Early Voidweaver Feedback

Classes Priest
1

So far, I have leveled to 76 in TWW during early access. As a new priest from the tail end of Dragonflight, I was most looking forward to Voidweaver Shadow Priest. To my surprise, I greatly prefer Archon instead! Mostly because Voidweaver is running into some fundamental Hero Spec issues that I would like to address here.

Before starting, this feedback is solely coming from a PvP perspective.

Voidweaver on paper sounds amazing, but in practice, it feels almost frustrating.

The core issue comes from Void Blast and our ability to actually press it during our Entropic Rift window.

Once I activate Void Torrent (while moving which is a great addition), I then have access to Void Blast while my Rift is out. However, in PVP, you will find it sometimes impossible to benefit from this new spell before losing access to it.

Kicks, interrupts, stuns, displacements, positioning etc. Sometimes, you simply just won’t have any active Mind Blast Charges available after pressing Void Torrent, leaving you unable to press a Void Blast before losing your window.

The first major change I would love to see, is after using Void Torrent, you gain access to 2 charges of Void Blast that completely replace your next 2 casts of Mind Blast until utilized.

This would help the flow of the spec and ensure we have access to the new primary ability we gain from picking up Voidweaver.

9 Likes
2

I think void blast could reasonably replace mind blast at all times. It doesn’t need to be available only during rift windows and having it as a permanent replacement for mind blast would likely bring the two hero trees a bit closer.

3

Seems to track being a Priest and all lol.

You know what would be nice is for Archons talent Sustained Potency talent make it so Halo either grants your cooldown for 6 seconds or it just adds 6 seconds if you are already in your primary cooldown.

Then rework the right side of Archon a bit so that you always have your Insanity version of the spell or for Holy, Surge of Light during your primary cooldown.

Then for Voidweaver, your Void Blast is always instant cast and it cools down 100% faster.

That way they both gain a slight bump to the main damage enhancing ability within each respective hero talent and it should make missing procs or windows less of an issue due to movement or stops.

Or also, make it so Archon only Insanity versions of spells are Cast while moving for Mind Flay and Instant cast for Mind Spike.

Then Voidweaver can have their charges of Mind Blast refilled after it becomes Void Blast and is always instant cast and cools down 100% faster.

That way, you have more freedom of movement for either hero path.

Doing this would make both the Surge of Insanity talent and Shadowy Insight talent slightly redundant but still required in a way.

So it kind of evens out.

5 Likes
4

Here are some other ideas…

Shadow

Archon

  • Sustained Potency (Redesign)
    Dark Ascension and Void Eruption now activate when you Cast Halo and causes your Mind Flay or Mind Spike to always become their insanity versions while active. Dark Ascension and Voidform become passive and can no longer be manually casted.
    • This would have the side effect of Void Bolt not being able to be used but in return, the cooldown is now dependent/relies on Halo at 1 minute.
  • Manifested Power (Redesign)
    During Dark Ascension or Voidform, your Mind Flay: Insanity becomes castable while moving and Mind Spike: Insanity becomes Instant cast.
  • Energy Cycle (updated)
    Casting Mind Flay: Insanity or Mind Spike: Insanity has a 100% chance to conjure Shadowy Apparitions.

Voidweaver

  • Entropic Rift (Updated)
    Void Torrent tears open an Entropic Rift that follows the enemy for 8 sec. Enemies caught in its path suffer (60% of Spell power) Shadow damage every 1 sec while within its reach and activates Dark Ascension or Voidform for 8 seconds or adds that duration if currently active.
  • Void Blast (Updated)
    Entropic Rift upgrades Mind Blast into Void Blast and becomes instant cast while its active
  • Void Infusion (Redesign)
    When your Mind Blast becomes Void Blast, it refills your charges and cools down 100% faster.
  • Inner Quietus (Updated)
    Your Periodic spells deal 20% additional damage

Note: Changing Voidforms damage increase to be Periodic only would cement it as the better cooldown for Voidweaver and fulfill the desire to be aligned more thematically and with that change done, it no longer needs to replace Shadowform and its damage bonus, it can just be in addition just like Dark Ascension.

Conclusion

Archon:

  • Primary cooldowns become Passively used through Halo.
  • Mind Flay/Spike becomes its insanity version during your primary cooldown and you reduce a casted spell to essentially be passive with it being merged into Halo.
  • Mind Flay: Insanity is granted the ability to cast while moving and Mind Spike: Insanity is granted instant cast while Dark Ascension or Voidform is active.
  • Voidform cooldown gets reduced but you loose access to Void Bolt.
  • Idol of Yogg-Saron gains value with the increased amount of using Insanity versions of Mind Flay and Mind Spike.

