It’s insane we are “forced” to use DA, which looks horrible for the Voidweaver spec. I think it doesn’t go with the tree at all, we should be using Void Eruption.
4 Likes
It’s honestly kind of silly that Archon favors Voidform and Voidweaver favors dark ascension. The aesthetics seem like they’re really mismatched.
8 Likes
I think it was done intentionally. I think whoever is working on Priest doesn’t want to or feels little interest in doing anything with it. Could be even a spite thing not necessarily against us players, but the work falling in the lap of the dev that “got stuck” with the work.
Could be no one on the dev team wants to work on Priest and there was a reluctance to do as little as possible with the class as to ensure it wasn’t accidentally OP. Other classes get a lot of love and attention and special care goes into their design, aesthetic, rotational flow, compared to Priest which has this weird clashing design, jank class fantasy, and poorly synergized rotation.
3 Likes
As much as thematically it’s a bit off the rotational gameplay for both builds feels great. Voidform does not play nice with what voidweaver wants to do at all, and archon being built around these huge powerful voidforms and generating as many mfi’s as possible feels really satisfying.
I belive that is to to Inner Quietus which has SW: Pain and Vamp Touch do 25% more damage.
There’s no part of shadow (and priest, overall) design from BFA onward that’s done intentionally. They went all-out in Legion, it didn’t work out, and they’ve done the quickest, easiest things that might have positive impact on the class since and none of them have worked or had healthy impact on the game.
Just look at the timeline:
BFA: Voidform doesn’t mesh with every other class on mechanics. We don’t want to vary encounter design or other classes, so let’s make Voidform shorter to more closely align with traditional cooldown-based gameplay. Also, we forgot that everything that makes Voidform function in Legion is part of Xal’atath and we’re not bringing any of those elements forward.
Shadowlands: Voidform was way too problematic on split cleave, so lets make it a traditional cooldown and nuke Shadowy Apparitions from orbit to destroy shadow’s cleave.
Dragonflight: lol let’s just not do any priest iteration during beta until we need a release candidate a week later. I guess we just put Mind Spike and Dark Archangel back to appease the Voidform haters with no coherent plan of how they fit into the spec or what purpose they’re supposed to accomplish? Oops, dungeons are perfectly suited to priest I guess we should remove their only utility from the game.
War Within: Shadow is perfect. No notes. Never mind that its damage is middling at best, can’t burst like a lot of classes, is highly vulnerable to many mechanics most classes ignore or easily resolve without aid, and brings nothing of value other than its mediocre damage.
7 Likes
Honestly I miss shadow in Legion and BFA the VF was so cool as a spender instead of DP. And in TWW, it’s a shame… no big changes, no rework, nothing. I wouldn’t be playing Shadow if it wasn’t for Voidweaver.
1 Like
Bringing back DP was the laziest, most uninspired choice Blizzard could have made, but, like I said, they were looking to get positive response for no effort and DP’s return gave them that.
I’ve been leveling up my priest these past few days and was completely baffled when i learned that Archon takes Voidform and Voidweaver takes Dark ascension. That’s backwards.
I vibed with what voidweaver had to offer, but using the DA playstyle is a big nope for me.
1 Like
I know people hated legion shadow, but void form and surrender to madness was kino. You really felt the class fantasy as you were smashing buttons.
2 Likes
Honestly I am playing Void Eruption with Voidweaver I don’t care what the guides have to say it feets better with the hero talent and the spec in general.
2 Likes
I don’t like void eruption at all. The bolts are awkward to put into your rotation.
2 Likes
How so? They just go on every 4th global, it’s very rhythmic.
Because it inserts itself in your normal rotation.
2 Likes
I think they should rework or at least update Dark Ascension a little, no cast time for a start.
Some people very loud people hated Legion shadow. A lot of people really loved it despite its flaws.
Blizzard abandoning it without putting in any effort to make something good and instead just lazily adding abilities back just to add them back is one of the greatest design tragedies in WoW’s history.
I really don’t think it was a love/hate relationship vs a more Functional/non-functional one.
If you did long form fight with low mobility requirements like raid bosses, it worked well enough. But world content (mainly leveling and questing) it was atrocious and PvP was terrible since both situations were fast pace and highly mobile. Then in dungeons it was essentially worthless aside from high keys and fortified weeks.
You just could not reach a point of satisfaction at best case because your teammates did all the quick burst heavy lifting or worst case you die.
So it was either a slow slog with no payoff or a quick burst of nothing because you died or your team did all the work.
That is simply not fun in any respect in terms of gameplay.
Then of course loosing the artifact going into BFA made the spec fall over until you got essences and beyond to make it start popping off again.
But once again going into shadowlands the spec just fell over as a hollow husk once all the BFA powers became unavailable.
It was only really at that time myself and others starting making a big stink on the forums and social media to remove Voidform because it was clear that it was the centerpiece of the continuing failures that they just can’t seem to fix without borrowed powers and even at that was a bandaid fix at best.
Then they changed a few things like removing the drain mechanic and re-adding Devouring Plague as the spender.
But the spec hasn’t really changed since then which has since been 4+ years. They just added some things that shore up some aspects and add a little flavor of choice. But the actual gameplay is pretty much the same.
But just want to make it clear that the history that lead up to this point was carved out by the failure of Voidform more so than the dislike of it. Meaning it was inevitable that the draining Voidform idea was problematic and would have eventually been changed.
It’s the replacement that is pretty lacking in the creativity department imo.
1 Like
My theory is the dev in charge of our Hero talents paired DA w/Voidweaver so Archon could have the flashier ability. Archon doesn’t really have any unique visual besides Halo coming back to us. It’s balanced a little with the much more thematic Voidform. DA desperately needs a visual upgrade and possibly an overhaul. I wouldn’t mind if it was a passive proc like Paladin’s wings. At the very least, it should be instant cast or have some other form of utility to justify the cast. Maybe a small group wide heal or damage reduction. In my dreams it would allow us to levitate and cast spells while moving like Dracthyr’s Hover.
2 Likes
My biggest gripe with cast while moving always comes down to the frustration of canceling a cast to either use a proc or a more higher priority spell or to bait an interrupt.
I use my jump action by pressing space bar to both jump over things and to cancel my spell casting action. But having cast while moving, you are unable to control your cancel spell action via space bar jumping. So you would have to take an extra action in pressing the Esc key or macro a spell cancel into another button you press.
Maybe it’s just mean but from a practical standpoint I don’t like cast while moving. But from a thematic standpoint it would make sense having wings out and hovering thus allowing casting while moving.
So I have mixed feelings on this lol.
1 Like
That’s also my issue with it. But also because it forces me to put Void Eruption in a more “spammy” keybind, when it’s not usually the case for me with cooldowns. I’d usually have other priorities to such keybinds.
2 Likes