You’re conflating talent variety with build variety. Most of the talents in the bottom two rows of Shadow’s tree have no impact on gameplay. Compare that with other specs’ whose talents have synergies to create a variety of builds.
I mean, it seems pretty clear that when talents change how you play, that talent variety creates gameplay variety (which you appear to be referring to as build variety).
And Shadow’s talents - not just the ones in its bottom tree - do change how you play in the four areas I mentioned. Again, I know you don’t find it sufficiently compelling. That’s fine - I’m not saying you are wrong to not find it compelling. But the gameplay variety is certainly there.
As per the examples I used in my previous post.
Paladins can pick talents that take away Crusader Strike to then make it more Auto Attack passive or they can take talents that add more charges of abilities to get more button spammy or they can lean into Hammer of Wrath focus builds or Multiple ways to do AOE via procs or call down a hammer or spin hammers around or controlled burst instantly and you can opt for a combination of them or focus on a single one.
That is just a birds eye view, but Paladins have many ways to customize your playstyle. Shadow Priest players essentially have the same buttons they press with really the only option of channel vs cast filler and Void Bolt with Void Eruption/Voidform And Void Torrent. Everything else is passive and barely noticeable.
With Fury Warriors, Your basic gameplay loop is for the most part pretty static. However, you can choose various ways to do AOE. You can have Multiple Types of Stuns, You can add extra bits to how you want to do Single Target damage by adding some abilities into your rotation or leaving them out completely. With Shadow, you basically use all your spells you have. You would likely never not completely leave something out of gameplay loop.
With Shamans, you can focus more on the Lightning based gameplay approach or go the more Lava Burst approach or a mixture of both. Doing this will either make some abilities rarely used or can make them a high priority to use. With Shadow, you basically use everything you have as often as you can use it. You don’t get to just not use something and focus more into other things.
Conclusion…
Basically every Shadow Priest Player presses the same buttons. Some press those buttons in different orders and priority’s based on talent builds, but you still press those same buttons. I know if I come across a Shadow Priest, I can expect the same stuff being used as every other Shadow Priest for the vast majority of them with barely any noticeable difference.
That’s not the case, though; their talent choices enable the selection of different abilities (buttons). But also, that’s an over-reductionist way of looking at build and gameplay variety. Sure, all shadow priests can “press the minion button,” “press the Mind Blast button,” or “press the Shadow-Word Death button.”
But not all Shadow Priests can make those buttons into procs to create a more movement-friendly gameplay experience. Numerous Spriests will not press the pet/minion button regularly or at all, because not all of them are speccing into stacked cleave. And not all Spriests will weave SW: Death into their core rotation, regardless of execute range, for an Inescapable Torment build.
To again summarize, Shadow has gameplay variety in at last these four areas:
- Hero talent choice (which determines cooldown usage)
- Main DPS cooldowns (which determine your rotational filler spells)
- Inescapable torment for stacked cleave
- More procs for movement-heavy fights
Pointing out that Pallies, for example, do things differently doesn’t change the fact that Shadow has variation in its gameplay.
You’re being overly generous with the way you describe Shadow’s build variety.
- Hero talents and cooldown choice are coupled together. If you play Voidform you play Archon, if you play Dark Ascension you play Voidweaver, and vice versa. You cannot separate the two with how the current design is.
- Inescapable Torment is not a “build”. Mindbender is not a “build”. You reduce Shadowfiend’s cooldown to 1min. That’s it.
- These procs you refer to, Mind Devourer and Deathspeaker, are add-ons, they are not builds. There are no additional synergies within Shadow’s talents.
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Ok, well I see what you mean there. That leaves 3 fundamental aspects of build and gameplay variety?
I don’t understand why Inescapable Torment would not be both a (talent) build and a gameplay change. You literally build your talents around the minion. It’s more than a single talent pick, because you are doing your best to maximize Mind Blast and SW: Death presses when the minion is up.
I mean, the way I see it, a proc-heavy (talent) build is a “movement-friendly build.” An Inescapable Torment build involves taking a serious of talents built around maximizing the effectiveness of your minion. I guess we are defining “build” differently, and I’m not really sure what you mean by “build” at this point if your definition of it excludes changing around your talent build, especially when those talents change your rotation and how navigate through various encounters. If neither of these are important aspects of what you consider a build, what is your definition of a build?