Voidweaver:

  • Primary cooldowns become active for a short duration or duration is added if they are already active when using Void Torrent.
  • Mind Blast charges are reset after being upgraded to Void Blast.
  • Void Blast cools down 100% faster.
  • Void Blast becomes instant cast.
  • All periodic damage, not just Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain is increased. This adds more value to Entropic Rift itself as well as Mind Flay, Void Torrent, Devouring Plague, Idol of C’Thun and Idol of N’Zoth.
6 Likes
5

Healing with it at lvl 80 doesnt feel that enjoyable for some reason. I would be curious to see if anyone has tried oracle healing as disc yet

Edit: Well tested oracle myself. different dungeons but trippled the healing with oracle and dps close to same. VW was cleft of shadows and oracle cinderbrew. maybe cinder has more healing but i found oracle did very nicely

1 Like
6

No just no.

1 Like
7

Want to elaborate a bit as to why you disagree with that direction?

Seems many Shadow Priest players want more Periodic damage to be more meaningful so they don’t just tickle.

Do you disagree with that direction? If so, why?

1 Like
8

DoT damage shouldn’t be gated behind a 2 minute cool down. I’d prefer to see Voidweaver focus more on sustained damage. Voidheart should be an always on buff and void blast should replace mind blast 100% of the time. Let archon be the arcane mage of shadow specs so that Voidweaver can bring back our sustained damage.

1 Like
9

So that we can come to an understanding, going to respond to each point individually…

Firstly, I agree that having a portion of your damage being locked behind a 2 minute cooldown seems a bit much.

But is the issue solely with the 2 minute cooldown aspect? What if it was shorter like 1 minute cooldown?

If its not based on the cooldown timer exactly but instead on the concept of your “periodic only” damage increasing during a window then how is that a problem? Dark Ascension is the opposite, that aspect is not a problem is it? Or do you think Dark Ascension needs to be ALL shadow damage and not limited to Non-Periodic shadow damage? If that’s not the case, then why is 1 type of damage enhancement being locked behind a cooldown a problem but the other is not?

If you want sustained damage, then I vote to just remove both cooldowns and be how it was in MoP and WoD as we had no cooldown. However, I highly doubt that is going to happen.

The word “sustained” typically does not make sense when you are paring it with a cooldown as that very nature is becoming “unsustained” as since its a cooldown, it only lasts for a limited time and is “unsustainable”.

One of the reasons why our Periodic damage is so low is because we spike up with overall damage from our cooldowns. So having both Periodic damage and non-periodic damage getting enhanced simultaneously means they both will be limited by how much of an increase they are allowed to receive.

But if you only received 1/2 of of your being enhanced, it has a much larger range for which it can be enhanced by. This would be the ONLY way to make our periodic damage to be “scary” again instead of just existing for synergy purposes.

I never mentioned anything about this talent. Are you just making a point that it should not be limited to being active ONLY during Entropic Rift?

If so, then that again will water down the damage window to be more “sustained” as you are wanting but again… that would also lower the cooldown burst window effectiveness because that damage instead of being focused when you need it, it will just be spread out over the coarse of your entire gameplay which means it is less meaningful and simply wont be noticeable.

Again I would ask what is the purpose of a cooldown if you want sustained? Having a cooldown and sustained are opposing forces. Having one negates the other.

Let me ask you this, do you think our Dots (periodic damage) should have the option to become “meaningful” again like it was in the past? Or should they just remain as they are where they are hardly noticeable by themselves on the target.

If you do want them to be more powerful but obviously we need to retain a semblance of balance, how would you go about it if not tying them to a cooldown?

1 Like
10

just cut sp talent tree to two sides. one for dot and pet? one for instant damage.

dark ascension and void eruption instant cast.

and change that useless mastery

done

2 Likes
11

Yup I disagree. I want more burst, this a pvp prospective.

The class needs more burst. Dots no longer cut it. For the past couple expansions affliction has been the highest dps in pvp and many of their games still went into dampening. This is the result of every few patches or season blizz just adds more damage to aff to make it viable.

Too many classes can self heal the dots, remove them, absorbs, passive magic damage reduction, etc. more classes are getting passive damage reduction with hero talents.

Blizz needs to look at buffing the instant damage on devouring plague significantly.

Mindblast as well. Swd. Void Bolt also needs a significant buff, it’s damage is Garbo, for it being gated behind a 2 minute cooldown.

Nightfall (instant shadow bolt) was hitting for 1million on beta. Nothing in the priest arsenal comes remotely close to this. Not even void Bolt with a 6sec cd lol.

