As I just mentioned regarding short sightedness. Anyone that has played Shadow in a decent amount of PvP situation will know… we don’t have the tools to avoid getting locked down.
A mage can Frost nova, Sheep, Blink, Proc instant cast pain train abilities etc…
A Priest for its entire history is a punching bag in PvP… we have no escapes, we cant chain CC with a Warlock Fear or Mage Poly, we can only heal if we do damage, we cant do damage unless we cast, we cant cast because we cant avoid getting interrupted
Are you starting to see why 1 little interrupt on a 8-15 sec CD can counter out voidform and all 3 abilities its brings to the table every time… when not in Voidform, you dont do ANY damage because you are balanced around doing damage while in Voidform for a prolonged period of time. It simply is not the same as any other class for all the wrong reasons.
When I play any other class, I just lawl rofl stomp any Shadow Priest I came across in Legion and BFA. I knew exactly how to counter them and I knew they had no chance to stop it. That is NOT how it was in any point in time Prior to Legions Voidform redesign.
The game is tuned to the max potential of a spec. If a talent gives access to Legion’s Voidform playstyle (which is incredibly difficult to isolate into a talent choice), the rest of the spec suffers for those who may not want to spec into that playstyle (as it was extremely polarising). Yet the spec as a whole is tuned around it’s max potential output.
See below. 1) Balance philosophy required to protect rest of spriest, 2) A theoretical approach to isolating it in a talent, 3) Just relevant class balance stuff
So many issues. Many have gone into detail of the problems. As for me, I try to fix the problems. Me coming from Shadow Priest experience in all aspects of the game since classic back in 2004. I have a pretty good understanding of how the spec functions and what makes it fun and what it needs to compete in current era wow. At least that’s my personal opinion.
This seems like a general issue with what shadow priest is now. There are other suggestions that can be made to make one side of the Spriest tree less voidform dependent, but I don’t see how it is relevant to the discussion about adding a few talents that bring an old voidform playstyle back.
I am sure there are people with much better understanding of the class than I working very hard to ensure shadow priest players get a satisfying overall talent tree. It absolutely looks problematic right now, but so do a lot of alpha talent trees. Hopefully blizzard will take the feedback and manage to fix everything by release.
I believe it is possible to build a shadow priest tree that can accommodate an old voidform talent without molding the rest of the tree entirely around that. The current Frost DK tree iteration for example allows you to go deep into the right side for AoE, but skip Breath of Sindragosa and go for Icecap on the other side instead - if you so choose.
Similarly, you can imagine a talent tree that works great for shadowpriest, where you do have the old voidform on the side somewhere, but you could easily take all the talents leading up to it and then pivot elsewhere without feeling bad
Some people hate Voidform (Me)
Some people like the old Voidform from Legion (you)
Some people like the Shadowlands Voidform
You cannot have a “part” of a spec to be “unrestricted” in scaling (Legion Voidform) without negatively impact 1 or both of those other groups. Even with a Hard cap on scaling… that means the other 2 groups will both not have access to that “Cap” you are suggesting BUT will still be BALANCED around that cap… because they have the capability to pick that playstyle option.
That’s not true at all. Lets go back to what I suggested initially:
You can now tune the power level of this independently from the rest of shadow priest - and I have already said that this build should absolutely not be significantly better that other shadow priest builds, even when played perfectly.
This is actually a perfect base to discuss it, especially with how you’ve placed Devouring Plague such that it is not mandatory. Is it possible for you to send me a copy of this in editable form?
Too many people in this thread pretending pre-voidform shadow didn’t have some of the same issues they’re laying out with post-legion shadow’s design.
The legion ‘playstyle’ is too dangerous to bring back. The output was completely ridiculous, and no matter how you spin it, StM wasn’t healthy (and still isn’t now considering it’s pretty much useless).
Gonna go out on a limb here and say that Spriest is a fairly well designed spec as-is, that mostly has tuning issues and a terrible AoE playstyle which pretty much throws away everything fun about the spriest in favor of slamming two buttons that needs to be solved. The new talent tree has a fair number of issues and doesn’t address the AoE issue at all - and that’s the biggest problem for spriest right now.
What you are wanting to do is cram the entire playstyle you want in only a small SMALL handful of buttons and ignores the rest of the spec.
That cant happen. The new talents by its structured design will not allow that to happen.
This is why Ryeshot wants Voidform to be its own class. It just cant be balanced around the rest of the tree.
Edit:
I take that back… It “can” be balanced I think… but it would be really goofy lol.
Take Mind Blast for example. That is the cornerstone ability that you want to use often but its locked behind a short cooldown.
Lets say in the non Legion Voidform spec that it would do 100 dmg.
In the Voidform Legion spec, it would do 100 dmg as well. But once you go into voidform, it would have to calculate every second you are gaining more and more power in that Mind Blast ability, it would have to have a counter balancing to subtract that same amount. In order to not affect the other specs… thus making Voidform useless.
I have always held the point of view that almost every dps spec in the game should have multiple builds with somewhat varying playstyles.
There’s Arcane mage with Kyrian burst and Burn/Conserve - drastically different playstyles.
There’s Frost DK, with Breath and Obliteration
The problem with these is that one is always poorly tunes. But it is not only possible to put multiple playstyles in a spec - it should be encourages. I think specs should have variety and individuality in how you play them. The new talent trees make this so much more possible which is very exciting.
Edit: In fact, you have already done this to an extent in your “Cleaned up Shadow Priest Tree” by putting void eruption on the very right side. Without too much in-depth analysis, the changes I’m suggesting could look like:
Replace Surrender to Madness in Row 9 Right side choice node with Void Torrent
Put the “Madness of the Old Gods” that I have suggested where Void Torrent used to be in your tree
Put Surrender to Madness - the version that buffs Voidform - directly under “Madness of the Old Gods”
The Issue I don’t think you are seeing is that with your Legions Voidform playstyle you want… Whatever “scaling” it has attached to it… it WILL drag the rest of the “core abilities” power with it… Meaning your Mind Flay, Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Paid, Shadow Word: Death, Auspicious spirits etc… ANY of those abilities or talents you pick up in addition to those that get affected in the power scaling you want… that means all those abilities are dragged to the TOP potential of what you want… which means the BASE needs to be reduced to balance… Meaning the rest of the spec suffers if it uses those abilities…
The only way around this is if the abilities you use in this Legion Voidform will have to be entirely different abilities that the rest of the spec does not use… which means all the talents you picked up along to way to get this Legion Voidform are wasted.
Clarity of Power
Your Mind Spike, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death deal 40% additional damage to targets not affected by your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch. Also reduces the cooldown on Mind Blast by 3 sec and makes it instant cast.
But…
Then why have Voidform at all if everything is nerfed? It just defeats the purpose.