My definition of a build would be talent synergies that revolve around a concept and enhance it. Let me take both of your examples and dissect them.
Inescapable Torment (Pet)
I do not qualify reducing a cooldown from 3min to 1min as a build. Additionally, the .7sec increased duration on high cooldown spells results in a unnoticeable duration increase.
Even the capstone talent Y’Shaarj does little to synergize with this. Why do I care about 5sec increased duration on Mindbender? Maybe if Mindbender generated less than a pittance of Insanity or empowered other spells. With its current design I just don’t care.
Compare this with current Discipline Priest Pet build, which not only includes Inescapable Torment but also the synergistic talents Void Summoner and Shadow Covenant.
Mind Devourer and Deathspeaker (Procs)
I can certainly understand the argument for there being a proc-based build, however, I do not think that we have either the amount or frequency of procs for this to be the case. Mind Devourer is nice to have but it doesn’t do anything. You can’t bank it and it still casts a normal Devouring Plague. Deathspeaker just lights up a spell you would not otherwise use, but the spell itself does not do anything special.
I can’t think of a way to include Mind Devourer in a build, but I could certainly see a Shadow Word: Death build exists using the Amirdrassil set bonus as its concept. But we don’t have that.
I think my argument for Shadow not having as much build variety as other classes is due to its lack of depth. The concept is there but it isn’t complete because there are simply not enough synergies. There are too many filler talents and too many ideas in general that the tree results in being shallow.
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I want the option to make Mind Blast not have multiple chargers but hit like a truck and perhaps also not have instant cast version of it. That simply does not exist. You will always end up taking Mind blast with 2 charges and the ability for it to proc to be cast instantly and forced to do so or you would be severally underperforming if you didn’t. Hanse the justification of no actually choice in gameplay.
I want the option to do focused AOE with Mind Sear OR Spread AOE with Psychic Link. That option does not exist. You have a single way to do consistent AOE and that is through Psychic Link.
I want Mind Spike to coexist with Mind Flay as it was in Cata-MoP-WoD and make it a hard hitting nuke or a more on the move damage button to fill out your gameplay loop. It only exists as a replacement to Mind Flay with very little done to lean one way or the other of enhancing Periodic vs Non-Periodic damage profiles.
I want to make Shadowy Apparitions become a build you can focus into instead of just fluff that just happens. I want my Shadowy Apparitions to become baneling like and explode for direct non-periodic AOE damage.
I want builds that lean into Periodic vs Non-Periodic damage profile builds where you would just flat out not use some spells in favor of others. I want to be able to change up my approach to how I deal damage be it quick and impactful or ramping up overtime. I want to be able to adjust based on the content I am doing to maximize the potential the spec can offer when you face many targets or few or when you face targets that die fast vs die slow or facing targets that will remove your debuffs or not. At current, every Shadow Priest player is subjected to the current Shadow Priest options which only lean 1 way in those examples so when you are facing something that proves to be challenging, you don’t have the option to change things and adjust.
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So having played shadow priest off and on ago for years I feel as though my biggest gripe with the spec is that there is no real purpose behind hitting buttons. This maybe due to a lack of meaningful and engaging visuals to buttons, but when I play it currently the spec feels like I am spinning plates for the sake of spinning plates. The best feeling I had for shadow personally was legion as I it had a distinct purpose (staying in void form for as long as possible).
Here is why currently I feel this
shadow word pain is not really an ability but rather a modifier for talents to interact with for vampiric touch.
Devouring plague(our spender) has no animation and we just press and forget to get another spender (insanity)
Insanity is barely noticeable in comparison with our other two channel spells void torrent and mind flay.
Why again am I pressing buttons again? What visual oomph to re enforce that I am doing something cool and engaging. Especially with the current iteration watching a white bar on details is definitely not motivating.
In terms of survivability and and movement I am def in agreement that priest needs to be looked at. They definitely appear to be an outlier.
2 Likes
Hoping this week we see at least some iteration on the priest class tree, and ideally some shadow changes as well. I don’t know how it’s possible that some classes have seen multiple passes over their class and spec trees since DF beta and the Priest Class tree has seen very little. Shadow tree has seen some more iteration since then but as a result of those changes, been designed into a corner, and I would definitely love for it to be given some freedom and room to breathe.
