD, Fill with Mind Flay. Along the way Shadow gained different tools, such as Dark Archangel, but the core root to the kit remained.
Legion brought with it void form and a new focus on insanity mechanics. while the core abilities of the class remained, the gameplay loop focused entirely on insanity as a mechanic. They pushed it hard. All of the abilities from void torrent to dispersion were designed around supporting the last as long as possible loop. Which was AWFUL. That was the part of Legion void form that mattered for Legion void form. Take away the insanity mechanics from Legion and NONE of the Void named abilities really mean anything anymore. They are just generic abilities. You don’t use Void Torrent to extend Void Form anymore, you use it because it’s a more powerful ability than all your other abilities. You don’t use Mind Games because of the utility, you use it because it does more damage. Which is exactly the old gameplay loop.
Old Shadow was a priority system focused around dot uptime and cooldowns. Mind Blasting on CD, because it did more damage. Flay between. Devouring Plague when it got changed was cast once you had 3 orbs. Because it did more damage. So Void Torrent is exactly the same now. It’s an ability that does a ton of damage and generate a lot of insanity to use Devouring Plague with. It fits perfectly into the priority based rotations of old shadow priests. Do we need another button for that kind of thing? No. But it’s not doing anything special either. It’s just a big damage ability on a CD. Like Mind Blast.
Don’t want to use Void Form? GUESS WHAT? There’s a talent for that. You don’t HAVE to use Void Form, and Void Form is not required to get the rest of this to function. You can easily use Dark Archangel if you wanted to. That’s the beauty of the new talents system. Don’t like Void Form and Void Blast? Take the Dark Archangel talent.
Shadow is currently exactly like it was before. I also really don’t understand the argumentation line here. Are you arguing FOR the return of the old insanity style gameplay, or arguing against it? Because it sounds like you just want the Legion spells gone, but the OP wanted Legion gameplay back. People are being really inconsistent in this thread about what they want.
