Combining Voidform + Shadow Orbs

Classes Priest
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These are my suggestions on how to fix voidform while giving people shadow orbs/Devoruing plague (well almost)

Disclaimer: I’m not a game developer so these are simply my suggestions that to ME sound good. However I understand that simply because they sound good on paper doesn’t mean it transfers well in game. Cough current voidform Cough.

Void Form:

I think the most important thing and maybe the key feature that would fix shadow is removing ramp up mechanic. Remove ramp up mechanic (form both haste and drain) and make it a fixed buff upfront. Make the buff impactful so that there is an incentive to get into voidform and stay in it. this way it’s so much less punishable if you drop voidform due to fight mechanic because all you must do is just generate insanity to go back into it. You wouldn’t pop voidform and hold it until you reach your peak window and then maintain it. it would also be so much easier to tune and balance because it wouldn’t be affected by secondary stats directly.

Once you enter voidform it has a fixed drain number (say 5 insanity per sec) that you could maintain. In theory you could maintain voidform for a long time however you would have access to spending abilities (ex: Devouring plague) that would make it harder for you to maintain voidform. This would give people as close to shadow orbs play-style as possible but also keeping voidform for the few you enjoy the unique playstyle it offers.

While your insanity is draining Devouring plague would cost insanity making it a more dynamic system then simply maintaining voidform.

But the most important element for this whole system is to be able to maintain voidform for a respectively long time.

Talents that need to be baseline:

Legacy of The Void and Lingering Insanity:

Legacy of the void and Lingering insanity need to be baseline. Bake them into each other to make a new passive called Legacy of the Void.

Legacy of The Void(passive):

while outside voidform your insanity generates and stays at 30 also you can access voidform once you hit 70 insanity.

While in Voidform you collect 1 insanity per second. After exiting voidform the number of insanity you collected would be generated over 10 seconds (adjustable)

Why:

Right now, by the time I have access to voidform all the mobs are dead and once I get kicked out of voidform and manage it build enough insanity to get back into it all the mobs are dead.

These 2 suggestions are to make it easier for you to get into voidform and less punishable if you drop out of voidform due to fight mechanic. Lingering insanity would also give the people who love the whole being rewarded for staying longer in voidform a similar playstyle by letting them get back to voidform faster.

Surrender to madness:

No one is gonna pick a talent that would kill them. That’s why I think it should be baseline however I would change it a bit.

It would give you a hyper more powered up voidform on a fixed duration (lets say 20sec)

Then change it from “killing you if you don’t kill your target” to " dealing 90% of your health in damage if you can’t maintain voidform for 20sec or kill your target"

  • it does not stack lingering insanity *

so, you can still use it as a dps cd however its more viable due to its flexibility. you can pop it in the start of a boss fight and survive it by maintaining voidform for 20sec or you can pop it on add/trash phase to melt them away and still survive it.

Make Dark ascension take its place on the talent tree.

Dark Ascension:

you trigger a second (normal) voidform starting with 50 insanity. While generating 50 insanity over 10seconds. 1 minute cooldown. (replace Surrender to madness)

stacks lingering insanity

Why:

This would give us a baseline burst dps cd however keeping dark ascension would give people who rather have a more consistent phases of voidform cycles better tools to manage them.

Mind Bender:

Shadow fiend is a useless braindead cd. Make Mindbender baseline however it would generate less insanity then the fixed drain rate for 10 seconds. I would still have it as a talent just a bit different.

Mindbender:

Your mindbender generates insanity equal to the fixed insanity drain to you and it would generate 10% mana to 3 casters (preferring healers) over 10 seconds. 1-minute cd

Why:

This would give it a purpose rather then it being simply an extremely trash dps cd. Mindbender would be a resource generating cd and if talented into it would give more utility to the spec.

Problems and Concerns:

Rotation:

I’m not a game Dev so I don’t have any suggestions on how to fix/adjust it. if you have a suggestion please tell me. All I got to say is make it, so our spells interact with each other and not simply a “keep pressing this button to build insanity and then keep pressing this button to spend it”. Make it so we have options to pick and chose from based on encounter.

Lack of Mobility:

Right know we have no mobility at all unless you talent into Body and soul (which is a must). Furthermore, our rotation forces us to stay stationary or risk losing voidform.

Lack of all sorts of CDs:

Shadow lacks utility and defensive cds.

Utility CDs:

Vampiric touch is the only utility cd we have, and it lasts for 15 seconds on a long cd and does minimum impact unless you talent into it which would never happen because Body and Soul is on the same row.