I feel like this is a lot of specs, Shadow included. Blizzard has almost entirely abandoned the design of “filler” abilities making up ~50% of your rotation and the remaining abilities hitting hard. Even a lot of spenders don’t really do “chunky” damage.
I am definitely open to Mind Blast and our dots (Devouring Plague especially) hitting harder if we have a nerfed filler that requires more uptime. Fewer highs, but the highs are much higher.
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I only play Spriest as an alt but one BIG issue I always have with it in any kind of content outside of raids n dungeons is ; kiting. I feel like shadow or even the other priest specs lack the abilty to kite well. The tools given are sub par to other classes. Warlocks have curses, hunters have traps and slows, mages have Slow and Frost Nova , if not frost spec, etc etc. I could go on but the fact remains priest doesnt have ANYTHING good like this. Sure you get the tendies but they die in 3 hits and have a long CD for what it is. Mind flay slow is ok but it has to be channeled which isnt the best when trying to kite due to having to SIT in one spot to gain the benefit of the slow, if you even talent into that. If you go mind spike you get nothing.
Alas I miss the days of Phase shift and other kiting abilities but something that would be great is adding a slow to Shadow Word : Pain or Vamparic Touch , adding phase shift back and not allowing the tentacles to be killed. Its really warranted due to priests not being as durable as locks and even they have more kiting capability than Priests. It makes no sense. We just need SOMETHING to close the gap. A slow and a knockback , just something.
Side note, give the healing specs Silence or an Interrupt - its really frustrating when you want to interrupt and cant especially in M+ when the dummy dps wont hit theirs.
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Most fun I ever had on my S.Priest was when we took mind sear and millions of ghosts came to party.
I loved the apparition heavy variant. I like the idols and stuff but the ghosts were the sauce, now they just feel like an afterthought
Some juicy spell effects and animations would do wonders too.
6 Likes
Legion (and the end of BfA) were the only two times I really messed with Shadow, but I really enjoyed the beginning of Legions shadow that involved accessing Void Form and trying to master your time in it to capitalize on your damage. The buildup to hitting this form was steady and fairly fun, and then it felt great to have that form hit and get to really try and maximize your abilities and CDs in the correct order until the form ended. Felt a little frantic but in a good way. I’m honestly not sure how popular the gameplay was, especially since it was exacerbated by how busted Surrender to Madness was, but I thought it felt pretty good.
Shadow currently feels like I either have a dead period of just steadily two or three buttons, or everything aligns and I’m full of procs and balancing DP, Blasts, Deaths, and Insanity. Sometimes it feels hectic and not entirely in a good way; almost like I’m pressing buttons, while in a certain prio, but not really interacting in a way that feels fun or engaging. I’m obviously not super historied up on Shadow, but it feels like a spec Blizz has long been unsure of what to do with and they can’t decide on how to proceed with it.
Could we be a DoT oriented spec? Should we be a proc spec? Could we potentially be a late scaling Execute spec or an Amp spec? Kinda feels like we’re meshed into all of them without any real cohesion in my eyes.
Of course, this is all coming from a Hunter main so take that as you will. Thematically, I like Shadow and have been thinking of raiding as it again next tier, so I’d really like to see Blizz take a good hard look at it and really find its future.
Keep waiting, and you should rest while you wait 
cuz back in TWW beta me and a bunch of players including some famous like Publik gave a ton of feedbacks, tons of realistic suggestions, and all we got before launch was nerfs, and more nerfs, and then on the 11.0.5 patch they gave Spriest some aura and spell buffs but all the gameplay issues still the same since TWW beta, numbers still bad, rotations still bad, hero talents synergy still horrible ( not being able to play Void Form with Voidweaver is a complete joke ), and for 11.1 we got radio silence, and i think it will be like this until next expansion at least, i realy dont have any hope at the moment that they will fix Spriest, for me personaly i think Spriest dont even have a DEV, cuz for me there is no explanation for just getting nerfs and more nerfs for then get some useless buffs while we have all the other problems that we pointed out on beta and some classes getting their 3rd-4th rework.
So dont get you hopes too high.
