I know there will be no reworks in Shadowlands, but hear me out. The nerfs to Priest made the entire class extremely gear dependent (and knocked us off our pedestal during Nazjatar sadly) and I found Shadow to be so insufferable in regards to ramping damage and a general lack of survivability that I switched to Discipline.
Is it just me, or has Shadow always felt like an inferior version of the Affliction Warlock? The class currently revolves around building insanity to pop off Voidform, which is an absolute MACHINE, but prior to that we are almost nothing but ramp damage, and weak ramp damage at that. Most of our dps is around Void Bolt, Void Explosion and Mind Blast with Mind Flay being a wet noodle we try to get in but often clip with our other, higher priority burst spells. Essentially the entire rotation feels extremely frenetic with the focus being in getting to and staying in voidform as long as we can.
I know SW: Pain and Vampiric Touch have been around forever, but they just feel kind of tacked on at this point. Shadow feels like it’s shifted mostly away from damage over time to a bursty play style, but is being held back by the trappings of originally being a strictly DoT based spec.
I enjoy the build and sustain model of insanity, it’s just when you’re outside of voidform it feels really week. And like I said, I have always had the feeling Warlock just fills the niche better; and they bring soul stone and healthstones to the table.
Lastly, the absolute lack of healing SUCKS. We have enough mana to get off about 5 Shadowmends (which blow) and that’s if we don’t throw out a PW: Shield (which also blows). The other class that’s comparable to our healing situation are Protection and Retribution Paladins, and they have Bubble and Lay on Hands. We can talent for Dispersion and that’s currently it. Even getting Flash Heal in Shadowlands isn’t going to help much since we’ll only be able to cast it a few times without going oom. If Blizz decided to give all specs with a non-mana resource the same amount of mana as regular casters that might help, but I can already hear the screaming from the vocal minority of PvPers.
It really does need a rework, but not for the reasons listed. Voidform is simply toxic for the spec’s design, and no matter how hard Blizzard tries to fix it it can’t work.
Oh well. How come when barely any Balance Druids or Protection/Holy Paladins asked for Eclipse and Holy Power back, those get returned, but when most Shadow Priests agree that Voidform’s a problem and Insanity needs a rework, nothing happens?
You don’t like insanity eh? What about Shadow Orbs from WotLK? Were those good? I miss the ravens…
And maybe Blizz could double down on our DoT features by bringing back that disease we used to have and cause Mind Blast to deal damage based on a multiplier for each dot we have up to help solve the burst issue the class historically lacks?
orbs were first introduced in cata. but yes Wolk was a decent design, most of the damage was in dots and mindflay. having to maintain pain, vt, and plauge, while weaving in mindblasts on cd, and flay the rest of the time was fine. but it still doesn’t work in a scenerio where things die to fast, and that isn’t going to change with or without a rework to insanity.
if we could get searing dialog baseline/thought harvest playstyle baseline next expansion i think it would help a lot. I enjoy that gameplay of vt’s as tank is gathering, sw:v, darkvoid, eruption, bolt, then mind sear, for aoe, feels really good in keys, but for bosses, you feel crappy not having the the ST traits.
The major concern with going back that far to the “Dot management” era is that dot management mechanics aren’t shadow specific, they’re universal. Back then there was no pandemic, meaning any early re application of a dot was a dps loss, and we had snapshotting alongside trinkets like DFO (Dislodged Foreign Object) that added nuance and decision making to dot fights. Also add fights were much rarer, and when we did have adds there were far less of them.
It’s not just shadow that has moved on from that very ridged refresh management style gameplay, the game has, with the removal of snapshotting and addition of universal pandemic in WoD, not to mention how immobile our rotation was back then, and the lack of burst damage.
To answer the OP’s question though. Yes, shadow needs an absolute ground up mechanical rework. Spell names, flavour, all fine. The mechanics underneath that? They need to go.
Stop right there. Not only does ret pally Flash of Light hit harder than SP SW:Mend at the same ilvl, Shadow has absolutely nothing that can compare with Word of Glory, (even talented vampiric touch isn’t even close to being in the same league). Plus, as you mentioned, Lay on Hands, bubble, hand of protection, shield of vengeance. Ret pally is a very poor example of a class with bad off heals or defensives.
I completely forgot about their Holy Power and that one healing spell. Yeah, Ret is busted. I was just thinking about their mana pool and how many times they can cast Flash of Light. Man, why does Priest suck so hard?
They seem hell bent on shadow being Cthulhu spec, they’re inordinately proud of their Legion redesign so they’re being stubborn with it in the face of its obvious gameplay problems.
My biggest issues with the spec stem from PVP, but translate to basic functionality. The spec is just so far behind the curve in mobility, durability, control, and time spent casting and channeling.
Positioning is such an important factor for a ranged dps, but as one of the least mobile specs in the game, the second you get in range to get your DoTs up nearly every melee in the game can instantly close the gap. And once that happens it’s over.
Virtually every melee can immune your fear, trinket your stun, and stun your Dispersion escape attempt. Good luck trying to cast anything. After you come out of Dispersion in roughly the same spot you started, you’re left with little choice but to PW: Shield and /rp walk towards your healer until you either die or are mercifully rescued by your team.
Then there’s the control issue. While everyone else is applying fire and forget snares that remain on the target as they prance around unimpeded, SP has to remain stationary and channel to apply a snare. Assuming you don’t get locked out of your entire spellbook for the effort, your target will either outrange you and then leave you in the dust because you’re the slowest player on the field, or will close the gap and commence to kicking your teeth in, which brings us right back to the mobility issue.
And finally, durability. With SP’s near complete lack of mobility, you can compare them to Warlocks. But the difference in durability between the two are night and day. Mobility trumps durability since being able to get to a safe distance prevents you from taking further damage, but being bottom of the barrel in both is just inexcusable.
I seriously doubt the spec will see a full rework, but my god does it need some quality of life improvements in practically every category imaginable.
As much as I’ve tried to think of ways for voidform to work, it just doesn’t seem to no matter what change can be made it will always mess with the entire tuning of the spec as well as its versatility.
I’d really like to see spriest get the shaman treatment and return to just using mana with maybe some kind of internal corruption/insanity system to buff its abilities at a price, which would hopefully give some cause to go out of shadowform and cast some holy abilities to help it still feel like you are playing a priest.