I personally see Shadow as the utility dps spec in the game so to only have one long cd that helps my group is ridiculous. Give us more utility cds to help our group/raid. Make it so wanting a shadow priest in your group is not simply for the dps they bring but more for the utility.

Defensive CDs :

Dispersion is absolutely the worst defensive cd in the game. Basically, it is a 6sec self-stun for 75% reduced damage. You can still get CCed in it and can’t heal or do anything about it. The movement speed boost is useless because you can easly get CCed (even if you run away a DK can easly yank you from across the BG while a DH would simply keep up and a Warrior would charge you)

My suggestion is:

Make it a baseline 1min cd where you become immune to all CC and generate 75%(adjustable) of your health. Insanity drain is stopped but you do not stack lingering insanity. So basically, make the talent baseline just add CC immunity.

If Blizz insists on leaving it as it is than I would strongly suggest changing it’s name to Suicide…. it’s more fitting.

Conclusion:

  • Basically, what I’m suggesting is make it so we would build insanity to enter voidform than once in voidform you have access to spells that would spend insanity (EX: devouring plague) while there is a fixed drain rate, however voidform last longer and is more maintainable. So, build a builder-spender system into voidform. This would give people who want shadow orbs/devouring plague back a similar playstyle while still not removing voidform for those who enjoy it.
  • Give us a more interesting rotation that interact with each other with slight mobility.
  • Make shadow into a more utility spec. Meaning give us more utility cds.
  • Fix Dispersion. Even if Dispersion is the only Defensive cd we get make the talent baseline with cc immunity.

EDIT:
So…I did more research and realized that what I basically describe is WoD Demo lock mechanic. I didn’t play much of WoD so I didn’t know of the mechanic. but now that I do can we please just have that mechanics. it’s better then ramp up

2 Likes
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I think anyone asking for Shadow Orbs really doesn’t understand or remember that system at all. It was one of the WORST gameplay points for the shadow priest. Voidform now is terrible, but it wasn’t in Legion, meaning that the issue isn’t with Voidform but rather Blizzard’s constant tinkering and screwing around with it. I still don’t understand why classes like Demon Hunter receive almost zero tuning and are allowed to be kings in nearly every piece of content, but if shadow ever crests top 5 dps on raids we get beaten into the ground. It’s unacceptable and unfair to those of us that have stuck with the class for so long. The ONLY reason I came back to play in 8.3 was N’Zoth and all the shadow priest theme content, only to realize that I can barely do content because they have once again gutted our spec for NO REASON.

Shadow Orbs were awful on a few fronts.

  1. Orbs were a resource shared by two primary abilities, Devouring Plague and Psychic Horror. The issue is that one of those is burst damage and the other was cc, so in PVP where orbs took a bit to generate you couldn’t hold your powerful single target cc and pair it with your burst rotation, a choice literally NO other class had to make.

  2. Orbs were boring. You only ever used really used them on a single spell, and there was little choice. You never wanted to use less than three, so it was basically just a weaker/boring Holy Power system that ret has. With even less choice.

My suggestion for shadow is simple, go back to the roots of when voidform was good in Legion. It was honestly the most fun and interesting point the game has ever been. I even like shadow NOW, I just hate that my choice and performance has been taken away, but voidform is WAY cool and needs to stay.

  1. Insanity should generate outside combat. Give us the ability to start fights at 100 insanity and have the option to immediately enter void form. This significantly reduces the ramp up time for shadow. It won’t eliminate it (and it shouldn’t, it’s a hallmark of the class) but it means we’re not just so garbage at doing anything when the fights get faster and faster due to gear, or the demands on burst damage get higher.

  2. Revert Shadow Word: Death to the way if functions now, and make it baseline for shadow instead of a talent. It’s absolutely fine as it is, and doesn’t need to be shoehorned in for the sake of bringing back an old version of the spell. There was a REASON it was changed, and with all the rotation we already have, it’s clunky and not very interesting to make it just another instant cast tax on healers.

  3. Bring back Devouring Plague. An instant damage ability with leech and burst, yes yes yes. I prefer the version from the Shadow Orbs days, but it can easily be made to have a cooldown, or require some other mechanic to trigger. Not sure how to fit it in, but THIS is the ability people want back. Not a crappier version of an existing talent.

  4. Reduce some power from voidform, roll it back into base form, and allow for longer periods of time in voidform to matter again. Voidform means too much to us, making the ramp up our biggest complaint, and the inability to improve by performance from proper resource management and rotation just makes it not feel like you’re playing the class like we used to.

For me these are my big takeaways as someone that played pretty heavily in Legion and loved the changes, especially as someone that has mained Shadow in every expansion from vanilla to current.

