I know it sounds silly, being an iconic ability that goes back to Vanilla, but hear me out.
For starters, it ruins transmog. Even with the glyph.
And consider what it’s become - it’s an effect you turn on and get bonuses, that is turned off only when you change specs or die. See, back in the day, in order to cast certain spells, namely healing ones I believe, you actually had to drop Shadowform. You’d lose the benefits in order to gain access to a school of magic. Now it’s a glorified aura you have to have on 100% of the time or you’re just gimped.
I don’t even like the particle effect associated with it after all these years. It’s black wavy lines in a translucent purple skin with what looks like smoke coming off it.
Voidform is fine - it looks cool and it’s temporary. But frankly at this point I wish they’d get rid of it as a spell and just convert it to an always on buff.
Idk, just my two cents.
12 Likes
This comes up every month or so and priest opinion is… divided (to put it politely).
For some, Shadow-form is THE defining feature of the shadow priest. Despite being purely legacy with no actual gameplay effect, seeing their avatar in shadow-form matters.
Then you get some who hate it and wish it was gone (I’m in agreement with you here, tbh).
And in between you get people who prefer one version of the form to another (the classic purple outline is particularly popular because… classic I guess). Few like the modern variant (or… if they do they’re not talking on this forum).
About the only thing I think they could do to fix it is with a range of glyphs - and even then some players hate the idea of people being able to hide the effect as they regard it so highly.
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Frankly I think Blizz should just kill it as an “ability” and make it an always on aura (with the stupid particle effect lol) that is switched on just by being in the specialization. I know they brought a bunch of abilities back, but we all know they will have to prune again in the future and I see no reason why this “spell” can’t just be turned into a passive effect.
It would be nice if they just rolled back anything tentacle related; it’s like the Lovecraft fetish got out of control. They could have done madness and insanity based abilities without making us look like some squid mutant.
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Not using a terrible/quickly created shader would help.
I love wow but their special effects engine isn’t remotely up to anything in Unreal or most of the other MMO style games (PoE says hi)
Shadow Form is a spec defining feature and right now it’s purely cosmetic. The odds of them removing it are pretty much zero.
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I’m in agreement with OP personally. Rather they lose the tentacles from void form, make void form the current shadow form, and give players a tome like they gave Druids for their treant form that allowed players to just turn it on and off at will for those who want it permanently on.
As I mentioned in another thread also discussing shadow form, it would be nice if the glyph to modify shadow form was independent of the glyph that made mounts shadow formed as well. I’m not a fan of the default shadowform and prefer the classic with the glyph. But I still want the shadowy mounts 
Another thing I question with Blizzard’s design decision is with insanity. Why does it even exist anymore now that the only real use for it is Devouring Plague? It’s no longer really useful to have insanity when it’s used for literally one skill. They did this with other classes too where they have a mechanic that may have had larger value to their respective classes in the past but currently serve no real use other than to just be there.
5 Likes
They should just allow you to glyph it out. Problem solved. No need to punish one half of the spriest community by removing shadowform entirely.
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It needs glyphs:
- Glyph of Old Shadowform (Vanilla -> Legion)
- Glyph of New Shadowform (BFA -> SL)
- Glyph of Combat Shadowform (Shadowform visuals only appear while in combat)
- Glyph of Faded Shadowform (an old Glyph that reduced the purpleness)
Personally I love the old Shadowform from Vanilla -> BFA, and I don’t like the new Shadowform. Give people visual options, that’s why Glyphs were supposed to exist - lately the glyph system only exists to give mages different shaped elementals apparently.
7 Likes
I think a glyph would be the best thing. That way it doesn’t impact those that like the shadow appearance. That said, for my personal taste I’d like to not look shadowy.
I’d prefer they make us look shadowy when we use our void eruption ability. Instead of entering tentacle form we enter the current shadow form. When we’re not in void eruption form we look normal. While we’re at it, change these void names to something else. Shadow doesn’t mean the same thing as void. Shadow eruption, shadow bolt, etc
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It doesn’t even really need glyphs so much as they need to add a barber shop option the same way druid forms were added.
At this point there really is no reason to not allow us to customize our shadow forms seeing as there has been so many, even going so far as to just turn it off if that’s what we choose to do.
They just won’t put the resources into it.
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Bring back Shadow Orbs. And Glyph of Shadowy Ravens. Man I really miss WOTLK. >_<
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Ok, this sounds like a good compromise. Rather than a glyph that makes it “slightly less noticeable” just give me a glyph that hides it completely.
Agree. I’m pretty sick of the tentacle thing. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. I do wish the whole “spawn a tentacle to mind flay the target” thing wouldn’t have been attached to a lego and would have been a passive in the kit.
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Yes
It’s been reduced to nothing but a passive. It has zero interaction with our spec.
Bake in the spell power buff and delete the purple cloud affect from the game files
And rename voidform Shadowform
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Imagine if a game like League of Legends made a champion whose passive ability was:“You do 10% more damage”. People would be in an uproar because that’s wasting an ability on something that should be baked in to the character’s base damage values in the first place. It’s not a real ability.
There should be a reason you might want to turn Shadowform off or something that makes it more like real passive abilities. Without that it’s a pointless ability and our skills base damage is just artificially reduced to account for the assumption we’ll always have it on.
Really what they should do is:
-
Remove the damage bonus and DP restriction from the form. Then either leave it as a purely cosmetic option or give it an effect that you may sometimes want to toggle off. Some sort of defensive buffs like Moonkin gets or an ally/enemy aura for example. Maybe a mini-darkness effect on just yourself or nearby allies? Or an enemy aura that causes enemies who die to become a Shadowy Apparition.
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Include Glyphs to modify Shadowform to less visually obtrusive versions such as Shadow Orbs based on your current Insanity.
It’s really easy to say “Leave it alone but add glyphs to remove/modify the visual effects” but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a stupidly designed ability. Shadowform should be an iconic ability that actually does something.
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Glyph of Shadowform
Glyph of New Shadowform
Glyph of Shadowform Classic
Glyph of New Old Shadowform
Glyph of Old New Shadowform
Glyph of Cherry Shadowform
Glyph of Shadowform Lite
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They did that at the start of legion. People hated that they couldn’t turn it off so much, it was hotfixed within a couple weeks