We used to have something like that, until BFA we had Mind Bomb, that replaces Psychic Scream to be a 4 sec aoe stun, or we could take Psychic Horror on the same line, but they removed Mind bomb, and Psychic Horror is on a terrible node to get.
For holy and disc we use to have Shinning Force, it was something simillar as shaman’s Thunderstorm, a knock back with slow, but ours could be targeted in allies, and didn’t had and damage in it, but they removed saying that we couldn’t have it cuz other classes had it, and we got nothing in compensation for that, as it was with everything they took out from priest
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In Cataclysm, we had Paralysis (current day nerfed version of Apathy) where Your Mind Blast Critical Strikes Root targets for 2/4 seconds.
It was amazing in PvP to get your casts off and nuke the melee and the more you Critically Strike with Mind Blast, the more you get the root option.
Now I get it, with Shadowy Insight granting Instant cast Mind Blasts it could get abused quickly. However, I don’t think it would be that much of a big deal and would actually make Apathy more worthwhile point investment.
Even with the Crits on Mindblast ROOTING a target, thats still too RNG for a thing that should be apart of the tool kit as it stands. I do remember shining force and it should make a comeback along with a slowing dot like warlock curses and perhaps having mindblast slow its target and others around it for like 50%. Its a better alternative than giving us a crap ton of leech n just letting us soak the hits.
On another note I didnt mention on my last post was when we had mind sear and it spawned just loads of apparitions. There was another dude up in the forum that mentioned it as well. Mind Sear is as creative as a block of wood but it does its job. I personally didnt mind the insanity drain part of it, I think that make it a good AOE burst spender. Tune it how you like but it would be nice to have that part of the kit back as well.
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I enjoyed Mind Sear since it’s inception back in Wrath.
However, with the evolution of Dungeon Mechanics over the years with adding ever more things that force you to move around to avoid and having channeling spells like Mind Sear cause an ever increasing friction of actually being able to make these spells count. When they don’t have a cooldown or resource cost or in the case of Void Torrent with Voidweaver in allowing the use of Void Torrent while moving then it’s not that big of a deal.
But with the resource cost attached to Mind Sear even with its accelerated channeling duration, it still poses the issue that you can easily start the cast of it and use resources and then move before any damage has been done thus wasting both the time you took to try to use the spell and the resource cost that instead could have been used for Devouring Plague but instead just went poof into thin air rendering it completed wasted.
So my stance on the DF version of Mind Sear being a spender is in alignment with the devs of I rather not have it and it being removed would be my ideal route to choose. The removal of the spending nature of it, not so much Mind Sear itself.
However, I think the better solution would be to simply have a default Mind Sear and then a talent to modify it to become that quick channel but cost resources version of it.
Then give other talents that lean into periodic damage to shift power towards Mind Flay, Mind Sear, Void Torrent, the ticking damage of dots and the Idol of C’Thun tentacle channeling damage.
Then have separate talents that enhance your Non-periodic damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike, Shadow Word: Death, Shadowy Apparitions.
Then you can have talents that benefit from both Periodic and Non-periodic damage builds like the instant damage done by your dots like the initial hit damage from Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch with Unfurling Darkness.
With options like those, you can lean into what you want more be it more upfront damage or more damage overtime or a mixture of both.
With those changes, I would recommend that Voidform gets the Artifact talent Mass Hysteria but change it to increase all Periodic damage increases over time while in Voidform and then make Dark Ascension enhance your Non-periodic damage as it current does but then modify abilities like Shadow Word: Death to cooldown faster or always do max damage or your Non-periodic damage has additional critical strike damage modifier. Just something similar to how Retribution Paladins gain extra functionality with Hammer of Wrath during Avenging Wrath.
Among other changes but the point is, I would like to have a distinct build variety in how we deal Damage as Shadow Priests using Periodic and Non-periodic as the primary basis for determining talent builds.
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I’d love if Void Form would be reworked to alter more of the gameplay than just one extra GCD added in the rotation (Void Bolt). I don’t even think, with VB not extending the duration anymore, Void Form promotes a much different playstyle from Dark Ascension.
It could be nice if, differently from DA, which behaves like a traditional cooldown, Void Form could be kept indefinitely with a stack based system (instead of a timer) in the form of good rotation management.
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