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Orbs were extremely fun because they gave agency to the player themselves. Voidform removes that and turns into you either smash Voidbolt on cd or lose voidform there is no sense of control or impact.

ramp up has been part of shadow for 2 expan only it’s not a hallmark of the spec. Ramp up is my as well as most Shadow priests main issue with voidform.the fact that i have to sit there generate insanity(even if i start with 100 insanity and can access voidform immediately) than stay in voidform for at least 20 seconds to do basic dps is absurd and unbearably obnoxious.

with orbs you can add more spenders, Exp: Psychic terror consumes 1-3 orbs and last longer with more. you can add proc instant mindblast if you channel mindfly that would give me a reason to cast mindfully.

yes a very basic version of orbs is boring but orbs system can be easily modified added to and adjusted without breaking the whole spec. Voidform has proven to be unbalance-able.

but you can turn it into a cd for the people who enjoy it. The people who are complaining about voidform understand that there is a very small minority out there that enjoys it so we are suggesting to turn it into a cd that if you choose talents that augment it, it will give you the voidform playstyle you enjoy. however why force the rest of the majority to endure this horror.

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Ramp up has ALWAYS been what Shadow does, because we are a dot class. We’ve always needed time to hit our maximum stride and been weaker on faster fights. This was true in vanilla, and it’s true today.

Orbs didn’t give anything to the player. If you were dpsing in pve content you just gathered three orbs and then hit devo plague. That’s not really any agency. If you think that voidform is just “mash void bolt” then you either didn’t play the entirety of voidform’s inception during Legion to now, or you never played the spec properly.

Also I find it weird that you’re complaint is centered around the requirement of voidform to do dps and ignored my post to just nitpick one part. Let me reiterate something for you.

Reduce some power from voidform, roll it back into base form, and allow for longer periods of time in voidform to matter again. Voidform means too much to us, making the ramp up our biggest complaint, and the inability to improve by performance from proper resource management and rotation just makes it not feel like you’re playing the class like we used to.

I did address the fact that voidform feels too integral to the class, and that’s kind of the point of many of my suggestions. I also find it funny that you make an assumption that you are in the majority in not liking voidform and the minority is those that like voidform. When the idea of bringing back orbs and removing voidform is relatively new, and only part of the vocal groups on the forums.

You don’t really have a leg to stand on or real data to backup your claim that voidform and my viewpoint should be relegated to a “cooldown” just because you’ve decided from the start you’re point is more valid with zero evidence.

How about you just stick to the conversations about the spec and not logical fallacies? It’s much more enjoyable if you would list out some actual things you’d like to see. Instead of just saying voidform is bad, bring back shadow orbs and make them more interesting. Which is doubly troubling when you consider that something as another form can’t be balanced according to you.

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wow you’re so bitter…why?

DoTs aren’t ramp up. DoTs are consistent damage over time. SW:P doesn’t do more damage per tick if it stays longer on the target. but no worries this is a minor mistake its k just please read your spells next time.

Agency- action or intervention, especially such as to produce a particular effect.
you get to choose when to spend your resources based on the encounter and mechanic. Voidform does not give you that. you fight a ramp up drain to maintain it.

I like the longer voidform idea. however taking power from vodiform and baking it into base will just mean no one will use voidform.

neither of us have data to back us up because we are discussing our opinions. where did your suggestion have any data or prove to back it up i might have missed it. You keep using i think and i feel. these are not factual things however they aren’t invalid.

By the way I’m very sure you know this cus like you mained shadow since vanilla and all but devouring plaque is more of a shadow priest hallmark then voidform. I don’t have to explain this to you, you mained shadow since vanilla.

lastly please take a deep breath and calm down. I don’t want to argue with you. You came to my post and left a comment that I replied to.

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I’m bitter and you’re a condescending prick. Since you seem to still only be capable of insults and not discussion, I’m done and will just be ignoring you from this point forward. It’s pretty clear that you’re grasp of how shadow works is limited and your only concern is that you be on top of the meters. This is neither helpful nor good for those of us invested in Shadow since day 1.

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Cool…just remember DoTs are consistent damage over time that does not ramp up. just cause you’re a factual guy and I would hate it if you looked stupid again.

P.S: In Legion ours did because of the artifact buff before that it didn’t but you’d know you mained shadow since vanilla.

have a wonderful life bye.

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Except shadow’s 4set PvP bonus provided the orbs you spent on horrify back to you over 3 seconds. And since this was in the time of true PvP gear, this was for all intents and purposes baseline. You never had to choose between Horrify and DP.

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Having to rely on a set bonus is not the same thing as having it baseline.