3 Likes
12

I don’t want any cool downs at all. I’m not happy that we can take both twist of fate and power infusion. I believe the excessive number of cool downs and damage amps are what cause shadow to have such lacklustre baseline damage. The implementation of Voidweaver and archon is almost exactly something I suggested before dragonflight release. I want an option to choose a cool down or a baseline damage increase that is always active.

The reason we have this arcane mage play style on every dps spec in the game is because of the m+ crowd and it has been detrimental to every other form of gameplay.

I should be able to opt out of the cool down burst play style to achieve a higher dps over the course of 2 mins at the cost of a burst window.

2 Likes
13

Lookin good :sunglasses:

14

The way you should look at entropic and void blast is as the base periodic go-to damage cooldown. If it fails, no biggy, you have a bunch of other stuff you can do in between those 20-24 second mind blasts.

15

Love this. I would add:

  • Shadow Form decreases physical damage taken by 20%
  • The Shadow Priest heals 50% more from Devouring Plague
  • The Shadow Priest heals 100% more from Vampiric Touch
3 Likes
16

Many of my suggestions over the years are aligned with that desire as well.

However, I am trying to also provide feedback that caters to the dot/rot aspect of Shadow as well to the point where our periodic damage becomes scary again.

So in order to have a semblance of both Burst windows and Scary Periodic damage, you would have to sacrifice one aspect to push more power to the other.

To take a seesaw as an example, if it’s perfectly balanced then it’s not noticeable on either gameplay profile side. But if one side goes higher, the other side goes the opposite direction and goes lower.

So to apply that example to my ideas, I think Dark Ascension already catering to the Non-Periodic side of damage keeps your periodic damage flatlined.

Then if we made Voidform enhance Periodic damage only, then that would make your dots and Mind Flay and any Periodic damage ability become more impactful while keeping your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death and any Non-Periodic damage flatlined.

The goal of my vision is that your Burst comes out swinging hard but for a short duration. Your scary periodic damage is required to ramp up to become scary and since Devouring Plague already is a Periodic damage spell and extends the duration of your Voidform, then if we make Voidform add a base amount of Periodic damage and in addition, add a stacking amount of increased periodic damage the longer you stay in that form would slowly make your periodic damage hit harder and harder until it ends.

So this would make a clear separation in primary talent builds with having talents that cater to Periodic and Non-Periodic damage which vaguely exists in some form already but it’s not fully realized and flushed out.

This would grant the player the choice in gameplay and you can always have an option for the type of content you need… fast pace burst or slow build up to scary rot damage.

I enjoyed not having a dedicated cooldown in MoP and WoD.

However, just like our current mobility in the displacement category in being very noticeably lacking, I think a similar outcome would be present if we did not have access to any damage cooldown enhancement.

The closest we got was a straight up passive damage boost across the board in Edge of Insanity PvP talent during Legion where you simply lost access to go into Voidform while also losing access to Void Eruption, Void Bolt and Void Torrent.

I simply don’t see a way they can somehow retain both a cooldown option of gameplay and a passive form of damage boost.

I mean I sort of have it halfway with the idea of merging your cooldown to activate when you use Halo for Archon suggestion, but it still uses your cooldown.

I suppose the other talent that increase your Halo damage by 30% might be an option where you can instead increase all damage by a much lower number but loose out of your cooldown? But if that happened, can you simply just avoid putting a talent into the cooldown in the first place? I think it will get really weird trying to mash that type of gameplay style into the current system without a major overhaul.

Regardless, it’s a difficult situation to work with.

1 Like
17

I think the ability to opt into a sustained damage profile depends heavily on tuning. There are three different damage profiles. One has on-demand burst windows like most specs now. Another has a consistent sustained damage with very little variation in output like MoP or WoD shadow. The third has a ramping damage output where the burst window is delayed like legion or BFA shadow. The tuning required to make each of these profiles valuable involves inequalities in overall dps. The ramping profile should have the highest dps over the full course of the ramp because damage is not immediately available. The damage profile with on-demand burst should have to pay overall damage done for the ability to deal higher damage immediately during its burst window. The sustained profile would fall somewhere between the two extremes.

The reason we don’t have a solid sustained damage profile is because of an obsession with having all damage profiles deal roughly equivalent overall dps over a timeframe.

18

Unfortunately, the entire base spec needs an overhaul, trying to add hero talents to it is like building a castle on a swamp. We need a better foundation, Voidweaver directly conflicts with the Void Eruption and Void Bolt window, it’s as if the devs in charge of our class never played Shadow.

After 3 expansion I gave up on Shadow and went back to playing DK. There’s only so much feedback we can give before we walk away.

4 Likes