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The PVP gear back then was easy to acquire and ~better than the PVE gear in all PVP circumstances. Nobody who wanted to competitive PVP lacked the PVP 4-set, and even with BIS PVE gear, not using the PVP set was at best a cheesy joke comp and not anything serious.

For all practical discussions, the PVP set bonus was baseline back then.

Also, on the topic of agency - there is literally zero player agency in Shadow’s Legion-BFA-SL design, you press Void Bolt & SW: Void on cooldown, or you are wrong. In a 5 orb model, you at least can float until your 6th orb generation would be wasted before deciding where to put DP.

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And it was still a bad system. And still would be a bad system. Because you STILL have to make that same choice, even if the orbs generate again over time (because it’s not immediate, and still not really much choice)

Also maybe your problem with N’Zoth is personal. Maybe you need to change what you are doing. I won’t lie, I’ve only been in LFR N’Zoth. But I don’t experience the same issues as you, and the same mechanical changes are still present. I don’t go down, I stay up because it’s far better for me. And my damage on those tentacles is insane and very useful.

Maybe you just don’t know the class as well as you think, or refuse to adapt your playstyle.

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I’m not advocating for a flat return to the old Shadow orb model.
I completely agree it was a poor design as it was at the time, and should be improved: but it was easy to improve.

The reason I do advocate it, is because it is a far simpler system to fix - which means the devs are more likely to actually fix it.

Just consider the mess we’re in right now in SL Alpha - the devs truly thought Void Bolt Rank 2 was a buff we’d be excited about. They truly thought Madness & Death was a talent we’d be excited about. They truly thought the new Surrender To Madness was a rework we’d be excited about.

That tells us 3 things:

  1. The devs have no clue at all how Shadow actually works
  2. The devs have no clue what the audience will get excited or angry about
  3. The devs repeatedly acknowledge Shadow’s problems, but have no clue how to fix them (in part due to 1)

On the one hand, present outrage is necessary from the community to make them know we’re not happy: that is the community performing our function in this relationship successfully.

On the other hand, if you are a class dev for 30 specs, and the above 3 points are true, and a recurring problem 3 expansions running as of SL. You’re just going to neglect that spec - because any time you try to help you get yelled at and make it worse.

We the community understand the complexity of how Insanity interacts with every other seemingly disparate part of our spec - from talents to azerite traits to passives to fight mechanics - to make it function for us. But this system is clearly too complicated for the devs to work with.

And to be clear, I don’t really blame them - they have 30 other specs to work on, not to mention other parts of the game to develop. They have to procrastinate on Reddit all morning, and ditch work at 3 to go to the beach, and they have increasingly few people on their staff to make that all work to my understanding.

They need a work/life balance too, and I respect that - but their work/life balance is bad news for Voidform & Insanity, and that will always be the case, it is an inherently over-complicated model to work within, and not something someone can think have a 1 hour group meeting about and understand.

What I advocate, is a return to a Shadow Orb model because it is simple, and then fix the issues it had - which are common to all builder/spender models.

Namely:

  • You need a pool larger than the cost - 5 orbs, spend 3
  • You need multiple ways to build orbs (Mind Blast, Death, a talent tier)
  • You need multiple ways to spend orbs - not just DP & refundable Horror

To that last point, I propose some pretty simple and familiar options:

  • Devouring Plague, a 10 second DOT
  • Void Torrent, a 4 second channel
  • Void Eruption, an AOE burst + applies Shadow Word: Pain

You now have a system which is simple to understand, but interesting to play. You have some time-bounded player agency about when to spend your Orbs (the ~18 second window between 3 orbs and 6th orb).
You have some player choice about how to spend your Orbs (3 meaningful spenders).

If the devs want to spend a 1 hour meeting on Shadow in the future, they can say, “We want to add more choice to Shadow, so what about a new talent tier with some new spenders”, and brainstorm some progress on our spec. Currently they probably can’t even finish brushing up on spell interactions before people have other meetings to go to.

I agree Builder/Spender is a common model. I just disagree that’s a downside when we’re beholden to a corporate environment and a hundred other Dev priorities beyond Shadow.

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Love the suggestion and I would love to see it come true. however I think you are giving the Devs to much credits. they really didnt work on shadow for alpha at all. power infusion was only disc and now its all specs, StM went back to the original talent. the only thing they redid was SW:D which i wish they didn’t because now its utter trash. The spec changes in alpha was an after thought.

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If these three things are true:

  1. The devs have no clue at all how Shadow actually works
  2. The devs have no clue what the audience will get excited or angry about
  3. The devs repeatedly acknowledge Shadow’s problems, but have no clue how to fix them (in part due to 1)

Then no change is going to matter because they still won’t understand. Because the problems from the alpha that you outlined don’t even have anything to do with the issues from voidform.

StM is crap because it’s unuseable. It’s literally designed in a way that the player would never want to even use it because the duration is too short and the requirements too high, the upside too low, and the downside is absurd. You could literally ignore all the issues with Voidform, and the design for StM STILL is stupid. And that’s not because of voidform.

Madness and Death is bad again because the change to SW:Death is bad. And the new SW:Death would be bad even if Voidform went away. Because having an instant cast damage spell that taxes healers is bad. It was bad in TBC it will be bad now. They can’t make the damage worthwhile because it’s available all the time, and because it would kill you if you used it whenever you wanted. That part of the spell is the problem, not the execute part. They have made the restrictions prevent the spell from working. Voidform or not.

Finally Voidbolt Rank 2 takes what was the best part of voidbolt, the mobility it gave to us, and threw it out the window. Even if you got rid of voidform, having something that is cast while channeling mindflay, and making us sit still like that would ALWAYS be bad.

None of the issues with these things are because of void form, they are bad all on their own. Getting rid of voidform for orbs does nothing to fix bad design like that. And it’s not magically going to make the devs smarter about shadow.

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I think the real issue is this is alpha, and as you said they didn’t make a lot of changes. So they took away all the azerite powers propping up shadow and gave nothing to the class. So it feels like crap because it’s alpha. And so part of it is the spec doesn’t work because it’s still functioning like it does in bfa without the special powers. And it always has new bad updates on top of that.

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but if a spec only feels good with borrowed power that just shows how bad the spec design is.

I’m glad that we can both agree that the alpha changes are disappointing.

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Build/Spend is probably the most common resource system in all games, it’s the system of choice for nearly every other spec in WOW.

The devs understand Build/Spend. They can work with that.

The kind of uniqueness I want for Shadow is that we’re purple, we don’t have burst cooldowns, but we’re good at multi-dotting.

I’m tired of our uniqueness being that we’re too complicated for the devs to fully understand.

Build/Spend is like trying to run a small business, you build some inventory, then you make some sales, and so long as those stay balanced or positive, you make a profit.

Shadow is like micro-economics. It’s a sort-of closed system, but it’s inside a far larger open system, and there’s like at least 50 externalities and interactions going on to map out. But you can’t really measure the variables anyways. You can get a feel for it though with practice.

Shadow is like the old guy at the corner store who knows that if his shipment of cigarettes don’t arrive this week, then the smokers in town will be agitated, so productivity will decline at the lumber mill, more arguments will get out of hand, and some people will likely get punched. So if his supplier can’t get a few cartons of cigarettes, he knows he needs to at least get some extra gauze (for the punches) and have a sale on alcohol to keep the peace until his cigarette shipment next week. Shadowpriests are that old guy.

Devs are some 25 year old business consultant who came in, trying to tell him how to optimize his business model - and asking why he’s stocking up on gauze and alcohol when he sells them at cost.

I want a system the devs understand. I’m tired of being the old guy, trying to explain what cigarette supplies have to do with gauze sales.

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I would disagree with this heavily. Void Bolt Rank 2 is a problem because of the high damage per execute time of mind flay, and the short, repetitive nature of shadow’s core rotation. Something that exists to fit to the “madness caster” fantasy presented by voidform.

Mind flay hits hard because shadow’s rotation does not have a real focal point. It has voidform, which amplifies everything, which leads to everything being roughly equal through it.

The whole rotation is tripping over itself, and basically on the brink of collapse in SL Alpha right now. And I’d say that can be put on Voidform’s impact on Shadow’s rotational mechanics, and the addition of Void Bolt in the first place.

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No, it shows that they have balanced the spec around the azerite system. Voidform has never had an expansion where it wasn’t designed around a system behind it. In Legion it was Xal’atath passives, and in BfA it’s azurite. You take those both away, and the spec needs to be rebalanced. Especially with a spec like shadow that scales insanely with everything.

“but if a spec only feels good with borrowed power that just shows how bad the spec design is.”

This is not true from both angles. It’s doesn’t “only feel good with borrowed power” and even if it did, it doesn’t make the other half of it true.

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No the issue with VoidBolt Rank 2 is that you stop moving during void bolt to fully channel mind flay. You just made up a reason to tie it to voidform.

Currently you clip mind flay, so you’re wrong about how “hard” it hits. You clip it because it doesn’t hit all that hard per tick and you can get partial benefit. Now, if you don’t have to clip, the value of it goes up. that’s the problem. You fundamentally don’t understand shadow priests.